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Creationism News – July 2013 创造论新闻– 2013年7月 Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to make his excellent websites. The contents of this presentation were taken from David Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. Pray for his fast recovery from cancer surgery. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org [email protected] 5/8/2017 1 Astrobiology: The Science of Could 天体生物学: 莫非科学 Anything “could” happen. Shouldn’t science deal with what does happen and what did happen? The “could” word is rampant in astrobiology literature and originof-life studies. “Antifreeze on Titan could affect its chances for life” (Astrobiology Magazine): 14 uses of the word “could” and 6 of “might.” “Billion-Year-Old Water Could Hold Clues to Life On Earth and Mars” (Astrobiology Magazine): 8 “could” and 4 of “may” or “might.” “Life On Earth Shockingly Comes from out of This World” (Science Daily): 8 uses of could and may. 5/8/2017 2 Astrobiology: The Science of Could 天体生物学: 莫非科学 “A Stepping-Stone for Oxygen on Earth” (Astrobiology Magazine): 6 uses of could and may. “Martian Clay Contains Chemical Implicated in the Origin of Life, Astrobiologists Find” (Science Daily): 5 instances of could, may, or might. “More Evidence That Ancient Mars Could Support Life Found by Old Rover” (Space.com): 3 instances of could, may, or might. “60 Billion Alien Planets Could Support Life” (Space.com): 8 instances of could, may, or might. 5/8/2017 3 Astrobiology: The Science of Could 天体生物学: 莫非科学 The hedging words are often key to the evolutionary ideas in the articles: e.g., in the antifreeze article, “These molecules could ultimately serve as the basis for life”; in the billion-year-old water article, “This water could be some of the oldest on the planet and may even contain life; in the Mars rover article, “NASA’s Curiosity rover found that the Red Planet could have supported microbial life in the ancient past”; in the out-of-this-world article, “icy comets that crashed into Earth millions of years ago could have produced life building organic compounds”. No life, of course, has ever been found beyond Earth’s biosphere. 5/8/2017 4 Astrobiology: The Science of Could 天体生物学: 莫非科学 We need a new word to describe the propensity of evolutionists to speculate out of thin air with the power of suggestion to lend a false air of scientific credibility to their confabulations. We’ll coin the term perhapsimaybecouldness index to measure that property and add it to our growing Darwin Dictionary (a helpful guide to understanding our commentaries). Whenever you hear an evolutionist using the could word, as in “life could have emerged from methane clathrates in Titan’s subsurface ocean,” remind him or her that could works both ways. Since it’s an imprecise, rigorless, unmeasured, hypothetical, speculative, imaginative, unscientific way to describe nature, stop them immediately with the response, “But then again, life might not have emerged from methane clathrates in Titan’s subsurface ocean, if there is such an ocean; life could have been designed. What do 5/8/2017 5 you know about it?” Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 6 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Since we all live in a body, we should all feel intrigued with what goes in under our skin. There are more wonders than science can ever fully know. Here are a few recent examples. Looking and recognizing: Why do secure websites ask you to identify words with curvy, speckled letters before letting you in? The reason for CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is that humans are far superior in recognizing misshapen words than computers. No robot can come close, Science Daily said: 5/8/2017 7 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 It seems easy to us — the human brain just does it. But the apparent simplicity of this task is an illusion. The task is actually so complex, no one has been able to write computer code that translates these distorted letters the same way that neural networks can. That’s why this test, called a CAPTCHA, is used to distinguish a human response from computer bots that try to steal sensitive information. 5/8/2017 8 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 The article tells how scientists at Salk Institute are taking wee steps at understanding the eye-brain system’s skill. Some day, robot engineers may master it, but for now, it sets us apart. Nice fat: Fat gets a bad rap, but it wraps us in a layer that can not only feel temperature, but do something about it. A new paper in PNAS describes how fat cells “directly sense temperature to activate thermogenesis” – the creation of heat, even without shivering. To do this, fat cells must be smart enough to do two things: respond to environmental cues, and know how to activate signal pathways that turn up the heat. The authors say, “These findings provide an unusual insight into the role of adipose tissues in thermoregulation, as well as an alternative way to target nonshivering thermogenesis for treatment of obesity and metabolic diseases.” 5/8/2017 9 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Shape shifters: Many organs in the body are lined with epithelial cells, cells that line up form protective walls. But they’re not just walls that are built and forgotten. Like fat cells, they respond, too, in a kind of fluid motion involving death and regeneration of individual “bricks” in the wall. Two French scientists wrote in Science Magazine about “Mechanics of Epithelial Tissue Homeostasis and Morphogenesis,” describing how wall-building is an ongoing, purpose-driven process: 5/8/2017 10 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Epithelia are robust tissues that support the structure of embryos and organs and serve as effective barriers against pathogens. Epithelia also chemically separate different physiological environments. These vital functions require tight association between cells through the assembly of junctions that mechanically stabilize the tissue. Remarkably, epithelia are also dynamic and can display a fluid behavior. Cells continuously die or divide, thereby allowing functional tissue homeostasis. Epithelial cells can change shape or intercalate as tissues deform during 5/8/2017 11 morphogenesis. More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 The authors did not mention evolution. Instead, they stated that control involves multiple levels of organization – in human experience, a hallmark of intelligent design. Without using the ID phrase, here’s how they described the outlook for science: We are entering an exciting time when interdisciplinary research enables us to understand the fundamental properties of tissue functional homeostasis and morphogenesis by considering the interplay between biochemical and mechanical signals across different scales of organization. 5/8/2017 12 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 A ubiquitous code: The protein ubiquitin, so named because it turns up in all life, is on a roll for earning increasing respect. At first discovery, scientists didn’t know what it did. Then they learned it tags proteins for recycling by linking up into small chains on cellular garbage. Now, they are learning that there are various ways it forms chains on different attachment points, with different responses for each one. Calling it a “potentially life-saving protein,” Science Daily describes the first hints that the structures of different poly-ubiquitin chains encode different signals to the cell. For the latest variation described by scientists at the University of Maryland, its “function is something different and perhaps equally vital to maintaining healthy cells.” 5/8/2017 13 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Switching off inflammation: Science Daily tells about an important molecule called DHA, found in fish oil, that is effective in switching off inflammation. It appears to work by signaling white blood cells to produce another substance called maresin that acts as a molecular switch, turning the inflammation response off and the resolution process on. “We encounter inflammation almost daily, but our body has ways of turning it off,” the journal editor commented. “This is an important step toward 5/8/2017 14 understanding exactly this happens.” More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Placental barrier: How does the unborn baby keep from getting Mom’s cold? Science Daily reports that “Placental cells may prevent viruses from passing from mother to baby.” In the placenta, cells called trophoblasts seem particularly immune to viruses. They work by secreting little packages of RNA, called exosomes, that can turn on programmed cell death to neighbors infected by viruses. Researchers attributed this wonderful and necessary protection mechanism to evolution, stating that “the complex and elegant mechanisms human placental cells, called trophoblasts, have evolved to keep viruses from infecting cells,” and “this pathway could be a powerful evolutionary adaptation to protect the fetus and mother from viral invaders.” It “could” be (7/01/13), but then again, it could not be. The scientists gave no particulars about how an unguided, aimless material process “accomplishes 5/8/2017 15 this feat.” More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Behind the placenta: How does a developing embryo go from single cell to complex body, with organs like intestines made of tubes lined with epithelium that loop and curve in long passageways? Some insights into this wonderful process were described in an openaccess paper in PNAS, “Anisotropic growth shapes intestinal tissues during embryogenesis.” It begins with an instability set up by patterning of cells having different structural properties: 5/8/2017 16 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Embryogenesis offers a real laboratory for pattern formation, buckling, and postbuckling induced by growth of soft tissues. Each part of our body is structured in multiple adjacent layers: the skin, the brain, and the interior of organs. Each layer has a complex biological composition presenting different elasticity. Generated during fetal life, these layers will experience growth and remodeling in the early postfertilization stages. Here, we focus on a herringbone pattern occurring in fetal intestinal tissues. Common to many mammalians, this instability is a precursor of the villi, finger-like 5/8/2017 17 projections into the lumen. More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 The herringbone (zig-zag) pattern appears to create a physical instability that induces buckling of the tissues, as different parts of the tissues possess different elastic properties. “The growth anisotropy increasing with time, the competition between folds and zigzags, is proved to occur as a secondary instability,” they said. How all these processes, and many others, come together in an adult human being who can read a book, play a piano or dive into a swimming pool after eating plants that captured sunlight must constitute grounds for sheer wonder and admiration in designs that transcend anything we know. 5/8/2017 18 More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 Three responses should be forthcoming at this point: (1) Appreciation for all we have been given in life. How can we take for granted even the simplest pleasure or accomplishment, when we see the levels of organization that make it possible? One begins to see the crime of failing to be thankful (Romans 1:21) for God’s magnificent designs in nature and in our own bodies in particular. (2) Responsibility to care for what we have. How would you treat a treasure, or an artistic masterpiece? Would you hang an outstanding work of art on a chain-link fence in a junkyard? Take care of what you have been given, flawed as it may be by millennia under the curse due to sin, and use it for 5/8/2017 19 good as much as you can. More Wonders Going On Inside You 您的内部更多奇迹 (3) Anger at the evillusionists who ascribe all this to chance. “…elegant mechanisms… have evolved,” they say. Ingrates. No explanation, just BAD language (bald assertions of Darwinism), exhibiting willful ignorance masquerading as “science.” If that is “science” (knowledge), then the KnowNothing Darwin Party is behind the starting gate, facing the wrong way. 5/8/2017 20 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 21 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Animals, whether living or fossil, often show surprising tricks of sensation, adaptation, or ornamentation. My, what big teeth you have: A marsupial saber-tooth cat with fangs like steak knives had a “embarrassing” bite no worse than that of a pussycat, Live Science claims. Mechanical analysis shows that to use them without ripping them out of their sockets, the beast would have had to insert them with “delicate precision” – a hard thing to test, since scientists lack the ability to watch the predators in action. The BBC News story included an artist’s conception of what the marsupial might have looked like (with artistic license for coat color and environment); other reconstructions make it look much more like Smilodon, the placental saber-tooth cat. What’s more surprising is the evolutionary angle. The marsupial supposedly had nothing to do with its placental look-alike: 5/8/2017 22 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Named Thylacosmilus atrox (“pouch saber”), the animal was about the size of a jaguar, but “looked and behaved like nothing alive today,” paleontologist Stephen Wroe said in a statement. Superficially, Thylacosmilus resembled the saber-toothed cats of the Pleistocene, like the North American icon, Smilodon fatalis. Both have long canines designed to attack large prey, but the animals were separated by at least 125 million years of evolution, 5/8/2017 23 researchers say. Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Tough but sensitive: What could be tougher than crocodile scales? Yet the scary beasts have a “supersense” in a “previously misunderstood” delicate organ, Science Daily reports: the ability to sense touch, heat, cold, and the environment in their skin. It wouldn’t seem that a skin so hard it cracks when it grows would be so sensitive, but inside those cracks are “integumentary sensory organs” (ISO’s) that help the croc find food even in dark, murky water. Their skin provides multiple types of information: temperature, touch, and chemicals in the environment. There is “no equivalent in any other vertebrates,” the article states. “It is this transformation of a diffuse sensory system, such as we have in our own skin, into ISO which has allowed crocodilians to evolve a highly armored yet very sensitive skin.” 5/8/2017 24 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Communal glow: A short post on Science Now shows that the glowworms that snare insects in New Zealand caves coordinate their light to maximize their catch. Whale of an oxygen tank: How do fin whales hold their breath and keep from imploding when they dive down 650 feet? That mystery was explored in a brief “Science Shot” on Science Now: 5/8/2017 25 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Think you’re under pressure? Try diving 200 meters below the ocean. That’s where fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) spend their time feeding. That kind of pressure would rupture our blood vessels, but whales do just fine. To figure out why, researchers compared whale arteries to those of pigs, chosen for their relation to the whale’s land-loving ancestors. Then they ran saline or water over and through the vessels. The arteries, which draw blood away from the heart, stiffened in the fin whale, while the pig arteries stretched out and collapsed under far less stress, the team reports online this week in The Journal of Experimental Biology. The finding suggests that the whales benefit from naturally occurring collagen around their arteries. Firming up to withstand the depths, this connective tissue may be what keeps whales from feeling the squeeze. 5/8/2017 26 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 More than one way to evolve a breath: Speaking of oxygen down deep, Nature News claims that “Animals have evolved a variety of ways to get oxygen under extreme conditions.” Featured creatures are northern elephant seals that can hold their breath two hours underwater, rayfinned fish that possess a unique form of hemoglobin, and deer mice that live at high elevations. The article appeared to care less about the design of oxygen deliver to tissues in these well-adapted animals as in their evolution, saying without elaboration, 5/8/2017 27 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Rezende … says that whereas the studies show that animals have found several ways to increase the amount of oxygen delivered to their muscles, all follow one unifying theme: all the adaptations help the animals to perform better under difficult conditions. And this is so useful that it has evolved multiple times through different pathways. “Increased oxygen delivery is almost always associated with high performance,” he says. High performance has also evolved in several different pathways in racing cars, but.… News flash! A beetle’s iridescent colors have survived for 49 million years! Extra, extra, read all about it in New Scientist. 5/8/2017 28 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 There they go again; misusing their own evolutionary theory. The phrase “allowed such-and-such an animal to evolve such-and-such an adaptation” is nonsense. We’ll allow you a trip to the moon without a space suit. Go ahead when ready. Evolutionists cannot use evolve as an active verb, “to evolve a” whatever. Opportunity is not fulfillment. An unguided process gives no permission. Whatever happens, happens in Darwin’s “Stuff Happens” Law, whether the 5/8/2017 29 environment allows it or not. Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 When they say, “animals have evolved a variety of ways to” whatever, there’s another fallacy. They’ve personified evolution as something animals or Mother Nature does on purpose for a goal. Stupidest mythoid is this one: “this is so useful that it has evolved multiple times through different pathways.” Evolutionists wield their theory like a magic wand, saying, “Abracadabra! It evolved!” to account for everything, including high performance oxygen delivery to muscles. How many mutations did that take for natural selection to filter through? 5/8/2017 30 Bizarre Creatures With Incredible Design 令人难以置信的奇异生物设计 Added to the mythoid mix is convergent evolution again; animals “have evolved” multiple ways to get oxygen to highperformance muscles; saber teeth evolved in two completely unrelated mammals, separated by 125 million years in their mythical timeline. Those of us who love animals should be able to enjoy the discoveries without the Darwin Party sales pitch. The evolutionary hype is like those annoying pop-up ads that distract attention from the real story, which is intelligent design. 5/8/2017 31 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 32 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? Starfish are found to have “primitive” image-forming eyes on the tips of their arms. Do these represent links between simple and complex eyes? Some reporters seem to think so. Deborah MacKenzie at New Scientist leapt at the opportunity to score one for Darwin: We have known about the sensors that starfish have at the ends of their arms for 200 years, but no one knew whether they are real eyes that form images or simply structures that detect changes in light intensity. We finally have an answer: they appear to act as real eyes. The discovery is another blow to creationist arguments that something as complex as a human 5/8/2017 eye could never evolve from simpler structures. 33 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? In a similar vein, PhysOrg asked if it is a “missing link in eye evolution.” Dr. Andrews Garm at the University of Copenhagen experimented on blue sea stars. When deprived of the photosensors, starfish wandered aimlessly, but their fellow stars with intact sensors migrated toward the coral, where the food source is. The article contains photos of the starfish and its photoreceptors. Surprisingly, after 200 years of knowing these photoreceptors exist, nobody had checked to see if they are capable of providing directional cues to the animals. New Scientist said they are “good enough to show the way home” but more primitive than the compound eyes in arthropods. MacKenzie continued the evolutionary angle: 5/8/2017 34 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? In evolutionary terms, says Garm, it is interesting because starfish eyes are structurally close in form to the hypothesised first image-forming eyes. For instance, light receptors in more advanced eyes are built either out of modified cytoplasmic projections called microvilli, or out of filament-shaped cell organelles called cilia. Starfish eyes contain both structures, so “have features that look a bit ancestral”, says [Dan-Eric] Nilsson [Lund University]. “This shows what visual task drove this important step in eye evolution,” says Garm. “Navigation towards large stationary objects – here the reef – that were preferred habitats.” In other words, he thinks our eyes may have 5/8/2017 35 first evolved so we could find our way home. Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? PhysOrg said that the structure on the blue sea star, “except for the lack of true optics, resembles arthropod compound eye.” Neither article mentioned the whole-body lenses on brittle stars, another echinoderm (8/23/01). In other echinoderm news, PhysOrg reported that some starfish are able to shed arms to prevent overheating. Nature News reported a Cambrian fossil that they claim is an early echinoderm. It lacked arms, but had five-fold symmetry. It “resembled an egg with its tapered end planted in the sea floor,” the article said. “Its mouth opened upward and its body spiralled down.” 5/8/2017 36 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? Nice try, Darwin Party, but no score. Starfish are not ancestral to arthropods or vertebrates. Eyes appeared abruptly in separate phyla during the Cambrian explosion, as seen in molluscs, jellyfish, comb jellies, and arthropods (trilobites and the Burgess Shale animals), and in some extinct phyla. Trilobite eyes were very complex but appeared abruptly like all the others. If starfish represented a transitional form, why do starfish still exist hundreds of millions of years later with the same “primitive” eyes? Where’s the evolution? 5/8/2017 37 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? The authors made another tactical blunder in their evolutionary tale. “Visual tasks” do not “drive evolution.” You can’t drive an aimless mechanism on a random walk. Eyes don’t evolve “so we could find our way home.” That makes no sense theoretically or evidentially. All living things have some common “tasks” including finding their habitat. Why don’t plants have eyes? Why don’t seeds have eyes so they can find the right soil? Many plants and animals could have benefited from sight but didn’t “evolve eyes.” You can’t use “evolve” as an active verb. Evolution is whatever happens, without anyone guiding it or needing it. Once again we see evolutionists misusing and misunderstanding their own theory. 