Creationism News -- August 2012
创造论新闻 – 2012年8月
Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career
as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini
Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the
Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to
make his excellent websites.
The contents of this presentation were taken from David
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. Pray for the
results of his discrimination lawsuit against JPL.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
ckchui1@yahoo.com
4/13/2015
1
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物


Plants and animals continue to amaze us with their
Olympic-level abilities. New observations promote some
to the award stand.
Diving: For the first time, scientists succeeded in
mounting a small video camera to the back of an imperial
cormorant on the coast of Argentina, allowing humans to
ride along and get a true bird’s eye view of its feeding
behavior. The BBC News and Live Science posted the
video, saying that the bird dives down 150 feet to the
bottom in 40 seconds, spends a minute hunting, finds a
fish, then comes up for air and lunch. National
Geographic said the video shocked researchers who didn’t
know the birds dove so deep. This is a rare opportunity to
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2
see a bird’s everyday athletics from its own perspective.
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物

Weight lifting: PhysOrg posted an article
about how male animals grow large
structures like horns on beetles and
antlers on elk. Because the structures are
linked to insulin usage, though, Olympic
judges might disqualify them for doping.
4/13/2015
3
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物

Moving plants: We mustn’t discriminate against
plants. Even though most are anchored to the soil,
they perform some remarkable feats in the track &
field competition. The BBC News posted a gallery
called “Olympians of the botanical world.” Did you
know the bunchberry dogwood wins the shot put,
explosively ejecting its spores at 800 G’s? The
fruits of the sandbox tree explode with the sound of
a cannon. Tumbleweeds win the marathon; they
conquered the entire western US in under a
decade. And coast redwoods vault up to almost 4
4/13/2015
380 feet above the forest floor.
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物

War games: Thank goodness there is not an Olympic
competition for terror, but if there were, some termites
would qualify for suicide bombing, an article on New
Scientist suggests. Fortunately, the termites are
altruistic; they only use their backpack explosives to
save their fellow hivemates when the hive is under
attack, and the aged termites are the ones who
sacrifice themselves. “The chemical warfare
employed by N. taracua is ‘one of the most
sophisticated examples of exploding we have seen’,
says Hanus. ‘We were very surprised to see it but
there are many phenomena in nature that are not yet5
4/13/2015
in the textbooks.’”
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物

Not to shortchange humans, men and women are
probably best in the all-around. Live Science posted
a video about medal contender Sarah Robles can lift
500 kg in the snatch and clean-and-jerk. Robotics
engineer Brian Zenowich remarked, “Watching what
she’s doing, it just blows me away.” At the London
Olympic games this week, North Korean Kim Un
Guk broke a world record, lifting three times his body
weight (Mercury News), one of only a handful to
accomplish this. Humans also run, jump, throw, row,
swim, shoot, ride, cycle, dive, do flips on a 4″ wide
beam, and all the other amazing feats the Olympics
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6
bring together.
More Olympic Creatures
更多奥运的生物

As that robotics engineer well knows,
none of this just happens. It takes
engineering. When humans combine their
equipment with motivation, drive, sacrifice,
courage and perseverance to go farther,
faster and higher, it’s thrilling to
watch. We give them the credit for the
work, but should we not honor the
workmanship of the Creator much more?
4/13/2015
7
Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica
棕榈树蓬勃发展在南极洲


Evidence for tropical trees has been found 5 km
deep off the coast of Antarctica.
The BBC News reported that explorers dropped a
drill rig 4 km down into the ocean off the east coast
of Antarctica, then drilled another kilometer
through sediment. The drill core included pollen
grains of palm, and trees resembling baobab and
macadamia. Remnants of single-celled archaea
were also found.“The lowland coastal region
sported palm trees, while slightly inland, hills were
populated with beech trees and conifers,” the
4/13/2015
8
article said.
Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica
棕榈树蓬勃发展在南极洲

The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP)
dates the sediments as Eocene, 53 million
years old in the evolutionary timeline. The
researchers infer from the flora that global
temperatures were some 5°C warmer than
today. That would have created no sharp
division between the poles and equator. Even in
the darkest part of winter, temperatures at the
poles probably did not drop below 10°C (50°F).
4/13/2015
9
Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica
棕榈树蓬勃发展在南极洲

“The early Eocene was a period of
atmospheric CO2 concentrations higher than
the current 390 parts per million (ppm)—
reaching at least 600 ppm and possibly far
higher,” the article said. Scientists believe this
data can help improve computerized climate
models. Even though the article claimed that
“Eocene represents heightened levels of CO2 that
will not be reached any time soon, and may not be
reached at all if CO2 emissions abate,” it ended by
arguing that current climate models are making
4/13/2015
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good predictions of future warming.
Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica
棕榈树蓬勃发展在南极洲

Well, isn’t this remarkable. First of all, what’s
the worry about human-caused global warming
if it got much warmer in the past when
evolutionists say people weren’t
around? Obviously all the land animals and
plants survived this episode, including the living
fossils that are so delicate they tell us humans
are making them go extinct. And how they can
prove that “Archaea hold on to their structure
through millions of years.”
4/13/2015
11
Palm Trees Thrived in Antarctica
棕榈树蓬勃发展在南极洲

Second, and even more important, evolutionists
have no theory for why the earth should have
warmed up at that time. Many Biblical creationists,
though, without the millions-of-years timeline,
believe that the pre-Flood world sported a
moderate climate without a large difference
between the poles and equator, just like the data
indicate. The Flood, however, changed all that,
burying the antediluvian world beneath miles of
sediment – and ushering in a much more recent
Ice Age whose effects are still damping out. Which
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12
account is a better match to the data?
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点


Instant dinosaurs: just add mountains. Does this and other
fossil news make sense?
Mountains into dinosaurs: Here’s the headline on PhysOrg:
“Mountains, seaway triggered North American dinosaur
surge.” The idea is not that mountains made dinosaurs make
more babies, but that North American mountain uplifts made
dinosaurs evolve into more species. “We hypothesize that
such isolation facilitated rapid speciation and increased
diversity in these animals,” one of the authors of a paper
on PLoS ONE stated. The paper’s title makes it clear: they
believe “Mountain Building Triggered Late Cretaceous North
American Megaherbivore Dinosaur Radiation.” They explicitly
pointed to geological “triggers” like mountain uplift and seaways
as a “causal mechanism” to explain the diversity of late
4/13/2015
13
Cretaceous dinosaurs.
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点


Their study of the timing of geological events was performed “to
identify correlative factors that may have driven lineage
diversification at more inclusive levels.”
There’s a well-known maxim in science, “correlation is not
causation.” Did they explain how the presence of a mountain or
sea barrier “triggered” beneficial mutations to be selected for
the formation of new species of dinosaurs? Did they evaluate
other animal groups with their hypothesis that mountains trigger
speciation? No; they didn’t even compare other dinosaur
groups. “Application of these results to other dinosaur
groups contemporaneously living in Laramidia is an
interesting prospect. The major hurdle to such comparative
studies is insufficient fossil records of other clades, although
based on limited data theropods may exhibit similar trends.”
4/13/2015
14
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

Volcanoes into teeth: Another use of the phrase
“evolutionary trigger” can be found in an article
by National Geographic about fossil rodents with
“supertough teeth.” According to reporter Brian
Handwerk, two new fossil rodent species from South
America “arose during a rodent evolutionary
explosion, which occurred after their ancestors had
likely rafted to the continent from Africa on floating
debris about 3.5 million years ago.” While visions of
exploding rodents may not be a pretty picture, Handwek
was excited. He claims that South America was an
“evolutionary hot spot” 40 million years ago. What
was the trigger for the “rodent evolutionary explosion”?15
4/13/2015
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点


One paleontologist explained, “frequent volcanism,
which can make soils rougher, could be an
evolutionary trigger for hypsodonty” (heavily
enameled crowns). It could be, sure. Anything could
be. It could also be an evolutionary trigger to wear the
teeth down and make them go extinct. There are
volcanoes all over the world; where is the
corroborating evidence that animals living near
volcanoes evolve supertough teeth?
Speaking of tough teeth, did you know your teeth are
as hard as shark’s teeth? We don’t need to feel
inadequate, Science Now reported.
4/13/2015
16
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

Empty Cambrian promise: Another team
publishing in PLoS ONE described exquisite
soft-tissue preservation of Middle Cambrian
arthropods fossilized in what is now
Sweden. The first paragraph of their paper
teased, “The famous ‘Orsten’ taxa
have provided significant insights into the
Cambrian biota and early Phanerozoic
metazoan evolution.” But the only insight they
gave into evolution was waffling speculation,
stated in the last paragraph as follows:
4/13/2015
17
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

A speculative explanation for the
appearance of musculature in the labrum from
an evolutionary point of view is that opening
of the buccal cavity could take preference over
a more sophisticated armament, allowing also a
flattening of the labrum. The lack of dorsoventral muscles in the investigated
phosphatocopines may imply that these
muscles appeared at a later stage in the
evolution of crustaceans; however, it could
also simply be a preservational artefact. 18
4/13/2015
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

Gap gabbing: Nature News announced a fossil
insect discovery from Devonian strata in Belgium,
said to be 370 million years old, that is “An insect
to fill the gap” between the record-holder at 400
million years and the more abundant fossils from
the Carboniferous at 325 million in the evolutionary
timeline. “A complete insect fossil from the
Devonian period has long been sought,” the
article by William A. Shear began. “The finding of
a candidate may improve our patchy
understanding of when winged insects
4/13/2015
19
evolved.”
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

A closer look at the article, however, a clear six-legged
critter already fully functioning, too small to “fill the
gap” that worries paleontologists (Shear later said it
“narrowed” the gap). Mostly, he was concerned that
so few paleontologists are even looking for fossils that
can show insect evolution. The authors of the paper
in Nature (Garrouste et al., “A complete insect from
the Late Devonian period, Nature 488, 02 Aug 2012,
pp. 82–85, doi:10.1038/nature11281) did not even
mention evolution. The editor’s summary of the paper
states, “The early evolutionary history of the insects is
obscure.” So what gap was Shear referring to that this
4/13/2015
20
insect filled?
Dinosaur Triggers and Other Fossil Foibles
恐龙触发器和其他化石弱点

Over and over, we see evolutionists
cheating with the data, claiming that
the latest fossil will “shed light on
evolution.” When will they see the
light? Those who already have the
light don’t need whatever it is they’re
shedding.
4/13/2015
21
Weightlifters No Match for Insects
举重敌不过昆虫


For Olympic season, here are more comparisons
between human and animal capabilities.
Weightlifting: The BBC News showed that, as
remarkable as it is for a human to lift 2 or 3 times his
body weight, leaf-cutter ants do better: 50x their body
weight – and they’re not even contenders for the
gold. A male rhinoceros beetle can lift 850 times its
own weight – equivalent to a human world champion
“lifting six double-decker buses weighing over 8000
kg.” There’s more: “But, the species to beat is a tiny
mite that has been shown holding forces of up to 1180
times its weight and even pull 530 times its weight on
4/13/2015
22
a vertical surface.”
Weightlifters No Match for Insects
举重敌不过昆虫

Sharpshooting: The same BBC News
article included a video of an archer fish
hitting its target in the air from underwater,
accurate up to 2 meters. “This expert in
ballistics even allows for the curving of the
jet through gravity, and adjusts for the way
light bends at the boundary between light
and air, which appears to shift the position
of its target.” Blood-spitting cobras are
pretty accurate with their shots, too.
4/13/2015
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Weightlifters No Match for Insects
举重敌不过昆虫
Boxing: Animal contenders in the boxing
ring include male brown hares and
kangaroos, who fight as courtship
displays. As reported here June 13, mantis
shrimp have the fastest punch known in the
animal kingdom, 23 meters per second.
 Wrestling: Champion animal wrestlers
include red deer and stag beetles, with their
“grand antlers and branching jaws” that lock
during combat. A video clip shows a beetle
4/13/2015
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wrestling match.

Weightlifters No Match for Insects
举重敌不过昆虫


Swimming: Dolphins have the best skin suits to reduce
drag, the BBC News said, with thick blubber for a
sleek look. But it would be hard to beat penguin suits,
that glide along through a skin of bubbles. As for long
distance records, remember the polar bear that was
observed swimming nine days nonstop? (1/25/2011).
Elephants emit long-distance infrasound signals using
the same vibrating larynx mechanism as
humans, Science Daily reported. Scientists
determined this by testing the actual larynx of an
elephant that had recently died of natural causes.
4/13/2015
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Weightlifters No Match for Insects
举重敌不过昆虫

Bird airlines: Migrating birds keep remarkable
time, PhysOrg reported. Songbirds as common as the
wood thrush” follow a strict annual schedule when
migrating to their breeding grounds – with some birds
departing on precisely the same date each
year.” A scientist at York University remarked, Much
like airplanes, there are many factors that can
influence birds’ flight schedules, such as weather at
departure and expected conditions at the other end of
the journey. Amazingly, these small songbirds are
highly consistent in their timing between years.”
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨


For an enterprise as secular and materialistic as
science, there’s a lot of talk about morality these days.
Human subjects: This past
week, Science magazine reported on a government
panel that is revising the 1991 regulations on human
research. Rebecca Dresser reported, “Although these
concepts underlie many Common Rule provisions,
insights gained since 1991 and unaddressed problems
in the current oversight system point to new measures
that could enhance the rule’s ethical legitimacy.”
(Science, 3 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6094 pp. 527–
528, DOI: 10.1126/science.1218323.) She used the
word “moral” five times, as in the last section, “A
4/13/2015
27
Fundamental Moral Judgment” –
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Underlying the research oversight system is a
fundamental moral judgment: Human subjects
have interests that should not be subordinated to
the interests of the patients, researchers, industry
stakeholders, and others who gain health and
monetary benefits from the research enterprise. In
the United States and elsewhere, allegiance to
this moral judgment demands robust efforts to
educate prospective research subjects, help
subjects who are harmed in research, and
evaluate the quality of human research proposals.
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Research misconduct: In Nature, Colin Macilwain wrote
that “The time is ripe to confront misconduct.” He is
encouraged that some scientific institutions are beginning
to take this problem seriously: “For too long, scientists’
instinctive defensiveness has produced general
denial that misconduct constitutes a serious
problem.” The statement suggests that scientists tend to
have a moral superiority complex. Science, after all is
supposed to be self-correcting; misconduct, they thought,
must be rare among their ranks. “Few senior scientists
now believe that,” Macilwain said. “They know that
misconduct exists and that, unchecked, it can
undermine public regard for science and scientists.”
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Some institutions have seen fraud investigations
as contrary to academic freedom, but noteworthy
cases of fraud are changing attitudes. “Worldwide,
however, research integrity is now very much in
the spotlight.” He spoke of a couple of initiatives
being taken to address the issue, then ended:
“Together, the studies represent a historic
opportunity to deal with what is, perhaps,
the single most potent threat to science’s
prestige” (Nature 488, 02 Aug 2012, page 7,
doi:10.1038/488007a).
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Mentoring: It’s natural for a trainee to want to
please and imitate his or her mentor. Nature
recognized this as a problem and an
opportunity: mentors should be the ones to
teach integrity and forestall misconduct. In
“The roots of research misconduct,” William
Neaves argued that “Mentors should
understand what causes misconduct among
trainees — and keep in mind some possible
remedies” (Nature 488, 01 Aug 2012, pp. 121–
122, doi:10.1038/nj7409-121a).
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

It’s not enough to teach about the importance of
integrity, he said; “Consistently modelling good
practice beats lecturing hands down, and discussing
ethical guidelines at laboratory meetings helps the
team to appreciate honesty — and the grim
consequences of misconduct.” This requires
overcoming the mentor’s natural reluctance to bring up
the subject, and understanding what motivates fraud
among young scientists. “Mentors should not avoid a
discussion on research integrity just because of their
own discomfort,” Neaves ended. “The potential
consequences for careers and reputations are too
4/13/2015
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severe.”
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Conflict of interest: Bouncing off a case of a scientist
with ties to industry contributing to a report giving
fracking a clean bill of health, Nature’s editors took the
opportunity to call for openness: “Scientists must
remember that however irrelevant their involvement in
industry might seem to them, others will see it
differently — only full disclosure will avert the taint
of scandal.” (Nature 488, 02 Aug 2012, p. 5,
doi:10.1038/488005a). The editors were not claiming
a scandal existed; they were just skittish about the
possibility of damage to the reputation of science if
scientists do not reveal possible biases. Sunlight is
4/13/2015
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the best disinfectant, they believe:
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Experts in many fields bounce between academia,
government and industry during their careers. Universities
could not exclude people who have industry connections
from their ranks, nor would they want to. The same goes for
government. There is also nothing inherently wrong with
universities accepting donations from industry to
conduct studies, as long as the proper protections are
put in place. The key is transparency, because that is
the basis for trust between institutions and the wider
public, which is especially important when people are
buffeted by confusing, contradictory and inflammatory
information. What the public needs, and what scientists
must deliver, is reliable information that is honest about
both its methods and its inevitable biases. What it needs 34
4/13/2015
is full disclosure.
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

False positives: Ethics requires avoidance of
exaggeration. On July 27, Daniel MacArthur wrote
in Nature about the risk of scientists treating “eyecatching artefacts” as “genomic insights” (Nature 487,
26 July 2012, pp. 427–428,
doi:10.1038/487427a). Beginning with a recent
highly-advertised case, he said, “As it turned out, at
least some of the results from this study were
surprising simply because they were
wrong.” Technical errors not caught by quality control
can lead to false positives, especially in data sets
where the complexity is huge:
4/13/2015
35
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

In fact, it has never been easier to generate highimpact false positives than in the genomic era, in
which massive, complex biological data sets are
cheap and widely available. To be clear, the majority
of genome-scale experiments yield real results, many
of which would be impossible to uncover through
targeted hypothesis-driven studies. However, hunting
for biological surprises without due caution can
easily yield a rich crop of biases and experimental
artefacts, and lead to high-impact papers built on
nothing more than systematic experimental
‘noise’.
4/13/2015
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Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Flawed papers cause harm beyond their
authors: they trigger futile projects, stalling
the careers of graduate students and
postdocs, and they degrade the reputation
of genomic research. To minimize the
damage, researchers, reviewers and
editors need to raise the standard of
evidence required to establish a finding as
fact.
4/13/2015
37
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

In genomics, for instance, surprising data can occur by
chance. Additionally, the technologies can generate
their own biases. In a paraphrase of the maxim, “If
something is too good to be true, it probably is,”
MacArthur wrote, “Few principles are more
depressingly familiar to the veteran scientist: the more
surprising a result seems to be, the less likely it is to
be true.” Yet quality control and reproducibility take
time. He suggested standards for journal editors and
scientists; fortunately, open-access and online
commenting are providing more rapid critical
responses, which MacArthur encouraged. His last
4/13/2015
paragraph shows that carefulness is a part of ethics:38
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Nothing can completely prevent the publication of
incorrect results. It is the nature of cutting-edge
science that even careful researchers are
occasionally fooled. We should neither deceive
ourselves that perfect science is possible, nor
focus so heavily on reducing error that we are
afraid to innovate. However, if we work together to
define, apply and enforce clear standards for
genomic analysis, we can ensure that most of the
unanticipated results are surprising because they
reveal unexpected biology, rather than because
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39
they are wrong.
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

As with any human enterprise, honesty is an essential
pillar. Without it, nothing else matters when trust
collapses. But where does ethics come
from? In Science, John T. Jost reviewed a new book
by Jonathan Haight, The Righteous Mind Why Good
People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (John T.
Jost, “Social Psychology: Left and Right, Right and
Wrong,” Science 3 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6094 pp.
525–526, DOI: 10.1126/science.1222565 ). Haight, a
popular social psychologist, tried to conjure up man’s
moral sense from evolutionary “psychological
foundations” –
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40
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

In The Righteous Mind, Haidt attempts to explain
the psychological foundations of morality and how they
lead to political conflicts. The book’s three parts are not as
compatible or settled as Haidt’s ingenious prose
makes them seem. The first revisits the intriguing
arguments of an earlier, influential paper (1) in which he
argued that moral reasoning is nothing but post hoc
rationalizing of gut-level intuitions. The second
introduces an evolutionarily inspired framework that
specifies five or six “moral foundations” and applies
this framework to an analysis of liberal-conservative
differences in moral judgments. In the third part, Haidt
speculates that patriotism, religiosity, and “hive
psychology” in humans evolved rapidly through
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41
group-level selection.
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Jost found contradiction in Haight’s premise
that morality is nothing more than post-hoc
rationalization of intuitive, emotional reactions
by finding post-hoc rationalization in the book’s
own moral judgments about what humans
ought to do. “Ultimately, Haidt’s own
rhetorical choices render his claim to being
unbiased unconvincing,” Jost said
charitably. He is not ready to accept the
premise that our “primitive ancestral legacy”
can be a guide to right and wrong:
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42
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Before drawing sweeping, profound conclusions about the
politics of morality, Haidt needs to address a more basic
question: What are the specific, empirically falsifiable
criteria for designating something as an evolutionarily
grounded moral foundation? Haidt sets the bar pretty
low—anything that suppresses individual selfishness in favor
of group interests. By this definition, the decision to
plunder (and perhaps even murder) members of another
tribe would count as a moral adaptation. Recent research
suggests that Machiavellianism, authoritarianism, social
dominance, and prejudice are positively associated with
the moral valuation of ingroup, authority, and purity
themes [e.g., (6, 7)]. If these are to be ushered into the
ever-broadening tent of group morality, one wonders 43
4/13/2015
what it would take to be refused admission.
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨


I see no compelling reason to assume that morality
is—let alone should be—whatever comes first,
easiest, or even most forcefully to mind (because of
our evolutionary heritage or otherwise). In many
situations behaving morally may require us to do
what is difficult, perhaps even “unnatural” in some
sense. Or, as John Stuart Mill put it (8), “… Nature
cannot be a proper model for us to imitate. Either it is
right that we should kill because nature kills; torture
because nature tortures; ruin and devastate because
nature does the like; or we ought not to consider what
nature does, but what it is good to do.”
Jost, however, failed to define goodness or reveal his 44
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own theory of the grounds of morality.
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

It’s nice that ethics is getting a hearing more and
more, but who are the editors of Nature to lecture
the rest of us about morality? The rag since its
inception was devoted to pushing the Darwinian
world view: a system where “ethics,” whatever that
means, is a mere artifact of the struggle for
fitness. They can’t play both sides of the fence
here, preaching the Darwin-Tyndall materialist
view most of the time, but the Christian sermon
when scientific fraud becomes an issue. How
about some full disclosure by the editors?
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45
Scientific Ethics Concerns Rising
科学道德问题上涨

Tell us about all your leftist political connections that
generate a hugely lopsided leftist viewpoint whenever
anything political is involved. How about some
repentance for Nature’s involvement with eugenics and
other atrocities with human subjects in the past? How
about some fact checking when evolutionists push their
false positives about some bone shedding light on
evolution? How about confessing your own conflicts of
interest when advocating increased taxpayer funding of
your favorite projects? We don’t need your sermons
about ethics. You need to go to church. You need to
hear some real sermons about the only solid foundation
for ethics: the word of the Lord: “Thou shalt not bear
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46
false witness.”
Curiosity Set to Explore Mars
好奇设定为探索火星


Having survived its nail-biting entry, descent and
landing, the Curiosity rover is ready to roll on Mars.
The excitement in the Mission Support Area
at JPL when the signal came down that Curiosity was
alive on the surface will be replayed for years to come
as one of the great moments in space
exploration. First pictures indicate that the rover is
healthy. Next, there will be a prolonged checkout
period before science collection begins in Gale Crater
and Mt. Sharp, the central peak.
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Curiosity Set to Explore Mars
好奇设定为探索火星


At the press conference following the historic landing,
project manager Pete Theisinger stated that the
nominal mission is two years, but the rover was tested
for three times nominal but not to failure. Given that
the Opportunity rover is still going strong after 8 years,
Curiosity could be exploring Mars for the next decade.
The website for following Curiosity’s progress
is mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl. “Curiosity” is the name given
to the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL.
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Curiosity Set to Explore Mars
好奇设定为探索火星

In the delirious celebration of landing, little was said
about astrobiology or the search for life up through the
first press conference. That will change. The press
and the scientists are obsessed with finding life on
another world. Curiosity is not able to detect life; at
most, it can find conditions for habitability. We know
from experience that the L-word life will appear often
in upcoming press releases. Keep your focus on the
data, not on the claims. Remember that scientific
discovery is very different from scientific
explanation. Raw data from distant worlds has usually
been discouraging for astrobiologists. We’ll see if
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Curiosity keeps that tradition going.
Curiosity Set to Explore Mars
好奇设定为探索火星

For the moment, this is time to celebrate on
a profound achievement of human intelligent
design – design rightly attributed by the
panelists to the United States of America,
land of the free and home of the brave
people who attempt daring
things. Congratulations to the hundreds of
American men and women who participated
in making this long-awaited entry, descent
and landing a resounding success.
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的


