Grand Canyon fault lines - Tom Vail's book under attack again

Tom Vail's book entitled Grand Canyon has caused a stir again, this time coming under attack from a group called Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Why such a group should consider attacking this book is a mystery as it doesn't seem to be in their area of interest - and they have got their facts terribly wrong, so much so that a leading evolutionist Michael Shermer has been forced into an embarrasing retraction.

You can read the full story here.

PEERing into the manufacturing of an anti-creationist urban myth
by Mark Looy, CCO, AiG–US
January 23, 2007

http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2007/0123peering.asp

A.E.Wilder-Smith - videos of talks available online

A.E.Wilder-Smith was a pioneer of Intelligent Design in biology, although ID wasn't recognised as something separate from Creationism then. Wilder-Smith was a leading academic, lecturing at Universities in the UK, Switzerland and America. he was also a Vice-President of the Creation Science Movement. One of those books, The Creation of Life a Cybernetic approach to Evolution inspired Dean Kenyon a leading proponent if ID.

“Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith was one of the two or three most important scientists in my life. He very powerfully influenced my intellectual development and my change of opinion on the origin of man. His writings, in particular The Creation of Life and The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, and the discussions I had with him were outstanding and had a great impact on my views and thoughts on origins. He was a courageous, supportive and gracious man, and he is greatly missed.” Dr. Dean Kenyon - Professor of Biology, San Francisco State University

There is now a website dedicated to Wilder-Smith, and you can watch some of his talks on video. http://www.wildersmith.org/library.htm

Titles include; Logos in Biology, Is Biogenesis Scientific?

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Intelligent Design in the Guardian - article by Richard Buggs

Richard Buggs has written an excellent article in the Guardian on Intelligent Design. It has raised quite a lot of comment from Darwinists, upset no doubt to hear that they may have bought into a Darwinian faith system.

Richard comments;

'If certain Darwinists also had the intellectual honesty to distinguish between science and their religious beliefs, the public understanding of science would be much enhanced.'

Intelligent design is a science, not a faith

Read more here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1985698,00.html

Spoiling the beauty of creation with wind farms

Like many urban socialists Polly Toynbee wants to destroy the beauty of the British countryside with highly inefficient, unpredictable wind turbines. As I live in Devon I object strongly to wind turbines being placed in rural areas, although as part of an urban landscape they may be acceptable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1983176,00.html

Of course in order for such turbines to be economical, they have to receive big subsidies for business. And doesn't New Labour love getting cosy with big business in the name of progress?

Urban socialists tend to have an anthropocentric mindset with little concern for nature therefore missing out on the spiritual nourishment that comes from a love of God's creation. They seem to want to ruin further rural areas with ugly human industrialisation because they believe that nature is the product of a mindless process of evolution. Heavy industry has brought poverty and ugliness to many as can be seen in the once lovely Welsh valleys, now spoiled by the legacy of coal, iron and steel industries, poor housing, large factories and slag heaps.

To help understand why country people are so opposed to wind turbines, imagine if you would if someone from the country went to London and demanded that all the art work in the galleries should be viewed through a wire mesh. Rural people from the extremities of Britain do not want ugliness and poverty thrust upon them so that business friends of urban socialists can grow rich on subsidies under New Labour.

Renewable energy is important, and solutions would include localised biomass fuel and solar energy, highly efficient and clean smallscale waste to energy plants, (possibly a Severn Barrage) but wind turbines are not the answer for areas where preserving the beauty of the countryside is vitally important for quality of life and tourism. Localised solutions maintain control and wealth in local communities.

Government to allow Intelligent Design in schools.

The Sunday Times 31st December 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2524442_1,00.html reports that Lord Adonis, the education minister, is to allow teaching of Intelligent Design in schools under the RE syllabus.

The Times report comments that Adonis said in a parliamentary answer: “Intelligent design can be explored in religious education as part of developing an understanding of different beliefs.”

This followed action by 12 prominent academics, who recently wrote to Tony Blair and Alan Johnson, the education secretary, arguing for inclusion of ID as part of science in the national curriculum. The letter applauded the Truth in Science initiative, commenting that empirical science has "severe limitations concerning origins" and Darwinism is not necessarily "the best scientific model to fit the data that we observe". They asked the Government "...that, where schools so choose, you ensure an open and honest approach to this subject under the National Curriculum, at the same time ensuring that the necessary criteria are maintained to deliver a rigorous education."

