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Scifi and Fantasy Forum: Off-Topic Conversations: Evolution. Is it just a theory.:
Archive through May 01, 2003
Archive through May 01, 2003
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DNA Clock Is Broken 10/01/2001
–or rather, never worked to begin with. Molecular biologists are unhappy to hear that a dating technique they have relied on for decades is unreliable. Based on a claim in 1965, they have built their evolutionary trees on the assumption that mutations accumulate at a constant rate. Now, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences summarized in a news report in Science, researchers at the University of California in Irvine have found “vastly different mutation rates, even for closely related species . . . . Molecular clocks in general are much more ‘erratic’ than previously thought, and practically useless to keep accurate evolutionary time, the researchers conclude.”
Hear, O skeptics! Thy prophets have spoken lies unto thee in the name of science. Molecular dating is flawed, and now evolutionists must cast away another worthless clock. Creationists believed all along that the DNA clock was built on circular reasoning and therefore unreliable. Let’s see some prominent Errata in the next issue for claims made over the last 36 years. (So much for the Sept 17 story, for instance.)
So will this be a blow to evolutionary theory? If you think so, you don’t understand the power of faith. Evolution is a fact that must be saved from the evidence at all costs. This 1998 article shows that doubts about molecular clocks have been around for some time, but no matter what the fossils or the molecules show, the story will be adjusted to fit Darwinism:
Is it then justified to test the accuracy of the fossil record using the molecular clock hypothesis, when this requires extrapolation between groups with scarce fossil data? Can we even use the rates calculated within a group of organisms to infer the origin of this group? Can we exclude the possibility that rates of evolution change over time? Specifically, what if the emergence of a group of organisms coincides with an initial acceleration of substitution rates followed by a slowdown or period of molecular stasis? . . . . Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there have been significant changes in the rates of nucleotide substitution in taxa with remote origins before sending palaeontologists out to fill perceived gaps in the fossil record.
Evolutionists will argue about which evidence supports Darwinism better, but Darwinism itself, like American foreign policy with the Taliban, is not open to negotiation or discussion.
1998 article: http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/fossil/fossil_5.html
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev1001.htm#dating27
DK: This news shows what creationists are getting at in the "Gene for Speciation Found" news article.
State of the Solar System Theories: A Mess 04/17/2003
The tally of recently discovered extrasolar planets exceeds 100, but “not everyone is celebrating,” says Dan Falk in the April 17 issue of Nature. Why the long faces? “Extrasolar planets have peculiar properties, and our understanding of how planets form, which was incomplete even before the new data became available, now looks even shakier. The newly discovered bodies have strange, highly elliptical orbits. They are also far closer to their stars than equivalent planets in our Solar System. Amid the thrill of discovery, planetary scientists are wondering how to make sense of the processes that shaped these strange new worlds.”
Falk describes how the two competing models of planetary formation, the core-accretion model and the disk-instability model, both have problems, and neither can explain the highly elliptical orbits of many extrasolar planets, or why so many large ones are so close to the parent star. He can only hope that new instruments in Chile (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) and Hawaii (Sub-Millimeter Array) that can peer into stellar dust disks might provide answers within a decade. But for now, “these new-found worlds don’t look much like our planetary neighbours, and no one is quite sure why.”
We think students and the public should know that after nearly three centuries of the nebular hypothesis, planetary scientists are still at square one explaining our solar system by natural causes. If they thought finding extrasolar planets would complete the picture, it has only compounded the problems. Perhaps future observations will lend support to one hypothesis over another, but if history is any guide, the number of new puzzles will outpace simple answers. They certainly are not confident at this stage, as this article makes clear.
Our earth is blessed by a multitude of “anthropic” characteristics: the nearly circular orbits of our planets, the placement of our moon and Jupiter, our atmosphere, our magnetic field and many other factors that combine to make our solar system a haven for life. Without even one of these, there would be no one here to wonder. Maybe that is the most difficult thing of all for a naturalist to explain: the origin of wonder.
Ironically, in the same issue of Nature, Stanford geophysicist Norman H. Sleep haughtily repudiates the one alternative that does explain all the data. In a review of two books on catastrophes and extinction, including Ward and Brownlee’s pessimistic book The Life and Death of Planet Earth, he sneers, “Reaction to the rank odour of biblical catastrophism and creationism has prejudiced serious consideration of extraterrestrial affairs in geology and biology.” In other words, there is evidence for catastrophism, but let me make it crystal clear I do NOT mean Biblical creationism – that stinks!
Maybe that’s what drives some of these planetary scientists: not the observations, but an irrational hatred of the Bible. Notice how Biblical creationism is the target, not the creation account in any other religious document. Can you imagine anyone in these PC days getting away with a remark like that about the Quran or the sacred text of any other religion, or saying the creationism of native Americans, Eskimos, aborigines or Hindus exudes a rank odour? Such a slur would mean instant vilification on the front pages of world newspapers, and angry demands for a retraction. Stanford would undoubtedly ask him to resign. But with the Bible – that’s another story: it’s always open season here; fire away!
In a way, that’s kind of a back-handed endorsement. There must be something there worth investigating if it makes certain people so mad. Didn’t Jesus (who was a Biblical creationist) say that the world would hate his followers? “Therefore let us go forth unto Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach” (Hebrews 13:13). As the writer of Hebrews encouraged early Christians to leave the majority camp and endure the shame that would result, scientists who fear God and respect His word need to be ready when leaving the majority camp of naturalistic science. The reaction behind you may not be rational, but the company in front of you is wonderful.
News from:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Peppered Mice? 04/18/2003
In a mammalian version of the famous peppered moth study by Kettlewell, some Arizona biologists have studied dark- and light-colored mice. Color variants of rock pocket mice, Chaetodipus intermedius, were collected from natural populations in Arizona and New Mexico. Most of the dark-haired mice live on dark lava, and most of the light-haired ones live on light-colored rock. These scientists wanted to go beyond the work of Kettlewell and determine the genetic basis for melanism (darkening of coloration) in these mice. They begin (emphasis added),
A key problem in evolutionary biology is to connect genotype with phenotype for fitness-related traits. Finding the genes underlying adaptation has been difficult for a number of reasons. First, it requires that we identify traits that are ecologically important and that we have some understanding of how these traits affect fitness in different environments. Second, phenotypic variation of ecological relevance has often been studied in species for which we have little genetic information, making the genetic basis of the traits difficult to analyze. For example, one of the best known cases of adaptation involves color morphs of the peppered moth Biston betularia. Yet, after more than a half-century of study, the genes responsible for the color differences remain unknown. Finally, many fitness-related traits are quantitative and are unlikely to have a simple genetic basis. Because of these difficulties, the molecular basis for adaptation is known in only a handful of cases. Most involve either biochemical polymorphisms or response to human disturbance, such as heavy metal tolerance in plants, insecticide resistance, warfarin resistance in rats, or antibiotic resistance, and in many cases, the specific nucleotide changes have not been identified.