This is Dave Coppedge’s eyewitness report of ecological
renewal at the volcano that erupted 32 years ago.
This past Saturday, August 4, a group of about 60
people hiked the Johnston Ridge trail to view Mt. St.
Helens and hear about its geology and ecology. The
event, advertised onDoNotBeDeceived.org, was
organized with help from members of the Design
Science Association of Portland and 7 Wonders
Museum on highway 504 west of Mt. St. Helens. The
event featured geologist Dr. Steven A. Austin, who
personally researched the volcano in the weeks and
years after its May 18, 1980 eruption and has hiked the
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area numerous times.
Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Dr. Austin had even scuba-dived into
Spirit Lake to view the patterns of tree
deposition after sonar his team towed
under a boat revealed trees sinking into
the bottom in upright positions, analogous
to the petrified forests of Specimen
Ridge. He also discovered a 1/40th scale
“miniature Grand Canyon” carved by a
mudflow in 1982. This canyon (left center
in photo) was the destination of the hike.
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的
4/13/2015
53
Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Geology: The volcano is very stark, with most of the
surroundings still highly impacted by the eruption 32 years
ago. Two deep gorges, Loowit Canyon, headed with a large
waterfall, and Step Canyon, 600 feet deep, descend from the
crater and flow into the North Fork of the Toutle
River. Mudflow damage along this river is still visible for
miles west Mt. St. Helens. In the vast landslide debris field
below the crater, the “Little Grand Canyon” becomes visible
after about 1.5 miles on the trail. In many ways (except for
color) the 200′ deep canyon resembles its larger namesake:
it has stratified layers, round-headed side canyons and sharp
gullies entering from both sides. There is a small stream
flowing through it reached after a descent down Truman
Trail, after 4.6 miles of hiking (requires off-trail permit).
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

What makes this little canyon fascinating and relevant to
catastrophist geology is that we know exactly how and
when it formed. The main eruption on May 18, 1980
deposited a thick layer of landslide debris. In June, a
pyroclastic flow deposited 25 feet of sediments that show
remarkable laminations at both large and small scales – a
surprise to pre-eruption geological thinking. Finally, on
March 19, 1982, a mudflow that poured from the crater
deposited mud on top of the other flows, then overtopped
a debris dam, causing rapid downcutting and upstream
cutting through the three layers. While it might appear that
the stream carved the canyon, we know from this highlymonitored volcano that the stream is a mere relic that had
nothing to do with the canyon’s rapid, catastrophic
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55
formation.
Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Ecology: The blast zone north of the volcano still looks very
desolate, especially south of Johnston Ridge. Fallen trees
remain all over the hillsides many miles from the crater, bearing
mute testimony to the power of the eruption that flattened virgin
forest in seconds. Pioneer species are making a strong
foothold, especially nitrogen-fixing lupine and
alder. Remarkably, some seeds and small animals survived
the blast under snowfields and were able to re-establish small
populations. A few douglas fir saplings dot the landscape in
places. Elk herds are among the first large mammals that have
entered the blast zone, living on grasses and vegetation
growing on plateaus alongside the Toutle River canyons and
debris hummocks. Some birds and frogs inhabit the riparian
environment along the stream in Little Grand Canyon. There is
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very little shade, though, in the blast zone.
Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Spirit Lake is 200 feet higher than its pre-eruption
level. The landslide on May 18, one of the largest
ever witnessed, caused a water wave 860′ high that
swept a million logs into the lake onto a new bed of
debris. So covered was the lake with logs and pumice
from the blast, early reports claimed Spirit Lake had
been obliterated entirely. The heat and vegetation
brought into the water created conditions for rapid
growth of anaerobic bacteria, causing an opaque,
churning stew of gases and germs. Ecologists were
surprised at how quickly the lake rebounded,
however.
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

The water is blue and mostly clear. Trout were
probably illegally reintroduced by a tourist, since it is
questionable they could have found their way in
naturally. They are doing well, after subsiding from
record growth rates when first introduced into the
uncompetitive environment. About 35% of the logs
remain, mostly douglas fir that could float for decades
more. Snowmelt over the post-eruption years caused
rapid rise in lake levels that threatened another
catastrophic dam breach down the North Toutle
drainage, so engineers carved a tunnel over a mile
long to divert the excess water down Coldwater
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Canyon.
Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

It’s quite humbling to look at this environment that all
changed so quickly on March 18, 1980. Our guides
told us that in places where we were walking along
the ridge and in the valley, we would have been in
the sky before the eruption, looking down on the
tops of old-growth forest. The volume of material lost
to the once-conical volcano is very striking, even as
seen from airliners leaving Portland; it’s like the
mountain was sliced horizontally, with a huge gash
on the north side where the lateral eruption
unleashed its energy. And yet this was a small
eruption as volcanoes go.
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Mt. St. Helens is important as a living laboratory of rapid
geology and ecological succession. Textbooks on geology
and ecology had to be rewritten because of the events that
followed that fateful morning (for example, see Science
Daily article today). Dr. Austin’s work is proof against the
accusation that creationists only criticize evolution without
offering original research. To the contrary, his work,
unfettered by Lyellian presuppositions, has been generally
well received and has influenced secular geologists to
reconsider the role of rapid catastrophic change. The
evidence he uncovered and published is second to
none. Moreover, his winsome Christian manner, alongside
the quality of his research, has gained the respect of notable
geologists willing to think outside the box.
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Mt. St. Helens Renewal Slow, Steady
圣海伦火山更新缓慢，稳定的

Several of our guides also believe that God, showcasing His
power through this event, also showed mercy in providential
timing of the eruption. It could have destroyed much of
Portland had the blast aimed in that direction instead of north,
and would have killed many more people on the north side
had it occurred the day before or after that Sunday morning,
because the prior day property owners were allowed to come
in and get their belongings, and the day after a new group of
campers and sightseers would have come within the actual
(not predicted) danger zone. The 57 who were killed were all
forewarned of the danger; now, Spirit Lake Lodge owner Harry
A. Truman and the others are fossilizing under tons of
sediments. Solomon said, “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for
thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” (Account,
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photo and commentary by David Coppedge.)
Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？



Some psychologists say gratitude improves one’s well
being. But is that a subject for science?
According to a report on Science Daily, “Growing Up Grateful
Gives Teens Multiple Mental Health Benefits.” According to
a psychologist from University of California, “Increases in
gratitude over a four-year period were significantly related
to improvements in life satisfaction, happiness, positive
attitudes and hope.”
For the study, 700 students aged 10 to 14 answered
questionnaires, then 4 years later, were surveyed again. Those
categorized as “most grateful” were judged by the researchers
as having 13 to 17% more purpose in life, more satisfaction
with “life overall,” more happiness and hopefulness, less
delinquency, and fewer negative attitudes.
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Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?



感恩可以科学地研究呢？
The researchers defined “gratefulness” as “having a disposition
and moods that enabled them to respond positively to the good
people and things in their lives.” The New York based sample
contained a mix of ethnic backgrounds, with 54% girls and
(presumably) the rest boys. The lead researcher, Dr. Giacomo
Bono, made sweeping conclusions:
“These findings suggest that gratitude may be strongly linked
with life-skills such as cooperation, purpose, creativity and
persistence and, as such, gratitude is vital resource that
parents, teachers and others who work with young people should
help youth build up as they grow up,” Bono said. “More gratitude
may be precisely what our society needs to raise a generation
that is ready to make a difference in the world.”
Dr. Bono’s definitions of these qualities are not found in the article,
nor is his view on what kind off difference in the world is good to
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63
make.
Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？

Much as you might like to agree with these conclusions, this is
another example of useless research done by modern
psychopriests trying to justify their existence. Who are
psychologists to tell people about gratitude? They can’t even
define the word. It’s “the quality or feeling of being grateful or
thankful,” not a positive disposition. What do they mean by
positive? Are we talking about electricity, protons versus
electrons? No; gratitude is inextricably bound up with
thankfulness. Thankfulness needs an object: you are thankful
to someone who is deserving of appreciation for what they
done for you – your parents, your teachers, your God. It does
no good to walk around with positive vibes aimed at nothing;
you have to humble yourself and honor the subject of your
gratitude with true, heartfelt appreciation. Can science
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64
measure that?
Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？

In addition, the so-called “science” of psychology lacks the
precision expected of science. How did Dr. Bono calibrate his
gratitudometer? What are the units of happiness? The
research summary is loaded with glittering generalities:
ambiguous words like purpose (did not the Colorado killer have
a purpose?), creativity (was he not creative as the
Joker?), persistence (did he not persist in booby-trapping his
apartment?). All of these touchy-feely words are meaningless
without their object: purpose for, creative about,
persistence toward. If the object of the word is evil, the quality
becomes an accomplice to evil. Wouldn’t you rather confront a
robber who lacked purpose, creativity and persistence? As for
“ready to make a difference in the world,” Genghis Khan and
Saddam Hussein were well qualified. Science cannot make
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value judgments when pursuing quantifiable qualities.
Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？

Another fault is that this study subliminally suggests that
parents, teachers, and others who influence teenagers should
teach them to be selfish. How? The conclusion stressed the
personal rewards that the teen will receive from behaving a
certain way: have a positive attitude “so that” you can have
better health and happiness. Needless to say, true gratitude is
not concerned with self. Gratitude should be encouraged
because it is right, not because it provides health
benefits. Teach teens right ways as a matter of duty, whether
or not it makes them happy. When they learn to love
righteousness, humility and thankfulness, any personal
happiness they encounter will be fringe benefits; but teens need
to be forewarned that doing right is often accompanied by
suffering, rejection or strife. Do right because it’s right.
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Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？

This shows that psychology is as useful to science as a
foghorn to an orchestra. Some psychologists can perform
valid work in limited areas that are observable, testable,
and repeatable, like learning theory (e.g., what is the best
method for memorizing), but even then, the conclusions
are often fuzzy and fungible. You could learn
memorization and the other things probably just as well
from your parents or grandparents who have honed their
conclusions in the furnace of real life experience, not by
answering questionnaires from quacks. When
psychopseudoscience tries to raise its voice about moral
qualities and values like gratitude and happiness, well; one
thing is clear: you’ll enjoy the concert better without the
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67
foghorn.
Can Gratitude Be Studied Scientifically?
感恩可以科学地研究呢？

So do your duty: invite a psychologist to
church, where he/she can learn all about
the proper objects of gratitude, purpose,
creativity, and persistence. If the
psychologist repents and gives up his/her
pretensions, you have gained your
brother/sister.
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The Fish Explosion


鱼爆炸
Fish are exploding in the kitchen of evolutionary
phylogenomics.
“The Age of Fishes” – the phrase immediately brings to mind
your biology textbook or natural history museum. What is it,
class? “The Devonian Period.” Wrong. Fish exploded onto the
scene in the Devonian (300 million years ago on the
evolutionary timeline), but diversified rapidly again in the
Mesozoic to Cenozoic, 120 to 60 million years ago on the
timeline – a virtual “Second Age of Fishes,” according to the
authors of a new paper in PNAS that tried to paper over a “lack
of a single comprehensive phylogeny” that “has limited our
understanding of the evolution and diversification of this
radiation” of our finny friends (Near et al., “Resolution of rayfinned fish phylogeny and timing of
diversification,” PNAS August 6, 2012, doi:
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69
10.1073/pnas.1206625109).
The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸

Is it inaccurate to call these explosions? After
all, the paper discussed the “radiation” or
“diversification” of fish. Perhaps. But the
abstract and the summary on PhysOrg used
evasive words that amount to “abracadabra”
incidents: we are told that the fish “appeared”
and “arose.” The scientists used the more
clever word “occurred” (without explaining what
mutations were preserved by natural selection),
while unveiling some dirty laundry in the
evolutionary fish camp:
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The Fish Explosion

鱼爆炸
This phylogeny informs three long-standing problems:
specifically identifying elopomorphs (eels and tarpons) as the
sister lineage of all other teleosts, providing a unique
hypothesis on the radiation of early euteleosts, and offering a
promising strategy for resolution of the “bush at the top of
the tree” that includes percomorphs and other spiny-finned
teleosts. Contrasting our divergence time estimates with studies
using a single nuclear gene or whole mitochondrial genomes,
we find that the former underestimates ages of the oldest rayfinned fish divergences, but the latter
dramatically overestimates ages for derived teleost lineages.
Our time-calibrated phylogeny reveals that much of the
diversification leading to extant groups of
teleosts occurred between the late Mesozoic and early
Cenozoic, identifying this period as the “Second Age of
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Fishes.”
The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸

If they were to use the word radiation the way
physicists do, it travels at the speed of light – a pretty
explosive speed. Naturally, they define it differently;
nevertheless, their imprecise words continue to invoke
visions of instantaneous change. As with the
Cambrian explosion, no transitional forms were
mentioned. While lead author Dr. Thomas Near
boasted, “The new family tree of ray-finned
fish comes close to completing the book on the
evolutionary relationships of vertebrates,” it is
doubtful he rebuked the press release writers for
saying that the fish “appeared” in the Devonian then
“appeared” again later – doubtful, indeed, because he
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said so himself:
The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸

“Half of all animals that have backbones are
ray-finned fish, but we know little about their
evolutionary history in contrast to other
vertebrate lineages like frogs, lizards, birds, and
mammals,” said Thomas Near of the
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary
Biology at Yale and lead author of the paper.
“Fish are usually viewed as primitive in
origin, but we are learning that most of the
familiar living lineages of fish arose more
recently — during what we might call the
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Second Age of Fishes.”
The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸
Speaking of fish, there’s news about the alleged fish-to-


limb transition, and it’s not good (for
evolutionists). “Paddlefish’s doubled genome may
question theories on limb evolution,”
PhysOrg announced. The first paragraph summarizes the
furrow-browing concern in the evolution camp:
The American paddlefish — known for its bizarre,
protruding snout and eggs harvested for caviar —
duplicated its entire genome about 42 million years
ago, according to a new study published in the journal
Genome Biology and Evolution. This finding may add a
new twist to the way scientists study how fins evolved
into limbs since the paddlefish is often used as a proxy
for a more representative ancestor shared by humans
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and fishes.
The Fish Explosion



鱼爆炸
These means trouble for the fish line and the human line
holding the pole. “This creates extra genetic material that
adds complexity to comparative studies,” explained Karen Crow
(San Francisco State). “It may change the way we interpret
studies on limb development.” How so?
In the last decade, paddlefish have become a useful
benchmark in evolutionary studies because their position
on the evolutionary tree makes them a reasonably good
proxy for the ancestor of the bony fishes that evolved into
tetrapods such as humans. However, the fact that paddlefish
underwent a genome duplication could complicate what its
genes tell us about the fin-to-limb transition, says Crow.
“Our findings suggest that the results of previous
studies using paddlefish as a comparative species may need
to be re-interpreted,” Crow said.
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The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸

You may have thought that humans were
bipeds, not tetrapods (“four-foot”), even
admitting that babies walk on all fours in
their transitional form to adults. The study
basically tosses the paddlefish back into
the river as the transitional form that got
away. But casting a good spin with this
tangle of phylogeny filament, Crow found
new possibilities to bring home a good fish
story:
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The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸



Whole genome duplications are game-changing
events in evolutionary history that give rise to new
species or novel features within a species.
They occur when a series of unlikely
circumstances coincide, resulting in twin copies of
every gene. When this happens, one
scenario that could take place is that one gene in the
pair keeps its designated function while the other is
either lost or takes on a new purpose.
“This extra genetic material provides the canvas
for evolution to paint with,” said Crow, who studies
the evolution of novelty and diversity.
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In short, she gave up fishing for art.
The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸

It’s hard not to laugh at these people. Their
concoctions explode in the kitchen, they can’t find
the ingredients, and they can’t paint, either. Like
some other famous magicians, they are always
learning and never able to come to the knowledge
of the truth. There’s always truck driving for the
desperate. Use laughter charitably; it may be the
quickest and softest way for them to get the hint
that they are clueless. Let them know that
the ID community will welcome them into a better
fellowship once they quit the Darwin cult and kick
the naturalistic magic habit that is its central ritual.
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The Fish Explosion
鱼爆炸








Where have all the fishies gone?
Long time passing;
Where have all transitions gone?
Long time ago.
Where have all our stories gone?
Facts have kicked them, everyone.
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化


Isolated table mountains with sheer cliffs in South America
should be natural laboratories for evolution. Why aren’t they?
The pantepui region spanning northern Brazil and parts of
Venezuela and Guyana contains some of the most isolated
ecological environments on earth. The table mountains (tepui)
are so remote and difficult to reach, some have been less
visited than the moon. Because of their sheer cliffs 1000
meters on all sides, evolutionists expected the habitats to be
natural laboratories for evolution, because organisms managing
to eke out a living on top of one tepui would be prevented from
sharing genes with those on others. Since the sandstone is
said to be 1.5 billion years old, there has been ample time for
the animals on top to evolve and diverge from one another in
isolation. Time estimates for the isolation of the tepui go back
to the Cretaceous.
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

With this “ideal nursery of speciation” tempting scientists to
look for tens or possibly hundreds of millions of years of
evolution on these natural laboratories, an international team
undertook the arduous task of visiting 17 tepui and collecting
samples from amphibians and reptiles to compare their
genes. They expected differences; after all, “If individual tepui
summits were indeed reservoirs of ancient endemism,
phylogenetic analyses of these taxa would identify
genetically distinct populations on each tepui without
close relatives elsewhere.” And outwardly, “Some of the
lowest genetic distances are observed for populations that
are currently recognized as distinct species and show
striking phenotypic differences,” they said. Their paper was
published this week in Current Biology.1
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

Substantial diversity was the expectation based on the amount
of time these creatures are believed to have been isolated. But
when they made the “analyses of two mitochondrial gene
fragments evolving at different rates,” they were very
surprised: “populations of a given species on individual
summits are often closely related to those on other
summits (e.g., Oreophrynella), or to those from the
surrounding uplands (e.g., Tepuihyla).” Many of the
differences were less than 1%. “Uncorrected pairwise
distances in both genes indicate unexpectedly low genetic
divergence — as low as zero — among multiple tepui
summit species or populations in five of the six groups
(Stefania being the only exception), as well as among some
summit species or populations and uplands populations
described as distinct species.”
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

With such a dramatic clash between theory
and practice, the scientists went into
damage-control mode. No one is going to
buy the idea that the frogs and snakes
decided to move from one tepui to
another. That would mean going down one
1000 meter cliff, crossing a completely
different ecosystem at lower elevation, then
climbing up another 1000 meters. The
scientists looked at other options:
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

If the tepuis are indeed as ancient as often stated,
the young age of extant summit fauna can only be
explained by active dispersal among summits with
subsequent extinction in the intervening uplands, e.g.,
during ice ages, or by passive dispersal, e.g., by birds or
storms. The highly specific ecological niche preferences of
some taxa restricted to tepui summits are likely to have limited
active dispersal. Most Oreophrynella species, for example,
exclusively occupy rocky habitats with extremely impoverished
flora, which are absent in the intervening areas. Time
estimates for the isolation of individual tepuis range from
the Cretaceous to the Quaternary. The youngest estimates,
although widely neglected in biological studies, could be
compatible with the low genetic diversity and leave vicariance
[geographical isolation] as a possible mechanism for
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speciation.
Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

Regardless of the mechanism, our study
shows that, even in small vertebrates
restricted to summit-specific habitats, gene
flow has been maintained until recently,
making single-tepui endemism an exception
rather than a rule. Nevertheless, as several of
the taxa studied here
(e.g., Oreophrynella and Stefania; Supplement
information) represent phylogenetically distinct
lineages restricted to the Pantepui region,
this area as a whole may still act as a
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reservoir of high-level endemism.
Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

Jargon aside, these paragraphs should be read with the
astonishment evident in the scientists’ prose. They are
grasping for alternatives. “If the tepuis are indeed as
ancient” sets up the problem: they are looking at isolated
habitats the geologists tell them are tens of millions of
years old. In evolutionary theory, a dog-like cow became
a whale in less time than that. The fauna look
young. How to explain this? They considered active or
passive dispersal: maybe a storm blew a frog from one
tepui across miles to another one, where the frog
continued on as if nothing happened. Maybe a bird
carried a snake in its talons from one summit to
another. Yet the animals live in highly specialized habitats
that don’t exist between the summits.
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

Their best guess was to choose the lowest possible
time estimate for isolation of the tepui (Quaternary, the
latest two million years), even though these young
ages are “widely neglected in biological studies.” The
extinction might have occurred in Ice Ages, they say,
leaving the summit organisms isolated to evolve very
recently. This explanation, though, raises other
questions. What raised up these islands in the sky so
recently, if the rock is 1.5 billion years old? Why do
they show such little erosion? Why are all 17 tepuis in
the study showing endemism (isolated populations
with unique fauna) to be the exception rather than the
rule?
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化


Their answers to the puzzle of the tepuis were
mere suggestions. Ending on a positive note,
they suggested that even if the tepuis do not
qualify as the “ideal nursery of speciation” they
hoped for, maybe the entire pantepui region
could be looked at that way. They left that job
for someone else.
1. Kok, McCulloch et al., “Low genetic diversity
in tepui summit vertebrates,” Current Biology
Volume 22, Issue 15, R589-R590, 7 August
2012.
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

This study is reminiscent of a similar study
decades ago that compared fauna on isolated
buttes in the Grand Canyon. Shiva Temple in
particular, with its forest on top, was thought to
have been genetically isolated for millions of
years. As with the tepui of South America, no
evolution was detected. Funny that you don’t
hear much in textbooks or TV programs about
these falsifications in their rush to celebrate
evolution as biology’s answer to everything.
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Brazil’s Islands in the Sky Defy Evolution
巴西在天空岛挑战进化

Astute Darwin critics might notice that the
observations from the tepui are
compatible with a recent creation, a
worldwide flood, and a single ice
age. Such notions are ruled out of bounds
by the current mandarins of
science. There are, however, alternative
media where those inclined to consider
this option can make their case.
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Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家


Add Leakey to Homo skulls and what do you get? Headlines! — with
fine print that undermines the celebration.
The news media were full of headlines this week about our latest
ape-like ancestors. New Scientist announced, “Fossils
confirm three early humans roamed Africa.” Pallab Ghosh spoke for
the BBC News, “New human species identified from Kenya
fossils.” PhysOrg trotted out the ever-ready cliche, “New Kenyan
fossils shed light* on early human evolution.” Live Science was
slightly more tentative with “New Flat-Faced Human
Species Possibly Discovered.” They were reporting latest finds by
Meave Leakey, Louis N. Leakey, Fred Spoor and team, announced
forthrightly in Nature, “New fossils from Koobi Fora in northern
Kenya confirm taxonomic diversity in early Homo” (Nature488, 09
August 2012, pp. 201–204). Trouble is, seasoned bone analyst
Bernard Wood let most of the gas out of the bag in his analysis in the
same issue of Nature(“Palaeoanthropology: Facing up to
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complexity,” Nature 488, 09 August 2012, pp. 162–163).
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

It’s not that Bernard Wood doubts human evolution
from apes. He made that clear: “There must have
been a ladder-like sequence of
species connecting us with that common
ancestor,” he said, speaking of “the ancestral
species we share exclusively with
chimpanzees and bonobos.” Then he added,
“but it is unclear whether our section of the ‘tree of
life’ is restricted to this ancestor–descendant
sequence, or whether it includes other, now
extinct, lineages.”
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Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

The gist of the find is that some new skull and jaw
fragments found in Kenya by the Leakey-Spoor team
seem to reinforce the idea the Homo rudolfensis, a.k.a.
Skull 1470 that made a splash back in 1972, was an odd
man out that might have represented an extinct lineage
of Homo. The problem, as Bernard Wood explains it, is
that the data (as usual) are too fragmentary to confirm
any one of several hypotheses. There’s so much wiggle
room in the data, he’s not sure what these new fossils
mean. Not only that, the other Homo fossils are still in
disarray: H. habilis, H. erectus, H. ergaster, H.
heidelbergensis, H. neanderthalensis – the whole
gang. Are they ancestors, extinct lineages, or all
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variations on the same human species?
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

Wood believes there are “at least two” Homo species
in the data, but he made statements that could make a
creationist say “Aha!” (considering that they will deny
the evolutionary dates assigned to these bones
anyway). For instance, he admitted that back in the
1970s there were questions whether the fossils from
Koobi Fora represented different species or just males
and females of the same species (he chose the former
interpretation). He also assumed back then that a
particularly robust jaw went with the face of H.
rudolfensis. That has been refuted by the new finds,
he said, leaving him to conclude that two or three
separate lines of Homo coexisted. His last paragraph,
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though, leaves enough gap to drive a truck through:
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

So where do we go from here? More work
needs to be done using the faces and lower jaws
of modern humans and great apes to check how
different the shapes of the palate and lower jaw
can be among individuals in living species. We
also need to find a way to formally estimate the
likelihood that the OH 7 lower jaw came from
the same species as either KNM-ER 60000
or KNM-ER 1802. If the latter can be
accommodated within H. habilis, then all well and
good, but if not (which I think is more likely),
then could KNM-ER 1802 and its ilk represent a95
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third species?
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

