All Quiet On The Blogging Front

I will be unable to spend time on my blog for the next several days. Even though it will be quiet around here, please feel free to leave your comments on any open post. Due to the vulgarity of past commenters, I cannot allow comments without moderation. Thus, your comments won’t appear until my time frees up again. Nevertheless, I will eventually find the time to moderate, approve, and reply, if appropriate.

Another Failed Evolutionary Prediction

In science, one of the most important things a hypothesis can do is make predictions that can be verified by experiment or observation. If a hypothesis makes predictions that are then confirmed by experiment or observation, its scientific value is high. The more confirmed predictions it makes, the more likely it is to be a good, scientific explanation for whatever phenomenon it is describing. However, if a hypothesis makes several predictions that are shown to by false by experiment or observation, its scientific value becomes questionable.

Dr. Cornelius Hunter has done an excellent job detailing many of evolution’s failed predictions. I have discussed a few on this blog as well (here, here, here, here, here, and here). Not surprisingly, as more and more research is being done, more and more evolutionary predictions are being falsified. The latest one involves bats and insects.

As most people know, bats have an amazing echolocation system that allows them to hunt in the dark. They send out high-frequency sound waves that bounce off anything in front of them. They receive the reflected sound waves, analyze them with sophisticated mathematics, and determine all sorts of useful information, such as the size, position, and speed of what’s in front of them. This amazing echolocation system allows bats to hunt and eat insects even when it is pitch black outside.

Well, it turns out that some insects are able to hear these high-frequency sound waves. This alerts them to the fact that a bat is hunting them, and they are then able to take evasive maneuvers. For many, many years, evolutionists have claimed that this kind of hearing in insects evolved after bats evolved. For example, a book that discusses the echolocation systems found in bats and dolphins says:1

The evolution of ultrasound sensitivity in nocturnal insects evolved in response to predation pressures exerted by echolocating bats.

Another evolutionary book makes a very similar statement:2

…before bats evolved…moths and other nocturnal insects owned the night sky, flitting about unmolested by predators. The appearance of bats forced them to evolve a novel antibat strategy – a way of hearing the echolocating calls of hunting bats, in effect a radar detector.

So evolution predicts that the high-frequency hearing in some insects arose after bats evolved, as a response to the bats’ new way of finding prey among the insects.

Like most evolutionary predictions, however, this turns out to be dead wrong.

Continue reading “Another Failed Evolutionary Prediction”

Motherhood Has a Lasting, Cellular Impact!

In pregnancy, the placenta is a barrier between the baby and the mother (Gray's Anatomy Image)
A very interesting writer named Amanda Read is a Facebook friend of mine. She has an amazingly diverse reading list, and she often posts things that she has read and found interesting. A while back, she posted a story about how a baby’s cells reside in his or her mother long after the baby is born, and that they may aid the mother in healing certain kinds of tissues. When I read the story she posted, I immediately expressed my skepticism. After all, we have an amazing immune system that fights any cells that are identified as foreign. Even though the baby develops in the mother’s body, there is a placenta that forms a barrier between the mother and the baby. It was obvious to me that a baby’s cells could not pass across the placenta, because the mother’s immune system would immediately attack them as foreign cells.

Well…it turns out that I was dead wrong. When I actually looked into the story, I found that while the story was a bit biased, the fact is that a baby’s cells do, indeed, cross the placenta, and they do, indeed, stay with the mother for a long, long time. In addition, the mother’s cells cross the placenta and stay with the baby for a long, long time. This phenomenon is called fetomaternal microchimerism, and believe it or not, scientists have known about for quite some time.

The first paper that discussed this phenomenon was written by Herzenberg and his colleagues in 1979. Published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, the paper details how they found cells with Y chromosomes in mothers after pregnancy, but only if the baby was a male.1 Since a woman has no Y chromosomes, it was clear that the cells they found didn’t belong to the woman. The authors didn’t have the ability to use genetic testing to confirm that the cells belonged to the baby, but they showed that these Y-chromosome-containing cells appeared only when the mother had a baby boy. Thus, it was clear that the cells must be coming from the baby.

