Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Unclassified quotes: June 2005

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The following are unclassified quotes posted in my email messages of June 2005. The date format is dd/mm/yy.

2/06/2005
"So, macromutations do happen. But do they play a role in evolution? People 
called saltationists believe that macromutations are a means by which major 
jumps in evolution could take place in a single generation. Richard 
Goldschmidt ... was a true saltationist. If saltationism were true, apparent 
'gaps' in the fossil record needn't be gaps at all. For example, a saltationist 
might believe that the transition from sloping-browed 
Australopithecus to dome-browed Homo sapiens took place in 
a single macromutational step, in a single generation. The difference in form 
between the two species is probably less than the difference between a normal 
and an antennapaedic fruitfully, and it is theoretically conceivable that the first 
Homo sapiens was a freak child - probably an ostracized and 
persecuted one - of two normal Australopithecus parents. There are 
very good reasons for rejecting all such saltationist theories of evolution. One 
rather boring reason is that if a new species really did arise in a single 
mutational step, members of the new species might have a hard time finding 
mates." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 
1991, reprint, p.231)

2/06/2005
"We can well imagine such a non-Darwinian theory of discontinuous change-
profound and abrupt genetic alteration luckily (now and then) making a new 
species all at once. Hugo de Vries, the famous Dutch botanist supported such 
a theory early in this century. But these notions seem to present insuperable 
difficulties. With whom shall Athena born from Zeus's brow mate? All her 
relatives are members of another species. What is the chance of producing 
Athena in the first place, rather than a deformed monster? Major disruptions 
of entire genetic systems do not produce favored or even viable creatures." 
(Gould S.J., "The Return of the Hopeful Monster," in "The Panda's Thumb: 
More Reflections in Natural History," [1980], Penguin: London, 1990, reprint, 
pp.158-159)

2/06/2005
"`Evolution' can mean anything from the uncontroversial statement that 
bacteria `evolve' resistance to antibiotics to the grand metaphysical claim that 
the universe and mankind `evolved' entirely by purposeless, mechanical 
forces. A word that elastic is likely to mislead, by implying that we know as 
much about the grand claim as we do about the small one. That very point was 
the theme of a remarkable lecture given by Colin Patterson at the American 
Museum of Natural History in 1981. Patterson is a senior paleontologist at the 
British Natural History Museum and the author of that museum's general text 
on evolution. His lecture compared creationism (not creation-science) with 
evolution, and characterized both as scientifically vacuous concepts which are 
held primarily on the basis of faith. Many of the specific points in the lecture 
are technical, but two are of particular importance for this introductory 
chapter. First, Patterson asked his audience of experts a question which 
reflected his own doubts about much of what has been thought to be secure 
knowledge about evolution: `Can you tell me anything you know about 
evolution, any one thing . . . that is true? I tried that question on the geology 
staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was 
silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in 
the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I 
got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said "I do 
know one thing-it ought not to be taught in high school." Patterson suggested 
that both evolution and creation are forms of pseudo-knowledge, concepts 
which seem to imply information but do not. One point of comparison was 
particularly striking. A common objection to creationism in pre-Darwinian 
times was that no one could say anything about the mechanism of creation. 
Creationists simply pointed to the `fact' of creation and conceded ignorance of 
the means. But now, according to Patterson, Darwin's theory of natural 
selection is under fire and scientists are no longer sure of its general validity. 
Evolutionists increasingly talk like creationists in that they point to a fact but 
cannot provide an explanation of the means. Patterson was being deliberately 
provocative, and I do not mean to imply that his skeptical views are widely 
supported in the scientific community. On the contrary, Patterson came under 
heavy fire from Darwinists after somebody circulated a bootleg transcript of 
the lecture, and he eventually disavowed the whole business. Whether or not 
he meant to speak for public attribution, however, he was making an 
important point. We can point to a mystery and call it `evolution,' but this is 
only a label. The important question is not whether scientists have agreed on a 
label, but how much they know about how complex living beings like 
ourselves came into existence. ... Colin Patterson's 1981 lecture was not 
published, but I have reviewed a transcript and Patterson restated his position, 
which I would label "evolutionary nihilism," in an interview with the 
journalist Tom Bethell. (See Bethell, "Deducing from Materialism," National 
Review, Aug. 29, 1986, p. 43.) I discussed evolution with Patterson for 
several hours in London in 1988. He did not retract any of the specific 
skeptical statements he has made, but he did say that he continues to accept 
`evolution' as the only conceivable explanation for certain features of the 
natural world." (Johnson P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: 
Downers Grove IL, Second edition, 1993, pp.9-10, 173)

3/06/2005
"Perhaps the most prevalent of the misconstruals of creationism involves the 
Second Law of Thermodynamics. There are several ways of stating the 
Second Law, but for present purposes the following intuitive characterizations 
will be adequate. In a system that neither loses nor gains energy from outside 
of itself (a closed system), although the total amount of energy within the 
system remains constant, the proportion of that energy which is no longer 
usable within the system (measured as entropy) tends to increase over time. 
An equivalent formulation is that in a closed system there is over time a 
spontaneous tendency toward erosion of a specified type of order within the 
system. Creationists nearly unanimously claim that this Second Law poses a 
nasty problem for evolution. Unfortunately, exactly what creationists have in 
mind here is widely misunderstood. Creationists are at least partly at fault for 
that confusion. One reason is that as noted earlier ... most popular creationists 
use the term evolution ambiguously-sometimes to refer to the cosmic 
evolutionary worldview (or model) and sometimes to refer to the Darwinian 
biological theory. Although a coherent position can be extracted from some of 
the major creationists (such as Morris, Gish, Wysong and Kofahl), this 
ambiguity has rendered some parts of their writings monumentally unclear. 
One has to read extremely carefully in order to see which evolution is being 
referred to, and some critics of creationism either have simply not noticed the 
ambiguity or perhaps have misjudged which meaning specific creationists 
have had in mind in specific passages. And critics are not the only people who 
have sometimes been bamboozled. Other creationists who take their cues 
from those above have also sometimes missed some of the key distinctions 
and have advanced exactly the original misconstrued arguments that critics 
have wrongly attributed to major creationists. In a word or two, we have a 
four-alarm mess here. But let's see if we can clear up at least some of it. First, 
when claiming that the Second Law flatly precludes evolution, major 
creationists almost invariably have in mind evolution in the overall cosmic, 
`evolution model' sense. The clues to that meaning are the almost invariable 
use (especially in Morris's writings) of phrases like philosophy of evolution or 
cosmic or universal or on a cosmic scale. The universe as a whole system is 
taken to be a closed system (classically), and according to the creationist 
definition of evolution model, that model is unavoidably committed to an 
internally generated overall increase in cosmic order, since on that view 
reality is supposed to be self-developed and self- governing. What Morris and 
others mean to be claiming is that any such view according to which the entire 
cosmos is itself in a process of increasing overall order is in violation of the 
Second Law.  Critics of creationism almost without exception take this initial 
creationist claim to be about purely biological evolution on the earth and 
respond that the Second Law applies only to closed systems, whereas the 
earth, receiving energy from the sun, is thermodynamically open. But since 
the system actually in question here is the entire universe, which is the `prime 
example' of a closed system, the response that the Second Law only applies to 
closed systems is beside the point creationists mean to be making in this case. 
That is not to say that the creationist argument is ultimately correct here, but 
only that if it is defective the problem is not the one initially proposed. When 
discussion turns to evolution in the more restricted sense- biological evolution 
on the earth-then obviously it is highly relevant to point out that the earth is 
not a closed system and that thus the Second Law by itself does not directly 
preclude evolution. But Morris, Gish, Wysong and others admit that, and have 
for decades, although not always in a terribly clear manner. How does that 
admission emerge? Morris, for instance, claims in numerous of his writings 
that a system being open is not alone enough to cause a reversal of disorder or 
a decrease in entropy. There are, Morris claims, some additional requirements 
that must be met before that can happen For instance, the flow of energy 
coming into the system must be adequate, and there must be some already-
existing `code' and `conversion mechanism' by which the incoming energy can 
be harnessed, turned into some form that is useful and usable in the system, 
and then properly directed and productively incorporated into the system 
experiencing increasing order. These additional requirements are not 
requirements of the Second Law itself but are requirements that Morris thinks 
we have good empirical grounds for accepting. Simply throwing raw energy 
into a system generally does not produce increased order but destroys some of 
the order already there. So the view is that special conditions-codes, 
conversion mechanisms and the like-are needed before growths in order can 
occur even in open systems. That raises the question, How do these codes and 
conversion mechanisms themselves arise? Some creationists may hold that the 
Second Law itself flatly precludes such codes and mechanisms arsing 
naturally. Others take the odds against the codes and mechanisms being 
generated naturally to be massively overwhelming. But Morris says that the 
natural development of such codes and mechanisms may, for all he knows, be 
possible, although it is unlikely. So although the Second Law does impose 
some conditions, and although other empirical experience seems to impose 
some additional constraints, at least in principle, according to Morris, all of 
those conditions and constraints can perhaps be met: `It is conceivable, 
although extremely unlikely, that evolutionists may eventually formulate a 
plausible code and mechanism to explain how both entropy and evolution 
could co-exist.' [Morris H.M., "King of Creation," 1980, p.117] `This 
objection does not preclude the possibility of evolution.' [Morris H.M., "The 
Troubled Waters of Evolution," 1974, p.101] `It may of course be possible to 
harmonize evolution and entropy.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of 
Evolution," 1974, p.99] `This of course does not preclude temporary increases 
of order in specific open systems.' [Morris H.M., "The Biblical Basis for 
Modern Science," 1984, p.207; Morris H.M., "Biblical Cosmology and 
Modern Science," 1970, p.127]. Morris says similar things elsewhere-from at 
least 1966 on. [Morris H.M., "Studies in the Bible and Science," 1966, p.146; 
Morris H.M., "The Biblical Basis for Modern Science," 1984, p.207; Morris 
H.M., "King of Creation," 1980, p.114; Morris H.M., "Does Entropy 
Contradict Evolution?," Impact, 141, March 1985, pp.i-iv]. So what, then, is 
the problem? A major one, according to Morris, concerns the required codes 
and mechanisms: `No one yet has any evidence that any such things exist at 
all.' [Morris H.M., "Creation and the Modern Christian," 1985, pp.155-56]. 
`Neither of these has yet been discovered.' [Morris H.M., "The Remarkable 
Birth of Planet Earth," 1972, p.20]. `So far, evolutionists have no answer.' 
[Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 1974, p.100]. `[The 
special conditions are] not available to evolution as far as all evidence goes.' 
[Morris H.M., "Science and the Bible," 1986, p.60]. Notice the invariable 
qualifications: `yet,' `so far' and so on. And what that all means, according to 
Morris, is that `the necessary `law' of evolution, if it exists, still remains to be 
discovered and evolutionists must in the meantime continue to exercise faith 
in their model in spite of entropy.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of 
Evolution," 1974, p.101]. Those last five quotes, incidentally, come from four 
different books written from 1972 to 1986, hardly an obscure brief departure 
from Morris's usual views-and this same sort of view is found in Gish, 
Wysong, Pearcey, Bird, and Kofahl and Segraves, from 1976 to the present." 
(Ratzsch D.L., "The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the 
Creation-Evolution Debate," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1996, 
pp.91-93)

