Satirizing Scientism: Mocking Scientism, Evolutionism, & the Arrogance of the Academy

SATIRIZING SCIENTISM CELEBRATES 70,000 VISITORS!

2012-03-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

"Who is Socrates?" he was asked. His reply: "A buzzing, stinging horsefly." He always had a few questions for any braggart who claimed to know something. From PBS website: "Unlike the use of the scientific method as only one mode of reaching knowledge, scientism claims that science alone can render truth about the world and reality. Scientism's single-minded adherence to only the empirical, or testable, makes it a strictly scientifc worldview, in much the same way that a Protestant fundamentalism that rejects science can be seen as a strictly religious worldview. Scientism sees it necessary to do away with most, if not all, metaphysical, philosophical, and religious claims, as the truths they proclaim cannot be apprehended by the scientific method. In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth." C.S. Lewis distinguishes "evolution," which is science, from "evolutionism," which makes claims similar to those of scientism.

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NOOOOOOOO! Ardi wasn't the missing link? NOOOOOOOOOOO!

2012-03-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

"I'M CANCELING MY SUBSCRIPTION TO

WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE!

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100527/full/news.2010.267.html

"Ardi may be more ape than human"

"A fight has broken out over attempts to drag 'Ardi' – the oldest hominid skeleton found – out of the woods where her discoverers say she lived.

And there are new questions about the classification of Ardipithecus ramidus aka Ardi, dated at 4.4 million years old; whether the species found in the Rift Valley of the Afar of Ethiopia is an ape or hominid...

The Cerling group contends that the abundance of small-mammal fossils at the site — which White's group says supports a woodland environment — could be due to predators hiding in vegetation growing around water and ambushing animals coming to drink.

In an interview, White accused the critics of "inaccurate" presentations created by "cherry picking data" — while overlooking key factors among more than 6,000 vertebrate specimens he and his colleagues catalogued.

For instance, White notes that isotopic analysis of tooth enamel of Ardi herself shows a diet from a woodland habitat.

Cerling denies misusing data. The Ardi tooth-enamel isotopic results were not discussed due to restrictions on article length, he says. But, he adds, the tooth-enamel findings do not directly support the idea that Ardi lived in woodland."

I just put my faith back in this bull[CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR], and they're changing it again! Who am I supposed to believe here?

Wait! There's a fight over facts? The "evidence" is controversial? Is somebody wrong? Are we making pronouncements for the textbooks with scant evidence?

There is infighting in the Academy? I am so shocked and disillusioned! I've been in the academy for 39 years! I've never seen a single fight, big ego, or anybody being proved flat wrong. We are "in pursuit of the truth." (As if, says Parker Palmer, "the truth were a little white rabbit and when we find it, by God, we're going to kill it!")

Logo of Yale University

Founded by Bible-thumping whackos
who sought "Light and Truth."

I wonder what book that is in the middle?

Do you know what the Hebrew refers to?

Evolutionism: Thick skull will improve your love life!

2012-03-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

You think you're our superiors, guys?
Let's go head-to-head.

Is this the kind of stuff they want to teach kids in schools about the origins of the human race and the transforming power of good social theory? You gotta laugh so you don't cry...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/7725655/Men-developed-thicker-foreheads-and-jaws-due-to-fighting-over-women.html

"Winning a mate used to depend only on physical prowess and men with the strongest jawline and thickest skulls were better able to survive onslaughts from love rivals.

That meant that over time all men developed thicker bones in the jaws, around the eyes and on the forehead than women...

Men are also far more aggressive than women, with about 30 percent in small-scale foraging communities dying violently. Dr Puts suggests while a deep voice has been considered an appealing trait to women, it actually signals dominance.

He said: "A deep voice makes men look dominant and older. A low voice's effect on dominance is many times greater than its effect on sexual attraction."

[With deep voice] "I am NOT a merry man."

"The main sticking point with human male competition compared to other species is men do not possess inherent weapons like antlers and claws. But they have always manufactured them instead including bows and arrows, spears and knives."

The main "sticking point?" Excuse me? Is this...like...some kind of horrible pun?

"These ideas may seem to paint a rather bleak picture of human nature with men dishing it out among themselves for most of human evolution.

Things are different for us now in many ways. It is heartening to think human behaviour is flexible enough that the right social institutions can increase equality and peace."

Good news! We now have the right social institutions and are sufficiently evolved so that men don't fight over women any more. Shoot, men don't fight at all! We're heartened! Let's hear it for social evolution!

You stay away from my girlfriend,
or I'll give you a wedgie you'll never forget!

Excuse me? Have you scientismists ever been in a fight? Do you think primitives didn't know how to take out their opponents except by head bashing? What Twilight Zone do you people live in?

One of many ways to take out your male opponent

QUESTION: I want to know why we didn't evolve
an armor-plated scrotum?

Scientists Prove the Creation of Life by Intelligent Design!

2012-03-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

He makes it look easy!

Scientism: "We can create life!"
God: "Really? Go ahead."
Scientism: "We'll need some of your dirt."
God: "Get your own dirt..."

http://www.ted.com/talks/craig_venter_unveils_synthetic_life.html

"Craig Venter and team make a historic announcement: they've created the first fully functioning, reproducing cell controlled by synthetic DNA. He explains how they did it and why the achievement marks the beginning of a new era for science."

They created? They created nothing. Original cells and cell defense systems came about by mindless evolution. However, the synthetic life was "created" after only 15 years of intelligent effort and high tech tools, mostly failures.

They made a synthetic copy of a cell's DNA, substituted it into a different kind of cell, and watched to replicate as the cell type the DNA corresponded to. To illustrate how carefully they had to duplicate natural DNA to make things work, they made a one-letter (!) error that brought everything to a halt for three months until they discovered the problem. That would be one letter out of 1.08 million! Aw, you know how trial and error goes. Brainless evolution eventually got it right.

A new era of science? Saving humanity aside, does anyone find this a little disturbing? Nuclear power was a great giant step, very positive unless someone is using it to blow up the world. Did this remind anybody of a really creepy science fiction movie?

Summary in prose, see:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2010/05/jvci-20100520.html

OK, science geniuses or genuses or genies or whatever you are, here's a calculation you need to make:

If you think about E = mc2, consider how much energy it took to make all of this matter. If you think the amount of stuff in the universe is staggering, calculate the amount of energy that matter represents. It's not like they created their own matter and energy to perform this tech miracle.

Martians on the loose again! (Head for the hills!)

2012-03-04T11:00:00.000-08:00

You don't have to look for us.

We've been watching you, and

we're baaaa-ack!

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2951855/Nasa-Evidence-of-life-on-mars.html#ixzz0mRux6FD3

Nothing like "likely" and "probably" to keep those government funds to NASA flowing!

"A special mission to the Red Planet has revealed the likely presence of a form of pond scum - the building blocks of life as we know it.

NASA unveiled the results of the recent Opportunity and Spirit probes sent millions of miles through the solar system to discover signs of extraterrestrial life.

The results are so promising boffins have already planned a host of other missions to discover whether there is extraterrestrial life in the universe.

The recent missions have gathered evidence of sulphates on Mars, a strong indication there is water on the planet and therefore life.

Previous missions to Mars have concluded there is probably water on the planet."

There is water on the planet and therefore life???!!! Really! I never knew the recipe for life was so simple! "Just add water." "Pond scum" = the building blocks of life. Is life worth so little?

SCIENTISMIST SYLLOGISM: Scientists have discovered that gypsum deposits on Earth can hold evidence of microbes. Gypsum is thought to exist on Mars. Therefore life exists on Mars....!

The plausible biotic result
of Martian Natural Selection.

Just add water.

LMAO! Breakthrough on the Evolution of the Horse's Ass!

2012-03-04T07:00:00.000-08:00

Satirizing Scientism breaks exciting new wind!

Satirizing Scientism (a refereed journal awarded the Seal of Excellence by the National Scientism Foundation) has released a controversial study and noxious gases. Yes, we had the courage and the know-how to investigate what no one else would even touch! It's like the asshole in the scientific living room that no one wanted to talk about.

Here is a summary of our findings:

1. Natural Selection is responsible for the formation of the horse's ass. Duh!

2. Horse's asses began very small with rudimentary but functional assholes on the microscopic level.

3. Over time, and a lot of it, the size of assholes increased all the way up to the biggest dinosaurs' mega-assholes.

4. Those early tiny horses that did not develop assholes naturally imploded and were de-selected.

5. Evidence shows that having a really big asshole was an effective deterrant against predators. Some prehistoric horses developed a defensive "airborne torpedo chip," which assured their survival; these, however, were wiped out by the comet/meteor/asteroid.

6. Also, horses with good smelling shit were (obviously) targeted by predators and died out.

7. Other independent research confirms: "The better the grass, the bigger the ass."

8. Those horses that did not chew their cud sufficiently died out from terminal constipation and gastrointestinal explosion.

9. Mares developed large asses as a sexual come-on, dramatically increasing horse populations.

10. Common assholes PROVE Common Descent. Monkeys got assholes. Horses got assholes. Darwin had an asshole. I got an asshole. For Dawkins, that's the Smoking Gun!

11. Any asshole that does not agree with this research is an even bigger asshole than we thought.

12. Researchers are concerned that so many people are laughing their asses off; this could have grave consequences for the future evolution of the human race.

Dawkins denies random chance evolution, proves Intelligent Designer incompetent

2012-03-03T06:54:00.000-08:00

Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/darwins_pitbull_richard_dawkin.html

Excerpt from interview, Oregon Live, "Darwin's pitbull":
What do people most often get wrong when they try to understand evolution?

Dawkins: "It's the idea that it is a theory of random chance. That single misunderstanding alone accounts for just about everything you will read on so-called arguments against evolution, things like, 'I can't believe that something as complicated as an eye could come about by chance.'"

That pretty much destroys all our so-called arguments. Our bad.

"Well of course it couldn't come about by chance! How could it be possible to be so stupid as to think that anybody could ever suggest that it comes about by chance? Natural selection is the very opposite of chance -- that's the whole point!"

So, can we quote you? Nothing comes from chance? Does something from nothing?

"Oh, I probably have to adopt a less impatient, irritated and preemptory tone."

What is this? Repentance? Are we evolving a conscience? Morals?

The so-called intelligent design critique argues that some biological machines are too complex to evolve without help from above. Your book counters with several examples of "unintelligent design." Any favorites?

Dawkins: "The recurrent laryngeal nerve is a remarkable piece of unintelligent design. The nerve starts in the head, with the brain, and the end organ is the larynx, the voice box. But instead of going straight there it goes looping past the voice box. In the case of the giraffe, it goes down the full length of the giraffe's neck, loops down one of the main arteries in the chest and then comes straight back up again to the voice box, having gone within a couple of inches of the voice box on its way down. No intelligent designer would ever have done that."

Let's dump that incompetent Intelligent Designer in favor of a blind one!

Follow-up questions:

1. Could you be more specific about how the nervous system evolved?

2. And how it integrated with all those other complex systems that make up the body of any mammal?

3. And why it works at all?

4. And what was the mechanism or driving force that programmed those biological machines and improved on them "progressively." Not random chance! Maybe, good luck?

5. Technology aside, can we "intelligent" human beings do the same with all our technology, fancy ideas and theories?

Good-bye, Gradualism! Hello, Hostility!

2012-03-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

Now that's one helluva punctuation mark!

"Charles Darwin’s theory of gradual evolution is not supported by geological history, New York University Geologist Michael Rampino concludes in an essay in the journal Historical Biology."

http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2010/11/09/darwins-theory-of-gradual-evolution-not-supported-by-geological-history-nyu-scientist-concludes-.html

"In fact, Rampino notes that a more accurate theory of gradual evolution, positing that long periods of evolutionary stability are disrupted by catastrophic mass extinctions of life, was put forth by Scottish horticulturalist Patrick Matthew prior to Darwin’s published work on the topic.

'Matthew discovered and clearly stated the idea of natural selection, applied it to the origin of species, and placed it in the context of a geologic record marked by catastrophic mass extinctions followed by relatively rapid adaptations,' says Rampino, whose research on catastrophic events includes studies on volcano eruptions and asteroid impacts. 'In light of the recent acceptance of the importance of catastrophic mass extinctions in the history of life, it may be time to reconsider the evolutionary views of Patrick Matthew as much more in line with present ideas regarding biological evolution than the Darwin view.'
...
When Darwin published his Origin of Species nearly three decades later, he explicitly rejected the role of catastrophic change in natural selection: 'The old notion of all the inhabitants of the Earth having been swept away by catastrophes at successive periods is very generally given up,' he wrote. Instead, Darwin outlined a theory of evolution based on the ongoing struggle for survival among individuals within populations of existing species. This process of natural selection, he argued, should lead to gradual changes in the characteristics of surviving organisms.

However, as Rampino notes, geological history is now commonly understood to be marked by long periods of stability punctuated by major ecological changes that occur both episodically and rapidly, casting doubt on Darwin’s theory that 'most evolutionary change was accomplished very gradually by competition between organisms and by becoming better adapted to a relatively stable environment.'”

So now we have to account for complexity evolving at an even faster rate with even more set-backs from a hostile environment. No more of this unbroken 100 million stable years of uninterrupted evolution stuff. Comets, meteors, volcanoes, sweeping climate changes, earthquakes, floods, everything obsessively chasing and eating everything else, NO PROBLEM!

This seems to be a big black hole in Darwin's theory of gradualism. "Theories" often don't take variables into account because variables can threaten the theory. Whadiya think, Darwinists?

Darwin was wrong, but that doesn't mean that Darwin was wrong?

[Don't forget that there have been creative comets: http://satirizingscientism.blogspot.com/search/label/Comets]

What does it mean to be human? (According to most of the world)

2012-02-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

Monkey can see, but can Monkey do?

It means that we can see, create, and appreciate beauty. We universally long for something higher, transcendent, beautiful, divine, something lost or just out of our reach. We have the impulse to create a lot of things that are not practical, although not all of us are so gifted. These "creations" are called "fine arts," the "humanities," and "literature." The rest of us who cannot create things of extraordinary beauty can nonetheless collect them and love them and ponder them. And we do.

Evolutionism perfects sliding time/truth scale

2012-02-28T06:38:00.000-08:00

Where are you on the "evolutionary scale?"

What about all those timelines and other "eternal truths" that were crammed down my throat in high school and college? Can I get my grades changed? Are the new textbooks incorporating the latest "truth" from evolutionism?

OOPS! MOVE HUMAN EVOLUTION BACK 3,000,000 YEARS!
New Statistical Model Moves Human Evolution Back Three Million Years
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101105124241.htm

NOT TO WORRY! THEY'VE SHAVED 10 MILLION YEARS OFF THE TIMELINE!
Scientists Narrow The Time Limits For The Human And Chimpanzee Split
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051222083255.htm

"A team of researchers has proposed new limits on the time when the most recent common ancestor of humans and their closest ape relatives -- the chimpanzees -- lived. Scientists at Arizona State and Penn State Universities have placed the time of this split between 5 and 7 million years ago -- a sharper focus than that given by the previous collection of molecular and fossil studies, which have placed the divergence anywhere from 3 to 13 million years ago."

UH, OH! NOW THIS REALLY [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] ME OFF!
Human-Chimp Difference May Be Bigger
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061219201931.htm

"Approximately 6 percent of human and chimp genes are unique to those species, report scientists from Indiana University Bloomington and three other institutions. The new estimate, reported in the inaugural issue of Public Library of Science ONE (Dec. 2006), takes into account something other measures of genetic difference do not -- the genes that aren't there."

SCIENTIFIC FACTS ARE "CONTROVERSIAL?"
Placental Mammals Newer Than Previously Thought
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417203151.htm

"Despite great progress over the past decade, the evolutionary history of placental mammals remains controversial. While a consensus is emerging on the topology of the evolutionary tree, although with occasional disagreement, divergence times remain uncertain."

MORE GAPS HAVE BEEN CLOSED! NEW THOUGHT HAS BEEN REPLACED BY PREVIOUSLY THOUGHT! ALL EVOLUTIONISMIST TEXTBOOKS NEED TO BE DIGITAL SO DAILY CHANGES IN "TRUTH" CAN BE ENTERED (ESPECIALLY HELPFUL WHEN YOU'RE DUMPING 10 MILLION YEARS). AND WHATEVER YOU DO, KEEP CRAMMING!

Swallow it! You'll like it!

"Reports of the death of ID are greatly exaggerated!"

2012-02-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

We're not dead yet!

Mark Twain, "The report of my death was an exaggeration."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-zimmerman/intelligent-design-scient_b_571703.html

"Intelligent Design: Scientifically and Religiously Bankrupt"
By Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.

"In case you had any doubt, the last nail was just placed in the coffin of intelligent design (ID). And, in case you had any doubt, that last nail joins many others that have been in place for quite some time...

Indeed, demonstrating imperfect design in humans has become something of a fascinating cottage industry. Listen, for example to Abby Hafer, a physiologist at Curry College, discuss five serious flaws, from the blind spot in the human retina to the placement of human testicles, on NPR's Here & Now. In his PNAS article, Avise simply extends this analysis to the human genome discussing myriad serious problems arising from "gratuitous gene complexities" that no self-respecting designer would tolerate...