5/8/2017 38 Are Starfish Eyes Missing Links? 海星眼睛是缺失的环节? The fact is, each animal has the senses it needs for its place in the ecology. Everything is equipped for its role. The story should have been that starfish are more amazing than previously thought, not that they represent a missing link. Maybe the evolutionists are panicking at the release of Stephen Meyer’s best-selling book, Darwin’s Doubt, laying out the case for intelligent design as seen in the Cambrian fossil record. For a shorter explanation of the Cambrian explosion, see Illustra’s film Darwin’s Dilemma. 5/8/2017 39 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 40 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 Even with generous dates of 10,000 years for the origin of farming, what were modern humans doing for tens of thousands of years or more? Take the latest date for the arrival of “modern humans” in Europe, some 43,000 years ago for Cro-Magnon Man. If farming did not begin till 13,000 years ago (the most generous date mentioned in an article on Science Now), what were modern humans doing for 30,000 years? That’s well over three times as long as “recorded history,” when humans of equal body and mind went from mud huts to the moon. Michael Balter, in his article on Science Now, “Farming was so Nice, It was Invented at Least Twice,” ignores that looming question. Instead, he focuses on archaeological sites along the Fertile Crescent (Israel, Iraq and Iran) that have been radiocarbon dated to 10,000 years, plus or minus a few 5/8/2017 41 thousand depending on the site. He begins, Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 The invention of farming some 10,000 years ago set the stage for the rise of civilizations in the Near East. Yet archaeologists disagree about how it happened. Some say it arose in a single spot near the Mediterranean, and spread from there. Others argue it had multiple independent origins, a view that is getting new credence, thanks to findings from an early farming site in Iran. The multiple origin theory, though, makes the problem worse. It discounts the idea that farming was the dream of a lucky individual at one location who decided they could save a lot of work by planting and growing the plants they like. It means the idea hit several towns in widely separated areas independently. Why, then, didn’t fully modern humans ever get that idea tens of thousands of 5/8/2017 42 years earlier? Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 The problem is exacerbated when including the members of the Homo genus prior to CroMagnon. Most paleoanthropologists concede that members of Homo (whether neanderthalensis, erectus, habilis or the like) used fire and made weapons, sailed boats, created art and musical instruments, understood semantic communication, and were for all practical purposes just like us before the Cro-Magnon arrived. If they could do all these other things, why didn’t any of them think of planting a crop or riding a horse throughout 1.9 million years? 5/8/2017 43 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 Some tribes in South America, when discovered before they had been influenced by Western culture, were planting their favorite crops as well as building villages. It seems to be a natural thing for humans to do: organize a society, plan ahead, and take control of the powers of nature. Yet Balter says, “Whether farming arose once or a hundred times, it happened first in the Fertile Crescent, a broad region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iran.” Did a genetic mutation turn hunter-gatherers into farmers? If they “invented” farming, did they do it by intelligent 5/8/2017 44 design? Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 Regular readers know we’ve been driving this issue for a long time. The Science Now article provides another occasion to remind readers of the huge credibility gap in the evolutionary timeline. Look at how quickly people spread around the globe. Everywhere they went they built monuments with inscriptions and built cities. Some of their technology, whether of the Mayans, Egyptians, Stonehenge builders, Incas, still arouses awe. 5/8/2017 45 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 It’s the most natural thing in the world for humans to find ways to make life easier. If it rains, build a hut. If foot travel is too far, find an animal to ride (horse, elephant, camel). If a plant tastes good, plant it and grow lots of it. We shouldn’t presume that Neanderthals and the other mythical pre-humans evolutionists place in their mythical prehistory were any less capable of doing these things, considering what other technologies they employed. 5/8/2017 46 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 Biblical creationists have a clear advantage on this point. According to Genesis, humans were farming right after Eden. They were making musical instruments, forging metals, and raising livestock. They were using their God-given mental abilities to eke out an existence in a newly cursed world, finding ways to make it not so hard. Within Adam’s lifetime they were building cities. The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 provides a credible history of the spread of mankind after the Flood and after the confusion of tongues at Babel. It matches archaeological finds with remarkably accurate names, genealogies, and dates that can be checked (note: creationists question the accuracy of radiocarbon dates before the Flood). 5/8/2017 47 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 The creationary explanation is about real historical people using intelligent design with minds created in the image of God by the ultimate intelligent Designer, YahwehElohim — the uncreated, eternal, all-wise Creator God. He is the Eyewitness. He has revealed what happened. Eyewitness testimony from someone who cannot lie is to be preferred over empty speculation by those who imagine humans emerging from bacteria by random processes. 5/8/2017 48 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 Evolutionary dates are inflated to force key observational data points into their predetermined old-age timeline. If science is to be directed by observations and logic, then let’s use the Guidebook from the One who knows everything and was there. It’s time to play hardball with the evolutionists in their own Fantasyland. Dunk an evolutionist into the credibility tank today, so everyone can tell they are all wet. OLD MAN DARWIN HAD A YARN 5/8/2017 49 Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable 进化时间表: 农业来得太晚 1. Old Man Darwin had a yarn, D-O-D-O-Woe. And in that yarn he had no farm, D-O-D-O-Woe. With a spear tip here and a bone flute there, Here a pot, there a fire, everywhere a thought but In that yarn he had no farm, D-O-D-O-Woe. 2. Old Man Darwin had a yarn, D-O-D-O-Woe. And in that yarn he had no horse, D-O-D-O-Woe. With a nay nay here and a nay nay there, Here a nay, there a nay, nobody could ride a mare, In that yarn he had no horse, D-O-D-O-Woe. 3. Old Man Darwin had a school, D-O-D-O-Woe. And in that school they had a rule, I-D, I-D, No! With a D-D here and an O-O there, Here a DO, there a DO, everywhere a DODO, 5/8/2017 In that school they had a rule, D-O-D–Or else! 50 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 51 New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 These recently-reported attempts to mimic nature show that the biomimetics revolution continues, with no end in sight. Splitting hydrogen: Bacteria make it look so easy, taking hydrogen molecules and dividing them at room temperature. Nature published a whole paper on attempts to imitate the hydrogenase enzymes in hopes of improving fuel cells. The only mention of “evolution” had nothing to do with Darwinism. It was about the “evolution” of hydrogen gas from the artificial 5/8/2017 52 metalloenzymes the team developed. New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 Bird smartphones: A new generation of “radically better” smartphones may some day employ magnetic field sensors inspired by how birds navigate, reported Science Daily. European researchers “are the first to successfully create perfect one-dimensional molecular wires of which the electrical conductivity can almost entirely be suppressed by a weak magnetic field at room temperature,” the article said. “The underlying mechanism is possibly closely related to the biological compass used by some migratory birds to find their bearings in the geomagnetic field.” Need we mention the new documentary Flight: The Genius of Birds, with its story 5/8/2017 about the world record holder for global navigation? 53 New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 Ant-i-cancer: A new cancer antibiotic was reported by PhysOrg to be “inspired by nature’s fungus farmer, the leaf cutter ant.” The ants don’t get the credit, though. The antibiotic is produced by a bacterium that lives in symbiosis with the ants. Bionic ear: Researchers at Princeton are “combining electronics with biological material” to produce a “bionic ear” that can both receive and transmit sound, Medical Xpress reported. The antenna, shaped like a human ear and printed with a 3-D printer, can pick up radio signals and transmit the signal to speakers. 5/8/2017 54 New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 Big Dog: A video clip on Live Science shows a walking tank called “Big Dog” undergoing field tests as a support machine for the Marines. Carrying 400 pounds for up to 20 miles, the four-footed robot can follow soldiers over a variety of terrains. Just the sight of it might frighten the enemy to submission. Knuckle-walker: A German team has developed a four-legged robot that imitates the knuckle-walking of apes. PhysOrg said the team is thinking of developing machines to serve on spacecraft or to support astronauts. Video clips in the article show the robot ape stabilizing itself on wobbly surfaces. In the future, improvements to its “spinal column” may allow it to 5/8/2017 55 stand up and pick fruit. New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 Biomimetic air conditioning: National Geographic listed no less than five new cooling technologies inspired by “Mother Nature’s craftiness.” Featured animals are termites, birds, whales, and even ticks, that secrete a substance to absorb moisture from the air. Humans were in the list, too, for the “logarithmic spiral shape found in such phenomena as tornadoes, whirlpools, and even airflow in the human trachea.” A biologist who wrote a book on biomimetics said, “With biomimicry we’re able to apply fresh thinking to traditional manufacturing, to undo the toxic and energy-intensive mistakes of the past,” said [Janine] Benyus, who is part of a group that hopes to lead a new revolution in design by imitating nature. “I wish we had 5/8/2017 been at the design table at the Industrial Revolution.”56 New Biomimetics Projects 新仿生学工程 As usual, none of these articles mentioned Darwinian evolution. Mentions of evolution in biomimetics articles seem to be waning. Maybe scientists are seeing it as superfluous in their focus on design engineering and intelligent technology. How would Darwinists try to rescue their myth from these developments? Would they say that humans are evolved animals just imitating other animals, like mockingbirds? Let them try that angle (one of Charle’s Angles). It will backfire, because it will mean their own logic is a product of unguided, meaningless processes. We can reply, “You’re only saying that because natural selection made you utter various sounds.” Benyus decried the “energy-intensive mistakes of the past” during the Industrial Revolution. Why didn’t Victorian scientists realize the models of good technology all around them? Let’s 5/8/2017 57 make up for lost time. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 58 Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 Compare two countries: in one, when their hegemony is threatened, evolutionists plead for academic freedom. In another, they deny it to those who want a chance to debate evolution. Turkey, with its somewhat secular government but largely Islamic population, has doubts about Darwin. Leaders there are reluctant to promote evolution, which they consider controversial, as the “glue of all biological sciences,” according to Science Now. Moreover, the government has (at times) blocked certain educational evolution websites, and thrown roadblocks in the way of evolutionary conferences, on the grounds that “Since evolution is still a debated issue, the degree to which the organizers represent the community/country is very questionable.” This has angered certain Darwinist academics who were expecting the Turkish government to fund a recent 5/8/2017 59 pro-evolution conference for students. Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 . They appealed to freedom of speech and inquiry (similar to academic freedom) in their protest: “It sets a very dangerous precedent,” Akçay says. “Today it might be a summer school that is fairly cheap … but tomorrow it could be a young researcher coming up for tenure. … And this on top of the very worrying and worsening trend in academia and the broader society towards curtailing freedom of speech and inquiry.” 5/8/2017 60 Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 But in America, Darwinists are delighted when academic freedom is denied to critics of their theory (see commentary on Evolution News & Views). Nature breathed a “Whew!” along with the National Center for Science Education when five states adopted science standards that will teach climate science and evolution dogmatically, prohibiting efforts to grant academic freedom to skeptics of those theories. New science guidelines supported by evolutionists begin the one-sided indoctrination “well before high school.” They “recommend teaching evolution before students reach high-school biology classes, the point at which many states tackle concepts such as natural selection and adaptation.” 5/8/2017 61 Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 In the past two months, education officials in Rhode Island, Kentucky, Kansas, Maryland and Vermont have all approved the standards by overwhelming margins. At least five more states — California, Florida, Maine, Michigan and Washington — may take up the standards in the next few months. “Whew,” says Minda Berbeco, programmes and policy director at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California. “So far, so good.” Swift adoption of the guidelines has been surprising but welcome news for many supporters. Evolution has been a controversial topic in US education for decades, stretching back to the 1925 ‘monkey trial’ in Tennessee, where the state prosecuted highschool teacher John Scopes for violating a statute that barred the teaching of evolution. In the past decade, those who oppose evolution have sought to enact ‘academic freedom’ laws that would allow creationism to be taught alongside62 5/8/2017 Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 The reference to creationism is a bald lie, since none of the bills prescribe teaching creationism. Instead, they ask for honest teaching of evolutionary theory, including its strengths and weaknesses, or they forbid schools from punishing teachers who do so, such as Eric Hedin, now in hot water at Ball State (see Evolution News & Views). In any case, evolution is the only theory allowed in the curriculum. Not even the Discovery Institute recommends bills requiring the teaching of 5/8/2017 63 intelligent design. Evolutionists Two-Faced About Academic Freedom 两面派进化论者: 学术自由 Such hypocrites. Evolutionists are like Marxists who cry out for freedom until they get power, then they deny it to everyone else. They’re not even good Darwinists. They ignore the words of their Prophet Charlie, who taught in his scriptures, “A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question” (See AcademicFreedomDay.com). Until and unless we rid science of the Darwin bigots, and require them to debate the evidence, they will continue to behave like the People of Froth, foaming at the mouth against anyone who wishes to break their filibuster and discuss the issues honestly. What are they afraid of? Scientific evidence? 5/8/2017 64 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 65 Underwater Forest Discovered: How Old? 发现水下森林:有多老 ? Sixty feet down in Gulf waters off the coast of Alabama, stumps of an old cypress forest have appeared. How can they be 52,000 years old when the wood still smells like cypress? The discovery was reported by Live Science. It includes a five-minute video tour of the area which the discoverers are keeping secret till it can be thoroughly documented. Hundreds of Bald Cypress stumps as large as two meters in diameter are found over a halfsquare-mile area, several miles from the coast of Mobile, Alabama in the Gulf of Mexico. Fish, anemones and other marine creatures have taken up residence in the forest, causing it to decay more 5/8/2017 66 rapidly. Underwater Forest Discovered: How Old? 发现水下森林:有多老 ? The video clip claims the stumps are 12,000 years old, but the text says they have been radiocarbon dated at 52,000 years old. The article claims that they might have been uncovered by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Before that, they may have been covered in sand, preventing oxygen from accelerating decomposition. 5/8/2017 67 Underwater Forest Discovered: How Old? 发现水下森林:有多老 ? Yet it appears incredible the trees could be that old. For one thing, “The forest contains trees so well-preserved that when they are cut, they still smell like fresh Cypress sap,” one of the divers said. For another, are scientists ready to claim that no hurricane of Katrina’s proportions occurred in the alleged 12,000 years since the trees sank below the surface? Now, the trees are decaying so rapidly, the discoverers fear scientists only have two years to examine the site and perform more radiocarbon or tree-ring date calculations. Divers said they could break off chunks of the wood with68 5/8/2017 their hands. Underwater Forest Discovered: How Old? 发现水下森林:有多老 ? Learn to ask the questions the reporters don’t ask. None of them ever questions the evolutionary dates, even when they lead to absurdities, like expecting fresh-smelling wood to be 52,000 years old, or asking people to believe thousands of years went by with no hurricanes strong enough to expose the forest. And how did the forest last as it gradually sank, unless a catastrophe buried it rapidly? The presence of this preserved forest silently cries for a recent catastrophe. 5/8/2017 69 Underwater Forest Discovered: How Old? 发现水下森林:有多老 ? Creationists argue that radiocarbon dates are unreliable before the Flood, because the atmosphere changed drastically. Putting that together with the evolutionary absurdities, we can reason that the forest was probably buried around the time of the Flood or after. It’s a stretch, though, to think five thousand years went by without a disturbance, so it may be younger than that. The old date for such fresh wood, though, is clearly incredible. 5/8/2017 70 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 71 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 There’s no end of amazing tricks in the living world – adaptations that aid their success. Finding them is one thing. Explaining them is another. Electric webs: There’s electricity in the air around spider webs, Science Now says in “Spider Silk Grabs Electrically Charged Insects in Midair.” Flying insects pick up static electricity as they fly (a honeybee can pick up 200 volts). Spider silks get a charge out of greeting the food service, flexing up to 2 mm at a fast rate of 7 m/s when the prey approaches. More study is needed, Live Science cautioned, to see if all flying insects, such as the spiders’ preferred diet of flies, pick up static 5/8/2017 72 electricity. Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 Jumping fish: A swamp dweller called the mangrove rivulus has a unique hopping method, Live Science reports. Unlike the largemouth bass that flexes into a Cshape and jumps but gets nowhere fast, the rivulus does a unique tail flip that sends it on the path to progress (see video clip in the article). On land, the mostly-hermaphroditic fish can live for up to two months feeding on insects while absorbing oxygen through its skin. 5/8/2017 73 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 Self-cleaning guillemot eggs: The eggs of the guillemot, a seabird, are covered in small conical pimples that shed water, the BBC News reported. This helps them avoid the saltwater and detritus in the birds’ crowded colonies. The roughness of the shell may also give the eggs a better foothold on the rocky cliffs where the females lay their eggs. 5/8/2017 74 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 Bat battery: Using elastic energy stored in their wing tendons, fruit bats get better mileage, Science Daily reports. When taking off, this “recycled energy” stored from previous wing flaps gives them an extra boost. This ability is apparently unique among small mammals. The article ends with a touch of biomimetics: “This research will likely have relevance for the development of autonomous micro aircrafts and potentially also amphibious search and rescue vehicles.” 5/8/2017 75 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 Jerboa jumps: Jerboas are little desert rodents that look like a cross between a mouse and a kangaroo (see picture in Science Daily). The small bipedal jumpers have not been studied much. Science Daily says that their hops, skips and jumps allow them to compete with four-footed rodents in Old World deserts. The unpredictability of their trajectories gives the jerboas a way to coexist in the niche occupied by quadrupedal rodents. 5/8/2017 76 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 RNA regulates flowering time: There’s new insight into how perennial plants know they are old enough to flower, and that the right season has arrived. An article on Science Daily reports that “Alpine Rock Cress Uses a Ribonucleic Acid to Measure Its Age and Tell When It’s the Right Time to Flower.” The concentration of a small RNA “works like an hourglass,” the article explains. 5/8/2017 77 Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 One can hypothesize about the origins of these adaptations by considering horizontal and vertical axes of information. The horizontal axis represents variations of existing genetic information. The vertical axis would require gain or loss of information. With that in mind, we might suspect that the guillemot egg did not require intelligent design, since it represents accentuation of existing dimples in the eggshell. The most-dimpled ones survived the salty, steep environment to bring a new generation of birds, whereas others were more 5/8/2017 78 susceptible to damage or falling. Animal and Plant Tricks 动物和植物的技巧 The RNA hourglass in flowering plants, though, appears to be a system that required programming from the beginning. There’s nothing about a particular small RNA molecule that would signal a plant to flower unless other systems exist to measure its concentration and use that metric to signal downstream processes. Try your skill with each organism to see where on the axes the adaptations might lie, realizing that scientific explanations are not necessarily part of science, especially when speculation exceeds testability. Avoid just-so 5/8/2017 79 stories. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 80 Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Silently, fossils speak from the earth, requiring translation and interpretation by humans who didn’t see when they were laid to rest. Beetle bling: The shiny blue scales of a weevil are still visible in a fossil after 49 million years, New Scientist claimed. 5/8/2017 81 Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Tar pit puzzle: “The La Brea Tar Pits have stirred the imaginations of scientists and the public alike for over a century,” Science Daily writes. “But the amount of time it took for ancient animals to become buried in asphalt after enduring their gruesome deaths has remained a mystery.” Researchers found insect traces on the sesamoid bones and phalanges of herbivores, leading them to conclude the carcasses were exposed to the air for 17–20 weeks. Surprisingly, “Although carnivorans vastly outnumber the amount of mammalian herbivorans excavated from the tar pits, no insect damage was found on their bones.” Science Now’s coverage included this typo: “fossils like this 35,000-foot bone of a prehistoric horse,” probably intending 35,000 years, not 35,000 feet; that would be a pretty big horse otherwise. The original paper is 5/8/2017 82 in PLoS One. Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Transitional fleas: “Fleas are a group of highly specialized blood-feeding ectoparasites whose early evolutionary history is poorly known,” begins a paper in Current Biology by paleontologists from Russia, China and London. They claim to have found Cretaceous fossils that “greatly improves our understanding of the morphological transition to the highly specialized body plan of extant fleas.” The claim they are transitional relates primarily to gonad size, body size, and patterns of stiff body hairs. Since they have all the flea parts, though, the fossils could represent greater diversity in the past: “The new fossils, in conjunction with previous discoveries, highlight a broad diversity of ectoparasitic insects in the mid-Mesozoic.” 5/8/2017 83 Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Transitional limbs: According to Science Daily, Yale scientists studied living mudskippers and salamanders to infer the evolutionary transition to land-based locomotion. Why did animals with limbs win the race to invade land over those with fins? A new study comparing the forces acting on fins of mudskipper fish and on the forelimbs of tiger salamanders can now be used to analyze early fossils that spanned the water-toland transition in tetrapod evolution, and further understand their capability to move on land. They measured the forces on limbs and fins of the living animals, thinking it would help explain the 5/8/2017 84 motions of the dead: Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Sandy Kawano said: “The transition from fins to limbs marks the most dramatic change in orientation of the locomotor forces from contact with the ground. Using these data we can now evaluate the locomotor capabilities of numerous important fossil taxa that spanned the water-to-land transition in tetrapod evolution. We hypothesise that the medial orientation of the forces on pectoral fins would result in unreasonably high bone stresses in early amphibious fish with fins, which would explain why the evolutionary invasion of land by vertebrates was accomplished instead by tetrapods with limbs with digits.” 5/8/2017 85 Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 Kawano never explained why mudskippers, still pushing themselves around with fins, never got the evolutionary message. If one did not assume evolution from the get-go, would the conclusions make sense? Who would think that fresh, clean, iridescent scales on a fossil beetle are 49 million years old? The fleas represent greater diversity in the past; that’s devolution. The mudskippers are still doing fine without digits. Salamanders haven’t evolved, either. Why did larvae attack herbivores but not carnivores, if all the animals were sinking into the 5/8/2017 86 tar at the same time? Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 The silliest idea above is the notion that forces on a fin will turn it into a limb with fingers. Why don’t they try that as a controlled experiment in the lab? Put forces on a fish’s fin and watch it grow hands. This is so stupid it takes an evolutionist to believe it. Look how they hide their faith in passive voice verbs: “… unreasonably high bone stresses in early amphibious fish with fins, which would explain why the evolutionary invasion of land by vertebrates was accomplished instead by tetrapods with limbs with digits.” Was accomplished by. My, what an accomplishment! Where did the tetrapods with limbs with digits “emerge” from? As we all know from Darwin’s storybook fantasyland, stuff 5/8/2017 87 happens (9/22/09). Fossil Follies and Mysteries 化石愚蠢和奥秘 None of the conclusions jump out of the data. All of them require interpretation. Unfortunately, due to evolutionary indoctrination from kindergarten to PhD, the only lens provided to these scientists is the Darwinian blood-red monocle that fits over the left eye. It turns everything in nature into a left-leaning diorama red in tooth and claw. Scientists should open the right eye, take off the monocle, and see the world in living color with binocular vision. 5/8/2017 88 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 89 Ancient Text Found in Jerusalem from David’s Time 在耶路撒冷从大卫的时代发现的古文 Inscriptions are rare but valuable artifacts in archaeology. Though short and simple, a fragmentary inscription on a jug sets a record as the oldest ever found in Jerusalem, from the era of David and Solomon or before. Announced by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the inscription consists of about six letters in Canaanite script. Its meaning is unknown. PhysOrg and Live Science reported it, too, mentioning other recent finds from the era. 5/8/2017 90 Ancient Text Found in Jerusalem from David’s Time 在耶路撒冷从大卫的时代发现的古文 The jar fragment with the letters inscribed on it was found outside the southern end of the Temple Mount wall by Eilat Mazar, excavator of the old City of David, who dates it to the 10th or 11th century BC. Since it appears to be written in Canaanite rather than Hebrew script (although others are uncertain that is the case), it could have been written by one of the Jebusites conquered by David when he made Jerusalem his capital. A lot 5/8/2017 91 depends on the date. Ancient Text Found in Jerusalem from David’s Time 在耶路撒冷从大卫的时代发现的古文 Todd Bolen on BiblePlaces Blog cautions that Mazar has been criticized in the past for dating artifacts from the time of David. The basis for her dating of this inscription has not yet been published. Other archaeologists besides Mazar are involved in the analysis of the fragment, though, and various experts are beginning to weigh in on the possible meaning of the inscription. George Athos believes its placement on a large storage jar suggests it was a royal jar, not one used by commoners.92 5/8/2017 Ancient Text Found in Jerusalem from David’s Time 在耶路撒冷从大卫的时代发现的古文 Every inscription from the Holy Land is particularly valuable, so this is certainly a welcome addition to the collection, especially if it sets a record as the oldest found in Jerusalem. The text appears to be too ambiguous to shed much light on the time, being brief and difficult to decipher. It will have to be considered in the context of other artifacts. Its provenance also needs to be described in detail, and the date narrowed down, before it can be relied upon. At the very least, it shows that someone had the expertise and reason to inscribe text on a large storage jar before firing it, whether from the early monarchy of David and Solomon, or prior to the conquest of Jerusalem by a Canaanite official. That suggests advanced urban life existed, not just scattered nomadic groups run by local chieftans, as some 5/8/2017 93 minimalist schools believe. Ancient Text Found in Jerusalem from David’s Time 在耶路撒冷从大卫的时代发现的古文 Exciting as these discoveries are, we should not let them diminish the importance of the most valuable inscription of all, the Hebrew Old Testament. That inscription is lavish in its information content. It was not inscribed on pottery, but rather passed on from generation to generation with the utmost of care by specially trained scribes who believed it to be the word of God. Since the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, including the complete Isaiah scroll, we know that the Messianic prophesies therein, written down well before the time of Christ yet so accurately fulfilled by Him, testify to its supernatural origin. No other inscription comes close. 5/8/2017 94 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 95 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 The wonder of muscle inspires both awe at its design and opportunities for evolutionary storytelling. Fifty years of assumptions about how muscle fibers work is being set aside, reported PhysOrg, with the discovery that its components don’t just slide in one axis, but bulge out in 3-D. The article, titled “Biceps bulge, calves curve, 50-year-old assumptions muscled aside,” states: 5/8/2017 96 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 The basics of how a muscle generates power remain the same: Filaments of myosin tugging on filaments of actin shorten, or contract, the muscle – but the power doesn’t just come from what’s happening straight up and down the length of the muscle, as has been assumed for 50 years. Instead, University of Washington-led research shows that as muscles bulge, the filaments are drawn apart from each other, the myosin tugs at sharper angles over greater distances, and it’s that action that deserves credit for half the change in muscle force scientists have been 5/8/2017 97 measuring. Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 It makes sense; if fibers stretched in only one direction, why would biceps bulge outward? The fact that muscle fibers don’t simply slide past each other but buckle, generating forces in multiple dimensions, adds to the wonder of its design. 5/8/2017 98 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Fish Muscle Evolution Humans are not the only animals with muscle, of course; fish use muscles, too. Muscle imprints from extinct fossil fish provided a backdrop for evolutionists from Australia to manufacture “A Muscular Perspective on Vertebrate Evolution,” Shigeru Kuratani wrote in Science about their paper in the same issue, “Fossil Musculature of the Most Primitive Jawed Vertebrates.” The amazing design of muscle was less important to these evolutionists than whether or not certain fossils can be placed into an ancestral sequence. The puzzle of how soft muscle imprints could be preserved for 400 million years was less important to them than divining phylogenetic trees from the data. 5/8/2017 99 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Although they assumed the evolution of fish, the paper’s authors actually had little to say about evolution. “Their evolutionary importance hinges on whether eubrachythoracid musculature is specialized or primitive relative to that of sharks” is one example of a reserved statement; another, “Hypothetical reconstructions are not able to recover the full complexity of this musculature, either on the basis of biomechanical analysis or phylogenetic bracketing, and are thus liable to give a false picture of muscular evolution at the origin of gnathostomes.” In the end, they could only hope that future studies of “exceptionally preserved fossils will continue to provide essential data for the reconstruction of vertebrate soft anatomy, particularly 5/8/2017 100 in groups with no close living relatives.” Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Kuratani, though, couldn’t get enough evolution into his Perspective article. In every case, though, he merely assumed evolution, without showing how the fossil actually helps establish a sequential list of lucky mutations leading to muscular fish: On page 160 this issue, Trinajstic et al. systematically describe the muscle anatomy of three fossil animals from the earliest jawed vertebrate group, the placoderms, which evolved soon after the acquisition of the 5/8/2017 101 jaw. Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Knowledge of the morphology of these earliest jawed vertebrates, especially with respect to soft tissues such as muscles, is necessary for understanding how vertebrates evolved. How vertebrates evolved: This hypothetical scenario of neck and cucullaris muscle evolution builds on the data presented by Trinajstic et al. and uses a simplified vertebrate phylogeny. The primitive shoulder girdle in placoderms, as suggested by Trinajstic et al., may be an intermediate state of neck evolution that simultaneously reveals the beginnings of a jawed 102 5/8/2017 vertebrate novelty, the cucullaris. Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 At one point, though, Kuratani was stumped. A complex feature was found in the primitive ancestor. His response? He just swept aside the concern, and proceeded on with his “hypothetical scenario” – The presence of the transverse abdominal muscles in placoderms is another mysterious finding of Trinajstic et al., because this muscle has been thought to be present only in tetrapods. Phylogenetic importance or homology aside, this muscle is potentially similar to a component of the trunk muscle in tetrapods, the abaxial muscle, which also develops as the result of myoblast migration and interactions between myoblasts and the embryonic mesenchymal environment of the lateral body wall. 5/8/2017 103 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 If the muscle patterns reported by Trinajstic et al. are found to reflect the general morphology of the placoderms, it would suggest that the developmental bases for the muscle anatomy of modern jawed vertebrates were present, in primitive form, around the time of the appearance of the functional jaw. This would stimulate even greater curiosity about the anatomy of more ancient stem gnathostomes such as ostracoderms, because the beginning of the jawed vertebrate body plan is likely to be buried in the anatomy of these animals. 5/8/2017 104 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Can “phylogenetic importance or homology” be cast aside so whimsically by an evolutionist? Wouldn’t casting aside those matters undermine evolution itself? This exposè has been brought to you by CreationEvolution Headlines, just the latest in its 12-year arsenal of similar examples of handwaving and pseudoscientific fabling about evolution in major scientific journals. They can’t hide their dumbfloundering confabulations any more. We are showing them to the world. Flex your muscle and take up the fight to restore the truth of design to science, which these DODO dogmatists twist into mythoids about evillusion. (For definitions of these terms, see our Darwin Dictionary.) 5/8/2017 105 Muscle Power Is Designed, Not Evolutionary 肌肉力量是设计,而不是进化 Enjoy your muscles today. It’s uncanny how we can order muscles to do things. Our general orders, like orders from a general, set the armies of actin and myosin molecules in motion in ways we can’t begin to fathom from our command perspective. Your muscles deserve good treatment. Feed them well and give them some good healthy work to do every day, then enjoy how good they can make you look. Finish it with sincere thanks to your Creator who granted 5/8/2017 106 us these wonderful systems. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 107 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 The race continues between scientists desperately seeking a rationale for harvesting human embryos and those who say, having adult stem cells and iPS cells available, they are unnecessary – and their use is unethical. Now ear this (ES): Using mouse embryonic stem cells (ES), researchers at Indiana University have grown inner ear hair cells complete with hair bundles, Science Daily reported. The cells were grown in a culture that allowed them to hang freely instead of growing on a flat surface as in previous attempts. It was not clear from the article whether embryonic stem cells, as opposed to iPS or adult stem 5/8/2017 108 cells, were required for the success. Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Liver vs die-er (iPS): A different organ was grown with induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) – a tiny liver grown in a mouse embryo with iPS cells from a human. Human livers are in high demand for transplants; many die before they become available. A way to regenerate them would be a huge help. Nature News described the process: 5/8/2017 109 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 The researchers make the liver buds from three types of human cells. First, they coax induced pluripotent stem cells into a cell type that expresses liver genes. Then they add endothelial cells (which line blood vessels) from umbilical cord blood, and mesenchymal stem cells, which can make bone, cartilage and fat. These cell types also come together as the liver begins to form in the developing embryo. 5/8/2017 110 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 The scientists got the cells to “talk to each other and make the organ.” Live Science added, “The human ‘liver buds’ grew blood vessels and produced proteins such as albumin that are specific to humans.” The article also said that when transplanted into a dying mouse, the new liver allowed it to live longer. Treatments for humans with this technique will probably take years, but in the meantime, the researchers are getting good results trying to grow a pancreas, too. The 5/8/2017 111 original paper is in Nature. Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Whoops; long-held assumption was wrong (ES): Science Daily published a short article about how a long-held assumption about embryonic stem cell differentiation was wrong. A certain transcription factor Nanog is not expressed only in one allele, as was previously believed, but in both. Significance? “it raises the question for other genes. For some genes, there might be similar issues.” 5/8/2017 112 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Safer alternative (iPS): A better way to reprogram adult cells into iPS cells was reported on PhysOrg. By developing “designer transcription factors,” researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have found ways to make the reprogramming process more efficient, and safer, too. Science Daily described another initiative at the University of Toronto that likened their work to reverse-engineering gourmet dinners by finding out that all the chefs used a device called a 5/8/2017 113 measuring cup. Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Epigenetics of muscle stem cells (AS): Keeping the pool of stem cells quiescent in muscles is important, but little is known about how they are maintained, and how they change with aging. In Current Biology, researchers at Stanford found “direct evidence that, with age, epigenetic changes accumulate and may lead to a functional decline in quiescent stem cells” in mouse muscle. 5/8/2017 114 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Maintenance crew (ES): Also in Current Biology, a team of European and Japanese researchers identified a couple of factors, an inhibitor and a cytokine, that appear to be involved in maintaining embryonic stem cells in a totipotent state by shielding them from other differentiating factors. Their research was done with mice. 5/8/2017 115 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 The next step down the slippery slope: The controversy over geneticallymodified (GM) foods pales in comparison to what’s coming, the BBC News reported. It’s synthetic biology – the creation of new living organisms, designer creatures with invented genes, not just chimeras of animals with mixtures of existing genes from different organisms. 5/8/2017 116 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 For those pioneering this new field, the science offers a whole realm of exhilarating possibilities — dreaming up and building new organisms that will perform exactly what’s ordered. It is a vision for taking control of nature.… Right from the start of each project, the ethical and environmental implications are considered — the aim being to head off the kind of reactions that GM produced. Visions of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” come to mind. David Shukman, science editor for the BBC, said that representatives from the UK, US and China are meeting to develop “codes of conduct” for this type of research. They’re worried about public reaction. 5/8/2017 117 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 Does anyone see any need for ES cells, now that iPS and AS (adult stem cells) seem to have all the capabilities without the ethical problems? Let them learn what they need with mouse embryos. It’s hard to understand why some researchers still want access to human embryos. 5/8/2017 118 Stem Cell Wars Continue 继续干细胞战争 As for synthetic biology, the ethics of that will depend on (1) whether human brain cells are being planted in animals, and (2) whether experimentation poses health risks, such as an out-of-control organism that reproduces with no predators to stop it. Creating a designer bacterium that can detect cystic fibrosis or cancer is a good goal almost no one would object to, but there are boundaries that must be maintained. Good intentions notwithstanding, scientists are on the verge of letting Frankensteins loose on the world. They need the oversight of an informed, 5/8/2017 119 moral, concerned public. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 120 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Evolution is slow and gradual, except when it is very fast. It changes everything, except when it keeps them the same. Recent reports treat evolution as a catchall idea that explains any phenomenon, even opposite things. Is such a notion really informative? 5/8/2017 121 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Glue can hold unrelated things together, things that would normally not fit well or assimilate on their own. The word “evolution” is often used to “glue” disparate observations into a theoretical construct, but if a nonsense word were substituted to explain the diversity of life, would we consider it scientific theory? Yet that is how evolution is treated in many reports, as a magic word that explains everything. Few scientists and reporters make the effort to identify mutations and selection processes that might specifically relate to the origin of a complex trait. Instead, they often just say “it evolved” – even if new observations contradict previous evolutionary 5/8/2017 122 assumptions. Here are some recent examples. Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 “New Insight Into the Human Genome Through the Lens of Evolution” – that’s a headline on Science Daily, promising insight by looking through a lens (perhaps a crystal ball). The first sentence, though, should be surprising to Darwinists: “By comparing the human genome to the genomes of 34 other mammals, Australian scientists have described an unexpectedly high proportion of functional elements conserved through evolution.” This article also contributed more to the demise of the “junk DNA” error by showing more function for non-protein-coding regions. It’s almost like the authors looked through the lens of evolution and saw design. 5/8/2017 123 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Beetle sheen: In Science Magazine, Elizabeth Pennisi wrote in an article categorized under “Evolution” about photonic crystals on weevil exoskeletons that give the little bugs exquisite, iridescent colors. She tried to show a progression from simple to complex over time, and adaptation to environment, but was unable to describe the geometric patterns in the chitin as products of natural selection acting on DNA. Instead, she proposed the idea that the patterns selfassemble. Surprisingly, the article ended with a push for biomimetics, a project requiring intelligent design. It’s not clear what evolution had to do with any of it. 5/8/2017 124 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 The evolution is quicker than the eye: Science Daily reported that a novel disease in songbirds “Demonstrates Evolution in the Blink of an Eye.” What evolved was not the birds, but the extent and virulence of a non-fatal, flu-like disease afflicting some songbirds. Everything happened in a few years. Unlikely for a law of nature, evolutionary theory produced opposite outcomes: “In evolutionary terms, some strains of the bacteria were better adapted to spreading across the continent, while others were more suited to becoming established in one spot.” The results were also “contrary to expectations,” the article noted. Rapid variation in diseases (like human flu) is well known, yet flu is still flu. 5/8/2017 125 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Peppered Mice: In another “Evolution” article in the same issue of Science Magazine, Pennisi wrote, “Field Test Shows Selection Works in Mysterious Ways.” She highlighted a study by Rowan Barrett, winner of the Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution, whom she described as a daring, persistent field biologist willing to tackle largescale evolutionary questions. His latest success: confirming that light color imparts protection on mice living in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. It’s not a straightforward confirmation, though; “there are other things that played a role in adaptation,” complicating a simple test of selection. Her last two paragraphs do 5/8/2017 not look particularly helpful for Darwinist chutzpah: 126 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 But many genes not related to pigment also changed over the course of the experiment. The analysis revealed “a potentially large number of genetic regions responding to selection,” Barrett reported. He doesn’t know what traits those changes affect, but he’s investigating each one— and suspects some have nothing to do with surviving predation. They might make a mouse healthier overall, or better able to find food, for example. “A lot of what we know about selection is very crude,” Schluter says. “When we start to do experiments we are surprised to find stuff happening that we didn’t anticipate.” 5/8/2017 127 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Evolution’s Toolkit: Relying heavily on “could” and “might” words, an article on Science Daily announced, “Development of Hands and Feet May Help Unlock Evolution’s Toolkit.” A cute picture of a human hand holding a monkey’s fingers adorns the article. But right off the bat, the article discussed enormous complexity, with no evolutionary solutions to explain it: Thousands of sequences that control genes are active in the developing human limb and may have driven the evolution of the human hand and foot, a comparative genomics study led by Yale School of Medicine researchers has found. 5/8/2017 128 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 The research, published online July 3 in the journal Cell, does not pinpoint the exact genetic mechanisms that control development of human limbs, but instead provides scientists with the first genome-wide view of candidates to investigate. The article continued to talk about “changes in genetic sequences that may have occurred during human evolution.” The scientists are assuming evolution occurred and fitting the data to that assumption. It’s all hope, not fulfillment: 5/8/2017 129 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 “It has been difficult to understand how human traits evolved, because we didn’t have any idea where the important genetic changes might be,” Noonan said. “Now we do, and we have the experimental tools to determine what biological effects these changes may have. Our study also provides a roadmap for understanding other humanspecific traits that arise during development, such as increased brain size and complexity.” 5/8/2017 130 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Development, however, is not evolution. Even creationists accept the role of genes in development, calling it evidence of intelligent design in a programmed system executing specified information encoded in DNA. The taxpayer-supported NIH and NSF are helping fund this effort to find how human traits might have evolved. 5/8/2017 131 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Evolutionary speedsters: Science Daily announced triumphantly that sturgeon fish are not “living fossils”, but rather “evolutionary speedsters.” Contrary to claims sturgeon have remained the same for millions of years, this article calls them “one of the fastestevolving fish on the planet.” On what basis? Well, body size, primarily. Evolutionists at the University of Michigan based their conclusion from a model that assumes sturgeon evolved, and then calculates, based on their fossil appearance, how quickly they evolved. No new innovative features or organs were described; just body size. It’s no wonder that evolutionary assumptions support evolutionary conclusions: “We’re basically validating a lot of ideas that have been out there since Darwin, but which had never been tested at this scale due to lack of data and the limits of existing technologies.” Whether or not sturgeon are living fossils, there are many others that show no evolution, sometimes since their first appearance in the Cambrian explosion (see new book Darwin’s Doubt or the Illustra documentary film Darwin’s Dilemma). 5/8/2017 132 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Fast and furious evolution: Evolution is relentless, according to a new book by John N. Thompson (UC Santa Cruz), Relentless Evolution. Reviewer Jordi Bascompte in Science Magazine calls it “fast and endless.” Reason: “adaptive evolution often leads to complex networks of interacting species that in turn spur additional selective pressures.” But then Bascompte points to the work of Peter and Rosemary Grant on Darwin’s finches that showed a reversal of beak adaptations when the weather changed. To him, this helps them understand evolution, because the idea that “adaptive evolution is so pervasive and fast relies on the fact that the direction of evolution may change markedly through time and space” – indeed, forward then backward again. No examples of true innovation involving gain of genetic information were mentioned. 5/8/2017 133 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Dating game: A dispute arose in Nature about whether scientists found imprints of ovarian follicles in three fossil birds in China in a previous evolutionary paper. The exquisite preservation of many fossils in the Jehol strata allows for investigation of fine details, but two scientists, who said it would represent an “extraordinary case of soft tissue preservation” if true, found it hard to believe. They also said the data disagreed with evolutionary expectations, saying, “the morphology of the fossil structures does not agree with the ovulation mode of coelurosaurs.” Zheng et al. stood by their claim, stating, “simply because something is unlikely to preserve does not mean that it will not.” 5/8/2017 134 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Friendly natural selection: “Monkeys’ winter death toll shows true value of friendship in natural selection,” PhysOrg said with an ironic headline for a theory built on selfishness. Claiming to report the “first known scientific study to establish a correlation between sociality (i.e. the number of social relationships an animal holds within its group) and survival of extreme ecological conditions,” the article “supports the view that factors which contribute to establishing and maintaining social relationships are favoured by natural selection.” But what evolved? The subjects remained the same species before and after the study. Actually, the evolutionists merely constructed a model of what monkeys would be expected to survive the winter: the friendly ones. 5/8/2017 135 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Inclusive fitness again: In Current Biology, Stuart A. West and Andy Gardner defended the concept of inclusive fitness, a version of natural selection that tries to explain how groups can benefit from the selection on individuals. This idea is not accepted by all Darwinists. “The critiques of inclusive fitness theory have provided neither an equally valid answer to the question of what organisms should appear designed to maximise, nor an alternative process to unite the interest of genes,” they said, describing in their paper the different ways of carving up natural selection. “Consequently, inclusive fitness remains the most general theory for explaining adaptation.” The debate over the target of selection will undoubtedly continue. 5/8/2017 136 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Models vs reality: PNAS posted another evolutionary theory promising to explain “macroevolutionary dynamics.” A look at the abstract, though, shows them assuming evolution in the model, a case of circular reasoning. “The model’s predictions for the appearance times (the time of the first existing species) of the taxonomic groups also approximately match estimates based on molecular inference and fossil records,” it says, failing to point out that molecular inference and dates in the fossil record also assume evolution. It shouldn’t be surprising that a model that assumes macroevolution comes out supporting macroevolution. It’s not clear if they included the Cambrian explosion in their model. 5/8/2017 137 Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 We could go on and on. Stories like this pile up and sometimes we just have to clear the deck. Here you see example after example of rhetorical tricks, assumptions masquerading as evidence, pre-ordained conclusions, anomalies squeezed into those pre-ordained conclusions, and admissions that Darwinian theory has never been adequately tested, or is all wrong and another version of selection needs to be considered. They promise “insight” but deliver darkness. Their insight is phantom figures on the cave wall, composed of just-so stories, glittering generalities and visions of the approving smile of the Bearded Buddha. We hope the amount of detail we present documents those allegations. Stop taking them so seriously. Once you realize this is divination, storytelling, 5/8/2017 138 mythmaking, the gig is up. Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Explaining things by Darwinian evolution is like trying to play basketball with square balls, because round balls have been ruled illegal. That’s the rule of methodological naturalism: design explanations are excluded. Even when things look designed, they can’t say it is designed. Evolutionists play within the bounds of an impossible game, trying to dribble a square ball that bounces at random, and fit it through a round hoop by shooting aimlessly. Actually, they kind of like the challenge, as long as they get paid for it. Novices to the game think nothing of it, because it’s the only game they’ve ever learned. They’ve never been allowed to see the beauty of a pro game using 5/8/2017 139 round balls. Evolution As Stretchy Glue 作为伸缩胶的进化 Evolution is the biggest scam foisted on mankind. Evidence for design fills the world and the universe, but modern day shamans of evolution wearing white lab coats promote the notion that it only looks designed for a purpose. The Stuff Happens Law (equivalent to Sheer Dumb Luck) can explain it all, the guiding assumption that there is no guide, the vision that there is only blindness, the purpose to propose only purposelessness, the aim to call every vector aimless. When will people come to their senses? When will this cult of Darwin collapse? How long before people shake their heads in disbelief that so many otherwise intelligent humans fell for this colossal concoction built out of vaporware, futureware and ideology posing as science? Be one of the clear thinkers outside the fogma bank, then help rescue others trapped in it. (Definitions of unfamiliar terms available in our Darwin 140 5/8/2017 Dictionary.) Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 141 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 What could identify intelligent design more than the discovery of “quality control”? Your cells employ QC every day. In “How Quality Control Works in Our Cells,” Science Daily described “A cellular control mechanism [that] prevents the production of defective proteins in our cells.” Many genetic diseases are associated with the breakdown of quality control mechanisms, a vital and necessary function for all life, as it is in artificial systems: 5/8/2017 142 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 A person has hundreds of thousands of different proteins that are constantly being produced and degraded. Like in any factory where raw materials are processed, there are various control mechanisms in the cell that check the quality of the products, namely the proteins. The system discussed in the article is just one of these mechanisms. It’s called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay, or NMD. “For the NMD quality control mechanism to be triggered, a large number of factors have to coincide with the defective mRNA,” researchers at the University of Bern 5/8/2017 143 found. You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 The way it works is by tagging a newly-transcribed messenger RNA (mRNA) with an “assume bad” protein tag, called UPF1 (up-frameshift 1). This tag is placed on all mRNAs as a default indicator it needs to prove itself worthy before proceeding. On viable mRNAs, it is removed by the ribosome (the translating factory), but on defective ones, it remains. It is recognized by the mRNA degrading machinery, which cuts it up for recycling. “The protein UPF1 bound to the mRNA acts as an armed trap that only has to be triggered when needed to degrade the 5/8/2017 144 defective mRNA.” You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 There’s more. “NMD also ensures that many mutations in our genes do not cause any disease symptoms — as long as the second copy of the gene affected is still intact and thus a correct version of the body plan is available,” the article explained. In multicellular organisms, NMD can miss its time limit to act on defective mRNAs. This could lead to accumulation of bad mRNAs in the cell. Fortunately, there’s another safety step: 5/8/2017 145 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 However, the doctoral student was able to demonstrate that NMD also recognises older, defective mRNAs as well as newly produced ones, which improves the efficiency of the quality control. “This result also indicates that the basic mechanism of NMD in single-cell and multicellular organisms is preserved and already developed early on in the course of evolution,” says Rufener. Speaking of evolution, the research team spoke of evolution as the creator of this efficient quality control system: “To prevent faulty proteins from being produced due to these corrupted mRNAs our cells developed the NMD control mechanism in the course of evolution, which recognises defective mRNAs and 5/8/2017 146 degrades them efficiently.” You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 More QC Systems Transporter, Open Sesame: Another part of the cell, the mitochondrion, uses electricity to conduct proteins across the inner membrane. A voltage-gated channel called TIM23 apparently has voltage sensors, reported Science Daily, and uses its voltage gradient to move its inner parts around, letting the protein cargo pass through. The nature of the voltage sensors is still unknown. 5/8/2017 147 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 A turnstile for protons: protons (H+) and calcium ions (Ca2+) are very small things, but gates in the cell’s outer membrane, made just for them, are able to let them in while keeping other small ions out. A paper in Science Magazine describes how electrical contacts in the channel guide the molecules through the passageway single file, while blocking other small ions. An article on PhysOrg described the importance of ion channels to the cell: 5/8/2017 148 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 A team of researchers at Columbia Engineering has used miniaturized electronics to measure the activity of individual ion-channel proteins with temporal resolution as fine as one microsecond, producing the fastest recordings of single ion channels ever performed. Ion channels are biomolecules that allow charged atoms to flow in and out of cells, and they are an important work-horse in cell signaling, sensing, and energetics. They are also being explored for nanopore sequencing applications. As the “transistors” of living systems, they are the target of many drugs, and the ability to perform such fast measurements of these proteins will 5/8/2017 149 lead to new understanding of their functions. You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 Starvation survival: A process called autophagy allows a cell to “eat” its own innards in order to survive starvation conditions. Medical Xpress says there are no less than 18 proteins dedicated to this process. Constant cleanup: Even garbage collection is part of the cell’s quality control. Without automatic janitorial services, cells could accumulate waste and even poisons. Live Science described at least three mechanisms for keeping the cell clean: the proteasome enzyme, which degrades proteins tagged for trash, the lysosome organelle, a kind of “cellular stomach” containing enzymes that can digest unwanted material (including viruses), and exocytosis, a system that boots junk outside through the cell membrane. Many diseases are linked to failure of these 5/8/2017 150 systems. You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 Darwin knew nothing about these things. If such information had been accessible to the scientists at Oxford and Cambridge in the 1850s, it’s likely Darwin’s theory would have been laughed out of town. Darwin himself would probably have been so ashamed to suggest it, he probably would have shredded his manuscripts on his own to avoid a legacy of embarrassment. Intelligent design would have been the leading movement of Victorian Britain, as well as on the Continent, and around the world, for the last 155 years, with no sign of it slowing down. 5/8/2017 151 You’ve Got Quality Control 你已经得到了质量控制 That’s why it’s so disgusting to see reporters saying stupid things like, “our cells developed the NMD control mechanism in the course of evolution.” Good grief; cells don’t develop anything. They use the software that an intelligent designer developed and put into them. And if “basic mechanism of NMD in single-cell and multicellular organisms is preserved and already developed early on in the course of evolution,” that’s not the course of evolution! That’s the abrupt appearance of design, without which the cell wouldn’t even be there. We must cure these people of their dumbfloundering confability, so that they don’t churn out material with a ridiculously high perhapsimaybecouldness index. (See Darwin Dictionary for definitions of unfamiliar terms.) Let the light 5/8/2017 152 of design shine in. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 153 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) One would think astronomers would not be stumped in 2013 by common objects like the moon, meteors and stars. But they are. It’s driving them mad. Moon madness: The lunacy begins with Earth’s moon. Here is a body man has walked on, and he still doesn’t understand it. National Geographic discussed “The moon’s mystery,” dispensing with all three of the most popular origin theories that were demolished by the Apollo program. It also dispensed with the currently-leading theory of a glancing blow collision, showing that Apollo samples discredit the idea of another mass with different composition leaving no trace. Variations of the model all have their 5/8/2017 154 weaknesses, so the answer must be in the futureware: Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) “The barn door is wide open, and now we have lots of ideas,” Asphaug said. “There probably will be another ‘aha’ moment in five years or so.” But for now, the moon holds on to its mystery. Natural History Magazine (5/13 issue, “Blue Moon” p. 7) corroborated the crisis, saying that the discovery that Earth and Moon share a similar composition works against the popular impact hypothesis: “Overall, the findings throw some big wrinkles into widely accepted theories of how wet the primordial Earth might have been, as well as just how the Moon was born.” 5/8/2017 155 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) Speaking of the moon, Space.com posted a handy guide to Earth’s moon, staying pretty much out of origin theories, only mentioning the impact model in one sentence without listing the problems. Most of the article focuses on facts about the lunar orbit and the moon’s composition. 5/8/2017 156 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) Chondrule madness: Chondrules are curious molten inclusions inside some meteorites that have defied explanation for decades. “Blobs called chondrules in the fabric of rocks from space have long baffled scientists,” Richard A. Kerr wrote in Science Magazine. “A new idea may shed light on their origins, but some experts have given up hope.” He describes the pessimism at a recent conference: How would you like your decades of research on a field’s central problem to be summed up by the statement that “these objects remain as enigmatic as ever”? That was part of the title of a session on the formation of chondrules at the 75th annual Meteoritical 5/8/2017 157 Society meeting last year. Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) For half a century, meteoriticists—scientists who study meteorites—have been trying to understand the origin of chondrules: once-molten, millimeter-size blobs of rock that a 19th century scientist called “drops of fiery rain.” Chondrules riddle 85% of the rocks that fall to Earth from the asteroid belt, so meteoriticists are deeply intrigued. And scientists have long presumed that the recipe for making the four rocky planets, including Earth, consisted largely or entirely of chondritic rock. They would like to know how their main ingredient came to be. Yet only two of last year’s 14 talks in that chondrule formation session directly addressed the topic, and both of them described a decades-old idea that has made little headway: chondrules splashing off colliding 5/8/2017 158 planetesimals. Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) There is no “unifying paradigm,” and “the field of possible formation mechanisms has hardly been narrowed in decades.” John Wood gave it up years ago and took up oil painting. His student lamented, “However [chondrules] formed, they formed beyond our experience. How do you ever prove it?” The only new idea sounds like a hard sell: But there may be reason for hope. A collaboration of astrophysicists and a meteoriticist has just floated a new mechanism: humongous “short circuits” in the still-forming solar system. All it has to do is run the gantlet of skeptical meteoriticists and astrophysicists. 5/8/2017 159 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) Alan Boss puts this idea on “the bottom of the list.” Others are similarly skeptical. No model has worked. Nobody was there to see what happened. One optimist placed his faith in futureware: “Sooner or later, someone’s going to come up with a mechanism that solves it all.” 5/8/2017 160 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) Star madness: One would think that stars, the most plentiful objects astronomers can see, would be understood by now. In “How did the universe get its stars? An astronomical puzzle,” Space.com shared the dirty secret that most star formation theories rely on previous generations of stars; they have no idea how the first generation of stars formed. It’s a controversial question, and it’s an important one, an astronomer remarked. Without original stars, you have no heavy elements, which theory says formed in stellar interiors. Once again, the solution was sloughed off to some hopeful day in the future. 5/8/2017 161 Mystery Moon (and Meteorites, and Stars) 月球之谜(陨石,和星星) We just thought you should know that textbooks bluff about these matters. People need to know how real scientists feel. They’re frustrated, some are worn out, some are ready to leave and take up oil painting. At least that involves intelligent design. Say, if the “barn door is wide open,” why not let the Biblical creationists in? They have an answer: the universe was created on Day One, and the stars and moon on Day Four. That’s they ‘aha’ moment they need, if they just 5/8/2017 162 weren’t so closed minded to intelligent causes. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 163 Longevity of DNA Estimated 预计DNA的长寿 How long can DNA survive in a fossil? Claims of ancient DNA can be compared with a new estimate based on a crime scene. A re-investigation of the 1960’s Boston Strangler case has given researchers a chance to study the condition of the perpetrator after 50 years in the grave, Rachael Rettner of Live Science reported. Because DNA degrades over time, it has a “half-life” even under ideal conditions of keeping it frozen. From Slate Magazine’s article about Richard III’s remains, 5/8/2017 164 Rettner writes, Longevity of DNA Estimated 预计DNA的长寿 Last year, researchers estimated that the half-life of DNA — the point at which half the bonds in a DNA molecule backbone would be broken — is 521 years. That means that, under ideal conditions, DNA would last about 6.8 million years, after which all the bonds would be broken. But DNA would not be readable after about 1.5 million years, the researchers said. According to Slate, the DNA of Egyptian mummies has degraded. Amber is also not a good preserver of DNA. You can’t tell by outward appearance, the article said. DNA’s “shelf life” is fairly low: 5/8/2017 165 Longevity of DNA Estimated 预计DNA的长寿 The decay rate of DNA depends on the conditions of its storage and packaging. Above all, it depends on whether the DNA is exposed to heat, water, sunlight, and oxygen. If a body is left out in the sun and rain, its DNA will be useful for testing for only a few weeks. If it’s buried a few feet below the ground, the DNA will last about 1,000 to 10,000 years. If it’s frozen in Antarctic ice, it could last a few hundred thousand years. For best results, samples should be dried, vacuum-packed, and frozen at about –80 degrees Celsius. Even then, ambient radiation is likely to render DNA unrecognizable before it celebrates its millionth birthday. 5/8/2017 166 Longevity of DNA Estimated 预计DNA的长寿 Both articles claimed the oldest DNA found so far, in permafrost, is 450,000 to 800,000 years old. Neanderthal DNA said to be 100,000 years old has been sequenced by paleoanthropologists, but “When it comes to modern humans, the oldest DNA recovered so far has been only about 5,000 to 7,000 years old,” the Slate article said. 5/8/2017 167 Longevity of DNA Estimated 预计DNA的长寿 Back in 2004, the upper limit was stated to be 400,000 years (1/6/04, see also 9/4/06), but then last month (6/17/13), horse DNA in permafrost said to be 700,000 years old was found. These claims should be remembered if ancient DNA older than that is confirmed in future finds. Biblical creationists will deny the ancient ages, of course, saying that they are based on evolutionary assumptions. But if intact DNA is found in a dinosaur or other fossil older than the upper limit they just stated, it could have the effect of falsifying the evolutionary timescale. Since evolutionists are such staunch believers, though, most likely the reaction will be, “Well, what do you know; DNA can survive for 65 million years.” That’s what they have already done with certain proteins and soft tissues that should have been long gone. The rest of us should remember what they said beforehand about DNA’s upper limit age, and not let them get away with it. 5/8/2017 168 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 169 Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 Scientific papers do not emerge from pure realms of wisdom and knowledge. They are written by people, who can be illogical sometimes. One has to be pretty smart and well-educated to get into the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The criteria for getting published in the Proceedings of the NAS are stringent. Somehow, though, the criteria for evidential rigor and sound logic are relaxed when the subject is evolution. Here’s what a recent paper by evolutionists primarily from China said in PNAS about “Adaptive evolution of energy 5/8/2017 170 metabolism genes and the origin of flight in bats” Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 Bat flight poses intriguing questions about how flight independently developed in mammals. Flight is among the most energy-consuming activities. Thus, we deduced that changes in energy metabolism must be a primary factor in the origin of flight in bats. The respiratory chain of the mitochondrial produces 95% of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) needed for locomotion. Because the respiratory chain has a dual genetic foundation, with genes encoded by both the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes, we examined both genomes to gain insights into the evolution of flight within mammals. 5/8/2017 171 Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 Evidence for positive selection was detected in 23.08% of the mitochondrial-encoded and 4.90% of nuclear-encoded oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) genes, but in only 2.25% of the nuclear-encoded nonrespiratory genes that function in mitochondria or 1.005% of other nuclear genes in bats. To address the caveat that the two available bat genomes are of only draft quality, we resequenced 77 OXPHOS genes from four species of bats. The analysis of the resequenced gene data are in agreement with our conclusion that a significantly higher proportion of genes involved in energy metabolism, compared with background genes, show evidence of adaptive evolution specific on the common ancestral bat lineage. Both mitochondrial and nuclearencoded OXPHOS genes display evidence of adaptive evolution along the common ancestral branch of bats, supporting our hypothesis that genes involved in energy metabolism were targets of natural selection and allowed adaptation to the huge change in energy demand that were required during the origin of 5/8/2017 172 flight. Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 These evolutionists must surely know that the earliest fossil bat is already 100% bat (2/16/08, 4/20/06, 1/28/05). That empirical problem aside, the authors of this paper assume that the presence of “genes involved in energy metabolism” was sufficient to create flying mammals. The highperformance genes for ATP production (involving the exquisite molecular machine, ATP synthase) somehow made a ground-based rodent take off into the air, with all the systems involved for powered flight. Why? Because natural selection “allowed” it. Since flight “required” a huge change in energy demand, once the genes arrived (somehow), the 5/8/2017 173 “origin of flight” resulted. Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 We’re holding up this example of patho-logical inebriation (i.e., drunken stupor) for the world to see that scientists can say really dumb things when under the influence of Darwine. Don’t let their jargon fool you. This is blubbering foolishness masquerading as scholarship. 5/8/2017 174 Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 Let’s apply this theory to flying dogs. Some dogs are high-strung, and some are calm. The highstrung dogs meet the stringent requirements for flight, don’t they? Tell your dog you “allow” him or her to fly, and watch natural selection bring “the origin of flight” to pass. 5/8/2017 175 Batty Illogic Published in Evolutionary Paper 发布不合逻辑进化文章 Some horses are high-strung, too. Maybe we could call this the Pegasus Theory of Evolution. If energy requirements being met is all that’s necessary for horses to fly, then evolutionists should expect to find flying horses in the fossil record. Maybe unicorns, too. 5/8/2017 176 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 177 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? The idea that honeycombs in beehives selfassemble is as old as Darwin. A new study claims to reinforce the idea, yet honeybees are not just bystanders in the process. Honeycombs have long been admired as examples of functional design in nature. The hexagonal packing is the most efficient method of maximizing storage area while minimizing building materials. Is this an example of design in nature, or natural laws at work? Maybe that’s a false dichotomy. 5/8/2017 178 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? Nature News announced the self-assembly theme in an article entitled, “How honeycombs can build themselves.” Writer Philip Ball recounts how Darwin thought of self-assembly: “The idea that the bees might first make circular cells, which become hexagonal subsequently, was proposed by Charles Darwin,” he writes, “But he was unable to find convincing evidence of it.” That evidence has supposedly been forthcoming in a new study by an engineer in the UK: 5/8/2017 179 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? Engineer Bhushan Karihaloo at the University of Cardiff, UK, and his co-workers say that bees simply make cells that are circular in cross section and are packed together like a layer of bubbles. According to their research, which appears in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, the wax, softened by the heat of the bees’ bodies, then gets pulled into hexagonal cells by surface tension at the junctions where three walls meet. 5/8/2017 180 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? This finding feeds into a longstanding debate about whether the honeycomb is an example of exquisite biological engineering or blind physics. Further reading, however, shows that the bees are not mere bystanders, even if they employ the natural laws of “blind physics” — 5/8/2017 181 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? It might seem like there is not much left for the bees to do once they’ve made the circular cells. But they do seem to be expert builders. They can, for example, use their head as a plumb-line to measure the vertical, tilt the axis of the cells very slightly up from the horizontal to prevent the honey from flowing out, and measure cell wall thicknesses with extreme precision. Might they not, then, continue to play an active part in shaping the circular cells into hexagons, rather than letting surface tension do the job? 5/8/2017 182 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? Good question. Another physicist noted that if bees’ body heat were so important to the process, the whole hive would melt down. Live Science stated that the honeycomb, “once thought to be an incredible feat of math-savvy insects” has been “explained by simple mechanics.” Later in that article, though, is the suggestion that bees focus their body heat to shape the hexagonal cells after first carving them out as cylinders. Another biologist spoke of the “the mechanisms that honeybees manage to build very precise cells,” suggesting there is more going on than “simple mechanics.” That biologist also hinted that humans could learn something from the 5/8/2017 183 bees’ techniques. Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? If honeycombs were the product of blind physics alone, why are they so precise in beehives? Columnar basalt is an example of natural law at work without design. When some lava flows cool, they crack into polygonal shapes, usually hexagons—but not always. Displays like Devil’s Postpile in California, spectacular as they are, show the limits of natural law; irregular polygons, falling into piles at the base. Nothing forces them to assemble at precise angles or thicknesses for any conceivable function. Similarly, bubbles on the surface of water can sometimes assume hexagonal borders due to surface tension, but are rarely free of defects. Honeycomb hexagons, by contrast, are very orderly and regular, maximizing space and minimizing wax, for a specified purpose: creating space for honey storage and the raising of young. 5/8/2017 184 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? Another example can be found with arches. Natural arches can be very large and spectacular, but we can tell intuitively whether an arch is natural or designed. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the arches in a basement supporting a building, or the arches in a Roman aqueduct spanning a canyon for miles, would never result from natural law. Why do they differ from Delicate Arch in Utah? Delicate Arch doesn’t do anything. It has no specification, no purpose. There, a sandstone fin eroded, weakest part first, till the most stable structure – an arch – formed and enlarged till it stands near to collapse, joining other arches in the park where gravity took over. No mind was involved. The man-made arches, though, required a mind. They function for artistry (commemorating a military victory), for architecture, or for carrying water. Because they function, the design specs for them are more critical and precise. Some Roman aqueducts, still standing today, maintained a very, very slight declination to keep the water flowing for over 30 miles, despite hills and canyons along the route. 5/8/2017 185 Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? Just because bees know how to use surface tension does not mean they are bystanders in a blind process of physics. On the contrary, knowing how to use natural law efficiently is evidence of intelligent design. If a bee can start with a round hole and use surface tension to help mold it into a hexagon, the bee is working smart, just as much as an engineer using gravity to advantage. The bee doesn’t just let nature do it. The bee supervises the result, ensuring that the resulting honeycomb meets the requirements for precise wall thicknesses and inclinations of 5/8/2017 186 the cells. Do Honeycombs Just Happen, or Do Bees Design Them? 蜂窝只是碰巧,或蜜蜂设计它们? The intelligent design in the case of honeycomb construction resides not in the brains of the bees themselves, but in the instinctive abilities programmed into them. They carry out the programmed instincts like miniature robots. That presupposes a robot-maker. Who was it? That’s an interesting question, but it’s beyond the scope of intelligent design theory. Just as one can tell an aqueduct was designed without knowing the designer, one can infer intelligent design in honeycombs from the specified complexity observed, whether or not certain natural laws come into play during its construction. The observation of design does not require knowing the designer, but makes belief in a personal, purposeful God, such as the God of the Bible, the most reasonable step 187 of 5/8/2017 faith in the direction the evidence points. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 188 Take Up Insect Watching 观赏昆虫 Insects are among the most diverse animals on the planet, many possessing extraordinary abilities. Here are some kinds worth watching. Dragonflies: It’s National Dragonfly Week in the UK. The BBC News posted a gallery of colorful winged dragons and damsels to whet your appetite for getting out into the wild to watch these superb flyers that can hover, dart, and move in all directions with precision. 5/8/2017 189 Take Up Insect Watching 观赏昆虫 Ants: As long as they don’t invade your kitchen, you should learn to respect ants for their pathfinding skills. Within their navigational toolkit, PhysOrg says that certain ants seem to have a photographic memory. If displaced from their starting point, they can use a series of “snapshots” they took when leaving, a kind of “photo library” to find their way back, experiments show. 5/8/2017 190 Take Up Insect Watching 观赏昆虫 Butterflies: Everyone loves butterflies: beautiful, graceful, harmless creatures that they are – and superbly engineered, as the Illustra film Metamorphosis reveals. Want to see how they reflect iridescent colors? Take a look at the 60,000x micrograph on Science Daily of a wing scale, with intricate patterns (photonic crystals) engineers would love to imitate. 5/8/2017 191 Take Up Insect Watching 观赏昆虫 Creationists should be among the best observational naturalists, because they believe creatures are designed by an all-wise, omnipotent Creator. Sure, after the curse due to sin, many species have become harmful, spreading disease, ruining crops, or causing pain to humans, but those are only a few out of the many thousands of harmless and beneficial varieties. The bad rap of a few does not diminish the fact that all insects are superbly designed. 5/8/2017 192 Take Up Insect Watching 观赏昆虫 Let’s teach children to appreciate and enjoy the beautiful colors and amazing abilities of insects by setting a good example: being observant and appreciative ourselves. And who knows: the secrets of these tiny creatures might improve our own lives someday, thanks to the willingness of many scientists to study their designs with an engineer’s eye. Biomimetic entomology would be a very good career path for many precocious youngsters. For those with a good eye and patience, insect photography can be a fun hobby. Look at the exceptional work of Bob Jensen for incredible photos of amazing insects (see this teaser). 5/8/2017 193 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 194 Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” As scientists continue to find incredible diversity in the smallest of organisms, realizations of all we’ve been missing are changing conceptions of life. Microbes: they live in and on us, and all around us – in the soil, in the air, and deep in the earth and seas. “How many microbes are hiding among us?” Science Magazine asks. It’s been hard to know, because most cannot be cultured in the lab. New sequencing technologies are starting to shed light on the “dark matter” of the living world, as EurekAlert termed it in a Department of Energy press release reprinted by Astrobiology Magazine. Eddy Rubin, leading a discovery initiative for the DOE, likens it to a new Lewis 5/8/2017 195 and Clark Expedition into unexplored territory. Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” “Microbes are the most abundant and diverse forms of life on Earth,” said Tanja Woyke, DOE JGI Microbial Program Head and senior author on the Nature publication. “They occupy every conceivable environmental niche from the extreme depths of the oceans to the driest of deserts. However, our knowledge about their habits and potential benefits has been hindered by the fact that the vast majority of these have not yet been cultivated in the laboratory. So we have only recently become aware of their roles in various ecosystems through cultivationindependent methods, such as metagenomics and single-cell genomics. What we are now discovering are unexpected metabolic features that extend our understanding of biology and challenge established boundaries between the domains of life.” 5/8/2017 196 Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” One of the boundaries being challenged is the distinction between viruses and microbes. When you find a virus so large it contains more genetic material than some eukaryotes, how do you classify it? Elizabeth Pennisi writes for Science Magazine, “It’s like finding a sasquatch,” says Elodie Ghedin, a virologist at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. That’s one of the amazed reactions to the discovery, reported on page 281, of two new viruses with by far the largest genomes ever seen in a virus, including one that’s bigger than the genomes of some parasitic eukaryotes. The virologists in France who unearthed the massive viruses— the biggest one is 1 micron long, a hundred times the size of many viruses—suggest that their finds challenge the longstanding view that viruses don’t qualify as life. 197 5/8/2017 Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” “It is clear that the paradigm that viruses have small genomes and are relatively simple in comparison to cellular life has been overturned,” says Curtis Suttle, a virologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The genome of one of the viruses is 1.91 million DNA bases long, while the other runs 2.47 million bases. That dwarfs some bacterial genomes and edges into the eukaryotic realm.… 5/8/2017 198 Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” This means that the division of life into archaea, bacteria and eukaryotes may be up for revision again. Efforts to sequence genomes of unknown microbes so far have only been a drop in the bucket, there’s so much more out there to discover. Another thing this means is that our planet is awash in coded genetic information. From the bottom of the sea to the edge of space, Planet Earth is the information planet! No other place we know has instructional code to build organisms that function with respiration, digestion, reproduction and all the other functional systems that separate life from nonlife, but Earth has it in super-abundance. 