3/06/2005
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down 
like a clock and never rewind themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' 
converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy chemicals, 
it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' 
faster and faster. Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable 
compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of 
years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the 
motive? If we leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long 
enough the forces of nature will convert him into simple compounds of 
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small 
amounts of other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of 
chemistry professor we use and no matter what process we use we can't turn 
these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors are 
unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the 
exclusive presence of the sun's heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic 
and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question is: Then why 
does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic 
compounds to go the other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the 
sun's energy did. It has to be something else. What is it?" (Pirsig R.M., "Lila: 
An Inquiry Into Morals," Bantam: London, 1991, pp.144-145) 

3/06/2005
"Where is the Garden of Eden? In Gen 2:10-14 the exact location for the 
Garden of Eden are described. It was in the headwaters of the four rivers 
Pison, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers rise on the plateau heights of 
Eastern Turkey. Around it is a rim of mountains rising to 12,000ft with the 
main peak- Mount Ararat towering above them all. Eden was at the source of 
rivers and therefore has to be in a mountainous region. What about the four 
rivers- two are unheard of aren't they? Identity of Pison and Gihon are clearly 
given in the London Geographical Institute maps. They are now known as 
Halys and Araxes. The Halys rises in Eastern Turkey and flows north into the 
Black Sea. The river Araxes rises in Eastern Turkey and flows North East into 
the Caspian Sea. They along with the Euphrates and Tigris rose from a 
massive mountain lake on the plateau over a thousand metres high. This lake 
has long since dried up although it remains in a much smaller form known as 
Lake Van. Was there such a thing as rain? Archaeological evidence proves 
that this lake fed waterways all over the area. 'God did not cause it to rain 
upon the ground'. How then was the garden watered? Streams of water 
coming out of the rocks were kept in the garden by clay walls. The water of 
the ancient lake seeps through porous rock. This is called Flood water farming 
which is not dependant upon rain and is an accurate description in Genesis of 
the method. ... The name 'Eden' is very similar to the Babylonian word 'Edinnu' 
which denotes a plateau or steppe. This would be a piece of land in a mountainous 
region, which is flat. This would also relate to the 'cool evenings mentioned in 
Gen 3:8 which is typical of a high plateau climate. Even today the area is famed 
for the quality of it's soil which allows great amounts of plant growth due to the 
richness of plant nutrients." (Pearce E.K.V., "The Garden of Eden," Barnabas 
Youth, 2001. 
http://www.barnabasyouth.org/online/barnabas.nsf/Evidence4Truth?openform)

3/06/2005
"The question is not concerning evolution, but as to the main cause which has 
led to evolution in such and such shapes. To me it seems that the `Origin of 
Variation,' whatever it is, is the only true 'Origin of Species,' and that this 
must, as Lamarck insisted, be looked for in the needs and experiences of the 
creatures varying. Unless we can explain the origin of variations, we are met 
by the unexplained at every step in the progress of a creature from its original 
homogeneous condition to its differentiation, we will say, as an elephant; so 
that to say that an elephant has become an  elephant through the accumulation 
of a vast number of small, fortuitous, but unexplained, variations in some 
lower creatures, is really to say that it has become an elephant owing to a 
series of causes about which we know nothing, whatever, or, in other words, 
that one does not know how it came to be an elephant." (Butler S., "Life and 
Habit," [1910], Wildwood House: London, 1981, pp.263-264) 

3/06/2005
"The advantageous micromutations postulated by neo-Darwinist genetics are 
tiny, usually too small to be noticed. This premise is important because, in the 
words of Richard Dawkins, `virtually all the mutations studied in genetics 
laboratories-which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't 
notice them-are deleterious to the animals possessing them.' (Dawkins R., 
`The Blind Watchmaker,' [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.233) But 
if the necessary mutations are too small to be seen, there would have to be a 
great many of them (millions?) of the right type coming along when they are 
needed to carry on the long-term project of producing a complex organ. The 
probability of Darwinist evolution depends upon the quantity of favorable 
micromutations required to create complex organs and organisms, the 
frequency with which such favorable micromutations occur just where and 
when they are needed, the efficacy of natural selection in preserving the slight 
improvements with sufficient consistency to permit the benefits to 
accumulate, and the time allowed by the fossil record for all this to have 
happened." (Johnson P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], Second Edition, 
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1993, p.38)

3/06/2005
"Can blind watchmaker evolution as described by Dawkins actually produce 
complex adaptive improvements like the bat's wings? The answer depends on 
the validity of the factual assumptions that underlie the model. Several 
conditions must be met before evolution of the blind watchmaker sort can 
occur, and each one is highly problematical. First, gene mutations of the 
necessary complexity-building type must occur sufficiently frequently to build 
the improvement. Unfortunately, mutations having a favorable effect on the 
organism are extremely rare. Dawkins himself says that the mutations in 
question would probably have to be too small in effect to be observable, 
because "virtually all the mutations studied in genetics laboratories-which are 
pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them-are 
deleterious to the animals possessing them." (Dawkins R., "The Blind 
Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.233) The mutations 
that the blind watchmaker model requires must be not only favorable, but 
favorable in the very strong sense that they provide exactly what is needed for 
the next stage of the wingbuilding project. That each individual mutation is 
supposed to produce only a slight effect in the desired direction implies that 
there will have to be an enormous number of exactly the right kind of 
mutations to finish the job-and wings are only one of myriad alterations 
needed to modify a tree climber into a bat. The only reason to believe that 
mutations of the kind and quantity needed for blind watchmaker evolution 
actually occur is that the theory requires them." (Johnson P.E.*, "Reason in the 
Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and Education," 
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1995, pp.80-81)

4/06/2005
"In 1926 the British biologist Heslop Harrison reported that the industrial 
melanism of moths was caused by a special substance which he alleged 
was present in polluted air. He called this substance a "melanogen," and 
suggested that it was manganous sulfate or lead nitrate. Harrison claimed 
that when he fed foliage impregnated with these salts to the larvae of 
certain species of light-colored moths, a proportion of their offspring were 
black. He also stated that this "induced melanism" was inherited according 
to the laws of Mendel. Darwin, always searching for missing evidence, 
might well have accepted Harrison's Lamarckian interpretation, but in 
1926 biologists were skeptical. Although the rate of mutation of a 
hereditary characteristic can be increased in the laboratory by many 
methods, Harrison's figures inferred a mutation rate of 8 per cent. One of 
the most frequent mutations is nature is that which causes the disease 
hemophilia in man; its rate is in the region of .0005 per cent, that is, the 
mutation occurs about once in 50,000 births. It is, in fact, unlikely that an 
increased mutation rate has played any part in industrial melanism. At the 
University of Oxford during the past seven years we have been attempting 
to analyze the phenomenon of industrial melanism. We have used many 
different approaches. We are in the process of making a survey of the 
present frequency of light and dark forms of each species of moth in 
Britain that exhibits industrial melanism. We are critically examining each 
of the two forms to see if between them there are any differences in 
behavior. We have fed large numbers of larvae of both forms on foliage 
impregnated with substances polluted air. We have observed under various 
conditions the mating preferences and relative mortality of the two forms. 
Finally we have accumulated much information about the melanism of 
moths in parts of the world that are far removed from industrial centers, 
and we have sought to link industrial melanism with the melanics of the 
past. Our main guinea pig, both in the field and in the laboratory, has been 
the peppered moth Biston betularia and its me (Kettlewell H.B.D., 
"Darwin's Missing Evidence," Scientific American, Vol. 201, No. 3, 
March 1959, pp.48-53, p.48)

