Carl Zimmer vs Michael Behe On Thornton’s Work

Like many of these types of debates about evolution with few exceptions, proponents on one side or the other conduct themselves within the confines on where they feel most comfortable  in order to avoid a face to face meeting, this particular one is without exception.

Carl Zimmer, a highly regarded so-called science writer who promotes evolution while trying to attack intelligent design. He recently posted this to Michael Behe about the work Thornton had conducted, it reads as follows…

“Thornton’s new work turned up last week on a web site run by the Discovery Institute, a clearinghouse for all things intelligent design (a k a the progeny of creationism). Michael Behe, a fellow at the Institute, wrote three posts (here, here, and here) about the new research, which he pronounced “great.” Why the change of heart? Because Behe thinks that the new research shows that evolution cannot produce anything more than tiny changes. And if evolution can’t do it, intelligent design can. (Don’t ask how.)”

Carl Zimmer takes a jab at Michael Behe, falsely accusing him of being a creationist like it’s some sort of dirty word and how dare he (Behe) conclude that intelligence is the source of organized information which produces and maintains life. Zimmer also wrongly believes science and Christianity are at odds with one another which they are not.  Behe responds…

“I must say, it never ceases to amaze me how otherwise-very-smart folks like Zimmer and Thornton fail to grasp pretty simple points when it comes to problems for Darwinian mechanisms. Let me start slowly with a petty complaint in Carl Zimmer’s intro to the post. Zimmer is annoyed that I think Thornton’s latest work is “great”, yet I thought his previous work published a few years ago was “piddling”. “Why the change of heart?”, wonders Zimmer.”

What Michael Behe fails to grasp, they really do get the simple points that he likes to write about, but because he disagrees with evolution it changes full range of dynamics on how they treat him. Who would really argue over a generalization about disagreeing with one study and then later on agree with another? Behe further explains by comparing it to a crane and it’s massive promise of what it could do, Behe calls this “piddling” but later on a more detailed study comes out that demonstrated a realistic evaluation on what the crane could actually do. Thus, Behe praises the work!

I believe Zimmer understands this position, that is not to say he agrees with it, but like I pointed out earlier, it’s the conclusions of science that dictates the dynamics of how he treats him! It’s a sad commentary for those who are so well educated but act so immature.

Geological Change Surprises A Team Of Scientists

Observing changes in the earths crust has made it’s mark in disproving some of the old earth mythology in which they call “science.”  New Scientist takes note…

“The crack is the surface component of a continental rift forming as the Arabian and African plates drift away from one another. It began to open up in September 2005, when a volcano at the northern end of the rift, called Dabbahu, erupted.”

“Similar dikes in Iceland are typically around 10 kilometres long and 1 metre wide and can take years to form. The new study shows the formation of dikes can occur in larger segments – and over much shorter periods of time – than previously thought.”

“The ferocity of what we saw during this episode stunned everyone,” says Cynthia Ebinger, a team member at the University of Rochester in New York. While the Mount Dabbahu rift is still hundreds of kilometres inland, Ebinger says it could continue to widen and lengthen. “As the plates keep spreading apart, it will end up looking like the Red Sea,” she says.”

This is how a young earth behaves, “rapid processes” not super slow changes as evolutionary thought continues to try to advocate. In a comeback from the observation, one scientist interview said it would take few million years which is generally is their lowest standard estimate, anything under millions would be considered too young because they are trying hard to fit the data into a particular framework. You also can see this with observations out in space with other planets showing rapid processes.

Some have called new discovery as being a “magnetic deformation”  Physorg reported…

“The significance of the finding is that a huge magnetic deformation can happen within a few days like in oceans,” Atalay Arefe, an Ethiopia-based university professor who was part of the study, told AFP in an interview.

“Researchers say faults and fissures, which normally occur deep down on the ocean floor, are the main processes by which continents gradually break off from each other. They cite Africa, which underwent a similar phase when it split from America millions of years ago.”

One thing about using an old earth hypothesis, who is going to make the observation millions of years from now if these “ideas” confirm whether or not these secular scientists are right or wrong? Huge amounts of money over the years has been used to buy all this story telling. There has been many falsified predictions over the years in evolution, what makes one think this would be any different?

Advanced Ancestry, Comets, Complexity, and More…

Was ancient man more physically advanced than modern man today? Interesting enough, that’s exactly what an Anthropologist says. Manthropology: the Science of Inadequate Modern Man written by Peter McAllister bases the evidence on fossilized footprints found in a lake bed from Australia.

“By analysing sets of footprints preserved in a fossilised claypan lake bed, Mr McAllister concluded that Australian aboriginals 20,000 years ago reached speeds of 23mph on soft, muddy ground. Bolt, by comparison, reached a top speed of 26mph at last year’s Beijing Olympics during his then world 100 metres record of 9.69 seconds.

Mr McAllister claims that with modern training, spiked shoes and rubberised tracks, aboriginal hunters might have reached speeds of 28mph – faster than Bolt’s record-breaking 100m performance at the World Championships in Berlin this summer.”  -Telegraph UK

The fastest man alive today had obtain an incredible speed of 26 miles an hour using modern technology with a special track and shoes under ideal conditions. Another interesting claim, McAllister stated from his study of fossils, that Neandertal women would have rivaled the musculature of today’s weight-training men.

A question comes to mind, why are humans getting weaker rather than stronger which is contrary to what the evolutionary hypothesis suggests? McAllister claims it’s due to being less active compared to the ancients. The better explanation comes from a focus on the loss of strength and speed over succeeding generations.

