Humans Evolving Faster. Sorry Creationists!

Sorry all you Creationist Dudes, not only are we evolving, but we are doing so at an ever increasing rate!

Anthropology researchers at the University of Utah have found the pace of evolution has accelerated in the past 50,000 years, especially since the end of the Ice Age 10,000 years ago.

Meanwhile, according to research leader Henry Harpending, a professor of anthropology at the university, Human races are evolving away from each other and are very different from what they were 1,000 or 2,000 years ago,

(That explains, in part, the difference between Viking invaders and their peaceful Swedish descendants.)

"The dogma has been these are cultural fluctuations, but almost any temperament trait you look at is under strong genetic influence," Harpending said in a release.

The findings were published in Monday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers looked for genetic evidence of natural selection, or the evolution of favourable gene mutations, over the past 80,000 years by analyzing DNA from 270 individuals in the International HapMap Project, which is an initiative to identify variations in genes that cause disease.

They studied 3.9 million chromosome mutations from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba tribe and northern Europeans, represented largely by data from Utah Mormons. Harpending and his team examined the speed at which chromosome mutations broke up and recombined and found that about seven per cent are undergoing rapid, recent evolution.

The main result of these findings is to deflate the commonly held befief that human evolution has remained static over the last 50-100,00 years said Dr. Harpending.

"Our study denies the widely held assumption or belief that modern humans appeared 50,000 years ago, have not changed since and that we are all pretty much the same," he said. "We show that humans are changing relatively rapidly on a scale of centuries to millennia, and that these changes are different in different continental groups."

The researchers noted that rapid population growth, along with big changes in culture and ecology, have resulted in major genetic changes, such as skeletal and dental changes.

In fact, people today are genetically more different from people living 5,000 years ago than those humans were different from the Neanderthals who vanished 30,000 years ago, according to anthropologist John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin.

Human migration into new environments has also led to adaptations to colder weather, such as less skin pigmentation to allow for more vitamin D absorption.

The genetic changes have related to numerous different human characteristics, the researchers said.

Many of the recent genetic changes also reflect differences in the human diet brought on by agriculture, as well as resistance to epidemic diseases that became mass killers following the growth of human civilizations, the researchers said.

For example, Africans have new genes providing resistance to malaria.

In Europeans, there is a gene that makes them better able to digest milk as adults.

In Asians, there is a gene that makes ear wax more dry.

The changes have been driven by the colossal growth in the human population -- from a few million to 6.5 billion in the past 10,000 years -- with people moving into new environments to which they needed to adapt, added Henry Harpending, a University of Utah anthropologist.

"The central finding is that human evolution is happening very fast -- faster than any of us thought," Harpending said in a telephone interview. "Most of the acceleration is in the last 10,000 years, basically corresponding to population growth after agriculture is invented," Hawks said in a telephone interview.

Beneficial genetic changes have appeared at a rate roughly 100 times higher in the past 5,000 years than at any previous period of human evolution, the researchers determined. They added that about 7 percent of human genes are undergoing rapid, relatively recent evolution.

Even with these changes, however, human DNA remains more than 99 percent identical, the researchers noted.

Genes have evolved relatively quickly in Africa, Asia and Europe but almost all of the changes have been unique to their corner of the world. This is the case, he said, because since humans dispersed from Africa to other parts of the world about 50-100,000 years ago, there has not been much flow of genes between the regions.


Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

15 Definitive Answers to Creationist Nonsense.

Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up. Rather than re-hash all the arguments the Creationist keep bringing up here is an objective view of the whole thing by Scientific American magazine.

After all, if you can't trust them, who can you trust?

Guest post By John Rennie.

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination. (And U.S. public opinion - ED.)

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms.

As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses."

No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity or the theory of gravity for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'"

The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time.

Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction.

That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances.

Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources.

Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders.

In a pioneering study of finches on the Galapagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution.

Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species.

Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field. (As in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galapagos finches.)

Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries.

For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows.

But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way.

If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent.

In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science.

Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted.

Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes).

In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more.

These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements.

Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution.

(Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.)

Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution.

The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry.

Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities.

Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length.

But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds.

Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow.

In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear.

Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures.

Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms.

Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection.

Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species.

The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed).

Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders.

For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups.

One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs.

A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found.

A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus.

Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May].

Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group.

Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships.

Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest.

In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention.

Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species" as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say.

Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye?

Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement.

Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different.