4/06/2005
"The peppered moth, Biston betularia, comes in various shades of gray. 
One hundred and fifty years ago, most peppered moths were "typical" 
forms, which have predominantly light gray scales with a few black scales 
scattered among them (hence the name, "peppered"). As early as 1811, 
however, the species also included some coal-black "melanic" forms. 
During the industrial revolution, the proportion of melanic forms 
increased, and by the turn of the century more than 90% of the peppered 
moths near the industrial city of Manchester, England, were melanic. A 
similar increase in melanic forms was reported in many other species of 
moths, ladybird beetles, and even some birds. It was also reported near 
other industrial cities such as Birmingham and Liverpool. Obviously, this 
was not an isolated phenomenon, and the name "industrial melanism" was 
used to denote all its manifestations. In 1896 British biologist J.W. Tutt 
suggested that industrial melanism in peppered moths might be due to 
differences in camouflage. Tutt theorized that in unpolluted woodlands, 
typicals are well camouflaged against the light-colored lichens that grow 
on tree trunks; but in woodlands where industrial pollution has killed the 
lichens and darkened the tree trunks, melanics are better camouflaged. 
Since predatory birds could be expected to find and eat the more 
conspicuous moths, the proportion of melanic forms would increase as a 
result of natural selection. In the 1920s another British biologist, J.W. 
Heslop Harrison, rejected Tutt's theory and proposed that melanism was 
induced directly by airborne industrial pollutants. Although he did not 
work on Biston betularia, Harrison reported that melanism could be 
produced in several other moth species if their larvae were fed on leaves 
contaminated with metallic salts. Critics were unable to reproduce 
Harrison's results, however, and pointed out that some of the species 
Harrison tested did not exhibit industrial melanism in the wild. There was 
a theoretical problem with Harrison's work, as well. If melanism could be 
induced it meant that the organism acquired it after birth. But there was 
also clear evidence that melanism was inherited, so Harrison's view 
implied that acquired characteristics could later be inherited. According to 
neo-Darwinian theory, however, the inheritance of acquired characteristics 
was impossible; all new heritable variations arose from genetic changes 
such as mutation. As neo-Darwinism rose in popularity, the influence of 
Harrison's ideas declined, and most biologists adopted the theory that 
industrial melanism in peppered moths was due to natural selection. It 
wasn't until the 1950s, however, that British physician and biologist 
Bernard Kettlewell set out to test the theory empirically." (Wells J., "Icons 
of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What We Teach About 
Evolution is Wrong," Regnery: Washington DC, 2000, pp.140-141) 

4/06/2005
"The concept of natural selection had remarkable power for explaining 
directional and adaptive changes. Its nature is simplicity itself. It is not a 
force like the forces described in the laws of physics; its mechanism is 
simply the elimination of inferior individuals. This process of nonrandom 
elimination impelled Darwin's contemporary, philosopher Herbert 
Spencer, to describe evolution with the now familiar term `survival of the 
fittest.' (This description was long ridiculed as circular reasoning: `Who 
are the fittest? Those who survive.' In reality, a careful analysis can usually 
determine why certain individuals fail to thrive in a given set of 
conditions.)" (Mayr E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," 
Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, July 2000, pp.67-71, p.68. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/12776)

5/06/2005
"In Britain and America there were a small number of scientists who refused 
to accept evolution. Professor Fleeming Jenkin, an engineer, in an article on 
the Origin in the North British Review in 1867 remarked that Darwin's idea 
that a species could be modified by a favourable variation occurring in an 
individual was the same as arguing that the arrival of one ship-wrecked 
European sailor on an island populated by negroes would result in the 
population gradually turning white in the course of a century or two (vide 
Mivart's Genesis of Species, p. 58). Fleeming Jenkin said he did not anticipate 
this little difficulty would embarrass the `true believer' in evolution, for: `He 
can invent trains of ancestors of whose existence there is no evidence; he can 
call up continents, floods, and peculiar atmospheres; he can dry up oceans, 
split islands, and parcel out eternity at will; surely with all these advantages he 
must be a dull fellow if he cannot scheme out a series of animals and 
circumstances explaining our assumed difficulty quite naturally.' (Darwin's 
Life and Letters, iii, 108). Darwin in the next edition of the Origin set to work 
and tidily patched up this rent in his theory. He said there could be no doubt 
that owing to similar organisms being similarly acted on by external 
conditions, `the tendency to vary in the same manner has often been so strong 
that all the individuals of the same species have been similarly modified 
without the aid of any form of natural selection.' Any theory needed could be 
supplied on demand apparently. An analysis of the various repairs effected in 
the six editions of the Origin would be instructive." (Field A.N., "The 
Evolution Hoax," [1941], Tan: Rockford IL., 1971, reprint, p.54)

6/06/2005
Col. 2:8 (NIV) "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and 
deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic 
principles of this world rather than on Christ."

6/06/2005
"The proliferation of wildly varying body plans during the Cambrian, 
scientists reason, therefore must have something to do with Hox genes. 
But what? To find out, developmental biologist Sean Carroll's lab on the 
University of Wisconsin's Madison campus has begun importing tiny 
velvet worms that inhabit rotting logs in the dry forests of Australia. 
Blowing bubbles of spittle and waving their fat legs in the air, they look, 
he marvels, virtually identical to their Cambrian cousin Aysheaia, whose 
evocative portrait appears in the pages of the Burgess Shale. Soon Carroll 
hopes to answer a pivotal question: Is the genetic tool kit needed to 
construct a velvet worm smaller than the one the arthropods use? Already 
Carroll suspects that the Cambrian explosion was powered by more than a 
simple expansion in the number of Hox genes. Far more important, he 
believes, were changes in the vast regulatory networks that link each Hox 
gene to hundreds of other genes. Think of these genes, suggests Carroll, as 
the chips that run a computer. The Cambrian explosion, then, may mark 
not the invention of new hardware, but rather the elaboration of new 
software that allowed existing genes to perform new tricks. 
Unusuallooking arthropods, for example, might be cobbled together 
through variations of the genetic software that codes for legs. `Arthropods,' 
observes paleoentomologist Jarmila Kukalova-Peck of Canada's Carleton 
University, `are all legs'-including the `legs' that evolved into jaws, claws 
and even sex organs. BEYOND DARWINISM Of course, understanding 
what made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger 
question of what made it happen so fast. Here scientists delicately slide 
across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuition rather 
than solid evidence. One favorite is the so- called empty barrel, or open 
spaces, hypothesis, which compares the Cambrian organisms to 
homesteaders on the prairies. The biosphere in which the Cambrian 
explosion occurred, in other words, was like the American West, a huge 
tract of vacant property that suddenly opened up for settlement. After the 
initial land rush subsided, it became more and more difficult for naive 
newcomers to establish footholds. Predation is another popular 
explanation. Once multicelled grazers appeared, say paleontologists, it was 
only a matter of time before multicelled predators evolved to eat them. 
And, right on cue, the first signs of predation appear in the fossil record 
exactly at the transition between the Vendian and the Cambrian, in the 
form Even more speculative are scientists' attempts to address the flip side 
of the Cambrian mystery: why this evolutionary burst, so stunning in speed 
and scope, has never been equaled. With just one possible exception-the 
Bryozoa, whose first traces turn up shortly after the Cambrian-there is no 
record of new phyla emerging later on, not even in the wake of the mass 
extinction that occurred 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian 
period. Why no new phyla? Some scientists suggest that the evolutionary 
barrel still contained plenty of organisms that could quickly diversify and 
fill all available ecological niches. Others, however, believe that in the 
surviving organisms, the genetic software that controls early development 
had become too inflexible to create new life- forms after the Permian 
extinction. The intricate networks of developmental genes were not so 
rigid as to forbid elaborate tinkering with details; otherwise, marvels like 
winged flight and the human brain could never have a risen. But very early 
on, some developmental biologists believe, the linkages between multiple 
genes made it difficult to change important features without lethal effect. 
`There must be limits to change,' says Indiana University developmental 
biologist Rudolf Raff. `After all, we've had these same old body plans for 
half a billion years.' The more scientists struggle to explain the Cambrian 
explosion, the more singular it seems. And just as the peculiar behavior of 
light forced physicists to conclude that Newton's laws were incomplete, so 
the Cambrian explosion has caused experts to wonder if the twin 
Darwinian imperatives of genetic variation and natural selection provide 
an adequate framework for understanding evolution. `What Darwin 
described in the Origin of Species,' observes Queen's University 
paleontologist Narbonne, `was the steady background kind of evolution. 
But there also seems to be a non-Darwinian kind of evolution that 
functions over extremely short time periods- and that's where all the action 
is.'" (Nash J.M., "When Life Exploded", TIME, December 4, 1995, pp.77-78)