Continue reading “Motherhood Has a Lasting, Cellular Impact!”

The Appendix: More Evidence That the Creationist Prediction Is Correct

The Human Appendix (Gray's Anatomy Image)
For many, many years, evolutionists have called the human appendix a vestigial organ. In their view, our supposed ancestors needed a large cecum for digestive purposes. Over time, however, we evolved so that we didn’t need such a large cecum anymore. However, mutation and natural selection never got around to completely removing the large cecum and, as a result, we have a leftover, useless, small version called the appendix. As one evolutionist put it:1

…we have an appendix (a small remnant of a prior ancestor species’ intestinal sack) which not only is of no use to us but which can sometimes kill us when it gets clogged up and infected! What kind of god or other “intelligent designer” would design organisms with such useless, imperfect, wasteful, and sometimes even harmful physical features?

As I wrote previously, there is strong evidence that this evolution-inspired idea is incorrect. Evidence indicates that the appendix acts as a safe reservoir of the beneficial bacteria that usually populate your intestine. That way, when you have a disease that wipes out those bacteria, they can quickly repopulate your intestine so as to restore your normal level of health. This function conforms quite nicely to a creationist prediction made several years before this evidence began to mount.

Of course, a few pieces of evidence do not make a clear-cut case. As a result, it is important to test the idea that the appendix has a vital function in the human body by making predictions based on that assumption and then seeing whether or not the predictions are confirmed by the data. This has recently happened. In 2007, some medical scientists wrote a paper suggesting that the appendix served as a reservoir for the beneficial bacteria that live in our intestines.2 As a result, they predicted that if specific intestinal diseases were investigated, it should be found that people who have those diseases are better able to fight them if they have an appendix.

Well, a study that tested this prediction was recently published, and the prediction was dramatically confirmed.

Continue reading “The Appendix: More Evidence That the Creationist Prediction Is Correct”

More on Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genome

A schematic representation of DNA, concentrating on the nucleotide bases that encode biological information. (Click for credit)
How similar is the human genome to the chimpanzee genome? Since both genomes have been fully sequenced, you would think that would be an easy question to answer. Unfortunately, it is not. After all, how do you compare the genomes of two different species? You might think that the most straightforward way would be to simply line the two genomes up and see how much they overlap. If that’s the way you are comparing the genomes, then the answer is relatively easy. Based on the analysis done by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, about 75% of the two genomes overlap well. There is an error rate of about 3% within that overlap, however, so the two genomes are 72% similar based on this kind of analysis.

The problem is that simply lining two genomes up and looking for overlap might not be the best way to compare them. After all, it seems that genomes have been designed to change. Genes and their regulatory agents can move around, be copied to different parts of the genome, etc. As a result, when you compare genomes between species, you might need to be a bit more careful in how you do it.

One popular means by which geneticists compare genomes today is by looking at chunks of DNA in one organism and comparing them to the genome of the second organism. One common way to do this is to use the computer program called BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool). This program takes a chunk of DNA from one organism and splits it into a series of short sequences called “words.” It then looks through the genome of the second organism, trying to find regions where there is a lot of similarity with the words generated from the first organism. If the similarity is above a specified threshold level, BLAST scores it as an overlap, keeping track of precisely how similar the two sections of DNA are within that overlap.

In other words, rather than looking for long stretches of DNA that overlap between two organisms, BLAST looks for smaller regions of overlap. This makes sense, of course, since a given gene or a given regulatory piece of DNA takes up only a small part of the total genome. By comparing small parts of two genomes rather than the genomes in their entirety, you are better able to find the functional units within the DNA that are similar.

So…when scientists use a comparison method such as BLAST, how similar are human and chimp DNA? Surprisingly, the jury is still out on the definitive answer to that question!