Finally, some researchers have suggested that
evidence from the face and jaws of H.
habilis and H. rudolfensis, plus what little fossil
evidence we have of these species’ other body
regions, stretches the definition of the
genus Homo too far. Perhaps these two taxa
belonged to a different lineage from that from
which H. sapiens arose? My prediction is
that by 2064, 100 years after Leakey and
colleagues’ description of H. habilis,
researchers will view our current hypotheses
about this phase of human evolution as
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remarkably simplistic.
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

Did the news media include these confessions? Only New
Scientist mentioned Wood’s statement about stretching the
definition of Homo too far. Live Science and PhysOrg, decorating
their articles with photos of the team looking very scientific with
their tools, treated the statements of the discoverers as fact,
saying they confirm the notion that there were three separate
lineages of Homo living at the same time. Pallab Ghosh at
the BBC News was the most reckless, stating as a fact that a new
species of Homo has been discovered by the Leakey team. “With
the discovery of the three new fossils researchers can say with
more certainty that H. rudolfensis really was a separate type of
human that existed around two million years ago alongside
other species of humans,” he said, completely ignoring Wood’s
remark about “our current hypotheses … as remarkably simplistic.”
Ghosh captioned the press-release skull reconstruction positively:
“A new species of human: One of several co-existing in Africa
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two million years ago.”
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

Ghosh even included the old “march of
progress” icon of apes evolving into humans,
with the caption, “The March of Progress had
many dead ends” (presumably exempting his
own top end). To nail it for Darwin, Ghosh
quoted Meave Leakey (hardly a disinterested
party), saying, “evolution really does work.…
It leads to amazing adaptations and amazing
species and we are one of them.” She did
not explain whether the truthfulness of her
propositions could be derived from random
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mutations.
Rudolfensis and the Red-Nosed Paleoanthropologist
Rudolfensis和红鼻子的古人类学家

For those of us who already know that
their current hypotheses about human
evolution are remarkably simplistic,
ignore the latest self-serving Darwin
Party infomercial and go back to work
doing what good humans do: thinking
rationally.
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Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘


A science writer is sure diatoms evolved, even if
their origins and intricate designs are major
mysteries.
Michael Gross, a science writer at Oxford, wrote a
feature story for Current Biology called, “The
Mysteries of the Diatoms” (Current Biology,
Volume 22, Issue 15, R581-R585, 7 August
2012). Gross knows that diatoms are extremely
successful and diverse, very important for the
carbon cycle, and beautiful to look at, but said
scientists still know little about them. One of the
chief mysteries is their evolution:
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Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

Diatoms — single-celled algae typically enshrined
in a cell wall made of intricately laced silica —
have fascinated researchers with a whole range
of mysteries, from their evolutionary
origins through to their morphogenesis and
reproduction. They entered the plant kingdom
rather late in evolution, and through an unusual
entry. Researchers believe they are secondary
endosymbionts, meaning that their precursor was
a eukaryote that engulfed another eukaryote,
resulting in a quadruple membrane around the
chloroplasts the diatom gained from this act of 101
4/13/2015
piracy.
Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

The evolutionary success story of
diatoms only begins some 200 million years
ago, but they have spread around the globe
and diversified into hundreds of genera and
around 100,000 species in this short fraction
of the geological timescale. Today, they
are present wherever there is liquid water, in
the oceans, in freshwater, and even in soil.
They have already played a significant role in
the global cycles of carbon and nitrogen,
and are responsible for large sediments of
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silica including diatomaceous earth.
Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘






In the article, Gross described many amazing facts about these
microbes that live in glass houses:
“they have a very efficient way to dissipate excess solar
energy, known as non-photochemical quenching.”
“In a time span of less than 200 million years, diatoms have
branched out into a multitude of species, which can be as
genetically different as humans and fish.”
“While we might want to call diatoms ‘plantimals,’ these things
are much more complex than we think,” Chris Bowler says.
“Like animals, for instance, diatoms possess a complete urea
cycle.… the cycle enables diatoms to recover quickly after
prolonged periods of nitrogen limitation.”
“…diatoms have a huge influence on geochemical cycles
and our climate.”
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Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘



“Diatoms fix as much carbon dioxide as all the
rainforests of the world combined.…”
“The silica frustules with their intricate nanoscale
patterns can make any nanotechnologist jealous.
Nature can produce such structures at ambient
temperature and under benign conditions, an
achievement that our technology cannot match yet.”
“Diatom adhesives are of interest for two opposite
reasons — some may want to mimic bioadhesives like
these to produce better glues that work under
difficult conditions, for instance under water.
Others want to stop diatoms from sticking to things
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under water, such as ships.”
Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

Considering these are widespread, common
organisms we can study right under a
microscope, surprisingly little is known about
them, Gross said. For instance, the in-depth
study of model organisms like water cress
and E. coli hasn’t helped scientists understand
the molecular physiology of diatoms. The
growth (morphogenesis) of their intricate glass
patterns is not understood. Their role in climate
modulation is poorly understood. It’s not that
scientists have not tried; the mysteries of
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diatoms have so far proved intractable.
Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

One thing Michael Gross seemed profoundly confident
about, though, was his belief that they evolved from
non-diatoms. This extended not to his endosymbiotic
theory but to their subsequent ability to evolve other
capabilities that stump human engineers. He spoke
glibly about how “diatoms evolved thicker and denser
cell walls and spread across the oceans,” speaking at
one moment about the mystery of their “evolutionary
origins” but then their “evolutionary success
story.” It didn’t seem to bother him that in half the
time horseshoe crabs remained static, diatoms
diversified into 100,000 species with genomes that
differ as much between them as fish differ from
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humans. Evolution works in strange ways.
Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

There is no such thing as an evolutionary
success story. Evolution, being mindless,
purposeless, and aimless,(see clarification
on Evolution News) could not care less
about what thrives and what goes extinct. If
the whole world went extinct, “evolution”
(whatever that fictional being represents),
would yawn and move on. By using the
word success, Gross exposes himself as an
unevolved human who cares.
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Diatom Evolution a Mystery
硅藻的进化神秘

In the 12/19/2007 entry, we used the
nonsense word gribbleflix as a substitute
for evolution, and it worked in the same
manner – it explains everything without
needing to explain anything. Readers are
encouraged to re-read that commentary to
understand how Michael Gross, and the
accomplice Current Biology, employed
evolution as nonsense masquerading as
explanation.
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”


A secular science reporter blundered twice about
irreducible complexity and evolution.
Natalie Wolchover, writing for Live Science, was explaining
why evolution never produced wheeled animals. Eyes,
she said, are no problem for evolution: “Despite the
complexity of the eye, it manages to evolve because
each advance in its development offers some
advantage.… From start to finish, a full-on eye can
evolve in as little as 400,000 years, evolutionary
biologists have estimated” she claimed, without naming
names. Wheels, however, are beyond the reach of natural
selection. Her authority was noted atheist, Darwinist and
anti-creationist Richard Dawkins. After describing how
evolution might produce an eye in stages, she said:
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”


The wheel, on the other hand, is an irreducibly complex
system: It must work perfectly to work at all.… The
sophisticated carpentry required to fashion wheeland-axle systems explains why humans didn’t manage to
invent them until the Bronze Age.…
Evolution can only build body parts in stages, but
because a rudimentary, nonrotating proto-wheel
provides no benefit whatsoever to an animal, the
process of wheel development is destined to never
begin. “The wheel may be one of those cases where
the engineering solution can be seen in plain view, yet
be unattainable in evolution because its lies the other side
of a deep valley,” the evolutionary biologist Richard
Dawkins explained in a classic 1996 article on the lack 110
of
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bio-wheels in nature, published in The Sunday Times.
Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”

Finally, consider this: Even if an animal could
make a sudden leap across that valley and find
itself in possession of the genetic blueprint for a
perfect pair of wheels, how would it even grow
them? To rotate freely, wheels cannot be attached
to the axles that support the rest of the body. So
without attachment points, how would living wheels
receive nutrients and expel waste? As Dawkins put
it, “The problem of supplying a freely rotating organ
with blood vessels (not to mention nerves) that
don’t tie themselves in knots is too vivid to need
spelling out!”
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”

Michael Behe, the originator of the term
“irreducible complexity,” defined it in his
book Darwin’s Black Box (1996) as “a single
system composed of several well-matched,
interacting parts that contribute to the basic
function, wherein the removal of any one of
the parts causes the system to effectively
cease functioning.” He made it clear he was
not speaking of a system that “must work
perfectly to work at all” as Wolchover alleged.
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”

More egregiously, Wolchover failed to point out the
wheels that do exist in nature: the bacterial
flagellum, for instance. When ATP synthase is
included, every animal on earth is wheeled after
all. Wheels for locomotion, to be sure, do not exist
in place of animal legs, but they would only be
functional on hard, flat surfaces which are rare in
nature – a fact pointed out in the response
on Uncommon Descent. That’s why in search and
rescue attempts after earthquakes, the authorities
generally rely on the systems designed for such
environments: dogs and horses.
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”

Do you need more evidence that secular
science sites like Live Science are
involved in a concerted effort to spread
misinformation, glorify Charlie, and
sacrifice their integrity in their devotion to
act as propaganda arms for the Darwin
Party? By contrast, CEH gives the best
mouthpieces for Charlie their best shot,
quoting them at length.
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Reporter Misuses “Irreducible Complexity”
硅记者误用“简化的复杂”

If Wolchover and her employer really wanted to
report the subject honestly, they would have quoted
Behe – maybe even given him a chance to respond
– and not exposed so blatantly their ignorance of the
arguments for I.C. We’re waiting for Live Science
and the other Darwin Party propaganda outlets to
show they can do honest reporting about
evolution. What really takes the cake is Wolchover’s
insistence that eyes are easy to evolve. We would
like Wolchover or her hero Dawkins to evolve a fly
eye, as recently described on Evolution
News. Anything is easy for pseudo-scientists whose
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operating principle is to Imagine everything.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情


Reporters show remarkably little discernment
about the limitations of natural selection, but
scientists don’t rebuke them.
Evolution has become the catch-all explanation
for everything in the world. This can be
illustrated by the ever-flowing articles coming
out of the news media about the evolution of, to
borrow a youth expression, “whatever.” No
rigorous detail characteristic of other sciences
is required to credit evolution with
“whatever”. Here are a few recent examples.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Salt of the Mars: The smiling face of
astrobiologist Mark Schneegurt opens an article
on PhysOrg about his theory that life arises in
Epsom Salt. While “Searching salt for
answers about life on Earth, Mars,” he
performed his divination with salt crystals,
mumbling, “Our work has relevance to
the origins of life on Earth, since
life may have arisen from a briny tidal
pool.” Then again, it may not have.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Great great .… granddaddy cell: Darwin’s sketch of a
“tree of life” accompanies an article on Live
Science tempting to reveal the “Ancestor of all life.” As
usual, it’s only a suggestion: “A newly drawn-up
evolutionary tree suggests a group of bacteria may be
the last common ancestor for all life on
Earth.” Inherent in these bacteria were phenomenal
powers, indeed: the seeds of Olympic athletes and
designers of Mars rovers. The gene bank being messy,
researchers divined the path of evolution through it by
examining some ribosomal proteins. “Structurally aligning
the proteins allowed the researchers to pick out subtle
differences that indicate which organisms belong on
different branches of the evolutionary tree, they
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explained in a statement.”
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Magic crystal: A headline on PhysOrg sounds like the
discovery of a magic wand: “Evolutionary molecule
identified by researchers.” This wonder molecule allowed
cells to differentiate and become specialists. The
professor, like a wizard, was on hand to reveal the deep
dark secrets: “These findings are
also remarkable because cyclic-di-GMP was previously
only found in bacteria, where it causes bacteria to lose
motility and transform into large sticky colonies, known as
biofilms. The fact that an organism like Dictyostelium,
which is very far removed from bacteria, uses the same
mechanism is very interesting and suggests that the
processes which cause cell differentiation in eukaryotes,
like ourselves, may have very deep evolutionary
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origins.”
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Multicellularity: Single cells operated for some billion
years before the rise of multicellular life, according to
the evolutionary scenario. PhysOrg described a new
computer run with Avida software that showed
imaginary cells learning the trick of “division of labor.”
The author was either oblivious to or unconcerned
about the controversy over Avida (see Evolution
News). The article said: “The most surprising
result was that the organisms evolved to become
dependent on each other” with guidance from the
programmers. The solution being such a cinch, one
wonders what took real biological organisms so
long. The original paper on PNAS is open-access 120
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(August 7, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1202233109).
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Building blocks: Life uses copper, zinc and
molybdenum. How did it become available
when needed? According to PhysOrg, simple:
it came from the deep, which is very
convenient, because without these elements,
there would be no eukaryotes and no
sex. According to a study, continents dredged
up the building blocks right when eukaryotes
began to need them. This obviously
establishes a cause-and-effect relationship, the
article implied.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情
Turning damage into creativity: A phenomenon called


“Muller’s Ratchet” guarantees that mutations will
eventually drive species extinct. PhysOrg described, in
bold print, why this is a predicament for evolution:
From protozoans to mammals, evolution has created
more and more complex structures and better-adapted
organisms. This is all the more astonishing as most
genetic mutations are deleterious. Especially in small
asexual populations that do not recombine their genes,
unfavourable mutations can accumulate. This process
is known as Muller’s ratchet in evolutionary biology. The
ratchet, proposed by the American geneticist Hermann
Joseph Muller, predicts that the genome deteriorates
irreversibly, leaving populations on a one-way street
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to extinction.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Clearly species are surviving anyway, so the task
before evolutionist Richard Neher (Max Planck
Institute) became finding a way to rescue
Darwinism from this falsifying principle. He did so
by turning mutations into a benefit within a
mathematical model. Agreeing that most
mutations are deleterious, his team got the model
to work with a little circular reasoning: “For their
model the scientists assumed a steady
environment and suggest that there can be a
mutation-selection balance in every
population.” Well, obviously. Evolution did it, so
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evolution must have done it.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Avida to the rescue again: Problem: organisms seem to build
structures they don’t need, according to another article
on PhysOrg: “Why, after millions of years of evolution, do
organisms build structures that seemingly serve no
purpose?” (a tacit acknowledgement that there are structures
with purpose, contrary to Darwinian thought). The article
quotes Michigan State evolutionists who believe there are
purposeless stages in embryological development (no
examples provided in the article). The “evolution as a tinkerer”
meme was developed into an analogy that life builds a roller
coaster then tears it down to build a skyscraper, presumably
because it’s disruptive to embryological pathways to start over
and do things efficiently (still no examples provided). What they
could not prove with real organisms under a microscope, they
proved (or made support their theory) by appropriately
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engineering Avida software with mythical aliens called Avidians:
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Rather than observe embryos grow, the team of
computer scientists and biologists
used BEACON’s Avida software to perform
experiments with evolution inside a
computer. The Avidians – self-replicating
computer programs – mutate, compete for
resources and evolve, mimicking natural selection
in real-life organisms. Using this software, Clune’s
team observed as Avidians evolved to perform
logic tasks. They recorded the order that those
tasks evolved in a variety of lineages, and then
looked at the order those tasks developed in
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the final, evolved organism.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Red Queens and Ying-Yang: Note: This is not a
trip down the rabbit hole. Really. It can’t be,
because the protagonists are evolutionists who
know physics and math. PhysOrg promised
readers that “Physics and math shed new light
on biology by mapping the landscape of
evolution.” The light is shed by researchers who
“captured evolutionary relationships in a system of
equations.” What could be more scientific than
equations, especially if they support the old YinYang religion by analogy? This model even has
something out of Back to the Future, a curl flux 126
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capacity:
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

The key breakthrough beyond the conventional
quantitative theory of evolution is the emergent curl
flux, which is generated by interactions between
individuals within or across species. The
underlying emergent landscape gradient and
the curl flux act together as a ‘Yin and Yang’
duality pair to determine the dynamics of general
evolution, says Wang. An example of similar
behavior is the particle and wave duality that
determines the dynamics of the quantum world, he
notes. The researchers also note that this combined
effect is analogous to the way electric and
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magnetic forces both act on electrons.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

With a little more divination, the researchers even saw
the Red Queen in their equations: the Lewis Carroll
character who had to keep co-evolving just to stay in
one place. With apologies to Darwin, they ended,
“When a species’ arms race with a coevolving parasite takes an unexpected twist, a
previously unnecessary trait could suddenly turn into
the key to surviving. In the co-evolving world, there
is no guarantee for ‘survival of the fittest’ and it is
often necessary to keep running for survival.” Funny
that equations analogous to the highly precise
Maxwell Equations cannot make evolutionary biology
into a truly predictive, precise science.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Jawboning about evolution: A bearded scientist from
Notre Dame appears to be kissing a llama in a photo
on PhysOrg opening a story promising to “shed light on
how jaws evolve.” Matt Ravosa “is your man” if you
want to know about “the evolution and function of
jaws,” the caption reads. Ravosa must have spent a lot
of time examining 2,900 jaws from 300 species, for sure;
but he never quite explained how these animals’ feeding
habits led to the origin and diversification of jaws,
despite the promise in the article that his “findings
having important implications regarding the
evolution of the feeding apparatus in humans and
other anthropoids.” What are the scientific causes
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here? Does food create jaws?
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

Handshake evolution: Seven authors got together
and published on PLoS ONE a curious theory:
voice and handshake are markers of Darwinian
fitness. “These findings demonstrate that
both hormonally regulated and phenotypic
quality markers can be used as measures of
Darwinian fitness among humans living under
conditions that resemble the evolutionary
environment of Homo sapiens,” they said. Their
study even adds evidence for the “Grandmother
Hypothesis” if curious readers want to investigate.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情
There was one recent occasion where scientists complained

about the carelessness of reporters who misrepresent findings
with titillating headlines. PhysOrg actually reported the
complaint that was published in Nature: “Biologists take
journalists to task for sensationalizing animal sexual
behavior headlines.” In the Nature article, Andrew Barron and
Mark Brown rebuked the media for misleading the public with
titillating headlines, such as implying that animal behaviors that
appear homosexual (even in roundworms) have anything to do
with human choices. Urging scientists to choose their words
carefully when talking to reporters, Barron and Brown said,
“These findings suggest that scientists can shape the
coverage of their results.” But that was about sex; no such
warnings have been seen lately when it comes to “findings”
about evolution, leading to the assertion that evolutionary
biologists are complicit in the way evolution is presented in the
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popular press.
“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情

These are just chunks drawn out of the cesspool of
evolutionary mythology, the morass
of generalities, analogies and fallacies that
comprise modern man’s highest and best
explanation for the emergence of life. It’s a fantasy
world where mystical equations support Malice in
Blunderland (5/14/2010), alleged “findings” find
three impossible things before breakfast, and
mythical organisms in computers boldly go where
no animal has gone before. Every scientific
malfeasance is tolerated so long as it presents a
worthy sacrifice to the Bearded Buddha.
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“Easy Does It” Evolution Credited with Anything and Everything
“易的”进化计入一切任何事情


Try challenging the Mad Hatters of the Darwin Party,
with their ubiquitous attack dogs, though, and you will be
subjected to the most vile hate speech today. Example:
“Creationists shouldn’t comment on science, it is
hilarious to see. Evolution is a well tested, well known
fact which obviously for everyone with two neurons to
rub together no more hinges on cell origins than the fact
of general relativity hinges on mass origins; their
‘problems therefore gods’ is not even good
theology.” That’s actually pretty mild for the genre.
This pitiful situation only continues because we allow it
to. If you are a sensible, rational person, and you
discern what is going on in the media, do your
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duty. Laugh harder.
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock


石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚
A geologist, trying to be nice to religious people, not only deals
fast and loose with rock, but rolls into circular reasoning.
Geomorphologist David Montgomery believes science and religion
can get along, as long as religion gives up any claim to epistemic
truth about the world. His new book, The Rocks Don’t Lie: A
Geologist Investigates Noah’s Flood, was given friendly air time
on Science Daily with no critique or rebuttal. The article makes it
clear that Montgomery views science epistemically superior to the
Bible at the outset: “The purpose is not to tweak people of
faith but to remind everyone about the long history in the faith
community of respecting what we can learn from observing
the world,” he said. By drawing a contrast between himself and
“people of faith” he denies the use of faith himself. By “observing
the world,” he presumes “people of faith” are not accustomed to
doing so. In short, if he can get “people of faith” to receive their
revelation from geologists, he is willing to patronize them.
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

The article informs the reader matter-of-factly that the
earth really is millions of years old, there was no universal
global flood (which is impossible, in Montgomery’s view),
and the Noah’s Flood story got its start in Mesopotamian
myths. This is nothing new, of course – skeptics have
been claiming this for two centuries. Montgomery, though,
tries to put forth a kinder, gentler kind of scientific
superiority complex: he allows that religious myths might
have gotten started with half-truths: e.g., global flood
myths based in local floods. He even mentions some
large local floods: a Tibetan flood, the Channeled
Scablands of Washington, and islands that experienced
devastating tsunamis. By acknowledging that evidence for
a “folk tale might be reality based,” he tosses a few scraps
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from the science table to the religious puppies.
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

In fact, one of his goals in writing the book was to
improve scientific literacy among nonscientists. Example: “He noted that a 2001 National
Science Foundation survey found that more than half
of American adults didn’t realize that dinosaurs
were extinct long before humans came
along.” Another of his altruistic motives is “to coax
readers to make sense of the world through
both what they believe and through what they can
see for themselves, and to keep an open
mind to new ideas.” He said, “If you think you
know everything, you’ll never learn anything.”
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Let’s take Dr. Montgomery at his word and see if he is
willing to learn something and keep an open mind. Dr.
Montgomery, do you have faith? Do you have faith in
science? Do you have faith in your senses? Do you
have faith in your ability to comprehend the world? Do
you have faith in your interpretations of the
evidence? Assuming your answer is yes, then you
need to lump yourself into the Venn
Diagram U labeled “people of faith.” Everybody has
faith. Nobody knows everything. No human being
alive today saw how the world came to be. We would
classify you within U in a box called, “people of faith in
scientism.”
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

We can already hear the comeback: “but I’m a scientist. I
go out and observe the world to learn from it. I keep an
open mind.” Are you aware, sir, that creation geologists
do that? Have you ever read the creation journals with
their detailed analyses of specific rock records interpreted
without the secular lens bequeathed by Lyell and other
disciples of that quaint Victorian myth of Darwinism? It’s
very easy and convenient for you to commit the glittering
generalities and bandwagon fallacies by lumping Tibetan
locals in the same camp with Bible scholars as “people of
faith,” but you are not doing your job unless you take on
the best of your opponents: the likes of Dr. Steven Austin,
Dr. Andrew Snelling and others with PhDs’s in geology
who hold to a Biblical world view.
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

While talking to them, you might ask if they keep
an open mind and admit they don’t know
everything, provided you are willing to honestly
answer that question yourself. You might consider
admitting that your straw-man descriptions of a
global flood are simplistic and wrong. Your
ignorance of what creation geologists teach is
matched by your ignorance of the Biblical
record. According to the Flood account, it would
have involved extensive ruptures of the earth’s
crust, rapid plate movements, and a reworking of
the continents from low relief to high mountains 139
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and deep ocean basins.
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

These clearly would have caused catastrophic
deposition and erosion, not a placid sea rising over
post-Flood mountains as you described it. You might
also consider the possibility that world-wide accounts
of a flood are local memories of a true global Flood
after all, not, as you have chosen to interpret,
memories of local floods in their region. Creation
geologists believe people took these memories
around the world after the Tower of Babel. Over time
the accounts became corrupted, while retaining a
kernel of truth. Are you willing to consider that maybe
the Mesopotamian flood accounts are corruptions of
the Mosaic account? Have you read the scholarship
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on that?
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Speaking to our readers now, the question is not
who has faith, but which faith is a better starting
point for interpreting the world: the word of
Someone who was there and told us what He did,
or the word of believers in the secular religion of
scientism who weren’t there and don’t know
everything. David Montgomery’s interpretations
are consistent with his world view: he looks at the
world and sees millions of years. He
commits circular reasoning: “I believe in millions of
years, therefore when I look at the rocks, I see
millions of years.”
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Example: He looked at the strata of the Grand
Canyon. What did he see? “Hiking a trail from the floor of
the Grand Canyon to its rim, Montgomery saw unmistakable
evidence of the canyon being carved over millions of
years by the flow of the Colorado River, not by a global
flood several thousand years ago as some people still
believe.” That’s because he is among other people who “still
believe” in millions of years. He went looking for millions of
years. Lo and behold, he found them in the missing layers:
he found a billion missing years between the bedrock granite
and the Tapeats Sandstone. He found 100 million missing
years between the Muav and Temple Butte limestones. He
found 10 million imaginary years between the Hermit and
Coconino. There they were, right behind his eyeballs in his
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world view!
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

What he didn’t see were the fault lines passing
through the whole canyon from bottom to top, the
twists and folds of strata (strata supposedly
separated by millions of years) showing softsediment deformation as a unit, the evidence of
high-velocity current flows in the Tapeats
sandstone, the pancake-flat strata over thousands
of square miles arguing against long ages, the
billions of nautiloids buried in a single layer of
Redwall limestone, the evidence of sheet erosion
over the continent, the rapid downcutting of the
canyon, and much more. He didn’t see them
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because he wasn’t looking for them.
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

