There are basically two possible explanations for our origin. Either we are a product of natural processes, an accidental result of mindless and purposeless laws of nature and random events, or we are the product of a designer. Either our existence can be totally explained by nature – what we might call natural law – or by something beyond nature – what we might call supernatural. There are really only these two possibilities. I finished my medical education with the impression that evolution was a logical conclusion stemming from fair evaluation of all the relevant scientific data. Further, I was told that no intelligent people doubted its truth, although there were a few intellectually primitive Neanderthals who also continued to believe that the earth was flat, and that dragons caused eclipses. It was not until I was given a book on creation by one of my brothers, who is a science teacher, that I even considered looking at the basis for these impressions. I left the book alone for over a year before I even opened it, finding myself revolted by the thought of reading material by someone who was so far from the scientific mainstream.  When I began to read The Creation of Life by the late A. E. Wilder-Smith, I was amazed and astounded by what I discovered. The author had three PhD's and was a brilliant biochemist. In his book, he pointed out that there is design in life which cannot be accounted for by chance. In fact, design always requires a designer and does not occur naturally. Natural processes produce order, but it is of a different sort from the effects of intelligence. The sorting of pebbles and sand on the beach is easily explained by the action of wind and waves. The piling up of cut stones, cementing them together and forming them into a house with windows and doors, roofs and floors, is the result of planning and work and is not innate in the nature of the materials or the natural forces acting on them. We can tell the difference and would not normally confuse a rock pile with a house on the beach. Nor would we attribute the presence of a house to the action of the wind and waves, but would assume that someone built it, even if we did not see the builder or know who it was. I think this would be true even if we had never seen a house before.  Attempts to explain away this distinction generally appeal to long ages of time and say that eventually, the unlikely becomes inevitable and the impossible becomes likely. In real life, however, we all know that time will not help to produce this kind of order. Given many years of exposure to the forces of nature, a beach house will not transform  itself into a 400-room castle, nor will a rock pile become a beach house. No, in time, both the castle and the house will be reduced to a rock pile and will blend in with all the other rocks along the beach. In the case of living things, the degree of order is so incredibly complex that the chance of it coming about by natural means is essentially zero.  For those familiar with molecular biology, the next few thoughts will be understandable. For those who are not, I only ask that you just try to appreciate how intricate and interrelated the factors have to be for it all to work properly. Scientist Fred Hoyle put it this way, "For life to occur by natural processes would be like a Boeing 747 assembling itself by means of an explosion in the junk yard." The simplest living cell must have many functioning parts to be alive - that is to respond to its environment, to extract energy, to protect itself, and to reproduce. There must be coded information, usually stored in long molecules called DNA. This information must be retrieved and transferred when necessary to perform a function. This is generally done within cells by the manufacture of protein molecules, which catalyze chemical reactions and guide construction of structural parts of the cell.  All this must be organized in space for it to work. An auto parts store may have all the pieces needed to build a car, but until they are put together, you cannot drive it. Even one minor problem with the construction, such as a disconnected wire, may make the whole thing inoperable, and random changes in the parts or connections are not going to make it better. For those who think that "maybe we just got lucky," let me put a few numbers behind those ideas. Proteins are the basic building blocks for the function of living cells, and are essentially long chains of individual amino-acid molecules. They fold and assume various globular shapes, depending on which amino acids occupy which positions, and their function is determined by the shape, atomic affinity and electrical charge at various points on their surfaces.  There are 20 different amino acids which are used by living systems to make proteins. A few of these amino acids may occur naturally, but they exist in a mixture of "d" and "l" forms, which are like mirror images of each other. Only the "l" forms are used in living systems. A protein molecule of 100 component parts would be a small part of a living cell. There would have to be, it is estimated, at least 230 very specific proteins, some as large as 10,000 amino-acids long, each coded by a gene, to complete the most simple, basic living cell. There would also have to be the coded information in the DNA for manufacturing that protein and the mechanisms for retrieving and transferring the information when the cell needed the function which that protein performed.  For the sake of illustration, let us look at the probability of putting that small protein molecule together from a "primordial soup" of individual amino acids, setting aside other difficulties such as the fact that long chains tend to fall apart. Let us forget about the need to select only "l" form, and the problem that amino acids, even if they do occur in nature, tend to deteriorate over time. Since the chance of selecting the correct amino acid for the first position from an equal mixture of 20 possibilities is about one in 20 (1/20), and the chance of selecting the second position correctly is also 1/20, the chance of getting both correctly is (1/20) ²  or 1/400. Therefore, the chance of getting all 100 positions correct is (1/20) ¹⁰⁰ which is (1/10) ¹³⁰  or 10 ˉ ¹³⁰ . On the average, therefore, 10 ¹³⁰ different chains of 100 amino acids would have to be tried before it is likely that one of them would be the correct configuration to do that particular job for the cell.  This is an incredible number which we can only begin to understand. The probability of this protein coming together is far beyond the bounds of possibility. There are only 10 ⁴⁷ molecules of water in the oceans, about 10 ⁸⁰ atoms in the entire universe and about 10 ¹⁸ seconds in 30 billion years. Therefore, the evolutionist will run out of time and matter before even getting close to the order of magnitude needed to make it probable. But suppose, what if someplace in the universe, some chain of molecules got lucky on this one protein? Still, the DNA for controlling that protein would need to "just happen" as well. Then, in order to have life, the other 229 different proteins and their DNA would also have to be put together by chance, some of them 10,000-amino-acids long.   And this is just to produce the simplest living cell. What about improving it by random changes into all the life forms that exist, each with its own incredible complexity? For instance, we human beings have more than one billion bytes of information in each cell, forming thousands of genes, each coding the information for making a specific protein. The human brain contains a hundred-billion neurons and a hundred-trillion connections, more complex than the internet.  A 2006 book by geneticist J.C. Sanford Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome shows that with each human generation there are 100 to 1000 deleterious mutations per individual and that the human race is headed for extinction. This translates into decreased fitness of 1 – 2% per generation and explains the increasing rates of both congenital diseases and deterioration that comes with age. We are living longer only because of modern medicine that controls diabetes and allows cancer patients to survive. But this all means that we had to have been created --perfect or near perfect --less than 1000 generations ago or we would already be extinct as a race. "Well," you might say, "If it is so obvious, why do so many fail to see it?" That is a reasonable question and moves us from the physics to the psychology of evolution. After I had studied these matters, I returned to some of my professors to discuss what I had found. One responded, "That does not impress me." "Yes," I replied, "But what do you do with the argument?" "It just does not impress me," he persisted. Now, of course, anyone may take leave of reason whenever he wants to and escape into irrationality, but that does not make reason go away. When a person is not impressed by something that ought to impress him, we wonder about his mental condition. For example, if a person, walking down the middle of a busy road, sees a large truck coming his way but responds by saying, "It doesn't impress me," he may still be run over. I have since discovered that those who do not accept evolution are often given failing grades in science classes. Their degrees may be denied. Their papers may be withheld from publication. Tenure may be refused. They will be rejected and ostracized by their peers. Therefore, it becomes a matter of professional survival to accept evolution. If it is accepted irrationally, it will be defended irrationally. Nevertheless, it may be defended passionately since otherwise, a person would have to acknowledge his dishonesty or lack of courage. Another professor, when I asked him if he had any interest in the evidence against evolution, responded by saying, "No." When I offered him books and articles, he became angry. "I know where you are headed," he shouted. "You are going to talk about God and Jesus and I have no place for them in my life! And... I don't think you can talk about this on a public university campus!" I was astonished! But he was indeed correct that if evolution is not true, the only other possibility is creation, which means there is a God. And if there is a God Who created us, then we are answerable to Him and ought to find out all we can about what He expects of us. Theologian John Warwick Montgomery once said, "When you get on a train of thought, check your ticket." The idea is to see where a certain way of thinking is taking us. This professor did, and refused to get on board. Naturally, it did not change the truth, only his chance of learning it. There are some basic philosophical problems with the evolutionary position, but they enter in a circuitous manner. First, the scope of science is limited to natural explanations. That is a reasonable limitation to set, so that we do not postulate miracles or magic as the explanation for everything. For example, did the eclipse of the sun end because we beat our drums or was there another factor operating? By being persistent, natural explanations can be found to many, if not most, phenomena. But can we say, then, that there must be a natural explanation for everything? Science cannot prove that miracles do not exist. It can only admit its inability to deal with them. Yet many scientists confuse the scope of science with the totality of reality. Actually, there are many assumptions made by the scientist before he even starts to look at data. Firstly, he assumes that he, himself, exists. Now, of course, that is a good place to start. Conversely, if you start with the assumption that you do not exist, why bother with anything? Also, however, a scientist must assume: that the world exists and that his senses give accurate data about it; that he can manipulate that data with his mind and come up with true conclusions; that he can communicate true information with other people who are seeing the same world; and that the whole universe will not suddenly change tomorrow so that apples fall up instead of down.  It is interesting in this regard to note that science has flourished under a Biblical/Christian world view, which sees the Universe, including natural laws, as a rational creation of a rational God. It is also assumed from this view that God made us rational beings capable, to a certain extent, of learning about His creation. It is further assumed that because it is His nature to be unchanging, He will not capriciously change everything; yet that He also occasionally intervenes miraculously. From the naturalistic point of view, the human brain is just an accidental organ, whose evolutionary purpose is supposedly for improved survival. It was designed and programmed by chance and there is no guarantee that it can come up with truth any more than randomly generated letters will come up with meaningful ideas. If lies have survival value, natural selection will favor them. There is also no real mechanism for free will in a naturalistic world. The way the brain works, sensory input activates electrical-chemical pathways -- predetermined by the present random state of the brain and the pathways taken by previous impulses -- and produces a response. In other words, past experience and present happenstance determine what comes out. The person cannot help what he thinks or says. It was just the molecules bouncing around.  When the evolutionist says he knows his brain evolved, he really has to admit that he could not help but say that. His brain is giving him essentially randomly processed data, naturally selected. Thus, he cannot trust the mind that led him to the conclusion. Anybody confused? On the other hand, when the evidence for creation is acknowledged, and the psychological and philosophical reasons for its rejection are unmasked, one is free to look objectively at all the data. It is then possible to even see that a great deal of “forbidden science” is actually credible and to discover that the scientific information contained in the Bible is both accurate and reliable. More important, the case against evolution removes the illusion that atheism is intellectually respectable and throws one back to the most important decision any person ever makes: specifically, realizing that there is indeed an incredibly intelligent and powerful Creator who made us and all that exists, how will we respond to Him?  Reason only brings us so far, for we see a creation that is not only intricately designed and beautiful, we also see evil and suffering. Only the revelation God Himself provided and accredited with miracles and prophecies, the Bible, can fill in those gaps in our understanding. The Biblical Creationist believes that the existence of God is not only true but terribly important and that the only loving thing to do is to spread the news. This includes the good news as well as the bad news, because it is the bad news that makes the good news so good. We were given free will by our Creator so that we might choose to love and serve Him. But we have tragically chosen to go our own way, what the Bible calls sin. In the process, we have caused the whole of creation to fall into disarray and evil to fall even on the relatively innocent. Yet the Creator took the initiative to restore all things by becoming human, in Jesus Christ, and taking on Himself the penalty of our sin.  Individually, we can return to the state He intended by humbling ourselves before Him and accepting the forgiveness He offers. Eventually, the great Creator who spoke the whole universe into existence, will bring it to an end, and judge all things. He will re-create what was originally intended to be, but hold each person responsible for the choices made, in response to the knowledge given. This is what it means when the Scripture says: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." (Romans 1:18-21) Those are words that do not pass the tests of political correctness, sensitivity or tolerance. Yet they claim to be inspired by God Himself. And if that is true, they need to be taken very seriously indeed. The argument about origins is not a game. It is not even an academic exercise. It is a sober test of intellectual honesty and humility with eternal consequences. God has arranged it so that finding Him does not depend on intelligence or education, but on open spiritual eyes. Those who accept the evidence and acknowledge God as their rightful ruler include people from both ends of the intellectual spectrum. Likewise for those who reject. And it is also not a question that we should leave to "the experts" because we each will be held responsible for the decision that we make. (January 26, 2008 Revision)

