Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
1
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误


Researchers are stating that beliefs about the origin of
western mountains in North America are all wrong.
In “Geologic History of North America Gets
Overturned,” Live Science described how thorough the
overturning was: “It’s time to redraw the map of the
world during the reign of the dinosaurs, two scientists
say.” The scientists, from Germany and Canada, dispute
the existence of the Farallon Plate, long thought to give
rise to the Rocky Mountains. Instead, they posit an
archipelago, such as those in the South Pacific, instead of
a continental margin. Finding stacked remnants is their
justification for the overhaul. The new model is more
complex in some ways, but also simpler, Nature
News claimed in “How the West Was Built.”
3/16/2016
2
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

[Mitchell] Mihalynuk said the new model
will make waves, as it overturns 40
years of accepted wisdom about the
evolution of western North America. “It
will take a while to turn people around.
That intellectual ship has a lot of
inertia,” he said. But for Mihalynuk, “this is
one of those eureka moments.”
3/16/2016
3
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

If they are right, 40 years of accepted wisdom
was really never wise at all. While this new
model “makes perfect sense” to some, will it
make sense to geologists 40 years from
now? There’s room for
reconsideration. The paper in Nature by Sigloch
and Mihalynuk lists four areas of uncertainty and
a fudge factor to make the model work: “This is
accomplished by introducing an additional
degree of freedom, an ad hoc, otherwise nonobservable, westward shift of the lithospheric
shell relative to the lower mantle.”
3/16/2016
4
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

In a Perspective article in Nature, Saskia Goes
said, “The tectonic history of western North
America is a puzzle in which many of the
pieces are mashed up or missing.” Although
she believes the new seismic image data alters
the reconstruction of the pieces, she described
the observational data as complex: “The
western margin of the North American
continent, comprising the Cordilleran mountain
chain that runs from Alaska to Mexico, consists
of scores of continental jigsaw pieces of
3/16/2016
5
different origins, sizes and ages.”
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

Goes made it clear that the new model is not
fixed in stone. “Sigloch and Mihalynuk have
incorporated several new pieces into the North
American jigsaw, but others remain to be
placed,” she said. More modeling and
interpretation will be required. “The new
pieces remain to be connected into a selfconsistent framework of plates with
continuous and dynamically evolving
boundaries,” she added, implying that the
model is not self-consistent yet. Her piece
3/16/2016
6
ended with a number of remaining questions.
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

Nothing in historical geology is ever as clean
cut as the popular media would lead you to
believe. They give the impression of
progress: the new model is superior to the
old. Is it necessarily? When you are dealing
with scores of “jigsaw pieces” without the
box cover to show you what they are
supposed to look like, and no human
observer around to watch what really
happened, there is ample room for another
3/16/2016
7
overturn in the future.
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

There is also ample room for alternative
theories with different assumptions or
different ad hoc, non-observable fudge
factors. Some philosophers even claim an
infinite number of theories can explain the
same observations. However stated,
theories and models like this are always
“underdetermined” by data. It means that a
measure of divination is required to conjure
an appropriate vision that suits the
3/16/2016
8
preferences of the day.
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

Overhauls also remind us that the
consensus is often wrong. Forty years of
false belief is what these two upstart
geologists have to allege by overturning
the old model: forty years of “accepted
wisdom” that was foolish in their
view. The new accepted wisdom awaits
future self-proclaimed wise men ready to
upset the applecart all over again.
3/16/2016
9
North American Geology All Wrong
所有北美地质学是错误

This is accomplished by introducing
an additional degree of freedom,
an ad hoc, otherwise non-observable,
westward shift of the lithospheric shell
relative to the lower mantle.
3/16/2016
10
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
11
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
12
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择



One might think that 154 years after Darwin’s book
about it, natural selection would be empirically
obvious. The journal Nature went on a search for
it in DNA.
Nature’s piece, “Evolutionary Genomics: Detecting
Selection” begins with hopes and worries:
“Advances in population genetics and genome
sequencing have made it possible to identify
anonymous fragments of DNA that have
undergone selection. This yields some
evolutionary answers, and a panoply of
3/16/2016
13
puzzles.”
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

Two things must be clarified before detecting natural
selection. One is that artificial selection has nothing to do
with it. Artificial selection is intelligently designed for a
purpose; natural selection, by contrast, is unguided and
purposeless. Even survival fails as a purpose; it’s only a
consequence of selection, not a goal of selection. The
other is that natural selection is more than variation. To
differentiate itself from creationism, natural selection has
to overcome small changes within a population that
creationists willingly acknowledge help an organism
adapt. Evolutionists need to demonstrate innovation, an
undirected change providing new functional information. A
mutation that produces “more of the same” effects, like a
change in enzyme production, does not qualify.
3/16/2016
14
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

With that in mind, what did the Nature article find in its selection
hunt? The authors acknowledged the “awesome power of
artificial selection” directed by the mind of man, such as in
dog breeding, but claimed that dogs and humans have been
partners in natural selection for 10,000 years in a case of
“parallel evolution.” They praised a recent paper in population
genetics that “promises to revolutionize evolutionary
biology, by challenging us to detect traits affected by
evolution on the basis of genotype rather than an organism’s
characteristics, or phenotype.” Then they praised two other
papers that “rise to this challenge and show how
hypotheses about an adaptive human genotype can be tested
in controlled experiments.” Sounds impressive. But is this
something new? What’s gone on in the past 154 years of
research on natural selection? It must not have been very
3/16/2016
15
revolutionary.
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择
 “Together, the three papers are
a wonderful intersection between
genomics, population science and
experimental genetics — a synergy
that has tremendous potential for
teaching us more about how and
why organisms evolve.”
3/16/2016
16
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

Unfortunately, the evidence cited in the first paper
concerns genetic changes found between wolves and
domestic dogs. Even the staunchest creationists put
those two animals within the same created kind. The
genetic changes, moreover, were in the “more of the
same” category – enhanced ability to digest starch,
presumably from crumbs dropped from the dog
owners’ tables. Nevertheless, the authors were
ecstatic that dogs and humans both produce more
starch-digesting enzymes: “the same molecular
mechanism has acted on similar genes in different
species exposed to the same dietary pressure —
a striking example of parallel evolution.”
3/16/2016
17
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

The other two papers merely found evidence of “selective
sweeps” without tying the changes to phenotypic
change. “Even when causal relationships seem obvious,
caution is warranted,” the authors warned, noting a case with
ambiguous results. Is detection of natural selection in human
populations even possible? “Classical genetic studies are
the optimal way to establish causal relationships, but in
many cases these are impossible because the appropriate
populations do not exist.” The third paper invented a “model
organism” to tease out evidence of natural selection. Its
researchers concluded that a mutation in East Asians produces
thicker hair and more sweat glands; they verified that effect in
mice (see 2/19/13, last section). But that’s another example of
“more of the same” variation; people already had sweat glands
and hair, and so did mice.
3/16/2016
18
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择


Remarkably, this article, poised to showcase the power of natural
selection, ended with ignorance:
“Kamberov and colleagues’ study is an exceptional example of
experimental genetics, but does it provide, as the authors
suggest, a general framework for assessing candidate
adaptive mutations? Genetically altered mice are a powerful
experimental tool, but the extent to which recent positive
selection in humans acts on pathways and amino-acid residues
that have been conserved across mammalian
evolution is uncertain. More importantly, it is often not clear
how to investigate positively selected genomic regions for
which the target gene, let alone its action, is unknown. And so
a major challenge for population genomics remains the
construction of meaningful null hypotheses. As Charles Darwin,
the best known evolutionary biologist, once said, “It is always
advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance”.
3/16/2016
19
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

So even though the paper they praised was
“an exceptional example” of looking for natural
selection, the authors of this article worried its
conclusions are uncertain. Worse, (“more
importantly”), it’s not even clear how to look
for selection in genomic regions where the
action is unknown. How does a researcher
compare the findings with a null hypothesis—
a baseline hypothesis that posits no effect
from the cause-when “meaningful null
hypotheses” are lacking?
3/16/2016
20
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

That’s why the summary of this
triumphantly-titled article spoke of “some
evolutionary answers, and a panoply of
puzzles.” Even the answers, though,
wouldn’t impress a creationist: no clear
evidence of positive selection toward new
functional information was presented. One
can only hope the authors of all these
papers are following Darwin’s advice to
perceive clearly their ignorance.
3/16/2016
21
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择