Beyond the obvious, and growing, problem that natural design is far from perfect, the concept of intelligent design also runs afoul of the scientific method. Simply put, ID offers no hypotheses that can be tested -- the hallmark of scientific investigation." [End of quote.]

Now, Dr. Zimmerman, you have a Ph.D. and all, so you must know what you're talking about, but looking at complex organisms, recognizing sophisticated design, and denying ANY intelligent agency is like not talking about the elephant in the living room or the raptors that are tearing up the lab.

I know the Christian story is distasteful to you, but in the beginning, everything God created was perfectly designed and good. Then, death and decay entered the world. And if you scientismists haven't noticed death and decay, you've died and gone to heaven. If the claims of evolutionism can be tested, why are there so many evolutionismist "camps" representing vastly different conclusions about the same meager evidence?

Everything human beings design is imperfect and will eventually break down or crumble. But how are you defining "perfection?" Is there an agreed-upon definition that is perfectly accurate? And what would "perfect" or "perfectly placed testicles" look like?

You close the piece crowing "as science advances, the 'gaps' become smaller and smaller..." Maybe you need to swap your microscope for a telescope. RIGHT HERE ON THIS BLOG, you will find posts that articulate gaps that will never be filled by Darwinism or science. You will find links to websites where non-ID scientists admit doubts about Darwinism, that there are unanswerable questions, that they may not know everything.

Humbly yours,

Stinging Horsefly, Ph.D.

P.S., What do biologists design? Do biologists have to know anything about design and functionality? Maybe they need to take some elementary engineering courses?

Scientismist deals with objections.*

*"He insulted me!" A Cask of the Amontillado, Edgar Allen Poe

What's wrong with these pictures?

2012-02-24T06:55:00.000-08:00

These pieces may or may not fit together.

But after 100 million years, they do.

And what's wrong with this picture?

Nothing, until I claim that the leggos

are in the process of finding their "matches"
(without intelligent assistance).

And what's wrong with this picture?

"Evolution is still scientifically stable:"

http://www.physorg.com/news172145598.html

"Monash University's Professor Trevor Lithgow said the breakthrough, funded by the Australian Research Council and published recently in the prestigious journal PNAS, provides a blueprint for a general understanding of the evolution of the 'machinery' of our cells.

'Our cells, and the cells of all organisms, are composed of molecular machines. These machines are built of component parts, each of which contributes a partial function or structural element to the machine. How such sophisticated, multi-component machines could evolve has been somewhat mysterious, and highly controversial.' Professor Lithgow said.

A non-Darwinian explanation, from believers of Intelligent Design, proposed these complex machines to be 'irreducibly complex.' In other words they are so neatly complex and complete that they couldn't have evolved but rather must have been designed by an intelligent entity.

. . .

"Our research shows that these machines although complete and complex, were a result of evolution.

François Jacob described evolution as a tinkerer, cobbling together proteins of one function to yield more complex machines capable of new functions." Professor Lithgow said.

Our work describes a perfect example of Jacob's proposition, and shows that Darwin's theory of evolution beautifully explains how molecular machines came to be."

Another mystery solved! How could we have ever doubted? Once again, I must hide my head in shame:

Please, please!
No more of those devastating proofs!

This new "breakthrough" is truly humilliating to all IDiots, but I do have a few questions.

You may say the above pictures are absurd because they illustrate only pieces of inorganic material somehow coupling up (which inorganic matter cannot do without help). But evolution really could not do anything until the inorganic made the transition to organic. Was this a single ancestor or did a large number inherit the spark of life at the same time?

At some point they parted ways, became separate organic machines and eventually got back together like long lost lovers in a bizarre coitus? Having increased in complexity, they both fit together perfectly and reproduced even more sophisitcated molecular machines? How did they do that? What brought them together? Why did they fit together? And that this proves "reducible complexity?"

So evolution is a "cobbler" and a "tinkerer." Sounds somewhat intelligent. Sounds more intelligent than the molecules it was tinkering with.

What's wrong with this picture?

I'm so glad that Evolution is still on stable, scientific ground.

How the leopard got his spots (Not Rudyard Kipling's version, but almost).

2012-02-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

According to this article, Kipling's version was

"right on spot."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11575214

"[Some species] are particularly irregularly and complexly spotted," William Allen from the University of Bristol, the lead author of the study, told BBC News.

"The pattern depends on the habitat and also on how the species uses its habitat - if it uses it at night time or if it lives in the trees rather than on the ground, the pattern is especially irregularly spotted or complexly spotted."
...
Dr Allen's study still fails to explain the mechanism of wild cats' pattern development - but the scientists managed to find a set of numbers to measure the irregularity or complexity of a pattern and correlate this with where the species lives to explain its behaviour.

"When you place cat patterning over the evolutionary tree of cats, you can see that patterning emerges and disappears very frequently within the cat family, which is kind of interesting - it suggests that perhaps particular genetic mechanisms can solve very different appearances of cats." [End of article quotes]

Previous theories include sexual attraction, a social signalling function except that cats are not social, except that lions with no stripes live in prides, except that we're guessing and calling it scientific research.

Ah, yes! It always comes back to explaining the mechanism. Thanks to the BBC for recognizing failure.
Conclusions based not on evidence on a faulty premise that allows you to see anything you want to see. The premise runs something like this:

Life, the spark that spread, the miracle of the organic, from the mircoscopic to the giant dinosaur, had no purpose, no Creator. Life evolved someone conscious of its need to survive at any cost, eat or be eaten. This drove species to devour and change in order to survive. Life did survive. Life was also conscious of its need to reproduce and transmit genetic information to subsequent cells. It knew how to increase in complexity to a dazzling degree, with no more help than a hostile environment, survival of the fittest. It also knew the mechanisms for appropriate changes. Given enough time, variation, selection, the cream rose to the top.

So if you see "evidence" while wearing this type of blinder, of course you will conclude that Evolution is a real miracle worker, the producer of "The Greatest Show on Earth."

Excuse me? You're not blending!

Are you not paying attention to predators?

Are you ignoring the landscape of your habitat?

Are you resisting evolution again?

Which came first, the _____ or the egg?

2012-02-22T07:08:00.000-08:00

I see a few cracks in the theory.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? You can't have an egg without a chicken, and you can't have a chicken without an egg.

AND you can't have a: spiny anteater, duck-billed platypus, a bird of any kind, crocodile, cobra, frog, toad, salmon, or trout. Which came first? Them or their eggs? At some point, egg-laying really became popular among our evolutionary cousins.

But let's go way back to the ill-fated dinosaur. Okay, summary of the "facts:" comet hits; the swampy pond eventually ejects a slimy amphibian fully equipped to lay an egg? No, that doesn't make any sense. Who was the Luci/Ardi of the dinos? What mechanism produced a Luci/Ardi dino able to lay a genetically complete egg? Over the 65-odd million years or perhaps 225-odd million years of their "reign," did they refine it or get any better at it?

Start again. Slimey reptile slithers out of scummy pond and finds a slimey mate. They have sex or something and produce off-spring. No, that doesn't make any sense. Evolution hadn't sorted gender out quite yet.

That's all a little foggy. SKIP!

Huge dinosaurs, when not eating each other, have coitus or a reasonable facsimile, and the female later lays a 10-15 lb. "mother of all eggs," the shell of which the baby dino will break, unless eaten by an egg-sucking predator. OK, this part is pretty much baseline quid pro quo, semper fidelis, and e pluribus unum.

I've read a lot of theories, but no one really addresses the crucial question: "So which came first? The dinosaur or the egg?" And my follow-ups, "What did that look like? Small to large? Simple to complex? Did they keep laying bad eggs until they got it right?"

70 million-year-old dino egg.

Escaped predators and the comet.

Didn't escape shell.

Makes you want to cry.

Darwin had an "eye" problem that he never got fixed.

2012-02-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

Another Charles Darwin Fairy Tale...

...brought to you by our sponsor, Natural Selection.

Thanks to "infinite variation" all eagles can see both forward and to the side at the same time. And they can see fish in the water from hundreds of feet up, an ability that eludes human fishermen. They see in color, as we do but see 4X more sharply than we do. Like humans, they have eyelids plus a transparent nictitating membrane that slides over the eye and cleans it every several seconds.

Let's remember, they have two eyes that are coordinated to their brains. (Newton asked the reasonable questions, "Why two? Why symmetry?") They have feathers and wings and can fly. They produce young able to learn and do the same. The plausible result of a completly undirected process?

Darwin had an "eye" problem. From "On the Origin of Species" (Harvard Facsimile Edition), p. 186. "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." Correction, please: not "seems," but "is."

Continuing from an absurd premise to an ever more absurd conclusion, we good evolutionismists must also admit that "a structure as even as perfect as the eye of an eagle might be formed by natural selection, although in this case he does not know any of the transitional grades," p. 188. Could we please have an update on those transitional eagle eyes? And wings? And claws? And etc.?

A majestic bird, descended from...?

A while back, my wife had cataract surgery. The doctor implanted a precision "intra-ocular device." Now, she sees perfectly. A great triumph for science, medicine, and technology. Happily, the device was intelligently designed and installed. Unhappily, the rest of my wife is not the product of intelligent design.

As quickly as her vision was restored, her brain began a process of "re-programming." Her other eye had been compensating for the cataract. Now, both eyes are adjusting and transmitting ever more clear images.

Yes, we believe that the human body, right down to its molecules, gives the appearance of having been designed by an intelligence greater than we. But we do not stop there, we assert that there is complex programming that natural selection can never account for. If someone has explained all this, we would like to know.

Scientism takes over morality!

2012-02-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Your brain chemicals made you do it!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827821.700-morality-dont-be-afraid--science-can-make-us-better.html

Scientism promises Utopia! What a relief!

"...We have long thought of moral laws as fixed points of reality, self-evident truths rooted in divine command or in some Platonic realm of absolute rights and wrongs. But new research is offering an alternative, explaining moral attitudes in the context of evolution, culture and the neural architecture of our brains. This apparent reduction of morality to a scientific specimen can seem threatening, but it needn't. Rather, by unmasking our minds as the authors of morality, we may be better able to bend its narrative arc towards a happy end.
...
Both biological and cultural evolution attempt to explain morality in terms of adaptive design principles, but another line of research illustrates how sophisticated moral principles can rest on accidents of cognitive architecture. Consider the distinction between actions and omissions. Most people think it is worse to actively harm than to passively allow a harm to occur.
...
When I and a team of neuroscientists used fMRI to investigate such judgements, we found that a large network of brain regions exhibits greater activity when judging omissions than when judging actions. Many of these regions are associated with deliberate, effortful, logical thinking. The more activity a person exhibited in these regions, the more likely they were to say that harm by omission is morally wrong. In short, it looks like judging a harmful action is relatively easy, while judging a harmful omission is hard work. This may reflect the fact that causal responsibility is much more obvious in the active cases - a feature of the brain's design with major consequences for law and policy."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20827822.100-morality-we-can-send-religion-to-the-scrap-heap.html

Sam Harris says that science can show us the best ways for human beings to thrive – and we can then junk religion forever
...
How can we move on from religious notions of morality?

Once we accept the idea that right and wrong relate to questions of well-being, and that such questions have answers that will be best illuminated by honest observation and careful reasoning, then we can decide, once and for all, that certain people are not worth listening to on the subject of morality."

Interesting "research" that begs many age-old questions:

1. Our minds are the "authors of morality?" Human minds have reached a consensus on this?
2. Which mad scientist or committee is going to define "wellbeing?" or a "happy ending?"
3. Who is going to "bend the narrative arc" of the brain and how?
4. Human beings are incurably religious. This will cure them?
5. How might Hitler have used this research?
6. Has anyone read Lord of the Flies? (A conclusive debunking of the "noble savage" theory.)
7. We can decide? Who is "we?" And we decide that certain people are not worth listening to?

Have any of you people ever taken a serious course in "Ethics 101?" The history of ethical thought?

This chemical-based morality sounds like a really great Sci-Fi/Horror movie! Science and technology run amuck with delusions of grandeur.

TLU suffers academic coup!

2012-02-14T06:53:00.000-08:00

"You can't Handle the Scientistic Truth!"

Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, Coup Colonel

Under the leadership of Col. Jessep, the College of Natural Sciences has taken over Tower of London University. Col. Jessup forced the bloodless but hostile takeover by arguing that CNS grant money comprised 51% of university assets. Junta member and new president Dr. M. B. Simian commented, "We have done this in the name of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth: Scientia est veritas."

The ruling junta acted quickly to cleanse the university:

1. Members streamlined the curriculum and saved millions of pounds by eliminating all humanities and fine arts, which the junta considered "irrelevant, highly subjective, and delusional." "We're trying to shape young minds here, not pollute them," said Dr. R.U. Snickwad, junta member.

2. Students who raised their hands questioning Darwinism were expelled. "Students are supposed to regurgitate the truth, not question it," noted Dr. Charles Durwin, the newly appointed Provost.

3. Faculty members who in any way expressed support for Intelligent Design were catapulted from the school's battlements. This included all who visit ID websites, mention ID in e-mails, have the letters "ID" in their names, or display ID on their screensavers, t-shirts, bumperstickers, coffee cups, tatooes (although clever captions like "IDiots suck dinosaur eggs" were acceptable).

4. The new school motto (and t-shirt): "Natural selection rules!"

"Besides, grant money for Humanities and Fine Arts
is almost non-existent.
We have shed a huge financial burden."

Dr. M. B. Simian, new President of the University

Take THAT you #@$% Creationists and IDiots!

Dr. R. U. Snickwad, Emperor of the Faculty Senate

UPDATE: Neanderthals more advanced/not more advanced than previously thought!

2012-02-12T07:34:00.000-08:00

"I'm suing the National Scientism Foundation

for decades of libelous slander against my people,"

says Neanderthal attorney Tumac Bukooban

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100921171412.htm

"Neanderthals More Advanced Than Previously Thought: They Innovated, Adapted Like Modern Humans, Research Shows

For decades scientists believed Neanderthals developed `modern' tools and ornaments solely through contact with Homo sapiens, but new research from the University of Colorado Denver now shows these sturdy ancients could adapt, innovate and evolve technology on their own.

The findings by anthropologist Julien Riel-Salvatore challenge a half-century of conventional wisdom maintaining that Neanderthals were thick-skulled, primitive `cavemen' overrun and outcompeted by more advanced modern humans arriving in Europe from Africa.
. . .
We are more brothers than distant cousins."

STEP THE TEXTBOOK PRESSES! We have to change another "fact" of evolution again! A half-century of "conventional wisdom?" Is that what they call what has been forced down our throats as scientific fact? I want to know who my great-great grandparents are! I've been hoping all this time that Scientism would help me find myself and my "bros."

"My parents were against it, but I mated with a Neanderthal.

You get used to the hairy body and the bad breath.
We had four kids: Ardi, Eve, Luci, and Bonzo."

UPDATE!!!!!

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/330/6003/439-a?sa_campaign=Email/toc/22-October-2010/10.1126/science.330.6003.439-a

"Once regarded as brutish and dumb compared to modern humans, Neandertals are now often credited with 'modern behaviors' such as crafting sophisticated tools and symbolic personal ornaments. But new radiocarbon dating at a celebrated site in France could mar this flattering view of Neandertal capabilities. The study, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that jewelry and tools once attributed to Neandertals may be the work of modern humans."

The trustworthy Scientismist Method: Could be, maybe not, yesterday it was, today it is, tomorrow the grant money comes, might have been, definitely was, etc.

Pre-historic De Lorean discovered in cave!

2012-02-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Dateline, Hill Valley, California. In a previously unexplored cave, a team of crack researchers has discovered a pre-historic De Lorean. Experts estimate it to be about 50 billion years old, give or take a billion.

The head of the team, Dr. G. M. Grantmoney, had this comment: "Evolution really timed this one poorly. It just sat around until the tires rotted off. Too bad the dinosaurs couldn't figure out how to drive it. What a waste. But machines lying around and not connecting for millennia is an established scientific fact. It seems a little random, but it makes sense."

Dr. Grantmoney cited the precedent of Evolution's hooking up intricate cellular machines.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/reduciblecomplexity/

"Intricate cellular components are often cited as evidence of intelligent design. They couldn’t have evolved, I.D. proponents say, because they can’t be broken down into smaller, simpler functional parts. They are irreducibly complex, so they must have been intentionally designed, as is, by an intelligent entity.

But new research comparing mitochondria, which provide energy to animal cells, with their bacterial relatives, shows that the necessary pieces for one particular cellular machine — exactly the sort of structure that’s supposed to prove intelligent design — were lying around long ago. It was simply a matter of time before they came together into a more complex entity.". . .

"The process by which parts accumulate until they’re ready to snap together is called preadaptation. It’s a form of “neutral evolution,” in which the buildup of the parts provides no immediate advantage or disadvantage. Neutral evolution falls outside the descriptions of Charles Darwin. But once the pieces gather, mutation and natural selection can take care of the rest, ultimately resulting in the now-complex form of TIM23."...

Let'em accumulate. Giv'em time.
And these suckers will snap together.