Review of The Dark Side of Charles Darwin: A Critical Analysis of an Icon of Science by Jerry Bergman Master Books, Green Forest AK, 2011, 270 pages , $13.99 When Jerry Bergman debated arch-evolutionist P.Z. Myers in November 2009, the most dramatic  reaction of the ideologically mixed crowd of about 500 came when Dr. Bergman suggested a connection  between Darwin and Hitler. The reaction was a sustained growling noise. Further interactions on that  topic in e-mails and on Dr. Myers famous blog www.scienceblogs.com/pharyngula – a sort of literary  “Jerry Springer Show” – indicated that no amount of data would allow such a sacrilegious conclusion  among the faithful.  Jerry Bergman, with his characteristic thoroughness, has systematically dismantled the glowing  reputation of the man often cited as the most important scientist of all time. But, of course, it will not  be enough to sway those whose powers of yarn-spinning are regularly exercised in the defense of  evolution itself. In fact, in an uncanny manner, evolutionary thinking has taken on the form of  Aristotelian science that was challenged by Francis Bacon when he argued for deductive reasoning from  the data instead of inductive conclusions from authority. Now Darwin is the authority and since  “evolution is true,” any apparent discrepancies must eventually and inevitably be solved. Also as  Galileo’s descriptions of craters on the moon – in the perfect heavenly sphere – were unthinkable to  that cosmology, any faults in the author of On The Origin of Species or the application of his ideas  cannot be true.  The fact that Darwin could be described as a “nice person” although with idiosyncrasies, makes his ideas  all the more dangerous than if he were a demonstrable psychopath. Yet Bergman’s book lays out the  data showing Darwin’s clear religious motivation, unable to accept a God who allowed injustice – putting it in the most stark terms, to “kill God.” Still, there is a great deal of ambivalence in Darwin’s writing, best explained as an attempt to avoid offending his cultural peers and his believing wife.  Darwin’s psychological and psychosomatic illnesses are clearly elucidated but it is also shown that  although this diminished his public defense of his theory – which he left to energetic followers, like  Huxley – he was able to carry out an extensive correspondence with the aim of making converts, not to  mention to continue his writing.  It is well known that much if not all of Darwin’s theory was borrowed – even plagiarized – from many  who came before him and he had great trouble in acknowledging this, even when grudgingly forced to  do so. But the sloppiness of his scholarship, from failing to label specimens to changing the content of  old papers to reflect later thinking would today be considered worthy of censure.   Also, although unlike his latter day disciples, he clearly saw the need for an adequate explanation of the  variation on which natural selection works, what he leaped to was pangenesis, a form of inheritance of  acquired characteristics by the movement of “gemmules” from all parts of the body to the gametes. He had previously rejected this Lamarckian idea but when no other mechanism was viable, he returned to it  and stuck with it despite experimental evidence to the contrary. Darwin’s alteration of photographs in a study intended to show the animal origins of facial expression shows a disregard for the facts when a  point needs to be proved. In these ways, he served as a role model for all who have followed in his  footsteps.   Darwin’s clear opinion that some races are inferior and his support of at least “passive” eugenics are  clear from what he has written. The typical defense that he opposed slavery is clarified in that he also  opposed cruelty to animals – although his was not the case when as a younger man he enjoyed killing to  a degree far beyond the typical hunter mentality. He was convinced that the higher races would eliminate the lower and even used the word “exterminate” although he shied away from actual killing in  favor of preventing reproduction of the less fit. Also, Darwin’s documented conviction that women  were evolutionarily inferior to men and more like children did not, of course, lead him to the conclusion  that they should be eliminated!  To be sure, Darwin’s ideas were taken in many directions in which he did not directly participate. But  the danger to morality and social stability, not to mention compassion, were probably part of the reason  for Darwin’s mental distress. The Darwin-Hitler deniers want a smoking gun – a secret conversation  that, of course, could not have been possible – and fail to admit that they understand the power of ideas  in history. Hitler’s programs were completely consistent with Darwin’s ideas and just added the political  will to stop being passive and get on with it. The fact that racism and sexism predated Darwin does not  invalidate the observation that he allowed proponents of those “isms” to become “intellectually fulfilled  scientists.”  Each chapter is a unit unto itself with a “Chapter Synopsis” at the beginning and “Conclusions” at the  end. Because of the format, some anecdotes and quotations are repeated in subsequent chapters. I  would have liked to see something about whether Darwin really had access to Mendel’s book before  publishing his. An index would have been helpful as well. There are some typos, probably untamed “spell check” additions, like “Ernest” instead of “Ernst” Haeckel on page 26, “psychic” for “psychiatric”  on page 97 and “micro” for “macro” evolution on page 268.   This is a valuable book and a reminder of the strong delusion that pervades academia.  Reviewed by   Ross S. Olson MD  Dr. Olson is a retired pediatrician who lives in Minneapolis Minnesota

I am now a board member and webmaster for Twin Cities Creation Science Association and a thoroughly convinced young earth creationist. I was a theistic evolutionist going through my medical training. I was told that science had proved evolution and although for quite a while it shook my faith because it seemed to make God unnecessary, I finally decided that God must have set up the universe so it spontaneously organized itself. This view is sometimes called the "fully competent creation" and is considered by its backers to be a magnificent demonstration of God's power. It seemed to me that if that were the case, God must have done something special in the case of man to give him "the image of God" but that otherwise it had to be all automatic and imbedded in the basic constituents of the universe. I continued to hold this position, mostly because I had never really looked at the data in detail, even as a missionary in Hong Kong with the Evangelical Free Church. While there, my brother, who is a science teacher, sent me two books by Biochemist A.E.Wilder-Smith who showed that order does not arise spontaneously. Dr. Wilder-Smith also included pictures of polystrate fossils, tree trunks 50 feet tall, fossilized standing up, that obviously could not have been buried at the rate hypothesized by uniformitarian geology because they would have rotted before they were covered. It took me a year to even open them because I was emotionally revolted by what seemed to be so far out of the scientific mainstream. Dr. Wilder-Smith showed that the whole idea of a code requires intelligence and the information carried by a code does not arise spontaneously. Long periods of time do not help because time degrades information. Random changes in a complex system do not improve it but deteriorate or completely destroy it I was astounded and wondered why this point of view had never come up in my science classes. When I returned to Minnesota for a year of further training, I looked up some of my professors. The Christian advisor to the Christian Medical Society Student Chapter was a theistic evolutionist. I showed him this data and asked what he thought of it. He said it did not impress him. But I asked again how he answered it and he repeated the same answer. I got a mental picture of a person standing on the freeway with a Mack truck bearing down on him saying, "It doesn't impress me." He then gave me an application form for American Scientific Affiliation, an organization of theistic evolutionists, essentially using the junior high tactic of saying, "everybody is doing it." Then another professor made passing reference to evolution in a lecture on hypertension, saying that the kidney evolved in an environment of low salt and when the sodium levels rise, it cannot compensate and by hormonal means raises the blood pressure. After the lecture I asked him if the kidney evolved into this amazing machine that keeps so many things in balance, knowing what to keep and what to toss, why could it not make a minor adjustment? He said that it was the time frame. I said that there was other evidence against evolution and asked if he would like to look at it. Without a moments hesitation he said, "No!" in a tone that implied that it was a stupid question. Either naively because I did not see the storm brewing or with characteristic courage, I continued by saying that I could leave him some books and papers. He stopped me in mid sentence with, "I know where you are headed with this. You are going to talk about God and Jesus and I have no place for them in my life!" Then turning, he shot back over his shoulder, "And I don't think you can talk about this on a public university campus." I was flabbergasted. Here was a faculty member of a major medical school who was unwilling to even talk about what may be the most important scientific question possible, namely "Where did we come from." He was not responding intellectually but emotionally. On the question of evolution, I had not been educated but indoctrinated. And I also saw clearly that the Christian in academic science, making his living in a hostile intellectual environment had apparently taken on "protective coloration" saying essentially, "I believe just like all you other guys do, but I say God did it." (This is no threat to the secular scientific community because they can say, "That's fine for you if you need a crutch, but we don't.") Then having made that decision without supporting data, the compromising Christian would be forced to defend it emotionally and without evidence or else admit to either dishonesty or cowardice. I was radicalized, realizing that there were very smart, highly educated people who were completely out to lunch on this issue. There were even warm hearted spiritually alive Christians who were sincerely wrong, and even thought they were protecting the gospel from potential rejection by non-Christians on scientific grounds. Yet in the process they were eroding the authority of Scripture -- if God did it that way, why didn't He just tell us? To say that early man was primitive begs the question by assuming evolution. Adam and Eve were created perfect with powerful intelligence according to the Scripture. Early man invented all sorts of technology and art very quickly. Also, if God used a wasteful, destructive, cruel method of creating -- struggle for existence, competition for resources, predation, and death -- then at the moment He said, "It is very good," Adam and Eve were standing on top of thousands of feet of fossilized remains of that sordid history. And if it were true, physical death did not result from humans in but is God's method of creation. Is that the picture of the God who is personally and intimately involved in the lives of His people? Does a God who takes billions of years to create consistent with the God who will wrap up history in the twinkling of an eye? Is ruthless competition and survival of the fittest consistent with Jesus teaching and example of self-sacrifice and exhortation to care for "the least of these"? If death before sin is true, why did Jesus die physically on the cross and rise again to conquer death and take the penalty for our sins at the some time? I became first an intelligent design advocate and slowly also saw that there was also a powerful case for a young earth. In fact, the fossil record is much more consistent with rapid burial in a worldwide flood than in slow sedimentation over millions of years of a land mass that slowly rises and falls. For one thing, fossils don't form unless the creature is covered before it rots. Clams all over the world are fossilized closed. There are 50 foot tree trunks that surely would not wait to be covered up at 1 millimeter a year. There are many "out of place" fossils and in the grand canyon such as pollen in the pre-Cambrian layer where no such plants should have existed. Also, there are 200 million "missing" years and the layers are blended at their interface, as if for those 200 million years absolutely nothing happened, neither deposition nor erosion, and the bottom lay stayed soft waiting for the next. See http://tccsa.tc/articles/index.html#pollen A summary of the physical evidence against evolution, the philosophical assumptions used to support it and the psychological reasons why academia marches in lockstep against any challenge to its ruling paradigm can be seen at  http://tccsa.tc/articles/evaluating_evolution.html . The way the courts have entangled themselves and confused the issue is discussed in  http://tccsa.tc/articles/id_in_schools.pdf  .  Ross S. Olson MD

Luke 2:7 provides this simple statement: And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. Over the years there have been many sermons preached about No Room, sometimes making the Innkeeper out to be a cruel or heartless person. Songs have been written emphasizing the No Room theme. Art galleries, especially those in Europe that I have seen, have a variety of artists renditions of large buildings with Mary and Joseph standing before the main entrance or looking in a window. What's wrong with that picture? The artists did not know what a Judean inn was like. And most modern preachers and songwriters have no idea what an ancient Judean inn was like. An ancient Judean inn can best be described in modern terms as a primitive campground surrounded by a stone wall. The wall was for protection. The innkeeper provided water, feed for the animals and a place to pitch your tent if you had one. There was no privacy, and the usual people and animal noises that accompany such a campground would be distracting. At the Bethlehem inn, people coming from short distances and arriving early would have had no problem finding space in the inn. Others may have stayed with close relatives. But Joseph and Mary came from Galilee, and because of Mary s condition the trip was slow, and their arrival late. The inn was full. Bethlehem was a small village a short distance from Jerusalem. There were no large buildings to accommodate the families returning to their own city to be taxed. But God provided something better than the campground for Joseph and Mary. Bethlehem sits on a hill of limestone, and in the hillsides are caves hewn out of the rock. Many were used for sheltering flocks and herds. The cave in which Joseph and Mary found shelter was new and had not yet been used for animals. It was clean, warm and private. There were no disturbances like those in the campground. When the shepherds went to Bethlehem after receiving the announcement from the angels of the Savior s birth, they knew exactly where to go to find the babe lying in a manger. Consider this. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in a new cave hewn out of rock. When he died 33 years later, he was buried in a new tomb hewn out of rock less than ten miles from where he was born. Most of the material about ancient Judean inns and the birthplace of Jesus was obtained first hand during a trip to Palestine in 1966. Our tour guide was knowledgeable of scripture relating to the life of Christ. He made the visit to the inn a significant time of presenting information that puts the Biblical account in proper perspective.

