The Beagle Project Blog

Karen and Peter have put together the 105th edition of the Tangled Bank. You should go over and get the details. Also, buy a T-Shirt or a coffee mug and help build a square-rigger. You know you want to.

This edition has more and more and more on the platypus genome sequencing. They are not “chimeras.”

Would you stand up for her?

ABC News ran an experiment, using actors to test the reactions of customers in a bakery. One actor played a clerk who refused to serve a woman dressed as a muslim. The woman was also an actor. ABC wanted to know if people would side either with the clerk or with the customer who was refused service.

Which group would you side with? Or would you merely refuse to step in, satisfied to mind your own business?

While I personally don’t like that certain Muslim women must remain hidden because of their religion, I would like to think that I would have been among those who stood up for her right to service. I can’t promise that I would always do the right thing, because it does take courage to stand up in this situation. How about you?

Thanks to Greg for the video.

Natural Selection in a Post-Genomic World

(This is the first of a multiple post series on genetics and expression. I will be examining the concept of interactomes from a lay perspective.)

I had grown up with a mendelian understanding of genetics and expression. For each trait there was corresponding allele, and we could measure the likelihood of the expression of a particular gene based on the ancestry of the organism.

For example, many of you remember the charts in biology class in which we determined mathematically the likelihood that the children of parents with brown eyes and blue eyes would have a particular eye color. Even more fun was the study of dominant/recessive alleles, and the possibility that if both parents had brown eyes then one child in four could still have blue eyes. Here is another example from a chart on the probability of one child inheriting cystic fibrosis, even if neither parent expressed the trait:

Figure 6. Inheritance of cystic fibrosis of the pancreas in humans: a cross between a normal woman, heterozygous for cystic fibrosis, and a normal, homozygous man..

In my opinion, creationists have a misunderstanding of how genes interact with each other and with extant proteins and RNA in the cell in order to create new structural proteins. They are still stuck with the idea that as soon as a gene is mutated, then its mutation must be expressed. The Harun Yahya collective played on this ignorance to make the claim that all mutations are harmful, and the creationists still claim that mutations can’t create new structures, even with the interaction of natural selection.

This is one problem that I have found with Richard Dawkins’ books on genes and evolution, but I don’t fault him in it. Rather, I recognize that his popular works such as The Selfish Gene, The Ancestor’s Tale and The Blind Watchmaker are targeted at a lay audience and he is working with the level of education that most people have from secondary school. In his explanations, he focuses on the expression of single genes as they mutate.

I have long understood that when a gene mutates, the mutation will just as likely be a dominant as it will be a recessive for a trait. If my child has a mutation for psychedelic eyes, and it the gene is recessive for this trait it will take generations upon generation for the trait to appear. Why? Well, my child will have brown eyes and may pass the gene for psychedelic eyes on after pairing up with another person, but since it is a recessive trait it will obviously not be expressed in my grandchildren. And, since the taboos against marrying cousins are (rightfully) strong, the recessive may be carried on for six, seven or even eight generations until a pair of my child’s descendants who don’t even know they are related pair up and do the meiosis horizontal bop.

If both of these descendants still carry a recessive for psychedelic eyes, there is now a 25% chance that one of their children will have psychedelic eyes. This child will be a freak. A very cool freak, but still a freak.

So, three or four hundred years after Grace Slick has died, we may have the first generation of naturally occurring psychedelic-eyed children. The eye-color recessive gene has been laying in wait, being passed around humanity and either accepted or rejected during mitosis, meiosis and finally fertilization hundreds of thousands of times before it showed up as a trait. The trait may have selective value, either negative or positive or it may merely be neutral (other than attracting or horrifying the members of the opposite sex for future pairings. If it’s neutral it may continue flowing in and about and around the gene pool popping up here and there whenever it meets its complementary recessive allele.

Someday, thousands of generations down the road, it may even work its way into dominant allele status. (Genes have to kiss a lot of ass to make it to the top.) Now, before you make plans to travel 20,000 years into the future to count the number of people who have psychedelic eyes, you need to consider the additional factors involved in natural selection and genetic inheritance.

Next post: A further look at gene flow.

Science Debate 2008

I received an e-mail from the ScienceDebate2008 committee (so did Greg) that clearly shows the American Electorate wants to know what the candidates have in mind for science policy should they get elected. Recent polling shows that 85% of Americans want to know, and the desire to know what the candidates think about science and technology cuts across party lines. This is a bi-partisan call for an informative sit-down with the candidates; can that be so scary?