“You look at cellular machines and say, why on earth would biology do anything like this? It’s too bizarre,” he said. “But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there’s a need for them, then it makes sense.” [End of quote]

"Neutral evolution" doesn't cost the cell anything. Really? The making of complex proteins requires energy, extraneous DNA, space, etc. And that came from...where?

Well, this evidence is OVERWHELMING! All ID Proponents must now hang their heads in shame. I'll have to go to a cave and hide. Oh, Non-Intelligent Neutral, Biological Entity that Makes Sense, please forgive us!

Empirical Evidence and Flawless Logic

2012-02-10T08:49:00.000-08:00

Empirical evidence proves that there are no naturally occurring scarecrows;

they are therefore intelligently designed/stuffed.

Furthermore, clothing does not occur naturally;

therefore, all clothing is intelligently designed.

Pumpkins and birds shown are not intelligently designed

unless they are artificial.

Straw for brains, but intelligent, holds a Th.D.

(Doctor of Thinkology)

Female human is not intelligently designed.

Plausible biotic result of a completely undirected process.

Costume intelligently, but tastelessly, designed.

PEOPLE SMARTER THAN YOU SAY COMMON DESCENT IS A FACT!

2012-02-10T07:02:00.000-08:00

SO SHUT YOUR STUPID MOUTH AND DEAL WITH IT!

"What am I?" Darwin completely overlooks Augustine's conundrum

2012-02-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

Darwin's theory of common ancestry

IDiots' response:

Charles was the plausible biotic result...

of an unsupervised process
of change and reproduction,

natural selection, blah-de-blah,

descended from lower life forms.

Charles D., however, was a victim of the law of decay.
The "miracle of life and youth" cannot sustain itself.

EPIC FAILURE!

OK, let's walk through the logic. Darwin used his brain but did not have a clue about how his brain worked. Darwinists today claim the human brain took a quantum leap some 10,000 years ago, give or take 5,000. They are using their highly intelligent brains but have no idea how those brains work or why. I heard one really good attempt, "10,000 years ago 'something happened' in the human brain." Now that's good science for ya. Anybody heard any better ones?

Now, now, don't get exicted. I've seen the charts, diagrams of the brain, descriptions, the fancy shmancy terminology. I've studied the location of functions, how synapses work, etc.

No one even knows the exact number of neurons we have in the brain nor can anyone explain how and why they work nor precisely how they could have evolved to this point. Over six billion brains, replicated down countless generations. The "master control center" of complex systems. The seat of personhood, memory, and consciousness.

So we in our "intelligence" operate a machine that was not intelligently designed. The sophistication of the brains we use is well beyond our ability to understand or duplicate. It could be called a "conundrum," except that Scientism is way too arrogant to admit there is something it cannot account for.

Yet we with those brains have come to the conclusion that the brain is the plausible results of random processes?

We have used those brains claiming to understand the origin of life and the universe. Some who believe this and preach it, call those who do not "brainless idiots," and etc.? That makes sense.

Augustine saw the conundrum but made no attempt to explain it. He merely glorified the Creator. (The Confessions, Chapter X (10) "On Memory.") "Animals, both small and large, see the beauty [of Creation], but they are not able to question it, for in them reason does not hold sway over the reports of the senses. Human beings have the power to question, so that by understanding the things He has made they may glimpse the unseen things of God."

On the faculty of memory and the mind X (14): "This is a faculty of my mind, belonging to my nature, yet I cannot myself comprehend all that I am. Is the mind, then, too narrow to grasp itself, forcing us to ask where that part of it is which it is incapable of grasping? Is it outside the mind, not inside? How can the mind not compass it?"

All this leads Augustine to the crucial question, "What am I?" Answer: I am the creation of a Divine Mind far beyond my understanding.

Scientism has its own answers about our identity. Scientism is the only access to the truth. Of course, this is a declaration made by accidentally rational minds.

(OK, I'm waiting for someone to comment and "enlightened" my darkened mind with some "science" here.)

Blog editor goes into a state of shock, has to be resuscitated!

2012-02-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

It was close.
In the future, I'll have to be more careful
about which websites I read.

http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/robert_ingersoll/on_abraham_lincoln.html

"On the 12th of February, 1809, two babes were born -- one in the woods of Kentucky, amid the hardships and poverty of pioneers; one in England, surrounded by wealth and culture. One was educated in the University of Nature, the other at Cambridge. One associated his name with the enfranchisement of labor, with the emancipation of millions, with the salvation of the Republic. He is known to us as Abraham Lincoln. The other broke the chains of superstition and filled the world with intellectual light, and he is known as Charles Darwin."

"Honest Abe" Lincoln. Freed the slaves
from the tyranny of their cruel masters.

Bible-thumping wacko.

Lincoln, educated with the Bible and "a few classics," believed that the Civil War was the retribution of God for the evils of slavery. Second Inaugural Address: "Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

St. Charles. Freed the world from the tyrany of Genesis 1

and Bible-thumping whackos.

The "Light" of the Intellectual World.

Cambridge-educated Darwin quote: "Man is but a worm."

More profound insight from the "light of the intellectual world:" "I was thus led to conclude that all the vegetable mould over the whole country has passed many times through, and will again pass many times through, the intestinal canal of worms."

I think I'm going into shock again. Call 91...

The Seahorse Mating Dance: Reducibly Complex?

2012-02-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

Come on Baby! Let's do the Twist!

Did some research on the evolution of these ugly critters. Result? We don't know a lot, and we don't have a lot of fossils with which we can speculate wildly. Seahorses just are.

Seahorses are odd is many ways, particularly the way they mate and reproduce. But when you have infinite variation, I guess anything is possible.

Watch Seahorse Mating Dance

[Earlier, less evolved versions would
have looked like Elvis rotating his hips.]

She deposits her eggs in his pouch...well, maybe evolutionism has a snappy theory about how that happened. Let's see:

"Dancing is beneficial to the mating process."
"Non-dancing seahorses were naturally de-selected."
"They danced to escape predators."
"The female didn't grow breasts but did learn to dance as a come-on."
"They had millions of years to practice and work out their moves."
"They evolved from much smaller seahorses who figured out an ingenious way to reproduce."
"They evolved from one prodigy seahorse who discovered how to fertilized him/herself."

And the "dance?" Seahorses have the coordination, grace, timing, and sheer beauty of (intelligent) human ballet dancers.

The mystery of the sublime, of the beautiful. Are we not allowed to soak it in without trying to explain it?
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

There are mysteries that have intrinsic and transcendent value beyond the reach or understanding of empirical science.

Evolutionism truth today (forget about yesterday). Stay tuned for tomorrow's truth.

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

NFL Front Four: The early years

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/326/5950/224

"New Work May Complicate History Of Neandertals and H. sapiens," by Michael Balter

"What were the evolutionary origins of the Neandertals, and how early did their close cousins, Homo sapiens, begin their highly successful colonization of the globe? Many anthropologists have concluded that fossil skulls from Europe show a steady progression from pre-Neandertal to Neandertal features. At a recent meeting in Gibraltar, however, some researchers held that recently redated fossils from a cave in Spain paint a more complicated picture, with two or more ancient human species living side by side in Europe for thousands of years. Meanwhile, stone tools found in Arabia and India suggest that Homo sapiens may have made its way out of Africa much earlier than 50,000 years ago, as usually assumed."

Adjusting a theory? No problem. Advertising science as the sole source of truth and mocking those who question it? Isn't that what "religous people" are accused of? The only thing I see evolving in our time is the theory of evolution.

One funny blog comment: "We know that the Creationists are going to jump on this, but it's only evidence that our understanding of evolution is deepening." Yes, it's getting deeper all the time.

Early evidence of H. Sapien influence

Neanderthals had feelings, too!

2012-01-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

He just cared so much!

Even Neanderthals had a right to some happiness!

"Neanderthals Had Feelings Too, Say Researchers"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101005085505.htm

"Pioneering new research by archaeologists at the University of York suggests that Neanderthals belied their primitive reputation and had a deep seated sense of compassion.

. . .

Dr Penny Spikins, who led the research, said that new research developments, such as neuro-imaging, have enabled archaeologists to attempt a scientific explanation of what were once intangible feelings of ancient humans. She added that this research was only the first step in a much needed prehistoric archaeology of compassion."

If this guy doesn't speed up,

I'm going to ~~ram this spear up his~~ be VERY UPSET!

"We have traditionally paid a lot of attention to how early humans thought about each other, but it may well be time to pay rather more attention to whether or not they 'cared'.

Dr Spikins will give a free public lecture about the research at the University of York on Tuesday 19 October. Neanderthals in love: What can archaeology tell us about the feelings of ancient humans takes place in room P/L001Department of Physics."

The first meeting of the
Neanderthal Anger Management Support Group.

"We're trying to evolve here, you know, become altruistic."

Altruism Researchers "at loggerheads."

2012-01-26T07:02:00.000-08:00

Can't we all just get along?

"Biologists studying the evolution of social behaviour are at loggerheads. The disputes — mainly over methods — are holding back the field," says Samir Okasha.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7316/full/467653a.html

Whadya mean my genes aren't altruistic?

"Last month, 30 leading evolutionary biologists met in Amsterdam to discuss a burgeoning controversy. The question of how altruistic behaviour can arise through natural selection, once regarded as settled, is again the subject of heated debate."

How to get tenure in Natural Sciences at Tower of London University

2012-01-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

TLU: A Bastion of Academic Freedom

From the Chair:

Department of Natural Sciences

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM

SUBJ: ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Dear Untenured Colleagues:

As I reflect back on my "untenured days," I recall fond memories of paranoia, nervous breakdowns, medications, walking on eggshells, trying to figure out who not to offend and how, when to pretend you are towing the party line, etc. My own experience helps me to empathize with you, to the point that I felt compelled to write you this letter of reassurance.

We have explained that in our department we deal only in empirical science undergirded by the overwhelming evidence of evolution right back to the swampy pond. Darwinism is pretty much the foundation for everything, so you are free to explore how your work further proves, refines, or reinforces our multi-faceted working hypothesis.

Since we are extraordinarily open-minded, you are free to make statements such as "I have doubts about Darwinism," or "Mindless Natural Selection is a woefully inadequate model for explaining the assembly of complex molecular machines," or "I am more than a random collection of chemical interactions," or "Could we be wrong?"

Of course, you can still be tenured and will still be given absolute freedom to express your views. Your tenure will be in the Tower, where you can try to convince your jailer of your errors until one of you dies:

This will be your new office
as a tenured faculty member!

You are also free to opt for any of our attractive severance packages:

The "Socratic Package."

These are free in the lab!
Bottoms up!

Then there's the "Medieval Fair" Package

"Next!"

Finally, we offer the "Royal" severance package!

Our most popular!

Your Chair and Friend,

Charles "Charlie" Durwin, Ph.D.

Tenured Professor

Let's hear it for parasites and sexy snails!

2012-01-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

"Wild thing!

[dee dum dum, dum dum, dee dum dum]

You make my heart sing!

Exerpt from a Science Daily website article (we are NOT making this up):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/07/090706171542.htm

"Jukka Jokela of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Mark Dybdahl of the University of Washington and Curtis Lively of Indiana University, Bloomington began observing several populations of these snails for ten years starting in 1994. They monitored the number of sexuals, the number asexuals, and the rates of parasite infection for both.

The team found that clones that were plentiful at the beginning of the study became more susceptible to parasites over time. As parasite infections increased, the once plentiful clones dwindled dramatically in number. Some clonal types disappeared entirely. Meanwhile, sexual snail populations remained much more stable over time. This, the authors say, is exactly the pattern predicted by the parasite hypothesis.

'The rise and fall of these female-only lineages was surprisingly fast and consistent with the prediction of the parasite hypothesis for sex,' Jokela said. 'These results suggest that sexual reproduction provides an evolutionary advantage in parasite rich environments.'

So we may well have to thank parasites—in spite of their nasty reputation—for the joy of sex.'" [Close quote].

"Let's hear it for parasites!"

You know, this is all starting to make sense.

Evolution is a scientific fact!

2012-01-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

But "Evolutionism" is a croc:

Leaping Lizards! I'm full of it!

"[Evolution]is a genuine scientific hypothesis. But we must sharply distinguish between Evolution as a biological theorem and popular Evolutionism or Developmentalism which is certainly a Myth."--"The Funeral of a Great Myth" – C.S. Lewis

Still not clear on the difference? See definition of "Scientism" from PBS website above.

"English" is a "cover term." It can refer to the language you are now reading and to the entire Oxford English Dictionary and to all regional variations and to more technical language and etc. It's all "English."

"Religion" is also a "cover term." A small word that embraces myriad and complex variations on the theme. The good, the bad, and the ugly.

"Evolution" is a cover term. It refers to change in general. In a scientific context, it can legitimately be used to describe observable changes in plants and animals. To deny evolution as proven by empirical science would be just plain stupid.

BUT...the notion that many minor changes within a species could lead to major changes that represent new species has never been more than speculation. For example, after decades of intensive, deliberate mutation of fruit flies, only variations on fruit flies have resulted, no improvements in the species, much less any new functional structures.

And the same is true of every species we have examined. Yet we are supposed to accept as established fact that variations within a species could lead to new species. This intellectual disconnect is more driven by philosophical prejudices than by firm science.

"Evolutionism" is a term used by C.S. Lewis to describe a myth mentality that exceeds the noble mission of responsible science--to benefit the human race. The evolutionary model of developmentalism from primitive organic to the present is only an imagined (and continuously mutating) model; it is not a provable scientific fact:

We do not satirize science on this blog. We will satirize speculation that masquerades as science and the hubris that drives it.

Evolution has "a curious sense of humor!"

2012-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

In our previous post, Scientism explained everything there is to know about kissing. Now it's time for Evolutionism to focus on big boobs and why they evolved.

The fossil evidence really stacks up!

Lewis Wolpert: Over the course of evolution, breasts became permanently enlarged to signal sexual receptivity:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/lewis-wolpert-over-the-course-of-evolution-breasts-became-permanently-enlarged-to-signal-sexual-receptivity-679871.html

Conclusion: "Human female breasts may have become permanently enlarged secondary to sexual selection, as they potentially resembled the double ovoid region of the distended buttocks, which in turn are employed to signal appeasement as well as sexuality in primates.

Over the course of evolution, the breasts became permanently enlarged, and thus a permanent sex symbol to signal that the human female was continuously sexually receptive. Evolution seems to have a curious sense of humour."

So what's your point? A mindless, guiding force determined whether women have big boobs or not? Is this what you call "Natural Selection?" "Survival of the D-cup?" "Extinction of the A-cup?"

[No image available of Evolution
or of Evolution laughing.]

Satirizing Scientism staff tried to contact Evolution for a comment, but Evolution did not return our calls.

Our question: in mate selection which comes first or is more significant: kissing or boobs? We hope there is grant money so that more study can be done of this important question. We need more experiments and empirical evidence.

"I just love evolution! I'm at the top of the food chain!

My mate does all the work!

So what if she didn't develop boobs?"

OMG! Evolutionism is sucking all the fun out of kissing!

2012-01-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

Improves mate selection process, immune system.

Kissing is an exact science.

(Do not attempt this at home without the approval
of a qualified physician or evolutionismist.)

No mystery. No "magic moment." Evolutionism has to explain every [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] thing under the sun by some chemical/environmental response.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/feb/13/kiss-science-lovers-evolution

"Fisher said the act of kissing appeared to stimulate these brain circuits in a unique way. 'Hooking up may have evolved as a fast-acting biological strategy for mate assessment,' she said. 'Men like sloppier kisses with more open mouths and more tongue movement. The hypothesis is they're trying to get small traces of oestrogen to see where the woman is in her menstrual cycle to indicate the state of her fertility.

More than 90% of societies around the world kiss, and Fisher argues this makes it too common to have no real purpose. 'You can the smell the health of their teeth and what they have been eating and drinking and smoking, and these are all devices we use to size up an individual before we do something like have sex with them, which is very metabolically expensive and very time consuming.'"

OK, I read it again several times. At first, I thought it was a parody, like what we do on this blog. But no... However, this hypothesis does conclusively explain:

a. why the French have so many babies.
b. why the French have such sharp tongues.
c. why the 10% of the world's peoples who do not kiss are dying out.
d. the relationship between garlic and abstinence.
e. why so few people want to have sex--they just don't want to waste their time.
f. why so few people want to have sex--it is very metabolically expensive, leaves you exhausted, and for what?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/kissing-evolved-spread-germs-not-feelings

"Cytomegalovirus, which lives in human saliva, is generally innocuous, but when introduced during a pregnancy it can be extremely dangerous, killing unborn babies or causing birth defects like deafness or cerebral palsy. However, if cytomegalovirus is introduced to a woman in small doses before she conceives, she will build an immune resistance to it. Optimally, kissing the same male for six months prior to pregnancy gives the woman’s immune system the practice it needs to render cytomegalovirus impotent."

Lessons:

1. to stay healthy, do not exchange saliva when you kiss...Duh!
2. to stay healthy, start kissing as quickly as possible.

No, wait! "Climate change killed the dinosaurs!"

2012-01-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Here's a theory we're working on.
The fossil evidence is pretty convincing!