Edward Blick 6/17/2007 Al Gore has replaced God in at least one California hotel. The Gaia Napa Valley Hotel has replaced the Gideon Bible on nightstands with Al Gore’s book “An Inconvenient Truth” . These same rooms have waterless urinals. How fitting! In mythology, Gaia is the goddess of the earth who gave birth to a son, with whom she later committed incest and gave birth to other son- gods. Is there any doubt that “Global Warming Environmentalism” is a religion? They have a Deity –Mother Earth, they have Sin –Fossil Fuels; they have the Wages of Sin –Global Disaster; they have Redemption –Carbon Offsets; they have a Savior –Al Gore . However, they are ignorant of our eternal environment – heaven or hell.  The predecessors of today’s unbelievers replaced the Holy Bible’s book of Genesis with Darwin’s “ Origin of the Species ”. Now with the help of Al Gore and the United Nations they are trying to replace the Holy Bible’s book of Revelation with the U.N.’s report “Anthropogenic Global Warming”. They tell us that man’s use of fossil fuels results in too much atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) which causes excessive warming and melting of polar ice caps. They say if we don’t take drastic steps (trillions of dollars of taxes, year after year, after year), we will either roast to death, or drown in the rising seas. The plan is for the U.N. to take control of the world’s economy and dictate what we can use for transportation (bikes?), what we can eat, where we can live, and what industries we must shut down. This whole scheme is a “Trojan Horse” for global socialism! Climate change activists have a moral message, but it’s not from The Bible. Basically it is about destroying our modern industry and worshipping the creation instead of the creator God. Environmental religion is pantheism and is at least 4000 years old. God warns us repeatedly not to worship false idols like golden calves, trees, stars, the Sun, Spotted Owls, Worms, etc. Global Warming is hatred against humanity. Man is the problem! America must be transformed into a natural environment like the Indians had in the 1400s. One million human beings could survive. Sorry fellows, 299 million Americans will have to go! They want to eliminate our use of oil, coal, and natural gas. But you can’t run our transportation system, steel mills, chemical plants, etc. on solar panels and windmills. If you accept for the sake of argument, that humans can only survive by CO2 free energy –that leaves only nuclear energy. But these same environmentalists wackos destroyed nuclear power energy in America 30 years ago. Industrialization of our agriculture industry has reduced employment to two per cent of our population. But now we’re not to use animals to farm or to eat. They produce too much manure and flatulence. These are global warming gases! They tell us we must stop consuming meat and dairy products. Why, because animals produce 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. An 18 oz. steak is worse than a gas guzzling “Hummer”, because of the nitrous oxide from manure and methane produced by cows  “toots”. Ice cream is bad . One gallon of it requires eight gallons each of manure and methane, a lot of cow flatulence, plus all that electricity-guzzling refrigeration. Is their any solid evidence the earth is warming due to man’s use of fossil fuels transferring excessive amounts of CO2 in our atmosphere? The answer is NO! Even a 1995 U.N. chart showed earth temperature during the past several decades were not as warm as the medieval warm period of 1000 A.D. to 1400 A.D. During that period, grapes were grown in England (today it is too cool), the Vikings had farms in Greenland, and the Andes had no glaciers. An excellent book for those interested in this subject is “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism” by Christopher C. Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The book is full of interesting information rebutting Al Gore’s message of global disaster. For example, NASA scientist Jay Zwally used satellite data to measure the changes in polar ice caps and their effect on sea level changes. They found that from 1992 to 2002 Greenland gained 11 billion tons of ice per year, while Antarctica lost 31 billion tons per year. The net change in sea level was 0.05 mm per year, which is half the thickness of a sheet of typing paper. At   that rate it would take 1000 years to rise two inches. Al Gore predicted a rise of 20 feet by 2100 A.D.! Another mystery for Al’s disciples is the northern and southern hemisphere atmospheres have about the same amount of CO2 since the 1970s, but the southern hemisphere has experienced no warming compared to the northern. If CO2 were the cause of warming they should both warm the same. There is a dearth of record high temperatures this past 50 years. In fact North Dakota is the only U.S. state to experience its record high since 1996. There were 25 states that had their record high temperature in the 1930s.  Why was Al Gore’s father not screaming about Global-Warming! Hurricanes are not more common during these last 45 years. Not a single hurricane hit the U.S. in 2006. Polar bears are not dying off in Canada. Eleven of 13 regions in Canada show an increase in population. There is  good evidence that we’ve had almost no warming of the earth since the late 1800s.  Scientists went back and checked on the thermometers used in the 1800s and found they gave slightly lower reading. There is a “heat island ” effect in large cities,  due to concrete, asphalt, brick, and heat sources. They absorb and hold more heat than rural areas with grass and trees. Hence cities have higher temperatures than the surrounding rural areas. When satellites started measuring the earth temperature about 40 years ago, many nations felt they no longer needed their small town and rural weather stations, so they were closed. They left the record keeping to the larger city weather stations with their heat island effect. At the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union (around 1990), they could not afford their weather stations in Siberia, so they were closed. Hence, with the loss of the cooler temperature data from Siberia and rural stations in other countries, coupled with the heat island effects of the large city stations, and errors in thermometers of the 1800’s, any increase in the average earth temperature in the past may be an illusion. Our satellite temperature measurements  of earth started 40 years ago and the readings have not varied over +/- 0.4 degrees C . Al Gore…please explain this! The amount of CO2 that man puts into the atmosphere each year is about 3 billion tons per year. But this is insignificant compared to the 39,000 billion tons in our oceans, 2,200 billion tons in our vegetation and soils, and 750 billion tons in our atmosphere. Much of the CO2 generated by man is consumed by vegetation. Famous climatologist Dr. Reid Bryson  has stated, “ You could go outside and spit and have the same affect as doubling carbon dioxide” ! Carbon dioxide is transported into the atmosphere by bubbling out of the ocean during warm periods (like a bottle of pop when it is opened and taken from a refrigerator). But atmospheric CO2 increase lags the temperature increase. It does not produce a temperature increase on the earth; it is caused by a temperature increase in the oceans. Various researchers have shown that in the past the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere was as high as 400-600 ppm. This is much higher that today (360 ppm). For thousands of years our earth has undergone cooling and warming under the control of God. Man cannot control the weather, but he can kill millions of people in his vain attempt to control it, by limiting or eliminating the fuel that we use. How does God control our warming and cooling? Scientists have discovered it is the Sun! Amazing, even grade school children know this. The Sun’s warming or cooling the earth varies with sunspot and Solar flairs. Astronomer William Hershel discovered this relation in 1801. He found when sunspot activity was high the price of wheat fell. When sunspot activity was low, the price of wheat rose. High sunspot activity increases earth’s temperature with a higher yield of wheat, which depresses its price and vice versa. Scientists have done a detailed study of the earth’s temperature and sunspots going back 400 hundreds years. They discovered an extremely close correlation between sunspot activity and the earth’s temperature. For example, during the Little Ice Age period from about 1700 A.D. to 1900 A.D., sunspot activity was very low and the earth was much cooler. Europe was cold and the English were ice-skating on the river Thames. During the past century we’ve had an increase in sunspots and an increase in temperature. It is interesting that some of the experts on sunspots are predicting that starting this year, 2007 A.D., we will be having a rather substantial decrease in sunspot activity and a drop in earth’s temperature. It appears they may be correct. Here in Oklahoma, thru June 2007, it’s been unusually cool. During the month of May 2007, South America saw their late fall and start of winter hammered with much colder weather and snow in places that haven’t seen snow in many years. Over thirty people died because of the early cold and snow. Maybe this is God’s way of reminding Al Gore and his Oscar that he doesn’t know what he is talking about.  In 1997, brilliant research by Danish meteorologists, Svensmark and Fris-Christiansen discovered the science of cloud formation. Cosmic particles enter our atmosphere, collide with nitrogen molecules and kick off ions and provide the nuclei for water vapor to condense around and form clouds, which cools the earth. In periods of strong sunspot activity the Sun’s stronger magnetic field weakens the cosmetic rays and fewer clouds are formed, which allows the Sun’s thermal radiation to warm up the earth. The book of Job makes clear that God alone controls the unpredictable changes in weather  (Job Chapters 36-38) “For He maketh small drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof; Which the clouds do drop and distil upon man abundantly (Job 36:27-28). Here indeed is remarkable insight. The drops of water which eventually pour down as rain are indeed “made small”, (vapor molecule), then condensing into tiny liquid droplets, via Cosmic particle impacts, forming clouds. They finally form into drops large enough to overcome the updrafts and fall as rain. God controls the weather; we must not let Al Gore and the U.N. to even try! Who are the people behind the religion of Global Warming? Maurice Strong ; A pioneer of the New Age Movement was a senior advisor to Kofi Anan and helped to ignite today’s Green movement. He was responsible for setting up the Kyoto Protocol. He has stated it may be the only way to save the world is for industrial civilization to collapse, deliberately seek poverty, and set levels of mortality control . Timothy Wirth, former undersecretary of State in the Clinton Administration stated, “We have to ride the theory of Global-Warming even if it is wrong ! Richard Benedict, former special advisor to Kofi Anan stated, “A Global Warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no evidence of Global Warming”! Dr. James Hansen, is known as the father of global warning. He is Al Gore’s advisor. The national media depicts him as an objective, non-partisan scientist. But he has admitted that he was willing to exaggerate science in order to get public attention . In 2004 he publically endorsed John Kerry for president and then received $25,000 from the charity of Kerry’s wife’s. His forecast how much the U.S. would warm in the 1990’s was too high by a factor of three. Hansen was not trained in climatology but in astronomy and chemistry. Liv Arnesen, a disciple of Al Gore, attempted to prove the ice was melting in our artic polar region by pulling a sled to the North Pole. In March 2007, she left Ward Hunt Island in Canada for her 530-mile journey. Three days later she had to quit because of the cold and frozen toes!  On May 2007, Senator Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California) has proposed a Global Warming reduction tax bill (S309) that will cost a family of four, $4,500 ! Those who signed the bill were fifteen democratic senators including Clinton, Obama, Dodd, Biden, Feingold, Kennedy, Inouye, Lautenberg, Leahy, Menendez, and Milulski. Senators John Rockefeller (D.W. Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R.-Maine) sent a letter to ExxonMobil CEO Tillerson demanding that his company stop supporting groups skeptical of global warming alarmism and announcing that an “American scientific group” was going to expose the company as the primary funder of those “climate-change-denial front groups.” The scientific group the senators mentioned was the far-left Union of Concerned Scientists. (Funded by Hollywood celebrities.) Global warming alarmist, Al Gore  has praised the work of Prof. Paul Ehrlich , calling Ehrlich’s work the “prescription” for our global woes. Ehrlich has promoted population control and described human population growth as “cancer .” An analysis carried out by citizens for a sound economy (CSE) showed that 90% of the   2,600 “scientists ” that Gore offers up as evidence of scientific consensus on global warming were not  qualified. Only one was a climatologist! Among the so-called experts were a plastic surgeon, two landscape architects, one hotel administrator, a gynecologist, seven linguists and one traditional Chinese medicine practitioner . Wow! The following are some of the errors in Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, or as called by some, “A Convenient Lie”. He ignored the middle age warming period and showed the false 1,000-year “hockey stick” chart. He showed photos of New Orleans floods and linked hurricane frequency to global warming. He asserted today’s Arctic is undergoing record warming, while ignoring temperatures were as high or higher in the 1930’s and 1940’s. He failed to show that Arctic temperatures more closely correlate with sunspots than CO2. He failed to explain that the Sun has been hotter (due to sunspots) in the last 50 years than for thousands of years in the past. Gore said that the Antarctic is warming and losing ice, but failed to state that this is only true for a small region. The vast bulk is cooling and gaining ice. The “Larsen B Ice Shelf” is breaking up, but experts believe it has been breaking up since the Little Ice Age 300 years ago. Greenland’s ice is melting, but NASA’s Jay Zwally’s satellite data showed it gained 11 billion tons of ice per year from 1992-2002! Global warming caused icecap melting of Mt. Kilimanjaro, but it was due to local deforestation and the drying of its atmosphere. A 20-foot rise in sea levels by 2100 will swamp coastal cities. But the latest UN estimate is 8-17 inches. Peruvian glacier’s retreat is due to global warming. But the region has been warming since the 1930’s and other Andes glaciers are advancing. Gore blamed global warming for water in Africa’s Lake Chad. NASA concluded that it was excessive water use and over-grazing. Polar bears are drowning due to global warming melting the ice. But the population has more than doubled in 11 of 13 regions of Canada since 1940! A review of 928 scientific papers has shown none against the global warming consensus. In fact, only 13 were pro-consensus.  Temperature changes followed CO2 changes for thousands of years. In fact CO2 follows temperature. Gore should have said: Fossil fuels have had an indispensable role in alleviating hunger, poverty and extending life spans. Climate warmth and rise in CO2 bestow many health, environmental, and economic benefits. The scientific method requires constant skepticism, otherwise scientists become politicians. (He impugns the motives of global warming skeptics.) President G.W. Bush’s administration has handed out $29 billion in research grants to promote Global Warming and to keep the public frightened about the climate.5.The Kyoto Protocol, if adopted, might reduce the temperature 0.07 C by the year 2050 and cost trillions of dollars. The 48 Nobel-laureates scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were members of a group promoting a Democratic presidential candidate. Al Gore should take the hint and pray for forgiveness and take off his false prophet robes. Big Al Gore  set up one of the first companies to sell carbon credits . Maybe Americans who believe that global warming is a serious problem can solve the problem by buying Carbon Credits from Big Al and he will build a wind farm in Timbuktu. It’s sort of like deciding to quit smoking and paying someone else to do it for you. Or like a rich person during our Civil War who, to avoid being drafted in the army, paid the government to draft some poor farm boy. Millions of American and United Kingdom school children have been forced to watch Gore’s film. Some colleges even require student’s to watch Al Gore’s film . To receive a   degree from Roger Williams University the students are being forced to view Al Gore’s Science-Fiction disaster film!  The required course is named “Science Technology and Society”. In response to protests from college Republicans, a dean stated that “All scientists agree with Al Gore, and that penguins, polar bears and your unborn children have no vote in this”! Schools like this are not bastions of knowledge, but bastions of “leftist thought”. The arrogance of the U.N. is unbelievable. Former chief of the U.N. World Health Organization, socialist and former prime minister of Norway, Dr. Harlem Bruntland declares the climate change debate over.  She stated on May 11, 2007 that the diagnosis is clear, the science is unequivocal. It is completely immoral to even question the issue. That’s the way with socialist, but scientists know that science is always open to question. Dr. Reid Bryson, a climate icon with scores of honors in atmospheric science does not believe the debate is over . When asked about computer models used to forecast long range climate, he answered with, “Do you believe in five day weather forecasts?”  Bryson stated “CO2 always lags temperature changes”. (Attention, Al Gore!) He also pointed out that Greenland was once green from the 10th-13th century. Old Viking farmlands are covered with ice. “80% of the heat radiated back from the earth’s surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor. 0.08 of one percent is absorbed by CO2, which is 1/1000 as important as water vapor. “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as   doubling carbon dioxide”.  Yet our brilliant Supreme Court (who have morphed into climatologists) has ruled “There is a “Consensus that Global Warming is a reality”!  Christopher Monckton is the former science advisor to British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. In an article entitled “Climate Chaos? Don’t Believe It” (Sunday Telegraph, 5/11/06), he stated that “Scores of scientific papers show a medieval warm period of up to 3 C above normal existed from 1050-1300 AD. It wasn’t CO2 that caused the warming, it was the Sun. The Antarctic, which holds 90% of the world’s ice and most of the 160,000 glaciers, has cooled and gained ice mass. The snows of Kilimanjaro are vanishing not because the summit temperature is rising, it isn’t, but because post-colonial deforestation has dried the air. The U.N.’s computer models are full of purposeful errors that result in climate chaos!” The Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg wrote “The Skeptical Environmentalist” disputing the hysteria of global warming and other environmentalist scares. He now finds himself in the same mess that Galileo was in. He offended the “church of environmentalism” and ignored the “Most Scientists Agree Lie” . Galileo had the same problem with the Aristotelian universe promoters. Lomberg was brought up before Denmark’s Inquisition Court (Ministry of Science). The Minister of Truth was probably booked up that day. When one diverges from official church doctrine, he is a heretic and can be burned at the stake, if liberals can figure out how to do it in a “carbon neutral” way. MIT Professor, Richard S. Lindzen may be the top climatologist in the world. He was elected to the National Academy of Science (NAS) at the age of 37. He wrote an opinion editorial for the Wall Street Journal, where he stated that he and members of the National Academy of Science did not agree with the notion that the U.N.’s IPCC   “Summary for Policy Makers” was based on true science.  