These scientists looked into the genes of their mice for clues. In a gene known to be responsible for hair color, they did see some frequently occurring patterns in the gene Mc1r among the dark mice; four out of nine single-nucleotide polymorphisms were found only among the dark mice at one of the collection sites. This, they feel, lends a genetic basis to the the melanism occurring there. But to their surprise, the population collected in New Mexico did not have these patterns in this gene. They say that this “indicates that a similar dark phenotype has evolved independently on these different lava flows and has done so through different genetic changes, although the gene(s) involved in the Armendaris population have not yet been identified. The distinct molecular basis for the same phenotype in two different populations provides strong evidence for convergent phenotypic evolution on a relatively short timescale; both lava flows are less than one million years old.”
So although their genetic linkage to phenotype was only a partial success, they feel this illustrates natural selection in the wild. Owls are presumed to be the primary agent of selection, since they are assumed to detect the contrasting color more easily. “The data reported here,” they conclude, “present a rare example of the molecular changes underlying adaptation in a simple and natural ecological setting.”
The paper is entitled “The genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice,” by Michael W. Nachman, Hopi E. Hoekstra, and Susuan L. D'Agostino of the Department of Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, published in the April 18 online preprints of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This paper is a fine example of science at work – unless used as support for Darwinian evolution, because that it surely is not. Some biologists went out on a field trip and collected mice. Fine. They noted which colors lived in which habitats. Dandy. They took them back to the lab and tried to associate genes with hair color. Wonderful. They have demonstrated Darwinian evolution in the wild. Whoa!
If anything, this paper points out serious problems with evolution. In the first place, nothing evolved: they started and ended with not just mice, but pocket mice, and not just pocket mice, but rock pocket mice, and not just rock pocket mice, but one species: C. intermedius. We assume this all means that these mice could interbreed. No speciation has occurred. We have dark-skinned and light-skinned people, too, that are all Homo sapiens sapiens, but it is very un-PC to claim that any particular color is more highly evolved than another. The same is true for mice.
It is probably a fair inference that an owl will go for the contrasting-colored mouse more often than one that blends in with its background. But they did not prove this by observation. Assuming this is true, it only involves a weeding out of varieties within existing populations of mice. There is no evolution in the Darwinian sense of getting something new to arise from a simpler precursor.
What these scientists did not accomplish is what they set out to prove: a genetic basis for the observed color differences. In one of the Arizona populations, they did find a correlation between patterns in the gene Mc1r and dark coloration. But this correlation did not hold true for the New Mexico population. For that, they had to invoke the hand-waving argument of convergent evolution; the New Mexico mice found a different means to the same end. The scientists did recognize that without a genetic explanation for phenotypic changes (external appearance), there is no Darwinian natural selection, only the discredited Lamarckian concept of inheritance of acquired characteristics. But even if they found a gene linked to fur color, it is oversimplifying not to assume that other factors, such as gene expression, the environment, and inter-species relationships are not involved in the observed distributions of pocket mice color. And where do some evolutionists’ pet theories like kin selection and sexual selection fit in? Did they ask Minnie Mouse if she preferred a light or dark Mickey?
So those are the pros of this study. Now for the cons. Look at the damaging admissions this paper makes about Darwinian evolution:
1 “Identifying the genes underlying adaptation is a major challenge to evolutionary biology,” they say, and repeat, “A key problem in evolutionary biology is to connect genotype with phenotype for fitness-related traits.” One would think, from the hype evolution receives about what a fact it is and how it can make philosophers out of goo, that such a basic problem would have been solved after 144 years of trying.
2 According to this paper, the old peppered moth tale is still “one of the best known cases of adaptation.” But the peppered moth myth was exposed by evolutionists as an overly-hyped story, not justified by the data, and in some particulars even involving fraud.* We will not accuse these biologists of gluing mice to the rock to take their pictures, but if there existed a better example than peppered moths, so widely debunked and discredited, these scientists surely would have mentioned it instead. (None of the other examples, such as insecticide resistance, refer to increases in genetic information, either, and notice that they were responses to human disturbance.) Even if the peppered moth story had a fragment of credibility left, they say that the genetic basis for the coloration change remains unknown to this day. Are we to conclude that no better example of evolutionary adaptation has been found since 1859 than peppered moths and pocket mice? Will these pictures of dark and light mice on light and dark rocks become the new icons of evolution in public school biology textbooks? Will the news media rise up and applaud this wonderful new example of natural selection in action? Probably.
(*See Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells and Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale by Judith Hooper).
3 The scientists call this a an example of “convergent phenotypic evolution on a relatively short timescale,” i.e., one million years. Are they implying that in a million years, all evolution could do for these mice was change their hair color? We thought they expected to get a whale from a wolf-sized land creature in just 50 million. If change in a few nucleotides in a mouse gene for hair color is all we can expect to get out of one million years of waiting for natural selection to work its wonders, we’re waiting in the wrong line.
We wish to express our sincere appreciation to scientists like these for continuing to provide us fresh material for exhibiting to the public the strongest evidences for contemporary evolutionary theory. Keep up the good work.
Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells
http://www.iconsofevolution.com/
Of Moths and Men: An Evolutionary Tale by Judith Hooper
news about it here: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crev0702.htm#darwin145
News from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
How Long Can Fossil DNA Survive? 04/21/2003
Nature Science Update has reported that a Danish team recovered 400,000 year old DNA in Siberian permafrost. Science News also highlighted the story in this week’s issue, describing the work of Eske Willerslev who analyzed core samples 31 meters long that they believe covers a two million year period. At the 30,000 year mark, they found DNA from eight living and extinct animals, like hares, reindeer and mammoths. At the 400,000 year mark they found genetic signatures of 28 modern and ancient trees, shrubs and mosses. The team also identified DNA of extinct birds and plants from a cave in New Zealand dataed to 3,000 years old.
Science News says the scientists do not know how the animal DNA ended up locked in permafrost, unless it came from their feces. The article also cautions that “at some sites, the mixing of soil layers over time could complicate attempts to reconstruct ancient ecosystems.” The work by Willerslev et al is to be published in an upcoming issue of Science.
Why do these scientists believe these samples are 400,000 years old? One word: evolution. They dated their samples on the presumption that animals have slowly evolved over millions of years from flatworms to mammoths, and piecing with that assumption guiding everything, made their claim. They used index fossils to date these samples, a method dependent on evolutionary assumptions – that is how they determined what a 30,000 year mark is, and so forth. But there are good reasons to believe DNA could not survive that long. The fact that the DNA of leafy plants and ambient-temperature animals like horses is locked in permafrost should make one think of alternatives. The samples do not show evolution; they show extinction, and stasis of some plants and animals that were fortunate to survive whatever drove their fellow critters under.
An organism constantly repairs its DNA, but outside the body, that repair stops. The DNA should then degrade relatively quickly, especially within warm road apples. The circumstances of burial in permafrost are consistent with rapid burial and preservation under extraordinary circumstances.