He was asking different questions, not “What evidence is
there for catastrophic deposition and rapid erosion?” but
“What do I see that comports with my chosen
worldview?” The creation geologists see these evidences
and write about them. So we need to ask Dr. Montgomery
why his eyes are blind to contradictory evidence when he
goes about observing the Grand Canyon. Doesn’t he
know that even many secular geologists no longer believe
the Colorado River carved the canyon, but instead use
catastrophic flooding in their theories? What gives him, or
any finite human being living 70-odd years in the 21st
century, the right to state categorically that the Grand
Canyon was not carved by a global flood?
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

So, for Dr. Montgomery and the other patronizing
positivists out there, along with Seance Daily and the
rest of the lapdog media, we would like to open your
eyes to evidence you are not seeing, and invite you to
consider asking new questions. Do you recognize
yourselves as “people of faith”? Do you recognize your
particular faith as scientism? Do you recognize that a
particular sect of your faith called secular geology
requires a statement of faith in the doctrine of
uniformitarianism? Are you aware of the many
inconsistencies between your own faith and the
evidence? Are you being honest with the history of your
geology, that it has suffered numerous reversals of
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interpretation and falsifications since the days of Lyell?
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Is it possible that you are blinding yourselves to evidence
supporting Creation and the Biblical Flood because of your
prior commitment to millions of years? Are you willing to
stop patronizing people who have good evidential reasons
for disbelieving your interpretations of the evidence? Are
you willing to stop insulting your opponents with the
accusation of scientific illiteracy just because they do not
agree with your belief that dinosaurs died out 65 million
years ago? Have you seriously considered the soft
tissues in dinosaur bones, or evidence of people who saw
dinosaurs and recorded their observations in words or
pictures? If Noah’s Ark were to be found, would you be
willing to abandon your position based on that evidence, or
would you seek to explain it away within your faith
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position?
Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Let’s stop this nonsense about “people of
faith.” Since the universe U of human beings is
coextensive with the universe U of people of
faith, it’s a redundant term. We should be
asking, “Which faith?” Which people have
reasonable faith? It’s not the size of the group
that matters, but their evidence. (Trusting in the
numbers of secular geologists, or their political
clout, commits the bandwagon fallacy.) Who
can support their faith with evidence and solid
reasoning?
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Rocks Don’t Lie, But Liars Rock
石头不会骗人，但说谎者摇滚

Creation geologists do that routinely, because
they examine the evidence from both
worldviews as part of their normal
practice. Secular geologists, by contrast, are
blind to their faith, and so thoroughly ignore the
creation position that they expose their illiteracy
about both Biblical scholarship and creation
geology. “People of faith” is hereby rendered a
meaningless term. More useful terms might
be people of fluff, and people of froth. In the
Venn Diagram, those two categories often
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overlap.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私


According to one Darwinist, selfish societies evolve into
egalitarian ones, for selfish reasons. It’s all in the math,
the genes, and natural selection.
Sergey Gavrilets, a “Distinguished Professor of Ecology
& Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics” at the
University of Tennessee according to his webpage,
decided to show that the French ideals of “liberty,
equality and fraternity,” along with charity, mercy and all
morality is really just dressed-up selfishness that
evolved by natural selection. His paper, titled “On the
evolutionary origins of the egalitarian syndrome,”
was published in PNAS this week (August 13, 2012,
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1201718109).
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

The abstract promised to show that his model
“creates the conditions for the emergence of
inequity aversion, empathy, compassion,
and egalitarian moral values via the
internalization of behavioral rules imposed by
natural selection.” It’s genetically determined:
he spoke of “the evolution of a particular,
genetically controlled psychology” that
produces egalitarian behavior in his
model. The paper makes it clear he is including
the conscience and all moral behavior.
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

From the outset, he had to admit that explaining human
kindness (altruism) has been a difficult challenge for
Darwinists. “The evolutionary emergence of the
egalitarian syndrome is one of the most intriguing
unsolved puzzles related to the origins of modern
humans,” he admitted. “Standard explanations and
models for cooperation and altruism—reciprocity, kin
and group selection, and punishment—are not
directly applicable to the emergence of egalitarian
behavior in hierarchically organized groups that
characterized the social life of our ancestors.” This
immediately renders those earlier catch-phrases like “kin
selection” obsolete. Would Gavrilets be the man of the
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hour, able to solve the puzzle?
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

The paper looks scientific. It has charts, equations
and graphs. It ends with 59 references. It includes
predictions about how human social groups with
bullies and victims will arrive at egalitarianism over
time. But the upshot is really an attempt to
“naturalize” morality– to undercut the ontological
significance of all human love and charity, and
replace it with genetic determinism. As Gavrilets
explains in his conclusion, it is his contribution to a
complete reduction of everything in biology to
genes and uncaring natural laws, forces that make
humans act as if they really cared for one another
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when they really only care about their own survival:
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

The origins of moral values have intrigued
scholars for millennia. Darwin saw human morality
as derived from animal “social instincts” that
transform to a “moral sense or conscience as
soon as … intellectual powers become … well
developed” (ref. 59, p. 8). In a modern perspective,
viewing human conscience as a mere by-product of
intelligence is an oversimplification. Boehm (6)
convincingly argues that additional processes and
factors such as moralistic punishment, internalization
of culturally enforced norms, symbolic language and
gossiping, and social selection for altruism and
self-restraint applied by groups to its members need
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to be considered.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私


That notwithstanding, identifying
evolutionary roots for and the dynamics
of genetically controlled egalitarian social
instincts is a necessary step in getting a
better understanding of the origins of a
uniquely human sense of right and
wrong.
So is he right? What is right? If it’s just a
“uniquely human sense,” how would he
know?
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

This is a prime example of why Darwinism, when
taken to its logical conclusion, is pure, unmitigated
evil. This is not to call Gavrilets himself evil; his Maker
will judge that. He may be a pawn of the training he
had that indoctrinated him into the notion that
everything in biology must be reduced to natural
selection. He is, after all, a Distinguished Professor of
Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics, if he
says so himself. But whether he intended it or not, his
model means, as C. S. Lewis called it, the Abolition of
Man. Think of it: all the ideals, the philosophy, the
instruction in right living has been destroyed by Darwin
and his committed disciple, Sergey Gavrilets. Throw
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out the Declaration of Independence.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

Throw out the Ten Commandments. Throw out the
whole Library of Congress while you’re at it. It doesn’t
matter. Mother Theresa was a fool. Soldiers awarded
the Medal of Honor posthumously for sacrificing
themselves on the battlefield for their comrades are
dupes. Voting is in vain. All of us are pawns of our
genes; all our behavior are necessary consequences of
equations. Nothing we value in life matters. In
Darwinland, where Natural Selection works aimlessly
and pointlessly on random mutations, the only morality is
Self, Self, Self. You’re not merciful; you’re selfish. You
just don’t know it. So why not give up on any attempt to
better yourself or your society, and just let Self be your
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god? What’s the use? You can’t help it anyway.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

If you’re not ready for that, maybe you’re worried that
Gavrilets has shown scientifically that this must be the
case. After all, he is a Distinguished Professor of Ecology,
Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics, if he says so
himself. Notice something before we proceed: even if
egalitarianism were to “emerge” over time in a human
social group, it does not validate his claim that genes and
natural selection did it. Intelligent design and traditional
morality can predict this behavior better. Because we are
souls, and because we have consciences, and because
we have a moral compass, we care (genuinely) that bullies
not succeed; we make intelligent, moral choices to act in
ways that will guarantee equal justice under the law, to the
limits of our power to achieve it.
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

Don’t be intimidated by the charts, graphs
and equations. Gavrilets said something
foolish, and we can prove it. We’re not
saying he’s stupid; obviously, he knows
his math. A fool in the Biblical sense is
someone who walks according to his own
will, and by ignoring the Creator, turns
wisdom into folly, light into darkness. Two
simple points prove his ideas are folly.
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

First, he admits that the “emergence” of human
kindness and morality remains “an unsolved
puzzle” in human origins. Whether or not you think
he solved it, consider that! How long has
Darwinism been trying to solve this puzzle? 153
years! Good grief, how long do you give these
guys before you call foul? Look: science is not an
endless license to mislead people on fruitless
quests. Sooner or later you have to face the
music: Darwinism is incapable of explaining the
main thing that makes us human: our moral
sense. Say you were with a group trying to find 159
a
4/13/2015
treasure.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

A self-proclaimed leader takes charge, and spends
his whole lifetime leading your group on a failed
quest, calling it “one of the most intriguing puzzles”
he has ever seen. He insists on going over the
same failed pathway over, and over, and over, with
little detours for variety. For the sake of our story,
imagine that the treasure is in the opposite
direction. Wouldn’t you want to call the guy’s bluff
and tell him his approach has been an utter failure,
and it’s time to try a different path? Darwinists:
your time is up! You have lost. You’re out. Stop
leading, and become a follower.
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

Second, his argument is selfrefuting. Why? Because he must include himself
in the universe of humans predestined by natural
selection. He cannot really mean what he is
saying, because evolution made him say it. Don’t
let him get away with making himself an
exception. He is not Yoda on some exalted plane
above the rest of humanity. He cannot, for
instance, claim that his model provides
“understanding” because that word has no
meaning in the Darwin Dictionary. He cannot
claim that natural selection does not preclude 161
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individual choice. It absolutely does.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

Don’t you remember how apostate-Christian-turnedDarwinist-professor William Provine emphasized this? He
used his free will to insist this is what Darwinism means:
we have no free will. Consistent Darwinists make this
point from time to time (see PhysOrg about Anthony
Cashmore’s views). True moral choices (including truth
claims) are in the universe of concepts, ideas – immaterial
entities involving intelligent design and reasoning. They
refer to unchanging realities that are true, universal,
necessary and certain. You can’t get there from natural
selection. Concepts do not reside in the universe of
material particles and forces. This proves that Gavrilets is
a creationist in spite of himself. He argues for Darwin not
realizing that rationality requires creationism.
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Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私

That being the case, we already know Gavrilets has
presented a certifiably foolish idea. Remember: any
statement that is self-refuting is necessarily false. It
cannot possibly be true, neither now, nor in the past, nor in
the future. What do you call someone who propounds
ideas that are necessarily false? Gavrilets is teaching, in a
nutshell, that morality (a concept) came about by natural
selection (particles and forces). This means that
his own concepts, written up in his paper, so came
about. But anything that emerges from particles and
forces cannot refer to concepts that are true, universal,
necessary and certain. This requires logically that his own
ideas have been refuted: they are not true, they are not
universal, they are not necessary, they are not
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certain. The “evolution of morality” is refuted. Q.E.D.
Darwinist: Charity Is Really Selfishness
达尔文主义：慈善是真的自私
Dr. Gavrilets needs to cure his Yoda Complex and put

himself in the universe of evolved apes for just a
minute, until he realizes for himself, that he is not an
evolved ape. If he tries to act like a human soul, we
must rebuke him for breaking the rules. If he tries to
act like an evolved ape, we who maintain rationality
and morality as ontological realities have the right and
privilege to laugh at anything he says and feed him
bananas. But, being the altruistic, unselfish, moral
individuals we are, we will have mercy on him and
quote him the Ten Commandments in a soft, rational
tone of voice. We will not, however, suffer him to
teach self-refuting nonsense unchallenged, lest it
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frighten the children.
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程


Scientists and entrepreneurs can’t get enough of the
design solutions found in the living world.
Snake-bots: PhysOrg wrote about “Flexible snake
armor: Biology could inspire systems in
engineering with minimized abrasion.” Snakes slither
on all kinds of surfaces; their skin, therefore, is optimized
to handle friction. Scientists at Kiel University looked at
electron micrographs of snake skin cross-sections and
found a gradient of stiff to flexible cells from outside to
inside. “A material that has a transition from a stiff
outside to a flexible inside can distribute an impacting
force over a larger area, therefore decreasing the force
on one single point,” a researcher explained. “Materials
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like this are like a flexible amour.”
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

How could imitating this structure help
humans? “Possible application areas can be
found in the medical engineering sector, in
which friction could for instance be optimized
for artificial implants,” the article
said. “Furthermore, the propulsion and
conveyer technique market could profit from
the abrasion minimization findings, since
lubrication would have to be implicated less
often.” Research on the mechanical properties
of snake skin is “extremely new,” the
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spokesperson said.
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Worm-bots: The pulsing action used by earthworms and snails,
called peristalsis, has inspired another soft robot named
“Meshworm” by its inventors. “Now researchers at MIT,
Harvard University and Seoul National University have
engineered a soft autonomous robot that moves via peristalsis,
crawling across surfaces by contracting segments of its body,
much like an earthworm,” a report on Science
Daily says. “The robot, made almost entirely of soft
materials, is remarkably resilient: Even when stepped upon
or bludgeoned with a hammer, the robot is able to inch
away, unscathed.” Faced with challenges of building artificial
muscles and soft actuators, the team “looked to the
earthworm for design guidance.” The article explains how
they did it. A softbot using peristalsis would be useful for
getting into tight places. Have they thought about just training
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earthworms?
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Gecko tape update: The climbing ability of geckos with dry feet
has been well studied, but how do they perform when
wet? The BBC News and Science Daily revealed the secret:
they trap air bubbles between the tiny hairs on the toe pads that
cling to surfaces. Tokay geckos live in tropical rainforests
where wetness is a problem. In natural circumstances, the
geckos do fairly well in wet weather, but in the lab, when the
toes were soaked, they lost adhesion. Researchers at the
University of Akron hope to use what they are learning to
develop a “gecko tape” that works on both wet and dry
surfaces. The BBC article also discussed research in Japan
with beetles that can walk underwater. The beetles use
capillary action of an oily secretion to do the trick. “Inspired by
this, the team created an artificial structure from silicone to
mimic the adhesion and were able to successfully stick a
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plastic toy bulldozer to the bottom of a fish tank.”
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Bamboo construction: The wood of bamboo decays
in UV light and has poor fire resistance; otherwise, it
has desirable properties for construction, PhysOrgs
aid in “Bamboo: The new super construction
material.” Those properties are its fast growth and a
strength like steel. If they can overcome the
undesirable properties, researchers at the University
of Bath believe bamboo holds promise. They are
experimenting with composites that boost its UV and
fire resistance. “Possible applications of the resulting
novel composites developed through this research
programme include incorporation in architectural
structures, particularly in critical areas such as joints
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and load bearing elements of buildings.”
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Octobot camouflage: “…inspired by the squid and
octopus,” PhysOrg wrote, Harvard scientists have “devised a
rubbery robot … which can crawl, camouflage itself and hide from
infrared cameras.” With “dynamic coloration,” this robot could
someday help surgeons and search-and-rescue teams. “One of
the fascinating characteristics of these animals,” a researcher
said, “is their ability to control their appearance, and that inspired
us to take this idea further and explore dynamic
coloration.” Just as the animals can hide from predators or signal
friends, the new robots could camouflage themselves or signal their
positions to other robots. The progress was reported in Science
Magazine (Morin et al., “Camouflage and Display for Soft Machines,”
Science 7 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6096 pp. 828–832, DOI:
10.1126/science.1222149). The paper begins, “Synthetic systems
cannot easily mimic the color-changing abilities of animals such
as cephalopods.” They hope their soft-bots can mimic some of the
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functions, if not the anatomy, of squid and octopus.
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Flower power: How to get more energy from sunlight? Follow
the sun, like sunflowers do. “A field of young sunflowers will
slowly rotate from east to west during the course of a
sunny day, each leaf seeking out as much sunlight as possible
as the sun moves across the sky through an adaptation called
heliotropism,” began an article on PhysOrg. It’s a clever bit
of natural engineering that inspired imitation from a UWMadison electrical and computer engineer, who has found a
way to mimic the passive heliotropism seen in
sunflowers for use in the next crop of solar power
systems.” The article includes a video clip about Hongrui
Jiang’s invention using passive heliotropism that improved solar
panel light harvesting by 10%. “But eventually, Jiang hopes to
see huge industrial solar farms where fields of photovoltaic
solar panels shift effortlessly along with the sunflowers that
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inspired him,” because “This is exactly what nature does.”
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Ultimate hard drive: Science Now called DNA the
“ultimate hard drive” for information storage. How
about some “wow” stats? “When it comes to storing
information, hard drives don’t hold a candle
to DNA,” John Bohannon wrote. “Our genetic code
packs billions of gigabytes into a single gram. A
mere milligram of the molecule could encode the
complete text of every book in the Library of
Congress and have plenty of room to spare.” He
reported, “researchers stored an entire genetics
textbook in less than a picogram of DNA—one
trillionth of a gram—an advance that could
revolutionize our ability to save data.”
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Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

It’s not practical for personal computers yet, but
just wait; an engineer at the Craig Venter Institute
said, “the field is moving fast and the technology
will soon be cheaper, faster, and
smaller.” Synthetic DNA – no cells required – has
been put on rewritable devices: “an inkjet printer
embeds short fragments of chemically
synthesized DNA onto the surface of a tiny glass
chip.” The researchers boast, “DNA chips are now
the storage medium with the highest known
information density.” New Scientist’s coverage of
this achievement added even more “wow” factoids
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about DNA:
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程


DNA is one of the most dense and stable media for
storing information known. In theory, DNA can
encode two bits per nucleotide. That’s 455 exabytes –
roughly the capacity of 100 billion DVDs – per
gram of single-stranded DNA, making it five or six
orders denser than currently available digital
media, such as flash memory. Information stored
in DNA can also be read thousands of years after it
was first laid down.
Researcher George Church even wrote his latest book
in DNA, illustrations and all, said Science
Daily. Another good thing about DNA encoding is
that the molecule is stable at room temperature.
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Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Fixing what happens: This is not exactly a biomimetics
story, but it deals with a biological reality which, if handled
better, would hold great promise for world health. The Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, according to PhysOrg,
sponsored a “Reinvent the Toilet Challenge” since much of
the world lacks access to good sanitation (see YouTube
video about the challenge). Cranfield University, one of
the competitors, has come up with a human-powered
device that extracts the water from refuse and
concentrates it into briquets that can be used for fuel or
fertilizer – and it’s not just for poor countries, too. The
sanitary reapplication of digestive waste could go a long
way to conserving water and preventing disease. As side
benefits, new sources of energy and even fresh water 175
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could result when nature calls.
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

The BBC News joked that Gates is flushing his money down the
toilet, but quickly explained that the initiative could prevent many
deaths: for example, 1.5 million children die each year from diarrheal
disease. “The project challenged inventors to come up with a toilet
that operated without running water, electricity or a septic system. It
needed to operate at a cost of no more than five cents (3p) a day and
would ideally capture energy or other resources.” In a short video
clip in the article, Gates described problems with current toilet
designs. “Traditional flush toilets waste tons of drinking water and
are often impractical in many areas of the developing world.” They
use, in fact, 10 times more water than people drink. At a recent
Reinvent the Toilet Fair, “In total 28 designs were shown off at the fair
and the winner was a team from the California Institute of
Technology” (see picture at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
website). “Led by Prof Michael Hoffman, the toilet they designed was
solar-powered and generated hydrogen gas and electricity. They won
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a $100,000 prize.”
Inventors Covet Nature’s Engineering
发明家贪图大自然的工程

Isn’t it refreshing to see science done for human good and
environmental stewardship? Evolution was almost a noshow in these stories, just appearing in bit parts with no
speeches. The Bill Gates challenge story is also a lesson
about how wealth creation through capitalism can benefit the
poorest of the poor. Gates built his fortune without
government or U.N. help, starting in a garage. His megacompany, Microsoft, created thousands of jobs and made
computing easier for the entire civilized world. Now, through
some of the wealth created (not stolen from the poor), he is
encouraging engineers to save millions of lives and
promote environmental stewardship with a simple challenge
that is long overdue: doing better with doo. Leftist
redistributionist Marxists, are you paying attention? What
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has Darwin crap done for the world lately?
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道
Spherical sun: The sun is too close to a perfect sphere than

expected theoretically, a finding “baffling” to
astronomers. “Definitive” measurements by the Helioseismic
and Magnetic Imager (HMI) show that “if the Sun were shrunk
to a ball one meter in diameter, its equatorial diameter would be
only 17 millionths of a meter larger than the diameter through
its North-South pole,” according to PhysOrg. The shape is also
remarkably constant over time. Even with its slow rotation, it
should flatten into an oblate shape more than is observed;
besides, it is a turbulent surface filled with magnetic
disturbances and flares. “For years we’ve believed our
fluctuating measurements were telling us that the sun varies,
but these new results say something different,” the team leader
of the observations said. “While just about everything else in
the sun changes along with its 11-year sunspot cycle, the
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shape doesn’t.”
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道


Another new moon theory: How long have the
textbooks said that a glancing blow from a Marssize object hit the earth and formed the
moon? Time for another revision. Science Now
entertained a new theory that it might have been a
direct hit. The article, “Moon Formed From HeadOn Collision,” came ready-made with new artwork.
Some 4.53 billion years ago, a Mars-sized
impactor slammed into Earth, forming a young,
molten moon. But was it a head-on collision or a
glancing blow?
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Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道


New computer simulations argue for the former,
indicating that the impactor scored a direct
hit, crashing into Earth at a steeper angle and with a
higher velocity than previously thought. The
resulting smashup would have ejected far more
Earth debris into space than other models have
indicated, with much hotter temperatures. And that
would mean the moon formed from more Earthlike
material than previously thought. The origin of the
impactor itself remains an open question.
As usual, the phrase “than previously thought” avoids
stating who thought such notions. Note: a smashup is
not like a mashup; no intelligent design is involved. 180
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Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

Lunar helium: Helium, a slippery molecule
that should not have long lifetimes above the
moon, has been detected in the moon’s
tenuous atmosphere by the Lunar
Reconnaisance Orbiter, according
to PhysOrg. It’s too early to say if it comes
from the interior or is added by the solar
wind; observers of lunar origin theories may
want to take note and follow up on the
developing story.
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Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

Creation by destruction: Theorist Alan Boss is pretty
sure a supernova led to the formation of our solar
system, even though the idea is highly speculative. This
is because gas clouds need a shove to form planets,
explained Space.com: “In particular, the shock
wave from the explosion is thought to have
compressed parts of the nebula, causing these regions
to collapse.” Boss’s computer model was programmed
to make sure that short-lived radionuclides got into the
nebula before they decayed, because they show up in
meteorites. It’s all work in progress: “the researchers
are still trying to find various combinations of
supernova shock wave parameters that will line up
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with observations of exploding supernovas.”
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

Solutions: Not to worry: two solar system puzzles
have been solved at once, according to PhysOrg: the
origin of comets and asteroids. Perhaps your textbook
didn’t tell you they were puzzles. The puzzles relate
to the origin of calcium-aluminum inclusions (CAIs) in
meteorites. If you are willing to accept some
complexity, a solution is at hand: “CAIs are thought
to have formed at the very beginning of the Solar
System,” one said. “Our results show that they must
have experienced remarkably complex histories as
they were transported chaotically all over the
disk.” Whether that is a good solution, the reader can
judge.
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Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道
Getting the dates right: “Dating features on the Moon and Mars is


guesswork. Scott Anderson is building a tool to change that.” So
begins a Nature News feature about Anderson’s cool new tool to date
meteorites that can fit on a spacecraft. But he has his critics, who
reveal some dirty laundry about radiometric dating methods:
Anderson will have to show not only that his chronometer is fast and
light, but also that his dates make sense. Radiometric dates are
some of the trickiest, most delicate and most disputed
measurements on Earth. Anderson wants to transform what has
been a laborious process of chemical extraction and analysis into a
laser-based system, automate it and shrink it into a robot small and
reliable enough to send to another planet. “We’re extremely
sceptical of these things working,” says Lars Borg, a chemist at
the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California,
whose three-person lab usually produces just two dates a year. “We
really struggle to get these ages ourselves.”
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Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道
Monster mash: A previous announcement about stars too


big for theory now has an explanation: smaller stars did
the Monster Mash. Details at Live Science.
Primitive star? A puzzling star thought to be among the
“second generation” of stars was announced in Nature
News. “The chemical content of a star that was born
relatively shortly after the formation of the Milky Way calls
into question conventional understanding of how
stars formed in the early Universe.” The problem is that
this low-mass Milky Way star has one of the lowest
metallicities (elemental abundances heavier than lithium)
of any star at a time when such stars should have been
massive. This and other problems call into question star
formation theories and their progress since the Big Bang;
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the astronomers do not yet see a pattern.
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