7/06/2005
"With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of 
Scripture's historic validity bears tremendous implications. Brown claims that 
Constantine commissioned and bankrolled a staff to manipulate existing texts 
and thereby divinize the human Christ. Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's 
speculations fall flat. Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive 
by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's composition and consolidation may 
appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown 
overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for 
centuries before Nicea, resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture 
before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of Christianity in 313. 
Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched 
when a rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a 
Gnostic leader named Marcion began spreading a theory that the New and Old 
Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the Old 
Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, 
represented by Christ, exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old 
Testament and the most overtly Jewish New Testament writings, including 
Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to downplay 
their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views 
heretical, Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult. Challenged by Marcion's 
threat, church leaders began to consider earnestly their own views on a 
definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New Testaments. 
Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New 
Testament. During the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor 
named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation from God about an 
impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide 
circulation and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but 
hadn't yet been collected in a single authoritative book. Montanus saw in this 
fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming authoritative status for 
his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and 
circulated a definitive list of apostolic writings that is today called the 
Muratorian Canon, after its modern discoverer. The Muratorian Canon bears 
striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books, 
Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from 
the canon. By the time of Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only 
a few books that we accept today, chief among them Hebrews and Revelation, 
because their authorship remained in doubt. In fact, authorship was the most 
important consideration for those who worked to solidify the canon. Early 
church leaders considered letters and eyewitness accounts authoritative and 
binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple of an apostle. 
This way they could be assured of the documents' reliability. As pastors and 
preachers, they also observed which books did in fact build up the church-a 
good sign, they felt, that such books were inspired Scripture. The results speak 
for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to spread, 
flourish, and endure worldwide." (Hansen C., "Breaking The Da Vinci Code: 
So the divine Jesus and infallible Word emerged out of a fourth-century 
power-play? Get real," Christian History, November 7, 2003. 
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html)

7/06/2005
"The ... release of a new Gallup Poll, reporting on the state of American 
opinion regarding evolution and creation. According to this survey, 
approximately 47 percent of Americans can be described as creationists, in 
that they say they believe that God created mankind in pretty much our 
present form sometime within the last 10,000 years. (The wording of the 
question did not rule out a long period of animal evolution before the 
appearance of man, however.) Another 40 percent agreed with the following 
statement: `Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced 
forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation.' Only 9 
percent of the sample said that they accepted the naturalistic view of 
evolution, which in Gallup's wording was that man has developed over 
millions of years from less advanced forms of life, with God having no part in 
this process. ... When Darwinists speak of `evolution,' they mean the creed of 
the 9 percent. Science educators frequently obscure this point in order to avoid 
further arousing political opposition to the teaching of evolution as fact in the 
public schools, but they are perfectly explicit about it when candor suits their 
purpose. For example, one of the founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, 
Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, explained the `meaning of 
evolution' in the following widely quoted language: `Although many details 
remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective phenomena 
of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper 
sense of the sometimes abused word, materialistic factors. They are readily 
explicable on the basis of differential reproduction in populations (the main 
factor in the modern conception of natural selection) and of the mainly 
random interplay of the known processes of heredity... Man is the result of a 
purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.' [Simpson 
G.G., "The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of its 
Significance for Man," (1949), Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960, 
reprint, pp.343,344] The literature of evolutionary biology contains countless 
statements to the same effect. `Evolution,' honestly understood, is not just a 
gradual process of development that a purposeful Creator might have chosen 
to employ. It is, by Darwinist definition. a purposeless and undirected process 
that produced mankind accidentally. ... Now, through an educational system 
insistent upon uncritical acceptance by students at all levels of the claim that 
purposeless material mechanisms were responsible for the creation of all 
forms of life, scientific naturalism is becoming the officially established 
religion of America." (Johnson P.E., "Creator or Blind Watchmaker?," 
Reprinted from First Things, January 1993, Access Research Network, 
November 2, 1998. http://www.arn.org/docs/johnson/cre_bw98.htm)

8/06/2005
"In the weeks since the release of Mel Gibson's controversial film, The 
Passion of the Christ, critics have expressed outrage over what they claim is 
an overly bloody, brutal depiction of the sufferings of Christ. It makes you 
wonder if they understand what really took place during the scourging and 
crucifixion. Somebody who does know is former journalist Lee Strobel. A few 
years ago, Strobel researched one of the most persistent claims against 
Christianity: Did Jesus survive the scourging and crucifixion? Was it possible, 
he wondered, to examine 2,000-year-old medical evidence and determine if 
Jesus really died on the cross? Well, to get an expert opinion, Strobel went to 
Dr. Alexander Metherell, a research scientist. Metherell has studied the 
medical data concerning Christ's death, and he's convinced there's no way 
anyone could have survived what the Romans put him through. First, there 
was the flogging. Soldiers used whips of braided leather thongs. The metal 
balls woven into the lash caused deep bruises, which broke open during the 
torture. Often the victim's back, in such a beating, was so shredded that his 
spine was exposed. Those who didn't die from the flogging went into 
hypovolemic shock, brought on by blood loss. There would be a loss of blood 
pressure, leading to faintness and collapse. And the loss of fluids would result 
in tremendous thirst. The Gospels indicate that Jesus was in shock as He 
carried His cross to Calvary: He collapsed in the road, and Simon of Cyrene 
had to carry the cross for Him. Later, Jesus said, `I thirst.' And there was the 
agony of the crucifixion itself. The Romans drove spikes through the wrists 
and feet of Jesus-spikes that traveled through the median nerves. This caused 
such enormous pain that a new word was invented to describe it: excruciating, 
literally meaning, `out of the cross.' Metherell believes that Jesus, like other 
crucifixion victims, eventually died of asphyxiation. The stresses on the 
muscles and diaphragm put the chest in the inhaling position; in order to 
exhale, the victim had to push up on his feet to ease the tension in the muscles 
for just a moment. It would be enormously painful, and exhaustion would 
eventually set in. As his breathing slowed, the victim would go into 
respiratory acidosis, leading to an irregular heartbeat and eventual cardiac 
arrest. Then, in the case of Jesus, to ensure that He was dead, a Roman soldier 
thrust a spear into His side. The flogging, the massive blood loss, the shock, 
the crucifixion, the stabbing: Could Jesus have suffered all of this and 
survived? Not a chance, Metherell told Strobel." (Colson C.*, "Brutal and 
Bloody Is The Passion Too Violent?," BreakPoint, April 9, 2004. Emphasis
in original. http://makeashorterlink.com/?A5374293B)

8/06/2005
"The truly outstanding achievement of the principle of natural selection is 
that it makes unnecessary the invocation of `final causes'-that is, any 
teleological forces leading to a particular end. In fact, nothing is 
predetermined. Furthermore, the objective of selection even may change 
from one generation to the next, as environmental circumstances vary." 
(Mayr E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific 
American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.68. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/12776)

9/06/2005
"Because of the importance of variation, natural selection should be 
considered a two-step process: the production of abundant variation is 
followed by the elimination of inferior individuals. This latter step is 
directional. By adopting natural selection, Darwin settled the 
several-thousand-year-old argument among philosophers over chance or 
necessity. Change on the earth is the result of both, the first step being 
dominated by randomness, the second by necessity." (Mayr E.W., 
"Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, 
No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.68. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/12776)

13/06/2005
"But Naturalism, even if it is not purely materialistic, seems to me to 
involve the same difficulty, though in a somewhat less obvious form. It 
discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such 
a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself. The easiest 
way of exhibiting this is to notice the two senses of the word because. 
We can say, `Grandfather is ill to-day because he ate lobster yesterday.' 
We can also say, `Grandfather must be ill to-day because he hasn't got 
up yet (and we know he is an invariably early riser when he is well)' In the 
first sentence because indicates the relation of Cause and Effect: The 
eating made him ill. In the second, it indicates the relation of what 
logicians call Ground and Consequent. The old man's late rising is not the 
cause of his disorder but the reason why we believe him to be disordered. 
There is a similar difference between, ` He cried out because it hurt him 
` (Cause and Effect) and ` It must have hurt him because he cried out' 
(Ground and Consequent). We are especially familiar with the Ground and 
Consequent because in mathematical reasoning: `A=C because, as we 
have already proved, they are both equal to B.' The one indicates a 
dynamic connection between events or ` states of affairs'; the other, a 
logical relation between beliefs or assertions. Now a train of reasoning has 
no value as a means of finding truth unless each step in it is connected 
with what went before in the Ground-Consequent relation. If our B does 
not follow logically for our A, we think in vain. If what we think at the end 
of our reasoning is to be true, the correct answer to the question, `Why do 
you think this?' must begin with the Ground-Consequent because. On 
the other hand, every event in Nature must be connected with previous 
events in the Cause and Effect relation. But our acts of thinking are events. 
Therefore the true answer to ` Why do you think this?' must begin with the 
Cause-Effect because. Unless our conclusion is the logical consequent 
from a ground it will be worthless and could be true only by a fluke. 
Unless it is the effect of a cause, it cannot occur at all. It looks therefore, as 
if, in order for a train of thought to have any value, these two systems of 
connection must apply simultaneously to the same series of mental acts. 
But unfortunately the two systems are wholly distinct. To be caused is not 
to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, 
are all caused, but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different 
from being proved that we behave in disputation as if they were mutually 
exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated as 
raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of 
discrediting a person's opinions is to explain them causally.' You say that 
because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a hypochondriac, or a 
mere man, or only a woman.' The implication is that if causes fully 
account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would 
have had to arise whether it had grounds or not. We need not, it is felt, 
consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without 
them." (Lewis C.S.*, "Miracles: A Preliminary Study," [1947], Fontana: 
London, 1960, Revised edition, 1963, reprint, pp.18-20. Emphasis in 
original)