Science writers routinely rattle off long ages as matter of fact, but none of these samples come stamped with dates on them certified by Father Time or any other eyewitness. Science is supposed to be about observable, repeatable, testable phenomena, but how are you going to repeat 400,000 years? If mixing of soils can occur, how can you know the exact circumstances of deposition? It is more credible to set an upper limit on dates, such as a few thousand years, based on human observation, than to set a lower limit like hundreds of thousands of years, based on extrapolation or philosophical preference. For this reason, the younger dates have a far better observation-to-assumption ratio. There is no reason to think that these samples are as old as claimed except for the prior assumption of evolution. It makes more sense to conclude that the samples are not that old, and that animals went extinct but did not evolve.
A pro-ev take here:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993641
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Age of Chauvet Cave Art Disputed 04/22/2003
A debate is rising over the claim France’s cave art in Chauvet is 30,000 years old, says New Scientist. Some critics think the radiocarbon date is unreliable since it was done at one lab. They also imagine it hard to believe that the best cave art was 15,000 years earlier than thought; the earliest art should have been more primitive and improved as early man evolved. Chauvet cave was discovered in 1994. When the paintings were dated by the Carbon-14 method, the results “shocked everyone.”
Let this be a lesson in the unreliability of dating methods and in the implausibility of evolutionary assumptions about the rise of man.
New Scientist Article:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993631
News from:
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Posted By:  Maitaman Apr 24, 2003 - 07:49 am |       | Back to the original question, which was, apparently mis-stated. The meaning taken here was "Is Darwinian evolution only a theory."
The following answers are all based on that concept.
I'll try to answer the original question, as asked.
Yes. In the vein that the Pythagorian Theorum is only a theory.
Pythagorian Theorum?, WHAT'S THAT.....?
Ethier you think everyone will know or your trying to confuse me.....
Pythagorian Theorum: lets see (seraching google), it's something to do with math....some equation....I'm not going to find out more...
So your saing Pythagorian Theorum is a fact, and Darwinian evolution is fact..........
Well Pythagorian Theorum way well be fact, but if you believe evolution is fact just say so....
Darwinian evolution is not fact!......
I think this topic has evolued eough to cover all evolution stuff not just Darwinian evolution.
now that we have had a math lesson lets get back to Ev....
Navajo Sandstone Theory Proposed 04/24/2003
The Navajo Sandstone of Utah-Arizona is one of the most remarkable landforms of the American southwest. It reaches over 2000 feet in thickness at Zion National Park. Some of its outcroppings are bizarrely beautiful, as in the striking crossbedded strata at Coyote Buttes. Its canyons are meccas for hikers (as in Paria Canyon) and photographers, such as the dramatic slot canyons like Antelope Canyon. How did this varied and colorful landscape, which extends from mid-Arizona up into Colorado, Wyoming and Idaho, form?
In the current (March 2003) issue of the Journal of Geology, David Loope and Clinton Rowe of the University of Nebraska investigate the Navajo Sandstone, “one of the largest sand seas known in Earth history,” which they describe as “an ecological/depositional system without an obvious modern analog.” After identifying various features within the Coyote Buttes, including fossils such as burrows, dinosaur tracks and insect nests, they describe the region as a large area of dry sand dunes interrupted by pluvial (wet) periods of heavy monsoons. Although the study area including Buckskin Gulch could be interpreted as a single pluvial episode, they argue that two long-lived, monsoon-dominated wet periods were required to explain some overlapping bioturbated features described in the paper.
Geology is a fascinating science. Researchers have to get out into some wild country, some of it remote and harsh, and describe phenomena ranging from microscopic grains to vast regions covering several states or sometimes continents. Needless to say, geology theorizing is also an art. A geologist can often find similarities to current processes, but many times there are formations “without an obvious modern analog,” as here. What then? The geologist proposes a theory that tries to explain as many details as possible, but it can never be thoroughly tested, because the true story is hidden in the unobservable past. It can only achieve a certain measure of plausibility.
The vast extent of the Navajo Sandstone is remarkable. It lies far above the strata of the Grand Canyon, and varies in color from white to rich reddish-brown, sometimes intermingled. It erodes rapidly into the narrow slot canyons popular with photographers and adventurers. These geologists claim its deposition could have required anywhere from 4000 years to 5 million years. If so old, would it remain sand, and not have turned to solid rock? Would not the monsoons have riddled the region with thousands of deep gorges, filled in with subsequent deposits? If a slot canyon can form within one heavy flash flood or within a few hundred years, and if most of the entire Grand Canyon could have been carved in one or several brief floods, where are the gorges in the Navajo Sandstone, if the sand sea were being inundated with long ages of heavy rain? Why the vast extent of crossbedding, and strata that are traceable at the same level over hundreds of square miles?
No one can replay the video of what really happened; neither can we. But at least consider the plausibility of visualizing this vast region being deposited rapidly and catastrophically, instead of slowly and gradually over aeons. The main reason geologists seem to reject rapid deposition of deposits like the Navajo Sandstone is their predilection to view earth history as ancient, requiring millions and millions of years of slow, gradual evolution. Interesting that Venus does not fit that pattern. In The New Solar System (4th ed.), the author says the doctrine of uniformitarianism does not apply, because the first 90% of the planet’s history appears obliterated by more recent events. Ditto for Io, Europa, Miranda, Enceladus, Titan, and large portions of Mars – why not Earth? Maybe it’s time to ditch Lyell like they ditched Freud. The credibility of his famous line, “the present is the key to the past,” has eroded.
news:http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Are Metal-Poor Stars Closer to the First Generation? 04/24/2003
Astronomers have this convention of calling anything heavier than hydrogen and helium “metals” even it is oxygen, iron or carbon. Most stars have a good portion of the periodic table of elements represented in their spectra, but last year a star with only 1/200,000 the sun’s metallicity was discovered. This excited astronomers, because they believe the big bang created only H and He, so every other element would have had to be formed with stellar interiors. That means the first generation of stars would have to be composed of only hydrogen and maybe some helium, but no pure hydrogen stars have ever been found. If, however, a very low metallicity star exists, perhaps it is closer to the beginning, having formed out of the nucleosynthesis products of first generation stars.
The picture is not quite so straightforward. In the April 24 issue of Nature, three conflicting papers try to explain the puzzling spectrum of HE0107-5240. Though its overall metallicity is low, it has an anomalously high C/Fe ratio, 10,000 times that in our sun, and a nitrogen abundance enhanced over the sun’s ratio by a factor of 200. In the News and Views summary of these papers, Timothy C. Beers of Michigan Stete sorts through the “frustrating variety of possibilities” the data permit. They don’t know if this star formed out of a metal-poor cloud, if it started out metal-rich but became depleted, or if it was salted with its metals by nearby supernovas. Though optimistic, Beers believes “numerous additional stars with extremely low Fe abundances will need to be discovered to fully ’tell the tale’ of early star formation and the creation of the first metals in the Universe.”