Plasma puzzle: We’ll just reproduce the
opening sentence of this entry on PhysOrg,
typical of the “everything you know is wrong”
genre: “The first controlled studies of
extremely hot, dense matter have overthrown
the widely accepted 50-year old model used
to explain how ions influence each other’s
behavior in a dense plasma. The results should
benefit a wide range of fields, from research
aimed at tapping nuclear fusion as an energy
source to understanding the inner workings
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of stars.”
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道
The dark rulers of all: For an entertaining story, read the book review

on black holes at Nature August 16. The book is Gravity’s Engines:
How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in
the Cosmos (Caleb Scharf Scientific American: 2012). Mario Livio
lavished in the speculation: “Scharf speculates that black holes rule
everything in the cosmic landscape — from the large-scale
structure of the Universe to life. Using rich language and a brilliant
command of metaphor, he takes on some of the most intricate
topics in theoretical and observational astronomical research.
He weaves a wonderfully detailed tapestry of what modern
astronomy is all about, from the complexities of cosmic microwave
background studies to the X-ray mapping of galaxy clusters.” But
then he had some quibbles. Scharf tends to overstate things. “I
have quibbles, too, with the passages in which Scharf attempts to
support his argument that black holes are the main engines
driving everything from re-ionization and cosmic star formation
to galactic evolution and the emergence of life.” Far be it from187
4/13/2015
astronomers to exaggerate.
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

All this culminates with his intriguing
statement that “the entire pathway leading to you
and me would be different or even nonexistent
without the coevolution of galaxies with
supermassive black holes and the extraordinary
regulation they perform”. Scharf admits that many
steps remain uncertain and that numerous
questions have yet to be answered. But
he proposes that because the cosmic and galactic
environments leading to the rise of complexity and
life are part of black holes’ galactic evolution, it is
reasonable to ask what special things link us
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directly to that history.
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道


However, I feel less certain than Scharf about
the answer. He explains that the tight correlation
between the masses of supermassive black holes
and of stellar bulges at galaxies’ centres reveals
a co-evolution. It is equally certain that feedback
from supermassive black holes had an important
role in the ensuing star-formation history in the
bulges of galaxies. But was this the key factor in
determining whether life-bearing planets should
exist or not? I doubt it. Still, the idea makes for
a very interesting journey.
In short, read Scharf as a nice story, not as solid189
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science.
Sun, Moon and Stars in the News
太阳，月亮和星星的新闻报道

Within much of astronomy these days,
what you thought you knew is wrong, and
what you think you know now is likely to
be proved wrong in the future, but what
scientists tell you they know at the
moment is a sure thing. Does the fable of
the Blind Men and the Elephant come to
mind?
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Switchboard operator: How does your brain keep track of the

constant stream of input coming in from the senses without getting
lost in the stimuli? Science Daily says you have a switchboard
operator called the pulvinar. It “regulates communication between
clusters of brain cells as our brain focuses on the people and
objects that need our attention.” For instance, when crossing a
street, you need to be able to focus on the oncoming bus without
worrying about all the other sights and sounds. An orchestra
musician needs to focus on his or her part amidst all the rest of the
players. A mother wants to hear her daughter’s voice coming off the
train amidst all the other voices. “The transmission of behaviorally
relevant information between various parts of the brain is tightly
synchronized,” the article said. “When we pay attention to
important visual information, the pulvinar makes sure that
information passing between clusters of neurons is consistent
and relevant to our behavior.” This makes it sound like attention is a
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choice, and the pulvinar is a servant of our choices.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Cleaning crew: A whole plumbing system in the brain has

been overlooked till now. Like other organs, brains generate
garbage that needs to be taken out, but the blood-brain
barrier isolates the brain from the rest of the circulatory
system, thus protecting it from viruses and microbes. The
mystery has been solved, according to National Geographic
News. A pump and plumbing system that circulates
cerebrospinal fluid was undiscovered before now because
opening the skull makes it stop. For this reason,
neuroscientists thought cerebrospinal fluid moved by passive
diffusion throughout the brain. Now, researchers at
University of Rochester Medical Center have found a system
that is “on the order of a thousand times faster than diffusion”
– a “glymphatic system” as named by Maiken
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Nedergard. The article describes how it works:
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Glial cells do this by growing their “feet” around


vessels and veins that carry blood, forming a sort
of pipe around a pipe. Tiny pores in this outer
pipe then suck nutrient-rich cerebrospinal fluid
from the blood vessels into channels dense
with nerve cells, and pores at other locations
pump the fluid out. The process simultaneously
carries away the brain’s waste while feeding its
cells.
Another neuroscientist not involved in the study
said this discovery “made his heart sing.” The
finding may have implications for brain
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abnormalities such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Memory champs: Speaking of Alzheimer’s
disease, why do some people maintain superb
memories even to old age? A new study is
trying to figure that out, reported Live
Science. One initial finding is that the cerebral
cortex of these seniors looks just like those of
young people. Maybe that’s what should be
considered normal. Researchers tend to focus
on abnormalities, but “perhaps we could learn
just as much by looking at what goes right with
the brain.”
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Brain’s timekeeper: More continues to be
learned about the body clock, also known as
circadian rhythms. Science Magazine (7
August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6096 pp. 805–
806, DOI: 10.1126/science.1227203) reported
how the clock involves proteins, genes and
electrical activity in neurons working in a
feedback loop. Here’s an excerpt about how
the brain clock interacts with the rest of the
body:
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Circadian rhythms pervade all aspects of our physiology
and behavior. For example, at night we sleep and our
metabolic activity is low, while during the day, we are
awake and active, and our metabolism is high. Genes and
proteins that underpin the molecular timekeeper of
these rhythms have been modeled as a transcriptiontranslation feedback loop (TTFL). This TTflclock
is present in cells, tissues, and organs of eurkaryotes,
and some of its molecular components are conserved
across animal species. In mammals, the master
circadian clock is in the brain’s suprachiasmatic
nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus. Individual neurons of
the SCN contain the TTflclock, and the coordinated
activity of these cell-autonomous oscillators conveys
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timekeeping signals to the rest of the brain and body.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Nutrient supply lines: Before the brain is ready to use, networks


of blood vessels need to set up the supply lines. Announcing a
new finding, PhysOrg posed the scientific problem:
How the intricate network of blood vessels forms within the
brain has long fascinated biologists. Though the human
brain comprises only 2 percent of body weight it receives
up to 15 percent of the cardiac output through this network,
or vessel vasculature. The vasculature in the human brain
consists of a complex branching network of blood vessels,
in total some several hundred miles in length. The network
is formed so as to distribute blood efficiently to all brain
regions, and abnormalities can lead to various neurological
disorders, including strokes, learning difficulties and
neurodegeneration. Yet our knowledge of just how the brain
vasculature develops remains relatively limited.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Using zebrafish embryos, researchers at the
Chinese Academy of Sciences were able to
observe neurons and blood vessels undergoing
a complex interplay involving growing and
pruning, “with some 45 percent of early-formed
vessel segments pruned during the course of
brain development.” The pruning process is
“mainly mediated by the expression of Rac1, a
protein known to drive migration of the EC cells
concerned,” they said.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Neural diversity: Not all neurons in the brain are
the interchangeable. In Nature, 488 16 Aug 2012,
pp. 289–290, doi:10.1038/488289a), Nathaniel
Urban and Shreejoy Tripathy commented a new
study that shows a lot of specialization between
neurons. “Neurons of the same type can show
functional differences,” the subtitle said. “It turns
out that this diversity is in part the result of the
cells’ adaptation to their specific neural
networks.” It means that neurons cannot be
treated like “interchangeable parts” on a Ford
assembly line.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

“However, neuroanatomists have long marvelled at the
snowflake-like diversity apparent in the shapes
of individual neurons, even within a cell type,”
announcing that “recent analyses have demonstrated that
same-class neurons show substantial heterogeneity in
their intrinsic properties, although the origin of such
diversity is poorly understood.” The new study in by
Angelo et al. in the same issue of Nature (488, 16 Aug
2012, pp. 375–378, doi:10.1038/nature11291) provides
one example: “physiological variability among mitral cells
(a type of neuron in the olfactory system) is at least partly
caused by differences in the inputs that they
receive.” Imagine what this means if each of your 100
billion neurons is as unique as a snowflake.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

MRIrony: In an effort to plumb the question of mind-brain
coordination, researchers in France used MRI to study
subjects faced with statements of irony: “as each key
sentence was read, the network activity was greater when
the statement was ironic.” They are performing
experiments on Theory of Mind (ToM) to examine the
physical aspects of known mental activities. “This shows
that this network is directly involved in the processes of
understanding irony, and, more generally, in the
comprehension of language,” they believe. Other
possibilities could explain the increased activity, though:
by analogy, a TV display might light up more during an
action scene, without having any cause-effect relationship
with the content of the action. That interpretation might 201
be
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ironic for the researchers.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

Baby morals: Do infants have a moral
compass? The debate heats up, reported Live
Science. New experiments in New Zealand
raise questions about a previous Yale study
that suggested babies have an innate sense of
right and wrong. The Yale researchers dispute
the new study, however, while both sides claim
flaws in each others’ experimental
methods. One thing seems clear, though; apes
don’t care much for morality. “When it comes to
food, chimps only think of
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themselves,” PhysOrg reported.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Science of the soul: Giulio Tononi has written a historical

scientific novel, Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul, that
claims the mind is composed in the neurons of the brain.
Christoph Koch, reviewing the book in Nature, “marvels at a
journey that explains mind–body theory through a fantastical
lens,” but is not sure he buys its materialism. Is consciousness
a mere epiphenomenon of the physical brain and its
interactions? That’s the deep question that “scholars,
scientists, doctors and artists from the Enlightenment to the
modern era” including “Descartes, Nicolaus Copernicus,
Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Marcel Proust and … Alan
Turing,” actors in Tononi’s story, wrestled with. Claude
Shannon, Leibniz, Spinoza and Thomas Nagel (the only living
person featured in the book) interact with protagonist Galileo in
the plot.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

In the end, Tononi puts hell in the mind, along with
everything else that tugs at human consciousness. “I
believe that in the fullness of time, the quantitative
framework outlined in Phi will prove to be correct,” Koch
states; “Consciousness is tightly linked to complexity and
to information, with profound consequences for
understanding our place in the evolving Universe.” Koch
and Tononi failed to specify whether their own thoughts
and opinions could be reduced to a quantitative
framework, or whether “understanding our place in the
evolving Universe” has any hope of being true given the
premises of materialist neuroscience. A little thought (with
one’s mind) would suggest that Galileo, Leibniz, and any
number of other non-materialist scientists and
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philosophers would have different opinions about that.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Big brain by mutation: Science Daily bombastically announced,

“Evolutionary Increase in Size of the Human Brain Explained:
Part of a Protein Linked to Rapid Change in Cognitive
Ability. Researchers have found what they believe is the key to
understanding why the human brain is larger and more complex than
that of other animals” Wow, this would almost encourage readers to
drink more protein shakes. “Researchers have found what
they believe is the key to understanding why the human brain
is larger and more complex than that of other animals,” the article
continued. Could it be that modifications to a protein
named DUF1220 made us what we are today, knowing that “The size
and cognitive capacity of the human brain sets us apart”? The
researchers at University of Colorado think their magic protein
“points to a new way to study the human brain and its dramatic
increase in size and ability over what, in evolutionary terms, is a
short amount of time.” In short, “The take home message was that
brain size may be to a large degree a matter of protein domain 205
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dosage.” Funny that no other animal ever hit on that formula.
Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑
Free will: Early experiments that supposedly showed free will is

an illusion (because the brain acts before our consciousness
does) have been called into question. New Scientist announced,
“Advocates of free will can rest easy, for now. A 30-yearold classic experiment that is often used to argue against free
will might have been misinterpreted.” Anil Ananthaswamy
wrote that the Libet experiment, that showed electrical potentials
550 milliseconds prior to a subject’s action, has flaws:
“Libet argued that our brain has already decided to move well
before we have a conscious intention to move.” Aaron
Schurger responds, “We argue that what looks like a preconscious decision process may not in fact reflect a decision
at all. It only looks that way because of the nature of
spontaneous brain activity.” Ananthaswamy left the debate open,
begging the question whether any of the contestants used their
free will to argue their propositions.
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Mind Your Brain
小心你的大脑

The wonders of the brain stand in sharp
contrast to the simplistic folly of evolutionists
who think a mutation to a protein turned Bonzo
into Einstein, or who use their minds to say
minds don’t really exist. We’ve already shown
how this kind of thinking is self-refuting
(see 8/15/2012) so no need to belabor the point
here. Use your mind rightly to contemplate the
gifts you have from your Designer – and resolve
to use them wisely. (Pondering the “evolution
of wisdom” would not be a good example.)
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


An article appearing on a science news site
portrayed Christian megachurches as a
drug. What if the tables were turned?
The article on PhysOrg analyzed the Christian
megachurch phenomenon in terms of its
psychological and sociological
influence. Without commenting on the validity
of its claims, is this a proper subject for
science? What if theologians analyzed the
scientific consensus on Darwinism in similar
terms? It might look like the following.
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


Darwin as a Drug: The Rise of Scientific
Consensus on Evolution
Pro-Darwin scientific societies use policy
statements, emotional rhetoric, charismatic
leadership and a domineering, unchallenged
vision of evolution to provide their members
with a powerful emotional pseudoscientific
experience that discourages dissent, according
to research from the Department of Sociology
of Science at G. K. Chesterton Seminary.
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物

“Membership in scientific societies is one of the
leading ways evolutionists maintain unanimity
these days, so, therefore, these societies should
be understood,” said James Weller, associate
professor of sociology of science at Chesterton.
“Our study shows that — contrary to public
opinion that tends to pass off the
Darwin movement as harmless atheist dogma —
scientific societies are doing a pretty effective job
quelling dissent and influencing education,
politics and the courts. In fact, society members
speak proudly of their lack of dissent.”
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


Pro-Darwin scientific conferences have grown in
number, size, and influence in recent years,
coming to virtually dominate the scientific
consensus on origins. More than half of all
research scientists now attend the largest proDarwin conferences.
Society conferences feature a highly-programmed
atmosphere, techno music, workshops on just-so
storytelling and what Weller calls a “multisensory
mélange” of visuals and other elements to
stimulate the senses, as well as small-group
participation and a shared focus in the keynote 211
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speech from a charismatic society president.
Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


The researchers hypothesized that such rituals are
successful in imparting emotional unity in the
society setting — “creating membership feelings
and symbols charged with emotional significance,
and a heightened sense of scientism,” they wrote.
As part of their study, Weller, Corky, and Stocky
analyzed 470 interviews and about 16,000 surveys
on society members’ emotional experiences with
the conferences. Four themes emerged:
materialism/scientism, conformity/unity, admiration
for and desire for acceptance from peers, and a
sense of duty to fight creationism in public
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outreach.
Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


The researchers found that feelings of
consensus felt in the meetings far exceed the
powerful but fleeting “maverick thinker ideal” for
which scientists are often stereotyped.
Many participants used the word “contagious”
to describe the feeling of a society meeting
where members arrive hungry for ways to
answer creationist evidence and leave
brainwashed. One society member said, “The
unity goes through the crowd like a football
team doing the wave. …Never seen it at any
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other conference.”
Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物
Weller said, “That’s what you see when you go into pro

Darwin society conferences — you see determined people;
people who are talking around the snack bars, and, in one
San Diego conference, a solid-leftist political stripe I’ve never
seen anywhere in my time doing research on scientific
conferences. We see this experience of unalloyed rage at
creationism over and over again in society meetings. That’s
why we say it’s like a drug.”
Weller calls it a “bad drug” because the message stifles
debate, such as discouraging dissent from Darwin, punishing
students, and venting hate speech against creationist
enemies or ID advocates. Societies also discourage their
members from thinking independently, such as by stating
firmly, “There is no evidence against Darwin,” he added.
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


This stultifying atmosphere also is a key to
societies’ consensus, Weller said. “How are you
going to dominate science? You give them a
generalized form of evolution that’s uncritical,
question-begging, and domineering.”
The researchers also found that the large size
of scientific societies is a drawback rather than
a benefit, as it results in propaganda for stateof-the-art technology — amplifying the
emotional intensity of consensus — and the
fear to hire more independent thinkers who
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might challenge society leadership.
Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


Weller said, “This isn’t just same-old, same-old.
This is not like historical scientific research by
the individual. It’s a new, totalitarian form of
science that’s mutating and separate from all
the traditional practices with which we usually
affiliate science.”
Scientific societies, which rarely refer to
problems with Darwinism, are worlds away from
the sober, rigorous scientific objectivity of long
ago, Weller said.
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物


Weller will continue studying the topic of the
new Darwinian consensus-building with a booklength profile of American anti-creationist Jerry
Coyne due out in late fall, and a book in 2013
titled “High on Darwin: How the Evolution
Consensus Destroyed Critical Thinking.”
A grant from the Society for the Theological
Study of Darwinism funded the project.
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Parody: Darwin as a Drug
滑稽模仿：达尔文作为药物

Darwinists and sociologists are only
human. If they can analyze
Christians, Christians can analyze
them back. What’s good for the
goosed is good for the candor.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题


Recent stories on human evolution continue to illustrate
ongoing problems that overturn long-held beliefs.
To hybridize or not to hybridize: Some
paleoanthropologists are now challenging the recentlyannounced claim that modern humans interbred with
Neanderthals, but the proponents of hybridization are
standing their ground; see original paper in PNAS (August
14, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1200567109) and news
summaries on Live Science (with artwork of intelligentlooking Neanderthal), PhysOrg (with artwork of dumblooking Neanderthal), and the BBC News(with artwork of
painted Neanderthal). The debate does not appear
settled. A two-minute video clip in
the BBC article contains fascinating facts about the human
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219
genome, except for a mistaken reference to “junk DNA.”
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题



Older culture: Evidence for culture 44,000 years old
was announced by the BBC News – a problem since
that date is nearly twice the previous date for earliest
human culture. Of special note in the article is this
statement:
These new discoveries, however, resemble modern
day tools used by San hunter-gatherers so clearly
as to remove any doubt as to their purpose.
“You can hold [one of the] ancient artefacts in your
left hand and a modern artefact in your right and
they’re exactly the same. It’s incredible… the
functions are very, very clear,” Dr Backwell told the
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BBC.
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题
Tales of the teeth: Chinese and French scientists have dated

“hominin” teeth from a cave with unprecedented precision to 1.8
million years, a story on PhysOrg claims. Unfortunately, a jaw
fragment from the Longgupo cave was initially ascribed in 1991
to Homo erectus, but has now been shown to be
“indistinguishable from Late Miocene-Pliocene
Chinese apes of the genus Lufengpithecus” (Gigantopithecus),
the article mentioned. How, then, did numerous stone-tool
artifacts made by humans get in the cave? The claimed
“consistent” dates should be interpreted in light of the block
quote from the 8/17/2012 entry under “Getting the dates
right”). Researchers appear baffled by an anomaly: “We
observed an inverse correlation of two samples with the
stratigraphical sequence,” they said, aware that correct
interpretation of the cave has implications for leading theories
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about the location where the first humans supposedly evolved.
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

Changing the dates again: It’s been well known in
paleoanthropology circles that molecular evidence
and fossil evidence for the assumed divergence
time of apes and humans don’t match. The heck
with fossils, then, implied Kevin Langergraber
(Boston U); in a new PNAS paper (August 13,
2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1211740109). His team
went with molecular markers of living chimpanzees
and apes to divine the average generation time of
ancient apes he never saw. He came up with an
estimate of 19–25 years – longer than thought.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题
With this information he pushed back the age of the

ape-human divergence from 6 million years to 7 or 8
million years, but the age of divergence of gorillas and
chimps from 8 to 17 million years ago. Science Now
and PhysOrg published this inference without
criticism. Science Now ended with this pregnant
clause giving cause for pause: “While these precise
dates for both generation times and the split between
lineages may be modified as more data is collected
from more apes, adds evolutionary biologist WenHsiung Li of the University of Chicago, the new work is
significant because it ‘provides a novel approach to
the long-standing issue of the divergence time
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between human and chimp.’”
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题


Take two – or is that 153? In “Remaking history: A new
take on how evolution has shaped modern
Europeans,” PhysOrg unwittingly let the cat out of the
bag about the trustworthiness of previous claims. Watch
for the operative phrase “than previously thought” in the
opening summary, a phrase suggesting falsification:
Investigators reporting in the Cell Press journal Trends in
Genetics say that new analytical techniques are
changing long-held, simplistic views about
the evolutionary history of humans in Europe. Their
findings indicate that many cultural, climatic, and
demographic events have shaped genetic variation among
modern-day European populations and that the variety of
those mechanisms is more diverse than previously 224
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thought.
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

The next paragraph was more optimistic, claiming that a
new study published in Trends in Genetics provides
“never-before-seen glimpses into the complex
evolution of humans in Europe, helping researchers
piece together the events that ultimately created what
is now known as modern man.” So, what are these
glimpses and pieces? First, the reader must wade
through the standard tale. Then comes the overturn:
“For some decades, it was assumed that the genetic
diversity of contemporary Europeans was shaped
mainly during the Neolithic transition; however, it now
appears that it was also affected both before and
after this key event.” But if that is true, it scrambles the
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225
data, making any theory incoherent.
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

The remainder of the article consisted of
promises that future multidisciplinary research
might “allow us to obtain a much more
accurate and detailed perspective on
the nature and timing of major prehistoric
processes,” implying that the perspective up to
now has been inaccurate and lacking detail. One
researcher acknowledged, “The development of
inter-disciplinary approaches is crucial to
elaborate realistic models of human
evolution,” implying that current models are
unrealistic to some unstated degree.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题


“Realistic models of human evolution” – how’s that for an
oxymoron. “To dream the impossible dream.…”
These stories lead to an inescapable conclusion: the
promoters of “human evolution” theories are
charlatans. Who but a charlatan promotes ideas that are
inaccurate, lacking detail, unrealistic, imprecise, incredible,
baffling, backwards, constantly changing, and destructive
to their long-held ideas. Why should we give these
charlatans any credence? Don’t be distracted by their skill
in using instruments and math. That is IRRELEVANT to
the major point: explaining where humans came from. If
an astrologer or alchemist was so gifted, would that
validate his claims? Absolutely not.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

We know these charlatans are completely
untrustworthy because they change their stories
constantly. There is hardly any portion of their
scenario that survives from what was taught in
textbooks for years, decades, or 153 years ago
when Charlie D. first suggested that humans
could trace our ancestry to animals. The only
constant is the overarching BELIEF in
evolution. They practice divination, ever
searching for “glimpses” and “pieces” to
rationalize their prior commitment.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题
Every discovery in paleoanthropology overturns what was

previously thought. Scan through the “Early Man” links in these
pages to see that has been the norm for 12 years of our
reporting. They consistently fail to reveal that the only ones
who “previously thought” these things were their fellow
evolutionary charlatans. Sensible people never would think
such silly notions. We know they are silly, too: the idea that
mistakes in ape brains led to what was described in
the 8/18/2012 entry, a human brain with a cleaning crew, a
switchboard operator, billions of neurons each as unique as a
snowflake, a mind and the power of rational thought. Who
would ever think that but a committed atheist materialist who
has no other option than the Darwin myth? Absurdity,
implausibility, contradiction – ANYTHING but creation! How
they ever convinced so many people they were practicing
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“science” has to count as one of the biggest swindles in history.
Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

Look at another example of silliness: the
paleoanthropologist who couldn’t see what his own
hands were telling him: he held a tool in one hand
and claimed it was 44,000 years old, then held a
modern tool made by a living hunter-gatherer in his
other hand and found them identical. This means
he believes that intelligent humans never
progressed for at least 6 times the length of all
recorded human history before they finally figured
out how to plant a farm, ride a horse, or build a
city. In the Biblical record humans were doing all
that in the first generation.
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Human Evolution Puzzles & Problems
人类进化的困惑与问题

The paleoanthropology mythmakers have a very low
opinion of the common sense of their ancestors and their
fellow human beings – which leads to another
inescapable conclusion, that they suffer from delusions of
grandeur about their own intellects. Pay them no
mind. Pursue life, liberty and the pursuit
of eudaimonia (the ideal good life founded on duty,
responsibility and rationality) endowed by your
Creator. Just don’t let the charlatans poison the minds of
the young; inoculate them with sound reasoning before
they are exposed. Evolutionists would never come up
with one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all; they would only weaken and sicken it. A
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healthy society begins with a healthy worldview.
Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查


Recent news stories have claimed evidence for
evolution. But has evolution been observed or assumed?
Snake transitional form: In Nature last week, Longrich et
al. claimed fossil evidence for a transitional form between
lizards and snakes. The fossil, named Coniophus, was
known since 1892 from fragments, but the authors claim
newly-discovered skull and vertebral parts establish its
ancestral position. The authors call it, however, a
“mosaic” of features with “synapomorphies,” which means
in cladistics traits shared by two taxa and their most
recent common ancestor. Their diagrams show a lizard
head, a snake head and the Coniophus reconstructed
head, each looking distinctive.
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Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

If this is a transitional form, it is rare: “Snakes are
the most diverse group of lizards, but their
origins and early evolution remain poorly
understood owing to a lack of transitional
forms,” they said. Owing primarily to its small size
and non-motile jaw, they believe,
“Coniophis therefore represents a transitional
snake, combining a snake-like body and a
lizard-like head.” (Longrich et al., “A transitional
snake from the Late Cretaceous period of North
America,” Nature 488, 09 August 2012, pp. 205–
208, doi:10.1038/nature11227).
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233
Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