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2010/03/19/Study-Climate-stress-killed-dinosaurs/UPI-49171269025560/

I read the whole stinking article only to come to the last line: "But there's no direct evidence showing what killed the dinosaurs..." This means our theory and fossils are as valid as any others.

This article does not mention how mammals survived, at least enough of them to reproduce and evolve.

At what point do we make a distinction between empirical science and speculation based on meager evidence? When do we say, humbly, "Here is the current evidence. This is our theory, but because we cannot see the whole picture, we cannot be 100% certain of its ultimate accuracy?" Would this principle not also apply to speculations about thousands, millions, billions of years ago?

Please note the definition of Scientism on the side-bar: "In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth." We're supposed to put our faith in these guys? How much grant money is funding this "research?" How does this advance the cause of science or benefit humanity? Should we wait patiently until they are all in agreement?

Comet #1, a dinosaur’s dream. Comet #2, apocalypse (which kind should we expect in 2018?)

2012-01-10T09:00:00.000-08:00

“Oh, crap!

I told you we should have taken swimming lessons,

but NO, you just wanted to eat and defecate.”

COMET #1: Transition to the Jurassic era in a “geological blink of an eye.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/05/0516_020516_dinocomet.html

“An international team of scientists has assembled a compelling collection of evidence that a giant ball of ice, rock, and gases smashed into the supercontinent Pangaea 200 million years ago, ending the Triassic era and beginning the Jurassic. The impact was devastating to ocean life, and more than half of land-based species disappeared. Once the dust had cleared, dinosaurs began their 135 million year reign as the planet's dominant life-form.

‘We have been able to show for the first time that the transition between Triassic life-forms to Jurassic life-forms occurred in a geological blink of an eye,’ said Paul Olsen, a geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. ‘The change was associated with an iridium anomaly suggesting the cause was the result of a giant impact of an extraterrestrial body.’”

COMET #2: Another blink from a selectively destructive comet

“The dinosaurs reigned supreme for 135 million years, until another comet colliding with Earth took them out. Once the dinosaurs were gone, mammals had the run of the land, and they flourished.”

Go, Mammals!

WORLDWIDE FLOOD?

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/3306656.html?page=1&c=y

“In 1991 a modern scientific “whodunit” was solved when geologists identified a deeply buried, 180-kilometer-wide crater in the Yucatán peninsula. Now known as Chicxulub, the scar resulted from the impact of a 10-km asteroid or comet nucleus 65 million years ago that triggered global tidal waves, worldwide firestorms, and massive earthquakes. When the planet finally returned to normal, the dinosaurs and the majority of all then-living species had gone extinct, paving the way for mammals to evolve and dominate Earth.”

“Giants in the earth” prior to “global tidal waves?” Okay, colleagues, I thought we were supposed to keep religion out of the discussion.

CAVEAT RAPTOR!

Science Channel program narrator, “What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?”: “In science they say there is nothing sadder than a beautiful theory ruined by an awkward fact.”

Is Scientism the Only Legitimate Access to the Truth? YES!!!!!

2012-01-06T09:23:00.000-08:00

Doesn't have a clue...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/stephen-hawking-women-a-mystery_n_1184468.html

"He's learned to communicate entire theories, write books, give lectures and talk by twitching his cheek. His best selling book A "Brief History Of Time" explained advanced concepts such as cosmology, the Big Bang, black holes and light cones in a way the general populace could understand.

He's even had time to think about space exploration being crucial to human survival.
But there is at least one mystery Mr. Hawking doesn't have a handle on. In an exclusive interview to New Scientist, Hawking was asked, "What do you think most about during the day?"

To which Hawking replied, "Women. They are a complete mystery."*

What? No formula? No theory? Lots of empirical evidence and opportunity for quantification, but let's face it, women are a mystery, but then so are men. So is the human race.

There is no formula, chemical, mathematical or otherwise, that can "explain" the mystery of life and personhood.

* I grant that Hawking was probably speaking semi-facetiously.

What does it mean to be human? (According to Hamlet)

2012-01-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

Yo, Yorick! Whaaaassssuuup?

Hamlet's discourse about "man:"

"What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals
—and yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?"

It is the universal paradox: We human beings are amazing. We can be noble and admirable. We are the paragon of animals, almost "like gods," and yet we are dust (or chemicals). We are sinners destined to die. Shakespeare may or may not have believed in the sin nature, but he made a lot of money by extrapolating on it.

Here, Hamlet contemplates the parallel fates of Yorick, a clown, and Alexander and Caesar, mighty conquerors:

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio:
a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy:
he hath borne me on his back a thousand times;
and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!
my gorge rims at it.
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft.
Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs?
your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set
the table on a roar?
Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
. . .
Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth;
of earth we make loam; and why of that loam,
whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay..."

I guess the "Melancholy Dane" was feeling even more negative than usual. I doubt he believed in Evolution, but he did wonder how we are at once self-deluded, complex, powerful, funny, fragile, ephemeral, and capable of evil. Is there an evolutionismist explanation for any of this?

How to distinguish a killer comet from a creative comet

2012-01-03T07:00:00.000-08:00

Article: "Comet impacts sparked dinosaurs' rise, demise"

http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news291.htm

According to this article, all you need is a big spark to create dinos and a big spark to destroy them.

This is a creative comet. Looks like a creative fire.

Creative comets are known to produce
new life forms like walking fish:

And a rapid explosion of walking reptiles
(some of which later flew).

This is a killer comet. Note its similarity to an ICBM

This type of comet creates a near world-wide catastophe

killing almost all dinosaurs, leaving a few selected mammals,
although not creating a global flood.

Note that most completely miss the earth.
There's still enough earth left
to create new life! Go comets!

BUT WAIT! THAT'S NOT ALL!

MORE THEORIES ON THE EXTINCTION
OF THE DINOSAURS. STAY TUNED.

HEADLINE! Evolution dumps Mickey Mouse!

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-08:00

Move over, Mickey!

So what if you can talk with that high-pitched voice,

dance, and wear clothes.

Your fur hasn't changed a lick in 80 years!

This from the BBC:

"A tiny pale deer mouse living on a sand dune in Nebraska looks set to become an icon of biology.

Within just a few thousand years, generations of the mice have evolved a sandy-coloured coat camouflaging themselves from predators. Most striking is that these mice acquired the mutation for pale fur naturally, then rapidly passed it on. That makes the fast-evolving deer mouse one of the best examples yet studied of "true" natural selection in action.

Deer mice are one of the most abundant and widespread mammals in North America.

Ours is a very complete story. We've been able to connect changes at DNA level to the ability of deer mice to survive in nature

Usually the mice have a dark coat, which enables them to blend in with dark soils and avoid being seen by predators such as owls and hawks."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8225000/8225219.stm

Scientific Scientism staffer Dr. C. R. Windar immediately contacted our antagonistic evolution expert, Dr. S. H. Schnausershnot, Universität der Hochmütige.

Windar: Dr. S, we're not sure what to make of this new icon: a deermouse?

Schnauser: Vell, ve tink he is a cutie! He know how to change color. Pretty shmart, jah?

Windar: But Herr Doctor, can a leopard change his spots?

Schnauser: Leopard is at top of food chain. No need to blend.

Windar: But how did the leopard get his spots in the first place? It looks like a design.

Schnauser: Ve are vorking on dat. Maybe he tink shpotty.

Windar: We need to say a word in favor of Mickey Mouse.

Schnauser: Ve don't do any "Mickey Mouse science" here. Mickey Mouse cannot change his fur or de shtupid expression on hish face!

Windar: But, Herr Doctor, he is an icon, and he can talk...

Schnauser: Talk, shmauk. Deermouse ist new icon.

Windar: So explain to us how the deermouse knew his own biochemistry, why he knew he needed to, and how he adjusted it.

Schnauser: Dumpkopf! Evolution told him, "You change fur color or you are kaput!" But it give him a few tousand years und die infinite variation! Evolution isht very patient and compassionate.

Windar: So he needed to change or die...

Schnauser: As you Americans say, Bingo! Ve can learn from Herr Fiedermaus. All you have to do is manipulate your own internal biochemistry. Ven die Frau ist pregnant, she musht tink tings like, "Change hair color. Be shmarter. Blend vit environment. Blend, blend, blend," und shtuff like dat.

Windar: Danke, Herr Doctor, I wonder why more human moms haven't tried that?
Schauser: Vell, dey need to spend more time mit die deermouse. Maybe dey learn, ja?

New Icon.
But can he replace Mickey in our hearts?

From: Littlefield, Shuffield, Danfield, and Stoned Media Publicist Group

To: All evolutionismists

You proposal to make the Deermouse an icon to replace Mickey is ambitious and will be expensive. But do not be concerned, in no time at all, the Dearmouse will become a household name, will be on t-shirts everywhere, and will have its own themepark.

1. We must change it's name to "Dearmouse," to make it more endearing.

2. We need more information about cute things it does and says, beyond changing color over thousands of years.

3. OK, evolutionisimists will worship at its feet (?), and we admit it is pretty cute. But to get the rest of the country involved, we need a little razzle-dazzle beyond "natural selection from infinite variation." Forgive our bluntness, but everything now alive has been "naturally selected."

4. We need a catchy jingle like "Dearmouse in your house" or a chant like "Dear Mouse, we love you, cuz we know what you can do! You're no rat, we know that! Come and teach us how to change colors." Okay, that last line needs work.

We are pleased that you have chosen LSD & Stoned as your publicist and since evolutionism has gained wide credibility with the world at large, we'll be able to hit this little rat out of the park, so to speak.

Endearingly,

LSDS
Partners in Publicity

"40,000 years ago, the planet was more crowded than we thought"

2011-12-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Artist's conception of 'X-Woman."
Note right "pinkie tip."

"I'm your blonde date, not your blind date.
Not what you expected? Kiss my pinkie bone, and

blame your [CENSORED] DNA Dating Service"

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2010-03-24-NEWSPECIES25_ST_N.htm

"A 40,000-year-old child's pinky bone found in a Siberian cave probably belonged to a previously unknown human species living near modern humans of the era, a gene study reports today."

[Phony baloney alert! Just in case you missed the key word "probably."]

"Analysis of the pinky bone discovered in a dirt layer about 40,000 years old yielded enough DNA for the gene study. It shows the creature's ancestry diverged from humans and Neanderthals roughly 1 million years ago. Dubbed "x-woman" by the researchers, despite its undetermined gender, the pinky owner may have belonged to an archaic human species such as Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis, known only from fossils, or an unknown pre-human species. From the size of the pinky tip, the team estimates its owner was a 5- or 6-year-old child."

[Phony baloney alert! Just in case you missed the key words "may have."]

"Intriguingly, the pinky-bone dirt layers also contain bracelets and other decorations usually associated with prehistoric humans. But paleoanthropologist Richard Potts of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., says he would be "very cautious" about linking decorations to the gene study species."

[Bling-bling alert! Be "very cautious" about drawing sweeping conclusions based on cheap costume jewelry. You can't judge a girl by her bling-bling.]

"Forty thousand years ago, the planet was more crowded than we thought," geneticist Terence Brown of the United Kingdom's University of Manchester concludes in a commentary accompanying the report."

[Phony baloney alert! What we "thought" was incorrect? So how is what we now "think" correct? Our technology and our conclusions are currently and always have been flawless?]

Pinch your nose! EVOLUTIONISMISTS AT WORK!

2011-12-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

Gotta keep shoveling it before it gets too deep!

How Scientismists/Evolutionismists avoid answering hard questions:

1. Can you explain how life began?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

2. Can you close all the gaps?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

3. Have you identified intermediate forms for all species?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

4. Have you been able to create living tissue?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

5. Can you prove Common Descent empirically?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

6. Can you explain how Natural Selection could produce molecular complexity?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

7. Have you located a perpetual source of grant money?

WE'RE WORKING ON IT!

NEWSFLASH: Train evolves into car with no intelligent help!

2011-12-26T06:00:00.000-08:00

"I think I can. I think I can. I think I can."

"I thought I could. I thought I could. I thought I could."

Interesting that we create machines that do what we build them to do, but they don't evolve without our intelligent help. But even with all our advanced technology, smarts, and clever theories, we can't create living tissue. Only living organisms dumber than we are can do that. Fortunately they had the sense to do what we cannot. (Name one biological machine that began functioning spontaneously--uh, we require proof here, not theory or speculation.)

Consider some of the statements and assumptions in this piece (our boldface):

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090819135436.htm

"Lake has discovered the first exclusively prokaryote endosymbiosis. All other known endosymbioses have involved a eukaryote — a cell that contains a nucleus. Eukaryotes are found in all multicellular forms of life, including humans, animals and plants.

'This relationship resulted in a totally different type of life on Earth,' said Lake, a UCLA distinguished professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology and of human genetics. 'We thought eukaryotes always needed to be present to do it, but we were wrong.'

In the Nature paper, Lake reports that two groups of prokaryotes — actinobacteria and clostridia — came together and produced 'double-membrane' prokaryotes.

'Higher life would not have happened without this event,' Lake said. 'These are very important organisms. At the time these two early prokaryotes were evolving, there was no oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. Humans could not live. No oxygen-breathing organisms could live.'

The oxygen on the Earth is the result of a subgroup of these double-membrane prokaryotes, Lake said. This subgroup, the cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. They have been tremendously productive, pumping oxygen into the atmosphere; we could not breathe without them. In addition, the double-membrane prokaryotic fusion supplied the mitochondria that are present in every human cell, he said."

#1 - "We were wrong." While we applaud the refreshing admission of error, we have to ask, "Could you be wrong in other areas?"

#2 - "...came together and produced" Produced and we presume "reproduced" with no intelligent help? What was the mechanism of their evolution? Natural Selection? Native intelligence? Did they get married and have sex? Did they appear and reproduce spontaneously?

#3 - "...cyanobacteria, used the sun's energy to produce oxygen through photosynthesis." Really lucky they could reproduce, blend, learn to use the sun's rays, learn to produce oxygen, and learn to pump it into the atmosphere. Thank God for cynobacteria. Without them, we would all be wearing oxygen tanks.

Fire + Dead Animal = BBQ. Ape + BBQ = Human

2011-12-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Stood too close to the fire,

but it helped him evolve.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227112.500-books-how-fire-made-us-human.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg20227112.500

"Anthropologist Frances Burton suggests that taming fire led to the evolution of modern humans. Millions of years ago, our ape-like ancestors may have overcome their fear of fire to pick at found delicacies - maybe an animal accidentally cooked in a forest fire. Over time, they learned how to keep a flame going by feeding it twigs, how to use fire to thwart predators and how to harness it for heat and light. This familiarity with fire, Burton argues, changed the hormonal cycles that depend on light and darkness: light from nightly bonfires may have caused a change in the nocturnal flow of melatonin. Over time, this changed the rates and patterns of our ancestors' growth, and the regulation and activation of genes, leading ultimately to us."

"Dang! That was good barbeque! Burrrrrp!"

"Leading ultimately to...us?

The evidence is overwhelming!"

Tower of London University hosts international conference on the evolution of the elephant

2011-12-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

http://elephant.elehost.com/About_Elephants/Stories/Evolution/evolution.html

"It is believed that 50-60 million years ago, mammals approximately the size of current day pigs, were the roots from which the proboscideans evolved from. Interestingly, based on both morphological and biochemical evidence, it is agreed that the manatees, dugongs, and hyraxes are the closest living relatives of the today's elephants. It is incredible* to believe given the vastly different sizes, external appearance and the fact that they occupy completely different habitats."

*Definition: "So implausible as to elicit disbelief."

TLU Conference Program:

Dr. Circus Maximus, Barnum and Bailey University. "The Evolution of the Trunk: A Herpetological View."

Dr. George Pattent, International War College. "Why Elephant Tusks Lost Their Metal Points."

Dr. Hikoro Wachanobe, Geisha-san Normal School, Misawa. "The Elephant as Evolved Geisha Dancer."

Dr. Rocky Slate, Boulder Technical College. "How Mastedons Evolved from Clay-Rock Formations."

Dr. Whackso Triehugga, Sequoia Institute. "How Early Proboscideans Were Naturally Selected for Firewood."

Dr. So Hi Flung, Wing Ding Unversity-Lower Tibet. "How Pot-smoking Turned Elephants into Manatees."

Conference participants were asked to give a thoughtful evaluation of other papers:

Dr. Maximus: "If I had wanted to see a freak show, I would have stayed at B&BU."

Dr. Pattent: "What a bunch of Jumbo Dumbos!"

Dr. Wachanobe: "Incredible gathering of...how you say...pigheads!"

Dr. Slate: "You know what? These morons can just go [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR]!

Dr. Triehugga: "These so-called scholars can't see the forest for the trees. Like the blind leading the blind."

Dr. Flung: "I find myself in the embarrassing position of being the only participant who truly understands elephant evolution."

The conference was not a total failure, however. In spite of only a few incidents of fisticuffs and assault with briefcases, all scholars thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the university's labs, dungeons and our "Fossils and Dinosaurs" Collection [Really old Tenured Faculty who just won't retire]." Conference Proceedings will be published by TLU Press under the title, "Aren't you glad that elephants don't fly?"