And they call creationists ignoramuses. OK, show us,
Darwinites. Darwin believed people have bacteria
ancestors. All the advances beyond bacteria for every
species on earth—be they wings, eyes, or brains—are
supposed to be the result of natural selection. Yet here it is,
154 years after the Origin, and evolutionists still cannot show
any example in the genes bigger than starch digestion in
dogs, or thicker hair and more sweat glands in certain
humans (all interfertile members of the same species, Homo
sapiens). The authors admit the studies are unclear. It’s
appalling that the sole theory allowed to be presented in
public school science classes is ignorant, not only of
examples, but of ways to test them. What hath evolutionary
theory wrought? A panoply of puzzles! Schools are teaching
3/16/2016
22
ignorance!
The Hunt for Selection in the Genes
寻找基因的选择
 If evolutionists do not perceive clearly
their ignorance, those of us who do
perceive it need to hold it up to their
faces. We can quote Darwin for
support: “It is always advisable to
perceive clearly [y]our ignorance.”
3/16/2016
23
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
24
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
25
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则








Fudging and finagling often underlie the confident-sounding
claims of cosmologists.
Finagle’s Rules prescribe ways to ameliorate Murphy’s Law in
science. They are needed because, according to Finagle, “The
perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.” Here
are the rules:
1. To study a subject, understand it thoroughly before you start.
2. Always keep a record of data – it indicates that you have
been working.
3. Draw your curves first, then plot your data.
4. If in doubt, make it sound convincing.
5. Experiments should be reproducible — they should fail in the
same way.
6. Do not believe in miracles, rely on them.
3/16/2016
26
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则

The case of the impossible star: A “Methuselah” star older than
the universe was reported on Space.com. That, of course, is
impossible, so what did astronomers do? In order to keep
current theory intact, they worked the puzzle from both
ends. They increased the age of the universe, and worked to
decrease the estimated age of the star from 16 billion years
down to a more reasonable level, by altering theory to let it burn
faster. But the new estimate is still paradoxical, because the
star has to be significantly younger than the big bang to allow
time for gas to condense into galaxies. “In the end, the
astronomers estimated that HD 140283 was born 14.5 billion
years ago, plus or minus 800 million years,” the article
ends. “Further observations could help bring the Methuselah
star’s age down even further, making it unequivocally
younger than the universe, researchers said.” Is that further
3/16/2016
27
observations, or further finagling?
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则

The case of the unwelcome supernova: Type-Ia supernovas
are the “standard candles” of cosmology, critical links for
determining distance and age of the universe. An upstart new
type of Type-Ia has been found, potentially blurring the
calibration. Called Type-Iax, it is 1/100th fainter and less
energetic than classical Type-Ia supernovae, Science
Daily said, and may account for a third of all Type-Ia
supernovae. Couldn’t that call into question earlier estimates,
making some supernova events look farther away than they
were? The article didn’t say. What it did say was not
particularly encouraging for standard theory. “Researchers
aren’t sure what triggers a Type Iax,” for one thing. What one
astronomer said was even more disconcerting: “The closer we
look, the more ways we find for stars to explode.” Maybe
that’s why Space.com’s headline read, “Whoa! Mini3/16/2016
28
Supernovas Discovered.”
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则

The case of the anomalous good fit: Most of the
science news media gave excited headlines about
how a new map of the cosmic background radiation
made from Planck Telescope data “confirms
standard cosmology” (Science Now; see Finagle
Rule #4). The Planck telescope, three times more
sensitive than its predecessor WMAP, “backs sudden
‘inflation’ after the big bang,” according to Nature
News. They were less excited, and more worried,
about the “anomaly” in the data, the so-called “axis of
evil.” Planck seems to have confirmed the presence
of a preferred direction in space – a violation of the socalled “Copernican Principle” that expects every
3/16/2016
29
direction to look the same:
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则
 “The asymmetry “defines a preferred
direction in space, which is an
extremely strange result”, says
Efstathiou. This rules out some
models of inflation, but does not
undermine the idea itself, he adds.
It does, however, raise tantalizing
hints that there may yet be new
physics to be discovered in
Planck’s data.”
3/16/2016
30
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则

Not only that, Planck found a “‘cold spot’ that covers a large
area.” Space.com discussed how the new map makes the
universe “older than thought” by about 100 million years,
based on its calculated value of the Hubble constant. The
new truth to be told in textbooks is 13.82 billion years, not
13.7, meaning that “space and time are expanding slightly
slower than scientists thought.” The phrase “than thought”
appears again in New Scientist: “The universe is almost
perfect, 80 million years older than we thought,
and maybe a little bit evil.” New Scientist suggested the
anomaly might represent a bump from a neighboring
universe born from “eternal inflation” putting a “bruise” on
ours – a speculative notion far beyond experimental
confirmation. At best, Efstathiou said, “There is less stuff
3/16/2016
31
that we don’t understand, by a tiny amount.”
Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology
在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则

If you don’t know how much you don’t understand,
then you don’t know how much you do
understand. Suppose you don’t understand 99.99% of
reality. Improving that to 99.98% (“a tiny amount”) is
hardly cause for rejoicing. A bad sign is when you
have to conclude, based on your favored notions, that
the stuff of stars and galaxies is perverse or
evil. Since gas cannot be evil, the evil must reside in
the minds of the theorists who fudge and finagle the
data, or invent new physics, to keep their presumably
righteous theories intact. When you hear a
cosmologist worrying about an “extremely strange
result,” ask whether it is the evidence, or the
3/16/2016
32
astronomer, that deserves the adjective.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
33
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
34
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹


A new record for soft tissue in a dinosaur fossil was
reported in Nature: collagen in dinosaur eggs from the
early Jurassic.
The Nature paper is all over the news, but not all the
science reporters are mentioning the most damaging
admission to long ages: the preservation of organic
material in fossil sauropod eggs from China, said to
be 190–197 million years old from the early Jurassic –
100 million years older than the previous
record. The Nature paper by Reisz et al. states, “This
discovery also provides the oldest evidence of in
situ preservation of complex organic remains in a
terrestrial vertebrate.” Here’s how Chris Palmer
3/16/2016
35
reported it in Nature News:
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹


“But it is not just the age of the fossils that is
notable, the researchers say. Spectroscopic
analysis of bone-tissue samples from the
Chinese nesting site revealed the oldest organic
material ever seen in a terrestrial
vertebrate. That was surprising because
the fossilized femur bones were delicate and
porous, which made them vulnerable to the
corrosive effects of weathering and
groundwater, says Reisz.
“That suggests to us that other dinosaur fossils
might have organic remains,” he says. “We just
3/16/2016
36
haven’t looked at them in the right ways.”
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

The organic material is thought to be
collagen. The researchers reported
“organic residues, probably direct
products of the decay of complex
proteins, within both the fast-growing
embryonic bone tissue and the margins of
the vascular spaces.” They mentioned
Schweitzer’s “controversial” reports of
dinosaur soft tissue and corroborated
them by their own methodology:
3/16/2016
37
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

“The embryonic bones were also studied using
synchrotron radiation-Fourier transform infrared
(SR-FTIR) spectroscopy. In contrast to previous
studies of organic residues based on extracts
obtained by decalcifying samples of bone, our
approach targeted particular tissues in situ (Fig.
5). This made it possible to detect the
preservation of organic residues, probably
direct products of the decay of complex
proteins, within both the fast-growing embryonic
bone tissue and the margins of the vascular
spaces (Fig. 5a, b).
3/16/2016
38
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

“This is indicated by the multiple amide peaks revealed by
both infrared (1,500–1,700 cm−1 strong band from amide I
and II, and 1,200–1,300 cm−1 weak band from amide III)
and Raman spectroscopy (amide A peak at 3,264 cm−1)
(Supplementary Figs 6.1 and 6.2). Previous reports of
preserved dinosaur organic compounds, or
‘dinosaurian soft tissues’, have
been controversial because it was difficult to rule out
bacterial biofilms or some other form of contamination as a
possible source of the organics. Our results clearly
indicate the presence of both apatite and amide
peaks within woven embryonic bone tissue (Fig.
5a), which should not be susceptible to microbial
contamination or other post-mortem artefacts.”
3/16/2016
39
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹



References in that quote were to Schweitzer’s 2005 and 2007
papers. The Supplementary Material indicated that mathematical
manipulation was necessary to see the amide peaks:
“The original FT-IR amides peaks from the organic residues of Dawa
(Lufeng) embryonic limb bone were convoluted, and provided
relatively little detailed information (Fig.5, main document),
showing a big unresolved hump around 1600 cm–1. Deconvolution
is a mathematically based process to reverse the effects of
convolution on recorded data. The deconvoluted peaks shown
above match well known secondary structures of protein. Thus,
it can be concluded that complex proteins were preserved in our
specimen.”
A table after this statement shows that they identified typical
secondary structures of protein, such as alpha helices, beta sheets,
and side chains – i.e., actual protein structures, not just amino acid
“building blocks” of protein.
3/16/2016
40
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