There has been a long-standing debate between
evolutionists whether snakes evolved in the ocean
or on land. The authors feel Coniophus suggests
a land origin: “its small size and reduced neural
spines indicate fossorial habits, suggesting that
snakes evolved from burrowing lizards.” It would
seem, however, that one oddball does not justify
the assumed evolutionary story that follows:
“Subsequent to the evolution of a serpentine
body and carnivory, snakes evolved a highly
specialized, kinetic skull, which was followed by
a major adaptive radiation in the Early
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Cretaceous period.
Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

This pattern suggests that the kinetic skull was a
key innovation that permitted the
diversification of snakes.” Coniophus, however,
lacked the kinetic skull. The Editors’ Summary is
tentative, saying that the study “has come up
with some facts that favour a land-based
genesis for snakes,” and “suggests that early
snakes were burrowers that achieved
their elongate form before evolving the
characteristic highly mobile skull of modern
snakes.” There are, however, legless lizards; it is
not clear why the authors did not comment on that
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235
possible interpretation of this fossil.
Evidences for Evolution Examined

进化论的证据审查
Moth pheromones: Male moths have a remarkable ability to
detect female sex pheromones at long distances, even though
the molecules weigh billionths of a gram. In a recent openaccess PNAS paper, evolutionists admitted that “little is
known about the molecular mechanisms that underlie the
evolution of new sex pheromone blends between closely
related species.” They succeeded in mutating a male moth’s
antenna to increase its long-range sensitivity to a mutated
female’s hormone. The mutation they studied appeared to
increase the sensitivity to a particular pheromone molecule in
the female’s blend of exuded pheromones while narrowing its
sensitivity to the blend, “altering the tuning profile of
this broadly responsive neuron.” Tuning an existing system
says nothing about the origin of the system. A summary
on Science Daily did not clarify if this was alleged to be an
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example of Neo-Darwinian evolution.
Evidences for Evolution Examined

进化论的证据审查
Changes such as this could represent designed adaptability,
therefore, analogous to the adaptive immune system, rather than
neo-Darwinian processes at work. The authors said as much:
“variability in the breadth of male response required to track new
pheromones exists in the population.” The authors noted that
researchers in this area are not sure what evolutionary processes are
at work in moth pheromone tracking. It could be stabilizing selection,
asymmetric tracking, reinforcement, communication interference, or
some combination of the above. All in all, in spite of their minuscule
finding of one mutation that appeared to increase sensitivity
amplitude while narrowing sensitivity breadth, they confessed,
“The molecular mechanisms that enable male moths to respond to
new female pheromones during the evolution of the sexual
communication channel remains a long-standing
question.” (Leary et al., “Single mutation to a sex pheromone
receptor provides adaptive specificity between closely related moth
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237
species,” PNAS, August 13, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1204661109).
Evidences for Evolution Examined

进化论的证据审查
Fireflies: New Scientist presented an article about the evolution
of cold light (bioluminescence), claiming that marine animals
invented it in the Devonian (at least 400 million Darwin years
ago), but land insects invented it far more recently – in the
Cretaceous, no more than 65 million years ago. This
“unexpected” “discrepancy” left Slavic paleobiologist Peter
Vršanský scrambling for explanations. Maybe “luminescent
species appeared on land only when night life began to
diversify,” the article claimed; or, perhaps, “terrestrial species
have only recently cracked the problem of disposing of the
toxic by-products of bioluminescence.” If evolution cannot
solve a simple problem like that, however, it casts doubt on the
ability of the “tinkerer” to produce giraffes and eagles in far less
time. The explanation further suggests the absurdity that land
insects were trying to evolve bioluminescence, but couldn’t
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because of toxic waste.
Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

Plant sex: An article on PhysOrg claims, “Researchers
solve plant sex cell mystery,” adding, “plant sex cells
have stubbornly guarded the secret of their origin” till
researchers at Stanford figured out the secret: low oxygen
levels. That hypothesis, however, if a natural law, would
bring sex cells out of any somatic cell, or out of rocks, for
that matter. According to the report, “the researchers
demonstrated that low oxygen levels deep inside the
developing flowers are all that is needed to trigger the
formation of sex cells.” This finding, however, says
nothing about the origin of sex cells in the first place – only
what triggers their development. As such, the article has
nothing to say about evolution. It might just as well be
about epigenetic regulation of existing design.
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Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

Human height: Live Science claims in bold headlines,
“Evolutionary Battle of the Sexes Drives Human
Height.” Careful reading, though, shows a convoluted
suggestion that cannot be tested. Reporter Stephanie
Pappas began, “For women looking to pass on their
genes, it pays to be short. For men, tall is the
ideal.” No evidence was offered for why this should be so,
instead of the opposite. But it was the basis for a claim,
“The result? An evolutionary tug-of-war in which
neither gender reaches their perfect height.” Gert
Stulp, the expert in the Netherlands who stated this
hypothesis, spoke of “evolutionary pressure” that kept
human heights varying incessantly in an “evolutionary
back-and-forth” with no direction or conclusion.
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Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

From this inconclusive explanation, Stulp leapt into a
whole mess of other possible non-converging
evolutionary tug-of-wars: hip width, facial masculinity,
and mate choice, for instance. These appear to be
post-hoc rationalizations for evolutionary theory,
though, instead of evidences. Undoubtedly this kind
of thinking could rationalize any observation into an
evolutionary explanation. It also ignores the fact that
men and women might make their mate choices by
intelligent design. Consequently, it seems a
stretch for Stulp to conclude, “I think it is important to
recognize that evolutionary processes occur in
contemporary human populations. Evolution did
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not stop at the industrial revolution.”
Evidences for Evolution Examined

进化论的证据审查
Using evolution to fight cancer: A scientific theory is bolstered if
it can make predictions that lead to practical applications. This
might be the case with a Science Daily story with the promising
headline, “Using Millions of Years of Cell Evolution in Fight
Against Cancer.” Below the headline, though, a reader will
look in vain for anything beyond a mere assumption of evolution
and millions of years. John McDonald (Georgia Institute of
Technology) inserted micro-RNAs (miRNA) into cells by design,
to study their downstream effects on gene regulation. He also
witnessed design: “McDonald noticed that most of what
changed downstream was functionally coordinated.” He then
wrongly linked evolution to a coordinated purpose: “miRNAs
have evolved for millions of years in order to coordinately
regulate hundreds to thousands of genes together on the
cellular level.”
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Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

The story, therefore, has nothing to do with
aimless, purposeless processes of neoDarwinism, but everything to do with intelligent
design: “If we can understand which miRNAs
affect which suites of genes and their
coordinated functions, it could allow
clinicians to attack cancer cells on a
systems level, rather than going after genes
individually.”
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Evidences for Evolution Examined
进化论的证据审查

We always like to give the Darwin
Team the best possible racing
conditions before watching their
contestants stumble and fall on
the starting line.
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News



表观遗传提供遗传新闻
More and more studies are revealing systems that
regulate DNA. Here are some recent samples.
Stress response: PhysOrg headlined, “Study finds stress
triggers widespread epigenetic changes that aid in disease
resistance reported.” A study by the Salk Institute made it clear
that epigenetics involves a code: “The scientists found
that exposure to a pathogenic bacteria caused widespread
changes in a plant’s epigenetic code, an extra layer of
biochemical instructions in DNA that help control gene
expression. The epigenetic changes were linked to the activity of
genes responsible for coordinating a plant’s response to stress,
suggesting that the epigenome may help organisms develop
resistance to pathogens and other environmental stressors.”
A primer on PLoS Biology, similarly, emphasized the role of
chromatin in stress response (Smith & Workman, “Chromatin: Key
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Responders to Stress,” PLoS Biology, July 31, 2012).
Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News

表观遗传提供遗传新闻
Developmental switches in lampreys: Science Daily reported
on a study that shows that lampreys have a way of
sequestering genes after their use in development to prevent
re-expression. “In effect, by undergoing programmed
genome rearrangement and gene loss during
embryogenesis, the sea lamprey “seals” the genes away in
the small germline compartment so they cannot be
misexpressed and thereby create untoward problems (such
as development of cancer, for example).” This mechanism
differs from epigenetic switching in mammals. “The strategy
removes the possibility that the genes will be expressed
in deleterious ways,” the article stated. “Humans, on the
other hand, must contain these genes through other
‘epigenetic’ mechanisms that are not fool-proof.” The
authors probably did not intend to convey the notion that 246
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News
表观遗传提供遗传新闻

Caste system: Epigenetics may be responsible
for converting ants that have the same genetic
code into workers and queens – the castes in
an ant colony. “The first ant methylomes
uncover the relationship
between DNA methylation and caste
differentiation,” PhysOrg
reported. Methylation is one epigenetic
mechanism whereby genes are tagged for
repression by the addition of a methyl tag.
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News
表观遗传提供遗传新闻

Mobile protection: Science reported on August 3 (Vol.
337 no. 6094 pp. 529–530, DOI:
10.1126/science.1227095) that exposure to
trasnposons (foreign mobile elements in DNA) triggers
a response by “Piwi” proteins and piRNAs to mount an
“enhanced response” to “actively repress
transposons to safeguard the genetic
information.” The immediate response triggers
another response by small RNAs to preserve the
memory of the invasion for future generations, a kind
of inheritance of acquired characteristics. The
complexity of this epigenetic response is coming to
light, along with possible new functions for “junk DNA”:
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News

表观遗传提供遗传新闻
Once piRNAs have managed the immediate threat of a foreign
element,22G-RNAs establish an epigenetic memory that
mediates transgenerational repression. Although initiated by
piRNAs, permanent silencing soon becomes independent of the
Piwi pathway and is stable for generations. Consistent with an
impact on transcription, the repressed target region becomes
packaged with silent histone (heterochromatic) marks. Genetic
screens and candidate approaches identify nuclear WAGOs,
chromodomain protein, and putative histone methyltransferases,
among others, as key components of the machinery required to
maintain this repression over generations. The studies by
Bagijn et al. and others provide a global view on how foreign
elements are silenced—from the initial trigger by piRNAs, to a
heritable state via 22G-RNAs. Like worm piRNAs, some mammalian
Piwi proteins are invested with millions of uniquely mapping
piRNAs, but with no known function. It can be envisaged that
with relaxed engagement rules, these might also participate in
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genome surveillance.
Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News
表观遗传提供遗传新闻

Stem cell stemness: Epigenetics may also play a
role in keeping stem cells from differentiating until
the time is right. “In a finding that could be
important to the use of all kinds of stem cells in
treating disease, scientists have discovered the
crucial role of a protein called Mof in preserving
the ‘stem-ness’ of stem cells, and priming them
to become specialized cells in
mice,” PhysOrg wrote of a study at University of
Michigan. “It plays a key role in the
“epigenetics” of stem cells — that is, helping
stem cells read and use their DNA.”
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News
表观遗传提供遗传新闻

Genome stability: A new open-access paper
in PNAS suggests that epigenetic processes
contribute to stabilize the genome (Birchler and Veitia,
“Gene balance hypothesis: Connecting issues of
dosage sensitivity across biological
disciplines,” PNAS, Aug 20, 2012,
3/pnas.1207726109). Specialists may wish to explore
the implications for evolution of the “Gene Balance
Hypothesis” by Birchler and Veitia. For example, “with
a greater number of protein–protein interactions
involved with macromolecular complexes, there
are increasing negative fitness consequences of
single gene duplication, which manifests as a
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stoichiometric imbalance.”
Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News

表观遗传提供遗传新闻
Another code? PhysOrg reported (without much detail) about
an “exceptional breakthrough” by an interdisciplinary team that
rivals the discovery of the base-pairing genetic code of Watson
and Crick: a code that determines the recognition
of RNA transcripts of DNA. It involves pentatricopeptide repeat
(PPR) proteins. “The new paper in PLOS Genetics describes
for the first time how PPR proteins recognise
their RNA targets via an easy-to-understand code,” the
article claimed, without describing the code itself. “This
mechanism mimics the simplicity and predictability of the
pairing between DNA strands described by Watson and
Crick 60 years ago, but at a
protein/RNA interface.” Because of the lack of detail in this
article, the claims may require further analysis; nevertheless,
the word “code” clearly dominated the story.
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Epigenetics Leads the Genetics News
表观遗传提供遗传新闻


We recommend again the popular-level introduction to
the subject, The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies
Beyond DNA by Woodward & Gills.
It’s interesting that few of these articles mentioned
evolution. No wonder; the discovery of regulatory
codes above the already-challenging genetic code
would scare any Darwinist needing to account for
them. Darwin was known to have stomach aches
most of his life. One can imagine how sick he would
be to hear about the genetic code. It would be
downright cruel to then tell him about epigenetic
codes. Codes are not conducive to a healthy GI tract
for those committed to unguided, materialist theories.
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Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学
If science is supposed to be apolitical, reporters and journal


editors are not remembering their duty to stay neutral.
Gaffe watch: Live Science used the occasion of Todd Akin’s
remark about rape, universally condemned by other
Republicans and apologized for by Akin soon after he uttered
it, to count other alleged scientific gaffes by
politicians. Suspiciously, 4 out of the 5 in the list were gaffes
by conservative Republicans: Rick Santorum, Michelle
Bachmann, Christine O’Donnell and Tom Coburn. As if
doing penance, reporter Stephanie Pappas added one by
President Obama, but portrayed it as a waffle, not a gaffe;
she quoted him saying “The science is not conclusive,” giving
him a way out. Some of the Republican gaffes could be
argued to be positions on legitimate scientific controversies,
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such as global warming.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

Pappas snuck in an added swipe by
characterizing Santorum’s alleged gaffe as “one
of his more memorable comments”. One would
think she wouldn’t have to look far through
Democrat VP Joe Biden’s numerous gaffes to
find something to help balance the
scales. Notably, scientific bloopers by
scientists, including those of Darwinians who
frequently exaggerate claims far beyond the
evidence, escape her notice: like this dandy
printed uncritically on Nature News, “In-law
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infighting boosted evolution of menopause.”
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

Hark! The Republicans Are Coming: For Nature News, reporter
Amy Maxmen headlined, “Republican Spending Plan Casts
Shadow on Science.” Her focus was on Paul Ryan,
Romney’s VP pick, as someone who wants to “limit the reach of
government.” She wrote, “As chairman of the House of
Representatives budget committee in the current Congress, Ryan
has crafted a federal spending plan that contrasts sharply with
that of President Barack Obama, whose budget requests have
largely maintained science and technology funding as an
economic investment.” Maxmen failed to mention that President
Obama and Senate Democrats have brought the USA to the edge
of a fiscal cliff that risks economic disaster for everyone, including
scientists. Her article failed to mention which science taxpayers
should be responsible to pay for, and also failed to mention
sources of private funding available to scientists, such as
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foundations and industry.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

Lionizing JFK and Obama: What’s this doing on a
science site? That’s a question a reader might
legitimately ask of an entry on PhysOrg about JFK’s
influence on Obama. The question becomes stronger
when one realizes it’s a review of a book by a nonscientist: “Researcher Greg Frame, from
the University of Warwick’s Film and Television
department, has explored how Obama, whose
birthday is Saturday August 4, has shaped himself
in Kennedy’s image.” Nothing negative is said about
either Democratic president, even though
commentators on both sides of the aisle this week are
decrying Obama’s current presidential campaign as257
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one of the dirtiest on record.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

Nothing was said about Obama’s deficit
spending that has run up a national debt of $16
trillion, more than all prior presidents
combined. Yet this is the image of JFK and
Obama PhysOrg allowed Mr. Frame to project
on their webspace: “leader, superhero, and
subsequently father.” One will look in vain for
any such pedestals for the likes of Ronald
Reagan, let alone an announcement about his
birthday.
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Anti-Republican Science

反共和党的科学
Political correctness: When it comes to moral and cultural issues
such as abortion or homosexuality, science news sites can be
counted on to take the leftist line. In “Why Women Choose
Abortions,” Live Science writer Jeanna Brynner ostensibly reported a
survey about women’s reasons for killing their infants in the womb,
giving ample time for them to describe why the thought of having a
child added stress to their life. One of the “solutions” listed was “free
birth control” without the important follow-up question, “at whose
expense?” In another article onLive Science, Stephanie Pappas was
all uptight about “Hateful Political Ads” against “Transgender
People,” implying that conservatives have no justification to be
concerned about gender-confused men entering women’s bathrooms
or applying as daycare workers, calling these concerns “scare
tactics.” Pappas gave complete free rein to Amy Stone, a sociologist,
to talk about homosexual issues and gay marriage, but never asked
for a balancing opinion from a conservative spokesperson from
someone like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, whose
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offices were targeted by a gay activist with a gun recently.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

A rare balance: One recent article on Science
Daily showed exemplary non-partisanship. It was
about a forecasting model at University of
Colorado that predicts Romney will win the
electoral college vote in the upcoming
election. The Romney mention is not the balance
at issue; it is the fact that the article steered clear
of advocacy or partisanship, and simply stated the
facts: if the same model that has been used since
1980 holds, the outcome will be as stated. Even
so, it is not clear whether a paper published by the
American Political Science Association belongs on
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a science news site.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

No matter the issue, no matter the controversy,
science news sites and leading journals can be
counted on to take the leftist position. Democrats will
be cast in a positive light, Republicans as
villains. Articles are written by leftists to
leftists. Sometimes, for instance, they appear aimed
at helping fellow leftists convince conservatives of the
wrongness of their position. On PhysOrg, for
instance, a psychologist who runs a website attacking
global warming skeptics was given the platform to
instruct fellow leftists that coming across too strong
can backfire, because conservatives (by implication)
take comfort in their worldview and see science as a261
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threat.
Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

But while he applied his psychological model to
skeptics of anthropogenic global warming
(usually conservatives), he avoided applying it
to leftists confronted with facts threatening their
Darwinian world view. The slant is always one
way. Sometimes journal editors will feel they
have done their job of balanced reporting by
printing a letter to the editor complaining about
their bias. They never think about avoiding the
bias in the first place.
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Anti-Republican Science
反共和党的科学

What to do? First of all, have a respect for
facts, but differentiate between facts and
opinions. Second, realize that most science
reporting these days is coming through a leftist
filter. Third, exercise discernment by noticing
the bias and asking the questions the reporter
is failing to ask. Fourth, support services
like Creation-Evolution Headlines, where we
boldly point out the bias and ask the questions
the reporters should be asking.
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Is a Bonobo a Genius?
倭黑猩猩是天才吗？
A trained bonobo has been filmed making simple stone


tools. Does that qualify for genius status?
In a shameless headline to lessen the gulf between apes
and humans, New Scientist reporter Hannah Krakauer
announced, “Bonobo genius makes stone tools like early
humans did.” Without diminishing of Kanzi’s engineering
feats with rocks, it seems a stretch for Krakauer to claim,
“he now seems capable of making stone tools on a par
with the efforts of early humans.” Further reading shows
that Kanzi had been taught toolmaking skills by trainers,
including how to knap flint flakes for cutting. His bonobo
companion did not learn as well. Krakauer was
astonished at the resemblance of Kanzi’s handwork to
“early hominid tools.” Only at the end of the article did she
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fess up that the headline might be overblown:
Is a Bonobo a Genius?
倭黑猩猩是天才吗？

Do Kanzi’s skills translate to all bonobos?
It’s hard to say. The abilities of animals
like Alex the parrot, who could purportedly
count to six, and Betty the crow, who crafted a
hook out of wire, sometimes prompt claims
about the intelligence of an entire species.
But since these animals are raised in
unusual environments where they
frequently interact with humans, their cases
may be too singular to extrapolate their talents
to their brethren.
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Is a Bonobo a Genius?
倭黑猩猩是天才吗？

The findings will fuel the ongoing debate over
whether stone tools mark the beginning of
modern human culture, or predate our Homo
genus. They appear to suggest the latter –
though critics will point out that Kanzi and
his companion were taught how to make the
tools. Whether the behaviour could arise in
nature is unclear.
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Is a Bonobo a Genius?
倭黑猩猩是天才吗？

But if it’s unclear, why did she claim the ape’s
toolmaking was on par with that of early humans she
never saw? Maybe those early humans made
saddles, too, that left no trace because they were
made of wood and leather. Meanwhile, over at Live
Science, Charles Q. Choi leapt to the same conclusion
as Krakauer, claiming that the observation “may shed
light on the mental capabilities of the last common
ancestor of humans and these apes.…” He wrote
similar things for an article posted on PhysOrg. After
the flashy headlines come the admissions that the way
these animals were raised could be essential to the
story, and that such behaviours were not observed in
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the wild.
Is a Bonobo a Genius?
倭黑猩猩是天才吗？

If it is wrong to make sexist conclusions out of the
observation that Kanzi made more tools than his female
companion Pan-Banisha, then it is wrong to make
evolutionary conclusions out of artificial training. Clearly
many animals are intelligent. If crows and dolphins had
hands, they might be better toolmakers than the
bonobos. Human trainers routinely train sea lions,
elephants and horses to do all kinds of neat tricks. Your
own dog can be trained to catch frisbees and herd
sheep. in response to whistles. The only reason these
people get all Darwin starry-eyed over Kanzi is that they
need the common ancestry line to emerge from apes, not
dogs and dolphins. Evolution is conclusion looking for
support after the faith commitment has been made.
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究


If federal science standards are approved by the
states, students will lose freedom to question
controversial subjects like evolution and global
warming.
Science thrives on open inquiry: the ability to ask
questions. But for certain subjects, notably evolution
and global warming, the scientific “consensus” (loosely
defined as the majority with power) wants to shut
down inquiry and indoctrinate students to accept the
consensus as the only acceptable position. The latest
attempt at indoctrination, revealed in an article
by Daniel James Devine in World Magazine, (“Change
in the Weather,” Aug. 25, p. 64) is to push for national
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science standards:
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究


As kindergartners and high-school students return to
public schools this fall, a team of 41 writers will be
busy editing national curriculum standards that, as
early as next year, could change how science
teachers instruct their classes. The so-called “Next
Generation Science Standards,” which all 50 states
will have the option of adopting or not, are intended
to provide a universal framework for science
education. They explicitly emphasize Darwinism
and climate change.
Environmentalism and Darwinism are heavily
promoted in the standards that are being
recommended by the National Academy of Science
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based on consensus (majority) views.
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

Controversies on global warming: As for global
warming, students in states that adopt the
standards will be taught that man is at fault for the
current warming and needs to fix it. If only one side
is taught in schools, the USA may soon resemble
Canada, where only 2% deny anthropogenic global
warming, according to a new poll reported
by PhysOrg. The science behind it, though,
continues to be ambiguous. The controversy is not
limited to skeptics. Should students be prevented
from hearing about the following three examples
found in the mainstream journals?
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

(1) A striking paper in Nature this week (Simpson
et al., “Long-term decline of global atmospheric
ethane concentrations and implications for
methane,” Nature 488, 23 August 2012, pp. 490–
494, doi:10.1038/nature11342) finds good and bad
in human climatic activity: methane is a
greenhouse gas emitted substantially by flaring of
natural gas vents, but so is ethane – a precursor of
atmospheric ozone. The decrease in ethane due
to reductions in flaring is reducing ozone that
protects humans from UV light, while the methane
from flaring adds to warming. Which is worse? 272
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

(2) In the journal Science this week, Luke Skinner
urged “A Long View on Climate Change” (Science,
24 August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6097 pp. 917–919, DOI:
10.1126/science.1224011). He cautioned about the
political ramifications of short-term graphs (those
looking back a century or less). He noted several
major climate swings over long periods before humans
appeared in the standard geological timeline. He
further questioned scientists’ ability to understand all
the forcing and feedback mechanisms and the
uncertainties in proxy estimates; for instance, what
factors are nonlinear? How resilient is the earth to
particular forcing factors?
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

“If the goal of climate science is not just to predict the next
50 to 100 years of climate change, but also ‘to tackle the
more general question of climate maintenance and
sensitivity’, then arguably we must do so within a
conceptual framework that augments the notion of
climate sensitivity as a straightforward linear
calibration of climate gain, with the possibility of nonlinear
feedbacks and irreversible transitions in the climate system,”
he explained. “An exclusive consideration of the highest
(e.g., decadal) register of climate variability might
be adequate for most political time frames and may suit
the urgency of immediate mitigation and adaptation
challenges,” he ended. “However, it falls short of the wider
scientific challenge that faces humanity, as well as a
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moral horizon that extends much farther into the future.” 274
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究
(3) In a published comment to Nature this week (Turnhout et

al., “Listen to the Voices of Experience,” Nature 488, 23 August
2012, pp. 454–455, doi:10.1038/488454a), five scientists had
nothing good to say about the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) – the forger of the climate
consensus. They criticized the IPCC’s top-down authority, its
narrow focus on one parameter (global temperature), and its
obsession with peer review with no regard for the stakeholders
in policies derived from its pronouncements. The five even
questioned the IPCC’s epistemology: “This IPCC-like focus
might be attractive to ‘elite actors’, from natural
scientists to national governments, but it omits many other
important stakeholders and knowledge-holders, including
indigenous people, businesses, farmers, community
partnerships and fishers,” they said. “What counts as
legitimate knowledge, and how it is generated, influences275
its
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