They concluded it represents a consensus of U.N. politicians  (many of whom are also their nations Kyoto representatives.) He stated, “As a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios . CO2 and methane are minor greenhouse gases, with water vapor accounting for 98% of the greenhouse effect. The earth is cooled primarily by air currents, which carry the heat upward, and poleward. Present models have large errors on the order of 50%. These models are unable to calculate correctly the average earth temperature or variations from equator to poles. Fudge factors are added to get the answers they want! The most alarming long range predictions rely on these untrustworthy models, which cannot even accurately forecast the weather a week from now”! Lindzen stated that “cloud cover in these models is poorly treated and inaccurately predicted. The models have neither the physics nor the numerical accuracy to deal with water vapor at all atmospheric levels. The models not only exaggerate the warming due to CO2 increase, but they greatly overestimated the past century’s warming. The past century had an average increase of 0.45 C, but the models predict about 2 C (an error of 300% ). Present models cannot predict the real world climate! The global cooling trend in the 1950’s-60’s led to a global cooling hysteria in the 1970’s. Dr. Lindzen stated that many people hyping global warming are environmentalists and scientists without any special knowledge of climatology. Of the 700 scientists who signed a petition promoting global warming, only 3 or 4 had any involvement in climatology . 1.7 trillion dollars have been spent on the environmental religion in the last decade!” The global climate computer models are like a giant Rube Goldberg machine. They are filled with complex positive and negative feedback mechanisms that are scarcely understood. They do not even include variation in sunspots and the radiant energy of the Sun.  So how can they accurately predict what the climate will be in 20, 50, or 100 years? When the models were run backward they were wrong, wrong, wrong. The only thing these computers are good for is to frighten people about future temperatures and ice melting.. They are not big enough, fast enough or smart enough. Science has not advanced to the degree where it fully understands the complete physics of clouds, sunspots, cosmic rays, the wobble of the Sun’s orbit, turbulence, etc. Climatologist Patrick Michaels, in his review of climate computer modeling, reported the models are highly flawed and based upon a true miscarriage of science . They performed worse than a table of random numbers. They cannot “hindcast” past climate and cannot reliably forecast! Man cannot predict the weather beyond 4 or 5 days, let alone 100 years. Yet we have been continually bombarded by alarmist headlines predicting gloom and doom from future weather changes. Consider the four climate disasters (cooling, warming, cooling, warming) predicted by the New York Times in the last 110 years: February 1895 ; “Geologists think the world may be frozen up again. Doomsayers say Canada may be wiped out and lower crop yields will cause billions to die.” March 1933 ; “America is in the longest warm spell since 1776 as temperatures record a 25 years rise.” June 1974 ; “Weather aberrations may be harbinger of another ice age.” December 2005 ; "Climatologists state the ice cores left no doubt that burning fossil fuels is warming the atmosphere in a substantial and unprecedented way.” Newsweek (April 28, 1975) wrote of the 1970s global cooling scare; “Ominous signs indicate the earth’s dramatic cooling portends a drastic decline in worldwide food production and massive famine . The evidence is so massive, meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. The National Academy of Science warns the cooling will force worldwide economic and social change. They also admit the reason for cooling is a mystery. Climatologists are afraid the politicians may wait too long to take any action. Some propose melting arctic ice caps by covering them with black soot! (Aren’t you glad that Congress did nothing!) The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been the leader in disseminating the lies on global warming. The four basic lies of IPPC are: CO2, the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, increased markedly by human activity, and by far exceeded the natural CO2 range for the last 650,000 years. Since 1750, human activities warmed the climate. The warmth of the last century is the highest in the past 1300 years, and very likely caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Anthropogenic warming will continue for centuries and by the end of this century the average global temperature will increase by 1.1 to 6.4 C. Bad politics was followed by bad science when IPCC issued a 21 page “Summary for Policy Makers” in Paris on February 2, 2007. It was a mantra of catastrophe presented in grandiose style designed to induce a tsunami of worldwide hysteria. The Eiffel Tower was blacked out to show that electricity is bad!  Three months later the 1600-page scientific report was released. True science works the other way; a report is written first, and then a summary of the report is written! IPCC stated, “The delay is needed for “adjustments ( fudging !) of the main text…to insure consistency with the Summary”! This   is not science, but politics ! “This is a strange and unusual method of producing a scientific report", according to Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski. (“CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Tim”, (submitted April, 2007 to U.S. Senate Committee Hearings)  Dr. Jaworowski is one of the world’s top glaciologists. His degrees include an M.D., Ph.D. and D. Sc. He has conducted scientific studies of dust, pollution, and CO2 ice cores from glaciers all over the world including, Tatra mountains in Poland, in the Artic, Antarctic, Alaska, Norway, the Alps,, the Himalayas, the Andes and others. His scientific analysis of the U.N.’s CO2 data indicates deliberate manipulation and falsification of their charts to indicate a constant 280 parts per million (ppm) of atmospheric CO2 prior to the industrial age.  German researcher Dr. Ernst-George Beck in his paper reached a similar conclusion, “ 180 Years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods . (Energy and Environment, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2007). Both Dr. Jaworowski and Dr. Beck have shown the method used by U.N. to measure the CO2 in ice cores was completely erroneous.  Instead of the U.N’s fairy tale that ancient CO2 values were a constant 280-ppm, from creation to 1750 A.D., some of the values shown by Beck and Jaworowski have been as high as 400 –600 ppm. CO2 is not poison and it is not our enemy. CO2 and oxygen are the twin gases of life. Humans and animals breathe in oxygen exhale CO2. Plants breathe in CO2, make carbohydrates, and breathe out oxygen. We feed the plants and they feed us. God knew what he was doing! Researchers have run plant experiments doubling CO2 from 280 ppm to 600 ppm. The increase in wheat, oranges and pine trees ranged from 41% to 265%. If Al Gore’s misguided efforts to decrease our available CO2 are successful, expect to see a drop in our food production and starvation! We need all of the CO2 we can get. For more information on this Gore/U.N. scheme to take over the world’s economy, one should use his computer and google “Global Warming Swindle”. You will find a 73-minute video documentary produced by British television Channel 4. Nine eminent scientists describe their research that debunks the Gore/U.N. fairy tale . Their conclusion: There is no global warming!  We’ve already spent trillions of dollars on a trivial non-problem. Share this information with friends in order to prevent the spread of the global warming hysteria and to prevent any government attempt to fix this non-problem with enormous tax increases. The former Prime Minister of France, Jacque Chirac, has called the Global Warming Kyoto protocol the first step in world governance. Dr. Edward F Blick Former U.S. Air Force Weatherman,  Prof. of Engineering, Adjunct Prof. Of Medicine  and Adjunct Prof. of Meteorology, Univ. Of Oklahoma, 1959-2007

Professor Change Laura Tan expelled:  A new book about a new case Tenure no longer protects creationist professors! [1]   In the past, the major problem experienced by those who rejected Darwinism based on science was denial of tenure. Tenure was generally an effective protection against termination based on one’s conclusions about Darwinism, but not any longer. A new book about a tenured professor expelled for a scientific discovery which created major problems for Darwinism documents this reality. The case involves Professor Change Laura Tan, formally a tenured associate professor teaching molecular biology at the University of Missouri. Her bachelor’s degree was in chemistry and her M. S. degree was in physical-organic chemistry. Next followed a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in biochemistry (developmental biology), and a post doc in genetics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tan’s Educational and Research Background  Dr. Change Laura Tan  Dr. Tan was born and raised in mainland China. She first learned about Darwin’s theory of evolution when she was in middle school in China. Professor Tan accepted without question the idea that humans were only a type of animal. She was taught that life came from non-life and that complicated life came from simple life. Humans evolved from some ape ancestor and there was no God and no creator.  Dr. Tan became a Christian in 2004. However, she remained an evolutionist after she became a Christian because she believed that it was supported by factual science. It was only when she began to teach molecular biology at the University of Missouri in 2006 that she began to question the theory. She taught molecular biology for sixteen years and began writing a molecular biology textbook, forcing her to think critically about the theory. While teaching and doing research, she learned that the genes involved in DNA replication, transcription, and translation in the three domains of life, i. e., bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes, are all very distinct.  This was clear evidence that prokaryotes did not evolve into eukaryotes as Darwinism teaches. Furthermore, the three domains of life could not share a common ancestor, a conclusion based on the fact that most of the essential genes are domain-of-life specific . Therefore, an impassable gap exists between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. [2]  The more she studied and researched genes and genomes of different organisms, the more she became convinced that organisms on Earth are much better represented diagrammatically as a forest of separate phylum trees, instead of only one phylogenetic evolutionary tree, as taught by orthodox Darwinism. Her first response was that maybe her knowledge about evolution was out of date since, up to this time, she had never formally studied evolution. Like so many others, she had taken evolution as a given.  The Evidence of Orphan Genes Against Darwinism   She also studied orphan genes , genes unique to a specific species and not found in other species. Professor Tan documented the distribution of homologs of all genes encoded in 317 model organisms, thereby showing that approximately 29.8 percent of the total protein-coding genes were orphan genes while < 0.01% were universal genes (genes with homologs in each of the 317 species she analyzed). [3]  As she analyzed genomes, the sum total of universal and nearly-universal genes plateaued, while that of orphan and nearly-orphan genes grew continuously. When the species numbers compared increased to 3,863 bacteria, 711 eukaryotes, and 179 archaea, not one of the universal genes remained universal . In other words, all genes are taxonomically restricted, though at different taxonomic levels. This was a stunning indictment of evolution and the exact opposite of what evolution predicted!  During this time she continued to research the problem, concluding that certain required evolutionary steps were impossible, including the evolution of prokaryotes to eukaryotes, of unicellular organisms to multi-cellular organisms, and of asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction.  Looking for Counter Evidence  As with any other area of scientific research, Professor Tan scoured the literature to determine if someone else had made the same discovery. As she delved into the literature on evolution, she found that many articles were difficult to read, the opposite of what she felt when she read other scientific articles. Very different standards are used in the field of evolution than in other research fields. Assumptions, perspectives, and imaginary explanations are often presented as facts.  Each time she taught molecular biology she faced the same problem, reviewing the details of DNA replication, transcription, RNA processing, and translation, and then facing the irreconcilable chasm between prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Furthermore, in the laboratory, she regularly did gene cloning and protein expression, both of which require matching vectors and hosts. She also became convinced that life coming from non-life was impossible, as it also was impossible for eukaryotes to have evolved from prokaryotes, both of which secular biology textbooks teach as scientific facts. [4] Professor Tan soon realized that there exists a wealth of paleontological, molecular, statistical, phenotypical, genomic, and histological data demonstrating that Darwin’s theory of evolution (and the modern synthesis) has reached its dead-end. However, nobody had clearly and systematically assembled all the pieces. Most people are busy learning about the details of life, taking evolution as a given. Indeed, evolution is regarded as the foundation of biology by many.  Some Bible believers accept Darwin’s evolution theory, but after many years of research she found that her science agreed with her Bible. Unfortunately, this conclusion was not only not welcome in the biological science community, but it also ended her career. She understands that she is running against a strong current and may be disliked and mistreated. However, as a scientist, and a pursuer of truth, she felt compelled to follow the evidence wherever it led.  Problems Began  The cover of her book that caused her major problems.  A major problem was that her opponents knew that she was publishing articles critical of evolutionary naturalism in the Answers Research Journal (a scientific journal published by Answers in Genesis) from 2015 through 2016 because Tan included them in her list of accomplishments. One of her main co-authors on these articles was Jeffrey P. Tomkins who was the head of the genetics lab at Clemson University before he retired. Having much experience with peer review, she also knew that the peer review process of Answers Research Journal was every bit as rigorous, if not more so, than the secular reviewers she had experienced at Harvard and elsewhere. Her peer-reviewed book on the origin of life was co-authored with Dr. Rob Stadler. He received a B.S. in biomedical engineering from Case Western Reserve University, an M.S. in electrical engineering from MIT, and a Ph.D. in medical engineering from Harvard/MIT. Their book was very well received, as of January 7, 2023, earning 115 reviews on Amazon, with 90 percent three-star ratings or better, and 80 percent 5-stars. [5] It was also obvious to me that most of the authors of the negative reviews had never read the book and their reviews consisted mostly of ad hominem innuendos. One example of such fallacious attacks is the following: Disguising the fact that a book is theistic in order to increase sales is deceitful. It is lying, it is theft, and it is disgraceful. Theists are now using such deception to get their ‘very important’ message to humanity. We have now had over 2,000 years of the burning of scientists at the stake, holy wars, massacres, the prevention of scientific advancement, and religious idiocy. We’ve gotten the message, you don’t have to trick us with manipulated book descriptions lacking full divulgence in order to get us into Sunday School to hear the same tired message again. [6]  Truth be told, not a single scientist was ever burned at the stake, according to science historian Ronald Numbers, [7] and religion was historically one of the strongest supporters of science. [8]  In fact, Christianity birthed modern science! [See CEH’s list of creation scientists.]  Knowing she was challenging a theory cherished by many, Dr. Tan was more careful with data when researching on the issues challenging the view of Darwinian evolution than with genetics or developmental biology, her former research focus. Before she switched her research direction from oogenesis to the origin of life, she asked Dr. John Walker, her department chairman, for permission.  In response to this request, her supervisor asked her to give a talk in the faculty-to-faculty seminar about her interests. In retrospect, it appears that his suggestion was a subtle way to prevent her from researching this area. After that conversation Walker attempted to stop her from pursuing any research against Darwinism. That was difficult because her research goal was not directed toward disproving evolution. It was focused on learning about the molecular details of DNA replication, transcription, and translation, which, in turn, led her away from evolution.  Persecution Accelerates   In December 2014, now that knowledge of her “heresy” was public, her laboratory and office were moved from a modern and well-equipped building, to a Lefevre Research Laboratory (University of Missouri College of Arts and Sciences), an old and deteriorated room with a disgustingly stained laboratory floor.  Subsequently, the interim dean at the time, Dr. Cooper Drury, informed her that the University decided to dismiss her for cause, claiming unsatisfactory performance. At that time she had 39 publications, 1,239 citations, and 88,915 reads. She was one of the most productive associate professors, with excellent student ratings during her last few years. Nonetheless, her peers disparaged any publication that took umbrage with Darwinism. She would have been better off to have published nothing rather than authoring publications that critically evaluated evolutionism. The fact is that, in the period when she was given an unsatisfactory five-year post tenure evaluation  (2013-2017), of the 35 total faculty members in her department, she had more peer-reviewed  publications than the majority of faculty members. Show Trial Like the Inquisition  The interim dean, Dr. Cooper Drury, said that she could resign to avoid the dismissal process, or she could request a hearing. She requested a hearing and was told that she could bring a lawyer, or an advisor, to the hearing, but she decided against this option, which she soon realized was a mistake. She entered the hearing with little idea about what would transpire. In addition to members of the University of Missouri Campus Faculty Committee on Tenure, there were a court reporter, a videographer, and several lawyers in the room. In fact, both her dean and the chairperson are lawyers, the committee had a lawyer counsel, and her dean had a lawyer who had two helping  lawyers. The charges for which she was being fired were vague, specifically that there was  “adequate cause for dismissal related directly and substantially to your fitness or performance in a professional capacity of teacher or researcher.” [And for] failing to “perform her responsibilities in research at levels satisfactory to maintain her tenured appointment.”  It was clear from her academic hearing that the root issue was her molecular biology research which showed that the life-from-non-life belief and the evolutionary notion that eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes were both at odds with the experimental evidence. Her response was to affirm that  these evaluations are the product of an orthodoxy that censors challenges to an explanation of the origin of life and its diversity held by my department Director and Personnel Committee, as well as the product of actions taken to censor and prevent my research about origins. The censorship violates Academic Freedom, what the tenure system at the University of Missouri aims to protect and what is essential to good science and good science education. In short, the key issue is about Organism specific Genetic Information Coding and Decoding and its challenge to the current popular belief about life, origin of life, and origin of biodiversity.  The committee also claimed that  Professor Tan failed to contribute research, peer-reviewed journals, and failed to raise any research funding… University of Missouri uses indicators to determine the quality of research and education. These indicators include faculty research published in journals that are found in Thomson Reuters InCites database, the database that houses thousands of journals.  The Catch-22 The university knew, or should have known, that the likelihood of an out-of-the-closet creationist publishing in peer-reviewed secular journals is essentially zero. [9] And, if by some chance she did manage to publish in one of their journals, the article very likely would have been withdrawn when the evolutionary establishment monitors became aware of it. [10] Her opening statement in her defense is here:  “the evaluations are factually incorrect and in direct conflict with the Division of Biological Sciences’ guidelines for review and the evaluation of faculty productivity. My publications mostly are in respected peer-reviewed journals. And especially, if you look at the teaching evaluation, that, we should say, is very objective — We’re all looking at the MIZZOU students’ evaluations — You can see how my teaching, based on the evaluations of the students, has increased greatly in the past couple of years. As of last semester, it reaches four point nine something over five. But that evaluation from my Department Director and the Personnel Committee was “unsatisfactory.”  