I.e., they have not been discovered yet. We think people should know that the simplistic stories of nucleosynthesis, leading to Carl Sagan’s oft-quoted line “we are all made of starstuff” is not so simple when you look at the actual data. If the big bang started with only hydrogen, why do virtually all stars already have heavy elements? Notice that even HE0107-5240 contains nine elements: H, C, N, Na, Mg, Ca, Ti, Fe, and Ni, which Beers admits “present a dizzying array of possible explanations for their origin.” It’s not that scientists are unable to concoct a story around the data, it’s the data require a story to fit a belief.
Got metals? Click here to see the latest Hubble Space Telescope image of the Omega Nebula. Look at the colors metals add to anotherwise boring hydrogen cloud.
Hubble Space Telescope image
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/2003/13/
news from:http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Cave Date Puts Hominids Too Early 04/25/2003
Results are in from the dating game, says Science Magazine 04/25/03, but the contestants are not happy. Darryl Granger used a new dating method to estimate the age of remains in Sterkfontein Cave, South Africa, and concluded the hominid skeleton there is 4 million years old, nearly a million years older than the oldest previous estimate. Others don’t buy it. That makes Little Foot (one of the skeletons) the contemporary of Lucy’s ancestor, yet it “does not resemble” that ancestor in crucial aspects, complains one investigator. To add confusion, dates from recent discoveries in nearby Jahovec Cave may represent two types of australopitcheines, “suggesting a diversity of 4-million-year-old hominids.” Critics feel use of the cosmic radionuclide dating method is on “shaky ground” because of the complexities of the cave environment.
So the hominid wars carry on. As usual, shaky method + shaky assumptions = shaky story. If contemporaneous australopithecines showed significant diversity, on what basis can scientists arrange them into an evolutionary relationship?
news: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
How Hummingbird Beaks Co-Evolve With Flower Shape 04/25/2003
In an Enhanced Perspective piece in the April 25 issue of Science, two evolutionists highlight the relationship between the hummingbirds and their nectar sources on the islands of the Lesser Antilles. The curvature of the beak correlates to the shape of the flower. Female beaks in some species are longer and more curved than males, but males have larger and heavier bodies. The sexes tend to feed on flowers that match their characteristics. While the sexual dimorphism seems a response to foraging, “it casts doubt on assumptions that sexual dimorphism is a measure of sexual selection.” The authors consider this a fine-tuned “co-evolutionary dance” (where evolution of the flower affects the evolution of the bird, and vice versa), yet they admit puzzles remain: “On the other side of the equation, how do differences in animal feeding behavior and efficiencies affect plant fitness? Gene flow is clearly available to plants with traplining pollinators [i.e., birds in which the sexes feed on different flowers], but how do plants with territorial pollinators accomplish genetic outcrossing? Also, does the consumption of insects by hummingbirds directly influence hummingbird morphology and indirectly influence flower morphology? Once again, islands may provide the ideal setting for answering these questions.”
The Darwinists are never done with their stories. It’s always going to take more studies (and more funding). Here you have a study that undercuts one of Darwin’s pet theories, sexual selection, but no clear cause-effect relationship is demonstrated between variation and fitness, or between morphology and the species responsible for the variation. There are enough loopholes in the tale to drive a tank through. Even if the birds and flowers are co-evolving, the birds are still birds and the flowers are still flowers. So what does this story have to do with Darwinian evolution, the origin of hummingbirds and flowers from bacteria? Nothing. Even creationists unashamedly accept this amount of variation, and are the first to exhibit, in their lectures, colorful montages of dogs in all their varied glory. One cannot extrapolate recklessly a function that is not known to be linear. Some functions rise gradually and then fall sharply to zero.
Karl Popper once took heat for stating that evolution is like a metaphysical research programme. It gives biologists something to do to look busy and publish or perish. They never want to finish their stories, because then they would have to go out and get a real job.
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Titan’s Ice Reflects Young Surface 04/25/2003
A team of scientists found evidence of water ice on Titan, the haze-shrouded largest moon of Saturn. This represents a problem. The international team of planetary scientists and astronomers, publishing in the Apr. 25 issue of Science explains that we shouldn’t be able to see the icy bedrock of Titan, because dark compounds ought to have buried it long ago (emphasis added):
Methane, the second most abundant atmospheric constituent (0.05 bar) detected after N2 (1.4 bar), is continually and irreversibly destroyed by solar ultraviolet photolysis, a process rapid enough to require a recent supply of methane. Two end-member scenarios are possible. Ongoing geologic activity supplies atmospheric methane (and leads to an atmosphere that varies in size with supply), or ocean reservoirs of methane exist as a result of past geologic activity. The products of methane photolysis, a variety of simple and complex organic compounds, precipitate to Titan’s surface, leaving a history of Titan’s atmospheric composition. If Titan’s atmosphere has existed in its present form since its formation, ~800 m of organic liquids and solids blanket Titan’s surface.
That’s roughly 2,600 feet thick of methane products. Yet presumably Titan’s solid surface is composed largely of water ice, as on Ganymede or Enceladus. How can the ice show through such a thick blanket? The authors do not offer a suggestion. Most of their report focuses on how they detected the water ice through narrow windows in the smog at 8 wavelengths. “We derived a spectrum of Titan’s surface within these ‘windows’ and detected features characteristic of water ice,” they state without theorizing. “Therefore, despite the hundreds of meters of organic liquids and solids hypothesized to exist on Titan’s surface, its icy bedrock lies extensively exposed” (emphasis added).
More detailed and extensive data are expected to be received when the Cassini Spacecraft makes its first flyby of Titan on July 1, 2004, and especially when its detachable Huygens Probe parachutes down to Titan for the first-ever in situ measurements and photographs of the atmosphere and surface.
This is one of many phenomena in the solar system that argue against the commonly-accepted age of 4.6 billion years. In the first place, all the methane should have eroded by now into products blanketing the surface. To keep the long age, scientists have to propose a continual source of new methane to replenish the atmosphere that we see. In the second place, if organic compounds have been raining down to the surface for that long, there should be a blanket over half a mile thick covering any water-ice surface, yet today, water ice is detectable. These are the data, folks. Make up stories of billions of years at your own risk.
from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DNA—what does it prove?
by Michael Matthews, AiG–US
25 April 2003
Conferences worldwide are celebrating a landmark in 20th century science—the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s structure (first reported in Nature magazine, 25 April 1953).
This discovery is certainly worthy of note—and celebration. The discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure truly revolutionized biology, opening the door to amazing breakthroughs in our understanding of disease and genetic disorders, and it inspired the just-completed Human Genome Project, hailed as the ‘periodic table of biology’
No more need for God?
The celebrations have a dark side, however. Many atheistic evolutionists claim that the discovery of DNA’s structure is proof of evolution and a nail in God’s coffin. As they see it, the discovery of a ‘universal’ molecular structure for storing and passing on information to offspring—shared by almost all forms of life—allows scientists to find a purely physical explanation for the origin and development of life on Earth, without any need for a Creator.