Controversies over evolution: Problems with Darwinism are
routinely discussed in the pages of Creation-Evolution
Headlines (recent example, 8/20/2012), usually expressed by
evolutionists themselves in leading journals. But if the
proposed “Next Generation Science Standards” become
universal, students will not hear about them. “High-school
students will be taught that fossil and DNA discoveries
support common ancestry, and that one species can
evolve into two” (readers are welcome to search on those
keywords for controversies about each of them). Adoption of
the standards will leave teachers in a hopeless bind. “A 2008
poll found that only a quarter of public high-school biology
teachers claim to be strong advocates of Darwinism,”
Devine said, ” and in an online poll last year, half of science
teachers said they faced skepticism about climate change
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teaching from parents.”
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

In the U.S., 26 states have representatives on the
“Next Generation Science Standards” writing team,
Devine reported. “These states and others are
likely to replace their own science standards with
the national ones—leaving teachers and parents
with little room to be skeptical.” This is ironic,
considering that the Skeptics Society and
prominent “debunkers” like magician The Amazing
Randi constantly urge a skeptical attitude about
everything (but science), and urge critical thinking
about claims presented as fact (by everyone
except scientists). How can students learn critical
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thinking, if “science” is immune from it?
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

Philosophy, Too: In the same issue of World Magazine,
Janie B. Cheaney expressed concern that the American
Philosophical Society (APA) – a body whose highest virtue is
to question things – is enforcing consensus opinions on
tolerance, refusing to publish ads in its journal from any
institution that fails to adhere to its politically-correct views on
homosexuality. Obviously this targets Christian
colleges. The logical contradiction between the APA’s antidiscrimination policy and its own intolerance of traditional
views has not been lost on luminaries such as Alvin
Plantinga, Robert George, and Roger Scruton, but since the
majority accepted the new policy, the illogic has been locked
in. “…open inquiry about ultimate questions is what
philosophy is all about,” Cheaney concluded. “If open
inquiry is throttled in its own house, Socratic discussion
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will have no place to go.”
National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

Bitter fruit of consensus enforcement: Two more articles in the
same issue of World Magazine illustrate the fallout when
consensus trumps freedom of inquiry. In “Good Deeds
Punished,” (World, Aug 25, 2012, p. 12) Warren Cole Smith
retold the tribulations of renegade sociologist Mark Regnerus at
the University of Texas who dared publish the politicallyincorrect finding, based on the largest sample ever conducted,
that children don’t fare as well under homosexual pairs
(see 6/10/2012 and 7/26/2012 entries). Regnerus survived the
backlash because he had tenure, but Bob Woodberry, in the
same UT sociology department, did not. Despite his
impeccable credentials and experience, he was denied tenure,
and thereafter effectively blacklisted from American universities
because of politically incorrect views, Marvin Olasky wrote
(World, August 25, 2012, page 76).
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

With American doors closed to him, Woodberry
had to seek employment where he could find it,
in a country more tolerant of dissent. “To get a
job, Bob Woodberry last month moved nearly
10,000 miles,” Olasky concluded after his
parody of the tenure board at UT. “The
National University of Singapore is giving him a
50 percent increase in salary, free housing for
up to nine years, the first semester off, and
$85,000 for his research.”
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

Centralization of education at the national level
is disastrous; education belongs at the local
level. The proposed national standards reflect
another volley by leftist elitists to squelch
independent thinking and force the unwashed
masses into uncritical acceptance of the
dictates of the oligarchy. States that refuse to
adopt the standards will likely be subjected to
threats from universities not to accept their
students. Totalitarianism, anyone?
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

World Magazine (“Today’s News, Christian Views”)
is a great resource, highly
recommended! Subscribers to the bi-weekly paper
magazine also get online access, email
newsletters in advance of print, and video
summaries of upcoming issues (watch the current
one). World covers many subjects: politics,
education, science, culture, music, movies, books
and much more. Readers will find many in depth
reporting on many subjects the secular press
ignores, such as persecution of Christians around
the world and controversies over scientific ethics.282
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National Science Standards Squelch Freedom of Inquiry
美国国家科学标准静噪自由探究

When it comes to evolution, the magazine is
favorable to Darwin skeptics in an informed
way. This is one magazine you will read
cover to cover. The reporting is well-written
and informative, and the editorials are timely
and thought-provoking. Get it today– right
now, while they are running a free, noobligation three-month trial subscription
at GetWorldNow.com; use “video” as the
promo code.
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283
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号


After praising the wisdom of the ant, a science writer
reveals little of his own.
The date is August 21. The place is Current
Biology. The perpetrator is Michael Gross, a science
writer at Oxford. For 30 paragraphs, he dazzles
readers with the wonders of the ant brain. In “How
Ants Find Their Way” (Current Biology, Volume 22,
Issue 16, R615-R618, 21 August 2012,
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.08.004), he waxes eloquent
about how smart the ants are and how little we
humans know about how they navigate. Then, in the
only mention of evolution in the article, Gross commits
a serious logical faux pas – best appreciated after a
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look at the amazing ant.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

Surely each of us, pestered as we might be about ants in
the kitchen, has marveled at how they so quickly establish
their trails – communication networks that may traverse
many meters (a long hike for an ant). Disrupt the trail and,
before long, they have found a new way. How do they do
it? “Insects use a wide range of tools for orientation,
including visual memory, smell, and counting steps,”
the summary states. “The tricky question is how they
combine and compute different kinds of inputs, and
whether their methods can help us understand more
complex brains or create artificial ones.” Right off the
bat we learn that ants compute. How did a computer get
into a brain smaller than a pinhead? Let’s review seven of
the applications (in modern parlance, apps) available in
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their tiny navigation computers.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

(1) The first technique an ant uses to find its
way is to count its steps. “Essentially, when the
ant leaves its nest to go foraging, it counts the
steps and keeps a record of how many steps
it is away from home at any given time, like a
pedometer,” Gross writes (see 6/29/2006). “In
addition, it also records changes in
direction.” There’s an app for that – right in the
ant’s brain: the “path integrator”. It’s an
“unflappable” tool that works even when
mischievous experimenters try to get the ant off
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track.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号


(2) Another app an ant uses is the sun
compass. Even at night, some ants can
detect polarized skylight to orient
themselves.
(3) A third app an ant uses is “the vibe” –
vibration signals the ant can generate as a
call for help, or vibrations from the nest
the ant can memorize to find the way
home.
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Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号


(4) A fourth app in the ant’s orientation toolkit is carbon
dioxide sensing, used to locate its nest. Since all nests
create CO2 plumes, the ant has smarts to trust the path
integrator app in conjunction with the CO2 sensor. “The
research suggests that ants can use any of a wide
range of sensory signatures associated with a place of
interest to complement their path integration
information,” Gross says.
(5) A fifth app is the magnetic compass– an ability to
orient to the earth’s magnetic field. Monarch butterflies
and some birds also have this ability. In ants and in
birds, proteins called cryptochromes are thought to be
the seat of magnetosensation, but the theory needs
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more study.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

(6) A sixth app is the sense of smell, obviously. For
this, ants are well equipped. We shouldn’t take this
sense for granted; “tracking an odour plume is a
complex computational task, as the distribution of
the relevant substance in the fluid may
be irregular and will depend on flow dynamics,”
Gross explains. Scientists are only beginning to
understand this highly complex sense in insects (for
mind-boggling introduction, see
the 6/27/2005 entry). If ants are equipped like fruit
flies are, they “can perceive substance gradients in
an odour plume ‘in stereo’, enabling them
to navigate towards a source of food odours, for
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example.” Your picnic lunch isn’t safe.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

(7) A seventh app is vision. Ants do look around
with their compound eyes; they are known to
identify landmarks to hone in on sites the path
integration app has brought them near. Gross
quotes entomologist Jochen Zeil (Australian
National University, Canberra) who states we are
only beginning to understand how ants use vision
in orienteering: “Quite generally, we are just
starting to acquire, develop and apply tools
that allow us to reconstruct the navigational
information available to animals under natural
conditions,” he said.
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Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

“We know that both localization of goals and direction
of heading along routes can be achieved without
segmentation of the visual scene into discrete
objects, which is considered to be computationally
demanding — but who knows?” as if to hint they
might perform that computation in their little
computers. Gross adds to the wonder by stating,
“The biggest challenge is to find out how the insects
store complex geographical information in their very
small brains.” Researchers have witnessed inklings of
this: “certain parts of the brain of insects reconfigure
themselves when exposed to information related
to navigation,” but mapping the external geographical
information to the neuronal response scientifically is a291
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long way off.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

(8) Gross didn’t mention the chemical cues ants
share with fellow hikers on the trail when they
touch their antennae together. To this we can
consider the roles of scout ants that sally forth
alone in complex paths they must remember all
the way home, so that their brethren can find
the best path to the food source. In
the 11/15/2000 entry, we described how ants
quickly solve the complex “traveling salesman”
or “Chinese postman” algorithm, a challenge
even for supercomputers (10/26/2010).
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Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号

Putting it all together: After examining the apps
separately, the challenge is to know how the ant
integrates them. What if, for instance, one app says go
east, but another says go west? We’ve each
experienced conflicts about directions by passengers in
a car (at least before Garmin Nuvis). “We may have
more or less rational ways of evaluating and
combining information from different sources, but
how do ants manage that?” Gross asks. Good
question. Once again, scientists are only beginning to
answer it. More mischievous acts by scientists trying to
confuse the ants have revealed that sometimes they will
compromise between conflicting signals, or superpose
the inputs to determine a resultant vector – pretty good
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math for a brain as small as an ant’s.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号
 Now, the explanation: Evolution is only mentioned twice

in Michael Gross’s article, at the very end – but the
context (above and below) is what guarantees it the
Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week award. Here are
the final two paragraphs containing the E-word:
Insect navigation is important for a whole range of
reasons. For neuroscience, it offers the chance to
observe information processing in manageable
systems under conditions that are close to nature and
thus relevant to evolutionary
considerations. The crucial importance of navigation
and homing behaviours is evident from the observation
that most animals need these abilities to some extent
— even sessile animals often have navigating larval 294
4/13/2015
stages.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号


Therefore it is no big surprise that evolution has
driven natural navigation systems to a degree of
perfection that human engineers can only dream
of. “I think that every animal we look at is a more
competent, more robust, more flexible, more
miniaturized and a more energy-, material-, sensor–
and computation-efficient agent than anything we
have ever built,” concludes Zeil. “So would anyone
need more justification for how fundamentally important,
intellectually challenging and promising it is to conduct
research into the navigational abilities of insects?”
In short, he says, if you want to find perfection, look to
unguided, mindless, purposeless processes of
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Darwinism.
Ingenious Ants Can’t Prevent Stupid Evolution Quotes
巧妙的蚂蚁不能阻止愚蠢的进化引号



“No big surprise.” Sigh. How does one respond to a
statement like that? Without LOL, that is. Go to the
ant, thou sluggardly of mind.
Save this SEQOTW for the Stupid Evolution Quote of
the Year contest. (Note: we award this only to Michael
Gross, not to Jochen Zeil, who actually said something
praiseworthy; re-read that part and be amazed.)
Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy and give thanks
for the wisdom our Creator has exhibited in the lowly
ant, with its tiny brain able to put our best-designed
systems to shame. Take a moment to admire an ant
before stepping on it or spraying it. And when you see
them enjoying their natural habitat outdoors, pay them
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Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化



Evolution does little to explain amazing adaptations in animals
and plants, but intelligent design is up to the task.
ANIMALS
Insect wing robustness: Scientists at Trinity College Dublin set
out to explain why insect wings don’t fracture. The secret is in
the veins, reported PhysOrg; tears in the paper-thin
membranes are stopped at the veins before they can
propagate. Locusts endure longer marathon flights compared
to most insects, but their wing membranes are actually quite
delicate. By performing stress tests on locust wings, the
scientists found that the veins provide stop gaps to prevent
accidents from becoming catastrophes, providing protection
against crack spreading by 50% (see video clip on Science
Magazine). In a way, the veins act like watertight
compartments on a ship, preventing a leak from sinking the 297
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whole vessel.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

The wings achieve an optimum balance between
competing design requirements. “Nature has found a
mechanically ‘optimal’ solution for the locust wings,
with a high toughness and a low weight,” remarked
David Taylor, a mechanical engineer at the college. He
sees scientific fruit from the team’s work in two ways. “The
researchers believe that the vein pattern found in insect
wings thus might inspire the design of more durable
and lightweight artificial ‘venous’ wings for micro-airvehicles,” for one. “And by “reversing” their analysis, one
could possibly even use the vein spacing of fossil
insects to study the wing properties of extinct insect
species.” The original paper by Taylor and Dirks, which
did not mention evolution once but mentioned design five
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times, is openly accessible on PLoS ONE.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Tiny bubbles in the feet: How does a beetle walk
underwater? Very carefully, with the aid of tiny bubbles
trapped in the hairlike setae of their foot pads. A
short PhysOrg entry explains how Naoe Hosoda and
team at the National Institute for Materials Science sees
engineering possibilities in their discovery. “Dr. Hosoda
and her team clarified the mechanism which makes
this possible and developed an artificial silicone
polymer structure with underwater adhesion properties,”
the article said. ” This achievement is expected to be
developed as an environment-friendly
technology and is also considered applicable to clean
underwater adhesion without using chemical
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substances that impact the environment.”
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Fish collective motion: Evolution tried to insert itself into a
story on Science Daily: “A video game designed for predatory
fish might have unraveled some lingering evolutionary
questions about group formation and movement in
animals, according to new research that took a unique
approach to observing interactions between real and
simulated animals.” Princeton evolutionists claim
“the strongest direct evidence that collective motion in
animal groups such as schools of fish can evolve as a finely
tuned defense against attack from predators.” To understand
this odd conjunction of fine tuning with evolution, we must look
beyond the contrived experiment where the experimenters
projected red dots (representing prey) on a tank containing
predators. Virtual fish are programmed by intelligent
design. Even a friendly colleague not involved in the study 300
4/13/2015
understands that:
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

“The beauty of this experiment is that the
researchers systematically vary the
rules that the individual simulated prey play
by, which dictates the structure of the
resulting group,” Parrish said. “They’re like the
little man behind the curtain moving three
dials up and down — attraction, repulsion and
alignment. Then they say, ‘Okay, bluegills, give
it your best shot. How good are you at attacking
prey based on how we set the rules?’”
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Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

The researchers claim that group formation in the
“evolvable” software worked to deter predator
attacks. This says nothing, however, about how the prey
fish “evolved” the ability to follow one another closely at
high speeds with near-instant coordination, nor why the
predators were repelled by the group motion. Clearly
these capabilities had to already be present in the
fish. Nor did it help evolutionary theory for the team to
point out this is how fish and birds in the real world act,
because they could have been designed that
way. Looking for “rules” that fish follow supports a design
inference. In short, the scientists observed adaptive
designs in the real fish, but neglected to explain how
purposeless mechanisms of evolution gave the fish these
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abilities by a long series of mistakes.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Cave fish tooth tale: It’s well known that humans
deprived of senses like sight or hearing gain increased
sensitivity from their remaining senses. This apparently
happens with cave fish, Current Biology reported: though
blind, they find their way “by the skin of their teeth”
(Haspel et al., Current Biology Volume 22, Issue
16, R629-R630, 21 August 2012,
doi:10.1016/j.cub.2012.06.035). “Evolution” was
apparently not important enough to the authors to
mention it in their paper. It was really a story of
heightened sensitivity in existing fish denticles to
vibrations. The only hint of evolution was a mere
suggestion: “Teleost denticles, oral teeth, cephalic lateral
line, and taste buds may share a common ancestral 303
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sensory structure.”
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Darwin finch genome: Evolutionists might be understandably
excited to have the first genome published from one of Darwin’s
“iconic” finches from the Galapagos, but any benefit for
evolutionary theory mentioned in the announcement
on PhysOrg is either historical hype or future hope. The article
went on and on about how the Galapagos finches have been
symbolic of Darwin and influential in promoting his theory. The
article went on equally about how the genome is expected to
produce scientific fruit in the future. But for now, nothing stated
in the article about the genome itself provided clear evidence
for evolutionary theory: just empty promises, like “Having the
reference genome of this species has opened the door for
carrying out studies that can look at real-time evolutionary
changes on a genomic level of all of these enigmatic
species.” If something evolutionary turns up, we’ll have to
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report it later.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化


PLANTS
Reach out and touch: If you thought plants are oblivious
to their neighbors, you should see a report from PNAS,
“Plant neighbor detection through touching leaf
tips precedes phytochrome signals” (deWit et al., August
20, 2012, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1205437109 PNAS August
20, 2012). It’s a study about the counterintuitive notion of
“plant behavior.” The lab plant Arabidopsis has been
observed to reach out and touch its neighbors: “we
identify a unique way for plants to detect future
competitors through touching of leaf tips,” the authors
stated. “This signal occurs before light
signals and appears to be the earliest means of aboveground plant–plant signaling in horizontally growing
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rosette plants.”
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Seasonal response: The “wisdom” of plants is noted
in a short article on PhysOrg about how plants survive
the winter. “Mechanisms that protect plants from
freezing are placed in storage during the summer
and wisely unpacked when days get shorter,” the
article began. Specifically, the CBF pathway becomes
activated when shorter periods of sunlight signal the
approach of winter. A researcher at University of
Michigan apparently didn’t require evolutionary theory
to observe that plants conserve their resources like
any wise person would do. “The CBF pathway
is actively turned off during the summer to prevent
the allocation of precious resources toward
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unneeded frost protection,” he said.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Wood you like to know: Another story on PhysOrg has a lot
to say about adaptive design but nothing to say about
evolution. Scientists at North Carolina State were excited to
discover “a phenomenon never seen before in plants,” a
transcription factor in the cytoplasm that regulates “gene
expression on multiple levels, preventing abnormal or
stunted growth” of wood. “And it did so in a novel way,” the
article remarked: when one of the four other proteins in its
family group was present, the spliced variant was carried
into the nucleus, where it bound to the family
member, creating a new type of molecule that
suppressed the expression of a cascade of
genes.” This behavior has not been seen in a plant before,
they said. They hope it will help genetic engineers learn
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how to control the amount of lignin in wood production.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Wonder wood: Ready to hear about the next
wonder material for the 21st century? It might
revolutionize construction of homes, cars,
computer displays, body armor and much
more. Get ready, it is (drum roll, please): wood
pulp. That’s right: common, ordinary wood pulp is
set to turn waste into gold, New
Scientist reported. Why? It’s an all-natural
replacement for expensive carbon nanotubes. It’s
called nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) and
inventors think you will love it. It’s transparent, it’s
lightweight, and it’s strong, with a strength-to4/13/2015
308
weight ratio eight times better than stainless steel.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

To manufacture it, engineers take plain old plant
material (small twigs and branches work just fine –
even sawdust) and purify it by removing lignin and
hemicellulose. By the time they mill it, give it an acid
bath and concentrate it into crystals, it becomes a
thick paste that can be applied as a laminate or
shaped into almost anything. “The beauty of this
material is that it is so abundant we don’t have to
make it,” one manufacturer reported. It’s also safe for
humans and green for the environment. The price is
expected to drop as large-scale production plants
ramp up. In the excitement of design talk, nobody
seemed interested in mentioning evolution.
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Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

Lignin: Speaking of wood, Dr. Doug Axe of the
Biologic Institute spoke on Intelligent Design the
Future why evolution cannot explain the second-mostcommon biopolymer on earth after cellulose, lignin –
the molecule that gives woody plants their
strength. Axe and two other researchers found a
compelling design inference in the global ecological
dependence on lignin’s specific properties – properties
that give rise to humus in topsoil. Further, though
microbes consume cellulose for energy, no microbe
has ever evolved the ability to consume lignin. “What
is a paradox for Darwinism makes perfect sense from
a design point of view,” he said. See the abstract of
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his paper in the journal Bio-Complexity.
Adaptation by Design, Not Evolution
适应是设计，而不是进化

The sooner we get evolutionary
just-so storytelling out of science,
the better. Science no longer
needs Darwin’s ball and
chain. Onward and upward into
the Intelligent Design century!
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311
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器


In a video clip seen by over a million, Bill Nye the
Science Guy slammed creationism with a series of
logical fallacies.
The 2.5-minute video, “Creationism is not
appropriate for children,” was posted
on YouTube on August 23. It was reported
by CNN Belief Blog and The Examiner among other
news media sites. On Live Science, Stephanie
Pappas gave an uncritical write-up, but at least
distinguished between creationism and intelligent
design, unlike Bill Nye. Transcript and analysis is
provided here in the commentary below. See also the
critical analyses on Darwin’s God and Evolution News
4/13/2015
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& Views.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

Bill Nye the Scientism Guy does not know what
he is talking about. If he ever learned
philosophy of science or even elemental logic,
he forgot it in this simplistic screed. He should
stick to cute children’s experiments that are
observable, testable, and repeatable, where
his TV programs shine. (Note: we mean “Bill
Nye fails baloney detector” in the sense of
failing a drug test—lots of baloney was
detected!) Here’s what he said about
creationism, with fallacies flying like rotten
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baloney in all directions:
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“Denial of evolution is unique to the United
States.” Big Lie. Bandwagon. People around the
world doubt evolution. South Korea has a strong
anti-evolution movement. There are Darwin
skeptics in England, Spain and other parts of
Europe. One of the largest creation organizations
is in Australia. Nye is sadly misinformed. He
states no facts about Russia, the Middle East,
Africa, or South America, but expects readers to
just accept his sweeping Generality. Even if it
were true, would he really want America to imitate
the rest of the world? Lots of things about the
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United States are unique – thank God!
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“I mean, we are the world’s most
advanced technological… I mean you
could say Japan, but generally the United
States is where most of the innovation still
happens.” Non-sequitur. How does this
support Nye’s contention? If anything
logical can be inferred, it’s a correlation
between technological innovation and
denial of evolution. The rest of the world
should follow the USA’s example!
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Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“People still move to the United
States. And that’s largely because of the
intellectual capital we have, the general
understanding of science.” Nonsequitur. And his point is? If
the USA already has the best intellectual
capital that is the envy of the world, what’s
the problem? Could it be that people
move to the United States because they
are running away from the Darwin
totalitarianism in their home countries?
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Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“When you have a portion of the population that
doesn’t believe in it, it holds everybody back;
really.” Big Lie, Non-sequitur. This sentence is
a Sidestep wrapped in a Generality, seasoned
with Equivocation and Fear-mongering. What
does “it” refer to? He has apparently just shifted
the topic from denial of evolution to denial of
science. Is Nye unaware that creationist leaders
have PhD’s in a wide field of scientific
disciplines? Denial of evolution has nothing to do
with denial of science. Creationists love
science! If anyone is holding anyone back, it is the
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Darwin Party holding back academic freedom. 317
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器
“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all

of biology…” Big Lie. Saying something doesn’t make it
so. Cell theory, genetics, or even intelligent design could
easily qualify for the most fundamental idea – intelligent
design, because biology is focused on genetic and
epigenetic codes, functional information, and functional
design, as evidenced in the biomimetics
revolution. Darwinists add their just-so stories as a narrative
gloss to the observations of biology, as often shown in these
pages. Wherever evolution is treated as a fundamental idea
or heuristic, it fails. The “tree of life” is a good
example. Biologists now consider it a network, not a
branching tree as Darwin envisaged; Darwin’s imaginary tree
misled biologists for over a century. Other examples:
junk DNA, vestigial organs, evolutionary psychology, social
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Darwinism.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“…analogous to trying to do
geology without believing in
tectonic plates. .…” Argument
from Analogy. Creationists
believe in tectonic
plates. Tectonic plate theory, not
involving life and reproduction, is
not comparable to evolutionary
theory.
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Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“You’re just not going to get the right answer. Your world
is just going to be a mystery, rather than an exciting
place.” Non-sequitur, Sidestep, Big Lie. Being “exciting”
may have a role in sociology of science, but is not a
necessary or sufficient condition for doing science
itself. Nye’s sophomoric statement also presumes that
science is capable of getting one and only one “right”
answer, a philosophically vexed notion. Science provides
tentative explanations that seem to work for the present; if
even Newtonian physics succumbed to Einstein’s
relativity, no scientific theory is beyond criticism. Nye also
assumes that Darwinism has produced a “right answer” –
name one! This is a claim so lame it mandates
penance. Re-reading every evolution story in our pages
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320
for the last 12 years is a start.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“As my old professor Carl Sagan said,
‘When you’re in love, you want to tell the
world.’” Argument from Authority. Nye
reveals his philosophical roots here: the
materialist, positivist, Darwin-saturated
world of the world’s most famous atheist,
with whom he is in love. Are you
surprised he wants to attack creation? He
should listen to his mentor’s advice
about Baloney Detecting, and his idol’s
advice about academic freedom.
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Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“Once in awhile I get people that really… that
claim they don’t believe in
evolution.” Ridicule, Straw Man. Nye’s sneering
demeanor here contributes to his emotional
effect of portraying Darwin skeptics as stupid,
misguided bigots. Rhetorically, nothing
prevents a person of equal status turning that
statement right back at him: “Once in awhile I
get people who claim they don’t believe in
creation” or “who claim they believe in
evolution.” Sneer and shake your head for
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322
added effect.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器