Continue reading “More on Comparing the Human and Chimpanzee Genome”

Kisses From Katie

The Remarkable Story of One Woman's Extraordinary Love for Jesus and His Children
As most people who read this blog know, I spend a lot of time writing about science. However, I read a wide variety of books. Some are fiction, but most are nonfiction. When it comes to the nonfiction books, many are about science, some are about philosophy, some are about theology, some are about modern Christianity, some are about music, and some are about theater. Most of them have something useful to offer, and if I find one of them particularly interesting, I tend to blog about it, which is why I have an interesting books section. However, other than the Bible, most of the books I read do not have a deep, personal effect on me. I blogged about one notable exception to this general rule more than a year ago, and now it is time to blog about another one. Be forewarned. This is not going to be a typical blog entry. It has nothing to do with science, but it has everything to do with Jesus.

A few weeks ago, I saw a short video on Facebook about a young lady (Katie Davis) who, at the ripe old age of 16, decided that God was calling her to do mission work. She went to Uganda when she was a senior in high school and then again after graduation, and within a short time began adopting girls who had no caretakers. At the time of the video (roughly three years later), she had adopted a total of fourteen girls and was running a ministry that fed, clothed, and paid the school fees for hundreds of Ugandan children. The video was a promo for her book, Kisses from Katie. I decided to buy the book, and I thank God that I did.

In the promotional video, the author mentions Mother Teresa, who said that her role model (St. Therese of Lisieux) did:1

small things with great love, ordinary things with extraordinary love

It’s fitting that the author looks to Mother Teresa, because she lives out St. Therese’s example better than anyone except perhaps Mother Teresa herself.

Continue reading “Kisses From Katie”

Dr. Frank Logsdon and the NASB: Another Christian Myth

When I decided to start a blog, I wanted to devote a section of it to ideas that are popular in modern Christendom but are simply not true. I call these “Christian Myths,” and you can see the ones I have written about so far. Interestingly enough, one of those articles (Laminin Shaminin) is the most common article on this blog that people find via search engines. Even though the majority of my writing is devoted to scientific issues, I do keep a lookout for any Christian myths that need to be addressed.

A few days ago, someone left a comment that was a bit far away from the topic of the post for me to approve. However, I read it and replied to the commenter via E-MAIL, as I always do in such situations. The person’s comment included a discussion of Dr. Frank Logsdon, a man who claims to have been an integral part of the team that developed the New American Standard Bible (NASB). I tried to track down the primary source for the quote, but I could not find it. The closest I could come is an article by David Sorenson. Here is what that article says:

Dr. Frank Logsdon was the co-founder of the New American Standard Bible (NASB). He since has renounced any connection to it.

“I must, under God, renounce every attachment to the New American Standard Version. I’m afraid I’m in trouble with the Lord… We laid the groundwork; I wrote the format; I helped interview some of the translators; I sat with the translator; I wrote the preface… I’m in trouble; I can’t refute these arguments; its wrong, terribly wrong… The deletions are absolutely frightening. . .there are so many. Are we so naive that we do not suspect Satanic deception in all of this?

Upon investigation, I wrote my dear friend, Mr. Lockman (editor’s note: Mr. Lockman was the benefactor through which the NASV was published) explaining that I was forced to renounce all attachment to the NASV (editors note: This is the same as the NASB)…”

Now, of course, this sounds very bad for the NASB. If the “co-founder” of the translation – the man who wrote the format, interviewed and sat with the translators, and wrote the preface – denounces the NASB, it must be a terrible translation. Fortunately, it is almost certainly not true.

Continue reading “Dr. Frank Logsdon and the NASB: Another Christian Myth”

Antiboitic Resistance Doesn’t Dissapear Quickly

A piglet nursing (Image in the public domain.)