They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.

As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole.

What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify.

The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design.

He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections.

First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work.

The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution.

The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego.

So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce.

The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences.

Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns.

Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms.

Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena.

The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones?

Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another.

Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works.

Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape.

Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com

Three Men in a Theological Tub!

O.K. kids, gather round. This is going to be like a Chinese dinner, you pick just one from either column A. - B. - or C. and that's what we judge you on!

Winner gets a nice prize and the losers are beaten with a wet noodle.

Now, it's not the Butcher the Baker or the Candlestick maker.

It's an Atheist, an Agnostic Kid and a full blown, educated, Creationist Asshole.

(Well, to be educated and still hold the views that he does, he can't be normal! Right?)

A.
Guest Contributor: Penn Jillette
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Country: United States of America


Allan, there Is no God. Period.

I believe that there is no God. I'm beyond atheism. Atheism is not believing in God. Not believing in God is easy -- you can't prove a negative, so there's no work to do. You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again. Did I mention that my personal heartfelt definition of the word ''elephant'' includes mystery, order, goodness, love and a spare tire?

So, anyone with a love for truth outside of herself has to start with no belief in God and then look for evidence of God. She needs to search for some objective evidence of a supernatural power. All the people I write e-mails to often are still stuck at this searching stage. The atheism part is easy.

But, this ''This I Believe'' thing seems to demand something more personal, some leap of faith that helps one see life's big picture, some rules to live by. So, I'm saying, ''This I believe: I believe there is no God.''

Having taken that step, it informs every moment of my life. I'm not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it's everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I'm raising now is enough that I don't need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

Believing there's no God means I can't really be forgiven except by kindness and faulty memories. That's good; it makes me want to be more thoughtful. I have to try to treat people right the first time around.

Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, ''I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.'' That's just a long-winded religious way to say, ''shut up,'' or another two words that the FCC likes less. But all obscenity is less insulting than, ''How I was brought up and my imaginary friend means more to me than anything you can ever say or do.'' So, believing there is no God lets me be proven wrong and that's always fun. It means I'm learning something.

Believing there is no God means the suffering I've seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn't caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn't bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future. No God means the possibility of less suffering in the future.

Believing there is no God gives me more room for belief in family, people, love, truth, beauty, sex, Jell-O and all the other things I can prove and that make this life the best life I will ever have.

Penn Jillette is the taller, louder half of the magic and comedy act Penn and Teller. He is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and has lectured at Oxford and MIT. Penn has co-authored three best-selling books and is executive producer of the documentary film, “The Aristocrats.”

Now I have to say that I respect Penn and Teller and also enjoy watching their T.V. show "Bullshit" but that doesn't mean I agree with him about the atheist part.

As I have said many times before I can't imagine a Universe this wondrous and majestic just appearing out of thin air so I have to go with a "First Cause!"

I must also admit that after that (First Cause) things do get sort of fuzzy!

B.
Dewee!
Pretty smart for a kid, eh!

C.
Walt Brown received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was a National Science Foundation Fellow.

He has taught college courses in physics, mathematics, and computer science. Brown is a retired full colonel (Air Force), West Point graduate, and former Army ranger and paratrooper.

Assignments during his 21 years in the military included: Director of Benet Research, Development, and Engineering Laboratories in Albany, New York; tenured associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy; and Chief of Science and Technology Studies at the Air War College.

For much of his life, Walt Brown was an evolutionist, but after many years of study, he became convinced of the scientific validity of creation and a global flood.

Since retiring from the military in 1980, Dr. Brown has been the Director of the Center for Scientific Creation and has worked full time in research, writing, and speaking on origins.

He lectures on such diverse topics as how the Great Flood carved out the Grand Canyon, why Evolution is a conspiracy by Darwinists and how Creation Science is the only true explanation for the origin of the universe.

As I said at the top, I cannot in any way shape or form understand how an educated man with a scientific background could be so far out in left field and still appear to be normal.

I don't know about you, but I would have to go with the kid in the middle from the T.V. show "Malcolm in the Middle!"

He makes the most sense to me! But then again, don't just take my word about anything you read here! I'm getting to the point where my mind not only wanders - sometimes it leaves completely!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 at www.God-101.com

Sunset on Mars

Saturday Morning Confusion! (Pt 1)

Here it is, another Saturday morning with a newspaper and a few coffee's! As usual I was struck with a few thoughts, but fortunately none of them caused any serious injuries!