5/8/2017 199 Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” Creationists and intelligent design advocates would expect our Privileged Planet to be the Information Planet – and so it is. Functional information, possessing purpose, complexity, and integration, does not emerge from rocks. It is the organization of the raw materials into information that sets it apart from everything else we know in the universe. Creationists would also expect the information to be organized into a system with hierarchical organization, networks and functional interactions from the micro to the planetary scale – and so that is, too. The information in viruses is part of that system. Most viruses are beneficial; the few that are “virulent” are products of the curse due to 5/8/2017 200 sin, Biblical creationists believe. Parallel Universe of Microbial “Dark Matter” Revealed 揭示微生物平行宇宙的“暗物质” Ariel Anbar might try to make “the case for alien life” (Arizona State press release) but it is illogical to extrapolate a position from one instance. “Is life a universal phenomenon, a planetary process just like plate tectonics?” Anbar asks. “Or is life some weird statistical fluke?” That’s a false dichotomy. From our universal experience with intelligent causes, we can deduce – whether alien life is discovered or not – that life is the product of an intelligent cause. From other signposts we can narrow down the nature and identity of that Cause. Hint: it is not a blind, aimless process of natural selection. Follow the evidence where it leads, instead 5/8/2017 201 of the imagination of Creator-deniers. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 202 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Philosophical questions about “reality” are fun if not practical. But we need a concept of reality in order to function practically. “Get real!” we challenge one another. Most of us believe in external reality. The “correspondence theory” of truth posits that our sensations, however flawed, correspond with what’s really out there in the external world, even if the signals go through multiple layers of processing and translation from source to brain. 5/8/2017 203 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Consider what mathematics represents. Is it a fictional, self-consistent system in the mind, or does it correspond to the universe? That question was asked by four neuroscientists at UC San Diego’s Kavli Institute for the Brain and Mind (see NewsWise press release). The question of whether humans create mathematics or discover it is debated in the article. Max Tegmark takes the position that the universe is inherently mathematical: 5/8/2017 204 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? “[N]ature is clearly giving us hints that the universe is mathematical,” says Tegmark, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and member of MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. According to Tegmark, many mathematicians even feel that they don’t invent mathematical structures, “they just discover them—that these mathematical structures exist independently of humans.” 5/8/2017 205 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Tegmark also points out this isn’t just interesting as an academic idea; if correct, then mathematics has a special role for advancing human knowledge. “If math is inherent out in the universe, then mathematics can give us hints for solving future problems in physics,” Tegmark says. “If we really believe that nature is fundamentally mathematical, then we should look for mathematical patterns and regularities when we come across phenomena that we don’t understand. This problem-solving approach has been at the heart of physics’ success for the past 500 years.” 5/8/2017 206 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Some philosophers will complain that Tegmark’s response is question-begging, but then one could reply to the philosophers, asking whether their own responses are real. Tanya Lewis, in an article on Live Science “Reality Check: Is Our Universe Real?” scares readers into questioning the obvious: “Perhaps our human senses are deceiving us — maybe existence is an illusion, and reality isn’t real.” The problem with that view is that it is self-refuting. It leads to solipsism, the idea that only oneself exists. But even that thought might be an illusion. In any case, who is Lewis talking to if that is the case, but herself? “What humans perceive as reality may be no more than an illusion,” she concludes. “But in 5/8/2017 207 the end, maybe that doesn’t matter.” Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? It surely does matter, though, if one wants to conduct science. Belief in external reality and the validity of the laws of logic are preconditions of science, without which a scientist is wasting his or her time. One cannot “understand” something that doesn’t exist. 5/8/2017 208 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? The major science journals, however, continue to promote materialist views that equate the mind with the brain. In Nature, for instance, Chris Frith gave good press to Patricia Churchland’s new book promoting monism, Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain. Recently the National Academy of Sciences held a Sackler Colloquium called “In the Light of Evolution VII: The Human Mental Machinery.” It included John Searle’s views on Theory of Mind and other papers assuming the mind evolved by Darwinian processes of selection. No one seemed to ask, if Darwinism is true, how they could know natural selection produced the mind, including its thoughts 5/8/2017 209 that the mind evolved. Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Other questions pop up from the proposition that the mind is essentially material. What is consciousness? A recent paper in PNAS assumes human consciousness evolved and differs only in degree, not in kind, from that of the animals. Materialists have a burden to prove their consciousness accords with reality. What is scientific evidence, and how can we trust it? A PhysOrg article assumes scientists can be objective and unbiased – loaded words for an evolved monkey’s brain. 5/8/2017 210 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? What is reason, compared with madness, and who decides who is mad? (see Science book review about psychiatry’s controversial diagnostic manual DSM5). Materialists must convince skeptics that they are the sane ones, yet it would be insane to consider reason or logic as evolvable entities. What is justice and fairness? Another PNAS paper considers those moral qualities nothing more than game theory applied to animal behavior. Honesty, though, is another precondition for science. The authors must convince their readers they are interested in the truth, not just playing games. 5/8/2017 211 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Materialistic explanations undermine their own assumptions by borrowing the correspondence theory of truth without justifying it, and acting as if dualism is true, even as they deny it. The brain is so complex, as an article in Nature about a new “mapping the brain” project attests, it seems the height of brashness to assume it excretes “mind” as a substance, a kind of truth serum. We use the mind to approach the brain, but whether the brain (as a physical object) can approach the mind – an entity in the realm of concepts – is a deeper conundrum the materialist cannot escape. 5/8/2017 212 Does the Mind Create Reality or Discover It? 心灵创建现实或发现它呢? Only the Biblical worldview allows a consistent framework for doing science. One must believe that God, who cannot lie, created a logical, mathematically-structured reality, and gave His creatures the capacity to explore and understand it. Otherwise, if it is the result of a blind evolutionary process, how can one trust the sensations of a physical brain that emerged only for survival? This conundrum troubled Darwin (5/09/13) and is amply discussed in the Discovery Institute Book The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism and Society, a good read. With Bible in hand, the world becomes comprehensible. Math works. Reality is approachable through our intelligentlydesigned senses that were given to us for the purpose of knowing truth. Though we may not discover truth 5/8/2017 213 exhaustively, we can approach it authentically. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 214 “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 When completely unrelated animals or plants display the same engineering solution, is it reasonable to assume a blind, unguided process of selection achieved improbable outcomes multiple times? Is calling it “convergent evolution” meaningful? Here are three examples. 1. Lizard convergence: A paper in Science (see also Live Science summary) claims that lizards on separate Caribbean islands converged on remarkably similar body traits. They found “morphologically and behaviorally similar species that occupy similar microhabitats” on islands where ancestral lizards did not possess the derived convergent properties. The Live Science article includes photos of lizards from different islands that match in color, markings and habitats, even though they supposedly 5/8/2017 215 evolved separately over millions of years. “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 The authors consider this an example of “extreme convergence.” They use their findings to claim evolution can be predictable, contrary to the late Stephen Jay Gould’s famous view that if one ran the tape of life a second time, the outcomes would probably be very different. The authors attribute convergent patterns to the environment: 5/8/2017 216 “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 Parallel radiations unfolding at large temporal scales shed light on the process of adaptive diversification, indicating that the adaptive landscape may give rise to predictable evolutionary patterns in nature, that adaptive peaks may be stable over macroevolutionary time, and that available geographic area influences the ability of lineages to discover new adaptive peaks. This explanation, however, merely shifts the design to the environment without explaining why a blind habitat would interact with a blind process of selection to produce extreme convergence. 5/8/2017 217 “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 2. Fish convergence: Surprise – tuna are more closely related to seahorses than to marlins, even though tunas and marlins share the same streamlined shape. The new “life-changing” phylogeny, reported by Live Science, shakes up a number of branches on the fish family tree. By implication (although the article doesn’t mention it), the streamlining of tunas, marlins and sharks all arose by convergent evolution. Another surprise from the new tree is that fish apparently were unaffected by the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs; “We cannot say why,” an evolutionist at UC Davis shrugged. 5/8/2017 218 “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 3. Brain convergence: One of the most extreme claims about convergent evolution was reported by Science Daily. Evolutionists at Imperial College London are now claiming that “Birds and Humans Have Similar Brain Wiring.” You may have more in common with a pigeon than you realise, according to research. It shows that humans and birds have brains that are wired in a similar way. 5/8/2017 219 “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 A researcher from Imperial College London and his colleagues have developed for the first time a map of a typical bird brain, showing how different regions are connected together to process information. By comparing it to brain diagrams for different mammals such as humans, the team discovered that areas important for highlevel cognition such as long-term memory and problem solving are wired up to other regions of the brain in a similar way. This is despite the fact that both mammal and bird brains have been evolving down separate paths over 5/8/2017 220 hundreds of millions of years. “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 The team suggest that evolution has discovered a common blueprint for high-level cognition in brain development. Though not stated explicitly, convergent evolution is implied as the explanation: e.g., “They discovered that despite both hub nodes having evolved differently, the way they are wired up within the brain looks similar.” [Brief pause to laugh out loud that evolution could discover anything, especially “a common blueprint for high-level cognition in brain 5/8/2017 221 development.”] “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 Brett Miller, who draws the excellent cartoons for this site, wrote up an essay called “The Convergence Concoction” that handily exposes, with cartoons and numerous examples, that this Darwinian explanation is a myth cooked up to avoid powerful evidence for design. (His excellent cartoon “Parallelizards” in the article is right on point for the Caribbean lizard story.) What more could falsify evolution than dozens of striking similarities in animals and plants that have no ancestral relationship in the 5/8/2017 222 Darwinian myth? “Extreme Convergence” Strains Credibility of Darwinism “极端趋同”菌株达尔文主义信誉 Darwin wanted an aimless, unguided process. The views of some evolutionists like Simon Conway Morris that evolution predictably converges on archetypal forms borders on Platonic mysticism. No; to be Darwinian, it must be random and unguided. The world is not that way. There’s similarity across tree branches everywhere. When evolutionists invent a phrase, “convergent evolution,” to dodge a falsification, they deserve no more respect than politicians who speak out both 5/8/2017 223 sides of their mouths. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 224 New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa A hilltop near where David fought Goliath has revealed buildings and artifacts suggestive of royal organization during the time of King David. A press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced the discovery of “royal public buildings” at Khirbet Qeiyafa, a fortress on a hilltop overlooking the Elah Valley. First reported by archaeologists in Nov. 2008 (see 11/16/08), it yielded an inscription (1/07/10) and other artifacts that warranted further excavation. The 7-year dig has concluded with the press release claiming that two buildings were “David’s palace” and “an enormous royal storeroom.” Also found were numerous stone jars, along with “evidence of a metal industry, special pottery vessels and fragments of alabaster vessels that were imported from Egypt.” With its exceptional view, the site would have been 5/8/2017 225 valuable as a lookout. New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa Science Daily and PhysOrg picked up on the phrase “David’s Palace” in their headlines for articles that republished the IAA press release. Live Science considered it “indicate that David, who defeated Goliath in the Bible, ruled a kingdom with a great political organization.” The dig was managed by Yossi Garfinkel (Hebrew University) and Saar Ganor (IAA). 5/8/2017 226 New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa Conservative Bible history professor Todd Bolen in Israel, on Bible Places Blog, urged caution: Whenever you see a sensational claim such as the discovery of a specific item mentioned in the Bible, you should be suspicious. In most cases, the archaeologist seems to be driven more by a desire for attention than by the evidence (e.g., the Cave of John the Baptist, the palace of David, or anything announced by Yosef Garfinkel in the last six years). 5/8/2017 227 New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa This is a bit surprising, since Bolen was initially enthusiastic about the site’s potential (12/24/08). Apparently he has reasons for distrusting the IAA and these particular excavators, one reason being that the end of a dig season is a tempting time to announce sensational discoveries for fund-raising or other non-academic motivations. There is no question from the photos released, though, that significant buildings, walls and artifacts from a welldeveloped fortress have been found. How they relate to the kingdom of David specifically awaits further analysis. 5/8/2017 228 New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa The site is very intriguing and seems to support the Iron Age identification. But respecting Bolen’s informed opinion, we will refrain from reading too much into the press release. Bolen feels Garfinkel is press-happy, hasty to interpret findings, and prone to sensational announcements (11/19/08). Surprisingly, he finds more credibility (but not a lot more) in the announcement that a room of the prophet Elisha has been found at Tel Rehov (7/23/13), on the grounds that its excavator, Amahai Mazar, has impeccable credentials. Even so, it’s nearly impossible to prove the room had anything to do with Elisha, he quickly 5/8/2017 229 warns. New Archaelogical Findings at Judean Fortress Khirbet Qeiyafa 新考古发现,在犹太城堡Khirbet Qeiyafa The potential harm from hyping archaeological digs too early (see his entry) is making Biblical archaeology a laughing-stock, and giving occasion for skeptics undermine Biblical history. As a science, archaeology needs a heavy measure of scholarly caution. With that in mind, hoping for further analysis of Khirbet Qeiyafa soon, we announce this latest series of findings with a subdued wow. 5/8/2017 230 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 231 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 T. Rex, Triceratops and other stars of the age of dinosaurs have made news lately. Here are some recent dinosaur findings. Predator or scavenger? Debates about T. Rex’s eating habits have raged for years. Was it a hunter, like the terror in Jurassic Park, or scavenger, picking the meat off dead prey? Evidence of a bite in a hadrosaur backbone seems to indicate the prey was alive when the king’s tooth bit into it, says a video clip on Live Science. But that’s just one data point, “the least you can have,” one skeptic cautions. 5/8/2017 232 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Tooth conveyor belt: Some huge sauropods may have replaced their teeth every month. Science Now said that analysis of “well-preserved fossils” of Camarasaurus and Diplodocus led scientists at Stony Brook University to estimate the beasts replaced their teeth every 62 days and 35 days, respectively. The fossilized dentin shows rows of material ready to replace teeth worn down by their heavy diet of plant material. Science Daily added some Darwin from a researcher: “At least twice during their evolution, sauropods evolved small, peg-like teeth that formed and replaced quickly,” said Dr. Michael D’Emic. “This characteristic may have led 5/8/2017 233 to the evolutionary success of sauropods.” News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 The BBC News refrained from the e-word, merely stating that analysis of teeth can reveal feeding habits. Big new ceratopsian: The name Nasutoceratops probably doesn’t roll out of a kid’s memory bank, but a large new horned dinosaur with that label has been found in Utah. “It belonged to the family of herbivore ceratops dinos, of which the famous triple-horned triceratops was a member,” PhysOrg reported, claiming the location of the fossil “sheds light” on moving continents. One mystery remains, however: how did two dozen large animals coexist on a landmass? Africa, with four times the area of the assumed continent of Laramidia, has only five large mammals. Also unknown is the purpose of the four-meterlong dinosaur’s oversize snout. 5/8/2017 234 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Battle of the boneheads: More evidence that bone-headed dinosaurs like pachycephalosaur butted heads like rams was reported by Live Science. Analysis of wounds in 100 skulls by researchers at the University of Wisconsin makes headbutting the most likely explanation. It’s possible they used them for display, though, or perhaps for both functions. 5/8/2017 235 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Tale of a tall tail: A huge well-preserved dinosaur tail of unknown species, probably a kind of hadrosaur or duck-billed dinosaur, is being excavated in Mexico, Live Science and PhysOrg reported. Found by locals, it’s about 16 feet (5 meters) long. The BBC News has a video report. Excavators have also found part of the animal’s hip, and hope to find more as the work continues. The tail would have been nearly half the length of the animal. 