Hawking fires God, craps on Sir Isaac Newton!!

2011-12-18T06:08:00.000-08:00

"Thanks, God. Don't call us. We'll call you,"

says High Priest of Scientism

http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/god-has-no-role-in-universe-says-stephen-hawking/19618260

"Entering the ongoing debate between faith and science, renowned British scientist Stephen Hawking claims that modern physics has now proved that God played no role in the creation of the universe.

In a new book -- 'The Grand Design,' co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow -- the theoretical physicist sets out to demolish Sir Isaac Newton's claim that an 'intelligent and powerful Being' must have shaped the universe, which he believed could not have emerged from chaos. Hawking and Mlodinow rule out the possibility of divine intervention, saying that new theories have made the idea of a supernatural creator redundant."

Sorry, Sir Isaac! You've been outsmarted! Although no one has answered your question "Why symmetry?"

THE GOOD NEWS!

1. Now we can all do whatever the hell we want.
2, "Hell" is no longer a cuss word. In fact, there is no more profanity because there is No one to profane (Wow! That kinda sucks all the fun out of it).
3. We are the highest intelligence in the universe...probably...maybe.
4. We can just make everything up as we go along.
5. All churches can close their doors with a clear conscience.
6. We don't need to waste our time praying.

THE BAD NEWS:

1. There is nothing to hope for, except what Scientism can give us.
2. We have to tell our grandchildren that they have no soul, no higher purpose in life, that they are just a mix-up of chemicals. They are not the gift of God, but rather, worthless trash destined to die in a dying universe.

Dawkins celebrates the good news by

explaining the evolution of Christmas ornaments.

NEWS FLASH! Evolution denied admission to Ivy League Graduate School!

2011-12-13T08:00:00.000-08:00

Only the fittest survive!

This just in. Evolution has been denied admission to a highly prestigious ivy league graduate school.

The Dean of the College of Natural Sciences cited a record-low combined GRE score: "0." Dean E. M. Gultch commented, "What a brainless idiot. That score is even contrary to the laws of chance. Evolution could have just guessed and gotten a 250 or 300, and we could have worked with that."

The Faculty Admissions committee lodged an immediate protest, pointing out Evolution's strong recommendation letters and its many accomplishments: Just a Google search will bring up 27,100,000 web results. "Evolution Creates:" 1,200,000 results. "Evolution gives:" 9,370,000.

Admissions Committee Chair Dr. E.G. Zeitgeist protested: "We have to think outside the box here. The GRE is not God. Candidates should be evlaluated with fresh criteria: creativity and a loving, giving nature. Surely this must count for something in the academic world! Besides, we were eager to mentor and mold Evolution to become a first-class academic who will thrive in a harmonious community of researchers. #$%!&* administrators!"

Interview with Dr. S. H. Schnausershnot, Universität der Hochmütige

2011-12-12T07:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, Satirizing Scientism staffer Dr. C. W. Windar had the opportunity to interview Dr. Schnausershnot, a distinguished evolutionary biologist.

Windar: Herr Doctor, we are interested here in the concept of intelligent design.
Schnau: Ya, das vat I read on ze internet. You are all dumkopfs unt goobuhs.
Windar: Thank you, Doctor. We are goobers. Now please help us to separate the intelligently designed from the accidentally evolved. How about this flower? It sure looks like a parrot.

Schnau: Vat parrot? De flower isht product of evolution, you idiot! But parrot unt flower did haf common ancestor, zo who knows?

Windar: Thank you, Herr Doctor. What about this one?

Schnau: Vy are you vasting mein time? Also ze product of millions of years of evolution!

Windar: Herr Doctor, this is an artificial flower.

Schnau: Ach! You are trying to trick mir! Obviously if artificial it vas made by peoples.
Windar: And this doll?

Schnau: Zo cutie! Vere can I get vun like dis?
Windar: Consider it our gift for your visit.
Schnau: Better dan de shtinking honorarium you paid mir to comen.
Windar: Yes, thank you, Herr Doctor. How about this baby doll?

Schnau: Isht dis real baby? Das isht photoshopped? You are trying to trick mir again!

Windar: Yes, it's real.

Schnau: Millions of years of evolution. It vas an accident, not planned!
Windar: Yes, thank you, Herr Doctor, the parents would agree. Now, how about this snake?

Schnau: Cheap rubber shnake. You insult mein intelligence!
Windar: Yes, as a matter of fact. How about this one?

Schnau: I assume you are not tricking mir. If real, it isht classic example of naturally selected surviving predator.

Windar: Evolved?

Schnau: Ya. Probably from dinosaurs unt other reptiles.

Windar: But this one didn't grow wings?

Schnau: Nein, das ist vun unlucky shnake!

Windar: Well, doctor. It's been really...enlightening. Thanks for coming.

Schnau: You are all dumkopfs unt goo-buhs. Mein Gott! De tinks I do fur science!

And God said, "Let there be CHaOs!!!"

2011-12-09T06:46:00.000-08:00

KAAAAAAAAABOOOOM!

(Oops! There was no one there to hear it,

or interpret its meaning or predict its future.

Any sense of sound is pure speculation.)

We vote for the KAAAAAAAABAAAANG! hypothesis.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100907171642.htm

"Seven years ago Northwestern University physicist Adilson E. Motter conjectured that the expansion of the universe at the time of the big bang was highly chaotic. Now he and a colleague have proven it using rigorous mathematical arguments.

The study, published by the journal Communications in Mathematical Physics, reports not only that chaos is absolute but also the mathematical tools that can be used to detect it. When applied to the most accepted model for the evolution of the universe, these tools demonstrate that the early universe was chaotic."

Satirizing Scientism response: Duh...

You'll excuse our horse laughs as we read infinitely varied websites about the lengthy but logical steps from cosmic chaos to ordered complexity, from non-life to life begetting other life, from minimal consciousness to the human brain.

Check out the previous post on the "Marble Theory."

So it all began with chaos. Hmmm. Sounds like Genesis 1.

And then somewhere along the billions of years timeline, chemical compounds, atoms, molecules, etc. got together and, even though ony life begets life, created the spark of some type of life that replicated itself and kept replicating itself, though originals died in time. It became organic by definition. Inorganic material cannot replicate itself, but LIFE began. You would call it a miracle if you were religious.

In a sense, this step began a chain of self-perpetuating cycles of life that ended up as seed-bearing plants, egg-bearing creatures that reproduced and moved by their own power. We can observe successive generations of creatures reproducing right down to this day.

Hmmm. After chaos, life came about by some "ordering force." Sounds like Genesis 1 all over again. God set into motion self-perpetuating cycles of living things. That part is still true, right down to the present day.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html

"Some people still argue that it is wildly improbable for a given self-replicating molecule to form at a given point (although they usually don't state the 'givens,' but leave them implicit in their calculations). This is true, but there were oceans of molecules working on the problem, and no one knows how many possible self-replicating molecules could have served as the first one. A calculation of the odds of abiogenesis is worthless unless it recognizes the immense range of starting materials that the first replicator might have formed from, the probably innumerable different forms that the first replicator might have taken, and the fact that much of the construction of the replicating molecule would have been non-random to start with."

This is a well-intentioned attempt to address the problem posed here. But molecules were "working on the problem?" What does a molecule know? AND PLEASE, define life.

"Evolution explains everything, except when it doesn't."

We are supposed to swallow this, hook, line, and sinker? We're not supposed to have questions or a problem with it? We are to blindly buy into it?

How many steps from the first life to a consciousness of self, of the need to survive, of the need and ability to reproduce, after how many generations? How many steps from that to pea-brain dinosaur consciousness? And from there to ape consciousness? And from there to the neural networks of the human brain? Have molecules been working on that problem all this time?

We repeat, does Scientism believe that it has explained or can explain the lengthy but logical steps from cosmic chaos to ordered complexity, from non-life to life begetting other life, from minimal consciousness to the human brain?

For this post, Satirizing Scientism has been awarded the "Seal of Excellence" by the National Scientism Foundation. Wow, those guys really are fair and open-minded dudes!

Genesis 1 and the Big Bang: Just a marble's worth of difference?

2011-12-08T08:54:00.000-08:00

Was there noise at the "bang"
if no one was there to hear it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031601889.html

Quote: "Scientists said yesterday they have found the best evidence yet supporting the theory that about 13.7 billion years ago, the universe suddenly expanded from the size of a marble to the size of the cosmos in less than a trillionth of a second.

A team of researchers used data collected by a NASA satellite measuring microwave radiation to offer direct, experimental support for the theory of 'inflation' put forth 25 years ago -- that the expansion of the universe, commonly known as the 'big bang,' began with a single burst of repulsive energy acting in a tiny fraction of time. The expansion continues today but at a much slower rate." [End quote.]

That must have been a dazzling, dense, and potent marble. It contained galaxies and the raw materials for evolution, the periodic table of elements and everything required for life to evolve. The Kingdoms of Animals, Plants, and Minerals can all be traced back to that single marble-sized ball of energy? Anyone care to guess where it came from? Why it exploded?

Maybe our power marble came from nothing and was commanded to exist (from nothing to a marble to galaxies is not a quantum leap for God). Traditional Christian doctrine says, "Creatio ex nihilo" or "Creation from nothing." I bet that when God said, "Let there be light," there was a really Big Bang.

Evolutionismists are claiming "Creatio a nullo" or "Creation by nobody." But Lucretius said, "E nihilo nihil fit" or "Nothing comes out of nothing." And Billy Preston sang: "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'."

MIRACLES OF NATURAL SELECTION!

2011-12-03T20:16:00.000-08:00

Given millions of years, as we all know...

(Illustration grossly simplified

for simple minds)

Given 9 mos., as we all know...

The overwhelming similarities
prove Common Descent!
(and are easily explained)

Trillions of cells per body, all functioning as a single unit, a human being. Every single cell contains the blueprint of the whole organism, the coded instructions for the design and programming of the same human. Male and female have intercourse, knowing nothing about DNA and caring nothing about natural selection. They mix coded information that begins a sequence of about 9 mos., resulting in a third functioning human being, who is a mix of them and their gene pool.

So Male Trillions blend with Female Trillions? Managing to form a fertilized egg that marches its way to becoming a body with Trillions of cell, all of which contain its coded information?

I see no evidence of intelligent design or programming.

Just believe this! Don't be an IDiot!

From Conception to Birth: Visualized"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKyljukBE70&feature=share

ANNOUNCING: This year's winner of Satirizing Scientism's annual award for "the Best Interactive Video Game with the Lowest Risk of Becoming Addictive"

2011-12-02T08:00:00.000-08:00

Missed-It Tech is this year's winner of Satirizing Scientism's annual award for "the Best Interactive Video Game with the Lowest Risk of Becoming Addictive"

Conspicuous for its user-friendly simplicity, this game will quickly find its way into the hearts of American teenagers who have been obsessed about what genetic drift has to do with eye color.

Check it out!

http://scripts.mit.edu/~aidanc/popgen/drift.php

Don't miss the follow-up!

http://scripts.mit.edu/~aidanc/popgen/simulation.php?eg=1

"The color of a person's eyes is determined by the amount and type of pigments present in the eye's iris. The color is influenced by several genes, the combination of which specifies the color an individual's eyes will take. It has been observed in the population that brown is the most common eye color, whereas blue is the rarest. In this example, we will demostrate a process that can explain a possible reason for this. Scientists believe that the true process involved is more complex than the one described below,* but the basic principle is the same. If you would like to understand more about the determination of eye color, read on here."

* Theess eess, how you say, scienteefeek anderstetment?

How about "in a pig's eye?"

But wait, there's more pigmentological evidence!

Here are my marbles in my gene pool.
I lost most of them some time back.
I always wondered why my eyes were those colors.
Forced to wear contact lenses most of my life.

Genetic drift as illustrated by blog experts.

Note the clear driftological patterns. Clearly, Gene Source "G" has fewer marbles, chaos, and a wide range of chromatic diversity. Generation X (on the left) shows an increasing number of marbles, identical chromatic diversity, and yet an "almost designed" order, proving that Darwin was on something.

We hope to make our approach available to the general public via an interactive game soon. Just hope we can get some grant money! Chalk and marbles are not cheap!

Size matters!

2011-12-01T09:39:00.000-08:00

"I love evolution! I can eat anything I want!"

Excuse me, I'm uncommonly dense, so I always have lots of questions. I thought the "trigger" for evolutionary changes was "the race," the competition to survive--eat or be eaten--and that the "mechanism" was natural selection from infinite variation. I still don't see how primitive organisms and creatures understood their need to evolve in specific ways and transmitted changes genetically to their descendants. Nor do I understand how these same life forms learned and evolved the ability to reproduce within their own short lifetimes.

Sometimes its seems that evolution is described as just a process. It happens with no intelligent help. In other literature, Evolution is characterized, even anthropomorphized as the agent of change. It "gives and takes away." It is both a process and the overseer of the process? It is some kind of force or automatic causation?

Then I read a release from Reuters (Washington) that when "you" have no real competition, "you" can still evolve:

After having grown a skeletal structure, scales, eyes and nervous system, a tail, a reproductive system, etc., and eaten everything in sight, you can get still even bigger...just because you can. You have evolved a big mouth and sharp teeth, and you're hungry! (If you're the biggest, you can eat the smallest of creatures, but can you catch them? Of course, that T-Rex in Jurassic Park looked pretty fast!)

http://www.trussel.com/prehist/news291.htm

Quote: "Lacking competition, the dinosaurs were free to evolve..."

Quote: "You want to get as large as you can so you can eat what you want."

And once you are free to evolve, you don't need millions of years?

Quote: "The evidence points to a quick explosion of size and diversity among the dinosaurs."

Feel free to post an explanation of this.

Modest blog editor boasts credentials

2011-12-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

Even though our incredibly modest blogmaster hates to flash his credentials, he feels compelled to talk about himself in the third-person-singular and pay homage to his mentors in satire and parody.

In his early years as the parody of a child prodigy, he was first influenced by Dr. Alfred E. Neuman, who always did satire with a smile and no worries.

Special mention for Drs. Moe, Larry, and Curly, who taught him you don't have to be a genius to make fun of the pompous:

And finally, Dr. Rocket "Rocky" J. Squirrel and Dr. Bulwinkle J. Moose, who taught him that the cool and confident satirist has nothing to fear.

During his college years, he learned from the great masters of the satiric art.

From Lewis Carroll, that some people will think you're just writing childish nonsense:

From Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, whose parody slammed the cruelty and cynicism of "civilized" but decadent society, that such an age is best satirized through the eyes of a fool (also, Forrest Gump):

Much from Dr. Samuel Clemons, who believed that human beings were descended from higher life forms:

In his later years, the Blogmaster's satirizing skills were honed with ever more sophisticated models:

Leslie Nielsen, the star of Forbidden Planet, taught me that even an idiot like Lt. Frank Drebin always gets his man. (Also, Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther.)

Monty Python showed me how to satirize political ambition, the inanity of contemporary culture, and how even the most noble of quests will meet arrogant opponents, obnoxious Frenchmen, and bridges of eternal peril.

And finally, I owe almost all my background in science to Spaceballs:

Modern Science: We are 98% Chimp (or not)

2011-11-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

They came to our family reunion,

but they weren't very friendly.

Here's one possible scenario:

Mr. and Mrs. Chimp were expecting their third chimpling. Their first two offspring looked exactly like them and each other, so this birth held little suspense for the happy couple. Many other chimps were also expecting, but none was expecting an evolutionary surprise.

When the time came, Mr. Chimp was hanging upside down, happily eating a banana. Mrs. Chimp shrieked, but other chimps did not notice, since chimps are always shrieking. Mr. Chimp scampered to his mate, and he, too, shrieked, but other chimps did not notice.

“Bonzo! It’s not like us,” Mrs. Chimp said to her mate in chimpanzee sign language.

There was no doubt about it; this freak could not be related to Bonzo.

“Bonzo!” she signed, “we don’t know anyone who looks like this! Do we?”That stopped Bonzo in his tracks. It was true, she had never so much as swung to another tree. In fact, neither one of them got out much.

“So, what do we do, raise it?” signed Mrs. Chimp.

At that moment, the little changling/throwback/variation began to cry out. This caught the attention of all chimps within earshot. The jungle suddenly fell silent. This was not the scream of a chimp or of any other animal they knew about. Hundreds of chimps rushed to learn about the origin of the new species.When they saw the hideous freak of nature, they drew back in horror. Its hands were okay, except for twisted thumbs, but its feet were seriously deformed; no swinging upside-down for this one. And what had happened to its hair?

Had Mama stayed too close to the ground during pregnancy? Had she drunk 2% milk? Had she been too open to Natural Selection? As the little freak grew, he found problems integrating with other chimps. After only one year, he was really wild and loud, a trait inherited from his dad, proving definitively that he was a chip off the old chimp.

But as his brain evolved rapidly, he starting naming everything, even other chimps. This created real conflict with his playmates, who were all jealous, nervous, or just clueless whenever he spoke to them. They would swing from branches upside-down and shriek, somehow trying to prove their superiority. It was their way of laughing, calling him names, and not letting the poor little mutant play in any chimp games.