This is where genetics comes into play and I believe explains things which verifies creationism! The human genome and other genomes from animals are decaying due to the buildup of mutations in every generation. They are undetectable by natural selection tiny genomes which could be eroding not only humans’ physical strength, but also their general health.

For example, increasing cancer rates maybe caused by genetic damage from these “near-neutral” mutations. Creationism states, after the fall of man, the created creatures have been breeding in a downward trend rather than an upward trend and this piece of research verifies it.

On another news front which was published recently, planetary scientists from Belgian have ruled out comets as the source for the Earth’s water supply. They are still very much confused on how water got on the Earth’s surface, the placement of the planet being close to the sun, should not have formed from ices.

The hypothesis was based on carbonaceous chondrites containing water sufficient enough to create a “veneer” of water after the Earth supposedly cooled, but ratios of osmium isotopes (evidence) don’t match. Their study suggests comets have have much more deuterium than what is in the ocean water.  Also, nitrogen isotope ratios significantly differ between comets and Earth’s atmosphere! It appears that scientists are beginning to run out of naturalistic options for their attempts in trying to explain how water was created on Earth.

Most of us have been taught in school variations that prove beneficial to an animal are naturally selected so it can adapt to its environment. According to Ariel Fernandez of Rice University disputes that as though that was a bit too simplistic, we humans he claims, are complex because natural selection is inefficient. Science daily reports…

“We have found a specific evolutionary mechanism to account for a portion of the intricate biological complexity of our species,” said Ariel Fernandez, professor of bioengineering at Rice University. “It is a coping mechanism, a process that enables us to deal with the fitness consequences of inefficient selection. It enables some of our proteins to become more specialized over time, and in turn makes us more complex.”

Ariel Fernandez has complexity confused. If you take cut grass, sticks, small stones, and have the wind blow them around for a bit, a complex image will emerge. However, this is not specified! He explains nothing about how genes and proteins can develop into a complex function being able to compose a symphony!

First they say, natural selection is the answer then the next thing they claim it’s really inefficient. It’s the same with adaptation where it’s considered to be  goal functioning for all evolutionary processes; next moment evolution happens by non-adaptive processes. Do they really know what they are trying to explain or is it the fact that what they are trying to explain is a story not factual?

In another area of science, Did the US government verify a creationist proposal concerning Junk DNA? New research indicates a mechanism in junk DNA that prevents two species from reproducing. Answers in Genesis reports…

“The team examined cross-breeds between the closely related fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans. The flies are closely related, and male D. melanogaster can breed with female D. simulans to produce viable male offspring. Female offspring of such a cross, however, die as embryos. The question is, why? Lead author Patrick Ferree calls it an “unsolved problem,” elaborating, “What are the elements that are killing these female hybrids and how are they doing that?”

“By looking more closely at the genetic composition of the D. melanogaster x D. simulans embryos, the scientists found a specific DNA segment that appears only in the father fly’s X chromosome and that leads to embryo death. Because only female offspring receive an X chromosome from their father (males receive a Y chromosome), only the female cross-breeds die.”

“The location of the fatal DNA segment was in the male X chromosome’s heterochromatin, a region full of what is sometimes called “junk” DNA. The segment halts the initial divisions of the embryo by preventing the male X chromosome from separating as it should.”

“The researchers believe the cellular machinery from the mother no longer “recognizes” the heterochromatin of the father’s. In fact, the part of the paternal X chromosome believed to be causing the trouble has some five million DNA base pairs, compared to only 100,000 in the equivalent portion from the mother.”

This research verifies biblical creationism, nothing anti-biblical about inter-breeding, variants within a kind, but nowhere is a species turning into another species this is why scientists are beginning to find processes which prevent it from happening!

New Survey About Science Conducted By The British Council

Ten countries participated in the new survey about teaching science where it stated it had established an international consensus on accepting the hypothesis of evolution. With a description like that one would think there is this is not good news about creationism, right? Partly, it’s not good, but on the other hand, there is some good news.

About 10,000 people from Argentina, China, Egypt, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. all took part in the survey. Communist China with it’s poor human rights record had the highest percentage (67 percent) of their responses which believed totally in the story telling of evolution while rejecting being designed first by supernatural intervention.

Here is what the survey says…

The results show that the majority of adults surveyed have heard of Charles Darwin and know at least a little about this theory of evolution with the highest levels in Great Britain (71%), the USA (71%), Mexico (68%), Argentina(65%), China (54%) and Russia (53%) whilst 62 percent of adults surveyed in Egypt and 73 percent in South Africa said they had never heard of Charles Darwin or his theory of evolution. Overall, the majority (70%) of adults surveyed across the 10 countries have at least heard of the British naturalist.

In all countries surveyed more people showed some agreement than disagreement that ‘it is possible to believe in a God and still hold the view that life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time as a result of natural selection’. Adults in India showed the highest level of agreement (85%) from all the countries, followed by Mexico(65%), Argentina (62%), South Africa (54%), Great Britain (54%), Russia (54%), USA (53%), Spain (46%), Egypt(45%), and China (39%).

Now the good news, less than half of the respondents in America believe there is enough scientific merit that verifies evolution!  There was no majority in any country that thought evolution should be the only alternative for explaining man’s origin!  Despite the slant on this survey, it’s clear that many people prefer opened ended science rather than closed to a particular framework!