Indeed, both Crick and Watson have been outspoken in their belief that the discovery of DNA’s structure has helped overturn belief in the God of the Bible. Francis Crick has repeatedly said that he sees DNA as a confirmation of evolution, which discredits ‘the god hypothesis.’ His co-discoverer, James Watson, says that our understanding of DNA has helped to debunk religious ‘myths from the past.’
Watson boldly told the London Telegraph in a recent interview, ‘Every time you understand something, religion becomes less likely. Only with the discovery of the double helix and the ensuing genetic revolution have we had grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours.’
Many of the world’s leading scientists will hear this message today at a huge gathering of luminaries (including Watson himself) who traveled to Cambridge to praise the ongoing impact of Watson and Crick’s discovery.
The culmination of the day, after a series of speeches on molecular medicine, cancer, aging, etc., is a lecture titled ‘Genes and human nature’ by Matt Ridley, author of the bestseller Genome. Ridley will speak about the broader implications of human genome research, and it is not hard to guess what he will say.
Scientific American describes Ridley as ‘an avid proponent of the Darwinian view of the world, [who] perceives the genome not as a cookbook or a manual but as a quintessentially historical document—a three-billion-year memoir of our species from its beginnings in the primal ooze to the present day.’
Around the world, believers in ‘goo-to-you’ evolution, like Matt Ridley, are repeating the mantra that the human genome holds the key to unlocking the mystery of human nature and the evolution of life on Earth.
What does DNA really show us?
But is this really what DNA shows us? Ironically, while atheists believe DNA is conclusive evidence of evolution, creationists reach the opposite conclusion.
Unlike the atheists, creationists see the genetic code as astonishing evidence for a Designer, who created a marvelously complex, efficient ‘information system’ for encoding life. The only reasonable explanation for all the information in DNA is that a Designer put all the information in the original genes—e.g. the ‘kinds’ that He made during the six days of Creation (see The Marvelous ‘Message Molecule’).
So how can rational people examining the same facts reach opposite conclusions? The answer is ‘worldview.’ To understand where DNA came from, we must make major assumptions about ancient historical events, which no human beings were present to observe.
Atheists begin with the assumption that the universe has been around for eons and that they can explain everything by time and chance. So they interpret scientific data to fit their assumptions. Those who believe in the Creator of the Bible, however, reject long ages. They believe that God was an eyewitness to the origin of life, and He faithfully recorded these events in His Word. Creationists interpret the data within this framework.
So how can rational people examining the same facts reach opposite conclusions? The answer is ‘worldview.’ To understand where DNA came from, we must make major assumptions about ancient historical events, which no human beings were present to observe.
Atheists begin with the assumption that the universe has been around for eons and that they can explain everything by time and chance. So they interpret scientific data to fit their assumptions. Those who believe in the Creator of the Bible, however, reject long ages. They believe that God was an eyewitness to the origin of life, and He faithfully recorded these events in His Word. Creationists interpret the data within this framework.
Only one good answer
So whose framework makes sense of modern-day scientific facts? AiG has several articles showing how the existence of DNA can not be explained by evolutionary processes (see Genetics: No Friend of Evolution and Jonathan Sarfati’s excellent article in the latest Creation magazine, ‘DNA: marvelous messages or mostly mess?’)
It is not enough to explain how DNA might have gathered into strands by random chance; evolutionists must also explain the machinery to interpret DNA. In other words, it’s not enough to explain how random letters could eventually fall into the order S-E-E-T-H-E-D-O-G-R-U-N. These letters still don’t mean anything unless you have a pre-existing language system for interpreting those letters! ‘See the dog run’ has meaning, but only to a modern English-speaker. (The origin of ‘information’ is a critical weakness in evolutionary theory—see Self-Replicating Enzymes? and Q&A: Information Theory.)
Biochemist Dr Duane Gish, a stalwart in the Creation movement and vice president of the Institute for Creation Research, observes about the human genome: ‘The genetics are so incredibly complex and can be so marvelously interrelated that it’s absolutely going to demand an intelligent source. The idea that all of this could have come about by random accidents, genetic errors, and so forth is just simply beyond comprehension.’
He explains, for instance, that cells must have an incredibly sophisticated editing process to ensure that each gene is reproduced error-free. ‘If life did not have that editing process right at the very start, then it would just mutate right out of existence,’ he explains.
‘All those errors would slip through—they’d make nonsense, and that would be the end of it. The fact that we have to have that editing process from the very beginning means it had to be created to be there to be effective and to do that work—or life could not exist.’
Conclusion
Yes, this is an appropriate day to celebrate recent advancements in our knowledge of human genetics and biology. But we should be humbled by our knowledge, limited as it is.
Atheists have no explanation for the origin of life or mankind’s sinful nature, in spite of their noises to the contrary. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, has given us the only historical basis for understanding the origin of the human gene—and mankind’s sinful nature—His Word.
Not only is the Creator God the source of all life and the source of our knowledge about life, He is our only hope (through Jesus Christ, the Creator/Savior/Redeemer) to escape the consequences of our evil nature, which blinds us to His truths (1 Corinthians 2:14) and causes us to seek our own way (Romans 3:11).
The Marvelous ‘Message Molecule’
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1165.asp
Genetics: No Friend of Evolution
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/1356.asp
Self-replicating Enzymes?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3974.asp
Information Theory Questions and Answers
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/infotheory.asp
1 Corinthians 2:14
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=1COR%2B2:14)#uage=english&version=KJV&showfn=on
Romans 3:11
http://bible.gospelcom.net/bible?passage=ROM%2B3:11)#uage=english&version=KJV&showfn=on
or a bible for the last 2.....
oh and last but not least.....
artcle from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0425dna.asp
How a Materialist Writes “A User’s Guide to Life” 04/25/2003
Is the soul a collection of neurons on the brain? A materialist must think so. Some would put more emphasis on nurture, beyond just nature (i.e., culture and environment, other than just the wiring). Either way, how does a materialist explain our sense of self and our deepest longings, and how does one explain evil?
In the Apr. 25 issue of Science, Nathan J. Emery reviews a new book by two who enthusiastically embrace the “reductionist manifesto”, Steven R. Quartz and Terrence J. Sejnowski, entitled, Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are. Emery sets the stage (emphasis added):
Can an understanding of brain science ever uncover the answers to the “big” questions of life: Who are we? How did we become who we are? And what does it mean to have an individual self different from other selves? Many scientists think so. Francis Crick, for example, has suggested that “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”. He even went as far as to state that the seat of the soul was located in the anterior cingulate cortex. And there is a constant stream of new research that attempts to answer these fundamental questions using sophisticated neuroimaging techniques. A recent trawl through the cognitive neuroscience literature reveals studies of the neural bases of cooperation, self-recognition, gender stereotyping, romantic love, humor appreciation, facial attractiveness and aesthetics, and the attribution of others’ mental states. But at a fundamental level, one wonders whether the attempts of such research to demystify the mysteries of life are futile. If we found the location of “self” in the brain, would that discovery tell us any more than we already know from our individual experiences?