Professor Tan then added that her publications were  peer-reviewed. So, these evaluations are not factually correct. They are efforts to … censor challenges to an explanation of the origin of life and its diversity held by my department Director and Personnel Committee. The censorship violates the principles of good science and good science education, the academic freedom and non-discrimination policies of this University, various provisions of the 1st and the 14th Amendments of the U. S. Constitution that prohibit a state from endorsing or abridging a particular religious viewpoint, similar provisions in the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Missouri, the CRRs of the University, and the DBS guidelines. Therefore, I would like to urge you to investigate the issue carefully and thoroughly and to judge objectively, for the sake of yourself, the University, and the State and the U. S. Constitutions.  She then presented some of the evidence she found that led her to question Darwinism, noting that “a comparison of RNA polymerases, (the enzymes used to synthesize RNA using DNA as a template)” reveals that  bacterial RNA polymerase is made of four different proteins and five different subunits. Bacteria use one single RNA polymerase to synthesize all their RNAs. Eukaryotes, on the other hand, use at least three different RNA polymerases. So, eukaryotic RNA polymerase shown here is the simplest one — that’s RNA polymerase II — which is used for Eukarya to transcribe their protein-coding genes, it is made up of 12 different proteins. But for bacteria, the core enzyme is made of four proteins. It needs help from one additional protein to perform the basal level of transcription. But a eukaryotic  polymerase, RNA polymerase II specifically here, needs help from many different proteins here. There are actually 43 different proteins involved, the whole thing contains 49 different subunits. So, I can logically conclude that bacteria and eukarya have their own way of transcribing their genes. Eukarya RNA polymerases are much more complicated. Even though they’re much more complicated–they’re made of many more different proteins–they need help from many more proteins than the bacterial ones do.  Academic Blindness  No one could dispute the facts she presented. Furthermore, they had no interest in the facts. She did not believe in Darwinism and that was her problem. Period. In her defense one professor noted, paraphrasing  When I look at her résumé, I see she earned a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania and a post doctorate at Harvard University. She is a serious scientist, just as serious as Professor Barbara McClintock. But before she [McClintock] was awarded a Nobel Prize, she had difficulty publishing her papers in mainstream journals and getting grants because of her point of view. She couldn’t get tenure here at the University of Missouri. So right now maybe her [Tan’s] papers are not in the mainstream journals because the community is not happy with her ideas.  Judgment Rendered   On June 29, 2022, the Board of Curators informed her that they had decided “to sustain the decision by the Hearing Committee” to dismiss her. Her response was:  I researched and wrote articles on how genes demonstrate that it is impossible for life having come from non-life and eukaryotes having evolved from prokaryotes, but those articles could not be published in mainstream journals, and, thus, I could not get federal research funds and could not support students or postdoctoral fellows. Meanwhile, my supervisors were offended because my conclusions challenge their cherished view of life and its origin. With more than ten years’ efforts, a condition was generated so that the University could dismiss me for cause. Even though the charge  was done prematurely, they succeeded.  Evolution has now become the enemy of evidence-based science concerning origins. Tan’s experience may place her as the ‘Galileo’ of evolution’s war on Darwin skeptics. The problem is that, we as a society, allow such travesties to occur over and over again. The facts that Dr. Change Tan uncovered, however, will not change. They will exist forever to falsify Darwin’s theory. References  [1] All the quotes are from Surviving The Darwinian Intolerance—Organism-Specific Genetic Information Coding and Decoding Systems: A Personal Journey by Professor Change Laura Tan. [2] Tan, Change Laura. Big Gaps and Short Bridges: A Model for Solving the Discontinuity  Problem. Answers Research Journal 9:149-162, July 2016.  [3] Tan, Change Laura. The Absence of Universally-Conserved Protein-Coding Genes. Answers Research Journal 15:83-95, April 2022.  [4] Tan, Change Laura, and Jeffrey P. Tomkins. Information Processing Differences Between Archaea and Eukarya—Implications for Homologs and the Myth of Eukaryogenesis. Answers Research Journal 8:121–141, March 2015.  [5] Tan, Change Laura, and Rob Stadler. The Stairway To Life: An Origin-Of-Life Reality Check. Evorevo Books, Bucharest, Romania; https://www.amazon.com/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life Reality-ebook/dp/B085VDGTWM/ , 2020.  [6] https://www.amazon.com/Stairway-Life-Origin-Life-Reality-ebook/dp/B085VDGTWM/ . [7] Ungureanu, James C. Myths about Science and Religion: That Giordano Bruno was the First Martyr of Modern Science; https://jamescungureanu.com/2013/04/04/myths-about-science-and - religion-that-giordano-bruno-was-the-first-martyr-of-modern-science/ , 2020. [8] See Numbers, Ron. Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2009.  [9] Bergman, Jerry. Silencing the Darwin Skeptics: The War Against Theists , 396 pages. Leafcutter Press, Southworth, Washington, 2016.  [10] Bergman, Jerry. Censoring the Darwin Skeptics. How Belief in Evolution is Enforced by Eliminating Dissidents , 566 pages. Leafcutter Press, Southworth, Washington, 2022.

by Professor G. H. Kailer, DTM (Doctor of Teaspoonicine Morphology)  You've probably heard of the primordial soup, the great ocean of amino acid rich water from which the first cells allegedly arose. New evidence indicates that the primordial soup was, in fact, a plot foisted upon the world by Campbell's Soup Company to make us believe that soup was foundational to life. ¹ Due to a generous research grant from the Lipton Company, we now know that life really began in the primordial tea. ² One of the earliest forms to rise from the primordial tea is the lowly Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus. ³ The Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus has several unique structures worthy of . The cranium is very nicely rounded, though quite flat. ⁴ The brain capacity is very small, assuring us that the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus is a very primitive form. We observe that it had a single elongated appendage with a distal anal perforation. There is presently an effort underway by a team of reconstruction experts to discern the exact method used for locomotion.  Continuing excavation uncovered the very fascinating Tabl Espoonica Saurus. The Tabl Es poonica Saurus shared several homological structures with the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus. Both structural and chemical homology demonstrate conclusively the close evolutionary relationship of these two forms. ⁵ Careful comparisons of the cranial capacity indicate that the Tabl Espoonica Saurus has almost exactly three times the brain size of the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus, thus revealing that the Tabl Espoonica Saurus is clearly an advanced relative of the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primativicus. The way we prove beyond reasonable doubt that the Tabl Espoonica Saurus evolved from the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus is by placing it slightly higher and to the right.  Research from the western section of an ancient cache of Teaspoonicine forms produced another specimen clearly belonging to the same genus, the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus. We have established a confidence interval exceeding 98% for the assignment of the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus to the Teaspoonicine family. Once again, the similarity of rounded cranium, singular elongated appendage and the same type of distal anal perforation naturally lead to the conclusion that the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus must be evolved from the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus by way of the Tabl Espoonica Saurus. The marked growth of the cranial capacity suggests that the brain development of the Teaspoonicine family far exceeded the morphological development of either modified appendages or the functional evolution of the family's methods of locomotion.  We do observe in the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus an interesting feature introduced to the anterior edge of the cranium. It is in the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus we first see a rolled anterior. It is apparent to those who have worked most closely with this research that the rolled anterior rim allowed these creatures to maintain facial integrity under stress. They were evidently less likely than their earlier ancestors to get bent out of shape by the stresses of life. ⁶ The same anterior roll seen in the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus was one of the first certain identifying marks of the next form in the Teaspoonicine series. The Whol Ecupi Wumpimus shared not only the anterior cranium roll, but the typical rounded cranium, the singular elongated appendage and the same type of distal anal perforation seen on other members of this family. The brain capacity had undergone an incredible increase in size with a remarkably small change in other anatomical features. Yet, it is worth noting that in the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus, one researcher noted that the single appendage was more robust than seems proportionate for the rest of the family. The robustness of this appendage is not outside the predicted range, but it does suggest divergence from the norm. Some have suggested this as evidence that the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus was more likely to have been an upright-walker. On this basis, one held that the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus was obviously closer to siring men than other forms in the Teaspoonicine group. ⁷ When placed into the series, carefully arranged from left to right, from smaller to larger, especially from lower to higher, it is perfectly clear how evolution has progressed among the Teaspoonicines. From the Primordial Tea, to the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus, through the Tabl Espoonica Saurus, via Coffeemeasur Ecupimus, we are able to see with our eyes the remarkable transformation through which the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus came into existence. In spite of this overwhelming evidence, however, some fundamental creationists insisted that if we were to honestly hold to this model of Teaspoonicine origin and development, we needed to produce a transitional form which would better link the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus and the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus. ⁸ Their objection was that the increase in brain capacity between these two forms was entirely too great to be accounted for merely on the basis of natural selection and mutation.  We went back to our benefactors at Lipton and reported the challenge to the integrity of our research (and the implicit threat to the Primordial Tea hypothesis). They generously supplied an additional $250,000.00 in scientific advancement grants in order to squash the objections  perpetrated by those who know nothing of Teaspoonicine morphology.  As is usually the case, science won out! ⁹ In an obscure cache of Meso-Teaspoonicines found jumbled in a square wooden cuisinary burial crypt, we discovered the Half Ecupi Wumpimus. The Half Ecupi Wumpimus was obviously the perfect transitional example linking the Coffeemeasur Ecupimus to its more modern descendant, the Whol Ecupi Wumpimus. With the completion of this uniform series, it becomes clear to all men of intelligence that the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus is most certainly the earliest ancestor of the well known, modern Teaspoonicus Hyper Maximus Saucepanicus!  Researcher's note: When the Tabl Espoonica Saurus was first studied, we had no clue as to the meaning and function of what seemed to be a ring passing through its anal perforation. With the discovery of the Teaspoonicus Hyper-Maximus Saucepanicus, we see a very similar ring in its distal extremity's perforation, as well. We still don't understand it's function, but it seems obvious that the ring of the Teaspoonicus HyperMaximus Saucepanicus is a vestigial organ from its evolutionary past. An exhaustive report on the usefulness of the anal ring will be forthcoming from the Institute for Demonstrating Intelligence with Obtuse Twaddly Science (I.D.I.O.T.S.)  Professor Kailer welcomes your correspondence at:  Land-O-Oz Research Institute  P.O. Box 442174  Lawrence, KS 66044  or FAX (913) 841-5352  All comments are welcome, but critical papers will be entertained only from those with accredited qualifications in Teaspoonicine Morphology. (Non-degreed laymen have no business challenging the work of experts!) Editor's Note:  While the preceding report by Professor Kailer contains much valuable research which will undoubtedly be quite new to many people, in the early eighties we reported significant research by Dr. R. Holtus of Sandy Labs, NM, showing that objects formerly believed to have been created had in fact evolved. Holtus' research led him to conclude that chains had evolved from volcanic eruptions in beds of iron ore. He was able to show many evolutionary twists during the early development of the chain, and even found some missing links (and more  than a few weak ones).  Holtus' research was plagiarized ... er... followed closely, by some amazing work by Professor Twillis of Patch O'Berry, Missouri who was able to demonstrate that spoons had clearly evolved into forks by discovering that holes in primitive spoons had eventually elongated, then turned parallel to the elongated appendage, probably eventually opening on the end to produce a fork. As with other great research in evolution Twillis' research was derided by fundamentalists of the religious right until he silenced them with the discovery of a complete transitional form, the now famous Spork.  Kailer is the first to claim evidence for teaspoon ancestry of humans. While his evidence is very cogent, as mentioned in his footnotes, some remain skeptical. One of those skeptics Kailer did not mention was Holtus who felt he had clear evidence for chain ancestry of hominids. Lest we forget the power of Holtus' evidence, we remind the reader that it included both Oriental and African branches showing definite hominid features.  Also, in this journal, Twillis (1989) produced cogent evidence that man had evolved from the sand dollar via wheeled vehicles. (See below) Twillis did not commit on the origin of the Sand Dollar, but privately he has expressed preference for a soup of molten silica dioxide.  Creationists will undoubtedly twist these minor disputes out of proportion, and will misquote and quote out-of-context these brilliant scientists, even going to the ludicrous extreme of trying to claim that these differences indicate weakness in evolutionary theory. But, the informed reader will recognize that science is a self-correcting process and that these minor disputes, rather than displaying any weakness in evolution theory, merely demonstrate the validity of the scientific process and the universality of acceptance of the basic doctrines of evolution among all true scientists. 1 Campbell's Soup Company, in a recent advertising campaign, is clearly attempting to reinforce the popular belief in the ability of primordial soup to be the source of the emergence of life. Their ad slogan is "Never Underestimate the Power of Soup."  2 Origin of life researchers did an extensive model of the action of solar energy on a prebiotic soup mixture. Taking billions of gallons of beef stew, containing lots of both animal and mineral proteins, gently stirring it in the sunlight for billions of years, you will have an awesome lot of rotten beef stew. This constitutes a very strong, though indirect, evidence for the primordial tea hypothesis.   3 English theoreticians seemed disposed to ascribe primal ascendency to another form often found in laboratory models of primordial tea. The Pekoe Blackii Bagus certainly seems to form in virtually every laboratory simulation of tea. However, chemical homological studies invalidate any conjecture that the Pekoe Blackii Bagus could be even remotely related to the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus. One well-known lecturer on Teaspoonicine Morphology, Kenny Hammer from Australia, reports that some of the Australian investigators briefly considered the Earr Legrey Bagus seen in some experimental tea tanks as an early ancestor of Teaspoonicines. But the Earr Legrey Bagus fell to the same fate as the Pekoe Blackii Bagus.  4 The principal work in the field of teaspoonicine morphology has been done near Oz, Kansas. Remarkably parallel work, worthy of note by all serious teaspoonicine morphologists, comes from Patch O'Berry, Missouri. Evidently, teaspoonicines closer to the Mississippi tend to have slightly more oblong craniums than the western population. Even though the roundness of the western forms is considered to be more common, the elongation of the eastern forms does not justify a different taxonomic classification. 5 The Tabl Espoonica Saurus shares in common with the Teaspoonicus Minimus Primitivicus a rounded cranial cavity, the singular elongated appendage, and the distal anal perforation. In sharp contrast with the Pekoe Blackii Bagus, mentioned in note #3 above, which bears no evidence of chemical homology, the Tabl Espoonica Saurus forms observed at the Center for Research of Advanced Propositions for Teaspoonicine Anatomical Naprapathic Knowledge yielded test results approaching 100% correlation in molecular homology.  6 A leading Teaspoonicine Forensic Psychologist, Dr. Paul Ackerspoon, postulates that Meso-teaspoonicines reflected numerous anthropomorphic traits including, but not limited to, stress responses such as brow furrows resulting from deep-seated concerns over existential issues and the final state of the departed. True fulfillment for the Teaspoonicines was very temporary. Many seemed to suffer feelings of emptiness for extended periods.  7 An unconfirmed account from Disneyland indicates that Dr. Don Joe Hansen has expressed skepticism regarding the incipient hominid structure seen in the hypertrophied appendage of the post-meso-teaspoonicine Whol Ecupi Wumpimus. But we all know Don Jo Hansen's near pathological bias toward apes and soup, so it is expected that evidence related to spoons and tea would be difficult for him to swallow. Nevertheless, the world waits anxiously his definitive response soon to appear in Lost Continent Geographic Magazine. Dr. Twillis of Missouri assures this author that an endorsement by Don Joe Hansen would virtually guarantee universal acceptance of the Teaspoonicine ancestry of certain groups of hominids. Such a development could not be ignored by any responsible Evolutionary Morphologist. It would certainly influence any future work in anthropological ontogeny and phylogeny.  8 The interference of fundamentalist creationists to the advancement of true science, such as this work, has been well documented by numerous experts in many fields. Biblical creationists have totally discredited themselves by their own claims. No one can profess intellectual integrity and deny the obvious, concrete evidence we scientists hold in our own hands for Teaspoonicine Ontogenesis and Teaspoonicine Phylogenetic progress.   9 Dr. Hug eRoss, normally a defender of true science, is also reportedly unimpressed by the evidence for teaspoonicine human ancestry. He claims to have solved a revised mirror image of the equations of the General Theory of Relativity to demonstrate conclusively that teaspoons expanded rapidly in a flat time warp from BB's, whereupon God intervened with a minor miracle to produce Coffeemeasure Ecupinius. Those who foolishly expect evidence to support his claims apparently must await repair of his mirror which was damaged while solving some new equations upside down in the shower. However, eRoss did say that he had solved Einstein's equations backwards using triple mirrors, which led unequivocally a rapid expansion of the primordial tea. Thus, while expressing reservations about teasponicine human ancestry, eRoss remained true to his mission in life, clearly showing that any enlightened scientist will quickly reject any view based on the silly notion that God expressed himself clearly on origins in the Bible, in favor of more scientific models.