I don’t think so. Yet the candidates seem to be afraid of committing themselves to the debate, perhaps afraid that they will seem geeky. But here is what the team asked for in the invitaion:

First, a review of our primary season strategy and what we learned. We made this invitation as attractive as possible.

* We recruited every organization that we six core volunteers (2 screenwriters, 2 scientists, a philosopher and a science journalist) have contact with, and we reached out and signed on 37,500 individuals.
* We emphasized that it was about policy, not a science quiz.
* We took the intimidating word “debate” out of the invitations.
* We joined with PBS and targeted an influential, educated demographic, through PBS’s 350 member stations, that are well-attuned to science and policy issues and could be very advantageous to court.
* We enlisted high-profile supporters to make video appeals.
* We recruited America’s leading science organizations and universities to sign on.
* We proposed not one, but four dates - one in Philadelphia and three in Portland.
* We told them the format was entirely flexible; it didn’t have to be a debate, it could be a forum similar to the “Compassion Forum” the democratic candidates recently attended in Pennsylvania, discussing matters of faith and values. What matters is that they come.
* We even told them we would show them our questions a week in advance, so they could prepare. That’s like showing all our cards.
* When even that didn’t work, several Nobel laureates joined with the Chairman of Intel and the CEO of the World Wildlife Fund in a joint email that emphasized that this could simply be a “conversation,” it should not take undue preparation and was important for the country.

Only the McCain campaign gave us the courtesy of a formal response: a polite decline that left the door open for the general election.

How, the science community is wondering, could this be?

Part of the problem, from our perspective, is a perception in the media, particularly the political editors, that this is a niche debate. We have saturated coverage in the science community, but have had a very difficult time getting the mainstream national media to cover this effort at all, despite numerous and frequent attempts; they believe that issues like religion loom far larger in this election and science simply doesn’t sell papers. Science has also been somewhat nonvocal and under political attack over the last several years, and this has helped to create the inaccurate perception of an uninfluential minority. The media help to steer the public’s attention and the national dialogue, and the candidates respond to this, and it has become an accepted assumption. But is it right? We argue that this assumption is wrong: science is not niche, and it does matter to a majority of Americans - in fact it matters a lot. But policymakers and editors need to know that, and they’re not going to poll for it on their own. We argue that this wrong assumption is part of the very problem we are fighting to turn around, and that exposing it is one of the more important goals of this initiative.

So we teamed up with Research!America to do a national poll of public attitudes about science and politics and found that what we’ve suspected all along is in fact true: there is overwhelming public support for this idea - and the support is equal among both Democrats and Republicans. Indeed, scientific integrity is even more important among Republicans. Today, the following press release went out. You can help this effort by encouraging mainstream media contacts you know to cover this.

In the mean time, we are now making a planned shift to the second phase of our effort, focusing on the general election.

Despite the anticipated Clinton win in West Virginia today, it seems likely that Obama will be the Democratic Nominee. There is little doubt that McCain will be the Republican nominee, despite continued detraction in the polls towards Huckabee and others. So let’s contact the McCain and Obama campaigns.

The ScienceDebate2008 Team have been working hard to get this thing done, and have sent invitations to the campaigns. They have only heard from the McCain folks, who said “no.” Obama hasn’t responded.

“This topic has been virtually ignored by the candidates, but this poll shows that Americans of all walks know how important science and technology are to our health and way of life,” said Shawn Lawrence Otto, CEO of Science Debate 2008. “We’ve heard a lot about lapel pins and preachers. But tackling the big science challenges is critical to our children’s future – to the future of the country and the future of the planet. Americans want to know that candidates take these issues seriously, and the candidates have a responsibility to let voters know what they think.”

Seriously, we do want to know how the candidates intend to address our current failings in science. We have seen the Federal Governments’ science missions weakened by politicizing and by budget cutting. India and China are both ready to take up where we are weakening, and Europe has been strengthening their science missions. We can’t just sit around and wait for a renewed commitment to science. We have to take action.

“This is not a niche debate,” said Craig Barrett, Chairman of Intel and one of the supporters of the Science Debate initiative. “Without the best education system and aggressive investments in basic research and development we will become a second rate economic power. We expect the candidates for president to take this very seriously.”