The Truth in Science website has also reported on this letter.
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/content/blogcategory/51/63/

Authors of the letter included Norman Nevin OBE, Professor Emeritus of Medical Genetics, Queen's University of Belfast and Antony Flew, former Professor of Philosophy at Reading University.

The other signatories of the letter were: David Back, Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Liverpool; Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at Warwick University; Mart de Groot, Director, Retired, Armagh Astronomical Observatory; Terry Hamblin, Professor of Immunohaematology, University of Southampton; Colin Reeves, Professor of Operational Research at Coventry University and John Walton, Professor of Chemistry, St Andrews University, as well as the three University Professors who are members of the TiS Board and Council.

Neutral mutations prove harmful.

Scientists have found that so-called neutral mutations are not as neutral as previously thought. Previous scientific theories considered neutral or silent mutations to have no effect on the expression of proteins. However, the latest research has shown that neutral mutations can have a serious negative effect on protein expression.

There are four types of nucleotides in the genome, labelled A,C,G,T, and every three letter sequence forms a codon, which codes for an amino acid. Four raised to the power three provides sixty-four combinations, but there are only twenty amino acids in the genome, as different codons are believed to code for the same amino acid. It was thought that silent mutations that change the letters of the codon, but do not change the amino acid have no effect on the way proteins fold and function.

However, the latest research by Kimchi-Sarfaty (2006) in Science has shown that even neutral mutations can in fact cause changes in the way the protein folds and functions.[1] The researchers studied three mutations that can alter the way a specific protein pumps toxins out of the cell. Tests involving small changes in this protein have shown that when two of the silent mutations are present it can change the shape of the protein and change that way cancer cells resist chemotherapy. Tests in lab dishes showed that when the silent mutations were present the cell was able to more efficiently block the drug that is used to halt the cancer cell’s development. It would also seem that evidence for the negative effects of silent mutations have been known about for twenty years, but largely ignored.[2] This latest evidence also ties in with comments by John Sanford in Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome [3] who claimed that even neutral mutations can have an accumulative degrading effect on the genome.

Other research has shown that silent mutations involved with the cystic fibrosis disease can alter the way a specific RNA molecule is spliced up and therefore change the shape of the protein rendering it inactive.[4] (RNA is involved in copying and translating the DNA and converting genes into proteins). Franciso Baralle comments that failure to identify the importance of silent mutations may have led to wrong diagnosis in some patients. It would seem that there is now a need to re-examine the effects that silent mutations have on genetic diseases and therefore improve medical research. Once again the theory of evolution has led to poor predictions in medical research.

As far as evolution is concerned the neutral theory was developed to overcome some of the problems associated with modelling genetics in evolution. J.B.S. Haldane for instance noted that in order for beneficial mutations to be fixed in a population, evolution by mutation must progress very slowly indeed. This slow process was considered necessary to give time for natural selection to weed out the far more numerous harmful mutations that would otherwise lead to error catastrophe in the population. There was also a very high cost in terms of excessive birth rates that higher vertebrates could not hope to meet, and Haldane saw in this a paradox that effectively falsified gradual neo-Darwinian theory. (See for instance: Walter ReMines, The Biotic message)

The Neutral Theory was developed to try and overcome this paradox. As an example, if it is considered that about one in a thousand mutations are beneficial, with fifty percent harmful with the rest neutral, then an increase in the number of neutral mutations would reduces the harmful ones, and seemingly helps to overcome the paradox that Haldane identified.[5] However, this latest evidence, that these neutral mutations are not nearly as neutral as previously thought, does further serious damage to the neutral theory and to the theory of macro-evolution as a whole.

References

[1]. Kimchi-Sarfaty C., et al. (2006), Science, doi:10.1126/science.1135308

[2]. See: Pearson, H., (2006), Silent mutations speak up, Nature, 21st December 2006 http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061218/full/061218-12.html

[3]. Sanford, J. C., (2005) Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, Ivan Press

[4]. Pagani F., et al. (2005) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, 102. 6368 - 6372

[5] ReMines (1993) The Biotic Message, St Paul’s Science, pp.237-253 shows that the neutral theory does not provide selective advantage and it too has a high cost.