Those who are not very familiar with the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance often use it as evidence to support evolution. However, those who understand genetics and biochemistry do not. That’s because most antibiotic resistance arises from genes that have been around for a long, long time. For example, an interesting study published just this year showed that many of the genes involved in antibiotic resistance were around with the mammoths, long before antibiotics were available. This seems to indicate that rather than being a response to the human production of antibiotics, at least some antibiotic-resistance genes are necessary for the proper survival of bacterial populations.

A new study provides additional evidence for this idea. In the study, researchers analyzed pigs that were kept on a pig farm known to be antibiotic free for two and a half years. The results were not at all what they expected. You see, bacteria have two ways of storing DNA. They have their primary genome, which contains all sorts of genetic information. However, they also have small, circular strands of DNA called plasmids. An important difference between a bacterium’s primary DNA and its plasmids is that a bacterium can transfer plasmids to other bacteria. It cannot do so with its primary genome.

Because of this distinction, plasmids are generally thought to be “accessory” DNA. They contain lots of nice information, but since they are not a part of the bacterium’s primary genome, they are considered non-essential components. Since copying a plasmid each time the bacterium reproduces takes energy, it is assumed that bacteria get rid of plasmids that they aren’t using.

Well, it turns out that most known genes that confer antibiotic resistance to bacteria are found on plasmids. Since biologists assume that plasmids which aren’t used are lost after a few generations, it was assumed that if you get rid of antibiotics, a bacterial population would get rid of the plasmids that contained genes for antibiotic resistance in just a few generations. It turns out that they were wrong.

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Christopher Hitchens is Dead

Christopher Hitchens in 2007. (Click for credit)
Christopher Hitchens died yesterday at the age of 62. In 2010, he publicly stated that he was being treated for esophageal cancer. He ended up dying of pneumonia, which doctors said was a complication from the disease. He was a journalist and writer, best known for his caustic defense of atheism.

While he was a prolific author, I read only two of his books. The first, The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer, was actually a collection works from other writers. The authors ranged from Lucretius to Dawkins. As such, it was a rather hit-and-miss book. Some of the works (like those from Shelley, Hume, and Dennett) were quite good, and some (like those from Hardy, Sagan, and Dawkins) were quite bad. Hitchens wrote an introduction to each work, which gave me some idea of his views and the methods by which he came to them.

Based on that, I also read God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. It contained very little of note, although Hitchens’s style did make it interesting to read. After finishing the book, I was left to wonder why some consider him to be such a powerful voice for atheism. There are very powerful voices in atheism, but based on what I have read, Hitchens doesn’t even register as a whisper compared to them.

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Certainty and Science Do Not Go Together!

Dr. Daniel Botkin holds a PhD in ecology and is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is best known for his books about nature, and has been called “one of the preeminent ecologists of the 20th century.” His website has a lot of good material, including an excellent FAQ regarding global warming.

The reason I am blogging about Dr. Botkin is that he authored a fantastic article in the December 2, 2011 issue of the Wall Street Journal. The article starts with an incredibly unscientific quote which comes (ironically enough) from NASA senior scientist Michael J. Mumma:

Based on evidence, what we do have is, unequivocally, the conditions for the emergence of life were present on Mars—period, end of story.

This kind of statement might excite people, but it does nothing to promote science. In fact, it does quite the opposite. As Dr. Botkin masterfully points out in his article, the phrase “period, end of story” should never be uttered by anyone who is trying to be scientific. The fact is that in science, we never have the end of the story. New information comes in constantly, and sometimes, it overturns old ideas, despite the fact that those ideas might be accepted by virtually every scientist on the planet. As the title of Dr. Botkin’s article correctly proclaims, absolute certainty is not scientific.

Dr. Botkin goes on to discuss how global warming advocates hurt their cause by making statements with absolute certainty, and I agree with his assessment. As I read his article, however, I couldn’t help but think about the hypothesis of evolution.

Continue reading “Certainty and Science Do Not Go Together!”