I love being an American, and I have a certain amount of pride at the initiatives that have been born here, but that isn’t going to last forever if we slip into a war between religion and science. I personally don’t care what lapel pin a certain candidate wears, I don’t care if Barack Obama’s father was a lapsed Muslim, I don’t think that one candidate or another is going to be more favorable to Hamas, I don’t care if one candidate or another may or may not have had an affair with a lobbyist.

I do care about whether or not a candidate has a decent plan to restore a sensible health care system. I do care whether a candidate is going to continue to shovel money at the rich. I do care whether or not a candidate thinks we can mediate a civil war indefinitely in Iraq (and Afghanistan.) And I care mostly if a candidate is going to respect a process of learning about the natural world that yields measurable results, and will respond to the results independently whether or not they conform to political goals and aims.

I want a Science Debate.

If We Hired Like We Vote

This whole Jeremiah Wright thing has been handled poorly by the media, and even the Obama campaign.

I am not sure that we could have expected much better, considering that the American Electorate says they want substance from the parties and the campaigns. Poll movement consistently shows that this is not true at all.

Hillary Clinton demonstrated that she could rebound in the polls merely by drinking shots and beer and pretending to be like us, while at the same time calling Obama an elitist. She gained ground by saying that middle class whites will be less like to vote for Obama because of his race. She gained ground by adopting a foolish, substanceless call for a gas tax holiday (playing on the meme that the guvmint is taxing us to death.)

So, when someone snips a small segment of a video in which Jeremiah Wright calls for God to damn America for its sins against the underclass, I am not all that surprised that it becomes an issue in the election. And even though it is a scurrilous snip, it becomes a problem for Obama to deal with. (Pay no attention to James Hagee, please.)

John Wilkins has reviewed the entire sermon, and says some surprising things about it. For one thing, Wright was quoting someone else. Here is Wilkins’ brief summary.

To compare American elections with Serbian elections, Bora reviews the process just recently completed.

Brave Sir Robin Rides the Wave

The newest Carnival of the Liberals has hit the tubes at Brave Sir Robin. The carnival features some great hits, including Jack, writing on Elitism in the new election; Mad Kane waxing limerical on McCain, a post on why we can be proud to be liberals, one on how the trickle-down economics of the conservatives has led to people selling heirlooms on the cheap, and there is more.

What! You want direct links to the featured articles?! No! You need to go to the Carnival yourself.

Oh, and hey! There is another Carnival coming soon and you can submit your links to Carnival of the Liberals through their on-line form.

An Argument for Ignorance

I get e-mails from Human Events, such as the one I recently passed on from Newt Gingrich. Some of them are advertisements, such as the following:

Tear Apart the “Theory” of Evolution
And Win Every Debate, Every Time…

Show any Skeptic that Evolution is Based on Myths,
Falsehoods and Outrageous Lies - In 5 Minutes or Less!

Dear Friend,

I’m fed up with Darwin…

When evolution supporters tried to make me feel foolish for believing in God, I decided to do something about it.

Evolution is not proven fact. Every one of their claims can be torn to shreds. All you need are the missing pieces. Today, I’ll show you what they are.

Within minutes, you’ll:

• Quickly take down self-righteous atheists…

• Easily and accurately defend God’s role as our Creator…

• Send hardened skeptics into a state of confusion…

• Expose the “theory” of evolution and leave scientists with their mouths hanging open…

My name is Jeffrey Howard. If you ever challenged someone on evolution, I have great news.

By the time you read to the end of this letter, you’ll have everything you need to take on the skeptics and win. You’ll never be at a loss for words. The whole evolution debate will be right in your pocket.

Use it anytime, anywhere… It’s much easier than you think. Once you get the real story, it takes less than 5 minutes!

How a Sunday Morning Sermon Changed My Life Forever…

A few years ago, I joined some friends for brunch after church. At the table was the husband of a friend. Let’s call him, “Tom.”

Tom is not a Christian and was not at church with us. But he showed up for the sake of being social. At first, I thought nothing of it. But when I saw his reaction to our conversation, I knew trouble was brewing.

The sermon that morning was from the book of Genesis. Our pastor has a wonderful way of telling the story of Creation. And like many folks do, we got together after church to share our thoughts about it over coffee.

We weren’t talking 5 minutes before this man’s face turned to ash. Without moving a single muscle he said, “The idea that God created the world is childish… Educated men don’t believe in myth and fantasy.”