The first thing that caught my eye was good ol' Dr. "Dino" Kent Hovind. Remember him?

He is the guy that has a "Creationist" theme park that shows dinosaurs and humans living side by side about 4-5000 years ago and is a great hit with the "Right Wing Christian Fundamentalists!"

Well the poor Doctor and his wife just got themselves 10 years in the slammer yesterday for playing around with their income taxes.

(Actually, they didn't play around with them, they just sort of "forgot" about them! ------Watch this, good seguay coming up here!)

Speaking of "Doctor:" Hovind was awarded a Master's degree and doctorate in "Christian Education" through correspondence from the unaccredited Patriot University (now Patriot Bible University) in Colorado.

Dr. Barbara Forrest, a critic of Creationism, wrote that Hovind's lack of academic training makes it impossible to engage him on a professional level.

Specifically, critics of Hovind have charged that Patriot Bible University is a diploma mill. The school's current policies allow students to attain Bachelor's degrees, Master's degrees and even "Doctor of Ministry" (Hovind!) degrees in months, rather than years, for as little as $25 per month.

Various criticisms have been made of his dissertation, including charges of incompleteness, low academic quality, poor writing, poor spelling, and ungrammatical style. (This on top of the fact that the guy wants to play with words and call it the "THEORY of Evolution" while he calls Creationism -- "Creation Science!"

Now the reason I am going into the stuff below is because Hovind is a good example of how the Extreme-Right thinks!

His thoughts are sytemic of how the United States is going wrong in not only it's attitudes, but also it's foreign and domestic policy. After all, the Right does have undue influence on things at the moment! (If you don't believe me read the article below on how the Right thinks it's the "Liberal Left" that is responsible for 9/11!)

In other words, some of his beliefs are shared by a good percentage of the American population and they are not doing themselves any favours by holding these views.

At least that's the opinion of someone quite close to, but still able to maintain an objective viewpoint of the States! (A Canadian!)

Creation Science Evangelism Ministry:

After receiving his first correspondence education degree, Hovind started Creation Science Evangelism Ministry in 1989.

The ministry aims to evangelize people by teaching them a creationist perspective.

The ministry is not a non-profit organization nor is it considered a church by people who work there or the IRS.

The Hovind Theory:

Hovind summarizes his highly controversial version of the argument for Creationism into the “Hovind Theory."

The theory includes a literal reading of the Biblical account of Noah: Noah's family and two of every animal (including dinosaurs) safely boarded the Ark before a minus 300° Fahrenheit ice meteor came flying toward the Earth and broke up in space.













Some of the meteor fragments became rings and others caused the impact craters on the moon and some of the planets. The remaining ice fragments fell to the North and South Poles of the earth. The resulting "super-cold snow" fell near the poles, burying the Mammoths standing up.

Ice on the North and South Pole cracked the crust of the earth releasing the fountains of the deep, which in turn caused certain glacier effects.

This also made "the earth wobble around for a few thousand years" and it made the crust collapse.

During the first few months of the flood, the dead animals and plants got buried and became coal if they were plants and oil if they were animals.

The last few months of the flood included geological instability when the plates shifted. This period saw the formation of both ocean basins and mountain ranges and the resulting water run-off caused incredible erosion!!!!

Hovind claims that the Grand Canyon was formed in a couple of weeks during this time.

After a few hundred years, the ice caps slowly melted back, retreating to their current size and the ocean levels increased, creating the continental shelves.

The deeper oceans absorbed much of the carbon dioxide in earth’s atmosphere and thus allowed greater amounts of radiation to reach the earth's surface.

As a result, human lifespans were shortened considerably from the pre-flood days.

Now I should mention here that the vast majority of scientists do not take Hovind's work seriously and do not agree with his interpretation of the facts. But, if you're one of the people I should be mentioning this to, then you really shouldn't be reading this article anyways!

Dinosaur Adventure Land:

In 2001 Hovind started Dinosaur Adventure Land, a young earth creationist theme park located behind Hovind's home in Pensacola, Florida.

The park depicts humans and dinosaurs co-existing in the last 4-6,000 years, and also contains a depiction of the Loch Ness monster.

The park does not explore "The Jurassic and Cretaceous eras," but rather, "depicts dinosaurs as coexisting with human beings."