The book takes a reductionist approach similar to that of Crick, but they “argue that these biological systems can only create a psychologically whole person through interactions with the cultural environment—interactions that affect the structure and function of neural circuits.” They call this “cultural biology,” according to Emery, who describes the main idea behind their “highly cognitive” sense of the self: “The crux of Quartz and Sejnowski’s thesis is the suggestion that the neural basis of our individual nature is located within the prefrontal cortex, which they call the ‘user’s guide to life” (emphasis added). But he wonders why this is news. Every scientist he knows already accepts the assumption of an interplay between heredity and environment, not the strictly reductionist idea that brain chemistry alone determines our sense of self. The value of the book, Emery believes, is in providing a wake-up call to neuroscientists: “Sometimes students of the brain forget that brains are party to evolutionary processes, do not work in isolation, are not fixed from birth, and can change depending on the environment. A failure to take this information into account would be detrimental to all subsequent studies of mind and brain,” he says (emphasis added).
Having thus justified the book, Emery is left with a strange aftertaste (emphasis added):
At the end of the book, I was left wondering what the authors had actually said about “how we become who we are” and about how we can use the knowledge of personality development that we already have. I expected to find such uses addressed in the afterword on the terrorist attacks of 11 September, but there I found nothing except a politically charged statement. As I write this, another suicide bomber has killed 20 in Israel, and the United States and the United Kingdom are preparing to go to war with Iraq. I ask myself what could be done about such problems if we had the kind of information this book purports to present. Terrorists do not tend to have a defined psychopathology, and therefore they are unlikely to have a biological deficit in their psychological makeup. Does this mean that many of the flaws in human (and individual) nature are due to culture alone?
Emery gives the authors some credit for at least raising consciousness on these questions: “Despite its many shortcomings, Liars, Lovers, and Heroes does provide a reasonably good place to start asking these sorts of questions empirically.”
Did you catch the lesson of this reductionist dialogue? If so, you found the Achilles’ heel of materialism. It is the crux of the debate about who we are, and how we became who we are: it is the inescapable reality of conscience. These materialists have an innate sense of good and evil, that evil is bad and should be stopped, but they do not know what to do with it. Their own materialism ties their brains in knots. On one side, everything evolved, so the brain evolved and evil evolved. No moral standard exists; everything can be reduced to nature and nurture. Whatever is, is right. On the other side, both Emery and the authors cannot live with this philosophy. Evil happens, and it should be stopped!
Notice how all of Emery’s bluff about “brains are parties to evolutionary processes” unravels in his last paragraph. He sees an afterword about September 11, and looks forward in anticipation that Quartz and Sejnowski are going to provide a reasoned explanation for evil. But then he sees them producing “nothing but a politically charged statement.” Whatever position they took is irrelevant, because if the brain is only nature + nurture, on what basis can they claim any position is right or wrong? (To be consistent, they would have to believe that their environment, upbringing or the groupthink of their culture made them feel the way they do, but their feeling is not morally superior to anyone else’s views; but then how could they advocate their own?) Then Emery glances over at the newspaper and reads about another suicide bombing in Israel that killed 20 peple, its perpetrator most likely deluded into thinking this was a ticket to paradise. Emery’s soul is stirred within him, a soul that refuses to be reduced to neurons, chemistry, or environment. The fact that he even asks these questions and thinks these thoughts, employing the conscience-directed functions of reason and logic, is the key to understanding that there is more than evolution or “cultural biology” at work here. There is a conscience that refuses to stay imprisoned in a materialistic box.
Emery looks down on Crick as overly reductionist. He thinks adding nurture to nature is one step better than trying to locate the soul in the anterior cingulate cortex. But this is a fool’s paradise. If every human is a material assemblage of atoms undergoing chemical reactions, then an assemblage of material assemblages of atoms is no less reductionist. You can put a hundred computers on a network, but they are not going to create chat rooms and emails by themselves unless souls use them. The soul is not nature (materialism), and it is not nature + nurture (materialism + materialism). It has a conscience. Our brains are strongly influenced by their material and cultural parts, and our consciences can be deceived and deadened, but the conscience refuses to be classified in the periodic table. Without real, true souls inhabiting our bodies and brains, there is no valid concept of self, of evil, or of moral imperative. Emery’s twinge of conscience in the last paragraph is the dead giveaway.
This little book review, hidden away in a weekly science journal, is not likely to attract a great deal of attention. It reveals, however, the utter moral bankruptcy of a system that on the one hand tries to say we are matter in motion, but on the other hand makes moral statements that the U.S. should either get out of Iraq or should stop terrorism, or anything in between. Don’t let an evolutionist use should in a sentence. That word is not in the Darwin Dictionary.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
PBS Offers Intelligent Design Documentary 04/28/2003
According to Illustra Media, the Public Broadcasting System uploaded the film Unlocking the Mystery of Life to its satellite this past Sunday. For the next three years, it will be available for member stations to download and broadcast. In addition, PBS is offering the film on their Shop PBS website under Science/Biology videos (page 4).
The film, released a little over a year ago, has been called a definitive presentation of the Intelligent Design movement. With interviews and evidences from eight PhD scientists, it presents strictly scientific (not religious) arguments that challenge Darwinian evolution, and show instead that intelligent design is a superior explanation for the complexity of life, particularly of DNA and molecular machines. The film has been well received not only across America but in Russia and other countries. Many public school teachers are using the material in science classrooms without fear of controversies over creationism or religion in the science classroom, because the material is scientific, not religious, in all its arguments and evidences, and presents reputable scientists who are well qualified in their fields: Dean Kenyon, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Steven Meyer, William Dembski, Scott Minnich, Jed Macosko, and Paul Nelson, with a couple of brief appearances by Phillip E. Johnson, the “founder” of the Intelligent Design movement.
Check with your local PBS Station to find out when they plan to air it. If it is not on their schedule, call or write and encourage them to show the film. Why should television partly supported by public tax funds present only a one-sided view on this subject, so foundational to all people believe and think? We applaud PBS’s move, but it is only partial penance for the Evolution series and decades of biased reporting on evolution.
This is a wonderful film, beautifully edited and shot on many locations, including the Galápagos Islands, and scored to original music by Mark Lewis. People are not only buying it for themselves, but buying extra copies to show to friends and co-workers. Unlocking the Mystery of Life available here on our Products page in VHS and DVD formats. The film is about an hour long and includes vivid computer graphics of DNA in action. The DVD version includes an extra half-hour of bonus features, including answers to 14 frequently-asked questions about intelligent design, answered by the scientists who appear in the film.
This is a must-see video. Get it, and get it around.