We were all stunned. He was usually tolerant. But there he was… trying to make us feel ignorant for believing in God’s power to create this marvelous world we live in.

For the next hour and a half, I went head-to-head with the theory of evolution. But I lost.

I just didn’t know how to go up against his arguments. Don’t get me wrong: My knowledge of the Bible is better than most. And my faith is unshakable.

But in that moment, I realized I couldn’t defend God’s place in our lives because I didn’t know a thing about this “theory” of evolution.

After I got home, I felt as if I had somehow let God down. I thought for sure that if I just shared my faith and His teachings, Tom would naturally “get it.” I was wrong…

That’s when everything changed.

The very next day, I decided to do something about it. If I wanted to win, I needed to challenge him on his own turf. And that meant learning everything I could about evolution.

For months, I searched the Internet… went to the library… bought books from Amazon.com… talked to teachers, preachers and university professors… all in the hopes of better defending our Faith.

And let me tell you something…

What I Discovered about Evolution
Gave Me the Shock of My Life

The theory of evolution is full of holes. And I’m not talking about minor differences of opinion. I’m talking about huge, gaping holes you could drive a truck through.

But here’s the problem: We never challenge it.

Defending God’s Word is a great first step. But if you don’t poke holes in the theory of evolution itself, they’ll NEVER get it.

Charles Darwin in 1881

And that’s bad news… All you have to do is open a newspaper to know the scientists are winning.

It all started in 1859, when Charles Darwin published his first book on evolution. Almost

immediately, scientists, atheists and university types grabbed the idea and promoted the heck out of it.

Once they figured out evolution was their golden opportunity to get rid of God, there was no stopping them. They pushed evolution to the point of becoming “official policy” without ever letting you know it would crumble if exposed to the light of day.

So that’s what I did: I exposed it. And boy did it crumble…

Here are Just a Few Examples of what I Found

Darwin himself said that future scientists would find fossils of “transitional forms.” Here’s what he meant: If fish really evolved into animals, you would find fossils of creatures that

Fossil: This is a shrimp fossil found in Lebanon. These pictures tell scientists what fish and animals looked like long ago.

were half-fish, half-animal. This would show that one species was making a transition into another.

So far, no transitional forms have ever been discovered! And of course, no transitional creature exists today. Let’s be honest: Have you ever gone to the zoo and seen a cross between a fish and an animal? Or a half-man, half-monkey?

All the creatures living on this planet are perfectly formed. There is no record of any animal, fish, beast or creature EVER turning into a different species.

In fact, the real fossil record shows almost no change. That means many of the creatures on this Earth have not changed since the beginning of time.

Here’s something else you won’t read in the newspaper: Hundreds of scientists and university professors are coming out against evolution. This should be front-page news. But you’ll never hear about it in the media.

Check out what some of them are saying about these missing fossils:

• Professor Steven J. Gould, Harvard University: “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology.”

Translation: Dr. Gould is a little too kind. The number of transitional forms is ZERO.

• Dr. Colin Patterson, British Museum of Natural History: “I will lay it on the line - there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”

Translation: There’s simply no hard evidence for evolution.

• Dr. Gareth J. Nelson, American Museum of Natural History: “It is a mistake to believe that even one fossil species… can be demonstrated to have been ancestral to another.”

Translation: Darwin’s theory doesn’t have a leg to stand on…

You Think That’s Something? Check This Out…

At some point in our history, thousands of new creatures suddenly appeared. And the scientists actually agree on this. This one fact is enough to put the “theory” of evolution to rest forever.

Think about it… Evolution says that new forms of life never appear suddenly. They tell us

The Trilobite: This complex creature suddenly appeared with no ancestors to evolve from…

new species evolve slowly over “millions of years.” They claim that small mutations occur to a single species and that over time, a new creature is born.

If that’s true, then how can thousands of new creatures come to life all at once - like they did during this one period of history?

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Their own scientific discoveries do a nice job of disproving evolution. Yet these very same scientists go on TV and tell us that evolution is “tested and proven.”

It only goes to show: Scientists will believe ANYTHING if the alternative is admitting that God created the world!

When you take God out of His own Creation, crazy things start to happen… You get “respected” scientists saying that fish can sprout legs and monkeys can turn into men.

But when you look under the hood, there’s NO PROOF whatsoever.

Evolution May be the Greatest Hoax in Human History

Let me tell you… All of this really got me worked up. These people are deceiving us at God’s expense.