“Any my response generally is [shrugs shoulders], why
not; really [silly grin], why
not?” Bandwagon, Ridicule. Hey, just leave your brain at
the gate and jump on the Darwinmobile; it’s fun!
“Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when
you don’t believe in evolution.” Half truth, NonSequitur. The world just is fantastically complicated by
every biologist’s account, evolutionist or not. Read one
week’s worth of biochemistry papers for proof. One thing
Nye gets right: everything is so much simpler when you
just throw up your hands like Darwin and say, “Stuff
Happens” (9/22/2009,9/15/2008). Now the whole world
makes sense! No more need to buckle down and explain
the complexity of life. Just say, “It evolved!” and make up
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323
a just-so story.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器
“Here are these ancient dinosaur bones, or

fossils…” Circular Reasoning, Card Stacking. First in his list
of items too complicated for creationists to deal with, Nye
embeds his beliefs into the language by calling the bones
“ancient.” Let’s get him to explain how blood cells and
proteins in dinosaur bone pulled up from the ground survived
for over 65 million Darwin Years. Does Nye really think that
creationists ignore dinosaur bones? Good grief, the creation
sites are filled with discussions about dinosaurs. And they
don’t fret over how complicated it makes creationism; on the
contrary, they show that the evolutionists are the ones
challenged to explain these large, complex, diverse beings
by an unguided process. As for other fossils, has Nye ever
heard of the Cambrian explosion? Let’s get him to
watch Darwin’s Dilemma to learn not to state
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misrepresentations on YouTube.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“Here is radioactivity, here are distant stars that are
just like ours but at different states in their life
cycles.…” Sidestep, Non-Sequitur, Card
Stacking. What on earth do these have to do with
the evolution as a “fundamental idea of biology”? If
he is trying to attack young-earth creationism, then
he is displaying his ignorance of PhD-level
creationist literature on radioactivity (e.g.,
the RATE books), and on cosmology. He is also
completely ignoring the many and deep difficulties in
evolutionary cosmology, not the least of which is
getting everything out of nothing. Search the
Cosmology links for many examples.
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Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

“… the idea of this deep time, of billions of years explains so
much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your
worldview just becomes crazy – it becomes, uh, untenable; it’s
self-inconsistent.” Big Lie, Ridicule, Sidestep. Creation
scientists do not “ignore” questions of time. There are
creationist cosmologies that allow for billions of years
(example). Certainly intelligent design theory is disinterested
about deep time. What is Nye ridiculing? Deep time has
nothing to do with biological evolution, except as a convenient
closet in which to stuff their skeletons. We’ll grant evolutionists
ten or hundred times the billions of years they believe in: the
mathematical probability will still rule evolution “untenable”
(see online book). Nye tosses out the adjectives “untenable”
and “self-inconsistent” as unargued conclusions, offering no
support. Who is calling whose worldview “crazy”? Just the
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326
facts, Nye.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器


“And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny
evolution, and live in your [waves hands around]
world that is inconsistent with everything we
observe in the universe, that’s fine.” Generality, Big
Lie, Ridicule. Such folly is not worthy of repetition,
let alone refutation.
“But don’t make your kids do it, because we need
them.” Non-Sequitur, Bandwagon. Who is
“we”? The scientific oligarchy? The Darwin
Party? The mandarins and elitists of Darwin
indoctrination? Or does Nye have a frog in his
pocket? Bill Nye, kids belong to their parents, not
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327
you.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器
“We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the

future. We need people that, uh– we need engineers!
People who can build stuff, solve problems.” Non-Sequitur,
Bandwagon. It just gets worse. Nye has now equated belief
in evolution with engineering! This is funny. Is he that
clueless? Some of the hottest jobs in science right now
involve biomimetics, the imitation of nature’s designs. As we
have reported for years, Darwinism has nothing to do with
the cutting-edge sciences of biochemistry and
biomimetics. Did the Curiosity rover land on Mars by
evolution? Has it found evidence of
evolution? Neither. Engineers build things using intelligent
design. Nye is right about one thing: we need scientifically
literate voters and taxpayers for the future, so that they can
kick the Darwin Party usurpers out and end the totalitarian328
4/13/2015
reign of the Emperor with No Clothes.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器
“It’s just really a hard thing. It’s a hard thing.”



NonSequitur. Nye can’t think of anything intelligent to say, so he
just gestures and fills up time with irrelevant emotional
expressions.
“You know, in another couple of centuries, that worldview will
be [shakes head] just won’t exist. I mean, it’s [shrugs] …
there’s no evidence for it.” Big
Lie, Sidestep, Ridicule, Argument from Authority. More
vacuous emotional opinions. How can he know what the next
two centuries will bring? He could well find his peers digging
through the garbage heap of discarded ideas for their long-lost
statue of Darwin.
This is why Bill Nye is not called the Logic Guy or Bill Nye the
Philosopher. Chances are good (since he lives and breathes
scientism) that he could not even define science in a way that
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329
could keep evolution in and creation out.
Bill Nye Fails Baloney Detector
比尔·奈伊失败胡扯探测器

Bill Nye’s 2.5-minute emotional rant,
unfortunately, shows the power of
an authority figure who can garner over a million
viewers to listen to his empty rhetoric and
influence the culture. Two minutes of lies and
distortions, spoken off the cuff with no support,
take paragraphs to refute. Don’t despair: if one
boy calling out “The Emperor is naked!” can turn
the tide, a few of us with our heads still screwed
on, not influenced by the aura of the
elitist Bandwagon, can make a difference. Get
your megaphone and shout the truth.
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Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现


The new record holders look identical to those alive today.
Claimed 230 million years old, 100 million years older than
the previous record holders, fossils of arthropods in amber
(fossilized tree sap) were reported in PNAS (Schmidt et
al., “Arthropods in amber from the Triassic
Period,” PNAS August 27, 2012, doi:
10.1073/pnas.1208464109). The little bugs, including two
mites and a fly, haven’t done much evolving in all that
time. Science Daily and PhysOrg both quoted co-author
David Grimaldi, a curator in the American Museum of
Natural History’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology “and a
world authority on amber and fossil arthropods,”
expressing his surprise at this example of extreme
evolutionary stasis:
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331
Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现


Two of the specimens are new species of mites,
named Triasacarus fedelei and Ampezzoa triassica. They
are the oldest fossils in an extremely specialized
group called Eriophyoidea that has about 3,500 living
species, all of which feed on plants and sometimes form
abnormal growth called “galls.” The ancient gall mites
are surprisingly similar to ones seen today.
“You would think that by going back to the Triassic
you’d find a transitional form of gall mite, but no,”
Grimaldi said. “Even 230 million years ago, all of the
distinguishing features of this family were there—a
long, segmented body; only two pairs of legs instead
of the usual four found in mites; unique feather claws,
and mouthparts.”
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Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现


He didn’t specify who would think that. Presumably,
he was referring to himself, or to other
evolutionists. According to the BBC News, Dr. David
Penney (U of Manchester) was just as surprised: “The
results presented here skip the Jurassic entirely
and go back a step further to the Triassic,” he
said. “This was not expected.”
Another evolutionary conundrum is that most living
gall mites feed on flowering plants, which (in
evolutionary time) would not appear on the scene for
another 90 million years. The article offered the
following theory rescue device:
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333
Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现


The ancient mites likely fed on the leaves of the tree
that ultimately preserved them, a conifer in the extinct
family Cheirolepidiaceae. Although about 97 percent
of today’s gall mites feed on flowering
plants, Triasacarus fedelei and Ampezzoa
triassica existed prior to the appearance and rapid
radiation of flowering plants. This finding reveals
the evolutionary endurance of the mites.
“We now know that gall mites are very adaptable,”
Grimaldi said. “When flowering plants entered the
scene, these mites shifted their feeding habits, and
today, only 3 percent of the species live on
conifers. This shows how gall mites tracked plants
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334
in time and evolved with their hosts.”
Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现

The amber droplets were found high in the
Dolomite Alps of northeastern Italy. To explain
why they showed up there, Science
Now explained, “were probably trapped during
a 10-million-year climatic shift that caused the
trees to produce more resin than usual,” without
commenting on what this could imply for today’s
political controversy over climate change. “Their
presence in 230-million-year-old amber,
researchers say, shows for the first time that
mites evolved long before the appearance of
flowering plants.”
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Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现

It shows no such thing. These are not “ancient”
mites. They are identical to modern mites, so
they are dead modern mites, OK? Grimaldi said
so; he expected transitional forms, and they were
not there. Why do we need evolutionists to
explain away the evidence? This story is another
example of how to understand the real finding,
you first have to work your way past the Darwin
Party guards who try to explain what you are
about to see. Just let the evidence speak for
itself. Notice their surprise in the abstract, and
the immediate retreat to just-so storytelling: 336
4/13/2015
Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现

Antiquity of the gall mites in much their extant form was
unexpected, particularly with the Triassic species
already having many of their present-day
features (such as only two pairs of legs); further, it
establishes conifer feeding as an ancestral trait.
Feeding by the fossil mites may have contributed to the
formation of the amber droplets, but we find that the
abundance of amber during the Carnian (ca. 230 Ma) is
globally anomalous for the pre-Cretaceous and may,
alternatively, be related to paleoclimate. Further
recovery of arthropods in Carnian-aged amber
is promising and will have profound implications for
understanding the evolution of terrestrial members
of the most diverse phylum of organisms.
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Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现

So let’s get this straight. Some highly complex creatures
(complete with articulated limbs, mouth parts and specialized
organs), which are also “very adaptable,” just lived in their
little conifer-feeding niche for 230 million Darwin Years,
having billions of kids exposed to a world of change –
mutations, cosmic rays, meteor strikes, global extinctions,
glaciers, earthquakes, tectonic plate subductions, volcanoes,
mountain uplifts and climate shifts – to say nothing of the
incessant evolutionary pressure to evolve – but lived out
their entire history in some evolutionary Brigadoon. (This is
known, we are told, as “evolutionary endurance.”) Now they
show up in amber with no transitional forerunners and no
morphological changes, oblivious to the Darwinian tale of the
emergence of flowering plants, dinosaurs, mammals and
man. Yes indeed: this will have profound implications for338
4/13/2015
understanding evolution.
Unevolved Arthropods Found in Amber
没有进化的节肢动物在琥珀中发现

Actually, the “understanding” produced, and the
“profound implication” is this: evolution has been
falsified (again). It’s not surprising, therefore, that
complex, fully-functional arthropods are also found
in the Cambrian explosion, where there are no
transitional forms, either. David Grimaldi may be a
world authority on amber and fossil arthropods, but
not on following the evidence where it leads. “You
would think,” he said, “you would find a transitional
form.” In psychology, this is known as
projection. One can only hope he would not think
of imposing his anti-empirical thoughts on
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others. Now go show this to Bill Nye.
Genes Make People Support Abortion
基因使人支持堕胎



If this political science is right, your genes and the
environment make you liberal or conservative.
Peter Hatemi’s paper in Trends in Genetics was
summarized on PhysOrg, “The role of genes in political
behavior.”
In the past, social scientists had assumed that political
preferences were shaped by social learning and
environmental factors, but recent studies suggest
that genes also strongly influence political traits. Twin
studies show that genes have some influence on why
people differ on political issues such as the death penalty,
unemployment and abortion. Because this field of
research is relatively new, only a handful of genes have
been implicated in political ideology and partisanship,
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voter turnout, and political violence.
Genes Make People Support Abortion
基因使人支持堕胎
Future research, including gene-expression and sequencing


studies, may lead to deeper insights into genetic influences
on political views and have a greater impact on public policy.
Instead of mere social determinism, Hatemi now argues for
social plus environmental determinism. “The emergence of
this research has sparked a broad paradigm shift in the
study of political behaviors toward the inclusion of
biological influences and recognition of the mutual codependence between genes and environment in forming
political behaviors,” the abstract explains. How Hatemi (a
political scientist and molecular biologist at the University of
Sydney) exempts himself from these influences enough to write
about as if detached from them it is not clear. It’s not clear
what constitutes “insight” in such a view. Nor is it clear whose
genetically-determined leanings should have sway on public
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policy.
Genes Make People Support Abortion
基因使人支持堕胎
Those who think these are easy questions should look at


Douglas Heaven’s entry on New Scientist, “Location of the
mind remains a mystery.” Science Daily tries to offer an
explanation for how the brain generates consciousness and
introspection, but in so doing, reveals the difficulties:
“Clearly, neuroscience is only beginning to understand how
the human brain can generate a phenomenon as complex
as self-awareness.” Any theory that cannot give an account of
the location of the mind is surely not ready to explain how
genes or the environment influence that mind.
Another cure for determinism is David Chalmers’ video posted
at Evolution News, where the noted philosopher of mind claims
that the “hard problem” of consciousness (how neural circuitry
produces conscious experience) will never be solved by
science. See also our 8/18/2012 entry, “Mind Your Brain.”
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Genes Make People Support Abortion
基因使人支持堕胎
 Determinists are proud of people with
a Yoda complex, thinking they live on
an exalted plane above their fellow
beings, analyzing and explaining them
in terms of the materials inside and
outside their brains. Pay them no
attention; evolution makes them think
that way (see Self-Refuting
Fallacy and think about it).
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究


The phrase “building blocks of life” is pregnant
with misinformation.
Starry eyed: Many organic molecules have
been found in space by their spectra. New
ones are added to the collection from time to
time. The latest is glycolaldehyde, a simple
sugar, found by astronomers using the
Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile around
a young star. No planets were found, because
according to theory, they come later in the
star’s evolution.
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

A press release from the University of Copenhagen,
“Sweet building blocks of life found around young
star,” sent reporters into lockstep confirmation
mode. Science Daily reposted the press release
verbatim even though it was primarily promoting the
university’s homeboy, Jes Jørgensen, and didn’t
explain whether the simple carbohydrate, containing
only common carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, would
survive any planet’s fiery formation without turning into
tar. PhysOrg dropped the “sweet” word, but reprinted
the press release uncritically. Live Science called this
a “space sugar” and stated the phrase “building
blocks of life” twice.
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

At National Geographic, Ker Than was ecstatic
about the “sweet discovery,” asking in big, bold
print, “Sugar Found In Space: A Sign of
Life?” The presence of this molecule floating in gas
was enough to suggest “the possibility of life on
other planets.” Later in the article he did admit,
“Glycoaldehyde can be found on Earth, usually in
the form of an odorless white powder” that is
really not used to sweeten foods. It’s significance
derives from some scientists who “think it plays a
key role in the chemical reaction that forms
ribonucleic acid (RNA), a crucial biomolecule
present in all living cells.”
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

Phosphorus for us: NASA Astrobiology
Magazine turned its excitement to phosphorus, a
molecule not common on earth but essential to
life. In “Life’s First Taste of Phosphorus,” (an odd
title considering the highly-toxic element became
essential in compounds long before taste buds
evolved in the evolutionary scenario), reporter
Michael Scherber provided this
summary: “Phosphorus is vital to life on Earth,
even though our planet doesn’t provide life very
much phosphorus to work with. Scientists are
now studying how phosphorus biochemistry may
have originated at the dawn of life.”
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

Phosphorus ranks 17th in abundance on earth,
and is generally locked up in inaccessible
minerals, the article explained; available forms
tend to be deep in earth’s core. But phosphorus
is a vital part of DNA, RNA, and ATP (adenosine
triphosphate), and “shows up in a surprisingly
wide range of biological molecules.” So
where did life get it? The article’s best answer:
meteorites. Georgia Tech’s Nicholas Hud
became chief storyteller for the scenario of what
happened after meteorites provided a veneer of
the essential element:
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究


Hud thinks phosphorus might have started out as a
trace element in a few biological processes, and only
later did life realize all the potential that phosphorus
has for life.
“Once life developed the molecular machinery that
allowed incorporation of phosphorus, and even the
‘harvesting’ of phosphorus, life would have moved
to a higher level,” Hud says. “The inclusion of
phosphate likely represented a major evolutionary
advance in life (if it was not there at the very
beginning) and therefore is extremely important for
understanding the origin and early evolution of
life.”
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

Adventure game: New Scientist posted a highly
speculative article entitled, “DNA could have existed
long before life itself.” The only hint of empirical
substance revolved around work by Michael Powner
(University College London), who is “trying to
make DNA nucleotides through similar methods to
those he used to make RNA nucleotides in
2009. And he’s getting closer.” Already, though, the
speculation is in high gear: “a rethink might be in
order,” writer Michael Marshall teased, even though
“There is plenty still to do.” If he succeeds, it “could
have important implications for our understanding
of life’s origins.”
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

The old RNA World scenario might be replaced by
the DNA World or some “bloody mess” of “rich pickings,”
according to Matthew Levy (Albert Einstein College of
Medicine), who did not explain how life avoided the toxic
cross-reactions and tholins likely to form. Steven Benner
(origin-of-life researcher at University of Florida) would really
like to get DNA going early: “Benner says it makes more
sense for the first life to have used
pure DNA and RNA as early as possible,” Marshall wrote
without explaining how pre-microbes evolved sense,
because “Both work better than the mongrel
molecules.” “Right now, though, there’s nothing to tell us
exactly how and when life first used DNA,” Marshall
ended, confessing complete ignorance. Matthew Levy got
the last word: “It almost becomes a choose-your-own- 351
4/13/2015
adventure game,” he said.
Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

The pep tide rises: PNAS published a paper
apparently solving an old conundrum for origin-of-life
research: how did amino acids link up in peptide
bonds? “Protein synthesis in aqueous
environments, facilitated by sequential amino acid
condensation forming peptides, is a ubiquitous
process in modern biology, and a fundamental
reaction necessary in prebiotic chemistry,” Griffith and
Vaida explained in the abstract. “Such reactions,
however, are condensation reactions, requiring the
elimination of a water molecule for every peptide bond
formed, and are thus unfavorable in aqueous
environments both from a thermodynamic and
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kinetic point of view.”
Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

Excitedly, they announced, “We
report unambiguous spectroscopic evidence of
peptide bond formation at the air–water
interface, yielding a possible mechanism
providing insight into the formation of modern
ribosomal peptide bonds, and a means for
the emergence of peptides on early
Earth.” Great. Now if they can keep them from
dissolving again when they dip below the surface,
they might be onto something. Actually, their
experiment required the formation of amino acid
esters first, and the cooperation of copper ions.
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Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究

Origin-of-life (OOL) researchers routinely commit a
number of fallacies. First, they are not following evidence
where it leads. Their evolutionary worldview comes first;
data are mere props for the worldview. Second, they
commit non-sequiturs. Just because life requires these
molecules now, it does not follow that the appearance of
these isolated molecules led to life. Third, they omit the
key ingredient of life: the code. Scattered amino acids and
nucleotides under the best conditions have no connection
to the configuration that produces function. OOL needs an
encyclopedia, but generates random alphabet letters
scattered over a vast ocean. Give the materialists whole
planets filled with letters combining at fantastic rates
without intelligent design; there is zero hope they will ever
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produce meaning (see online book).
Origin-of-Life Researchers Excited Over Nothing
没有什么激动生命起源的研究
 OOL research does not deserve
anyone’s respect. It deserves their pity,
or their laughter. They are wasting time
playing adventure games instead of
doing real scientific work that helps
humanity. The misinformation
disseminated by the media over this
hopeless, misleading research deserves
their scorn.
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感


The San Diego Zoo has a new Centre for
Bioinspiration, promoting invention based on life’s
solutions to practical problems.
Radio station KPBS announced, “San Diego Zoo Will
Mimic Nature To Create New Products.” The zoo
will use its practical knowledge of plants and animals
to excite corporations to apply the knowledge to
invention. By connecting collaborators with sponsors,
they hope to bring useful products to the
marketplace. Examples of animals with biomimetic
potential listed in the article include the morpho
butterfly, whose wing scales led Qualcomm to improve
cell phone displays, and sharks, whose skin led to
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improved ways for shipbuilders to avoid barnacles.
Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Reporter Tom Fudge ended with this promising
citation: “A study by Point Loma Nazarene University
found biomimicry could help the local economy. The
study said developing such products had
the potential to add 2,100 jobs and $325 million
in annual revenues to the San Deigo [sic]
region.” Across the world, the BBC News took
notice of this development, headlining, “San Diego
Zoo looks to nature to create new gadgets,” noting
the design influence of birds, whales and
butterflies. Live Science also reported the
news. “The San Diego Zoo has touted its
biomimicry expertise for a few years now,” the article
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Visitors to San Diego Zoo’s Bioinspiration
Website can find news and lists of resources for
further information. The Centre’s summer
newsletter announced a Bioinspiration Conference
for October 2013 in partnership with the Zurich
Zoo. “Imagine medical transportation simplified by
looking to the flight of dragonflies, protective body
armor inspired by the armadillo shell, or drug
delivery improvements inspired by the mosquito,”
the announcement reads. “The natural world
represents a tremendous resource for novel and
transformative innovation.”
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

In addition, the Centre is attracting high school
students to consider careers in biomimetics by
offering a course this fall, “Introduction to
Biomimcry,” in collaboration with UC San
Diego. It won’t just be a series of lectures,
either: “Students will work in pairs on a Design
Challenge, where an adaptation from an
animal or plant is used as inspiration for
solving an engineering challenge.”


In other biomimetics news:
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Cucumbers: Did you ever wonder about those coils on
cucumber vines that find poles to climb? Did you ever
stretch them? Scientists at Harvard did. They wanted to
know how the spring-like tendrils coil tighter when stretched,
unlike most springs that unwind. In “How the Cucumber
Tendril Coils and Overwinds” in Science Magazine today (31
August 2012: Vol. 337 no. 6098 pp. 1087–1091, DOI:
10.1126/science.1223304), Gerbode et al. explained the
counterintuitive behavior of these natural springs “using
physical models of prestrained rubber strips, geometric
arguments, and mathematical models of elastic
filaments.” The outcome of their work “suggests designs
for biomimetic twistless springs with tunable
mechanical responses.” Their paper threw a cucumber
slice to Darwin who had called the tendrils “soft springs” –360
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but that had nothing to do with evolution.
Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Their only mention of evolution itself was not helpful to
Darwin: “Collectively, our observations raise
questions at an evolutionary level about the ubiquity
of this mechanism in other tendril-bearing species and at
a mechanical level about the functional principles of
these soft twistless springs,” they said in the
conclusion. A Harvard press release summarized the
research in lay language. Trying to remain evolutionary
about this design, the article claimed, “Nature has
solved all kinds of energetic and mechanical
problems, doing it very slowly and really getting it
right.” Noting the efficiency of the design, the article
ended with a rhetorical question, “The real question
remains this: How difficult is it to evolve such
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Rats: Engineers at CORDIS are saying “Eureka!”
instead of “Rats!” as they work on rat-inspired
whiskered robots, reported PhysOrg. The summary
provides glimpses of hope for homemakers, doctors
and firefighters: “Inspired by the twitching
whiskers of common rats and Etruscan shrews,
European researchers have developed rodent-like
robots and an innovative tactile sensor
system that could be used to help find people in
burning buildings, make vacuum cleaners more
efficient and eventually improve keyhole
surgery.” Remember–these are the critters you
want to trap or poison.
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感


Bugs: A short video on Live
Science praises “The Master Designer,
Nature Herself.” Shrilk, a cheap new
material inspired by bug parts and
discarded shrimp shells, is leading to
biodegradable sutures, plastics, and
containers.
Lastly, Science Daily announced
“Evidence That New Biomimetic
Controlled-Release Capsules May Help in
Gum Disease.”
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感

Isn’t this great? This is more evidence that
biomimetics is rolling over Darwin. As
expected, the Darwinists are trying to
capitalize on this hot new trend with empty
speculations, like “Biology has had a much
longer time — 3.8 billion years — to address
problems, and a lot of the problems are
similar to those we face” (BBC News), but in
so doing, they are only exhibiting their
ignorance of natural selection (an aimless
process with no goal or purpose in mind), and
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the uselessness of their theory.
Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感
 Most biomimetics articles don’t even
mention evolution, and are better off
with the omission. Who needs a
distracting story, when the rush is on
to imitate the designs everyone calls
masterful? Darwinism may well be
simply drowned out and forgotten in
the bioinspiration stampede.
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Zoo Celebrates Bio-Inspiration
动物园庆祝生物灵感


Even worse is calling “Mother Nature” the
Master Designer. The apostle Paul rightly
instructed us to give honor to whom honor is
due (Romans 13:7), and the only Master
Designer around able to create master
designs is the all-wise Logos who created all
things (John 1:1–3) – including ourselves,
who are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and
“skilfully wrought” in the womb (Psalm
139:13–16). Give honor to whom honor is
due: be humble, be thankful, and be obedient.
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