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May 19, 2009 — Shoppers typically are wary of over-hyped ads, knowing that any claim sounding too good to be true probably is.  What would they think about media reports claiming a new fossil monkey is the “8th wonder of the world”?     The scientific paper in PLoS ONE1 had hardly been published before the press went ape, as if on cue, at the buzzphrase missing link.  A couple of press releases about the new lemur fossil of a female nicknamed Ida are calm and rational, like the one by Gautum Naik at the Wall Street Journal.  If what...

A discovery of a 47 million-year-old fossil primate that is said to be a human ancestor was announced and unveiled Tuesday at a press conference in New York City. Known as "Ida," the nearly complete transitional fossil is 20 times older than most fossils that provide evidence for human evolution....

The Universe: Order without design by Carlos I. Calle IN THIS excellent book, NASA physicist Carlos Calle tackles the question of whether the universe requires a supernatural "designer" or whether our cosmological theories can explain the wondrous reality around us. The standard model of cosmology, in which a tiny piece of inflating "false vacuum" decays into a fireball, and stars and galaxies congeal out of the cooling debris, has passed many tests, but problems remain. Where did the false vacuum come from in the first place? And how do the supposedly enormous quantum convulsions of our current vacuum manage to...

--snip-- Darwin’s erroneous and racist conclusionsIn chapter 21 of his Descent of Man, “General Summary and Conclusion”, Darwin wrote, “We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped probably arboreal in its habits and an inhabitant of the Old World.” He continued, “The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly organized form, will, I regret to say, be highly distasteful to many. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.” In support of this Darwin then reiterated his assessment of the Fuegians. He wrote,...

The beautifully preserved remains of a 47-million-year-old, lemur-like creature have been unveiled in the US. The preservation is so good, it is possible to see the outline of its fur and even traces of its last meal. The fossil, nicknamed Ida, is claimed to be a "missing link" between today's higher primates - monkeys, apes and humans - and more distant relatives. But some independent experts, awaiting an opportunity to see the new fossil, are sceptical of the claim. And they have been critical of the hype surrounding the presentation of Ida. The fossil was launched amid great fanfare at...

Scientists have unveiled a 47-million-year-old fossilised skeleton of a monkey hailed as the missing link in human evolution.

Political Science 101 May 18, 2009 — Ideally, science should be non-partisan and stay out of politics.  That ideal is not always met, as the following recent stories illustrate. The intellectual president:  New Scientist published a commentary, “Hail to the intellectual president,” by Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science.  Opening line: “If you liked George W. Bush, it wasn’t because of his brain.”  Ronald Reagan, John McCain and Sarah Palin were other targets labeled anti-intellectual in the article, along with McCarthy and Eisenhower.  Obama, by contrast, is “the intellectual president,” in his opinion.  “With the coming of...

May 18, 2009 — Those investing credibility in the concept of “junk DNA” suffered more losses this week. Repeated hits to the paradigm that portions of non-coding DNA are useless leftovers of evolution make a recovery unlikely...

In what could prove to be a landmark discovery, a leading paleontologist said scientists have dug up the 47 million-year-old fossil of an ancient primate whose features suggest it could be the common ancestor of all later monkeys, apes and humans. Anthropologists have long believed that humans evolved from ancient ape-like ancestors. Some 50 million years ago, two ape-like groups walked the Earth. One is known as the tarsidae, a precursor of the tarsier, a tiny, large-eyed creature that lives in Asia. Another group is known as the adapidae, a precursor of today's lemurs in Madagascar. Based on previously limited...

Persisting in Spite of the Evidence: Why Darwinism Is False Note: This post is the last in a series reviewing Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 6 here, and Part 7 here. Darwin called The Origin of Species “one long argument” for his theory, but Jerry Coyne has given us one long bluff. Why Evolution Is True tries to defend Darwinian evolution by rearranging the fossil record; by misrepresenting the development of vertebrate embryos; by ignoring evidence for the functionality of allegedly vestigial...

Huge Virus a Missing Link? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* In 1992, researchers discovered a giant virus with so much DNA that some have called it a “viral missing link.” Evolutionary scientists claimed that it has features that reflect both a living cell and non-living matter, and may thus provide a clue as to the origin of the first cell.[1] But new high resolution images and a closer inspection of this massive virus actually point to design, rather than evolutionary development...