Even worse, they’re teaching this stuff to our children. Millions of kids are growing up thinking we live in a godless, mechanical world that has no meaning at all.

In spite of many brave parents, schools around the country keep evolution firmly in place - making it the only explanation our kids get. And I don’t have to tell you how difficult that makes it to raise kids with real Christian values.

Left unchecked, evolution will eventually rob you of prayer and your personal relationship with God.

Think about this for a moment: Taking God out of His creation means prayer and communication with God becomes a fairy tale - an impossibility.

Darwin believed prayer and the belief in God comes from an animal’s instinct to feel awe or inspiration from things it doesn’t understand. Scientists now call this “magical thinking.”

Here’s an example: If a monkey sees a leaf blowing in the wind, it may think the leaf has magical powers because it doesn’t know the wind is giving it lift and motion.

Scientists and atheists believe prayer and your faith in God is just a logical next step in the evolution of the “magical thinking” they find in apes and monkeys.

They’re taking us for fools.

And for the most part, we’re not doing anything about it. But if you learn a thing or two about their “theory,” you can win every debate, every time.

Remember Tom… the guy at the restaurant who embarrassed me in front of my friends? I saw him again, two years later. Only this time things were different.

After all my research, he didn’t stand a chance. He folded like a house of cards.

In just a second, I’ll tell you the rest of the story… First, I want to tell you how I sent him packing.

Here’s the key: The average person on the street accepts evolution without understanding it.

They can tell you that it’s “proven”… and that’s about it. If they’ve done their homework, maybe they can tell you that so-and-so did an experiment… or so-and-so wrote a book…

But if you know the missing pieces, you can shoot down every one of their arguments - every time. And because they don’t really understand what they’re defending, they suddenly fall silent when they can’t fire off a come back.

They get shell-shocked when they come up against a Christian who knows more about evolution than they do.

In an ideal world, you should be able to defend God’s Creation with the Bible alone. But we live in dark times.

Scientists, atheists and all those university types will ALWAYS reject the Bible. It doesn’t matter how many passages you quote - they’ll ALWAYS tell you that God is a fantasy.

But if you go after their beloved “theory” of evolution - and show them beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s based on a bunch of guesswork, forgeries and outright lies, then congratulations…

You just beat them at their own game.

It’s a great feeling. To see them with their mouths hanging open… A look of shock on their faces… Not knowing what to say… Feeling confused and embarrassed…

And here’s the best part:

Defeating Evolution Couldn’t Be Easier…

After my research I started telling my friends about what I’d found. Like me, they were amazed evolution could be crushed so quickly and easily.

They started to tell their friends and the whole thing started to snow ball. In no time at all, our Sunday morning coffee sessions turned into a small community of Christians devoted to exposing the myths of evolution.

After a few months, I started getting phone calls from people I didn’t even know - asking me to tell them about the discoveries I made.

As the momentum started to build, my Sunday morning “crew” started nudging me to write this stuff down. I hesitated at first, but realized that it might help other folks defend God’s place in our lives.

With that in mind, I sat down at the computer and started to type.

I sent out a few drafts by e-mail and the feedback was immediate: These missing pieces were so hot; they were sparking debate and knocking skeptics on their heels.

Now YOU Can Expose Evolution…
With the Same Amazing Results!

I put all the missing pieces into a 55-page e-book called Disprove Darwin In 5 Minutes or Less… In it, I give you simple and effective ways to knock down and tear apart the theory of evolution.

But don’t worry: It’s not a boring textbook. It’s easy to read and everything is set up in a way that’s easy to remember and easy to refer back to…

I stripped down and demystified evolution so anyone can understand it. I took out all the jargon and all the non-sense and cut right to the chase.

It’s kind of like a handbook that tells you how to counter every argument or piece of “proof” they can throw at you. Within it minutes of opening it you can start using this high-powered ammunition to blow apart any argument, any time…

Even better, I show you how to fight evolution. I don’t just give you facts and stories; I give you the strategies the scientists are using to fight against us - and how to counter them.

Knowing How to Fight is the Key to Winning

Once you know what they’re up to, you can pull the rug right out from under them - no matter what they throw at you.

I reveal the myths, falsehoods - and in some cases - the outright lies that have propped up the “theory” of evolution for nearly 150 years.