Science Now said the researchers “suspect” the presence
of organic remains, but maintained some caution on the
grounds that it’s hard to rule out contamination. “Still, if
the evidence holds up, the find could finally tip the
scale in favor of soft tissue preservation,” the article
said. The BBC News and New Scientist didn’t mention the
organic remains, but Science Daily did, based on a press
release from the University of Toronto where Robert Reisz
works. He said, “To find remnants of proteins in the
embryos is really remarkable, particularly since these
specimens are over 100 million years older than other
fossils containing similar organic material.” Live
Science briefly mentioned the soft tissue, and added
an Image Album about the story.
3/16/2016
41
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

National Geographic completely ignored the soft
tissue evidence, but did add this detail: the eggshells
were found crushed, and the bones were sorted and
concentrated. Reisz presumes they were buried in a
flood: “It became inundated, the embryos
were smothered by sediment and water, and [they]
basically rotted and fell apart,” he said. The original
paper described what the site looked like: “completely
disarticulated skeletal elements at various stages of
embryonic development… with calcium carbonate
nodules often surrounding tightly packed
appendicular skeletal elements.” What does this
imply? The paper continues,
3/16/2016
42
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹


“We interpret the bone bed as a para-autochthonous
assemblage, formed by low-energy flooding and slow
inundation of a colonial nesting site. The host sediment is
a heavily bioturbated, massive siltstone, throughout
which are dispersed isolated skeletal elements, eggshell
fragments and the small, fossil-rich nodules of calcium
carbonate. There are no preserved nest structures or
uncrushed eggs.”
It would seem that vulnerable, porous bones buried
underwater in silt subject to bioturbation would have
difficulty preserving the dinosaurs’ protein parts for 197
million years. It would also seem that a low-energy local
flood by a riverbank would not leave “massive siltstone”
filled with bone fragments.
3/16/2016
43
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

Interesting that the Brits at BBC & New Scientist
(as well as NG) ignored the most important part of
the story, the soft tissue, as if trying to protect their
national hero Charlie from embarrassment. The
other articles simply assumed that soft tissue can
last almost 200 million years! Why isn’t anyone
seeing the obvious? Chris Palmer admitted that
the eggs were “vulnerable to the corrosive effects
of weathering and groundwater,” making it
unbelievable that up to 197 million years passed
without obliterating the proteins. Who are you
going to believe, evolutionary scientists or your 44
3/16/2016
own eyes?
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹

Notice also that Reisz suggested soft tissue would
likely be found in other dinosaur fossils. Why
haven’t they all been looking? Evolutionary theory
often dictates what scientists look for and what
they expect to see. Thank goodness Reisz & team
made an effort to find the protein signal, even if
they didn’t dwell on the implications for geological
dates. This is a hot topic for creation
research. Unfortunately, when they try, they are
often severely criticized for (1) poor technique or
(2) agenda-driven bias (example to be
forthcoming). As if those problems never occur in45
3/16/2016
the secular world.
Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs
发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹
 Multiple reports now from different
parts of the world are making a
watertight case for soft tissue in
dinosaur bones. Critics of the reports
are not necessarily driven by respect
for the evidence, but by fear of what it
means to evolutionary geology,
evolutionary dating and the whole
evolution industry.
3/16/2016
46
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝
3/16/2016
47
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
48
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵


A professor of science education has a radical idea:
teach science through argumentation, because that’s
the way scientists do it.
If you were bored in science class having to learn a
bunch of facts, you might have perked up if your
teacher taught it the way Jonathan Osborne
recommends: argue a position from available
evidence. PhysOrg introduced its article by saying,
“Teaching students how to argue based on available
evidence engages them in the scientific process
and provides a better idea of how science actually
works.”
3/16/2016
49
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵


“Earth orbits the sun. Microorganisms cause infectious
disease. Plants use carbon dioxide to grow. Most of us
know these scientific truths from our earliest school
days. They’re accepted facts. But astronomers,
microbiologists and botanists once fought for these
concepts using arguments based on
evidence. Science, it seems, arrives at its tenets
through argument.
“Science education should follow suit, says Stanford
education Professor Jonathan Osborne. Teachers
should help students learn to argue a position from
available evidence, he says, helping them learn why
we know what we know.”
3/16/2016
50
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵



In short, Osborne wants students to think about evidence, not
just be told conclusions. “In science, people argue for their
ideas, in terms of the evidence that they have,” he said.
“There should be more opportunities to look at why some
ideas are wrong, as well as what the right ideas are.”
The concept of “justification” for “right” ideas is lacking in
science education, Osborne believes. His recommendations
were published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
50:3, March 2013. The only hard part is training science
teachers to change their ways.
The article led to a flurry of argumentation in the comments
about what constitutes a legitimate scientific theory. Osborne
was mentioned in our 5/21/2012 entry where he promoted
“collaborative discourse” in the science class.
3/16/2016
51
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵

Osborne’s ideas are good, but he doesn’t go far
enough. Indoctrination into a consensus is still
possible under his model, if the concepts of “evidence”
and “justification” are not unpacked. This is another
good time to remind readers of the course
on Philosophy of Science offered by The Teaching
Company, where you can see how difficult it is to
justify even the simplest of scientific truths. Another
worthwhile course (though flawed when it discusses
intelligent design) is Science Wars: What Scientists
Know and How They Know It. (Reader tip: these go
on sale for 70% off from time to time).
3/16/2016
52
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵

It’s not clear from the article if Osborne understands the
problems with peer review and consensus. Does he have
a Popperian view of science, or a Kuhnian view? How
about the view of Feyerabend, Cartwright, or van
Fraasen? Lakatos or Polanyi? What is even meant
by science these days, when it covers everything from
sociology to string theory? Students should learn not just
to argue evidence, but to argue philosophy of
science. They can’t study science without knowing what it
is. Yes, normal science includes argumentation, but it can
also include social pressure. Students need to know that
scientific institutions, made up of fallible people who don’t
know everything, can enforce conformity within popular
paradigms, which regulate what questions are important53
3/16/2016
and what is meant by “evidence.”
Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It
学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵
 Dead ideologies can be
dangerous. Positivism and scientism
still parade through high schools, like
zombies, without students realizing
they’re dead. Let them learn to
beware the zombie science teachers
who say, “Scientists now know.…”
3/16/2016
54
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
55
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
56
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

Grammar test: A Science Daily entry tells the upshot in the headline:
“Young Children Have Grammar and Chimpanzees
Don’t.” Scientists at University of Pennsylvania believe they have
shown that “children as young as 2 understand basic grammar
rules when they first learn to speak and are not simply imitating
adults.” For instance, children tend to get the definite article “the”
and the indefinite article “a” correct every time when referring to
objects. They also exhibit more extensive diversity of abstract
grammatical concepts. Chimpanzees, by contrast, just don’t get
it. The famous 1970’s ape Nim Chimpsky “never grasped rules like
those in a 2-year-old’s grammar.” To the researchers, “This suggests
that true language learning is — so far — a uniquely human trait,
and that it is present very early in development.” An article
on PhysOrg, though, claimed that chimpanzees have
“metacognition,” the ability to think about thinking. This was based
on how they responded to a touch screen to find a hidden
reward. None of them, however, were found mumbling, “I think, 57
3/16/2016
therefore I am.”
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

Math test: Another headline tells all, this time from Medical
Xpress: “Despite what you may think, your brain is a
mathematical genius.” Researchers at the Salk Institute were
impressed that the brain appears to run an algorithm called the
Gabor Transform when confronting a change of
environment. The brain picks out the salient signals in both
time and space, and learns to ignore others, in order to extract
the maximum amount of useful information. Confronted with
precision on the time channel and not the location channel, or
vice versa, how does an information theorist decide the best
compromise? Nobelist Dennis Gabor, who invented
holography in 1971, came up with a mathematical theorem,
known as a “Gabor Filter” that “helps obtain the most precise
measurements possible for both qualities.” A Salk
researcher said that our brains employ a similar strategy.
3/16/2016
58
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

Music test: Several science sites reported on Canadian
research that identified how the brain learns to “like” (in the
Facebook sense) a new piece of music and file it in the
“favorites” folder. A part of the brain called the nucleus
accumbens lights up on fMRI scans when tested on
various human subjects. Science Now, Live
Science and Medical Xpress discussed how this shows
that different human brains appear to have the same
responses to a new music experience. Another Live
Science article explained how this shows music is a
universal language for humans. That article quoted a
neuroscientist opining, without evidence, “Evolutionarily,
music is something people came together to do.” None of
the articles mentioned if animals have a similar response.
3/16/2016
59
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