15/06/2005
"Darwin's theory clearly emerged as the victor during the evolutionary 
synthesis of the 1940s, when the new discoveries in genetics were married 
with taxonomic observations concerning systematics, the classification of 
organisms by their relationships. Darwinism is now almost unanimously 
accepted by knowledgeable evolutionists. In addition, it has become the 
basic component of the new philosophy of biology." (Mayr E.W., 
"Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, 
No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.69. 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CreationEvolutionDesign/message/12776)

22/06/2005
"One way to explore the minimum complexity of independent life is to survey 
the microbial database for the smallest genome. .... The data indicate that the 
microbes possessing the smallest known genomes and capable of living 
independently in the environment are extremophilic archaea and eubacteria. ... 
These organisms also happen to represent what many scientists consider to be 
the oldest life on Earth. This crude estimate seems to suggest that, to exist 
independently, life requires a minimum genome size of about 1,500 to 1,900 
gene products. (A gene product refers to proteins and functional RNAs, such 
as ribosomal and transfer RNA.) The late evolutionary biologist Colin 
Patterson acknowledges the 1,700 genes of Methanococcus are `perhaps close 
to the minimum necessary for independent life.' [Patterson C., "Evolution," 
Comstock: Ithaca NY, Second edition, 1999, p.23] ... So far, as scientists have 
continued their sequencing efforts, all microbial genomes that fall below 
1,500 belong to parasites. Organisms capable of permanent independent 
existence require more gene products. A minimum genome size (for 
independent life) of 1,500 to 1,900 gene products comports with what the 
geochemical and fossil evidence reveals about the complexity of Earth's first 
life. ... Theoretical and experimental studies designed to discover the bare , 
minimum number of gene products necessary for life all show significant 
agreement. Life seems to require between 250 and 350 different proteins to 
carry out its most basic operations. That this bare form of life cannot survive 
long without a source of sugars, nucleotides, amino acids, and fatty acids is 
worth noting." (Rana F.R.* & Ross H.N.*, "Origins of Life: Biblical And 
Evolutionary Models Face Off," Navpress: Colorado Springs CO, 2004 
pp.161-163)

26/06/2005
"The following illustration is my (Norman Geisler) updated version of 
William Paley's famous `watchmaker argument' in light of modern 
molecular biology and information theory. It deliberately borrows the 
format and language of Paley to make the point. `In crossing a valley, 
suppose I come upon a round stratified stone and were asked how it came 
to be such. I might plausibly answer that it was once laid down by water in 
layers which later solidified by chemical action. One day it broke from a 
larger section of rock and was subsequently rounded by the natural 
erosional processes of tumbling in water. Suppose then, upon walking 
further, I come upon Mount Rushmore where the forms of four human 
faces appear on a granite cliff. Even if I knew nothing about the origin of 
the faces, would I not come immediately to believe it was an intelligent 
production and not the result of natural processes of erosion? Yet why 
should a natural cause serve for the stone but not for the faces? For this 
reason, namely, that when we come to inspect the faces on the mountain 
we perceive-what we could not discover in the stone-that they manifest 
intelligent contrivance, that they convey specifically complex information. 
The stone has redundant patterns or strata easily explainable by the 
observed natural process of sedimentation. The faces, however, have 
specially formed features, not merely repeated lines. The stone has 
rounded features like those we observe to result from natural erosion. The 
faces, on the other hand, have sharply defined features contrary to those 
made by erosion. In fact, the faces resemble things known to be made by 
intelligent artisans. These differences being observed, we would rightly 
conclude there must have existed at some time and at some place some 
intelligence that formed them. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the 
conclusion if we had never seen such a face being chiseled in granite, if we 
had never known an artisan capable of making one, or if we were wholly 
incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves. All this is 
no more than what is true of some lost art or of some of the more curious 
productions of modern technology. Neither, secondly, would it invalidate 
our conclusion that upon closer examination of the faces they turn out to 
be imperfectly formed. It is not necessary that a representation be perfect 
in order to show it was designed. Nor, thirdly, would it bring any 
uncertainty in the argument if we were not able to recognize the identity of 
the faces. Even if we had never known of any such person portrayed, we 
would still conclude it took intelligence to produce them. Nor, fourthly, 
would any man in his senses think the existence of the faces on the rock 
was accounted for by being told that they were one out of many possible 
combinations or forms rocks may take, and that this configuration might 
be exhibited as well as a different structure. Nor, fifthly, would it yield our 
inquiry more satisfaction to be answered that there exists in granite a law 
or principle of order which had disposed it toward forming facial features. 
We never knew a sculpture made by such a principle of order, nor can we 
even form an idea of what is meant by such a principle of order distinct 
from intelligence. Sixthly, we would be surprised to hear that 
configurations like this on a mountainside were not proof of intelligent 
creation but were only to induce the mind to think so. Seventhly, we 
would be not less surprised to be informed that the faces resulted simply 
from the natural processes of wind and water erosion. Nor, eighthly, would 
it change our conclusion were we to discover that certain natural objects or 
powers were utilized in producing the faces. Still the managing of these 
forces, the pointing and directing them to form such specific faces, 
demands intelligence. Neither, ninthly, would it make the slightest 
difference in our conclusion were we to discover that these natural laws 
were set up by some intelligent Being. For nothing is added to the power 
of natural laws by positing an original Designer for them. Designed or not, 
the natural powers of wind and rain erosion never produce human faces 
like this in granite. Nor, tenthly, would it change the matter were we to 
discover that behind the forehead of a stone face was a computer capable 
of reproducing other faces on nearby cliffs by laser beams. This would 
only enhance our respect for the intelligence that designed such a 
computer. And, furthermore, were we to find that this computer was 
designed by another computer we would still not give up our belief in an 
intelligent cause. In fact, we would have an even greater admiration for the 
intelligence it takes to create computers that can also create. In addition, 
would we not consider it strange if anyone suggested there was no need for 
an intelligent cause because there might be an infinite regress of computers 
designing computers? We know that increasing the number of computers 
in the series does not diminish the need for intelligence to program the 
whole series. Neither would we allow any limitation on our conclusion 
(that it takes intelligence to create such specific and complex information) 
by the claim that this principle applies only to events of the near past but 
not the most remote past. For what is remote to us was near to those 
remote from us. And would we not consider it arbitrary for anyone to 
insist that the word science applies to our reasoning only if we assume the 
face had a natural cause, such as erosion, but not if we conclude it had an 
intelligent source? For who would insist that an archaeologist is scientific 
only if he posits a non-intelligent natural cause of ancient pottery and 
tools?' Neither, lastly, would we be driven from our conclusion or from 
our confidence in it by being told we know nothing at all about how the 
faces were produced. We know enough to conclude it took intelligence to 
produce them. The consciousness of knowing little need not beget a 
distrust of that which we do know. And we do know that natural forces 
never produce those kinds of effects. We know that the faces on the rock 
manifest a form such as is produced by intelligence. For as William Paley 
remarked, `Wherever we see marks of contrivance, we are led for its cause 
to an intelligent author. And this transition of the understanding is found 
upon uniform experience.'"(Geisler N.L.* & Bocchino P.*, "Unshakable 
Foundations," Bethany House: Minneapolis MN, 2000, pp.127-130) 

26/06/2005
"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized 
complexity in the world, either instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that 
deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place. The creationist, 
whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an 
already existing being of prodigious intelligence and complexity.: (Dawkins 
R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.316)

28/06/2005
"Imagine, says Darwin, that we extrapolate the tiny microevolutionary 
changes we see in domesticated breeding-a pea with extra-large pods made 
larger, or a short horse bred shorter. Imagine if we extend those slight changes 
caused by selection over millions of years; we add up all the minute 
differences until we see major change. This is what makes coral reefs and 
armadillos out of bacteria, Darwin said-accumulated microchange. Darwin 
asks that we extend the logic of microchange to cover the grand scale of Earth 
and Time. The argument that natural selection can be extended to explain 
everything in life is a logical argument. But human imagination and human 
experience know that what is logical is not always what is so. To be logical is 
a necessary but insufficient reason to be true. Every swirl on a butterfly wing, 
every curve of leaf, every species of fish is explained by adaptive selection in 
neodarwinism. There seems to be absolutely nothing that cannot be explained 
in some way as an adaptive advantage. But, as Richard Lewontin, a renowned 
neodarwinist, says, `Natural selection explains nothing, because it explains 
every thing. ` Biologists cannot (or at least they have not) ruled out the role of 
other forces at work in nature producing similar effects in evolution. 
Therefore, until evolution is duplicated under controlled conditions, in the 
wild, or in a lab, neodarwinism remains a nice `just-so' story-more like history 
than science. Philosopher of science Karl Popper said bluntly that 
neodarwinism is not a scientific theory at all, since it cannot be falsified. 
`Neither Darwin, nor any Darwinian, has so far given an actual causal 
explanation of the adaptive evolution of any single organism or any single 
organ. All that has been shown-and this is very much [sic]-is that such an 
explanation might exist-that is to say, [these theories] are not logically 
impossible." (Kelly K., "Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines," 
Fourth Estate: London, 1994, p.473. Emphasis in original)