You’ll get the simple and easy-to-apply strategies that kick the skeptics to the curb. I’ll even show you my “rapid fire” take down that puts every ivy-league evolution lover up against the wall in 5 minutes or less.

Here’s just a quick feel for what you’ll get a hold of:

• Why evolution is really just a cult based on false assumptions - NOT FACTS.

• The truth behind the missing fossils and the physical evidence that clearly disproves evolution.

• How Stalin, Marx and Hitler used evolution to justify their brutality and drive for world domination.

• The critical discovery Darwin predicted future scientists would have to make to prove evolution. (HINT: It didn’t happen!)

• How scientists shamelessly cover up Darwin’s failures to prop up his un-provable theory.

• The museum in San Francisco that fabricated evidence to support evolution. (This is happening all over the country!)

• How school textbooks get away with using known fakes and forgeries to teach the lie of evolution.

• Discover the time period in our past that produced thousands of new life forms all at once - with no “evolutionary ancestors” before them.

• Meet the courageous microbiologist who exposed the fraud behind evolution - only to get sacked by the media.

• Evolution has been observed while it’s happening, right? Wrong! Hear the stunning admission from one of science’s most vocal evolution supporters.

• How evolution poisons your mind - and your soul - by promoting chaos, depression and violence.

• Learn the real story behind the dinosaurs and why these giant creatures crush the theory of evolution.

• MORE MISSING LINKS: Why there’s almost no research by evolutionists to explain evolution on a molecular and biochemical level.

• How science has rearranged the evolution argument to make it sound like a lack of evidence is the evidence.

• PLUS: Why scientists have to throw out their beloved “scientific method” in order to embrace evolution - and why they’re fighting like mad to keep you from finding out…

Play Your Part in Defending God’s Role as Our Creator

When you’re armed with the documented, undeniable evidence you’ll find in Disprove Darwin In 5 Minutes or Less… you’ll have everything you need to take on evolution and win. So don’t be surprised when your friends ask you for the details.

Just days after getting it, people will start coming to you for answers. I should know: It happened to me. At first, I was a little nervous about suddenly being the center of attention.

But when I saw the smile on my pastor’s face - and felt the gratitude of my friends and congregation - I knew I was doing the right thing.

After all, it’s our duty as Christians to defend our Faith. And honoring God as our Father and Creator is at the core of everything we believe. Without it, everything else falters: Prayer… Devotion… Salvation…

Take away God as our Creator and it all vanishes.

By arming yourself with the truth about evolution, you’ll expose the lies and set people straight.

That’s Exactly what Happened to Tom…

Six months after finishing my research, I saw Tom in the parking lot of our local grocery store. He recognized me right away. I approached him and asked him if he remembered our lively debate. He cracked a smile so I told him I’d been doing some reading on evolution.

He raised an eyebrow and gave me a smirk, like, “Oh, please… this nutty Bible-thumper thinks he knows something about evolution…”

That’s when something remarkable happened. In less than 5 minutes I cut down every “solid” argument for evolution he had ever heard of… And here’s the best part:

He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.

He didn’t know what to say or what to do… To this day, I don’t know what shocked him more: Watching his cherished beliefs go down in flames or realizing I knew what I was talking about.

Help Me Spread the Word!

When I fully understood the impact of this evidence, I knew I had to tell other Christians. That’s why I’m writing to you. I want you to know the truth about evolution TODAY!

Download Disprove Darwin In 5 Minutes or Less… right now for just $24.95. It’s 100% refundable if you’re not completely happy with it.

I trust your judgment and your good faith. That’s why I’m giving you a no-stress, no-hassle guarantee. If it’s not for you, just let me know and you’ll get ALL your money returned.

PLUS I’ll let you keep Disprove Darwin In 5 Minutes or Less… with my compliments!

Even better… There’s no time limit to my guarantee. Keep it for three years and I’ll still return your money. That way, I take all the risk.

And that leaves you free to get on with what’s important: Showing the rest of the world that God is our Creator. (And putting those atheists in their place.)

Let Me Hear from You Today and
I’ll Send You My Newsletter FREE!

The evidence I turned up during my research is amazing. There’s so much of it, I couldn’t fit it all in my book.

To make sure you get every possible piece of evolution-crushing evidence - and every strategy to make you a winner, I keep you updated every week.

For no extra cost I’ll send you my weekly letters, and my monthly newsletter straight to your inbox.