February 2009 The theory of evolution can only be discussed adequately if a distinction is made between micro-evolution in which the seize of the DNA of an organism does not increase, and macro-evolution in which the size of the DNA of an organism does increase.  Micro-evolution is brought about by the recombination of gene-variants (alleles) from the genepool of a population and selection of advantageous combinations. This mechanism is fundamental for animal and plant breeding, and is responsible for the continuous adaptation of living nature to changing circumstances by natural selection. An example of micro-evolution is the change in the beaks of Darwin finches.  Macro-evolution would be brought about by code-expanding, inheritable mutations of the DNA that provide a selective advantage. Mutations, however, are opposed by various mutation-repair systems in the cell kernel. An example of such a mutation-repair system is the deletion of code expanding mutations when producing sex cells. In this process, the genes inherited from the father of the organism are mixed with those inherited from the mother. If the length of the DNA partitions that are exchanged are not exactly equal, the process will break down resulting in the deletion of the code expanding mutation. In addition, macro-evolution requires a dysfunctioning mutation-repair system, which is a severe selective disadvantage for an organism in the struggle for survival since it causes cancer and hereditary diseases. A structural process of (1) code expanding (2) immediately advantageous (3) non-repairable (4) inheritable DNA-mutations, made possible by (5) a dysfunctioning mutation-repair system, can only exist in a mythical story, but not in reality. Moreover, what to think of the logical impossibility that mutation-repair systems are produced by the processes they antagonize?  As micro-evolution is produced by a process completely different from the process that would produce macro-evolution, ‘a huge amount of micro-evolution’, in which the size of the DNA does not increase, cannot add up to macro-evolution. Micro-evolution can produce very large differences in the appearance of organisms (for instance it can produce very big, aggressive fight dogs, or kind, palmtop dogies) and new species, without an increase in the size of the DNA of these organisms. Evidently, the numerous examples of micro-evolution cannot be used to prove the existence of macro-evolution.  Only in mythical stories, molecules possess an intrinsic desire to clot into ever more complex substances, into organic soup, RNA, DNA, a primitive gene, cells, an ever more complex organisms. In the real world, the natural cause of events is exactly the opposite. Random processes are aimless, but they have a direction (‘arrow of time’): sooner or later they will equalize any difference, for instance in energy, temperature, potential, energy density, information or complexity. No serious scholar will deny this basic property of reality. The macro-evolutionary theory is in flat contradiction with this basic property of reality, and therefore with physical science. In addition, the macro-evolutionary theory is in contradiction with Darwin’s principle of ‘survival of the fittest’. As a consequence, the theory of macro-evolution is an invalid scientific theory.  An important rule of science, frequently applied by reviewers, is that invalid theory is put into the garbage can, even when no alternative scientific theory is available. Then, a gap in scientific knowledge remains, because the theory “god, or an intelligent designer, or a pink elephant created the DNA” is not a scientific theory as it is intestable and therefore infalsifiable. The theory “god, or an intelligent designer, or a pink elephant created the DNA” is therefore a belief that belongs to the domain of religion.  The theory of macro-evolution is invalid and has to be rejected according to the rules of science. An excellent scientific alternative however is available: “We don’t know (yet)”. Such a position is completely normal and legitimate in any branch of science, and should be normal and legitimate as well in scientific discussions of how all genes and all other DNA present in living nature have originated.

Grand Rapids Michigan William B Eerdmans Publishing Company 279 pages, endnotes, topic list, scripture references $22.50 in paperback, $14.74 Hardcover $13.80 as Kindle in Amazon Prime This is not a new book. It was published in 1996. But it has had a long and influential life. Why should a pediatrician review it? And why now? First, I emerged from my medical training in 1967 as a theistic evolutionist, having been thoroughly indoctrinated in “the truth of evolution.” What brought me back to Biblical creation was scientific evidence. Therefore, my attention was drawn to this book when it was quoted to me as the authoritative refutation of my creationist views.  I heard the author being interviewed by Ken Myers of “Mars Hill Audio,” describing creationism as consisting of pronouncements by rural pastors unqualified to discuss science. I emailed Dr. Noll and asked if he had read young earth creationist writings. He replied that he only reads qualified experts in the field. I reminded him that he himself is considered a qualified expert, although he had not gone to the primary sources.  In 2021 I finally purchased his book. Most of it looks, to this non-historian, to be a masterful synthesis of church history, focusing briefly on the church fathers and the reformers. Most of the book addresses evangelical phenomena beginning with the Whitefield and Wesley revivals and the first and second great awakenings in America. He laments the lack of serious scholarship within the movement and analyzes the possible factors that contributed.  He draws on the writings of hundreds of experts, as evidenced by 367 endnotes. He does not dwell on the Scopes Trial which might have precipitated an evaluation of “trial by media” coordinated by anti-creationists. Instead, he simply designates it as the end of the era dominated by William Jennings Bryan.   Noll takes a panoramic view, essentially from 30,000 feet, that does not swoop down to turn over rocks until it gets to the only young earth creationists he references, Drs Whitcomb and Morris. The author quotes from the introduction to The Genesis Flood , highlighting the authors’ goal of ascertaining what the Bible has to say about the Flood and orienting the data of the relevant sciences. (page 201-202) To Dr. Noll, that sounds like pounding square pegs into round holes and he never looks at the results of that change of orientation, either within Whitcomb and Morris’s book or the tsunami of research that followed. The only other ally of modern creationism who is mentioned is Phillip Johnson and he is only applauded for addressing the philosophical overreach of naturalism (page 197), ignoring Johnson’s proposal that the validity of scientific evidence needs to be evaluated by legal standards.  He notes that the evangelical experience is based on conversion. Evangelical life is influenced by separation of church and state in America and a populist orientation that has tended to be suspicious of authority and leans towards anti-intellectualism.   The flow of the book is that of a calm and disinterested scholar observing the currents of theology and practice until it comes to what certainly looks like Dr. Noll’s “pet peeves.” Young earth creation, he claims, is an idea that was never defended until the 20th Century (page 13). This even though Jesus believed in the Great Flood and Job hears God describe the behemoth, a sauropod dinosaur as a real animal that Job would have seen – as being created “with you.” Noll attributes recent creation to Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price (page 189) even though the Jewish calendar puts us  in the year 5781.   Dr. Noll also neglects giving voice to the young earth theologians. If God uses evolution and millions of years, then the geologic layers represent death before the time of Adam, thus before sin. If the death penalty only referred to spiritual death, then why is a blood sacrifice necessary? Why did Jesus have to take a body, suffer and die? Or is God just a bad communicator?  Another issue that Noll approaches with less than scholarly detachment is “radical apocalyptic speculation,” intense interest in prophecy and a penchant for identifying current events with Biblical prophecies (page 174). He opposes the rapture as a “wooden interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4” (page 143). Yet the disciples were told that Jesus was coming back in the manner He left. We are instructed to be ready because He could come at any time, and that although no one knows the day and hour except the Father, we can know the times and seasons.  Noll claims that spiritual warfare, with events in the spiritual realm paralleling the physical, as depicted in the writings of Frank Peretti, implies a nearly Manichaean dualism (page 140). Yet unlike this heresy that proposes equally powerful good and evil gods, the novels represent a reasonable application of the facts of Scripture. For instance, Jesus cast out demons and stated that Satan wanted to “sift” Peter. Paul warned that we fight spiritual wickedness in high places for which we need spiritual armor and constant prayer. An angel described as coming to answer Daniel’s question  was detained by “the Prince of Persia.” One of the churches addressed in Revelation is located where Satan has his throne. And, of course, Satan is described in the end as defeated and cast into the lake of fire.  Mark Noll was a graduate of Wheaton College and came back to teach for 27 years after getting an MA in English from University of Iowa, an MA in church history from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and a PhD in church history from Vanderbilt University. He has since moved on to Notre Dame and Regent College. During his years at Wheaton, the college was a stronghold of theistic evolution and long age creation.   The book has an index of names and subjects and an index of Scripture references. Reviewed by Ross S. Olson MD

Evoskepsis Association, February 2009 What is the natural course of events?  The aim of science is to reveal truth. Thereto science puts questions like: Is the earth flat or round? Does the sun spin around the earth or does the earth spin around the sun? What are random processes capable of? What is the natural course of events? Not all questions, however, can be answered since a scientific answer or theory must be falsifiable and therefore has to be testable somehow. The theory “A god, or an intelligent designer, or a pink elephant, has created the living nature” is untestable, because where is that god, intelligent designer, or pink elephant to be measured and tested. Consequently, this theory is unscientific. It is a belief. The theory “Random processes have created the living nature” is scientific indeed, because random processes can be measured and tested. Science understands random process completely. We know they have no aim, but they do have a direction: sooner or later they will equalize any difference, for instance of temperature, energy, density, elasticity, complexity or information. Not any serious scholar will deny this basic property (‘arrow of time’) of our reality. Everyday, we experience this basic property in our houses, offices, laboratories, and factories: cups of tea cool off, batteries get empty, chemical reactions die down, and machinery and production systems wear out and fall apart. Any complex structure with a high energy level will ultimately fall apart by random processes back to the lowest possible energy level, as confirmed by physical science. The theory of macro-evolution however states exactly the opposite, and claims that random processes can make simple molecules to clot into ever more complex substances, organic soup, RNA, DNA, a basic gene, a basic cell, and ever more complex organisms. While the natural course of events is that ‘apples fall down’ and random processes extinguish complexity, the theory of macro-evolution states that ‘apples fall upward’ and random processes make complexity grow ever further. The theory of macro-evolution thus is in flat contradiction with the fundamentals of our reality and with physical science that formalizes these fundamentals, and is therefore not valid. An important rule of science, which is applied frequently by reviewers, is that an invalid theory is put into the garbage can, even if an alternative scientific theory is absent. A gap in our scientific knowledge is the result, but gaps are the business of science. In any branch of science “We don’t know (yet)” is a completely normal and legitimate scientific position, and that should hold too when a scientist is asked how the complexity in living nature has originated.  The return of the alchemists  Evolution is as everywhere and normal as gravity, thanks to the mechanism of recombination of gene variants from the gene pool of a population and selection of advantageous combinations. By that mechanism, the living nature can adapt continuously to changing circumstances and new species can originate. In this micro-evolution, however, the DNA of an organism does not grow. Besides, expansiong of the DNA is antagonized, for instance when producing sex cells. When mixing the genes that come from the father of the organism with the genes that come from the mother, the nucleotide strings that are exchanged between homologous chromosomes must have exactly the same length, or the process stops ¹ . A long sequence of micro-evolution, where the DNA does not grow, thus cannot produce macro-evolution, where the DNA grows and becomes more complex. The numerous accounts of micro-evolution from living nature and from the fossil record are therefore unjustly adduced as evidence for macro-evolution. Also the results Miller’s experiment in 1953 with a primitive building blocks-for-life-factory are unjustly adduced to underpin that random processes can make simple molecules clot into billions of tons of building blocks for life. ²  If random processes would really do such a thing, complex high energetic substances could be produced without effort for free, making the chemical industry superfluous. Moreover, many right-thinking people suppose unjustly that (organic) molecules possess a hidden self-organizing property that allows them to increase complexity, provided time is no limitation. Centuries ago, the alchemists believed something like that. The thought that aside of the elements earth, water, fire and air, a mysterious fifth element was hidden in matter: the ‘ quinta essentia ’. After the Enlightenment, physical scientists have put an end to this misconception, it seemed. In this darwin year, the alchemists appear to be back, as well as the ways that were typical for the dark ages. Many educated people are willing to ignore everyday experience, the laws of physical science, and the rules of science, to keep their belief that only what you can measure can exist ( naturalism ). They obstruct open scientific discussion of the theory of macro-evolution by saying that criticism can only come from creationists, followers of intelligent design, or laymen, and is pointless. ³  They fence of the scientific fora and journals for sceptics of macro-evolution, as giving entrance would give them credibility and would help them to slide down society into fundamentalism ⁴ . Also the hundreds of scientists with a PhD that ask for room te be sceptical of the claim that mutation and selection can increase complexity by signing the ‘Scientific dissent from Darwinism’ on the internet, carry no weight at all. They are all creationists, ID-followers, or stupid fundamentalists, which must be ignored.  What would Darwin have thought of all this?  Hundred and fifty years ago, Darwin believed that cells were no more than small lumps of slime, instead of fully automated nano-factories controlled by a DNA-program that has a size of 3 billion characters in humans. Darwin knew nothing of the mechanism of micro-evolution that changed the beaks of his finches but that cannot make the DNA-code grow, and he knew nothing of the mutation repair systems that antagonize an expansion of the DNA-code. As a consequence, the idea could arise in his mind that many small changes might ultimately add up to big changes. Despite his ignorance, Darwin was a true scholar, and aware that a scientific theory should be falsifiable. In ‘The origin of species’ (6e ed., New York University Press, p. 154) he wrote: " If anyone would prove the existence of a complex organ that could absolutely not be the result of a large number of sequential changes, my theory would collapse completely ”. To his own surprise, his theory conquered the world within twenty years. Strangely, photo’s of him made after that victory do not show a self-assured scholar confident of the truth of his theory, but a sad, disillusioned man. The cause of this might be that Darwin made a frightful discovery in his back-garden after the publication of his book. He might have seen the one step transformation of a pupated caterpillar into a butterfly and he might have observed how two flabby gutter-like extensions on the front of the butterfly were inflated and zipped together in one smooth movement starting at the head of the butterfly, producing a tubular flexible tongue with which the butterfly took a sip of nectar before flying away. His ever-lasting fear, which his faithful friends had kept talking out of his head, appeared inescapable: according to his own criterion he had to reject his theory. From that crushing insight he would never recover… And what else? What would Darwin have thought of the neo-alchemists who regard the belief that a creative force or field outside our reality may have existed, or may exist, to be an insult for their intellect, but who believe themselves that a mysterious creative power is hidden in matter, and who are prepared to sacrifice empirical science, empirical evidence, and the integrity of science to hold on that belief. When we look at the photo’s of the old Darwin, one answer presses forward: He couldn’t care less!  