Your brain’s janitors: Some things go on in your brain
without your knowledge, and good thing: Science
Daily described how your brain does “spring
cleaning.” All brains have stem cells lying in wait to be
called on, ready to become nerve cells or brain cells
“whenever and wherever you need them most.” To keep
them in readiness, a process in the brain “clears out
garbage within the cells, and keeps them in their stemcell state,” researchers at University of Michigan Medical
School found. Even stem cells can generate
waste. Through a well-known process called autophagy
(eat myself), stem cells periodically clean house to
maintain their readiness. The study was conducted on
mice.
3/16/2016
60
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

The fly, the mouse, the human: Another article
on Medical Xpress claims that human, mouse and fruit
fly brains have some “strikingly similar”
characteristics. Al Hirth, a psychologist at King’s
College London deduced this from studies of what
happens when analogous parts of the brains are
disrupted. A photo of the three brains side by side
shows dramatic differences in size, like between a
pinhead and a cantelope. The researchers found,
“despite the major differences between species,
their respective constitutions and specifications derive
from similar genetic programmes.” Hirth believes
this shows common ancestry, but he was just
3/16/2016
61
speculating:
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同


“Dr Hirth from King’s College London Institute of
Psychiatry says: “Flies, crabs, mice, humans: all
experience hunger, need sleep and have a preference
for a comfortable temperature so we speculated
there must be a similar mechanism regulating
these behaviours. We were amazed to find just
how deep the similarities go, despite the differences
in size and appearance of these species and their
brains.”
Dr. Hirth did not, however, find mice or fruit flies doing
research to figure out how the human brain
works. Furthermore, “no fossil remains of the
common ancestor exist,” the article admitted.
3/16/2016
62
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

When you see a sentence start with “Evolutionarily,…”
prepare for a myth. Evolutionary psychologists and
neuroscientists err when they use similarity as evidence
for evolution. They fail to consider the evidence for
common design. The Creator knew that a fruit fly, a
mouse, and a human all need to eat, sleep, and
maintain body temperature; that’s why they have similar
mechanisms. Animals showcase intelligent causes in
their origin; humans, uniquely, use their own intelligence
to research other animals to try to understand them. We
don’t see monkeys or mice building
functional MRI machines and microscopes for the
purpose of research. We don’t see chimpanzees using
3/16/2016
63
grammar or creating music libraries of favorites.
Human and Animal Brains: Uniquenesses and Similarities
人类与动物大脑：独特性及异同

There’s enough similarity between humans and animals to
show a common Creator. There’s enough uniqueness in
humans to show we alone are capable of using intelligence
for abstract reasoning, the enjoyment of music, the creation
of music, reasoning about reality, and thinking about
“thinking about thinking.” These abilities require a tool – a
brain – yet reach beyond the tools into intellectual, aesthetic,
and spiritual realms. These traits are common to all
humans. The simplest explanation for this is that first human
pair was endowed with these abilities from the
beginning. The simplest account for it is the Genesis
account, at which time humans were impressed with the
image of God. Is there anything about the scientific articles
in this entry that contradicts that account? No. Are there
findings that support it? “Think” about it, and thereby help
3/16/2016
64
establish the point.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
65
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
66
Titan’s Methane Still Puzzles Scientists
土卫六的甲烷仍然困惑科学家



The methane in Titan’s atmosphere should be long
gone, and may be disappearing soon, planetologists
say.
A JPL press release states that the stability of Titan’s
scattered polar lakes suggests that ethane, not
methane, is the primary constituent. If so, it means
that methane in the atmosphere cannot last much
longer.
Ethane evaporates slower than methane. In the
nearly nine years of observations of Titan’s surface,
the lakes haven’t changed much. This suggests that
heavier hydrocarbons, end products of dissociation of
3/16/2016
methane by the solar wind, predominate in the lakes.67
Titan’s Methane Still Puzzles Scientists
土卫六的甲烷仍然困惑科学家

“The lakes are also not getting filled quickly, and
scientists haven’t seen more than the occasional
outburst of hydrocarbon rain at the moon over the
mission’s eight-plus years in the Saturn system. This
indicates that on Titan, the methane that is
constantly being lost by breaking down to form
ethane and other heavier molecules is not being
replaced by fresh methane from the interior. The
team suggests that the current load of methane at
Titan may have come from some kind of gigantic
outburst from the interior eons ago possibly after a
huge impact. They think Titan’s methane could run
out in tens of millions of years.”
3/16/2016
68
Titan’s Methane Still Puzzles Scientists
土卫六的甲烷仍然困惑科学家
 The “gigantic outburst” is purely
speculative. There is no evidence
Titan has a reservoir of methane in its
interior, nor that it could erupt onto the
surface. It would seem more
reasonable to believe that Titan’s
current methane budget is a remnant
of its primordial methane.
3/16/2016
69
Titan’s Methane Still Puzzles Scientists
土卫六的甲烷仍然困惑科学家

It should be noted that scientists in the
1990s predicted Cassini-Huygens would
find a global ocean of ethane on the
surface from half a kilometer to several
kilometers deep. If methane photolysis to
ethane were occurring continuously for
billions of years, it should have
accumulated those vast quantities of
ethane on the surface. Instead, the
Huygens probe landed on relatively dry
sand.
3/16/2016
70
Titan’s Methane Still Puzzles Scientists
土卫六的甲烷仍然困惑科学家

This is just an update on a story we have been
following for years
(1/17/02, 4/25/03,10/28/04, 7/24/06, 7/31/08, 12/1
8/08. 4/09/11, 6/15/12, 12/23/12, 1/18/13). As you
can see, the problem for old-Titan believers has
not been solved. If anything, it keeps getting
worse. (Note: 10 million years would represent
less than 1/400th the assumed age of the solar
system.) The burden of proof should be on those
who believe Titan is billions of years old, because
the evidence clearly indicates otherwise. This
means everyone should, by default, speak of Titan
3/16/2016
71
as a young world.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
72
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
73
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？


Cellulose is the most abundant
biomolecule, but how it’s made still baffles
scientists. Soon, though, you may be able
to eat it.
Two stories in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)
talked about cellulose: one, about how it’s
made, and the other, about we might
remake it into food.
3/16/2016
74
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？


Baffling Molecular Machine
The first paper in PNAS is trying to tease out the structure
of cellulose synthase (CESA), a complex enzyme that puts
together the ingredients into the strong stacks of
microfibrils that make wood sturdy and hard to digest. The
team of 7 researchers said, “A 3D atomistic model of a
plant cellulose synthase (CESA) has remained elusive
despite over forty years of experimental effort.” The
enzyme is composed of over 500 amino acids. Even this
paper doesn’t have the structure all worked out. “Cellulose
is nature’s most abundant renewable biomaterial and
an important resource for production of biofuels that
represent alternatives to fossil fuels,” the press release
said, without revealing the details of how it works.
3/16/2016
75
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？

A press release from North Carolina State University where one of
the researchers works shows it to look like a ring that braids the
microfibrils. Lecture notes from the University of Kentucky show
the machine climbing a microtubule as it removes the fructose
from sucrose, weaving the microfibrils of glucose into a stiff
tapestry. Box 1 of a paper from Trends in Plant Science (2012)
says that 36 proteins are involved with CESA, adding, “many
proteins regulate the synthesis of cellulose, either via a direct
interaction… or indirectly… Mutations in any of these genes also
lead to reduced cellulose content or crystallinity and cell expansion
defects of roots and hypocotyls.” With the structure becoming
better known, the enzyme’s processivity (method of operation) is
bound to be interesting. The research team studied CESA within
cotton fibers. What cotton-picker or cotton-spinner of centuries
past would have thought that in his or her hands was a molecular
machine that would defy the understanding of 21st century
3/16/2016
76
scientists?
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？


Swords to Plowshares
The second paper in PNAS describes a way to
convert cellulose into starch. Cellulose, consisting
primarily of glucose in chains, has proven
indigestible except by bacteria within the stomachs
of some herbivores. Cellulose and starch (made
of glucose) have the same basic structure, differing
only in the linkages between molecules. Finding a
way to turn that abundant biomolecule into food
would be valuable to feed a growing world
population. A team at Virginia Tech found a way to
do it using 5 non-natural enzymes derived from
3/16/2016
77
fungi, yeast and plant material.
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？

The process yielded 30% of amylose, a linear form of starch,
with the remainder available for biofuel. It’s environmentally
friendly, according to Science Daily; it doesn’t require heat,
chemicals or expensive equipment, and can be upscaled for
commercial production. And because the enzymes can be
recycled with magnetism, it doesn’t generate any waste. The
abstract stated, “Next-generation biorefineries based on
simultaneous enzymatic biotransformation and microbial
fermentation could address the food, biofuels, and environment
trilemma.” Earlier this month, PhysOrg reported on attempts to
turn xylan, the world’s second most abundant biomolecule, into
biofuels. It’s more challenging because of the pentose
structure of its sugars gets in the way of extracting the hexose
sugars in cellulose that are more easily fermented. The article
spoke of this Department of Energy initiative in Biblical terms,
3/16/2016
78
likening it to turning “swords to plowshares.”
Wood You Cellulose for Starch?
木纤维素成为淀粉？