PBS stationfinder
http://www.pbs.org/stationfinder/index.html
News from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
How Does a Stem Decide to Become a Leaf or Flower? 04/29/2003
It’s the simple questions that sometimes yield the most interesting answers. What junior high kid in a science class hasn’t experimented with bean seedlings, watching them germinate and grow toward the light? Many people have seen time-lapse movie clips of germinating plants emerging out of their seeds. The initial shoot splits into branching stems, and leaves start appearing. At a certain stage in the growth cycle, flowers appear, followed by fruits. Have you ever wondered how a plain-looking stem, called an apical meristem, decides to grow a leaf or a flower? Scientists are continuing to learn more of the details at the genetic level, and the emerging picture is quite amazing.
In the April 29 issue of Current Biology, Peter Doerner has provided an overview entitled, “Plant Meristems: A Merry-Go-Round of Signals Review.” He introduces the subject:
Growth and organ formation in plants occur post-embryonically, mediated by meristems located on the tips of growth axes in shoots and roots. Meristems are unique structures made up of pluripotent stem cells, a transitory population of indeterminate cells and determinate organ primordia formed at the periphery. Secondary growth, which increases the girth of stems, is mediated by cambial cells, which continue to add vascular cells to the circumference of the central, vascular cylinder of the plant.
While shoot meristems produce geometric patterns of leaves and flowers, the root meristems produce stochastic or indeterminate branching arrangements. The meristem center has three layers of slowly-dividing cells. Doerner says that “Low rates of cell division reduce the likelihood of mutations affecting the large sectors of the aerial plant body produced by individual stem cells. On the flanks, however, are cells that divide more rapidly, and when an organ needs to start forming, “proliferation increases markedly.” Something has to signal the meristem to begin producing an organ like a leaf or flower. This has certain requirements (emphasis added):
Meristems mediate plant growth and hence are dynamic structures in which cells transit through zones with distinct developmental potential. The coordination of growth with development in such dynamic structure requires extensive short and long distance intercellular signalling. A conceptual framework for meristem function must include at least the following elements. First, meristems must have a capacity to specify an indeterminate cellular ground state. Second, a subset of these indeterminate cells must acquire stem cell identity, ultimately replenishing cells lost to organs and maintaining genetic integrity.. Cells in this stem cell niche must self-regulate their activity to not disappear or overproliferate. Third, indeterminate cells must have the ability to acquire determinate fates associated with organogenesis.
An analogy from recent military news might help explain what these cells accomplish. Imagine an army sent into a battlefield, where each soldier is “pluripotent” or able to do any job required. They are sent out, not yet knowing what specific job they are going to have to do. This is the “indeterminate” state. At some point, signals come into their walkie-talkies giving orders: “Bob, you are to be a tank missile launcher,” or “Jessica, take over medic responsibility in the infirmary.” These soldiers then “acquire determinate fates” and do their jobs with skill and precision, including the ability to act autonomously and coordinate with other soldiers in their vicinity. In the plant, there are feedback loops maintaining dynamic equilibrium (homeostasis) that is very effective. Doerner comments, “Stem cell homeostasis is maintained astonishingly well within tight bounds, as the longevity of the shoot apical meristem of trees demonstrates.”
In an army, all this cooperation would not work with out the generals giving the proper signals from headquarters. A plant, however, does not have a centralized headquarters, like a brain. How does it do it? Each cell has a copy of the DNA master plan, but “One of the major unresolved questions of meristem function is the nature of the mechanisms by which signalling occurs to establish specific patterns of gene expression.” Biologists have long known about chemicals called auxins and gibberelins that enhance or suppress growth at the meristem, but recent work has led to a “startling observation.” Small bits of RNA, called micro-RNAS (miRNA), a “recently discovered, novel class of non-conding regulatory RNAs found in animals and plants” may be responsible for patterning. Another class of RNAs called “short interfering RNAs (siRNA), distinct from miRNAs, are involved in “epigenetic regulation mediated by DNA and histone regulation.” Doerner explains, “Therefore it is likely that several small RNA-mediated processes participate in precipitating, enforcing or maintaining patterning decisions.” But what controls the RNAs? Do they mastermind the expression, or just enforce developmental decisions? “No single ‘master regulator’ has been identified sufficient to specify shoot or root meristems originating from any single cell,“ Doerner observes, “and from the emerging paradigm for meristem function it is unlikely that such a gene exists.“
So while we know that meristem homeostasis thrives on “antagonism: negative feedback loops and juxtaposition of cells with divergent developmental fates,” and while we think “small RNA-dependent processes are good candidate mechanisms to effect changes in expression levels or patterns in the short term or for longer periods by epigenetic mechanisms,” Doerner leaves the central question unresolved: “No clear candidates for morphogens have yet emerged,” meaning that while the soldiers are well-trained and exquisitely coordinated, we do not see a clear central command that makes the decision and sends the orders, “Grow a flower right here.”
One of the first “amazing” stories we reported back in July 2001 was that plants have their own internet, and plant cells talk to themselves in email. This updated report shows that the interplant internet is even more mysterious and wonderful than we imagined. Without a brain, without a general, without a headquarters, a beehive of activity functions with goals and coordination and timing. Flowers appear on schedule. Leaves unfurl with mathematical precision. Roots dive into the dark soil, fruits ripen, seeds disperse, water and minerals flow through the vessels, and dozens of other functions work not haphazardly but with “astonishing” levels of dynamic equilibrium and effectiveness. Two wonders are evident in this paper: (1) Epigenetic mechanisms are at work. This means that DNA is not a master control; something is controlling the DNA itself. (2) Elaborate signalling takes place. The micro-RNAs are like email messages delivering the orders to local indeterminate cells, causing them to became flowers, leaves and fruit. We hope you never look at a tree, or even a weed, quite the same again.
http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
How the Cell Avoids Typos 04/29/2003
Some of the most intriguing molecules involved in protein manufacture are the set of 20 molecular machines that fasten amino acids onto transfer RNAs. They are called aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) and it is their job to be certain that the correct amino acid is mated to the correct transfer RNA (tRNA). They are like language interpreters, in that they understand both the DNA language of nucleotides and the protein language of amino acids. Just like an interpreter must carefully match an English word to its Chinese equivalent, the aaRS interpreters are key players for ensuring the resulting protein chain is spelled correctly. Human interpreter errors can be funny (a Chinese interpreter once translated the American idiom “out of sight, out of mind” as “invisible idiot”). But in the cell, mistakes can be disastrous, leading to cell death. One difficulty of their job is that some amino acids are very similar to others. Linus Pauling once predicted an error rate of 1 out of 5 (80% accuracy) between isoleucine and valine, since they are differ only in weak van der Waals forces; but experimental evidence shows the the aaRS interpreter scores correctly 2999 times out of 3000 (99.67% accuracy). How do these sightless molecular machines discriminate between nearly identical twins, and almost always pick the right one?
