News to Note, August 12, 2006

1. LiveScience.com: Scientists Reverse Evolution, Reconstruct Ancient Gene

This story made a big splash this week, so we'll be featuring a full response in an article soon. Briefly, though this experiment is touted as another proof of evolution, it is actually nothing of the sort. Scientists pieced together two genes in mice that they believe were part of the same gene 530 million years ago. One gene, called Hoxa1, is required for proper breathing. Another, called Hoxb1, is necessary for certain facial expression nerve functions.

Scientists combined the “crucial portions” of the Hoxa1 and Hoxb1 genes, and voilà-this new (“recreated,” according to evolutionists) gene does both what Hoxa1 did and what Hoxb1 did!

Underwhelmed by this “proof” of evolution? Look forward to a full response from AiG's Dr. Georgia Purdom.

2. The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade: Toledoan spreads word about creationism

Although this article is only indirectly about Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, it leads off by referencing a bus breakdown that Ken mentioned in a blog entry two weeks ago. See “AiG customer service aims for excellence” in this entry.

We are thankful for Mr. Yonke's objective reporting in this Blade article-he avoided taking potshots at us, and kindly included our web address. Also, if you live in the Toledo area, tune in to WPOS-FM (102.3) to hear Carl Kerby September 9 at 7:00 PM.

3. Appleton Post-Crescent: Winnebago County an evolution battle site

The debate over teaching evolution as “de facto fact” (that is, as a theory both unchallenged and unchallengeable) continues to flare up around the country, and the next battleground may be Wisconsin. Dr. Sandra Gade, a retired physics professor from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, started a petition drive to ask the Oshkosh school board for an “advisory referendum” requesting that students learn evidence for and against evolution. This certainly sounds reasonable so far.

You can learn more on Dr. Gade's website, TellAll.org

4. The Cincinnati Post: The evolution of Kansas

The Post, opining on the recent school board primaries in Kansas, refers to Answers in Genesis as “an advocacy group that champions the teaching of options to Darwinian evolution in schools,” even though AiG has informed Post reporters on multiple occasions that this is not true. In response, AiG sent a letter to the Post editor; we also explained our stance on public science education in “What Happened in Kansas?”

5. The (Louisville, Kentucky) Courier-Journal: Creation Museum taking shape in Northern Kentucky; see also The (South Africa) Sunday Independent: Creationist disneyland closes the history books

Both of these links are to the same AP article that we discussed in item #1 of last week's News to Note; we simply wanted to point out how subjective news sources can be. The Courier-Journal chose to title the AP piece quite fairly, “Creation Museum taking shape in Northern Kentucky.” Entirely accurate; no bias for or against AiG. But look at what headline the Sunday Independent chose!

6. CNN: Study: Universe bigger, older than expected

Basically, recent measurements have determined that the Triangulum galaxy (M33) is approximately 15 percent farther away from the Milky Way galaxy than was previously thought, which has led scientists to conclude that Hubble's constant (the number big bang proponents use to extrapolate the age of the universe) is too high. If the new datum is confirmed, secular cosmologists would revise the age of the universe to be nearer to 15.8 billion years rather than 13.7 billion years.

What we found most interesting in this article was this statement:

Scientists now estimate the universe to be about 13.7 billion years old (a figure that has seemed firm since 2003 [...])

So many scientific theories “seem firm” until they are revised a few years later! The inability of secular science to induce proof of anything leads to its failure to provide any real foundation for thought; this is why all science, whether Bible-based or naturalistic, must be built on an unscientific axiom.

7. ABC News: After 10 Years, Few Believe Life on Mars

Remember the hype in the mid-nineties when NASA announced life on Mars? (“Wow, NASA's found life on a meteorite from Mars; the Bible can't possibly be true.”) Creationist responses abounded, trying to caution Christians that this discovery was not quite as rock-solid (pardon the pun) as certain scientists were making it out to be.

Over the last decade, however, scientists have remained unconvinced that there was once life on Martian meteorite ALH84001. Many scientists, no doubt, still believe (in spite of a lack of evidence) that Mars once held some form of life. Once again (as with the CNN article above), this is an example of the constant change in science; the constant overturning of old hypotheses, etc.

So, as usual, scientists are still grasping for whatever they can find to justify alien life or, as announced this week, interstellar “precursors to life.” In this recent discovery, eight new carbon-based molecules were discovered in space. If evolutionary scientists can't find life anywhere in space, they look for these “precursors”-of course, the idea of molecular precursors to life is based entirely on evolutionary speculation/necessity. See our Origin of Life topic page for details.

8. FOX NEWS: U.S. Lags Behind Europe, Japan in Acceptance of Evolution

It is no surprise that this study's results are presented as the United States “lagging behind” other countries in acceptance of evolution-can you imagine a news organization printing these results under the heading “Europe, Japan Lag Behind U.S. in Acceptance of Creation”? But the headline matches the pro-evolution spin in this article.

Interestingly, over the 20 years this study was conducted, not only did the level of acceptance of evolution fall in the US, but so did the level of acceptance of creation. But perhaps most interesting-and frightening-is this comment:

Paul Meyers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study, says that what politicians should be doing [instead of legislating for more open discussion of evolution in schools] is saying, "We ought to defer these questions to qualified authorities and we should have committees of scientists and engineers whom we will approach for the right answers."

How long will it be till Americans have to contact the scientists and engineers on the National Committee for the Determination of Human Origins and ask, “What does the word yom mean in Genesis 1?”

9. FOX NEWS: Maine Mussels Evolve Defense Mechanism in 15 Years

This is another example of “evolution” (actually just natural selection favoring mussels with thicker shells) occurring “rapidly.” In fact, time and time again, scientists express amazement at the speed at which a particular animal “evolves”.

Creationists argue that observational science shows that selection/speciation occurs in very short time periods, and that the long periods of evolution postulated by Darwinists are merely products of uniformitarian, evolutionary interpretations of the fossil record. Evolutionists counter that we only observe rapid evolution because scientists have only had a Darwinian framework for a century and a half; there hasn't been time to observe larger-scale changes.

In other words, both evolutionists and creationists have a response to these examples of rapid selection. But if that's the case, why are stories like this so often presented as “evidence for evolution”?