28/06/2005
"Returning to the platypus, the sting in the tale is actually in the hind claws 
of the male platypus. True venomous stings, with hypodermic injection, 
are found in various invertebrate phyla, and in fish and reptiles among 
vertebrates - but never in birds or mammals other than the platypus (unless 
you count the toxic saliva of solenodons and some shrews that makes their 
bites slightly venomous). Among mammals, the male platypus is in a class 
of its own, and it may be in a class of its own among venomous animals 
too. The fact that the sting is found only in males suggests, rather 
surprisingly, that it is aimed not at predators (as in bees) nor at prey (as in 
snakes) but at rivals. It is not dangerous but is extremely painful, and is 
unresponsive to morphine. It looks as though platypus venom works 
directly on pain receptors themselves. If scientists could understand how 
this is done, there is a hope that it might give a clue to how to resist the 
pain caused by cancer. This tale began by chiding those zoologists who 
call the platypus `primitive' as though that were any kind of explanation 
for the way it is. At best it is a description. Primitive means `resembling 
the ancestor' and there are many respects in which this is a fair description 
of a platypus. The bill and the sting are interesting exceptions. But the 
more important moral of the tale is that even an animal that is genuinely 
primitive in all respects is primitive for a reason. The ancestral 
characteristics are good for its way of life, so there is no reason to change. 
As Professor Arthur Cain of Liverpool University liked to say, an animal 
is the way it is because it needs to be." (Dawkins R., "The Ancestor's Tale: 
A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston 
MA, 2004, p.242)

29/06/2005
"... The Da Vinci Code contains many more (equally dubious) claims 
about Christianity's historic origins and theological development. The 
central claim Brown's novel makes about Christianity is that `almost 
everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.' Why? Because of a 
single meeting of bishops in 325, at the city of Nicea in modern-day 
Turkey. There, argues Brown, church leaders who wanted to consolidate 
their power base (he calls this, anachronistically, `the Vatican' or `the 
Roman Catholic church') created a divine Christ and an infallible 
Scripture-both of them novelties that had never before existed among 
Christians. Watershed at Nicea Brown is right about one thing (and not 
much more). In the course of Christian history, few events loom larger 
than the Council of Nicea in 325. When the newly converted Roman 
Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day 
Turkey, the church had reached a theological crossroads. Led by an 
Alexandrian theologian named Arius, one school of thought argued that 
Jesus had undoubtedly been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in 
flesh. ... In The Da Vinci Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his 
representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the Council of 
Nicea, Brown claims that `until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed 
by His followers as a mortal prophet   a great and powerful man, but a 
man nonetheless.' In reality, early Christians overwhelmingly worshipped 
Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted 
comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of 
instructional summaries of belief, termed the `Rule' or `Canon' of Faith, 
which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent 
second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: `Yet 
for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for 
whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ.' The term used 
here-Lord, Kyrios-deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the 
Greeks to denote divinity (though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple 
honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the Septuagint, 
pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for 
`Jahweh,' the holy name of God. The Romans also used it to denote the 
divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer Josephus tells 
us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: 
only God himself was kyrios. The Christians took over this usage of kyrios 
and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of the church. They did so 
not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after 
Nicea), but in the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, 
which scholars agree was written no later than the late 100s. In this book, 
the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord. In 
addition, pre-Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by 
petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church leaders, including 
Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church 
apologist, baptized in the name of the triune God-Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit-thereby acknowledging the equality of the one Lord's three distinct 
persons. The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over 
Arius's teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of 
Christ's divinity on the church. The participating bishops merely affirmed 
the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front against 
future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation." (Hansen C., "Breaking 
The Da Vinci Code," Christian History, November 7, 2003. 
http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/newsletter/2003/nov7.html)

30/06/2005
"Hope of reconstructing the ancestor from its inferred genes received new 
impetus three years ago when the first full DNA, or genome, of a 
bacterium was decoded. Since then, the genomes of a dozen microbes 
have been sequenced, including at least one from each of the three main 
branches of the evolutionary tree. The three kinds of genome offered a 
broad basis for triangulating back to the ancestral genome. But the 
emerging picture is far more complicated than had been expected, and the 
ancestor's features remain ill-defined though not wholly elusive. `Five 
years ago we were very confident and arrogant in our ignorance,' said Dr. 
Eugene Koonin .... `Now we are starting to see the true complexity of life.' 
Despite the quagmire in which their present efforts have landed them, 
biologists have not in any way despaired of confirming the conventional 
thesis, that life evolved on earth from natural chemical processes. But a 
ferment of rethinking and regrouping is under way. Until now, searchers in 
the universal- ancestor treasure hunt have followed a hallowed chart 
known as the ribosomal RNA phylogenetic tree. This is a family tree 
drawn up by Woese and based on a gene used by all living cells to specify 
ribosomal RNA, or ribonucleic acid, a component of the machinery that 
translates genetic information into working parts. It was this tree that led 
Woese to recognize the tripartite division of living things and to realize 
that one of the three kingdoms belonged to the archaea, previously 
assumed to be a weird sort of bacteria. Many of the deepest branches in 
Woese's tree, those that join nearest to the three-way junction of the 
kingdoms, turned out to belong to organisms that live at high 
temperatures, as in the fuming springs in Yellowstone Park or the volcanic 
vents that gash the ocean floor. That clue fit well with new ideas holding 
that life originated at volcanolike temperatures. With the new ability to 
decode the full DNA of a microbe, it is these hightemperature microbes 
that biologists have chosen for some of their first targets. Aquifex 
aeolicus, a denizen of Yellowstone Park that lives at 5 degrees below the 
boiling point of water, is the deepest branching of all known bacteria. In 
the light of evidence suggesting that the oldest region of the ribosomal 
RNA tree lies on the branch leading into the bacterial kingdom, Aquifex 
provided grounds for the claim that it was the nearest living cousin of the 
universal ancestor. But the sequence of the Aquifex genome, reported last 
month in the journal Nature, has yielded only disappointments. For one 
thing, the microbe appears to have only one gene, called a reverse gyrase, 
that is not found in organisms that live at ordinary temperatures. ... A 
second blow is that with the full genome sequence in hand, for Aquifex 
and a dozen other microbes, biologists can draw up family trees based on 
other genes besides the ribosomal RNA gene that provided the original 
map. And the trees based on other genes show different maps that do not 
agree with the ribosomal RNA map. `Each picture is different, so there is 
tremendous confusion,' Woese said. A basic source of the confusion is that 
in the course of evolution whole suites of genes have apparently been 
transferred sideways among the major branches. Among animals, genes 
are passed vertically from parent to child but single-celled creatures tend 
to engulf each other and occasionally amalgamate into a corporate genetic 
entity. ... Horizontal transfer of genes between kingdoms would severely 
tangle up the lines in family trees. ... `It's possible that bacterial genes have 
swept all over the world and replaced everything else that existed, so some 
of the features of the last common ancestor may have been erased from the 
face of the planet,' Koonin said. But no one is abandoning the search for 
the ancestor. `My biggest fear is that evolution would be indecipherable 
because of all the random changes that took place,' said Craig Venter .... 
`The good news is that that is clearly not the case. I think it will be 
completely decipherable but because of horizontal transfer the tree may 
look more like a neural network,' he said, referring to the criss-cross 
pattern of a neural computing circuit. Venter, who pioneered the 
sequencing of microbial genomes, estimated that 50 to 100 more genomes 
needed to be sequenced to help triangulate back to the last common 
ancestor. Evolutionary biologists are working on several approaches for 
seeing beyond the confusion caused by lateral transfer. Computational 
biologists like Koonin believe that it is already possible to identify 100 or 
so genes that the common ancestor must have possessed -- mostly ones 
that manage DNA and its translation into proteins -- and that others can be 
added with varying degrees of certainty. Most biologists still favor the 
standard view that the universal ancestor, already a quite sophisticated 
organism that had come a long way since the origin of life, first branched 
into the bacteria and the archaea. Later the eukarya branched off from the 
archaea, but accepted many genes from the bacteria. Koonin describes the 
eukaryotic cell as a `palimpsest of fusions and gene exchanges,' referring 
to a manuscript that has been written over with new text. But some 
important eukaryotic genes have no obvious predecessors in either the 
archaean or the bacterial lines. The family of genes that make the stiff 
framework of eukaryotic cells, known as the cytoskeleton, seems to appear 
out of nowhere. `The absence of sequences closely related to the slowly 
changing proteins of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton remains unsettling,' Dr. 
Russell Doolittle ... wrote in the March 26 issue of Nature. Another 
evolutionary biologist, Dr. Ford Doolittle ... has an explanation, though 
one that he concedes does not yet enjoy the company of evidence. He 
argues there might have been many lost branches of the tree of life before 
the universal ancestor. One of these branches, a fourth kingdom of life, 
might have contributed the cytoskeleton genes to the eukarya before 
falling into extinction. A new and far- reaching theory about the universal 
ancestor has been developed by Woese. Though he declined to discuss it, 
because his article is due to be published in the Proceedings of the 
National Academy of Sciences [Woese C., "The universal ancestor," 
PNAS 95(12), 6854-6859, June 9, 1998. 
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/95/12/6854], colleagues said the 
theory envisages that all three kingdoms emerged independently from a 
common pool of genes. The pool was formed by a community of cells that 
frequently exchanged genes among themselves by lateral transfer. The 
price of membership in the community was to use the same genetic code, 
according to Woese's theory, which is how the code came to be almost 
universal. The community of proto-genomes quickly shared innovations 
among themselves, in Woese's new view, and the system evolved by 
producing more complicated proteins, the working parts of the cell. The 
genetic code was at first translated rather inaccurately, so the proteins it 
produced were short and limited in capability. But the code became more 
accurate, and the proteins more complex, driven by the advantage that 
more capable proteins conferred. At a certain stage of complexity, design 
decisions may have limited cells' ability to exchange genes, and the 
ancestral pool would have split into the three kingdoms seen today, the 
new theory suggests. It is possible, of course, that evolution's early traces 
have become too faint to decipher. And at the back of researchers' minds is 
another worry, one that makes them throw up their hands since it cannot 
be addressed scientifically: that life may have arrived on earth from 
elsewhere. Life seems to have popped up on earth with surprising rapidity. 
The planet is generally thought to have become habitable only some 3.85 
billion years ago, after the oceans stopped boiling off from titanic asteroid 
impacts. Yet by 3.5 billion years ago, according to the earliest fossil 
records, living cells were flourishing, and there are indirect signs of life 
even earlier, in rocks that are 3.8 billion years old. `There's the gee-whiz 
point of view, how can life possibly have evolved in 300 million years, 
which I think is still a problem,' said [Russell] Doolittle .... But life 
arriving from outer space is a hypothesis, he said, that `leaves you stunned 
-- there is nothing more you can say after that.' This narrowing window of 
time may be less embarrassing than it seems. Biologists are warming to the 
view that the emergence of life from chemical precursors is a quite 
probable event which does not require billions of years to get under way. 
`You put a selective hammer on it and it happens fast,' said Norman Pace, 
an evolutionary biologist ... referring to the force of natural selection `It's 
shockingly fast, maybe just tens of millions of years.' Still, many more 
years of evolution presumably passed before the universal ancestor, a quite 
sophisticated genetic system, attained its final form. If the ancestor was a 
pool of organisms as Woese suggests, and not a definable species, it may 
be even harder to capture its likeness. But knowledge about this distant era 
at the dawn of life is moving so fast that few biologists are troubled by 
setbacks like the Aquifex dead end or the discordant family trees. `I'm 
unwilling to say we'll never know about anything, because we have come 
so far in the last two decades,' Pace said." (Wade N.J., "Tree of Life Turns 
Out to Have Complex Roots," The New York Times, April 14, 1998. 
http://www.samsloan.com/eukarya.htm)