A new enlightenment necessary  On 25 October 1996, our present-day secretary of Education and Science, micro-biologist Ronald Plasterk, wrote in his column in the journal Intermediair: “Hordes of biologists believe that evolution happens by the occurrence of a mutation somewhere in a species providing selective advantage. Since half a century yet, it is know that evolution do not happen that way, and cannot happen that way. … The origin of species proceeds by selection of combinations, not by mutations” . Today in the darwin year, the ignorance Plasterk calls attention for is still as big, and still results in adducing the numerous accounts of micro-evolution as a proof for macro-evolution. Therefore it is necessary we start teaching our pupils and students more accurately the mechanism of animal and plant breeding, and how living nature continuously adapts to changing circumstance by micro-evolution without changing the size of the DNA. We have to teach them that DNA mutation produces hereditary diseases and cancer in stead of improvement and growth of the DNA, and that sexual reproduction prevents the passing of code expanding mutations to prosterity. Moreover we must teach them that a process of structural growth of the DNA-code requires dysfunctioning mutation repair systems, which provide a severe selective disadvantage, and that according to Darwin’s principle of ‘survival of the fittest’ a population with dysfunctioning mutation repair will disappear. Together with our pupils and students we must repeat Miller’s experiment, both without and with the transportation system Miller applied, we must discuss the differences. We must teach them that naturalism is a belief that is not better or more plausible than the belief that outside our reality forces or fields might exist, or have existed, that cannot be captured by our laws of physics. We must show them how naturalists misuse science to make themselves credible, and how they gag the normal free scientific debate. In fact, a new enlightenment is necessary, for which this darwin year should be the starting-point.     ¹ http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CrossingOver.html   ² See SKEPP-discussie: http://forum.skepp.be/viewtopic.php?t=613 en ook  http://www.evoskepsis.nl/docs/Conclusies%20discussie%20op%20SKEPPforum%20over%20Proef%20van%20Miller%20is%20volksverlakkerij.pdf   ³ See for example Ad Valvas (journal of the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) nr. 15, 16, 17, en 18: http://www.advalvas.vu.nl/images/AdValvasPDF/PDF/5616.pdf  ⁴ http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/EDOC11297.htm

Although there is intense interest in this topic in the scientific community, I think that nearly everyone, except those who claim to have been abducted by aliens, agree that there is no evidence for life, much less intelligent life, on any other planet, moon, asteroid or comet. A lot of money has been spent looking. An early Mars probe, the Viking Lander, looked for carbon based molecules and found only a molecule of the cleaning fluid used to sterilize it before take-off, at least proving that the detector worked. There was a flurry of excitement when a later mission found evidence of rapid chemical activity when nutrients were dropped onto the Martian soil, initially thought to be due to metabolism by living creatures. But it turned out to be reactions with superoxides formed in the harsh conditions of the planet's surface. A meteorite found in Antarctica (known as ALH84001) was thought by its composition to be from Mars, possibly chipped off the surface by an asteroid impact and sent this way. It contained a strange microscopic object some thought to be a fossilized bacteria. But it was far too small to be a bacteria and the Martian origin is a real stretch. Radio Telescopes have been scanning the universe for decades looking for signs of coded messages from distant stars or galaxies, a project known as SETI or Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Despite media hype and support by the late Carl Sagan on his Public Television program Cosmos , nothing has been found. But the idea is now quite common that where there is liquid water, there is likely to be life. The possibility, however, is apparently convincing enough to our leaders to shake loose billions of dollars for exploration of the solar system with the prime purpose being a search for life. Where does this notion come from? Well, water is necessary for life as we know it, liquid water at that. And on earth, essentially wherever liquid water is found, there is also life. For example, there are bacteria in Lake Vostok, a body of liquid water under hundreds of meters of ice in Antarctica, kept from freezing by geothermal heat and intense pressure. There are also strange bacteria that metabolize hydrogen sulfide near deep ocean hydrothermal vents that spew out 600 degree F water, kept liquid by the immense pressure. But is a necessary condition also automatically a sufficient condition for something to occur. It is necessary to purchase a Lottery ticket in order to win the Lottery, but just buying one is no guarantee — and by the way, I don't recommend it. But the feeling of many scientists is that because life "spontaneously arose" here and survives in all sorts of environmental extremes, then it must have arisen elsewhere as well.  Therefore, this becomes a question of evolution, which is a very big topic and it will obviously not be possible to thoroughly cover it in a single short talk. What I do hope to accomplish, however, is to raise questions and stimulate thought. I hope to make everyone skeptical of those who say that evolution is a proven fact. It is obvious to those who study history that people often have incorrect ideas. In fact, at any given time, even the great majority of people may be mistaken on a particular topic. And to anyone familiar with human nature, it will not be a shock to realize that when the majority is powerful, dissenting views may also be suppressed. What is popular may not be true, and truth may not be popular. Therefore, to know the truth, we need to have an open mind, which includes a willingness to say, "Could I be wrong on this topic?" Knowing that it is difficult to even look at the relevant data from this perspective, one must also ask, "If I were wrong, could I be convinced?" Finally, given the reality of social pressure, a final question might be, "If I were convinced, would I be willing to change?" Let me begin with some definitions. By "evolution" I mean the notion that we and all living things come from non-living things, and have developed by completely natural means without any outside direction or power. This concept meshes with the idea that non-living things, including the whole time-space continuum, have also occurred naturally. Together, this forms the basis for philosophical naturalism, the theory that there is no need for a Creator since everything can be explained by other means.  Some evolutionists may now protest that the origin of life (abiogenesis) is a completely separate question and they prefer to begin with pre-existing life and simply talk about its gradual change by mutation and natural selection. There are two kinds of people who say this. Some believe God created the first life and let it evolve into everything we see today. There are all sorts of scientific and theological problems with that idea that I will only touch on briefly. Others who take this tack do not believe in God but think they have a good case for evolution of organisms from simple to complex. There are many pure scientific problems with that belief.  The examples that evolutionists use to prove evolution tend to be trivial, such as the breeds of dogs or bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The former is simply the unmasking of information already present in the original dog ancestor. Actually there is loss of information and the "purebred" dogs are actually less fit than their mongrel cousins. Bacteria develop resistance usually by losing a structure or function attacked by the antibiotic and are overall less fit than the wild type of organism. Occasionally resistance is a preexisting ability present in a minority of the population or borrowed by a process called lateral transfer from another species of bacteria and selected for survival in the presence of the antibiotic. In no case can examples be given of the spontaneous development of new information, such as that needed for flight or intelligence. Rather than showing how there can be "bacteria to biologist" evolution, the examples invariably show loss of information and deterioration. But the particularly disingenuous part of evolutionists most popular tack is the contention that they do not need to have a theory of the origin of life and can just say, I don't know. Well, they can and indeed should say that they don't know. But since there are only two possibilities for the origin of life, a natural mechanism or a supernatural mechanism, then without any evidence for the first, they need to admit that their working hypothesis is the second. This they are unwilling to even consider. Yet, in considering whether there is life in space, they are asking the question, "Did life spontaneously arise outside of earth?" If something crawls up and makes faces into their cameras on some alien world, they are not going to say, "Look at that. God made life on that planet, too." Let me illustrate how thinking on this issue involves much more than scientific objectivity and hard cold rationality. I was a theistic evolutionist going through my medical training. I was told and believed that science had proved evolution and only a few Neanderthals and other mental defectives or superstitious gullible people doubted it. Although for quite a while it shook my faith because it seemed to make God unnecessary, I finally decided that God must have set up the universe so it spontaneously organized itself. This view is sometimes called the "fully competent creation" and is considered by its backers to be a magnificent demonstration of God's power. It seemed to me that if that were the case, God must have done something special in the case of man to give him "the image of God" but that otherwise it was all automatic and imbedded in the basic constituents of the universe. I continued to hold this position, mostly because I had never really looked at the data in detail, even as a missionary in Hong Kong with the Evangelical Free Church. While there, my brother, who is a science teacher, sent me two books by Biochemist A. E. Wilder-Smith who showed that order does not arise spontaneously. Dr. Wilder-Smith also included pictures of "polystrate fossils," tree trunks 50 feet tall, fossilized standing up, that obviously could not have been covered at the rate hypothesized by uniformitarian geology because they would have rotted long before they were covered.  It took me a year to even read them because I was emotionally revolted by what seemed to be so far out of the scientific mainstream. Dr. Wilder-Smith showed that the whole idea of a code requires intelligence and the information carried by a code does not arise spontaneously. Long periods of time do not help because time degrades information. Random changes in a complex system do not improve it but deteriorate or completely destroy it Natural processes produce order, but it is of a different sort from the effects of intelligence. The sorting of pebbles and sand on the beach is easily explained by the action of wind and waves. The piling up of cut stones, cementing them together and forming them into a house with windows and doors, is the result of planning and work and is not innate in the nature of the materials or the natural forces acting on them. We can tell the difference and would not normally confuse a rock pile with a beach house. Nor would we attribute the presence of a house to the action of the wind and waves, but would assume that someone built it, even if we did not see the builder or know who it was. I think this would be true even if we had never seen a house before. Attempts to explain away this distinction generally appeal to long ages of time and say that eventually, the unlikely becomes inevitable and the impossible becomes likely. In real life, however, we all know that time will not help to produce this kind of order. Given many years of exposure to the forces of nature, a beach house will not transform itself into a 400-room castle, nor will a rock pile become a beach house. No, in time, both the castle and the house will be reduced to a rock pile and will blend in with all the other rocks along the beach. In the case of living things, the degree of order is so incredibly complex that the chance of it coming about by natural means is essentially zero. I was astounded and wondered why this point of view had never come up in my science classes. I first became an intelligent design advocate and then slowly began to see that there was also a powerful case for a young earth. In fact, the fossil record is much more consistent with rapid burial in a worldwide flood than in slow sedimentation over millions of years of a land mass that slowly rises and falls. For one thing, fossils don't form unless the creature is covered before it rots. Clams all over the world are fossilized closed. There are 50 foot tree trunks that surely would not wait to be covered up at 1 millimeter a year. There are many out of place fossils and in the grand canyon such as pollen in the pre-Cambrian layer where no such plants should have existed. Also, there are 200 million "missing" years and the layers are blended at their interface, as if for those 200 million years absolutely nothing happened, neither deposition nor erosion, and the bottom lay stayed soft waiting for the next.  Let me try to explain a bit further how complex life really is and how unreasonable it is to believe it came together and improved itself by natural processes. For those familiar with molecular biology, the next few thoughts will be understandable. For those who are not, I only ask that you just try to appreciate how intricate and interrelated the factors have to be for it all to work properly. Sir Fred Hoyle put it this way, "For life to occur by natural processes would be like a Boeing 747 assembling itself by means of an explosion in the junk yard." The simplest living cell must have many functioning parts to be alive -- that is to respond to its environment, to extract energy, to protect itself, and to reproduce. There must be coded information, usually stored in long molecules called DNA. This information must be retrieved and transferred when necessary to perform a function. This is generally done within cells by the manufacture of protein molecules, which catalyze chemical reactions and guide construction of structural parts of the cell.  All this must be organized in space for it to work. An auto parts store may have all the pieces needed to build a car, but until they are put together, you cannot drive it. Even one minor problem with the construction, such as a disconnected wire, may make the whole thing inoperable, and random changes in the parts or connections are not going to make it better. For those who think that "maybe we just got lucky," let me put a few numbers behind those ideas. Proteins are the basic building blocks for the function of living cells, and are essentially long chains of individual amino-acid molecules. They fold and assume various globular shapes, depending on which amino acids occupy which positions and on templates the coding for which is still poorly understood. (If they fold wrongly, harmful or fatal prions are formed, such as the one that causes "mad cow disease.") Their function is determined by the shape, atomic affinity and electrical charge at various points on their surfaces. There are 20 different amino acids which are used by living systems to make proteins. A few of these amino acids may occur naturally, but they exist in a mixture of "d" and "l" (L)forms, right handed and left handed, which are like mirror images of each other. Only the "l" forms are used in living systems. A protein molecule of 100 component parts would be a small part of a living cell. There would have to be, it is estimated, at least 230 very specific proteins, some as large as 10,000 amino-acids long, each coded by a gene, to complete the most simple, basic living cell. There would also have to be the coded information in the DNA for manufacturing that protein and the mechanisms for retrieving and transferring the information when the cell needed the function which that protein performed.  