In both you’ll find all my latest research… All the tips, stories and revelations you can use to go up against even the staunchest scientists and university types.

I’ll keep you up to date and well armed. You’ll never be out of touch. And of course, I’ll deliver it in a way that’s easy to use and easy to understand.

(The general public pays $9.95 a month - but you’ll get it FREE!)

Put Evolution to Rest… Today!

You now have everything you need to crush the “theory” of evolution and win every debate, every time.

All you have to do is download it and use it.

Join me today. Together we’ll put an end to 150 years of cult worship and bring God back to His Creation.

Christians around the country are already using this ammunition to overthrow the soul-destroying deception we know as evolution.

You’re just moments away… In a few seconds, you’ll have the ammunition you need - right in your own hands.

Click the link below to get started now.

Yours in Faith,

Jeffrey Howard

That’s the thing about creationists. Their faith is so dependent on lies, misinformation and half-truths that I just wonder how valuable it could possibly be. If they have taken the definition of faith we commonly hear, which is “Certainty in things unseen” and turned it into “outright denial of things seen” then their faith is a weak argument for religion.

I am sure that Howard is sincere and happy in his faith. I am sure that he is even a decent guy, but I am also certain that he is lying about the acquaintance who is an atheist. None of this would impress an atheist, because we know that what he claims to know about evolution is false. All of it. Every single thing.

Every weakness he claims for evolution can be understood as being false merely by fact-checking from the Index to Creationist Claims at talkorigins.org.

“New Atheism” is a surge necessitated by the growth of this sort of misinformation. I honestly don’t care about the religion of my neighbors, and am happy for them if they find personal satisfaction from being religious. The problem is that the sort of religion evidenced by Howard’s misinformation is spreading and is invading schools, politics and affecting people. Sure if they want to evangelize, that’s fine; but if they want to use this sort of pseudo-intellectual denialism to defeat science in defense of their religion they are now affecting the rest of society in a negative way.

If faith depends on me seeing a green sky in place of the blue one I can plainly see, well then no amount of proselytizing will convince me that I am wrong about being an atheist. The site that sends me this is a conservative political site, and it has one other effect that Human Events may or may not have planned. It throws into question the validity of all of their thinking. Do you think that this is unfair?

Perhaps it is unfair to the reasoned conservatives who don’t depend on denying facts in order to reach their conclusions. But those who do should really be far more vocal about denouncing conservatism’s ties to creationism. Ronald Bailey is one who has been trying to get the word out that creationism is bunk and is actually a useful tool to gather the faithful into the conservative camp.

But Human Events also features prominently the writings of Ann Coulter, who everyone says is so smart because she has a law degree. She knows jack about evolution, but she thinks she knows enough to debunk it. They favorably review the “Politically Incorrect Guides to….” which are a series of books that get the facts wrong and lead to faulty conclusions from there.

If their stable is so weak on knowledge related to the science we can see, how can we take seriously any of their analysis? Is their approach on economics any better than their approach on evolution? Is their approach on policy any more based on facts or does it rely on denialism, too?

Are they proving Colbert right when he quipped “Reality has a well-known liberal bias?”

Perry Marshall’s “Proof” of a Designer

Perry Marshall is probably far more intelligent than I am. He is certainly more accomplished than I am, I have no claim to any publications in any field while Marshall has published an engineering book Industrial Ethernet. I have taken some courses on network protocols, but that was about ten years ago. So I will accede to his prowess in computer engineering.

That being said, I will now say that he is stupid when it comes to DNA. Well, not stupid, but not very well educated about how it works. DNA is the stranded double-helix molecule that all living cells use to regenerate the proteins needed for life. I just finished reading the transcript of a talk he gave in 2005, titled “If you can read this I can prove God exists.” Marshall returns again to Paley’s Watchmaker, updating the Watchmaker to Codewriter.

Perry Marshall’s version of God as Creator is that of a programmer, the one who wrote DNA 1.0. Perry makes an analogy, and then uses the analogy as proof. Except, analogies are not proof. They are analogies.

DNA is an encoding and decoding system. DNA molecule represents more than itself; it represents an entire living organism. It doesn’t just represent Adenine. It represents you or it represents a rabbit or a squirrel or a snake.

It has alphabet and syntax and semantics and pragmatics, or to use less technical terms alphabet, grammar, meaning and intent. It can be copied and even stored in other media with no loss of information.