30/06/2005
"Rejecting all these unseen, unmeasurable "forces," paleontologist George 
Gaylord Simpson wrote in his Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944): the 
progress of knowledge rigidly requires that no non- physical postulate ever 
be admitted in connection with the study of physical phenomena ... the 
researcher who is seeking explanations must seek physical explanations 
only ... Simpsons proscription excludes not only consciousness, spirit and 
God, but also Platonic ideals-patterns, types, archetypes-that such 
naturalists as Richard Owen and Lorenz Oken had believed to be as real as 
bones." " (Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: 
Humanity's Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)

30/06/2005
"As a matter of personal philosophy, I do not here mean to endorse an 
entirely mechanistic or materialistic view of the life processes. I suspect 
that there is a great deal in the universe that never will be explained in 
such terms and much that may be inexplicable on a purely physical plane. 
But scientific history conclusively demonstrates that the progress of 
knowledge rigidly requires that no nonphysical postulate ever be admitted 
in connection with the study of physical phenomena. We do not know 
what is and what is not explicable in physical terms, and the researcher 
who is seeking explanations must seek physical explanations only, or the 
two kinds can never be disentangled. Personal opinion is free in the field 
where this search has so far failed, but this is no proper guide in the search 
and no part of science." (Simpson G.G., "Tempo and Mode in Evolution," 
[1944], Columbia University Press: New York NY, 1949, Third printing, 
pp.76-77)

30/06/2005
"But most scientists who adopted the Materialist postulate did not abandon 
Judeo-Christian values and many professed a belief in God. Newton 
himself spent more time studying the Book of Revelation than he did 
physics. Yet, Materialist scientists shocked Victorian lecture audiences by 
asserting that "thought is as much a secretion of brain as urine is of 
kidneys." Thomas Henry Huxley liked to compare the mind to the whistle 
on a steam engine-a noisy adjunct to the body, driven by the same force." 
(Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's 
Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)

30/06/2005
"Physical explanation as the only scientific one is a legacy of Newtonian 
physics, which by the 19th century was the only accepted scientific model 
of the universe. However, modern physics has changed the picture 
drastically. Critic of anthropology William R. Fix writes: "quantum 
physicists have been led more and more to consider models of 
consciousness and theories of perception as part of the 'stuff' that the new 
physics is about." Subatomic particle behavior, uncertainty principles and 
other recent developments have led quantum physicists to "describe 
'reality' in terms that are often restatements of Buddhist metaphysics." " 
(Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's 
Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)

30/06/2005
"Fix's critique is that modern evolutionary biologists accept as their 
"reality" a "naive realism" based on outdated Victorian science: an old- 
fashioned Materialism that was daring and appropriate in Darwin's day but 
is no longer the model used in physics. (In one of his private notebooks, 
Darwin had written to himself: "Why is thought being a secretion of brain, 
more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? ... Oh, you 
materialist!")" (Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of 
Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 
1990, p.293)

30/06/2005
"Now I quote all this not merely because Gould holds a chair at Harvard 
and I do not; although this made the target all therefore tempting, but 
because Gould represents a charming intelligence corrupted by a shallow 
system of belief. No distinction in kind rather than degree between 
ourselves and the chimps? No distinction? Seriously, folks? Here is a 
simple operational test: The chimpanzees invariably are the ones behind 
the bars of their cages. There they sit, solemnly munching bananas, 
searching for lice, aimlessly loping around, baring their gums, waiting for 
the experiments to begin. No distinction? Chimpanzees cannot read or 
write; they do not paint, or compose music, or do mathematics; they form 
no real communities, only loose-knit wandering tribes; they do not dine 
and cannot cook; there is no record anywhere of their achievements; 
beyond the superficial, they show little curiosity; they are born, they live, 
they suffer and they die. No distinction? No species in the animal world 
organizes itself in the complex, dense, difficult fashion that is typical of 
human societies. There is no such thing as animal culture; animals do not 
compromise and cannot count; there is not a trace in the animal world of 
virtually any of the powerful and poorly understood powers and properties 
of the human mind; in all of history no animal has stood staring at the 
night sky in baffled and respectful amazement. The chimpanzees are static 
creatures solemnly poking for grubs with their sticks, inspecting one 
another for fleas. No doubt, they are peaceable enough if fed, and looking 
into their warm brown eyes one can see the signs of a universal biological 
shriek (a nice maneuver that involves hearing what one sees) but what of 
it? One may insist, of course, that all this represents difference merely of 
degree. Very well. Only a difference of degree separates man from the 
Canadian Goose Individuals of both species are capable of entering the air 
unaided and landing some distance from where they started." (Berlinski 
D., "Good as Gould," in "Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck," 
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: Boston MA, Second Edition, 1988, pp.293-
295)

30/06/2005
"By the time of the Darwin Centennial celebrations at the University of 
Chicago in 1959, Darwinism was triumphant. At a panel discussion, Sir 
Julian Huxley (grandson of Thomas Henry) affirmed that `the evolution of 
life is no longer a theory; it is a fact.' He added sternly: `We do not intend 
to get bogged down in semantics and definitions.' At about the same time, 
Sir Gavin de Beer of the British Museum remarked that if a layman sought 
to `impugn' Darwin's conclusions it must be the result of `ignorance or 
effrontery.' Garrett Hardin of the California Institute of Technology 
asserted that anyone who did not honor Darwin `inevitably attracts the 
speculative psychiatric eye to himself.' Sir Julian Huxley saw the need for 
`true belief." (Bethell T., "Darwin's Mistake", in "The Electric Windmill: 
An Inadvertent Autobiography", Regnery Gateway: Washington DC, 
1988, p.185)

30/06/2005
"Darwinian natural selection was based on a few concepts all obviously 
true true once they have been pointed out. After Darwin had pointed them 
out, honest biologists agreed they had been extremely stupid not to see 
them before. ... All organisms vary, some being more and others less fit for 
survival. Much of that variation is heritable by their offspring. All 
organisms tend to produce more offspring than can possibly survive in the 
long run. On an average, more offspring will survive from those parents 
whose heritable variations make them more fit. Therefore, on an average 
and in the long run, characteristics that adapt various lineages of 
organisms to the different environments available to them will accumulate 
progressively within them. Q.E.D. The conclusion follows from the 
objective facts of nature as inexorably as the proof of a theorem in Euclid 
follows from his subjective axioms. We now see clearly what Darwin also 
sensed, but more vaguely, that the essential point is differential success in 
contributing offspring to the next reproducing generation and that 
individual survival is only one of numerous factors contributing to that 
result. This broadening of the concept has only enhanced the importance 
of natural selection." (Simpson G.G., "This View of Life: The World of an 
Evolutionist," Harcourt, Brace & World: New York NY, 1964, pp.51-52)