Over a span of time, however, the chimps got used to him, and most just ignored him. When he was old enough to know that he would have to find a mate, the freak decided that the local female population was definitely not interested; not a one of them would ever swing with him.

The time came. He had to leave in search of a female. There had to be a female “something” who wouldn’t mind his hideous, mutated appearance...or maybe there was a female mutant like him, maybe one who had long hair (on her head), one who could talk,…one who could keep him out of trouble…*

* According to more recent evolutionary "truth," chimps may have evolved from us, or we may share some kind of freak ancestor with them, or etc. We had to get rid of that embarrassing sudden mutant scenario. Who would be stupid enough to believe that? (Even though they crammed it down our throats for decades.)

La Pietà: Chiseled by Chance or Sculpted by an Intelligent Designer?

2011-11-26T08:00:00.000-08:00

Seen anything like this while hiking in the mountains?

In 1498, a relatively unknown sculptor was commissioned to make a statue of the Virgin Mary holding the body of Jesus. The exquisite result, carved from a single block of marble, was unveiled two years later in Rome. It was called La Pietà, and the masterpiece made Michelangelo famous. The world still considers him an artistic genius for creating such moving images from cold stone.

Is there another statue exactly like La Pietà out there somewhere in the universe, created “accidentally” by eons of erosion? Given the billion known galaxies, each with a billion stars and probable planetary systems, couldn’t this type of formation have occurred somewhere? What are the odds? Astronomical? I think it is safe to say that there is not another Mt. Rushmore anywhere, or an Eiffel Tower, or a Taj Mahal, certainly not by some freak accident of topography. I’ve seen cliffs, crags, and caves that suggested monstrous eyes, noses, and mouths, but I have yet to see anything resembling a Michelangelo.

Before someone brings up "falsefiability," let me make the bold a priori assertion that we will not find ANYTHING in the universe resembling ANYTHING that we have intelligently designed or engineered. So WHY are we assuming that the sophistication in the design of molecular machines (not to mention information storage and transmission) came about through an undirected process of trial and error? How is it that the design sophistication is beyond our ability to understand? Are we intelligent designers less intelligent than natural selection, trial and error, genetic drift, and other mindless, haphazard phenomena?

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1). We are no accident. God designed us and created us. The bodies we inhabit are a complex composite of systems and structures, of molecules and living cells, all of which function as part of a sublime machine. We are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

The crux of the matter is the claim that our single grandparent DNA (or, some would argue, RNA) came into existence, alive, by chemical collision in a swampy pond, or maybe on the surface of the ocean, or maybe at the bottom of the ocean, or maybe in a formation of clay.

That first living cell molecule would have had to begin replicating itself almost immediately and flawlessly and at the same time be open to "infinite variation." That is, high-fidelity duplication in spite of a hostile environment.

We are told that the hostile environment causes “variations” over millions of years. Somehow "selfish genes" become cooperative. And we are told that given enough eons of cooperation and building, you will have flying eagles, apple trees, sharks, horses, and human beings (male and female).

We are told that evolution is a SLOOOOOOOOW process of change and adaptation. Any changes in human beings in recorded history? I mean, except for "vestigial organs" like the appendix? [See post, "Darwin was wrong..."]. Have we evolved or changed in any substantial way in 6-10,000 years? Are we smarter? Have we developed/evolved something extra that we need to survive?

Here's a website where you can learn how to build a DNA Molecule. You will see how incredibly simple it is. (Warning! Intelligence required!)
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/dna/builddna/

Researchers publish picture of first blue-eyed mutant!

2011-11-24T05:52:00.000-08:00

The first mutant who wasn't full of the brown stuff,

according to published research.

Scientismists are puzzled by

how this ugly freak found a mate.

http://www.livescience.com/health/080131-blue-eyes.html

"'From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,' Eiberg said. 'They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA.' Eiberg and his colleagues detailed their study in the Jan. 3 online edition of the journal Human Genetics.

That genetic switch somehow spread throughout Europe and now other parts of the world.

The question really is, 'Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 percent of Europeans having blue eyes now?' Hawks said. 'This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids.'"

Let's see if we can track the thinking:

1. Never mind the complexity of the eyes (see our previous posts). We're just looking at color here.

2. "Originally, we all had brown eyes."

3. A mutation resulted in "...'the creation of a switch,' which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes'" Which switch?

4. Then, "the turned-down switch diluted brown eyes to blue." Oh, that switch.

5. This mutation unexplainably causes blue-eyed people to "have more kids." If this is a serious statement, we recommend researchers get out of the lab a little more often. If facetious, are you joking about blue-eyed people being sexier or more fertile? A mutation did all that? And how does this discovery interface with the complexity of design and function of the eyes? What about the eye color of mammals et al?

Are you saying my brown-eyed peeps aren't sexy enough? You are treading on thin ice, Doc.

Evidence for human evolution from lower life forms? There's not a shred.

2011-11-23T07:26:00.000-08:00

What do you mean "there's not a shred of evidence?"
There are lots of shreds!

And we're making excellent progress
in piecing them all together.

How birds got their wings and learned how to fly

2011-11-23T07:00:00.000-08:00

"Tell you what. You jump first, and I'll follow you."

At least once upon a time, birds* had no wings. They just jumped from rock to rock. Those who could not make the jumps were naturally eliminated and, as a result, ever stronger birds evolved. What with billions of birds jumping everywhere and getting nowhere, mama birds unconsciously transmitted through their genes the need for something to help their babies run farther and faster, and so escape their predators.

Any little change would do, but flying was considered ideal; flying would never occur to most of the animals who were pursuing them. Why it occurred to mother birds is among many evolutionary mysteries.

There was particular excitement in one bird family when a strange little chick was born with bumps on its shoulders. At last, a bird who looked like a bird was jumping around and flapping ...well... something. As the news of the mutant spread, thousands of birds gathered around the nest to see if this little one was in fact the fulfillment of their considerable evolutionary hopes.

The mama bird, who instinctively had to teach her little chick how to fly, took it to the edge of a cliff and kicked it off (Scientific note: the cliff was necessary since nests were on the ground then; obviously, the wingless birds could not fly up into the trees to build a home of sticks).

As this little fellow fell, he began trying to flap his little bumps. Birds of all descriptions were shrieking in support, but, in the process of trial and error, we have to say that this little chick was an error. Most of the birds were devastated, but a few left the gruesome scene strangely encouraged by the fact that a first important link in the evolutionary chain had been established and that now, real progress in their quest for flight was only a matter of time.

But time was something they did not possess in abundance, for the entire ground bird population of the earth soon began to diminish. Their predators were evolving faster than they. Something had to happen, something bigger than bumps. Populations were getting critically low, but though they were an endangered species, even these birdbrains knew that Random Selection was on their side.

Finally, in a remote section of birddom, a little chick was born that would forever improve the gene pool. He was a mutant, but his bumps were amazingly long and sleek. Unbeknownst to the birds, who at this point knew nothing about flying, these feathery limbs were accidentally aerodynamically engineered. Because this new little bird was so radically different, he drew a considerable birdherd to cliffside (Scientific note: they constituted a “herd,” not a “flock,” since they were ground creatures, not yet birds as we know them).

As his mother pushed him off, he began flapping his appendages--what else could he do with them?--and suddenly, to the total amazement of the bird spectators, he swooped away from the rocks below just as he was about to crash into them. The hopes and dreams of generations of birds were fulfilled in that one simple act.

As this male bird grew, every female bird under the sun wanted to mate with him, a fact which kept him in the air more than he had originally planned. But it all worked out well since he used the extra flying practice to good advantage.

Each female hoped that at least one of her offspring would also have wings and be able to fly. Well, wings did develop in about 50 percent of them and most learned how to fly, but a few turkeys were just too stupid and never seemed to get the hang of it.

*Substitute "dinosaur" for "bird" where scientifically appropriate.

A Brief History of Eternity

2011-11-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

“When a tree falls in a lonely forest,
and no animal is nearby to hear it,
does it make a sound? Why?”

1. In the beginning, No One was around to create Anything, so there was Nothing.
2. And it came to pass that Nothing became Something. And since No one was there to ask “How?” or “Why?” it was so.
3. After uncountable eons, Something became quite hot and exploded throughout the infinite expanses of Nothing that were never going to amount to Anything.

Let’s think back a few billion years, as Evolutionismists are wont to do.

There was space, whether infinite or circular, it was still space. Was it nothing? Can nothing be measured? Why was there space?

We are told about the Big Bang. In the midst of nothing, where did that come from? Why did it explode? Where did energy and mass come from? In the newly exploded universe, matter and energy, governed by laws and equations were present in all their glory. There was just no one around to discover them, interpret them, translate them to symbols, or use them to harness the raw power.

OK, jumping ahead to that swampy pond. No being could see the pond or see anything in the vast universe. It was just there, lonely and unappreciated (unless you accept the alien transplant theory).

Billions of years of invisible, soundless, purposeless existence? Mindless machines clashing in the night?

There was no one to see anything. In this cold cosmic view, nothing had a "soul." There was no love or hate or passion of any kind. There was no faith and certainly no hope. Was there beauty? Probably, but who or what could see it?

OK, jumping ahead to primitive life forms that battled for survival. They weren’t into religion or the fine arts or civilization or motor cars or spaceships. They didn’t contemplate their navel or their mortality. They just somehow knew that they had to survive. Deaf, dumb, blind watchmakers and biochemical engineers. Is that it?

The dinosaurs, now that’s a giant step; they weren't working for Ph.D.s in genetics exactly. But they knew—or something in them knew—how to develop sensory systems and transmit these abilities to their offspring. OK, the comet/meteor/asteroid hits. Wipe that slate clean and start over--mammals rule. That seems really logical.

I guess later evolved primates heard and saw and tasted and felt, but they may not have been models of aesthetic sensitivity, later cave drawings notwithstanding.

Along came the mutants who outsmarted them all and survived. They were, and still are, especially adept at inventing killing tools and machines, and they have massacred each other like animals. But some of them have loved and believed and thought and created. They have longed for hope, for beauty, and for life, for a meaning higher than Scientism has thus far offered.

So, Dr. Scientism, since people, like children and grandchildren, mean so much to all of us, what hope do you offer them? A universe accidentally conceived but spectacularly evolved that is destined for burn-out and self-destruction?

And what will be left in measureless time and space? Can we expect another happy explosion from nowhere? All that we have achieved, for naught. And again, no one to see or be seen, to love or be loved. No time to be born or to die. No time, period.

What happens after the big crunch?

Another Big Bounce?

“You can drag a philosopher out of his cave, but you can’t make him see the light.”

Grim Reaper mocks evolution!

2011-11-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

"I will bury you!"

I'm not such a bad guy. I've just gotten a bad rap. Is there something wrong with being punctual and doing your job well?

I was around for billions of years with nothing to do. I got lonely. Then, I watched all those ambitious molecules as they organized themselves. Oh, they were smart in a primitive sort of way. They managed to come to life, somehow, but they were not smart enough to overcome my sickle. They kept multiplying and changing and growing and evolving. But reaping was still easy.

They reproduced. Don't ask me how. Their mindless descendants became quite sophisticated in their "unsupervised evolution." Some crawled out of the pond. They all struggled for survival, but they died just the same.

Dinosaurs? Big and scary? Not to me. I presided over their extinction. But they weren't as much fun as what came later! Only the fittest of myriad species improving themselves, becoming ever more diverse and complex, only to meet me at their inevitable end. And what did it matter that they were "the fittest?" Evolution is supposed to be a "god-like force?" I laugh at your god. It creates life but cannot sustain it.

And along came Homo Sapiens. They were a challenge, but I love a challenge. They got even smarter, but they haven't managed to outsmart me. They are "like gods, but they die as men."

Their science has slowed my work a bit, but I am thorough and very patient. I wait for the universal law of decay to run its course. And it does, in spite of their inane theories about life forms able to re-design themselves and increase in complexity. Too bad they didn't have help from a more powerful, more Intelligent Designer who could enable them to live forever.

But oh, well, they're all headed for the Big Burn-out and the Big Crunch. And I will be bored and lonely all over again for...who knows how long. C'est la vie! C'est la mort!

Satirizing Scientism receives lucrative grant, edges out competitors

2011-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

"Braying or bragging?"

AP, Cyberspace. Superblog Satirizing Scientism, has received a lucrative 7-figure grant from the National Foundation for the Preservation of Evolutionism.

We all know that it's "dog-eat-dog" for those in search of big grant money. Only the fittest survive...and the rest? They just keep struggling with a hostile environment.

But the NFPE has recognized our proposal as a superior example of good, solid scientific inquiry:

"Braying or Bragging? Emerging Language Acquisition Capabilities in the Evolution of the Jackass." Previously seen as an animal with a vocabulary numerically comparable to a cat's, the Jackass is no burro. We present clear evidence worthy of further investigation: in recent years, braying has evinced essential phonetic, morphological, syntactic, and psychosemantic tranformations, showing properties common to selected human speech. Scans of Jackass brains and naturally selected Homo sapien gray matter reveal astounding similarities, which we will prove with our data, our polls, and other impressive empirical evidence. This may signal a significant step in Jackass evolution and a possible step in human de-evolution.

Grant referees commented that although our proposal was "full of it," it must be funded to advance the search for the origin of the universe and the meaning of life. Applicants not selected were critical of the grant and called it "asinine," and we heartily agree with this assessment. NFPE, thank you for your support! To all applicants, try again! Chances are very good that you will come up with a more competetive proposal. (Warning! It is written, "Covet not thy neighbor's ass.)

NEWSFLASH! Evolutionism discards the Scientific Method!

2011-11-18T07:00:00.001-08:00

New methods are very promising!

Dr. I. C. All, Executive Director of the National Evolutionism Academy, has announced that evolutionismists see no further need for dependence on the scientific method.

In a telephone interview, Dr. All clarified:

“The scientific method is too confining, repressive, and clearly outdated. Aristotle was just a crackpot; he thought that logic and reasonable assumptions were necessary. We’ve abandoned that nonsense as well. And Enlightenment Empiricism is SO 18th-century!

In the Post-Modern era, we are all fashionably chaotic. Chaos is scientifically satisfying and better characterizes both our research method and the objects of our study. You can’t just talk about it rationally. You can’t just look at it. Your senses can deceive you. We’ve moved on.”

Asked how evolutionists can see so far along the Space-Time Continuum:

“We have developed clairvoyant powers that allow us to see billions of years into the past and billions into the future (though we doubt we have that long). ‘We just know.’ When we don’t know, we must have the courage to guess. We build on what we theorize. This is sufficient proof.”

What do you do when there’s little or no evidence?

“We connect the dots. We fill in the blanks. We extrapolate. We make it fit. We make it up as we go along. All theories agree, obviously, and there is no controversy in our ranks. We merely add to an already established construct that just needs to be fine-tuned here and there. We have seen the light of the big bang. After that, everything is easy."

Presenting: An op-ed piece from Dr. Strangelove

2011-11-18T07:00:00.000-08:00

The troublesome issue of intelligent design (known simply as ID) is one that every science educator needs to be prepared to deal with. The issue threatens our society on several levels. For example, how can our nation hope to compete in an increasingly technological world unless our budding new scientists believe life is a purposeless cosmic accident? The very integrity of science is in danger. In fact, the continued existence of civilization might be at stake.

True science must always provide purely naturalistic answers, not simply follow the evidence where it leads. Unless we restrain the range of acceptable answers to scientific problems, we cannot guarantee appropriate, scientific conclusions. Such is our duty as educators. The following suggestions should make your job of shaping young minds somewhat easier.

1. Be vague about what exactly is meant by the word "evolution". Use the term in the most expansive way when referring to support for or the importance of the theory ("evolution is supported by a vast amount of evidence" or “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” ). You can imply that any kind of evolution (cosmological, chemical, biological) is strongly supported by the evidence, but when pressed to defend this, drop back to the less significant but well-proven things like antibiotic resistance.

Under no circumstances should you allow any distinction between what your opponents will call microevolution (small, observable changes like antibiotic resistance) and macroevolution (major changes whose causes and even existence can only be inferred); that way you can imply that the strong support for the former is really support for the latter as well. You should implicitly assume (as you were taught) that many small changes can (and did) lead to new highly complex systems, and allow no questioning of this assertion.

2. Be prepared to reframe the argument. If you should encounter any doubt or criticism of "evolution", immediately reframe the criticism as being a promotion of intelligent design. Then stress that "intelligent design is not science", which was, of course, scientifically proven by Judge Jones in the Dover case. This has the important effect of rendering as non-science all possible criticism of our side! Logically, it works like this:

any criticism of "evolution" = promotion of ID
but ID = religion
therefore any criticism = religion!

Try to find occasions to repeat "ID is not science" in class as often as possible; if necessary, practice this several times each day in front of a mirror until you can say it convincingly. Because science has come to mean absolute truth, everything else is at best mere opinion, so it is critical that you keep ID out of the science category.

But when establishing that ID is not science, try not to use actual science to make your point. The more that facts are discussed, the more obvious it will become that both sides use the same facts, and that the different viewpoints result from philosophical biases rather than good or bad science. If your students at any point realize that ID is based on science as much as "evolution" is, you may have made converts of the most dedicated kind for the other side. The best approach is to immediately relegate ID to the category of religion or philosophy, and never let the issues be discussed.