For the sake of illustration, let us look at the probability of putting that small protein molecule together from a "primordial soup" of individual amino acids, setting aside other difficulties such as the fact that long chains tend to fall apart. Let us also temporarily forget about the need to select only "l" forms, and the problem that amino acids, even if they do occur in nature, tend to deteriorate over time. Since the chance of selecting the correct amino acid for the first position from an equal mixture of 20 possibilities is about one in 20 (1/20), and the chance of selecting the second position correctly is also 1/20, the chance of getting both correctly is (1/20) ²  or 1/400. Therefore, the chance of getting all 100 positions correct is (1/20) ¹⁰⁰  which is (1/10) ¹³⁰  or 10ˉ ¹³⁰ . On the average, therefore, 10 ¹³⁰ different chains of 100 amino acids would have to be tried before it is likely that one of them would be the correct configuration to do that particular job for the cell.  This is an incredible number which we can only begin to understand. The probability of this protein coming together is far beyond the bounds of possibility. There are only about 10 ⁴⁷ molecules of water in all the oceans lakes and rivers of the whole earth and there are only about 10 ⁸⁰  atoms in the entire universe and about 10 ¹⁸ seconds in 30 billion years. Therefore, even allowing evolutionists longer than they think they have, we will run out of time and matter before even getting close to the order of magnitude needed to make it probable. But suppose, what if someplace in the universe, some chain of molecules got lucky on this one protein? Still, the DNA for controlling that protein would need to "just happen" as well. Then, in order to have life, the other 229 different proteins and their DNA would also have to be put together by chance, some of them 10,000-amino-acids long.  And this is just to produce the simplest living cell. What about improving it by random changes into all the life forms that exist, each with its own incredible complexity? For instance, we human beings have more than one billion bytes of information (one gigabyte) in each cell, forming thousands of genes, each coding the information for making a specific protein. The human brain contains a hundred-billion neurons and a hundred-trillion connections, more complex than the internet. "Well," you might say, "If it is so obvious, why do so many fail to see it?" That is a reasonable question and moves us from the physics to the psychology of evolution. When I returned from Hong Kong to Minnesota for a year of further training, I looked up some of my professors. The Christian advisor to the Christian Medical Society Student Chapter was a theistic evolutionist. I showed him this data and asked what he thought of it. He said it did not impress him. But I asked again how he answered it and he repeated the same answer. I got a mental picture of a person standing on the freeway with a Mack truck bearing down on him saying, "It doesn't impress me." He then gave me an application form for American Scientific Affiliation, an organization of theistic evolutionists, essentially using the junior high tactic of saying, "everybody is doing it." I have since discovered that those who do not accept evolution are often given failing grades in science classes. Their degrees may be denied. Their papers may be withheld from publication. Tenure may be refused. They will be rejected and ostracized by their peers. Therefore, it becomes a matter of professional survival to accept evolution. If it is accepted irrationally, it will be defended irrationally. Nevertheless, it may be defended passionately since otherwise, a person would have to acknowledge his dishonesty or lack of courage. Then another professor made passing reference to evolution in a lecture on hypertension, saying that the kidney evolved in an environment of low salt and when the sodium levels rise, it cannot compensate and by hormonal means raises the blood pressure. After the lecture I asked him if the kidney evolved into this amazing machine that keeps so many things in balance, knowing what to keep and what to toss, why could it not make a minor adjustment? He said that it was the time frame. I said that there was other evidence against evolution and asked if he would like to look at it. With out a moments hesitation he said, "No!" in a tone that implied that it was a stupid question. Either naively because I did not see the storm brewing or with uncharacteristic courage, I continued by saying that I could leave him some books and papers. He stopped me in mid sentence with, "I know where you are headed with this. You are going to talk about God and Jesus and I have no place for them in my life!" Then turning, he shot back over his shoulder, "And I don't think you can talk about this on a public university campus." I was flabbergasted. Here was a faculty member of a major medical school who was unwilling to even talk about what may be the most important scientific question possible, namely "Where did we come from." He was not responding intellectually but emotionally. As Theologian John Warwick Montgomery once said, "When you get on a train of thought, check your ticket." The idea is to see where a certain way of thinking is taking us. This professor did, and refused to get on board. Naturally, it did not change the truth, only his chance of learning it. I realized that on the topic of evolution, I had not been educated but indoctrinated. And I also saw clearly that the Christian in academic science, making his living in a hostile intellectual environment had apparently taken on "protective coloration" saying essentially, "I believe just like all you other guys do, but I say God did it." (This is no threat to the secular scientific community because they can say, "That's fine for you if you need a crutch, but we don't see the need.") Then having made that decision without supporting data, the compromising Christian would be forced to defend it emotionally and without evidence. I was radicalized, realizing that there were very smart, highly educated people who were completely out to lunch on this issue. There were even warm hearted spiritually alive Christians who were sincerely wrong, and even thought they were protecting the gospel from potential rejection by non-Christians on scientific grounds. Yet in the process they were eroding the authority of Scripture -- if God did it that way, why didn't He just tell us? To say that early man was primitive begs the question by assuming evolution. Adam and Eve were created perfect with powerful intelligence according to the Scripture. Early man invented all sorts of technology and art very quickly. Also, if God used a wasteful, destructive, cruel method of creating -- struggle for existence, competition for resources, predation, and death -- then as He said, "It is very good," Adam and Eve stood on top of thousands of feet of fossilized remains of that sordid history. And if that is the case, then physical death did not result from human sin but is God's method of creation. Is that the picture of the God who is personally and intimately involved in the lives of His people? Is a God who takes billions of years to create consistent with the God who will wrap up history in the twinkling of an eye? Is ruthless competition and survival of the fittest consistent with Jesus teaching and example of self-sacrifice and exhortation to care for "the least of these"? If death before sin is true, why did Jesus die physically on the cross and rise again to conquer death and take the penalty for our sins at the some time? Noted paleontologist, the late Stephen Gould of Harvard, once said something like this, "Evolution is a fact, because we are here." I asked some young children what was wrong with this statement and one replied, "He thinks there is no God." Is it not amazing that Dr. Gould's graduate students either cannot see or dare not state that simple flaw? There are some basic philosophical problems with the evolutionary position, but they enter in a circuitous manner. First, the scope of science is limited to natural explanations. That is a reasonable limitation to set, so that we do not postulate miracles or magic as the explanation for everything. For example, did the eclipse of the sun end because we beat our drums or was there another factor operating? By being persistent, natural explanations can be found to many, if not most, phenomena. But can we say, then, that there must be a natural explanation for everything? Science cannot prove that miracles do not exist. It can only admit its inability to deal with them. Yet many scientists confuse the scope of science with the totality of reality. Actually, there are many assumptions made by the scientist before he even starts to look at data. Firstly, he assumes that he, himself, exists. Now, of course, that is a good place to start. Conversely, if you start with the assumption that you do not exist, why bother with anything? Also, however, a scientist must assume: that the world exists and that his senses give accurate data about it; that he can manipulate that data with his mind and come up with true conclusions; that he can communicate true information with other people who are seeing the same world; and that the whole universe will not suddenly change tomorrow so that apples fall up instead of down.  It is interesting in this regard to note that science has flourished under a Biblical/Christian world view, which sees the Universe as a rational creation of a rational God. It is also assumed from this view that God made us rational beings capable, to a certain extent, of learning about His creation. It is further assumed that because it is His nature to be unchanging, He will not capriciously change everything; yet that He also occasionally intervenes miraculously. From the naturalistic point of view, the human brain is just an accidental organ, whose evolutionary purpose is supposedly for improved survival. It was designed and programmed by chance and there is no guarantee that it can come up with truth any more than randomly generated letters will come up with meaningful ideas. There is also no real mechanism for free will in a naturalistic world. The way the brain works, sensory input activates electrical-chemical pathways -- predetermined by the present random state of the brain and the pathways taken by previous impulses -- and produces a response. In other words, past experience and present happenstance determine what comes out. The person cannot help what he thinks or says. It was just the molecules bouncing around. When the evolutionist says he knows his brain evolved, he really has to admit that he could not help but say that. His brain is giving him essentially randomly processed data. Thus, he cannot trust the mind that led him to the conclusion. Anybody confused? On the other hand, when the evidence for creation is acknowledged, and the psychological and philosophical reasons for its rejection are unmasked, one is free to look objectively at all the data. It is then possible to even see a credible case for a young universe and to discover that the scientific information contained in the Bible is both accurate and reliable. More important, the case against evolution removes the illusion that atheism is intellectually respectable and throws one back to the most important decision any person ever makes: specifically, realizing that there is indeed an incredibly intelligent and powerful Creator Who made us and everything else, how will we respond to Him?  Reason only brings us so far, for we see a creation that is not only intricately designed and beautiful, we also see evil and suffering. Only the revelation God Himself provided and accredited with miracles and prophecies, the Bible, can fill in those gaps in our understanding. The Biblical Creationist believes that the existence of God is not only true but terribly important and that the only loving thing to do is to spread the news. This includes the good news as well as the bad news, because it is the bad news that makes the good news so good. We were given free will by our Creator so that we might choose to love and serve Him. But we have tragically chosen to go our own way, what the Bible calls sin. In the process, we have caused the whole of creation to fall into disarray and evil to fall even on innocent babies. Yet the Creator took the initiative to restore all things by becoming human, in Jesus Christ, and taking on Himself the penalty of our sin. Individually, we can return to the state He intended by humbling ourselves before Him and accepting the forgiveness He offers. Eventually, the great Creator who spoke the whole universe into existence, will bring it to an end, and judge all things. He will re-create what was originally intended to be, but hold each person responsible for the choices made in response to the knowledge each has been given. This is what it means when the Scripture says: "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened." (Romans 1:18-21) Those are words that do not pass the tests of political correctness, sensitivity or tolerance. Yet they claim to be inspired by God Himself. And if that is true, they need to be taken very seriously indeed. The argument about origins is not a game. It is not even an academic exercise. It is a sober test of intellectual honesty and humility with eternal consequences. God has arranged it so that finding Him does not depend on intelligence or education, but on open spiritual eyes. Those who accept the evidence and acknowledge God as their rightful Lord include people from both ends of the intellectual spectrum. Likewise those who reject. It is also not a question that we should leave to "the experts" because we each will be held responsible for the decision that we make. Look on www.tccsa.tc  for more information, for example See http://tccsa.tc/articles/index.html#pollen for the grand canyon data. 1/25/07 Revision

Reason becomes unreliable precisely at that point where the will has gone astray. Illogic is not the cause but rather the effect of misbehavior. Analytic and creative powers which perform spectacularly in other circumstances become redirected into rationalization and self justification when the need arises. This concept ought to be familiar to parents of small children whose offspring subject them to daily examples of (often transparent) mental gymnastics differing in degree of sophistication but not in kind from those of their more mature counterparts. Neither are criminologists and trial lawyers strangers to the practice of selective recall and convincing revisionism when people are confronted with well documented but unpleasant aspects of their past. One whose life is disordered only in areas unrelated to a matter under discussion may do a capable job of dealing with it, given the available information and the innate capacity of his mental apparatus. On the other hand, one with enormous intellectual skills may stagger between elementary fallacies and frank dyslogic (however well disguised with suitably erudite verbiage) to consciously or unconsciously avoid exposure of a basic character flaw, improper action or ulterior motive. An intellectually honest person needs to ask several questions to detect the potential for pitfalls: Have I considered the possibility that I may be wrong on this point? What would it take to convince me? If the evidence were clear would I be willing to change? Is it common to retreat from a publicly and loudly proclaimed opinion? Would it be easy for a man to denounce an idea that formed the foundation of his career and reputation? Indeed is it even possible to willingly acknowledge evidence that ones entire life has been built on a lie? I submit that some who evaluate the evidence for creation and against evolution do so with a strong aversion to the potential conclusion. Namely, they want to avoid at all cost the possibility that they may be responsible to a creator. That prejudice makes it impossible for them to accurately assess the case. This is not a new idea. Paul wrote it to the church in Rome over 1900 years ago, but the truth is reconfirmed with each succeeding generation. Ross S. Olson MD