Legal problems:

Kent Hovind has been in trouble with law enforcement several times. These have included assault and battery, falsely declaring bankruptcy, making threats against federal officials, filing false complaints, failing to get necessary building permits, and various tax-related charges.

In 1996 Hovind unsuccessfully filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying federal income taxes. Hovind was found to have lied about his possessions and income. He claimed that as a minister of God everything he owns belonged to God and he is not subject to paying taxes to the United States on the money he received for doing God's work.

"Since 1997, Hovind has engaged in financial transactions indicating sources of income and has made deposits to bank accounts well in excess of $1 million per year during some of these years, which would require the filing of federal income taxes."

In 2002, he was charged with one count of felony assault, one count of misdemeanor battery, and one count of burglary with assault/battery. In December 2002, the charges were dropped by the alleged victim - Hovind's secretary.

On June 3, 2004, the IRS issued tax liens of $504,957.24 against Hovind and his son and their businesses due to previous legal maneuverings to evade taxation by moving property between himself, his son, and other legal entities.

Hovind stated that he did not recognize the government's right to try him on tax-fraud charges.

Hovind is known for his debates against atheists, skeptics and scientists. However, some scientists like Richard Dawkins refused to debate Creationists as they believe debate is not how science works.

Others like evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci have debated Hovind, and were surprised how ignorant Hovind was of evolutionary theory. Pigliucci was surprised to hear to Hovind try "to convince the audience that evolutionists believe humans came from rocks" and claimed biologists believe humans "evolved from bananas."

In Hovind's debates, he traditionally focuses on points that he claims serve to discredit evolutionary theory, physical cosmology, and geology. He also presents what he claims is evidence for a Biblical flood, a young earth, and the canopy (crust) theory.

Hovind's $250,000 offer:
Since at least 1999 the good "Doctor" has said; "I have a standing offer of $250,000 to anyone who can give any empirical evidence (scientific proof) for evolution. My $250,000 offer demonstrates that the hypothesis of evolution is nothing more than a belief.

I have to inject a personal note here! I myself, sent Hovind a letter a few years ago in which I think I pretty well established the "fact" of evolution. Not only did I not get my $250,000 bucks - he didn't even bother to reply!

Controversial remarks:
Kent Hovind has made controversial remarks regarding conspiracies, science, creation, equal rights, religion and government over the years.

Hovind considers the King James Version of the Bible to be the Inerrant word of God that must be taken literally. Because of this, he believes all findings of science will eventually be found to agree with Scripture.

Hovind maintains that biology textbooks are lying and advocates simply taking evolution out of the textbooks because he considers evolution to be a false-religion.

Hovind has several conspiracy theories about the U.S. government. For example, he believes that Laetrile works and teaches that the US government is conspiring to suppress a cure for cancer.

On his radio program that he claims the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks and that a "lot of folks were told not to come to work."

He also believes the Oklahoma City bombing was done on purpose. To quote the good Doctor; "Did you know the Federal Government blew up their own building to blame it on the militias, and to get rid of some people that weren't cooperating with the system?"

He also alleges that "UFOs are apparitions of Satan" and that the US government possesses UFOs.

Additionally, Hovind believes that the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United Nations, and various other groups are actively planning to create a one world government.

He also claims that the 1993 World Trade Center attack was staged by the U.S. Government in order to pass "anti-terrorism" legislation that restricts civil liberties.

He says, "I love my country, but fear my government. And you should too."

Jesus Christ, that's exactly what I keep saying about mainstream religion!

In terms of science, Hovind disregards all fossil evidence, claiming; "No fossils can count as evidence for evolution because all we know about that animal is that it died. We do not know that it had any kids, much less different kids!"

During a debate with Farrell Till, Hovind made the following claim about Donald Johanson: "He found the leg bones of "Lucy" a mile and a half away from the head bones. The leg bones were 200 feet deeper in a deeper layer of strata. I would like to know how fast the train was going that hit that chimpanzee."

However, the claim itself is false, and while Hovind has been informed of this, he continues to make it.

He also claims the Grand Canyon was not created through gradual geologic processes but rather by the Great Flood as narrated in the Old Testament.

I could go on about this asshole but I think you get the general idea.

As for the systemic problems in the United States, Hovind gives us a few good examples of what not to do!

Basically it boils down to throw away your "bibles" and your conspiracy theories and start looking at what makes sense. Period!

And that's all I have to say about that!!!!!!!

Your scribe;
Allan W Janssen

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) www.God-101.com