3. Avoid the tough issues. If despite your best efforts the issues begin to be discussed, do your best to keep the conversation away from dangerous topics like "how did life get started?" and "how did complex features like cellular machinery come about?". Again, it helps to be rather vague about what you mean by "evolution"; when you point out that evolution is well-supported by the evidence, use examples of minor observable changes (bird beaks, etc.) while implying that the major, unobserved changes are also well-supported. In general, try to subtly downplay the complexity of living things.

For example, you can imply that the abundance of life on Earth means that the complexity must not be such a big deal. The popular notion that there has to be life on other planets will work in your favor, as will the abundant science fiction your students are no doubt familiar with. For example, the recent discussions of the possibility of life on Mars can easily be presented as the likelihood of life there, especially if you stick to the headlines rather than the articles themselves.

Your students' inexperience with the facts will help. If by chance there should be a more knowledgeable student in your class with the nerve to speak up, imply somehow that the student is either ignorant or superstitious. For example, you might say something like "religious fundamentalism has a place, but not in science class."

4. Be prepared to misdirect the conversation. If things get bad and your class begins to question how random events could ever result in really complicated living things, there are at least a couple of effective strategies. One is to mention how all scientists accept evolution. If one of your students should happen to know that 700+ PhD scientists have signed a "dissent from Darwinism" statement, respond that these are only a tiny minority and imply that they are probably religiously motivated.

(As an aside, our universities simply must begin doing a better job of screening these people out, and look into revoking the degrees of trouble-makers.) Another effective ploy if ID begins to be discussed is to divert the conversation with the trustworthy "Who designed the designer?". You can easily use up half a class period that way, and be prepared next class to direct the conversation more appropriately.

5. Do not hesitate to mischaracterize ID's motives. Although ID proponents, unlike creationists, are really quite good about sticking to scientific arguments, it is to your advantage to not distinguish between the two. In fact, we recommend that you always append the term "creationism" to ID so that it reads intelligent design creationism.

Since we have succeeded in getting the courts to discredit creationism (thank you, ACLU!), this has the effect of (a) immediately attributing religious motives to ID, (b) implying that that ID has no more scientific basis than creationism, and (c) immediately diverts the discussion away from scientific evidence to fears of Taliban-like imposition of religious dogma. Because scientists are objective and open-minded, dogma should be ours to impose and hopefully that will increasingly be the case.

6. Remember who is on your side; rely on your allies. You have many resources at your disposal - use them! The National Center for Science Education has the primary goal of making your students believe properly, and they have much that will help you accomplish this. Your state education agency is most likely an ally, unless perhaps you are unlucky enough to be in the Bible belt, but we are working hard on those too.

Be aware that Wikipedia has been very friendly to our cause, so encourage your students to go there for perspective. You should also tell them to watch public television: PBS has been extremely effective in broadcasting various anti-ID documentaries.

You can also turn to the National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Association of Biology Teachers, all leading authorities that have officially spoken on behalf of all scientists and educators by declaring intelligent design to be wrong. Finally, if necessary, you can contact the ACLU; they have been very helpful on a wide range of issues.

But always remember - your students don't know the science as well as you do, so despite right-wing interpretations of the U.S. constitution, parental objections, etc., to the contrary, your students ultimately have no right to believe differently than scientists do. You didn't become an educator so your students could have their own opinions, so don't let them!

Sign of the Times

2011-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

"We don't know as much as we believe we do"--George Whitesides (See previous post)

2011-11-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Shame on you for acting like you knew something!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727721.100-recreate-life-to-understand-how-life-began.html

"IMAGINE Earth 4 billion years ago. It is a world of oceans, peppered with volcanic land masses resembling Hawaii and Iceland. The volcanoes spew poisonous gases and the atmosphere is rent by the violent impacts of asteroids and comets. Temperatures range from the incandescent heat of flowing lava to the frozen ice fields of the high polar regions. Shallow ponds on the volcanic islands dry out, then fill with rain, incubating the fragile chemistry that ultimately leads to the emergence of life.

How extraordinary that cellular life should have arisen in such a harsh environment. The exact nature of that first cell, the basic unit of all life today, is still unknown. It is an exciting puzzle that goes to the heart of the origins of life as we know it. But it is hard to solve: after all, reconstructing such ancient events seems an impossible task. Fortunately, there is much to be learned from a slightly more modest goal: building basic artificial cells in the lab.

The exact nature of the first cell, the basic unit of all life today, is still unknown."

"Extraordinary?" That's a cosmic understatement. Why so impossible to reconstruct? It's so simple!
Read the entire article about the history of "opposing views" about the origins of life. The miraculous "emergence of the cell membrane." Thank God for membranes, but membranes "are so messy and squishy."

In the final analysis, it looks like they gave the whole project a lot of intelligent help.

The article basically says "Since oil droplets have been observed to break apart, cellular reproduction can't be such a big deal." This demonstrates, again, the extreme grasping-at-straws that routinely goes on in origin-of-life "research." Every observation that might have any relevance is given 1000 times the significance it deserves, then you pile a couple dozen of these together and can go home each night confident that life is just an accident of chemistry and that you have no ultimate accountability to anyone.

It's like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with solid rubber by dropping in inflated balloons - it's nearly all just air! Likewise, origin of life "research" is almost pure speculation. They start with the certain "knowledge" that it all just happened by chance, then proceed to try to support that view. "After all, educated people all know that it is so." If you forbade the phrases "may have", "might have", and "could have", it would be impossible to write a credible paper in this field.

"We need a really good new idea."

We really need a new idea!

2011-11-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

"I was thinking, Honey. We really need a new idea!"

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/85/8513cover1.html

Dr. George Whitesides is a Harvard professor chemistry and an evolutionist. Read the entire link. We are especially interested in the following excerpts:

"The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.

How? I have no idea. Perhaps it was by the spontaneous emergence of "simple" autocatalytic cycles and then by their combination. On the basis of all the chemistry that I know, it seems to me astonishingly improbable. The idea of an RNA world is a good hint, but it is so far removed in its complexity from dilute solutions of mixtures of simple molecules in a hot, reducing ocean under a high pressure of CO2 that I don't know how to connect the two.

We need a really good new idea. That idea would, of course, start us down the path toward systems that evolve autonomously—a revolution indeed."

And let's not forget the "academy."

"What We Know and What We Don't. We don't know as much as we believe we do. As we begin to think about ambitious problems, we find that our current theories—of complex, tightly coupled kinetic networks; of protein-ligand binding; of catalysis; of dissipative, out-of-equilibrium systems; of liquids and solutions; of noncovalent interactions; of entropy; and so on—simply do not work. In some cases, we have ideas why our theories fall short; in others, we don't.

Peer Review. The peer review system, especially in a time of financial drought, is between conservative and Luddite. It filters out all the bad ideas, most of the new good ones, and all of the really unusual ones. There is, of course, an alternative to this 'intolerance' for new ideas, to use Kuhn's term: If chemistry wishes to welcome new ideas, the peer review system can express that wish."

Warning: Reading the Bible Warps Your Mind!

2011-11-14T07:00:00.000-08:00

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Too bad he read the Bible

I first learned about Pascal in my college Intro to Philosophy class. He was discussed in chapter one. Later, I saw his name in a textbook on Mathematics and then in a Physics text. The science texts never mentioned that he was a born-again Christian.

Here is a brief account of just a few of his contributions to science, mathematics, and technology:

At 16, he formulated “Pascal’s theorem” in projective geometry.

At 18, he invented a working mechanical wheel calculator.

In his adult years, working with fluids and vacuums, he invented the barometer, vacuum tube, syringe, and hydraulic press.

In mathematics, he made significant contributions to algebraic probability forecasting, and other theorems which are still considered basic.

Although highly respected as a scientist and philosopher, his Christian testimony is less known. Here are some excerpts:“I have met the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob (Exodus 3:6), not of philosophers and scholars… Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy…Total submission to Jesus Christ… I will not neglect Your Word (Psalm 119:16). Amen."

Interesting that he applied vacuum theory to our need for God:“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”

Also a genius in probability forecasting, he made his famous wager . "If you erroneously believe in God, you lose nothing (assuming that death is the absolute end), whereas if you correctly believe in God, you gain everything (eternal bliss). But if you correctly disbelieve in God, you gain nothing (death ends all), whereas if you erroneously disbelieve in God, you lose everything (eternal damnation)."

Other Pascal quotes:

“Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.”

“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.”

“The knowledge of God is very far from the love of Him.”

“Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know ourselves only by Jesus Christ. We know life and death only through Jesus Christ. Apart from Jesus Christ, we do not know what is our life, nor our death, nor God, nor ourselves”

Darwin was wrong, but this does not mean that Darwin was wrong.

2011-11-13T06:00:00.000-08:00

"Quick! Someone catch him!
We've got to cover his ass."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820175901.htm

"The lowly appendix, long-regarded as a useless evolutionary artifact, won newfound respect two years ago when researchers at Duke University Medical Center proposed that it actually serves a critical function. The appendix, they said, is a safe haven where good bacteria could hang out until they were needed to repopulate the gut after a nasty case of diarrhea, for example.

Now, some of those same researchers are back, reporting on the first-ever study of the appendix through the ages. Writing in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Duke scientists and collaborators from the University of Arizona and Arizona State University conclude that Charles Darwin was wrong: The appendix is a whole lot more than an evolutionary remnant. Not only does it appear in nature much more frequently than previously acknowledged, but it has been around much longer than anyone had suspected.

"Maybe it's time to correct the textbooks," says William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgical sciences at Duke and the senior author of the study. "Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a 'vestigial organ.'"

Correct the textbooks!? You mean that Darwin was wrong and that the textbooks have been wrong?

The honeybee's waggle dance. Reducibly complex?

2011-11-11T07:00:00.000-08:00

Quote from: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/MES/notes/entnote22.html

"How a worker communicates the location of a pollen and nectar source to other workers in the hive may be the most incredible and complex form of social behavior existing outside of the human race.

Upon her return to the hive with pollen and nectar, the worker bee performs an elaborate dance on the vertical surface of a comb. If the source is relatively distant from the hive (as it generally is), the dance takes the form of a figure-eight. The forager waggles her body from side to side as she moves forward in a straight line, then circles to the right, back to her starting point, waggles ahead again, and then circles to the left (Fig. 1). This dance pattern is repeated a number of times. The angle of the straight run, or "waggle," from vertical is equal to the angle from the hive between the sun and the nectar/pollen source. If the flowers are located 45 degrees to the right of the sun, the dance will be oriented 45 degrees to right of vertical. The distance of the straight waggle run is proportional to the distance from the hive to the source."

Would some evolutionismist please explain who taught the bees to do this? Trial and error? Infinite variation? I say, "that's a bunch of beeswax!"

Now the below article taught me "how a complex genetic mechanism determines gender and maximizes gene transmission to the next generation of several bee species."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061027183752.htm

My favorite empirical observation:

"There’s a big difference between the duties of a fertile male honey bee and those of a female. The males lead a life of luxury – their duties include eating, resting and mating." Now that's just WRONG! What WAS Evolution thinking?

They fail to mention the complex genetic mechanism that creates the "royal jelly" which turns female hatchlings into queens. We don't believe in magic elixirs, do we? Maybe they all watched an infomercial and dialed the 800 number?

George Washington Carver, humble scientist, believed God gave him all his ideas

2011-11-11T06:30:00.000-08:00

An African-American
on a U.S. postage stamp in the 1940s?
Now that's a miracle!

George Washington Carver has always been both an inspiration and a mystery to me. I grew up not far from Carver’s boyhood home. As early as the 1950s my family (and local schools) often visited the Carver national monument in Diamond, Missouri. Mystery? That an African-American could be so revered in a clearly segregated society. Inspiration? No mystery there.

His “ground-breaking” research was not initially well received by farmers or the “academy” (We are surprised because….? Farmers are known to be narrow-minded hicks, and academics? Well....).

The list of his scientific achievements is impressive. Just google his name, and you will encounter a number of websites where they are listed: products from the peanut, from the sweet potato, innovative crop rotation method, use of sweet potato and pecan for soil enrichment. And the list goes on.

Though Dr. Carver said openly that he received all his ideas from God, it is an even greater mystery to me how many websites and encyclopedia entries that make no mention of his faith in God through Jesus Christ. As I reviewed a number of these sites, I was surprised, but not surprised.

Carver quotes:

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

“When I was young, I said to God, God, tell me the mystery of the universe. But God answered, that knowledge is for me alone. So I said, God, tell me the mystery of the peanut. Then God said, well, George, that's more nearly your size.”
Blaise Pascal (see my post) was also an outspoken Christian. Google him for his list of accomplishments. He is often cited in physics and mathematics textbooks, but you would have to dig a little to find out about his faith.

Pascal: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus”

A final footnote on George M. Whitesides, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard. Whether he is a Christian or not, I do not know. His humility is refreshing. Since he doesn't claim to know everything, Socrates has no questions for him.

“The Origin of Life. This problem is one of the big ones in science. It begins to place life, and us, in the universe. Most chemists believe, as do I, that life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.

How? I have no idea. Perhaps it was by the spontaneous emergence of ‘simple’ autocatalytic cycles and then by their combination. On the basis of all the chemistry that I know, it seems to me astonishingly improbable. The idea of an RNA world is a good hint, but it is so far removed in its complexity from dilute solutions of mixtures of simple molecules in a hot, reducing ocean under a high pressure of CO2 that I don't know how to connect the two.”

Evolutionismist wins millions in casino! (Also quickly escorted to city limits)

2011-11-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

"What d'ya think? Dat we all shmoes heah?"

Dateline, Lust Vagus. The world’s foremost authority on evolutionism, Dr. S. H. Schnausershnot, Universität der Hochmütige, won millions at the roulette wheel and at the dice table at Sin City Resort and Casino.

Complex Owner and Manager Marlboro “The Mole” Brandywine commented: “Dis guy is some kinda scientist. We couldn’t figure out his system. He must'uh had some electronic gizmo hooked up ta influence da results. He bets on 36 on da roulette wheel and 36 comes up 36 times in a row?"

Den, he goes to da dice table, rolls "lucky seven" 150 times in a row?

Hey, dis is gambling heah. I been in da business 50 yee-uhs. Dat don’t happen by itself. I says, “Get outa heah! Do we look like shmoes heah? No one cheats da odds 'less da dice are loaded or da wheel is rigged. We ain’t got no fancy schmancy alphabet soup afta our names, but dat much, we do know.”

Dr. S. protested, “Oh, jah! it mosht certainly does happen. Odds-defying coincidences isht wery basic schientific principle. Lucky 7 can come up millions of times in a row. Dat isht vy you are hee-uh. Your grandpapa-godfather beat de odds unt von. Tink back, billions of years ago…”

“The Mole” cut him off, “Get’im outa heah 'fore I rearrange dat funny accent.”

Use Your Brain, You IDiot!

2011-11-05T07:00:00.000-07:00

"Your brain is ready, Doctor"

"How Brains are Built"

[Note use of passive voice. Doesn't express an "agent" since there wasn't one. "How brains build themselves" would be more honest.]

http://dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=30356

"Brains, at one level, consist of ion channels, chemical pumps, specialized proteins. At another level, they contain several types of neurons connected via synaptic junctions. These are in turn composed into networks consisting of repeating modules of carefully arranged circuits. These networks are arrayed in interacting brain structures and systems, each with distinct internal wiring and each carrying out distinct functions. As in most complex systems, each level arises from those below it but is not readily reducible to its constituents...
But brains, alone among organs, produce thought, learning, recognition. No amount of engineering has yet equaled, let alone surpassed, brains’ abilities at these tasks. Despite huge efforts and large budgets, we have no artificial systems that rival humans at recognizing faces, nor understanding natural languages, nor learning from experience.

There are, then, crucial principles that brains encode that have so far eluded the best efforts of scientists and engineers to decode."

This seems to summarize the crux of the matter. Intelligent scientists who use intelligent brains but don't understand how the never-intelligently-designed brain works. Is there a flaw in this line of thinking? HELLO!!!! (Or HELL NO!!!) You decide.

In our brains we are at the controls of a sophisticated machine that we cannot understand. Just reading the above description about brain architecture and functions BLOWS MY MIND!

Use your brain! How does it work? I don't know. Why does it work? I don't know. And BTW, a human zygote develops a human brain in 9 months spawned from the union of two people who know nothing about brain structure or chemistry. How does that work? I don't know. Darwin didn't know. It apparently never entered his mind.

In the movie, they didn't understand the engineering,

but Will Smith could fly it.

My car was designed, engineered, and built by intelligent beings smarter than I am. I can drive it without having to know anything about how it was designed.

Evolutionary axioms:

If it is inorganic, it can only have design through the work of an intelligent designer. I mean, a four-lane highway does not occur naturally! Don't be an idiot!

If it is organic, it may show evidence of design, but the design cannot be the work of a higher intelligence, no matter how sophisticated the design. Don't be an IDiot!