I used to work for a company that made DNA sequencers. Their machines would go through and figure out what all the letters were in a strand of DNA. You could store that on a computer disk, and somebody in the lab could take the right chemicals and they could put those back and they could end up with a clone of the organism. Because the information in DNA is information is something distinct and separate from whatever it is stored in.

DNA is not language, however. And this is where his analogy falls apart. A language requires a reader, someone who interprets symbols. Even machine language has an interpreter, and it’s not the machine. It’s the programmer, the engineer who has programmed the memory chip to respond in a specific way to instructions. The machine itself is dumb, but the programs in the memory chip of your computer determine how it reacts and its reactions are programmed.

DNA does something completely different. DNA contains templates for proteins. Nothing actually “reads” a stretch of DNA in a cell, not in an interpretative way, at least. DNA transcription works in a similar way to a plaster cast of an object. When a protein is needed, the appropriate stretch of DNA separates. Transcription RNA (tRNA) assembles in a matching sequence, transfers the template through messenger RNA (mRNA)to the cytoplasm (in eukaryotes) where amino acids are assembled into proteins.

The process is amazing, no one claims otherwise. However, at no point is there an “interpreter” as there is with language. There are molecules that “copy” the sequence. That’s it. Strings of digital, binary code are language. The nucleotides of DNA are not bits, they are themselves complex molecules. The names that we give the nucleotides (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine) are useless to the process. The names are useful only to us and if given different names would work just the same.

Humans receive information symbolically and interpret it according to what we have learned. One way we receive information is language (heard or seen.) Cells don’t. Cellular structures are copied from templates.

Now, since Marshall has made his case based on DNA being a form of language, the remainder of his presentation falls completely to pieces once one realizes the differences between DNA and language.

The hubris continues:

Perry Marshall’s Update to Paley’s Design Argument

But now I have an improvement to Paley’s design argument. This sounds audacious but I’m serious. I have an improvement that makes Paley’s argument airtight:

• Element common to both watches and life is language

• The essential distinction between pattern and design is language

• Fundamental Property of all Designs: Idea precedes Implementation

• Idea must be represented by language

• All language comes from a mind

Life is preceded by DNA, and a watch is preceded by a plan where a blueprint or at least an idea in somebody’s mind that preceded the building of the watch.

That is true of all things that are designed, an idea comes first.

The essential distinction betweens patterns and designs is language. Patterns don’t have languages, but designs do. So the fundamental property of all designs is that an idea precedes the implementation of the idea.

The idea exists in a symbolic form before it’s physically built. An idea, in order to exist, has to be represented by a language. Even to have an idea in your mind you have to talk to yourself and have images in your mind of what you want to do before you do it. So we know this:

• Ideas always precede implementation, always, no exceptions.

• All languages come from a mind. No exceptions.

• There are no languages that do not come from a mind.

• So we know that DNA was designed.

• A mind designed DNA, therefore God exists.

Can this be refuted? Yes, if any exceptions to this can be found. But a lot of people have tried to refute it, unsuccessfully. It’s an airtight inductive proof that life was designed by a mind. If anyone can find a flaw in the logic, it fails. Until that happens, it stands. It’s just like the laws of thermodynamics, or gravity, or conservation of matter and energy. If anyone can find an exception, the law fails to hold.

This leads to what I call The Atheist’s Riddle:

“Show me a language that does not come from a mind.”

It’s so simple and a child can understand, but so complex no atheist can solve.

I hate to burst his bubble, but an atheist has solved the problem. Of course, I changed the rules on his problem. I had only to demonstrate that the question was based on a faulty premise. This is Salem’s Law revealed, and shows that when engineers pretend to be smarter than scientists they make big mistakes.

Now, if I ever need to understand Industrial Ethernet, Perry is definitely the guy to whom I will turn. But if I need to understand the workings of DNA, I will turn to a molecular biologist.

Stephen Colbert and George Johnson

I Found this at Uncertain Principles

Tune in Sunday at 9:00 AM

Atheists Talk #018 May 11, 2008

INTERVIEW OF ANNIE LAURIE GAYLOR, CO-FOUNDER AND CO-PRESIDENT OF FREEDOM FROM RELIGION FOUNDATION

Listen to AM 950 KTNF on Sunday at 9AM Central to hear Atheists Talk produced by Minnesota Atheists. Stream live online. Call the studio at 952-946-6205 or email us at radio@mnatheists.org