EVOLUTION HUMOR

I copied this from Creation Revolution:

When evolution is seen as a storytelling game rather than a serious attempt at scientific explanation, it suddenly makes sense.

The goal in evolutionary theory is to fit any observation into a predetermined narrative – one of universal common ancestry by blind, unguided processes.  Since no human ever sees functioning, complex, specified information coming into being that way, evolutionary theory is guaranteed to generate implausible stories.  The stories only seem plausible when evolution is first assumed, and all other possible explanations are excluded.  If this seems backward to science’s ideal of letting the evidence speak for itself, it has one redeeming virtue: it’s funny.

Kissing may be evolution’s matchmaker:  Sex sells; it sells evolution.  Look at the picture on Live Science’s article.  Mesmerized, the reader allows Stephanie Pappas to turn a fairy tale into support for Darwin:

You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince, as the saying goes. New research suggests the cliché is true on an evolutionary level.

Kissing might have evolved as a way to assess the quality of potential mates, according to two new studies.…

The details of the studies are less important than the marks of storytelling: profuse use of “if,” “might,” and “may have” escape clauses that substitute for scientific evidence.  Since “Kissing exists in virtually every culture on Earth,” there is no control group against which to assess the fitness of kissers vs. non-kissers.  Even if there were, singling out that one behavior against all the other factors involved in successful mating would be near impossible.  Is the first kiss the crucial one?  Is a peck on the cheek as naturally selective as an alfalfa kiss?  Who could ever scientifically test that, without interfering in the data collection process?

The Oxford researcher wants to go beyond the evolution of kissing into the “murkier depths” of sex, Pappas says.  “I’m interested in doing more research on what love is in humans.  What is it that makes us so intimately attracted to one specific person?”  Must be a fun job.

Evolution of Catwoman:  Feminists, get on the case of Tia Ghose.  In Live Science, she claimed “Women evolved to be catty” – meaning, “rumor spreading, shunning and backstabbing” according to the “mean girls” stereotype, claiming that “the behavior is rooted in humans’ evolutionary past.”  How sexist!  Demand equal time for men evolving to be like wolves.

Ignorance is bliss:  Readers can evaluate the evolutionary value of ignorance in an article on Science Daily.   In a nutshell, it gives more evidence against Hamilton’s kin selection theory.  If “ignorance is bliss” is a law of evolution, it would explain a lot about current political debates.

A sauropod walks into a bar: ‘Why the long neck?’  That headline on Science Daily introduced an evolutionary tale of convergent and divergent evolution.  “While convergently evolving many features seen in large terrestrial mammals, such as upright, columnar limbs and barrel-shaped trunks, sauropods evolved some unique features, such as the extremely long necks and diminutive heads they are famous for.”  Trouble is, the joker asked the riddle but never gave the punch line.  The evolutionists haven’t figured one out yet.  Maybe that’s the joke:

The unique gigantism of sauropod dinosaurs has long been recognized as an important problem in the evolution of vertebrates, raising questions as to why no other land-based lineage has ever reached this size, how these dinosaurs functioned as living animals, and how they were able to maintain stable populations over distinct geological periods.

Snakes on the Brain:  Almost all the science media repeated a plot line introduced on PNAS, typified by this question on Science Daily: “Was the evolution of high-quality vision in our ancestors driven by the threat of snakes?”  The international authors of this plot took monkeys and showed them images of snakes, angry monkey faces, monkey hands, and geometric shapes, measuring the response time of particular neurons in their brains.  Naturally, the response was quicker to snakes.  They concluded:

Our findings are unique in providing neuroscientific evidence in support of the Snake Detection Theory, which posits that the threat of snakes strongly influenced the evolution of the primate brain. This finding may have great impact on our understanding of the evolution of primates.

It “may” have impact, but where is an unbiased judge, if everyone is an evolutionist?  A look at the paper shows poor scientific controls.

• The scientists did not compare the monkey results with response times of unrelated animals, like birds, mice, or squirrels.  (Why?  Because those animals are not in the evolutionary lineage of primates.)
• The test monkeys were shown pictures of a variety of snakes, but no tigers, spiders, or hunters with guns.
• The monkeys were not shown live snakes along with pictures.

The authors, further, did not connect the dots, to find whether a specific mutation for greater visual acuity and response time was connected to survival of snake encounters.  Worst of all, the authors merely assumed an evolutionary cause for highly complex effects (visual acuity and quick response), instead of considering whether the design of those traits is beyond the reach of blind, unguided processes. 

The media, though, lapped up the story uncritically.  PhysOrg called it “new evidence to support the notion that primates evolved keen vision skills so they could survive the threats snakes pose in the jungle.”  Science Magazine rewarded this as one of the biggest news stories of the week, saying the paper supports the “controversial hypothesis” that “primates as we know them would never have evolved without snakes.”  National Geographic said “it might be those slithery serpents that helped us evolve to see as well as we do.” In storybook land, anything “might be”.   Science Daily quoted the lead author saying, “I don’t see another way to explain the sensitivity of these neurons to snakes except through an evolutionary path.”  Naturally; she invented the “notion” in 2006, following it up in 2009 with a book ironically entitled,  The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent.