An international team of biochemists publishing in the April 25 issue of Molecular Cell has followed the activity of a couple of these interpreters in unprecedented detail. Before attaching the amino acid, the aaRS machine validates it with a “double-sieve” mechanism, which is like forcing the entrant to open two locks with two independent keys, or making him supply two passwords to two different security guards. It performs both pre- and post-transfer editing. In other words, it validates the incoming amino acid before attachment, and double-checks it after attachment. To begin with, the attachment will not proceed unless the tRNA is charged and the amino acid is activated. The active site for the leucine aaRS machine includes a “discrimination pocket” for the side chain of the amino acid leucine. Simultaneously, it authenticates the adenine of the RNA. If the parts don’t match, or a hacker tries to sneak past, the aaRS machine holds the amino acid in position to be hit by the water-balloon firing squad; an incoming water molecule hydrolyzes both substrates, so that no further harm will come from the mismatched tRNA. The properly-edited tRNA then moves to another machine complex, the ribosome, that joins the amino acids together on an assembly line; here, additional proofreading mechanisms check for accuracy. Then the assembled protein chain moves onto the chaperone for correct folding, then to the intercellular railroad for shipping, etc.
The team found a critical aspartic acid in the active site of the leucine aaRS interpreter that is “universally conserved” in very different organisms. Mutating it to something else, like alanine, destroys the editing function. So far, scientists have learned about four proteins that can deacylate charged tRNAs, and they have “completely different structural frameworks.” Small changes in these machines also cause a ”dramatic effect upon editing.” The accuracy of the aaRS system is just one of many levels of quality control ensuring cell survival. The authors state, “Our results demonstrate the economy by which a single active site accommodates two distinct substrates in a proofreading process critical to the fidelity of protein synthesis.”
This system hardly needs comment. It speaks so loudly about intelligent design that only willful unbelief could claim such a system evolved by random, undirected natural forces. Language translation, quality control, triple-checking failure analysis, pre- and post-translation authentication, error disposition, precision parts, irreducible complexity ... what more needs to be said?
This paper makes no mention of evolution, except in one sentence: “Subsequent biochemical analysis determined that a number of other aaRSs also have highly evolved proofreading mechanisms.” Gag me with a spoon.
Your Body Has Transistors Superior to Intel’s 05/01/2003
Roderick MacKinnon’s team has done it again. The headline at Rockefeller University proclaims, “Voltage-dependent channel structure reveals masterpiece responsible for all nerve, muscle activity.” Building on the art metaphor, the news release begins, “Scientists studying the tiny devices — called voltage-dependent ion channels — that are responsible for all nerve and muscle signals in living organisms for 50 years have been working like a bunch of blindfolded art critics. ... Rockefeller’s Roderick MacKinnon, M.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Youxing Jiang, Ph.D., and their colleagues have removed the blindfold to reveal a masterpiece of nature’s engineering” (emphasis added).
The masterpiece is an exquisite voltage-regulated pore in the cell membrane that attracts and transmits potassium ions, maintaining an electrical potential with performance specs superior to man-made transistors. The team found that the channel operates with charge-sensitive protein paddles that permit the correct ions through while blocking others, and involves a feedback loop that is sensitive to changing conditions in the environment. Their experimental results are reported in the May 1 issue of Nature.
Potassium channels are vital to muscle and nerve activity, and are highly conserved in all organisms, from the Archaea living around hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, to the human gymnast on the high bar. The importance of these molecule-size gates is summed up in the news release: “ The entire sequence of events takes only a few milliseconds, and occurs tens of thousands of times every day in human beings and organisms of all varieties. Without this hair trigger electrical system, life would be more than calm. There would be scant possibility of thinking, breathing or movement.”
It’s nice when other reporters do the thinking for us. No evolution, just intelligent design that flabbergasts the investigators. But like the obligatory pinch of incense to the emperor, evolution is mentioned in passing. The article states that “voltage-dependent potassium channels are extremely similar throughout every branch of the evolutionary tree.” Uh, pardon me... what tree? I thought we were at an art show.
Rockefeller University report:
http://www.rockefeller.edu/pubinfo/043003.php
May 1 issue of Nature:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v423/n6935/full/423021a_fs.html
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Are Germs Good Bugs Gone Bad? The Case of Anthrax 05/01/2003
Now that the anthrax genome has been decoded, scientists are surprised that most of it looks like a common, beneficial soil bacterium, Bacillus cereus. Only about 3% of their genomes are significantly different. In addition, the pathogenic genes are not in the nucleus, but in plasmids (smaller, circular strands of DNA in the cytoplasm). They give the appearance of having been imported by horizontal gene transfer. Some are wondering if anthrax acquired its toxicity recently. The pathogenic genes seem to affect expression of existing genes. EurekAlert summarizes two papers in the May 1 issue of Nature that report the decoding of the anthrax genome.
This raises some interesting questions about the origin of disease germs, and puzzles on both sides of the creation-evolution debate. But it seems consistent with a Biblical view that there was an original good creation that has gone awry, either directly from God as judgment from the curse because of sin, or indirectly from mutations mucking up the regulation of otherwise beneficial functions. An evolutionist can claim anthrax got its virulence genes by horizontal transfer, but then where did those come from? It’s too early to understand what these genomes are revealing, and there are some things science can never tell us.
eurekalert:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-04/tifg-as042803.php
Nature:
http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/dynapage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v423/n6935/index.html
Not All Pseudogenes are Pseudo Genes 05/01/2003
At least one pseudogene has a function, claims a team scientists from Japan and UC San Diego (see UCSD Health Science News). Long assumed to be dead copies of true genes that are devolving into useless relics, pseudogenes, which are common in eukaryotic DNA, may not be so useless after all. The team found a pseudogene that, while not coding for a protein, affects the expression of the true gene. The pseudogene apparently stabilizes the expression of a similar protein-coding gene on another chromosome. Without the pseudogene, lab mice developed abnormal kidneys and bones. The team discovered the function of the pseudogene by accident, reports SciNews, as they were preparing the mice for a different experiment. They suspect similar mechanisms may be at work in most other pseudogenes, and “hope to show that pseudogene-gene interaction is a general mechanism taking place in many cellular interactions.” Their technical paper is published in the May 1 issue of Nature.
This is one more step in debunking the “junk DNA” myth. Evolution gave us the concept of vestigial organs; now, most of them are known to be vital. Evolution gave us the notion that glia cells in the brain were just space-filling junk; now we know that they may be just as important as the neurons, or even more so. Evolution gave us the concept of pseudogenes. Is there a pattern here? Evolutionists criticize creationists for just “giving up” investigation by claiming “God did it,” but the Darwinian mindset has actually hindered investigation in these three cases, sometimes to the detriment of human health, by assuming parts we don’t understand are just useless relics of evolution.
Never rule out design just because you can’t see it yet. Think about those 3-D artworks that were popular a few years ago. Sometimes you have to stare long and hard before the design becomes apparent. When it registers, the viewer typically expresses amazement and satisfaction at the thrill of discovering something that before looked random and purposeless, but now makes perfect sense.
UCSD Health Science News
http://health.ucsd.edu/news/2003/04_30_Boris.html
SciNews
http://www.newswise.com/articles/2003/5/BORIS.UCD.html
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