5/8/2017 236 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Warm or cold blooded? The belief that dinosaurs were cold-blooded has been “put on ice” according to Live Science. Researchers at University of Adelaide came to the conclusion that dinosaurs must have been warmblooded. They did this not directly, but by inferring the energy requirements for thrashing in living crocodiles and large mammals. As usual, not every expert agrees. Given the number of decades this aspect of dinosaurs has been debated, it’s hard to predict if a new 5/8/2017 237 finding will overturn the latest claim. News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Big fish: The largest bony fish that ever lived, some 16 meters long, was a contemporary of dinosaurs, PhysOrg says. Surprisingly, Leedsichthys (Leeds fish) was most likely a plankton eater. The gills, though “Extremely delicate and rarely-preserved,” were preserved well enough to show the mesh structure, resembling the honeycomb pattern in a beehive. The article claims that the same meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs wiped the big fish out, too. Maybe that reporter didn’t see the Live Science article that claims an “absence of any sign of a fish extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, when a mass extinction wiped out the dinosaurs.” But when the same article puts seahorses in the same phylogeny with tuna but 5/8/2017 238 not with swordfish, who you gonna believe? News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Someone had to ask: PhysOrg posed the question, “How did dinosaurs have sex?” (and no, the big bang theory does not apply here). Someone needs to answer, “Very carefully.” Alongside the headline is an artist’s rendition of a huge, bulky triceratops. Comparing dinosaurs with tiny birds and giraffes does not seem to shed light on the question. Speculator of the day John Long concluded, “I truly believe the day will surely come, probably when we least expect it, when a remarkable new dinosaur fossil pops up solving the age old mystery of how dinosaurs really did do the deed.” 5/8/2017 239 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 Some day, when you least expect it, John, someone may pop up to you and say, “Smile! You’re on Candid Camera!” Does anybody remember the claims about dinosaurs from ten years ago, or even five? Science news is often like short-term thrills that wear off until the next fix. Debates about warm-bloodedness, extinction and feeding habits have raged on for decades – decades, and no resolution is ever forthcoming by scientific “experts” (people who used to be spurts, but are now ex-spurts). The latest claim by Dr. Science gets good press, till another claim comes along later and dislodges it. 5/8/2017 240 News About Your Favorite Dinosaurs 你最喜欢的恐龙新闻 And where, anywhere, does anyone see the need for evolutionary theory? Dinosaurs once lived and are now gone, but that’s not evolution. Fossils of huge animals that flourished in a rich world of life show evidence of design with subsequent decline. Our world, rich and diverse as it is, is impoverished compared to the world filled with large, healthy animals and plants that once lived on it. It seems as if some catastrophe* happened. *Implausible? Science Now just reported that a megaflood appears to have carried house-sized boulders hundreds of miles, from China to India, as easily as modern rivers carry sand. 5/8/2017 241 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 242 Cassini Shoots “Blue Dot” of Earth 卡西尼号拍摄的“蓝点”地球 Another epic photo of Earth from space was taken on July 19 of Earth from Saturn by Cassini, and released on July 22. From Mercury, the MESSENGER spacecraft also portrayed Earth as a small dot. Many articles reported the photo-op, such as this one on Space.com, which reminded earthlings that such photos provide perspective: It’s not often that some event comes along to really show humanity its true place in the universe, but two NASA spacecraft have just managed just that. 5/8/2017 243 Cassini Shoots “Blue Dot” of Earth 卡西尼号拍摄的“蓝点”地球 It may not be often, but many images of Earth from space have been taken since the famous Christmas Eve “Earthrise” photo by the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968. Galileo, Cassini, and some of the Mars missions have turned toward Earth to snap photos on their journeys. The earlier Earth-facing photo taken by Cassini from behind Saturn has been a classic since 2006 (Astronomy Picture of the Day, 10/16/06). Another classic, the “pale blue dot” photo of Earth in a beam of sunlight taken by Voyager in 1990 at the edge of the solar system, inspired opposite conclusions: that we are insignificant, according to Carl Sagan, and that we are designed for a purpose, according to The Privileged Planet. The new Cassini image shows Earth not as pale, 5/8/2017 244 but as a rather bright and brilliant blue dot. Cassini Shoots “Blue Dot” of Earth 卡西尼号拍摄的“蓝点”地球 For more views of the new Cassini photo, see the Cassini website, Astronomy Picture of the Day July 22 and July 23, and video clip on Space.com. How could God care about beings on such a tiny speck? That question has been a huge stumbling block to many since modern astronomy revealed the vastness of the universe. Remember a couple of things. For one, human beings are about halfway on a scale from the very small to the very large. For another, God’s concern for us is not based on our physical size; He is omnipresent, which means all of God is present at every point in space. For one more, we almost have to be the size we are (given the laws of nature) to be held gravitationally to a body the size of the Earth, so that we can live and move and have fellowship with one another. Everything about our world – its star, its moon, its diameter, its composition – is exactly right for life. Watch the Privileged Planet documentary (watch entire documentary on YouTube in 12 segments), and marvel at how the world God made for us allows us to explore the farthest reaches 5/8/2017 245 of space, and to begin to grasp the mind of God. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 246 Toddler Beats Artificial Intelligence Computers 幼儿击败人工智能电脑 Artificial intelligence, despite decades of work, still cannot match some of the mental capabilities of a 3-year-old. Computers have no common sense. “To create a robot with common sense, mimic a toddler,” says a story on New Scientist. The article is an interview with Ben Goertzel, who is trying to get A.I. up to toddler level and beyond. “Step one is to make an AI program that understands the world, and itself, in a basic common-sense manner,” he said. “I think the best way to get there is to build a robot toddler.” 5/8/2017 247 Toddler Beats Artificial Intelligence Computers 幼儿击败人工智能电脑 Computers and robots are very good at fast searches through vast amounts of data. They can also outperform chess champs. But prudence and sound judgment at even a 3-year old level are beyond them. According to Live Science, “Machines can’t yet be programed to form intuitions about the physical world without doing extensive calculations, and they seem to fail at answering open-ended questions.” A.I. researchers in Zurich believe they have developed a chip that will make the breakthrough: chips that mimic the brain. Medical Xpress tells about the new neuromorphic chips. We’ll have to wait and see if the robots have sense enough to come out of the rain 5/8/2017 248 before they short out. Toddler Beats Artificial Intelligence Computers 幼儿击败人工智能电脑 Human brains have some pretty sophisticated wiring, including a new method of signaling described in another article on Medical Xpress. Exosomes provide a kind of “delivery on call” capability, the article says. Another article on Science Daily said that cells have a “zip code” capability that is linked to learning and memory, including redundancy to ensure proper delivery. In addition, PNAS published a paper that says “Flexible frequency control of cortical oscillations enables computations required for working memory.” The brain also finds it easy to pick out salient sounds from background noise, Science Daily said, by tracking frequency and time. 5/8/2017 249 Toddler Beats Artificial Intelligence Computers 幼儿击败人工智能电脑 But it’s not just the squishy hardware in brains that makes them excel over computers in so many ways. Where is the seat of common sense? Can a computer judge a piece of music? A robot can dance, but can it “know” that it is dancing? Before A.I. gets close to making humanoid robots, there will still be ample time for philosophers and theologians to debate the nature of consciousness, and even simple questions about qualia (our sensations of attributes of things) – the “hard problem of consciousness” according to philosopher David Chalmers, who believes science will never solve it (see Evolution News & Views video clip). 5/8/2017 250 Toddler Beats Artificial Intelligence Computers 幼儿击败人工智能电脑 A.I. is a variety of biomimetics, the imitation of nature. Trying to reproduce simple intellectual tasks our brains take for granted should be a good way for scientists to learn humility, and conclude intelligent design. Unfortunately, too often, the opposite occurs. That’s a sign of human stubbornness and pride – more evidence that underscores the Biblical view of man created in the image of God but fallen into sin. That’s why Jesus, knowing the mind of a toddler He created, said to the prideful adults of His day, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). 5/8/2017 251 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 252 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Inspired by the wisdom inherent in living organisms, inventors and engineers are finding bright ideas. 3-D Printing: In an article “Improving 3-D Printing by Copying Nature,” National Geographic reported on the work of Janine Benyus, a biomimetics expert, on how the new 3-D printing craze can help the environment by using biological materials instead of toxic solvents: 5/8/2017 253 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 “Nature uses life-friendly chemistry, which is nontoxic and water-based, and which does not require high heat,” said Benyus. In contrast, most of the products people use today have been forged in industrial-size furnaces, with a plethora of toxic solvents. A potato chip bag may seem like a simple item, but it is actually made up of several thin layers of different materials, one to make it strong, one to make it airtight, and so on. 5/8/2017 254 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 But nature creates an enormous amount of diversity from a relatively small palette of materials. Most of the polymers in the natural world fall into about five classes, said Benyus. One is keratin, which makes up skin, hair, and feathers across the animal kingdom. Another is chitin, which makes up exoskeletons in arthropods. The way such basic building blocks are arranged, in terms of internal structure, results in extraordinary differences in animals’ size, shape, color, and function—and it can also result in extraordinary strength. 5/8/2017 255 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 She used the example of abalone shells and diatoms that make extraordinarily tough materials that outperform high-tech ceramics by layering ordinary proteins and minerals in creative ways. One problem: “we don’t really understand how to do that,” said an MIT engineer – not yet, at least. Mussel sutures: Mussels and barnacles hold fast to things despite the constant battering of ocean waves, but use different methods. Science Daily reported that the methods of attachment by mussels is now coming to light: they use thin 5/8/2017 256 threads called byssus threads. Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Byssus threads, they found, are composed of a well-designed combination of soft, stretchy material on one end and much stiffer material on the other. Both materials, despite their different mechanical properties, are made of a protein closely related to collagen, a main constituent of skin, bone, cartilage and tendons. 5/8/2017 257 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 The 80/20 ratio of stiff to flexible material allows them to “withstand impact forces that are nine times greater than the forces exerted by stretching in only one direction.” Imitating this construction could lead to improved medical sutures in the wet, moving parts of the body, or for attaching sensors to buildings, underwater vehicles or any item located in extreme conditions. 5/8/2017 258 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Anti-shark wetsuit: By learning about smells and patterns sharks avoid, Aussies have developed anti-shark wetsuits and materials for the bottoms of surfboards. Live Science shows a video clip of tests with real sharks. The “Elude” product, “inspired by nature,” could save lives, and “It’s safe, it’s natural and gives the animals no harm at all.” Everyone can live with that. 5/8/2017 259 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Skin computer: It’s bright, it’s flexible, and it folds up: it’s the E-skin computer display, as shown on Science Daily. Touching this new skin-like screen makes it light up. Human skin is not only flexible but filled with sensors. Try it; touch someone’s skin and watch if they light up. “In addition to giving robots a finer sense of touch, the engineers believe the new e-skin technology could also be used to create things like wallpapers that double as touchscreen displays and dashboard laminates that allow drivers to adjust electronic controls with the wave 5/8/2017 260 of a hand.” Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Insect prosthetics: Some insects are able to move parts of their bodies without muscles via “neuronal control” and some “clever biomechanical tricks.” Science Daily discussed how mimicking this ability could improve prosthetics for human limbs and robots. The biomechanical movements allow grasshoppers and fleas to jump much higher than muscles alone would allow. Scientists at the University of Leicester are studying those insect legs very closely for clues. “We hope that our work on locusts and grasshoppers will spur a new understanding of how limbs work and can be controlled, by not just insects, but by other 5/8/2017 261 animals, people, and even by robots.” Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 Squid telecommunications: The ability of squid, cuttlefish and octopi to change colors instantaneously has long fascinated biologists. Now, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made headway understanding how the animals control proteins in their skin to create dazzling patterns and colors in fractions of a second, Science Daily reported. Possible applications? Tunable filters and switchable shutters for infrared cameras; perhaps even synthetic camouflage. Daniel E. Morse thinks evolution is marvelous: 5/8/2017 262 Engineers Chase Animals 工程师追逐动物 “We already use optical cables and photonic switches in some of our telecommunications devices. The question is — and it’s a question at this point — can we learn from these novel biophotonic mechanisms that have evolved over millions of years of natural selection new approaches to making tunable and switchable photonic materials to more efficiently encode, transmit, and decode information via light?” Evolution takes credit often (8/24/07) from the sidelines, while watching engineers chase the animals for their designs. The process of evolution is still unknown. The wonders of animal design, and the audacity of evolutionists, are common themes in these biomimetics 5/8/2017 articles. Evolutionists have robbed the glory of God. 263 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 264 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Within the factories of molecular machines that run living cells, including those in the human body, processes occur non-stop that are designed to meet every contingency. Here are just a few examples. Parking garage: Most of us have driven round and round in those multi-level parking garages looking for a spot. We have something like that in our cells, too: helical ramps within an organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum, where proteins are given final assembly and checkups before being put into operation. Science Daily has a diagram of the structure. Nature News described how it works the same way as a parking garage, allowing “for dense, adjustable packing of material in the cell, boosting the surface available for protein 5/8/2017 265 production within a small volume.” Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Brain tune-up: To perform in concert, neurons in the brain occasionally need to tune their signals, like orchestra players tune their instruments. Science Daily described how they do it: NIH findings show that “brief bursts of chemical energy coming from rapidly moving power plants, called mitochondria, may tune brain cell communication.” About a third of mitochondria move along tracks in the axon. Their presence seems to provide a reference tone, like a tuning fork, for signals: “the presence of stationary power plants at synapses controls the stability of the nerve signal strength.” 5/8/2017 266 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Cell division conductors: Speaking of orchestra players, there wouldn’t be music without an orchestrator. Centrioles are tiny bundles of microtubules located at the foci of mitotic spindles, the structures that pull chromosomes apart during cell division (mitosis). They are always found in pairs perpendicular to each other. PhysOrg discussed their “manifold functions in the cell,” including “orchestrators of cell division,” a “tightly regulated process.” European biochemists investigated the mysterious “pericentriolar material” (PCM) that binds them into the “centrosome” where, in a still mysterious way, they winch the chromosomes into the daughter cells. “Our results show that the PCM still harbors many surprises,” one of the researchers said. 5/8/2017 267 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Damage repair team spirit: A paper in PNAS describes what happens when lesions form on DNA strands, triggering “excision repair” processes. The title describes what happens: “Homologous recombination rescues ssDNA gaps generated by nucleotide excision repair and reduced translesion DNA synthesis…” The study, performed on yeast cells, describes cooperation between translesion DNA synthesis (TLS), singlestranded DNA repair (ssDNA), and homologous recombination, which rebuilds a damaged strand from the intact strand. “These findings suggest that ssDNA that might originate during the repair of closely opposed lesions or of ssDNA-containing lesions or from uncoupled replication may drive recombination directly in various 5/8/2017 268 species, including humans.” Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Checkpoint charlies: A technical paper in Science Magazine described the interactions of multiple players that use checkpoints to ensure genomic integrity. The teams include proteins, small interfering RNAs, and multi-part enzymes. These players are all involved in “DNA Replication Origin Firing in Human Cells,” i.e., making sure that the all-important task of replicating the genome begins at the right spot. Here’s a taste of the technical details: “We propose that MTBP acts with Treslin/TICRR to integrate signals from cell cycle and DNA damage response pathways to control the initiation of DNA replication 5/8/2017 269 in human cells.” Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Master regulator: A paper in Nature uncovers more findings about mTOR kinase, which it calls “a master regulator of cell growth.” The opening paragraph describes why this enzyme is important: Whether or not a cell grows is decided by a remarkable protein kinase enzyme called mTOR. As part of two complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2, mTOR integrates and interprets all sorts of factors that influence cell growth — including nutrients, stressors and the outputs of signal-transduction networks — by targeting a multitude of substrates that drive processes such as protein translation, metabolism and cell division. Research into mTOR-mediated signalling has taken on added urgency since it was discovered that most cancers contain mutations that inappropriately activate this protein. 5/8/2017 270 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 The newly-uncovered structure of mTOR, made up of 1,500 amino acids, shows that it has a “gatekeeper mechanism that controls substrate access to the active site.” You’re the boss: As a functioning whole organism, you can tell your cells what to do. An attention-getting paper in Nature states that “Attention enhances synaptic efficacy and the signal-to-noise ratio in neural circuits.” In other words, when you focus your attention on a sight or sound, your neurons obey, all the way to the level of synapses between neurons. “The results demonstrate that attention finely tunes neuronal communication at the synaptic level by selectively altering synaptic weights, enabling enhanced detection of salient events in the noisy sensory environment.” Philosophers of free will, take note. 5/8/2017 271 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Bricks that build: Certain structural building blocks in the inner ear don’t just sit there. They actually have a “starring role” to play, Science Daily reported in a surprise announcement. “Researchers have found in mice that supporting cells in the inner ear, once thought to serve only a structural role, can actively help repair damaged sensory hair cells, the functional cells that turn vibrations into the electrical signals that the brain recognizes as sound.” Sex cooperation: Science Daily reported a “shocker,” a “surprising finding” that the female X-chromosome participates in sperm production. One would think men and women are actually part of the same species 5/8/2017 272 after all. Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 Where do we stop? We could go on and on. Every week in the science literature, new findings are made about regulators, teams, quality controls (see 7/16/13), checkpoints, conductors, players with starring roles – Michael Denton wasn’t kidding when back in 1985 (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, p. 328) he compared a cell to a large city, filled with “supreme technology and bewildering complexity.” 5/8/2017 273 Remarkable Cell Processes That Keep You Alive 显着的细胞过程,让你活着 That was almost 30 years ago; more discoveries have poured forth since then, many of them of paramount importance to our understanding of how life works. It’s almost as if God, in His shrewd wisdom, has allowed biochemists to peer into the machinery, bit by bit, just as they were concluding their “evolution is a fact” speeches through their megaphones in the press. It’s hard to see how Darwinian evolution can survive this never-ending onslaught of Design, design, design! emanating from the living cell as, week after week, year after year, improving technology brings its perfections 5/8/2017 274 into sharper focus. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 275 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Here are some headlines concerning early man and the ongoing struggle by humans to improve life. Throw the dog a bone: An extinct ape named Oreopithecus did not walk upright as earlier claimed, Science Daily admitted. Maybe they sat as they made little black cookies with white cream in the middle. “The study, published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, confirms that anatomical features related to habitual upright, two-legged walking remain exclusively associated with humans 5/8/2017 276 and their fossil ancestors.” From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Back in Liang Bua Cave: Whatever happened to The Hobbit? News about those little fossil people from Indonesia occasionally breaks above the din into the headlines. Latest claim: they looked like us but were not us. Science Daily reported, “3DComparative Analysis Confirms Status of Homo Floresiensis as Fossil Human Species.” A team from Stony Brook University claims that they were not victims of microcephaly. That keeps them in the genus Homo, but as a separate species – at least, until the next analysis contradicts it. 5/8/2017 277 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Give peace a chance: Scientists are fighting over whether early humans were aggressive and warlike. Reviewing a paper in Science, Elizabeth Culotta, in her perspective article, announced, “Latest Skirmish Over Ancestral Violence Strikes Blow for Peace.” Early people were peacemakers. That’s the opinion of two Finns who published an article in Science about whether “lethal aggression” was dominant among mobile foraging bands. It has “implications for the origins of war,” they wrote. “But those on the other side of the debate” are fighting back, Culotta wrote; they “say that the paper lacks the numerical data to evaluate how 5/8/2017 278 common war and homicide actually are.” From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 And how can there be a peace treaty if both sides can’t even define what war is? Darwin always wins, regardless. “If war is a common feature of the foraging way of life, then perhaps it was a driving force in human evolution,” Culotta said. Well, then, what “if” it wasn’t? Then, presumably, peace and cooperation were the driving forces in human evolution. 