Is a legless lizard a snake?  Speaking of snakes, “legless lizards” provide an interesting case study in the philosophy of classification.  Lizards are not snakes, but there are lizards that look like snakes.  Mike Wall explains for Live Science how to tell them apart:

For example, snakes tend to have relatively longer bodies and shorter tails than their limbless reptilian cousins. Further, serpents don’t have eyelids or external ears, while most lizards do. And many “legless” lizards actually have tiny vestigial limbs, while snakes generally sport no external appendages at all.

Trouble is, there are exceptions to all these rules.  Pythons and boas are snakes, but have “rudimentary hind limbs.”  Dr. Wall mentions a legless lizard that looks like a snake (no eyelids) and eats like a snake.  Why shouldn’t it be classified as a snake?  What does the word “snake” mean if shared traits don’t apply?  Enter the evolutionary story:

The answer, of course, lies in ancestry. Legless lizards are not snakes. Rather, functional limblessness has evolved independently perhaps a dozen times in the squamate reptiles — lizards, snakes and amphisbaenids, or worm lizards — suggesting that the body plan offers many advantages.

If that were a law of evolution, we should see legless badgers, legless prairie dogs, and legless ants.

Which part of the Darwin Comedy Show did you like?  The sauropod walking into the bar?  Ignorance is bliss?  Catwoman?  Snakes on a brain?  This is what they love to do: spin yarns and tell jokes.  It’s so much fun.  It’s kind of like being stoned.

- See more at: http://crev.info/2013/11/evolutionary-stories/#sthash.rDIGNmAK.dpuf

Thomas Nagel on the existence of God

Thomas Nagel on the existence of God

"I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind.... This is a somewhat ridiculous situation.... [I]t is just as irrational to be influenced in one's beliefs by the hope that God does not exist as by the hope that God does exist." 1


Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, pp. 130-131, Oxford University Press, 1997. Dr Nagel (1937- ) is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University.

Note: Thomas Nagel is an American philosopher, currently University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University, where he has taught since 1980. His main areas of philosophical interest are philosophy of mind, political philosophy and ethics.

HIGGS BOSON

This is the latest news report: "The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two physicists, Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, who independently proposed the mechanism that gives subatomic particles their mass. Without this mechanism, physicists say, subatomic particles would ping around the universe at the speed of light without interacting and forming atoms and molecules, the building-blocks of matter."

Supposedly one experiment using the Hadron cyclotron observed the Higgs boson. Other researchers are skeptical of it. I think the whole idea is questionable.

This confirms my belief that the Big Bang theory is made-up story with no physics support. If you had a Big Bang that released atomic particles like electrons and protons, in my mind they would just expand into the vast expanses of space forever. There are no forces to cause the particles to come together and form larger molecules. I don't understand why intelligent physicists can't see the obvious. The Higgs boson is their answer. That is why it is called "the God particle". They need intelligence to make their theory work, but deny that God had anything to do with it.

The whole concept of immense times and evolution forming matter, stars, galaxies and eventually living plants and animals is so far-fetched as to be completely ridiculous.

KILLING JESUS

I just finished reading Killing Jesus by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard. I was dreading reading it because of a book I had read by Kathleen and Richard Gear that created a fiction based on their research that had Jesus living after the crucifixion married to Mary Magdalene with children. I was afraid O'Reilly would use the "historical" material they had used.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book follows the Biblical story closely but adds a lot of material about the persons who were in his life like Tiberius and the other Roman rulers. They also told about the life of Jesus and the apostles. He tells how the toilet was a hole in the ground outside homes with a shovel near a pile of dirt. He details the horrendous actions of the crucifixion that were illustrated in the movie about Christ.

I am feeling great and my oncologist upped my Gleevec dosage from 200 to 300 mg, still below the recommended dose of 400. He wants to see whether it has any more bad effect on my kidneys. My creatinine jumped when I started but I have increased my water intake and reduced my sodium intake and the creatinine came back down some. I now have a kidney doctor along with the oncologist and have a urologist that I will meet with Monday.  I had a CAT scan and a Sonogram in the last couple of weeks. My tumor hasn't decreased, but it also hasn't increased. The sonogram was for my kidneys that look OK but found I have an enlarged prostate. Thus the urologist appointment. I am not experiencing the problems I had years ago before my prostate resection operation so I feel all right about the current situation.