Like the old motivational speech “Acres of
Diamonds” emphasized, people are
surrounded by treasures if they just knew
how to find them and use them. Here is
more good Darwin-free science that can
actually increase our understanding (and
wonder) of the natural world, and at the
same time, turn that understanding into
technologies that can help humanity.
3/16/2016
79
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
80
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
81
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼



The coelacanth genome has been sequenced. Does it
show evidence for evolution? Only to those with a good
imagination.
The genome was published in Nature this week. Science
Now put the problem with coelacanth into perspective:
“The coelacanth isn’t called a “living fossil” for nothing.
The 2-meter-long, 90 kg fish was thought to have gone
extinct 70 million years ago—until a fisherman caught
one in 1938—and the animal looks a lot like its fossil
ancestors dating back 300 million years. Now, the first
analysis of the coelacanth’s genome reveals why the
fish may have changed so little over the ages. It
also may help explain how fish like it moved onto land
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82
long ago.”
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼


It may, but then again, it may not. That’s the
challenge facing evolutionists. Why hasn’t this fish
changed under the inexorable power of natural
selection for 300 million years? Why hasn’t it moved
onto land? Why does it still lurk in deep underwater
caves, not using those lobed fins for walking?
So what’s the reason the coelacanth hasn’t evolved in
300 million years? Answer: “The coelacanth genes
changed at a ‘markedly’ slower rate than those
from other animals,” Science Now said, without
explaining why this fish escaped a natural law of
evolution. Must be some new kind of law:
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83
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼


“The slow rate at which the fish’s genes
change demonstrates that some animals evolve
more gradually than others. The
coelacanth looks primitive, but looks are
difficult to quantify, whereas DNA sequences are
not, Ahlberg says. “The fact that their proteins
evolve slowly underscores that there is a real
phenomenon going on here.”
A real phenomenon, like creation? Like
stasis? Like falsification of evolution? Yes, there
is a real phenomenon there. As for how this
genome might explain how fish moved onto land,
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84
the scientists brought in mighty mouse:
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

“The authors located a fragment of DNA within the
coelacanth’s genome that is also found in land
vertebrates but not in fish without lobed fins, such as
tuna, tilapia, and sharks. Because researchers cannot
study live coelacanths in the laboratory, they inserted
the fragment into a mouse embryo in order to learn
what it does. The fragment activated a network of
genes that forms bones in wrists, ankles, fingers
and toes. Although it’s not yet clear what
the DNA fragment’s function is within coelacanths,
the authors suggest that it was key to forming
the ends of limbs that helped a fishlike animal
crawl out of the water.”
3/16/2016
85
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

But the genes are HOX genes, upstream switches
that control downstream development. They are
not going to switch on a radius, ulna, wrist, or digits
if the downstream genes aren’t there for
them. These same HOX genes didn’t help the
coelacanth develop limbs or crawl out of the water
for 300 million years. So where is the purported
“fishlike animal” where it did happen? The
researchers don’t know what these genes do in
coelacanths. If they did nothing, wouldn’t selection
purge them instead of maintaining them for no
good purpose? It’s not clear how this experiment86
3/16/2016
helps the evolutionary story.
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼


Chris Woolston, writing for Nature about the genome,
quoted one of the researchers (Chris Amemiya) saying,
“The coelacanth is a cornerstone for our attempt to
understand tetrapod evolution.” Woolston concurred
that coelacanth is a living fossil, but he didn’t add
anything new to the evolutionary tale, except to debunk
an old one:
“Ending one long-standing argument, analysis of the
coelacanth genome clearly shows that it is not the
closest living fishy relative to tetrapods, Amemiya
says: that honour belongs to the lungfish. However,
he adds, the lungfish genome is unlikely to be
sequenced any time soon because it is much larger
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87
and more complicated than that of the coelacanth.”
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼


How that helps the evolutionary story is also unclear: a more
complicated, larger genome is ancestral to tetrapod
genes? Why would that be? Woolston described how slow the
genome evolution has been between two separated
populations of the fish:
“Scientists already had hints of the coelacanth’s sluggish
evolution. In a 2012 study, researchers in Japan and Tanzania
compared the DNA of the African and Indonesian coelacanths.
Specifically, they looked at HOX genes, which help to guide
embryonic development.… Even though the two species
separated, by one estimate, perhaps 6 million years ago,
their genes are remarkably similar. For these particular
genes, the difference between the two species of
coelacanth was about 11 times smaller than that between
the HOX genes of humans and chimps, two species that
3/16/2016
parted ways perhaps 6 million to 8 million years ago.” 88
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

The paper says they are 99.73% similar. To explain
this non-evolution, one of the researchers offered
this idea: “It is impossible to say for sure, but the
slow rate of coelacanth evolution could be due to a
lack of natural-selection pressure,” Kerstin
Lindblad-Toh said. Natural selection is not really a
pressure, though. It’s only like a bumper in a pinball
game, not one of the paddles operated by the mind
of the player. Woolston said that transposable
elements, a form of non-coding DNA, have moved
around, but Amemiya quickly added that their role in
evolution is “speculative” and its significance is not
clear.
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89
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

So even though the genome paper said that
coelacanth DNA is “a blueprint for
understanding tetrapod evolution,” very little
evidence supporting tetrapod evolution was
offered. “The slowly evolving coelacanth” was a
major subsection of the paper. Their last sentence
provided only wishful thinking: “Further study of
these changes between tetrapods and the
coelacanth may
provide important insights into how a complex
organism like a vertebrate can markedly
change its way of life.”
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Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

That was the 7th use of “may” in the paper,
along with 5 instances of “suggest.” Evidence
for positive selection was also put off into the
future: “A closer examination of gene families
that show either unusually high or low levels
of directional selection indicative of
adaptation in the coelacanth may provide
information on which selective pressures
acted, and which pressures did not act, to
shape this evolutionary relict.” By
“evolutionary relict,” they really mean something
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91
that didn’t evolve for 300 million years.
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼

Nevertheless, the news media jumped onto the meme that
the coelacanth genome “might” provide insight into
evolution. The BBC News said, “The work also shed
light on how the fish was related to the first land-based
animals” (but it wasn’t related, the researchers had
admitted). PhysOrg had a clever way to spin-doctor the
anti-evolutionary evidence: it said the genome provided
“Unexpected insights from a fish with a 300-million-yearold fossil record.” National Geographic focused on the
notion that this fish “evolved more slowly” than other
animals. Live Science used the power of suggestion in its
headline, “Fish DNA Makes Limbs Sprout in Mice,” even
though the HOX genes studied are far upstream of limb
formation and have nothing to do with arm bones, wrists92
3/16/2016
and fingers in a fish.
Coelacanth: Making the Most of an Unevolved Fish
腔棘鱼：不进化的鱼


None of the media recognized that the
evidence contradicts evolutionary theory,
even though the coelacanth, with its lobed
fins, had been promoted as Exhibit A for
evolution by Darwinists before one was
found swimming in the Atlantic in 1938.
If lies and misdirection were physical
crimes, evolutionists would be convicted
of terrorist bombings.
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93
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
94
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
95
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
96
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
97
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？


The bubbling froth percolates with ideas about how life
“emerged,” each new notion trying to outdo the last in
vacuity.
Feel the power: Wham! goes the meteorite. From this,
we are told by Science Daily, life got a helping hand to
spring out of lifeless rock. “While it is generally
accepted that some important ingredients for life
came from meteorites bombarding the early Earth,
scientists have not been able to explain how
that inanimate rock transformed into the building
blocks of life,” reads the teasing caption, leading us to
the University of Leeds, where the “power behind the
primordial soup” has been “discovered,” according to
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98
the headline.
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