5/8/2017 279 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Ancient mariners: Using traditional craft and no modern navigation aids, a Polynesian team completed a voyage from New Zealand to Easter Island and back, the BBC News reported. The feat revitalized natives to remember a skill that is rapidly being lost. For “over 3,000 years, John Pickford wrote, “the Polynesians had been using their great canoes, combined with nearmiraculous navigation skills, to explore and settle a vast stretch of the Pacific.” Today’s islanders, want often to leave their paradise and get jobs on the mainland, it was a big morale booster. “They are a powerful reminder of a heroic age not so long ago when those mythic islands of the south seas were more connected and the ocean really was a highway rather 5/8/2017 280 than a barrier.” From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Crop rotation, good: Since the days the Jews were ordered to give their land a Sabbath rest, allowing native plants to grow back for a year, wise early farmers have learned that crop rotation increases productivity of the land. It’s a trick medieval farmers had to re-learn the hard way. Now, Science Daily claims to know why crop rotation works: it causes a shift in soil microbes. The microbes affixed to the roots of some plant species, like legumes, know how to fix nitrogen and fertilize the soil. Not only that, rotation has a “profound effect … on enriching soil with bacteria, fungi and protozoa,” researchers at the John Innes Centre found. 5/8/2017 281 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Farm changer, world changer: Moving up to modern times, now, here’s a story to watch. Science Daily reported that a professor at the University of Nottingham has found a way to take nitrogen fertilizer from the air. No, he hasn’t invented a way to do it; he’s just borrowing the technology of nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Nitrogen is the most abundant molecule in the atmosphere, but its triple bonds make it hard to crack. Man’s methods of fixing nitrogen to produce fertilizer are costly and require heat. The press release could hardly contain the excitement: 5/8/2017 282 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Professor Edward Cocking, Director of The University of Nottingham’s Centre for Crop Nitrogen Fixation, has developed a unique method of putting nitrogen-fixing bacteria into the cells of plant roots. His major breakthrough came when he found a specific strain of nitrogen-fixing bacteria in sugar-cane which he discovered could intracellularly colonise all major crop plants. This ground-breaking development potentially provides every cell in the plant with the ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen. The implications for agriculture are enormous as this new technology can provide much of the plant’s nitrogen needs. 5/8/2017 283 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Turbocharging farms: Current Biology has another idea to increase farm productivity: genetically engineer crops to use C4 photosynthesis. 97% of plants use the C3 method, but a few species, particularly those in harsh environments like deserts, use C4. Now that humans have learned genetic engineering, could they use C4 to get more mileage out of crops? Elizabeth A. Kellogg thinks so: 5/8/2017 284 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 The number of humans on earth is increasing, generating concerns about food security and spurring efforts throughout the world to increase the productivity of crops. If a way could be found to increase the yield of crops by, say, 20%, it would have immense impact on global food supplies. Fortunately, evolution has already crafted such a mechanism, known as C4 photosynthesis. The C4 pathway is in effect a turbocharger for the more conventional C3 pathway. Just as a turbocharger improves performance of an engine by forcing more air into the manifold, C4 improves photosynthetic performance by forcing CO2 into the standard C3 photosynthetic apparatus. The added efficiency of this mechanism is obvious at a global level. 5/8/2017 285 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 In a sense, humans continue to use ingenuity (a.k.a., intelligent design) to improve their lot in life, using natural resources more and more efficiently. If modern humans have existed on this globe for at least 40,000 years (some evolutionists think Homo species were our equals two million years ago), would they not have invented seafaring and agriculture much earlier? (See 7/06/13, “Farming Came Too Late in the Evolutionary Timetable”.) 5/8/2017 286 From Hunter-Gatherer to Modern Farmer 从猎人采集到现代农民 Despite all the progress in agriculture, there are worries that humans are devolving, not evolving. Evidence was right here in the article: a retreat into pagan mysticism, as evident in Kellogg’s statement, “Fortunately, evolution has already crafted such a mechanism, known as C4 photosynthesis…in effect a turbocharger.…” There’s not much hope for mankind with that kind of personification fallacy getting published in a major science journal. 5/8/2017 287 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 288 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Regrowing organs and other miracle cures may be coming to a hospital near you, thanks to progress with adult stem cells. Three blind mice see again: The BBC News reported on advances in treating blindness with stem cells. In studies described as a “significant breakthrough” and “huge leap forward,” lab work with mouse embryo cells showed that stem cells can repair retina damage, actually regrowing the rods and cones (see beautiful picture of them in the article). Even though the work was done with mouse embryonic stem cells, coverage on Medical Xpress made it clear that harvesting embryos is not necessary: 5/8/2017 289 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 The goal is to test therapy for AMD using so-called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS. These are adult cells that have been reprogrammed to return to their infant, versatile state. Provided that they are proven safe, they can provide a noncontroversial alternative to stem cells culled from early-stage embryos. 5/8/2017 290 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Grow a liver from skin: A team in Japan (birthplace of the induced pluripotent stem cell or iPSC technique) has succeeded in growing functional liver tissue, blood vessels and all, from iPSCs. Publishing in Nature, the team said, “To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating the generation of a functional human organ from pluripotent stem cells.” With organ donors perennially in short supply, this could be revolutionary news for those in need of transplants: the ability to grow another organ from one’s own cells. “Although efforts must ensue to translate these techniques to treatments for patients, this proof-ofconcept demonstration of organ-bud transplantation provides a promising new approach to study regenerative medicine.” 5/8/2017 291 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Heart and lung: Scientists in Pennsylvania are seeking to understand how cardiopulmonary progenitor cells, a kind of stem cell lining the lungs and blood vessels, are capable of regenerating damaged tissues. These cells appear to guide the development of both tissues in the embryo. “Future studies will focus on whether CPPs exist in the adult cardiopulmonary system and whether they play a role in the response of the lung and heart to injury or disease,” the article on Medical Xpress said. It’s not clear, though, what these comments about evolution had to do with the story, which was focused on human health: 5/8/2017 292 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 The evolution of adaptations for life on land have long puzzled biologists – are feathers descendents of dinosaur scales, how did arms and legs evolve from fins, and from what ancient fish organ did the lung evolve? Biologists have known that the co-development of the cardiovascular and pulmonary systems is a recent evolutionary adaption to life outside of water, coupling the function of the heart with the gas exchange function of the lung. And, the lung is one of the most recent organs to have evolved in mammals and is arguably the most vital for terrestrial life. 5/8/2017 293 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Stem cell liver injections: Another team mentioned on PhysOrg has grown functional hepatocytes (liver cells), injected them into mice, and watched them take on function, extending the lives of mice afflicted with liver disease. Not only that, they’ve developed a bioreactor that can generate stem cells in quantities that would be useful for clinical applications. “This promising advance in the development of cellbased therapies to treat liver failure resulting from injury or disease relied on the development of scalable, reproducible methods to produce stem cell-derived hepatocytes in bioreactors,” the article states. 5/8/2017 294 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Paradigm shift: Incidentally, science popularizers may have to drop the assumption that every cell in your body has a copy of “your” genome. Science Magazine reported the following: With recent advances in genome-wide assays, it is becoming increasingly apparent that a human individual is made up of a population of cells, each with its own “personal” genome. Thus, mosaicism is perhaps much more common within multicellular organisms than our limited genomic assays have detected thus far, and may represent the rule rather than the exception. 5/8/2017 295 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 These differences in genomes appear in embryonic stem cells and iPS cells. Why would this be? It’s not just about mutations leading to sickness. The article surmised, “the extent of somatic mosaicism that is now being reported in a variety of healthy tissues and cell types suggests that it also has physiological functions,” including possible roles in the immune system and in normal brain function. This is a new area ripe for investigation. 5/8/2017 296 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Aside from the Darwinist reporter trying to insert evolution where it doesn’t belong, these are great news stories offering hope to millions of people. (Darwinism has its place, but its place is in the dustbin of discarded myths.) Did you notice that the Darwinist provided no evidence for any of the claims, but instead listed three major puzzles they still haven’t figured out? How much more time do we give these guys? 5/8/2017 297 Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Stem cell research is intelligent design research. Scientists are using their intelligence to understand the intelligence built into stem cells that allow them to turn into any kind of tissue. Evolution has nothing to do with it. The whole process of development is so amazing, it transcends anything we know. If we can get these pluripotent cells from adult cells, why on earth continue to pursue embryonic stem cells? Go ahead and play with mouse embryos; mice are intelligently designed, but not made in God’s image like man is. When alternatives exist, go for the 5/8/2017 298 non-controversial alternative. Amazing Cures from Adult Stem Cells 从成人干细胞惊人的治愈 Your Editor has liver damage from cancer. He would love to get a new liver grown from his own skin cells, without having to take the life of an unborn human being. Pray these treatments will advance quickly and help all those who need it in time. For those without current health issues, thank God for the health you have and use it for good while you can. 5/8/2017 299 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 300 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Several recent science papers try to find evolution in bird brains, genes, and behaviors. Do they succeed? Sexual selection conundrums: Sexual selection seems to work except when it doesn’t. That’s the apparent observation from two articles, one on Science Daily that claims shorebirds choose looks over brains, and one on Live Science that shocks readers with the news that peahens don’t pay much attention to the elaborate tail feathers of peacocks. This seems to contradict a classic case of sexual selection. Sure enough, tiny video cameras on peahens followed their gaze and found that they tended to focus below the neck, a Purdue biologist found: “The males put on this huge display, and females seem to look at only a small portion of it.” What’s a male to do? Neither article mentioned whether sexual selection matters in species like crows that show virtually no sexual dimorphism. 5/8/2017 301 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Chicks vs mice: A study in PNAS tried to find how much divergence and convergence there is in the expression of brain genes between chickens and mice. The authors claim that their study “potentially resolves the complex relationship between developmental homology and functional characteristics on the molecular level and settles longstanding evolutionary debates,” but the actual results were mixed. The authors found some surprising examples of convergent evolution (homoplasy) – surprising given “very different developmental trajectories” of birds and mammals. They admitted their limited data set could have led to different results. As a result, their conclusions were tentative, requiring further study: 5/8/2017 302 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Our results suggest that the pallium has undergone major transcriptomic reorganization, with traces of both molecular homoplasy and homology .… These results do not imply that there is no homology among other pallial sectors, only that homology is not a dominant factor in their adult gene expression patterns. Homology might have a greater impact on pallial gene expression if we had studied a greater number of smaller regions or even individual cells.… Considering these results, subsequent investigations into the evolution of the neocortex should complement studies of homology based on cell lineage with multiple levels of information in various taxa toward a holistic understanding of how its molecular programs were repurposed, resulting in such cognitive convergence. 5/8/2017 303 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Cockatoo puzzle solving: Speaking of bird brains, cockatoos can perform intelligence tests on spatial and navigational skills as well as toddlers, and sometimes better than great apes, according to new experiments reported on Science Daily. Darwin’s finches again: A new book is out about Darwin’s finches – not so much about the birds, but about David Lack, the “father of evolutionary ecology,” who spent a lot of time trying to defend Darwin’s views about them. Ben C. Sheldon liked Ted Anderson’s book in his review for Nature. Some readers might be surprised to find out that Lack did more work than Darwin: 5/8/2017 304 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Charles Darwin had remarkably little to say about how the birds that bear his name — Darwin’s finches — came to have such a variety of beaks, despite their iconic status in evolutionary biology. It was left to an English schoolmaster on sabbatical in the late 1930s to carry out the first serious work on this question. 5/8/2017 305 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Sheldon did not mention the subsequent work by Peter and Rosemary Grant who found that changes to the birds’ beaks oscillated according to the weather. Lack only spent 4 months on a field trip studying the birds, compared to the Grants’ three decades. It’s doubtful Lack’s work contributed much to scientific understanding of the Galapagos finches as much as the starting of a new movement: “The central message of Anderson’s book is that Lack should be understood as someone who bridged the gap between traditional natural history and the development of its modern academic descendant, evolutionary ecology.” In short: the book is short on science, and big on name-dropping of the evolution giants Lack interacted with. Whether “evolutionary ecology” is a productive use of biologists’ time is another subject. 306 5/8/2017 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) Homing pigeon navigation: A bird article with no need for evolutionary theory, but implications for design, concerned homing pigeons’ uncanny ability to find home. Science Daily reported that new experiments show the birds are not simple “flying robots,” but use cognitive ability when deciding what cues to follow. They build a spatial map of their surroundings and can choose to head toward a feeder or home, depending on how hungry they are: 5/8/2017 307 Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) “As we expected, the satiated pigeons flew directly to the home loft,” explains Prof. Hans-Peter Lipp, neuroanatomist at UZH [University of Zurich] and [Nicole] Blaser’s supervisor for her doctoral thesis. “They already started on course for their loft and only deviated from that course for a short time to make topography-induced detours.” The hungry pigeons behaved quite differently, setting off on course for the food loft from the very beginning and flying directly to that target. They also flew around topographical obstacles and then immediately adjusted again to their original course. Based on this procedure, Blaser concludes that pigeons can determine their location and their direction of flight relative to the target and can choose between several targets. They thus have a type of cognitive navigational map in their heads and have cognitive capabilities. “Pigeons use their heads to 5/8/2017 308 fly,” jokes the young biologist. Birds and Their Evolution (or Design) 鸟类及其进化(或设计) There was no mention of evolution in the article. Was there ever a more useless, time-wasting, distracting theory than Darwinian evolution? It made some people famous who were able to look like they were doing science. It created camaraderie between fellow Darwine drinkers. But did it ever produce understanding of the natural world? After reading these articles, you be the judge. We think an intelligent design perspective would have brought the coveted “insight” and “understanding” far earlier, without all the obstacles forcing observations to fit the hunches of a Bearded Buddha. If you really need convincing, watch the new Illustra film Flight: The 5/8/2017 309 Genius of Birds. Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 310 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Epigenetics has become a hot topic in biology. There are players “above DNA”– some heritable – that may be more important than the genetic code itself. Unto the 3rd and 4th generation: A headline on Science Daily sounds almost Biblical: “Gene Mutations Caused by a Father’s Lifestyle Can Be Inherited by Multiple Generations.” Moses had said that a father’s sins can affect offspring; was he stating a fact of epigenetics unknown in his day? He was undoubtedly referring to spiritual effects, but it’s becoming apparent to scientists that “a father’s lifestyle has the potential to affect the DNA of multiple generations and not just his immediate offspring,” because changes in the regulation of genes can be passed on through the gametes of his children and 5/8/2017 311 their children. More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Reversible damage: A paper in PLoS Biology states that epigenetic changes are reversible. Working with yeast, a team said, “The results presented here suggest that epigenetic control within an individual cell is reversible and can be achieved via regulation of histone acetyltransferase activity.” With the previous entry, this suggests that offspring are not doomed to suffer their father’s lifestyle problems. 5/8/2017 312 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Work out and modify your fat: Science Daily reported evidence that workouts make epigenetic changes to your fat cells. A researcher at Lund University in Sweden said, “Our study shows the positive effects of exercise, because the epigenetic pattern of genes that affect fat storage in the body changes.” 5/8/2017 313 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Work out and fix your nerves: Damage to neural stem cells from mutations can be reversed by exercise. That’s a finding announced in Medical Xpress: mutational damage to CHD7 (a gene that codes for an epigenetic regulator) that inhibits neurogenesis in mice, and presumably in humans, can be completely reversed by exercise: “After the running exercise the CHD7 mutant neurons were fully rescued: They were able to create functioning networks.” 5/8/2017 314 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 The pursuit of happiness: Research reported on Science Daily shows that your body responds differently to “different kinds of happiness.” The “hedonic” kind (pursuit of pleasure, likened to “empty calories” in food) produces more stress, whereas the “eudaimonic kind” (the pursuit of purpose and noble meaning in life, as meant in the Declaration of Independence), produced less stress and greater sense of satisfaction with life. The effects can be measured in epigenetic 5/8/2017 315 markers on genes. More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Extra layer of information: As you grow, epigenetics modifies the genes in your brain. An article on Medical Xpress says that epigenetic information adds to genetic information content: Changes in the epigenome, including chemical modifications of DNA, can act as an extra layer of information in the genome, and are thought to play a role in learning and memory, as well as in age-related cognitive decline. The results of a new study by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies show that the landscape of DNA methylation, a particular type of epigenomic modification, is highly dynamic in brain cells during the transition from birth to adulthood, helping to understand how information in the genomes of cells in the brain is controlled from fetal development to adulthood. The brain is much more complex than all other organs in the body and this discovery opens the door to a deeper understanding of how the intricate patterns of connectivity in the brain are formed. 5/8/2017 316 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 These and other recent stories represent a major paradigm shift in genetics. Gone is the old “Central Dogma” that considered genes the master regulators. The path of information flow is not simply DNA to RNA to protein anymore; it’s a much more dynamic, elaborate choreography, the intricacies of which scientists are only beginning to understand. 5/8/2017 317 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 Needless to say, the discovery of “an extra layer of information” above DNA is worrisome to Darwinism but confirming of intelligent design. It’s also helpful to know that our actions and choices can affect our genes and those of our children. 5/8/2017 318 More Evidence for Epigenetic Controls on Genetics 更多表观遗传控制的证据 We’ll take this opportunity to again promote the recent book on the subject by Woodward and Gills, The Mysterious Epigenome: What Lies Beyond DNA. Hear a podcast by Dr. Woodward on ID the Future. Watch a short presentation by Woodward and Gills on YouTube. 5/8/2017 319 Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 5/8/2017 320