Lonely Hearts Letter to the "Evolution Answer Man"

2011-11-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

"Dear Evolution Answer Man:

Hope you've got some answers for me! But before I ask my questions, let me tell you my story.

I've been hunting grizzly bars since I was a pup (so to speak). Don't believe in guns, so what I do is to go to a mountainous area, find a grizzly who will chase me, you know, like the predator he is. Then I lead him to a cliff, where I jump off. Them bars is fast, but they's big and fat, got too much of that thar momentum stuff. I always survive the fall without a scratch (except'n I break my nose every time), but the grizzly can never stop hisself. I make a pretty good livin' from selling bar hides I sew back together. Make great rugs.

Well, back to me. Bout 10 years ago, I noticed these white thingies popping out all over my skin and face...feathers! And my nose is gettin' bigger and harder. My stinking doc looked me over and sent me to a vet. I cain't pluck them...way too painful. And it's killin' my love life; I'm sure you can see why. Well, I wouldn't mind if I just had enough feathers to take off flyin'.

So, Mr. Answer Man, got any hope for me?

Lonely Heart Lame Duck"

"Dear Lame Duck:

You have come to the right place! We have all the answers for everything and can guarantee a full and meaningful life!

First, I can assure you that according to our experts you are an evolving life form. We are not aware of a recent Cambrian explosion, but these things do happen. The problem seems to be that you are only transitional. We recommend you jump off more cliffs to see if you can trigger more feather growth and an aerodynamic shape. Your situation is not without precedent among the dinosaurs.

Pre-flight dinosaur

(feathers need a few more generations;

teeth are coming along nicely)

Unfortunately, you don't have a million years to wait for changes. Perhaps the comet scheduled to arrive in 2018 will give you a jump-start. In the past the impact of a comet has certainly encouraged selected new life forms that survived the global tidal waves. On the other hand, this next one might destroy our entire planet.

But let's not cast ahead negatively. As cosmic chance would have it, another feathered lonely heart has contacted us, and we evolutionists love to play matchmaker. We are so excited about this one because we won't have to manipulate your DNA to produce a flying half-bird, half-human. Although we are uncertain about how many generations this will require, we recommend that the two of you get together and begin mating immediately.

"Ugly Duckling. Men were repulsed by her appearance."

We have shown "Ugly Duckling" your picture, and she finds you "very attractive." You know what they say, "Birds of a feather..."

We wish you the very best in your evolutionary pursuits and escapes from predators and hope you two love-birds will remember that you and you new family always have a home in our labs, free of charge. (Our staff recommends you not check into the zoo.)

Scientifically,

The EAM

Reassembling life?

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’ Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

King’s Horses and Men arrive on the scene:

Major: Hmmm. Colour Sergeant. Why was an egg wearing clothes sitting on a tall stone wall?

Colour Sergeant: Suh! I do not know. It seems a bit daft.

Alice: Well, he and I were having a sort of…conversation. I left and later heard a loud crash. When I returned, I found this…

Major: You were talking to an egg?

Alice: I've talked to stranger things than that.

Major: No matter. His Majesty has given orders to reassemble...it. This is all of it?

Alice: He is all right there. You just have to put him back together again. It should be fairly simple. All eggheads look alike.

Major: But how shall we reassemble an egg and a rather odd one at that? Colour Sergeant, tell the men to get busy!
Colour Sergeant: Suh!

Later.

Colour Sergeant: Suh! I fear we have scrambled him!

Major: Colour Sergeant. I said, “over easy!”

Colour: Sorry, Suh! We gave it a go.

Major: Hmmm. I say, Horses, have you any ideas?

Horses: Neigh!

Alice: The question is how to reassemble a living thing?

Major: An egg is not alive.

Alice: He was.

Major: Well, he is dead now. Who was his mummy? Perhaps she can lay another egg like him. We must report something to His Majesty.

Alice: I think she died at his...uh...birth. He was a kind of mutant, you know, got ahead of himself on the evolutionary scale, suddenly started talking and boasting. Usually eggshells don’t even move until a chick starts to hatch out.

Major: Hens and eggs must be smarter than we are! They can make both.
Colour Sergeant: Yes, suh! But we can eat both. We are higher on the food chain!

Major: Very well, scrambled eggs for the troops and for His Majesty! We will just have to tell him that Mr. H. Dumpty took a great fall and that all the king's horses and all the king's men just could not put Humpty Dumpty together again.

Alice: I knew this would happen. Poor Humpty!
But he was a bit rotten...

Recipe for creating DNA

2011-11-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

INGREDIENTS:

Swampy pond with at least 500 gallons of water
5 lbs. of sugar per gallon
5 lbs. of phosphates per gallon
19 100-volume encyclopedias or 30 flash drives
A dash of 100 amino acids in 50:50 ratio to sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
A pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat pond to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

2. Blend together sugar, phosphates and amino acids in the standard 600 steps.

3. Stir, do not shake.

4. Post “No swimming” sign.

5. Wait for lightning, a comet, or a meteor to strike the pond.

6. Or if short on time, start car and link jumper cables to your battery and drop the other end in the water.

7. If you have followed directions to the letter, be prepared to shoot whatever emerges. A bazooka should be sufficient.

I was not designed to die!

2011-10-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

You must have been a beautiful baby!

(What happened?)

I started life as a zygote with 46 chromosomes—23 from Mom and 23 from Dad— which determined my eye color, hair color, height, facial features, etc., not that Mom and Dad chose from a menu.

In just a couple of weeks, I grew to 1/8 of an inch, and my little heart started beating and my digestive and respiratory systems began forming as well as the buds that would become my arms and legs.

According to the Mayo Clinic website, I weighed less than an aspirin tablet at that point. I’ve put on a few pounds since.

And after only eight weeks, my cute little face began to form. It took about three months for me to make 3” and 4/5 of an ounce, but only six months later, I was born, 10 pounds and 23” long.

My parents are responsible for me, but they didn’t design me. So who did? I hear that unsupervised chemical Evolution is due a round of applause.

Wow! Is Evolution amazing, or what? That happy collision of molecules millions of years ago produced some awesome results: A highly sophisticated program that converts human zygotes into human babies in just nine months! Shake up a jar of chemicals for long enough, and who knows what you might get?

But not just in human beings. Within a micro-second of fertilization all human zygotes are irrevocably set on a pre-programmed sequence of cell divisions to become human beings, and never anything else. Chimp zygotes become chimps, and so forth down the evolutionary line.

But since my birth, the god of Evolution has not been kind. I was miraculously, accidentally designed, but Evolution fell far short of giving me eternal life. Why did the power of Evolution fail to continue the miracle it began? It created the steps for “progress,” but it could not produce what was needed for perpetual renewal of the molecular structure that it had unwittingly assembled.

In a decaying universe, my awesome chemical arrangement turns out to be just one more decaying element. Let’s see, we descended from monkeys, but we are ascending in intelligence, but we are also decaying like everything else. What went wrong?

Or perhaps I was created by God and for God, to live unto the Eternal One who is the Author of Life? Psalm 139 says that God “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” That’s a divine understatement. Why, then, am I decaying, though fearfully and wonderfully made? Because of sin and death, principles operating in me and my ancestors right back to the fall of Adam and Eve.

Why do I now have eternal life? Because My Designer loved me and gave His life for me on Calvary's cross and there redeemed me from the curse of sin and death.I was designed not to die, but to live, and to worship God, my Creator...life without end. Amen.

[Inspired by C.S. Lewis’ essay, “Funeral of a Great Myth.”]

Robo-cat?

2011-10-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

Artificial Intelligence.

No Kitty-Litter necessary.

http://io9.com/5410037/ibm-recreate-cats-brain-inside-computer

"IBM Recreates Cat's Brain Inside Computer

Well, as artificial intelligences go, it's no HAL, but it's definitely a step closer than we've ever been before. IBM researchers have reportedly simulated the cerebral cortex of a cat using 147,456 processors and 144 terabytes of memory.

This latest simulation, following on from 2007's simulation of a rat brain, isn't an exact copy of an actual cat cortex: It runs 100 times slower than the real thing, for one thing. Scientists created the virtual cortex as part of an ongoing study into how to make virtual intelligence more able to handle ambiguity and fuzzy data, and IBM Research's manager of cognitive computing, Dharmendra Modha, believes that his team are a decade away from being able to create a virtual human brain... at which point, we're all going to be living in Tron."

This required very little effort, since cats are brainless (in my opinion). However, I find it interesting that so much effort and "intelligent design" went into simulating what occurred without intelligent guidance. And even with all that effort, it runs "100 times slower that the real thing."

I refuse to believe that anyone has even come close to understanding how a cat thinks.

Evolutionism 101 Study Questions

2011-10-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

She's 98% Chimpanzee!
(So says modern scientism)

EVOLUTIONISM 101: STUDY QUESTIONS

1. The female subject pictured is 5' 8" tall. This means that only about 3" of her is human. Circle the 3".

2. Circle the body parts that most resemble a chimpanzee:

hair
face
upper torso
waist
legs
feet
hands

3. The female subject is obviously a mutation. True or true?

4. Evolution can do some good work. True or true?

5. The female subject can be classified as (circle all that apply):

chimpanzee in transition
Neanderthal in transition
Cro-Magnon in transition
Missing Link Human
Who cares?

6. Speculative science: What was her evolved male counterpart's reaction when he first saw her? (The answer "named her Eve" will be marked incorrect.)

"Look at those bones and look at that flesh."
"Ugh."
Fell over backwards.
Ran away shrieking in horror.
Said, "Come on, baby, let's twist again like we did last summer!"
Thought, "How could she possibly get me into trouble?"

A Visit to Father Time's House of Cosmic Chance

2011-10-25T07:00:00.000-07:00

The Blind Watchmaker

Just after the Big Bang, Evolution was in a real quandary. Even though It preferred to work alone, without supervision, It could see there was an impossible task ahead, and It needed to improve the odds in Its favor.

It decided to go see Father Time at his House of Cosmic Chance.“I have a gambling problem,” It admitted to Father Time, “but there’s nothing else I can do. I need time, lots of it.”

“I can give you all you need. How many eons shall I advance you?”

“I don’t know. I’m no good at math. I’m just a mindless force, you know.”

“Yes, so am I.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel the pressure to do something constructive with all this matter and energy flying everywhere. Did you see the explosion?”

“I did. You have your work cut out for you.”

“So what are the odds that this mess is going to produce life, any kind of life?”

“Infinitesimally tiny. But you surely aren’t going to let that stop you?”

“Oh, no! The payoff is too big. Think about it. Even though I am completely brainless, some of my brainy future products will give me life and purpose and worship me like a god. Anyone ever worship you?”

“No, quite the contrary. I do what comes naturally, and everyone seems to hate me for doing it. I’m just an old man with a long white beard.”

“Well, I feel the pressure. I am not intelligent, yet I will have to design intelligently. I can’t just speak everything into existence! Only a God could do that!”

“Oh, don’t worry. It will all design itself. You just oversee the trial and error that will inevitably occur in that exploded rubble out there. Just stand back and watch what happens when all those chemicals collide.”

“But the explosion left everything in chaos! There’s no order left.”

“Chaos is good. It will make infinite variations.”

"But I have no plan!”

“You don’t need one. It will all happen by chance. Be patient. You’ll be worshiped in no time. You have the building blocks of life at your disposal.”

“Oh, sure, I may be able to make a few amoebas that swim around in soup, but I don’t know about DNA, reproductive cycles, or opposable thumbs.”

“You will also need to think about creating a heart.”

“But I don’t have one.”

“Trial and error will teach you everything you need to know. Well, it sounds like you’d better get started. Time’s a wastin’.”

“So you’ll give me the odds and advance me the eons?”

"Yes, but if you fail to give eternal life to your products, I’ll eventually kill them all, and everything will revert back to explosions and chaos.”

“Okay, but what a job! No power, decaying resources…talk about starting from scratch!”

“But if you want to become a god, you have to be patient. And you also need to work on forgiving your products and giving them faith, hope, and love.”

“I know nothing about any of that. I’m just a mindless force, remember?"

Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions? SHOW ME THE MONEY!*

2011-10-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

* Grant money doesn't count.

Theory accepted and proven in Disney World.
Mickey has evolved.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v459/n7244/abs/nature08013.html

John Sutherland, Nature, May 14, 2009: "At some stage in the origin of life, an informational polymer must have* arisen by purely chemical means."

*Note: not "arose," but "must have arisen." Acute insight. Yes, that must have happened to bring us to where we are today. Could you please provide a little more empirical evidence?

But hey, this is no breakthrough, my high school biology teacher was creating life decades ago!

Mrs. Gulch was always on fire,
stayed away from H2O,
thought it might dampen her spirits.

Mrs. Gulch said that to create life we just needed (a) some simple chemicals to mix together for (b) an information-storing polymer that (c) also acquired the spark of life and (d) had the ability to reproduce itself along with (e) its lifeforce and (f) successfully transmit all information stored to its descendants. We did it! With a few chemicals and a little of Mrs. Gulch's magic, we created those molecules and watched them grow.

It didn't know what it was doing or where it was going,
and we didn't either. It just kept getting more complex.

Nothing special here. Just one biotically plausible result
of a lengthy and completely undirected process.

I've been a believer in human evolution by natural selection ever since. I mean, it all makes sense, and it's obviously been proven or is easily provable. Just ask Mrs. Gulch.

Guest Op-Ed: The Evolution of Painting

2011-10-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

Satirizing Scientism cannot be accused of narrow-mindedness. We are happy to publish perspectives and analyses from "the other side." In that spirit, we are pleased to welcome to our blogsphere Dr. Napoleon Skweelar, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Pigmentology at Wing Ding Normal University, Lower Tibet.

Professor Skweelar:

"I have to say at the outset that I am embarrassed to have my sterling professional reputation associated with this low-life blog, but as a true scientismist, I feel that someone really brilliant has to step up and counter the lies, distortions, and disinformation herefrom propagated.

My focus today is on the evolution of painting. I could go on and on, but the [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] blog editor imposed a word limitation on me.

Let's start with a foundational theory, which is well established, self-evident and needs no real "proof:"

Given enough time,
with a room full of these artists,
one will produce:

And I don't want to hear any of that [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] about "gaps" and " where are the intermediate steps?" Paint is the same everywhere, and pigment is "star-stuff" like everything else.

Next, let's look at an early art form:

This "painting" shows a lot of bull
in the struggle to survive.

We cannot call this "art." Although some proponents of that bull-[CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] called "modern art" seem to resonate with its quasi-cubistic technique. Nothing so sophisticated. That would require intelligence, and cavemen did not have it. They were dumb in every sense of the word.

There is a suspect school of pigmentologists who believe the painting to be a primitive form of communication for a people who lacked language. These [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] believe that painting was a way of communicating and suggest that this piece was metalinguistic way of saying, "You're full of it!" What a bunch of [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] holes!

Pigmentology is an exact science. No guesswork. See my latest book, The History of Painting with Bat Guano and Bull[CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR] in which I trace cave, fecal, and other primate painting all the way down to 19th century America. In the below piece, note the similarities to the hunt theme with a clear sense of evolution from the above cave painting.

Suspect pigmentologists would
probably say that this means...

...that you're a pain in the [CENSORED BY BLOG EDITOR]!

Early Neanderthal Rock Bands

2011-10-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

Early Rock Band: "The Rolling Sticks."

No evidence that Neanderthals had language, BUT...

"So I think they communicated by using sets of phrases, almost like musical phrases that would have had semantic meanings, phrases such as something that would translate into “Let us share meat,” “We’ll go hunting” or “How are you feeling?” but would have been expressed in musical tones, different types of pitches, different types of rhythms. They might have used these also to build a sense of group identity, very much how we use music today."

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/musicinstinct/video/music-and-evolution/music-and-the-neanderthals-communication/66/

"Monkey men."

Proud of their Neanderthal heritage.

Their way of communicating that
they can't get no satisfaction

No heart, no art, no spirit.
She's just trying to invite you
to go Mammoth hunting with her.

Why does Scientism relentlessly try to explain everything in life that is beautiful and sublime? There's an evolutionary explanation for: love, morality, altruism, music, painting (next post), you name it. It must all be observed under a twisted microscope. Didn't these Ph.D.s ever have to take Music Appreciation?

I attended a piano concert the other night. I was moved. My soul was stirred. My imagination was fired, and I became lost in the melody and the virtuosity.

For a time, I thought about the pianist on the physical level only: what neurons were firing to coordinate lightning fast finger and foot pedal movements; I wondered how this "wiring" permitted him to produce nuances in the sound. That all by itself is amazing and inexplicable.

But then there is that transcendant quality of the arts that calls us to something higher than ourselves. Music is more than sound waves. The piano itself is a work of art, intelligently designed. I remember Leonard Berstein's book, The Infinite Variety of Music. And no, he wasn't talking about natural selection.

According to Scientism, there is nothing higher than ourselves to which (or Whom) we might be called. There is no higher mode of existence, nothing higher than what we can verify with our senses, no higher intelligence, nothing higher than we in the entire universe. (Sounds a bit arrogant, don't you think?)

So if I question that Scientism and Evolutionism have adequate resources and viable models to explain all this, does that make me a crackpot?