With bated breath, readers learn that “a chemical,
similar to one now found in all living cells and vital
for generating the energy that makes something
alive,” (i.e., phosphorus) “could have been
created when meteorites containing phosphorus
minerals landed in hot, acidic pools of liquids
around volcanoes, which were likely to have
been common across the early Earth.” That
alleviates “The mystery of how living organisms
sprung out of lifeless rock [that] has long
puzzled scientists.” Life surely would have taken
that phosphorus to make ATP, right?
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99
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Replace the fantasy with a bigger one: Evolutionists have
this yearning for a universal tree of life that would unite all
organisms in a Darwinian banner, Live Science explains, but
we may need to abandon that “fantasy” for “a time before
Darwinism” when multiple organisms “emerged,” giving birth
to life “in a collective state.” Sounds politically correct for the
far left, but we don’t know the political leanings of the idea’s
advocate, Professor Nigel Goldenfeld (U of Illinois). “I like to
think of early life as being more like an undifferentiated
slime mold,” Goldenfeld said. “Such a communal form of life
would have no meaningful family tree, because it is the
community that varies in descent, not individual organismal
lineages.” If the probability for a chance emergence of one
viable cell is astronomically small, Goldenfeld did not explain
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100
how to get many separate ones all sharing together.
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？
 What is it? Before finding how life
emerged, evolutionists need to know
what it is. It’s hard to
define, Space.com said. Astrobiologist
Chris McKay doesn’t worry about
definitions; anything made of
“complex, organic molecules”
interests him. Like ricin? tailpipe
soot?
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101
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

The search for what is it: The new UK Centre for
Astrobiology launched this month, asking “Is there life out
there?” Already 40,000 students are excited about this new
initiative, the BBC News says. As is typical, the article points
to Earth life and its tenacity for surviving extreme
environments as evidence for life out there, but since no
extraterrestrial life has been found, astrobiologists have to
consider a negative answer. “The discovery of many
lifeless planets across the Universe, the discovery that
the Earth might be unique as a place for life, would be an
astonishing discovery in itself,” said professor Charles
Cockrell. “It would be a very lonely discovery, but it would be
an astonishing discovery.” Clearly he was not speaking for
the many theists, who expect an afterlife with their Maker and
the redeemed to be anything but lonely.
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102
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Life older than Earth: Taking Moore’s Law
from transistors to genes and “doing the
math,” two geneticists decided that life is
older than the Earth, according to Live
Science. This, of course, implies
panspermia brought life to our planet,
displacing the problem of life’s origin even
further from empirical study. One of them
is “99% sure it’s true” that life did not start
on Earth but reserves that 1% to prove
him wrong.
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103
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Hope in the dead salty soup: A photo of the
salty Dead Sea adorns a story in Science Daily
about a Florida astrobiologist who blabs that 10
amino acids could have folded into protein-like
structures in a high salt environment. See
picture of the Blaber on PhysOrg. His notion,
however, contradicts the “RNA World”
hypothesis popular among other
astrobiologists. The headline brags, “How
Life May Have First Emerged On Earth.”
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104
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Bleached Martians: Hopes for life on Mars
have been pretty much bleached by the
discovery of “pesky perchlorates” all over the
surface, from the poles to Gale Crater where
rover Curiosity now rolls (see Science
Magazine article by Richard Kerr). New
Scientist quoted the rover chief saying,
“The odds of rolling up to a rock on Mars and
finding organics are vanishingly small, but
we’re still going to try.” Your tax dollars at
work.
3/16/2016
105
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Astrobiological enthusiasm is rising with the news that Kepler
found several more “Earth-like planets” around other stars
(see BBC News). But another consideration is the number of
factors that must be satisfied for life, as explained in the
documentary The Privileged Planet. Could those come
together by chance? Science Daily took a closer look at one
curious example of fine-tuning: the requirements for carbon
and oxygen. “Now a team of physicists, including one from
North Carolina State University, is looking at the conditions
necessary to the formation of those two elements in the
universe,” the article began. “They’ve found that when it
comes to supporting life, the universe leaves very little
margin for error.” They found that “more than a 2 or 3
percent change in the light quark mass would lead to
problems with the abundance of either carbon or oxygen in
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106
the universe.”
What’s New in the Primordial Soup?
有什么新的在原始汤？

Astrobiology (n.): government welfare for
storytellers. Requirements: know some scientific
jargon and possess the ability to look busy. Mastery
of the words emerged, could have, might have, may
have, and possibly is a must. The government is an
equal-opportunity employer that does not discriminate
on the basis of evidence, observation, or
logic. Darwin card accepted; applicants may sign up
for one, but absence of a current Darwin card may
trigger a background check. Prior possession of
intelligent design beliefs is grounds for expulsion. This
rule is enforced in order to foster the culture of
storytelling astrobiologists have come to expect.
3/16/2016
107
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
108
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
109
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说


The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is like a
detective story without a body. All those new planets,
but no signal—at least not one that most scientists will
accept.
SETI has fallen on hard times. News reports seem to
waver between optimism and pessimism, with the
pessimists gaining ground. Space.com said no
signals have come from the trove of new earthlike
exoplanets (cf. 2/08/13). Another Space.com article
suggested that scientists might have to conclude we
are alone, or that life is rare in the universe. “When it
comes to life across the cosmos, the universe
might just be an ‘awful waste of space’ after all,”
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110
Miriam Kramer wrote.
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说

But this month, more earthlike planets were found
by the Kepler space telescope. Optimists are
optimizing at Astrobiology Magazine, asking “Are
the Newly Discovered Planets Ideal SETI
Targets?” All they can do is think about it and
speculate, because technology to detect life
optically is not far enough along. Both optimists
and pessimists exchanged ideas in a meeting
reported by Astrobiology Magazine, part of its
“Great Exoplanet Debate” series. A candidate
planet must not only be the right size in the
habitable zone; it has to have a breathable
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111
atmosphere, the pessimists say.
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说

Mike Wall at Space.com takes the new Kepler
planet count as justification for revving
up SETI. “Time Right for Next Phase in Search
for Alien Life,” he headlined. Astrobiologists
usually are quick to point out that alien life does
not necessarily imply intelligent life. Many would
be happy to find bacteria. Perhaps that’s
why PhysOrg reported that some SETI Institute
scientists, with NASA dollars, are going to work on
the next generation of planet finders:
“NASA doubles down on exoplanets
and SETI institute will be part of the search.”
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112
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说

Live Science put the I back in SETI with a catalog of “13 Ways
to Hunt Intelligent Aliens.” In addition to standard radio SETI,
there’s optical SETI, looking for artifacts on earth or in the solar
system (including alien footprints on the moon), looking for
tinkering with our DNA, focused searches on the best candidate
stars, hunting for life that consumes its asteroids, shows green
lifestyles, or presents non-natural shapes against stars, and
more. Maybe dolphins are aliens. Maybe we should wait for
them to invade us. Still, the opening line is pessimistic: “Really.
Where are all the aliens? We should have been probed,
exterminated, assimilated, infected, invaded or abducted
by now, shouldn’t we?” That’s the old Fermi paradox. Some
of the speculations get ridiculous. Maybe aliens have put us on
their “Do not call” list. It’s a hard sell, reporter Ian O’Neill
confesses, but SETI “is one of the most profound things we,
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113
as a species, can do.”
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说

Nigel Henbest at New
Scientist calls SETI a detective story
without a body. Reviewing a book by Paul
Murdin titled Are We Being Watched?,
Henbest thinks the first resort remains the
best: good old radio SETI. Combing the
radio sky for signals of intelligent origin
would provide “the thrill that would come
from answering the provocative
question in the title.”
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114
SETI, Said He, Isn’t Ready, Said She
搜寻外星人，他说还没有准备好，她说

Want to find out if you are being watched? Want to
solve the Fermi paradox? Want to engage in the
most profound thing we, as a species can do? Want
a method that is scientifically tractable? Want to
ensure that the universe is not a waste of
space? Want a thrill that would come from
answering a profound question? Want verifiable
answers, not idle speculation? Want a nonquestion-begging, non-self-refuting approach? Want
assurance that the answer is real? Then read the
artifact left by Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Start
with the first chapter and verse, Genesis 1:1, and
3/16/2016
115
continue on to the grand finale.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
116
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
117
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题


Finding that some stars emit circularly polarized
light will not help explain why life uses only lefthanded amino acids.
Periodically, another attempt is made to explain
the one-handedness of life’s amino acids. The
problem for materialists, explained in our online
book chapter 3, is that only 100%-pure onehanded proteins will work, but the probability of
getting pure one-handedness (“homochirality”)
by chance is vanishingly small (chapter 4). The
latest article addressing this problem
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118
on PhysOrg admits it:
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题

“Life on Earth is made of “left-handed amino acids
(L-amino acids)”. The question of why organisms
on Earth consist of L-amino acids instead of Damino acids or consist of D-sugar instead of Lsugar is still an unresolved riddle. In other
words, a major mystery of life on Earth is that
organisms are exclusively made up of lefthanded amino acids. Therefore, the effort to
solve this problem is one of the biggest in
research into the origins of life, a subject that
remains enveloped in mystery.”
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119
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题

The homochirality problem is enormous:
“Origin-of-life theories often ignore the
homochirality problem, even though the
question is critical to the origin of life,” the
article states. All known physical processes
lead to mixed-handed (“racemic”)
collections. Since the two forms behave the
same chemically and thermodynamically, how
can they be separated? Only life seems
capable of producing pure one-handed sets.
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120
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题