Recently the Brits have found out what really separated them from mainland Europe: catastrophic flooding!...

--snip-- Noah’s Ark was the focus of a major 1993 scientific study headed by Dr. Seon Hong at the world-class ship research center KRISO, based in Daejeon, South Korea. Dr. Hong’s team compared twelve hulls of different proportions to discover which design was most practical. No hull shape was found to significantly outperform the 4,300-year-old biblical design. In fact, the Ark’s careful balance is easily lost if the proportions are modified, rendering the vessel either unstable, prone to fracture, or dangerously uncomfortable...

Human-Ape Hybridization: A Failed Attempt to Prove Darwinism by Jerry Bergman, Ph.D.* Ilya Ivanov (1870-1932) was an eminent biologist who achieved considerable success in the field of artificial insemination of horses and other animals. Called “one of the greatest authorities on artificial fecundation,”[1] he graduated from Kharkov University in 1896 and became a professor of zoology in 1907. His artificial insemination techniques were so successful that he was able to fertilize as many as 500 mares with the semen of a single stallion. Ivanov also pioneered the use of artificial insemination to produce various hybrids, including that of a zebra...

Chapter 12: Life Requires a Source of Information by Dr. Werner Gitt May 14, 2009 The common factor present in all living organisms, from bacteria to man, is the information contained in all their cells. It has been discovered that nowhere else can a higher statistical packing density of information (see appendix A1.2.3) be found. The information present in living systems falls in the category of “operational information” as discussed in chapter 7. This information is exactly tuned in to the infinitude of life processes and situations, and its origin can be ascribed to creative constructional information (chapter 7). The...

47 Million-Year-Old Primate Skeleton Suggests Different Precursor To Monkeys, Apes, Humans: A primate skeleton claimed to be 47 million years old could further amplify the often contentious debate between evolutionists and creationists. A prominent paleontologist says the discovery of the ancient primate fossil suggests the creature is the common ancestor of monkeys, apes and humans, reports The Wall Street Journal. The find bolsters the less-popular stance that humans' ape-like ancestor was a precursor to the lemur - the tarsier, a tiny, bug-eyed primate in Asia, is more commonly thought of as the precursor, the Journal reports. Dr. Philip Gingerich, the...

Dutch researcher Gerrit Dusseldorp analysed their daily forays for food to gain insights into the complex behaviour of the Neandertal. His analysis revealed that the hunting was very knowledge intensive. Although it is now clear that Neandertals were hunters and not scavengers, their exact hunting methods are still something of a mystery... His analysis of two archaeological sites revealed that Neandertals in warm forested areas preferred to hunt solitary game but that in colder, less forested areas they preferred to hunt the more difficult to capture herding animals... Rhinoceroses, bisons and even predators such as the brown bear were all...

Imagine a group of Homo erectus, the earliest members of our family genus, living near a coastline on an Indonesia island and well aware of a lush island that is visible only a few miles offshore. One day while on the coast, a herd of elephants emerges from the nearby forest and crosses the beach. They enter the ocean and swim successfully to the offshore island. Could this be the experience that triggers a creative process in our ancestors who are watching nearby? Does their imagination and thinking include not only a desire to reach that island, but ideas about...

5 May 2009 “Theistic evolutionists”: What they can expect after they have surrendered O'Leary [Theistic evolution, as normally propounded today = accept on faith that God dun it and holler yer guts fer Jesus to feel good - because the evidence suggests there is no God]. Why any theist should do that today is incomprehensible to me, because the evidence is all in the theists’ camp. But tax-supported, tenured professors can say anything they want, and they certainly do.Here is an instructive story about their true fate: After eviscerating two new books that attempt to show that Darwinism is compatible...

Whose god? The theological response to the god-of-the-gaps by Lael Weinberger The god-of-the-gaps argument asserts that it is invalid to introduce God as an explanation for a scientific phenomenon that we cannot currently explain by naturalistic causes. Believers in naturalism take this a step further, and offer the god-of-the-gaps argument against any involvement of God in nature. However, the god-of-the-gaps argument is only good against a particular deistic approach to God and nature, and loses its potency when Scripture and science are pursued together...