30/06/2005
"Using Popper's criterion, we must conclude that evolutionary theory is 
not testable in the same way as a theory in physics, or chemistry or 
genetics, by experiments designed to falsify it. But the essence of scientific 
method is not testing a single theory to destruction; it is testing two (or 
more) rival theories, like Newton's and Einstein's, and accepting the one 
that passes more or stricter tests until a better theory turns up. So we must 
look at evolution theory and natural selection theory in terms of their 
performance against their competitors. I will deal with evolution first, the 
belief that all organisms are related by descent and have diverged through 
a natural, historical process. This theory has only one main competitor, 
creation theory, though there are different stories of how the Creator went 
about His work. All creation theories are purely metaphysical. They make 
no predictions about the activities of the Creator, except that life as we 
know it is the result of His plan. Since we do not know the plan, no 
observation can be inconsistent with it. At one extreme there is the 
fundamentalist view that evidence of evolution, such as fossils, was built 
into the newly-created rocks to tempt us or test our faith. At the other 
extreme is the person to whom evidence of evolution only pushes the 
activity of the Creator further and further into the past. Both these 
modifications of the original creation myths are typical evasive moves, 
avoiding refutation or confrontation by modifying the original theory, or 
erecting subsidiary defensive theories around it." (Patterson C., 
"Evolution," British Museum of Natural History: London, 1978, pp.147-
148)

30/06/2005
"To see that the Darwinian mechanism is incapable of generating specified 
complexity, it is necessary to consider the mathematical underpinnings of 
that mechanism, to wit, evolutionary algorithms. By an evolutionary 
algorithm I mean any well-defined mathematical procedure that generates 
contingency via some chance process and then sifts it via some law-like 
process. ... Given the popular enthusiasm for evolutionary algorithms, to 
claim that they are incapable of generating specified complexity may seem 
misconceived. But consider a well-known example by Richard Dawkins in 
which he purports to show how an evolutionary algorithm can generate 
specified complexity." He starts with the following target sequence, a 
putative instance of specified complexity: METHINKSoIToISo 
LIKEoAoWEASEL (he considers only capital Roman letters and spaces, 
spaces represented ... If we tried to attain this target sequence by pure 
chance ... the probability of getting it on the first try would be around 1 in 
10^40 .... But consider next Dawkins's refraining of the problem. In place 
of pure chance, he considers the following evolutionary algorithm: (1) 
Start out with a randomly selected sequence of 28 capital Roman letters 
and spaces, such as WDLoMNLToDTJBKWIRZREZLMQCOoP; (2) 
randomly alter all the letters and spaces in the current sequence that do not 
agree with the target sequence; and (3) whenever an alteration happens to 
match a corresponding letter in the target sequence, leave it and randomly 
alter only those remaining letters that still differ from the target sequence. 
In very short order this algorithm converges to Dawkins's target sequence. 
... ... in 43 steps. In place of 10^40 tries on average for pure chance to 
generate the target sequence, it now takes on average only 40 tries to 
generate it via an evolutionary algorithm. Although Dawkins and fellow 
Darwinists use this example to illustrate the power of evolutionary 
algorithms, in fact it raises more problems than it solves. For one thing, 
choosing a prespecified target sequence as Dawkins does here is deeply 
teleological (the target here is set prior to running the evolutionary 
algorithm and the evolutionary algorithm here is explicitly programmed to 
end up at the target ... A more serious problem then remains. We can see it 
by posing the following question: Given Dawkins's evolutionary 
algorithm, what besides the target sequence can this algorithm attain? ... 
Clearly, the algorithm is always going to converge on the target sequence 
(with probability 1 for that matter). ... In general, then, evolutionary 
algorithms generate not true specified complexity but at best the 
appearance of specified complexity. This claim is reminiscent of one 
made by Richard Dawkins. On the opening page of The Blind, 
Watchmaker he states, "Biology is the study of complicated things that 
give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose." Just as the 
Darwinian mechanism does not generate actual design but only its 
appearance, so too the Darwinian mechanism does not generate actual 
specified complexity but only its appearance. " (Dembski W.A., "No Free 
Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without 
Intelligence," Rowman & Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2002, pp.181-183)

Genesis 1-2:4a (NIV) [1] In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth. [2] Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the 
surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 
[3] And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. [4] God saw 
that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. [5] 
God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there 
was evening, and there was morning-the first day. [6] And God said, "Let 
there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." [7] 
So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from 
the water above it. And it was so. [8] God called the expanse "sky." And 
there was evening, and there was morning-the second day. [9] And God 
said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry 
ground appear." And it was so. [10] God called the dry ground "land," and 
the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. [11] 
Then God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and 
trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various 
kinds." And it was so. [12] The land produced vegetation: plants bearing 
seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it 
according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. [13] And there 
was evening, and there was morning-the third day. [14] And God said, 
"Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the 
night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, [15] 
and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." 
And it was so. [16] God made two great lights-the greater light to govern 
the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 
[17] God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, [18] 
to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And 
God saw that it was good. [19] And there was evening, and there was 
morning-the fourth day. [20] And God said, "Let the water teem with 
living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the 
sky." [21] So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living 
and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, 
and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was 
good. [22] God blessed them and said, "Be fruitful and increase in number 
and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." [23] 
And there was evening, and there was morning-the fifth day. [24] And 
God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: 
livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each 
according to its kind." And it was so. [25] God made the wild animals 
according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the 
creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God 
saw that it was good. [26] Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, 
in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of 
the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that 
move along the ground." [27] So God created man in his own image, [in 
the image of God he created him; [male and female he created them. [28] 
God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; 
fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of 
the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." [29] Then 
God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole 
earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for 
food. [30] And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and 
all the creatures that move on the ground-everything that has the breath of 
life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so. [31] God saw all 
that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there 
was morning-the sixth day. [2:1] Thus the heavens and the earth were 
completed in all their vast array. [2] By the seventh day God had finished 
the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his 
work. [3] And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it 
he rested from all the work of creating that he had done. [4a] This is the 
account of the heavens and the earth when they were created."

30/06/2005
"The discovery of the principle of natural selection made evolution 
comprehensible; together with the discoveries of modern genetics, it has 
rendered all other explanations of evolution untenable. So far as we now 
know, not only is natural selection inevitable, not only is it an effective 
agency of evolution, but it is the only effective agency of evolution. " 
(Huxley J.S., "Evolution in Action," [1953], Penguin: Harmondsworth, 
Middlesex UK, 1963, reprint, p.42. Emphasis in original)

30/06/2005
"Since the rise of genetics it has become important to emphasize that the 
phenotype of the individual as a whole is the target of selection. The 
emphasis on single genes in the work of most mathematical population 
geneticists and their definition of evolution as `a change in gene 
frequencies' has led to the unfortunate misunderstanding by certain 
outsiders, that the selection of individual genes is the basic thesis of 
neoDarwinism. It is not!" (Mayr E., "Darwin, intellectual revolutionary," 
in Bendall D.S., ed., "Evolution From Molecules to Men," [1983], 
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1985, reprint, pp.34-35)

30/06/2005
"Evidence and Bias Bias is a negative word for viewpoint. I have a rational 
viewpoint; you have a bias; he is hopelessly prejudiced. Consider this 
statement (from a Christian college science professor): Just as Phil is 
concerned with `naturalistic' biases which cause me to find the data 
convincing, theistic critics of Phil are concerned with his biases which cause 
him to find the data unconvincing. ... Whether my evaluation of the evidence 
is `biased' depends on whether TR as defined above is a `bias.' For example ... 
I do not think that the Cambrian explosion illustrates anything I would call 
`evolution.' I do not think that the variation illustrated by the peppered moth 
and finch-beak examples convincingly demonstrates a process that either 
could or did produce new body plans or complex organs. Each of these 
judgments is based on evidence-evaluated from the TR perspective. 
Everybody has a viewpoint. The negative word bias is appropriate for 
viewpoints that unduly constrict the possibilities that the mind may consider. 
Thus racial or religious bias may lead an employer to reject the most qualified 
employee. Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of the age if it is to 
be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past geology had to free 
itself from religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old earth 
or the occurrence of ice ages rather than a worldwide flood. That job was 
accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by naturalistic 
bias. Methodological naturalism is a bias in the sense that it constricts the 
mind, by limiting the possibilities open to serious consideration. Theistic 
realism opens the mind to additional possibilities, without preventing the 
acceptance of anything that really is convincingly demonstrated by empirical 
evidence." (Johnson P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against 
Naturalism in Science, Law and Education," InterVarsity Press: Downers 
Grove IL, 1995, pp.217-218)

30/06/2005
"Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modification of Lamarck's 
doctrine of development and progression. If this is your deliberate opinion 
there is nothing to be said, but it does not seem so to me. Plato, Buffon, my 
grandfather before Lamarck, and others, propounded the obvious views that if 
species were not created separately they must have descended from other 
species, and I can see nothing else in common between the 'Origin' and 
Lamarck." (Darwin C.R., letter to Charles Lyell, 12 March, 1863, in Darwin 
F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New 
York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.198-199) 

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