Previous attempts have tried to discover physical
factors that might lead to a preference for one
hand over the other (“enantiomeric excess”), but
they have only achieved differences of a few
percent. PhysOrg explained the leading multi-step
hypothesis for separating the hands: (1) Find
stellar sources of circularly polarized light that
might preferentially destroy one hand or convert it
to the other; (2) Have the amino acids delivered to
Earth via meteorites; (3) Purify the one hand
further in shallow basins undergoing cyclic periods
of wetting and drying.
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121
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题

Now, astronomers at the National Observatory of
Japan have detected the highest ever circular
polarization excess from a star: 22%. Their paper
was published in The Astrophysical Journal
Letters. This has “implications for the origin of
homochirality,” the PhysOrg headline reads
NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine reproduced the press
release verbatim, categorizing it as a “Hot topic,”
headlining it, “Star– and Planet-Forming Regions May
Hold Key to Life’s Chirality.” If so, the implications
are pretty weak, and the key hard to find, since
polarization only addresses half of the first step in the
chain. It is not known how effective circularly
3/16/2016
polarized light is in causing changes to amino acids.122
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题


The finding also requires that most of life’s amino acids
were sent to Earth on meteorites – a controversial
claim. Even then, the enantiomeric excess would likely be
small, and exist only in tiny locales (shallow pools) that
reduce the lab space for life’s origin. But unless a growing
protein chain is 100% pure with one hand, it won’t work. A
generous scenario with 22% excess (assuming the amino
acid population trends with the polarized light excess) is
far too small to help, even if origin-of-life researchers could
figure out a way for the amino acids to link up naturally
(they prefer to separate in water).
Homochirality is not the only mystery. “The history of
star and planet formation and the origin of life are still
a mystery,” too, the article confessed.
3/16/2016
123
Latest Attempt to Explain Homochirality Underscores the Problem
最新尝试解释同手性突出问题

Could the pure one-handedness in life be bona fide
evidence for intelligent design? Louis Pasteur, the man
who discovered homochirality, thought so. For more
than a century this problem has baffled
materialists. They’ve been trying to relegate this to a
god-of-the-gaps argument for too long. One can’t keep
using that excuse forever. If the gap keeps getting
wider, or if the evidence creates a positive argument for
design, there comes a time to turn that excuse around
and accuse materialists of materialism-of-the-gaps, the
faith that somehow, sometime, a solution will
emerge. But why must materialism be the default
position? Scientists cannot live in the land of mystery for
decades and still call it science. If the evidence points124to
3/16/2016
design, so be it.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
125
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
126
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论


If evolutionists and reporters stuck to the
essence of neo-Darwinism, many of their claims
would never reach the press.
Darwin attempted to describe a natural
mechanism (natural selection) that would
generate the entire tree of life, with all its
diversity. Neo-Darwinism identifies the source
of variation as mutations. The essence of
Darwinian theory is that the process is
unguided, with no goals or purposes. Many
evolutionists and their press agents seem to
3/16/2016
127
forget this.
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Artificial selection is not evolution. A common fallacy is to
assume artificial selection is the same as natural
selection. Artificial selection, though, comes from goals,
purposes and plans of people; it’s a form of intelligent
design. One form of this fallacy is “computer evolution” –
programming a computer to simulate the evolutionary
process. Science Daily reported on attempts to do this at
Cornell’s “Creative Machines Lab” (a tip-off that this is not about
Darwinism). The reader is told, “A research team led by
Cornell University’s Creative Machines Lab has created a
computer algorithm that can be used to witness virtual
creatures evolving their squishy, muscle-like features in order
to teach themselves to walk.” All the bold words in that
sentence violate Darwinian principles, yet the article claims that
the experiment demonstrates “the power of
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128
evolution to create counterintuitive designs.”
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Change within species is not evolution. Medical
Xpress tells readers this profound observation:
“Evolving genes lead to evolving genes.” Other than
being a tautology, the headline leads into a story with no
evidence for the origin of species. The Wellcome Trust
and Sanger Institute went looking for evidence of
positive selection in a single gene named FOXP2,
implicated in human speech: “Have these evolutionary
changes in FOXP2 function or expression exposed its
target genes to novel selective pressures?” The
variations they found, however, only exist in human
populations that are all members of Homo sapiens, one
interfertile species. Even the strictest creationists allow
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129
for that kind of change.
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Microevolutionary change is not evolution. John Thompson
of UC Santa Cruz has a new book out, Relentless Evolution, that
alleges “species evolve relentlessly and that evolutionary
changes occur at a surprisingly rapid pace.” Yet apparently, the
changes he speaks of are occurring within species, not from one
species to another. According to PhysOrg, he describes the
Darwinian mechanism correctly as aimless. He states that “Much of
adaptive evolution does not lead anywhere,” yet the article speaks
only of continual microevolutionary changes within species that would
make a creationist yawn. “These continual microevolutionary
changes keep populations in the evolutionary game as they
interact with other species that are themselves constantly evolving,”
Thompson says. “These seemingly aimless meanderings are the
essential dynamics of evolution, with directional change and
speciation as occasional outcomes.” Yet nowhere does he
describe the origin of species or any kind of directional change
leading to a new organ or function.
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130
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Behavior within species is not evolution. New
Scientist turns classical Darwinism on its head with
this headline: “Survival of the shyest: Timidity’s
surprising benefits.” Reporter Leslie Evans Ogden
does her best to show that some humans,
salamanders and birds appear more successful
without being assertive, but nowhere does she
describe a species becoming another species. Ogden
claims that evolution favors both boldness and
shyness, but nowhere escapes the tautology of
defining fitness in terms of survival. Even if she
makes a case that shyness has its advantages,
nothing in the proposition supports neo-Darwinism. 131
3/16/2016
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Evolvability is not evolution. The ability to evolve does not, ipso
facto, mean that bacteria evolved into humans. But that’s not the
only puzzle in Science Daily’s headline: “Computer Scientists
Suggest New Spin On Origins of Evolvability: Competition to
Survive Not Necessary?” Here’s two more: the reference to
computer science, and the denial of classical Darwinian
competition as a necessary condition for the origin of
species. Anything dependent on a computer “algorithm” is
suspect from the starting line as a model for how an aimless,
purposeless process could originate new organs and functions. A
researcher from the University of Central Florida stated, “An
important implication of this result is that traditional selective
and adaptive explanations for phenomena such as increasing
evolvability deserve more scrutiny and may turn out
unnecessary in some cases.” Maybe he should come back
when he knows something. In the meantime, nothing in the article
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demonstrated the origin of species by unguided processes.
Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Purpose is not evolution. The oxymoronic phrase “Evolutionary
Purpose” appears in a headline on Live Science that gets even
more bizarre. Reporter Charles Choi writes, “Birds can hold their
wings high because of the strange way they crouch, and
now scientists say the origins of this folded posture may provide
insight into the evolution of their flight.” A cartoon of a
perching T. rex in a tree adds to the fantasy. It doesn’t matter that
some dinosaur’s crouching posture is similar to that of birds; the
burden of proof Choi set for himself is to show that an aimless
process led to avian flight. Humans and kangaroos can crouch in
a similar way but are not evolving hollow bones, avian lungs or
wings. Choi commits the fallacy that evolution has an aim when
he says “birds evolved to crouch.” Those two words should never
go together. An aimless, purposeless process cannot “evolve to”
do anything. Besides, Choi is not sure if it happened gradually or
suddenly, indicative of an absence of scientific explanation.
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Evolutionists Don’t Understand Their Own Theory
进化论者不明白自己的理论

Let’s hold evolutionists’ feet to the fire. Insist on these rules:
No teleology. No aim. No intelligence. No purpose. No
assuming evolution is a fact. No microevolution. No
computers. No intelligent design, such as with artificial
selection. Show new species or kinds, not just variation
within a species: it needs to surpass the kinds of changes
creationists already accept. Show innovation toward new
function, not just horizontal change. With those rules, the
Darwin industry would dry up, because few (if any) are the
papers that try to deal honestly with the facts of nature,
relying only on the principles of Darwinian evolutionary
theory. But, of course, if they are principles, they undermine
evolutionary assumptions in the first place, because
principles rely for their existence on the immaterial realm of
concepts–ideas–propositions. Maybe if evolutionists grunted
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like chimps they would make more sense.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
135
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
136
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决


Some basic ideas about physics and astronomy remain so
mysterious, and their explanations so flexible, they may lead some to
question whether they should be called “hard sciences.”
It’s about time: Most of us take time for granted and wish we had
more of it. Why, then, is it controversial for a physicist to claim that
time is real? Live Science describes the ideas of Lee Smolin, who
“controversially” claims that time is not an illusion, but a fundamental
aspect of the universe. The question opens up a “meta-law dilemma”
about whether laws of nature are inside or outside of time. If outside,
Smolin argues, they have no meaning. The question also bears
heavily on the nature of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and
why it presents an asymmetrical “arrow of time.” In his article
for New Scientist, Smolin said, “It might be a funny thing to say, but
the idea that time is real requires a radical departure from the
standard paradigm of physics.” Nature reviewed Smolin’s new
book, Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the
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Universe.
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决
Theory of massive star formation encounters
surprise: Science Daily reported that
astrophysicists were surprised when a
massive star disobeyed theory.
 Standard candle isn’t: PhysOrg reported the
possibility that gravitational lenses could
make Type 1a supernovae, the leading
cosmic distance indicators, much brighter
than they are. The implications of this
realization for estimating the size and age of
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the universe were not explored.

Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

The antimatter puzzle: The BBC News, Live
Science and Science Daily all reported that
the Large Hadron Collider may have found a
case of matter-antimatter asymmetry for a
particular form of matter (the Bs meson) and
its antiparticle. It’s not enough to explain the
predominance of matter in our universe
though. Jason Palmer at the BBC writes,
“but puzzle abides.” Science Daily quoted
the physicists saying that the observed
asymmetry is “too small to account for the
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matter-dominated Universe.”
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Grand finale came first: Another observation supports the
surprising finding that the universe underwent extraordinary
periods of star formation in its infancy
(01/08/2002, 09/21/2005,04/02/2009, 12/17/2010). Big bang
theory posits that the universe began in a highly smooth
state, but Science Daily wrote, “Astronomers using a worldwide collection of telescopes have discovered the most
prolific star factory in the Universe, surprisingly in a
galaxy so distant that they see as it was when the
Universe was only six percent of its current age.” Another
example, “a dust-obscured massive maximum-starburst
galaxy at a redshift of 6.34,” was reported by Nature: “it
seems that environments mature enough to form the
most massive, intense starbursts existed at least as early
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as 880 million years after the Big Bang.”
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Dark matter moment of
truth: Science Magazine stated that the “dark
matter mystery” is nearing its “moment of
truth.” Dark matter is supposed to be much
more plentiful than visible matter, according to
leading theory, but has eluded all
detection. One team thinking it has a
potential detection of WIMPs (weakly
interacting massive particles, a theoretical
kind of dark matter) is not ready to announce
it. Others are urging caution because of other
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falsified claims in the past.
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Higgs vs inflation: Nature reported that
the properties of the newly-discovered
Higgs boson “could spell trouble for
leading Big Bang theory.” Astronomer
Paul Steinhart believes data from the
Planck telescope “introduce new, serious
difficulties” for the popular hypothesis
that the universe underwent exponential
expansion in the first fraction of a second
after the big bang.
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Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

A simple, ignored question: Back in January, in Live
Science, Joel Shurkin asked, “Where did the universe’s
magnetism come from?” That question is rarely
addressed. The big bang would have begun with no
magnetism, he says: “In the beginning there was no
magnetism.” Today, though, it is one of the most
powerful forces in stars and galaxies. Any incipient fields
after the big bang should have cancelled each other
out. Shurkin entertained a theory by one German
physicist, Reinhard Schlickeiser, who thinks it began very
weak until iron evolved in stars, then current flows
magnified it. “You have to have something to start
from,” his partner said, but that begs the question of
where the something came from.
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Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Inconstant speed of light: It’s not just
creationists who put forth the idea that the
speed of light is not constant. Live
Science entertained ideas from two
physicist teams who propose it, even
though their estimates of the amount of
change are slight. Still, it shows that
fundamental ideas unquestioned since
Einstein can still be questioned.
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Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Hubris nonetheless: Given the amount of mystery
remaining in physics and cosmology about the
most basic questions, it seems blatantly hubristic
for Stephen Hawking to continue claiming that “the
big bang didn’t need God,”
as Space.com reported. He’s assuming there
even was a big bang. On April 16, long lines
waited to hear him at Caltech mock God and
religion. He even fancies himself a prophet. He
said, “I don’t think we will survive another thousand
years without escaping our fragile
planet.” Fortunately for him, he won’t have to face
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accusers in the year 4013.
Major Cosmic Questions Remain Unanswered
宇宙的主要问题仍然未决

Never confuse the observable, repeatable,
testable science that gives us cell phones
with the unverifiable speculation emerging
from the mouths and keyboards of secular
scientists who don’t know what they’re
talking about, who keep making theoretical
claims that get falsified by new observations,
and who intrude into metaphysical questions
they are not philosophically prepared to
approach. Their only qualification lies in the
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sophistication of their ignorance.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
147
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
148
Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环



Cassini has observed clouds of dust from meteoroids hitting the
rings. The data will “impact” theories of the rings’ origin and age.
New observations have shown dust clouds from four impacts on
Saturn’s rings (see JPL press release). One impact was observed
twice, about 25 hours apart. The impacts were found in all three
major rings: A, B, and C. The ejecta clouds are thought to have
been observed between 1 and 50 hours after the
impacts. According to National Geographic, streams of meteors
must be hitting the rings more often than thought. A paper by
Cassini scientists was published in Science Magazine.
National Geographic waxed philosophical, saying, “The hope in
the science community is that insights into these ring impacts
may also shed light on the rings’ puzzling origins.” That
sentence cloaks the real problem: impacts are destructive, not
constructive. Jeff Cuzzi, long time ringmaster and co-author of the
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149
paper, expressed concerns in the press release:
Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环

“Saturn’s rings are unusually bright and clean,
leading some to suggest that the rings are
actually much younger than Saturn,” said Jeff
Cuzzi, a co-author of the paper and a Cassini
interdisciplinary scientist specializing in planetary
rings and dust at NASA’s Ames Research Center
in Moffett Field, Calif. “To assess this dramatic
claim, we must know more about the rate at which
outside material is bombarding the rings. This
latest analysis helps fill in that story with detection
of impactors of a size that we weren’t previously
able to detect directly.”
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Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环

The impactors are estimated to be between
a centimeter and several meters in
diameter. If a rain of dusty debris like this
has been going on for billions of years, the
rings should appear darker than they
are. Furthermore, since they carry away
more mass than they add, they have been
eroding the rings for a long time according to
current beliefs about Saturn’s age. Pollution
and erosion are not helping keep Saturn’s
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rings old.
Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环


Another clue for a high impact rate is the “ring rain”
that descends onto Saturn’s equatorial
bands. Science Daily said that “more charged
particles fall than thought” from water ions
originating in the rings. Are the charged particles
coming from impacts hitting the rings? What other
process could be sending material from the rings
onto Saturn? The article didn’t say. In any case,
this is another erosive process, it appears.
The paper in Science said that the estimated
impact rate, though significantly higher “at face
value” than before, is too uncertain to know for
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sure:
Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环

“Our results are higher than the extrapolation by
one or two orders of magnitude (Fig. 4); at face
value, especially if this increase is also reflected in
submillimeter-to-millimeter-size particles, then
pollution and erosion rates due to
interplanetary meteoroids might be higher than
have been thought. However, gravitational
focusing enhances the flux at Saturn’s rings by a
factor of 4 to 40, and the sensitivity of rings to a
two-directional flux yields another factor of 2, so
our results may corroborate the previous
extrapolation after all.”
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Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环

(By extrapolation, the authors refer to the
prior habit of estimating impact rates for
the outer solar system to be similar to
rates in the inner solar system.) Better
observations to constrain the impact rate
will be possible when the Cassini
spacecraft approaches its end of mission
(2017), when it is slated to make series of
“high dives” over the rings and into the
gap between the D ring and Saturn.
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154
Saturn’s Rings Impacted by Meteoroids
流星冲击土星的光环

If this were the only problem in the Saturn
system facing the moyboys (believers in
“millions of years, billions of years”), it would
be worrisome for them. But then you have
Titan’s atmosphere, the Titan ethane
problem, the Enceladus geysers, delicate
rings, and other matters that, taken together,
could title a book, “Billions of years: a theory
in crisis.” Prediction: future measurements
of impact rates on Saturn’s rings will prove
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higher than expected.
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
156
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
157
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
158
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
159
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
160
Sermons From Science -- May 2013
科学布道-- 2013年5月
Sermons from Science is now published in both
YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in
PowerPoint slides in the website
http://ChristCenterGospel.org.
The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave
Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all
the glory.
Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from
cancer surgery.
Pastor Chui
http://ChristCenterGospel.org
3/16/2016
ckchui1@yahoo.com
161
Gloria Deo
愿荣耀归上帝

3/16/2016
162