COMMON SENSE

I would like to see some common sense applied to the evolution argument. Why does anyone think that if brilliant scientists can not create life from inorganic molecules by creating complex DNA molecules that would direct the reproduction of the life that Mother Nature, who has no intellect, could create life. Ever since Darwin scientists have been trying to generate life unsucessfully. It is impossible. Doesn't that make sense? Evolutionist claim evolution is a proven science because biological scientists can manipulate existing life forms to create mutations and examine life forms in the laboratory. But we can't create life. Only a creator, either from some remote planet or maybe from a spiritual realm, can create life. The current belief, by those who don't believe there is a God, is that aliens have deposited life on earth that has evolved to the current condition. They use Bible citations that seem to be from outer space and drawings of what seems to be space suits on people in Egypt. They have admitted that Nature can't create life forms. Why then does the science activists fight so hard against any teaching in school of possible creation science subjects?

I need to be active in the current textbook fight in Texas but haven't had access to the books under question. The letters in the FWST are the usual rants against religion vs. science without citing any scientific arguments.

I would like  to see design engineers take on the Science group and support a creation approach.

FORT WORTH MUSEUM OF SCIENCE

For my birthday, after my son with his wife and my granddaughter with her two daughters treated us to lunch at La Madeleine, we went to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and Technology where we were bombarded by evolution science. Starting with the dinosaur exhibits which is the main focus of the museum with their large dinosaur statues outside the explanation was always about the long times explaining that fossils are dated by index fossils. None of which is true. The displays are focused on kids with an interactive dinosaur dig display ourside.
We chose the IMAX movie Space Junk. Again it had nothing to do with the actual facts of space junk, but the movie started with the Big Bang and creative displays of how galaxies and planets formed using their unscientific ideas. Because I worked on the Apollo program with the charge to prevent astronauts from being killed by meteoroids during the flights to the moon I was familiar with all of the space debris being a problem for the International Space Station and future satellite launches. I didn't know that NASA has a hypervelocity impact laboratory. I do know that my papers on hypervelocity impact studies have been quoted in science papers. I found this out when I Binged my name the other day. The Big Bang had nothing to do with the problem that we have created by destroying satellites in space creating thousands of parts that can impact other satellites creating more  debris. A real problem for the future.

To counteract the bad taste, we took a trip back to the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose this morning where we heard a 30 minute film on their belief in creation science as supported by their dinosaur excavations and footprints of humans with dinosaurs. The museum obviously need financial support. It has added a new exhibit of a scale model of Noah's Ark built by a messianic Jew from the Dallas area, but the hyperbaric chamber experiment has not been repeated. They are waiting to buy copper wire to wind the chamber to simulate the electormagnetic field of the pre-Noah atmosphere.

I picked up a copy of IN THE BEGINNING: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood by Walt Brown, who holds a PhD from MIT and worked in the aerospace industry with a stint teaching at the Air Force Academy. I had given away a couple of copies of the book and wanted to read it for myself. I have started it and find it compelling. He was mentioned in the film at the Glen Rose museum. Walt's web sire is www.creationscience.org. The museum web site is: www.creationevidence.org/

AFTER CRUISING ALASKA

I reached a record high weight of 183.5# by having ice cream every day on the cruise ship. And eating all I wanted didn't help. But I have lost nine pounds since so I am back to my normal weight. Also after meeting with a new doctor, who is a kidney specialist, on his recommendation to reduce salt, my wife has placed me on a low sodium diet. As a result my food choices have been strictly limited. Everything you buy has sodium. Even milk! The good news is that my creatinine was lower on the last test. The big news will come after they read my next CAT scan scheduled for September 17 to see whether the tumor has shrunk.

My creation research since I got back has been looking at evolution sites trying to understand where they are coming from. I can't believe what I read. The basic question is how nature can create life. The proof of evolution is shown to be how modern biologists have been able to manipulate changes in genetic makeup. They argue that that "proves" evolution. But no one has shown how natural processess could have created the complicated DNA information that controls biological activity. Living organisms have the chemical makeup of inorganic chemicals and when they die they revert to basic chemicals, but in order to be classified as a living organism there must be a highly organized information gene that controls how the organism will reproduce.

The possibility of this occuring naturally is statistically impossible and many evolutionists have recognized this problem. So they now postulate that living organisms on earth were planted here by aliens from outer space. Big problem. We have been trying to contact these extraterrestrials for years and they won't reply. Could it be that they don't exist? Is it possible that earth was created as a unique experiment by an intelligent designer? I see no other good answer. None of our science fiction stories of men on the moon, Venus, Mars or any other planet in our solar system have come true. The more we learn about the other places the more we realize that to colonize the planets will require habitations for humans.

I can't believe people have signed up to go to Mars. Mars has an average temperature of -84 degrees. That is cold. No oxygen in the atmosphere requires breathing equipment. It is very dusty, even for a West Texan that has no appeal for me. Why are we going? I give up. NASA says that they want to know what happened to all of the life that was on Mars millions of years ago. No one seems to understand that there wasn't any life there then or now. We want to believe in myths.