We did discover a fossil in Antarctica of an animal that lived 252 million years ago.¹ It was during the time when Pangea was whole, and the volcanoes did emit high amounts of greenhouse gasses. This gasification of the Earth did produce catastrophic global warming resulting in the death of 80-95 percent of life in the oceans and on land (Praise Science).

So, we do imagine that this fossil is of an animal that had no fur and “probably laid eggs.” We imagine it on the line between reptiles and mammals. We did find some related fossils in Africa, and therefore pieced together that these animals migrated south and lived with other animals that were probably the ancestors of mammals.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Naturwissenschaften, may offer insights into potential survival techniques for modern day animals threatened by climate change .

“Countless species are threatened by global warming today,” said Frobisch. “A prime example of a threatened species is the polar bear, whose habitat becomes increasingly smaller as a result of melting sea ice in the Arctic Circle.”

“However,” he added, “it is questionable whether the polar bear or other threatened animals can respond in the same way as Kombuisia did in the Permian, simply because human activities severely limit the animals’ possibilities.”

He concluded: “The primary lesson we should learn from the studies of extinction due to climate change in the past is that it is of utmost importance today to control and reverse human induced global warming by taking counteractive measures, such as greatly reducinggreenhouse gas emissions.”

Anyway, the animals and fossils are irrelevant, because the point is, if we don’t act soon, we’ll all be dead in a couple hundred years (Praise Science). Please don’t give up on being terrified of the environment, because Mother Earth is very angry at what you are doing to her. She will punish and probably kill you if you don’t straighten up and curtail your gaseous emissions.

1) Ancient animals escaped warming in Antarctica

The inner workings of a supposedly simple bacterial cell have turned out to be much more sophisticated than expected.

An in-depth “blueprint” of an apparently minimalist species has revealed details that challenge preconceptions about how genes operate. It also brings closer the day when it may be possible to create artificial life.

Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes a form of pneumonia in people, has just 689 genes, compared with 25,000 in humans and 4000 or more in most other bacteria. Now a study of its inner workings has revealed that the bacterium has uncanny flexibility and sophistication, allowing it to react fast to changes in its diet and environment.

“There were a lot of surprises,” says Peer Bork, joint head of the structural and computational biology unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. “Although it’s a very tiny genome, it’s much more complicated than we thought.”
…
The biggest shock was that the organism gets by with just eight gene “switches”, or transcription factors, compared with more than 50 in other bacteria such as Escherichia coli. Transcription factors are generally thought of as the key components enabling living things to respond to environmental conditions by switching genes on and off.
…
Another unexpected discovery was that bacterial genes grouped together in clumps or families called “operons” don’t work as had been thought. The assumption was that if there are four genes in an operon they always work in unison, but the new analyses show that only one, or perhaps two, operate at any one time.

Even more surprising, the proteins the genes make don’t necessarily always couple with their nearest neighbours – again contrary to previous assumptions. Instead, they often join up with proteins originating from other, distant operons, vastly increasing the bacterium’s flexibility and versatility when faced with a changed environment.

Reference:
(1). ‘Simple’ bacterium shows surprising complexity, NewScientist, 11/26/09.

During 15 years of excavation they have uncovered not some monumental temple but evidence of a critical transition in religious behavior. The record begins with a simple dancing floor, the arena for the communal religious dances held by hunter-gatherers in about 7,000 B.C. It moves to the ancestor-cult shrines that appeared after the beginning of corn-based agriculture around 1,500 B.C., and ends in A.D. 30 with the sophisticated, astronomically oriented temples of an early archaic state.

This and other research is pointing to a new perspective on religion, one that seeks to explain why religious behavior has occurred in societies at every stage of development and in every region of the world. Religion has the hallmarks of an evolved behavior, meaning that it exists because it was favored by natural selection. It is universal because it was wired into our neural circuitry before the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland.

For atheists, it is not a particularly welcome thought that religion evolved because it conferred essential benefits on early human societies and their successors. If religion is a lifebelt, it is hard to portray it as useless.

For believers, it may seem threatening to think that the mind has been shaped to believe in gods, since the actual existence of the divine may then seem less likely.

In case you missed it before, I think John Cleese’s work in this area is as good or better than any other Darwinist speculating in this area.

Reference:
1. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/weekinreview/12wade.html

“Individuals occasionally suffer a disease called polycythaemia, an overpopulation of red blood cells. By analogy, Gaia’s illness could be called polyanthroponemia, where humans overpopulate until they do more harm than good,” Lovelock writes. He says the cure won’t come until the human tribe is trimmed back from its current 6.8 billion to, say, 1 billion people.

Others see mother nature as a mean woman who will take care of herself by killing us off when we get out of hand. Paleontologist Peter Ward seems to find this view of mommy more compelling.

“I hypothesize that life and its processes, together often referred to as ‘Mother Nature,’ was, is, and will be anything but a good mother to her many evolved and evolving species,” Ward contends in his new book, “The Medea Hypothesis.”

Gaia vs. Medea … that sounds like the start of a philosophical catfight.

Ward, however, says he’s not just trying to pick a fight with the 90-year-old Lovelock. “Most every scientist is trying to ‘pick a fight’ with another scientist,” he told me today. “We try to do it in a collegial fashion. … I’m trying to do science, but I’m also trying to point out that there has never been opposition in a formal sense – it’s been Gaia, Gaia, nothing but Gaia.”

So the scientific debate here seems to be whether mommy E is kindly, but infected, versus potty training conflicts projected onto the environment.

While Lovelock uses “Gaia” to refer to Earth’s biosphere as a kindly mother goddess, Ward uses “Medea” as a reference to the mother in Greek myth who killed her own children. Ward says life, like Medea, eventually sows the seeds of its own near-destruction – over and over again. “Life boils up and bubbles up, and through its own waste products and activities makes the planet no longer inhabitable,” he said.

So, the important question seems to be, shall mommy kill us with her flatus?

Ward’s “rotten-eggstinction” scenario begins with a shift in climate that sparks blooms of sulfur-loving microbes in the world’s oceans. Their belches of hydrogen sulfide – the gas commonly associated with rotten eggs – triggers a sequence of events that end with a global poisoning of marine and land species. (This scenario is detailed in Ward’s previous book, “Under a Green Sky.”)

In “The Medea Hypothesis,” Ward sketches out similar biocidal scenarios for other extinction events. He goes with the conventional wisdom that a huge asteroid touched off the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that killed off the dinosaurs, but says continent-spanning forest fires most likely sparked a global winter that finished the job. Thus, he writes, “it could be argued that the effects of life magnified the extent of the extinction.”

One certainly hopes not! However, we must await the outcomes of future science to know for certain.

Source:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/05/06/1924384.aspx

From the article:

The voluminous research on the evolution of the adaptive immune system describes in enormous detail both the similarities and differences between the immune systems of a wide variety of animals, but does not provide evidence for the evolution of these irreducibility complex systems. The complex, designed processes used to produce antibody diversity and then to fine tune the adaptive immune response are not evidence of Darwinian evolution, but rather of intelligent design.

Recent work has also shown that innate immune systems formerly thought to be very primitive are far more complex than once believed, blurring ‘traditional distinctions between adaptive and innate immunity.’³⁸ Various phyla use ‘a remarkably extensive variety of solutions to meet fundamentally similar requirements for host protection.’³⁷ The large discontinuity between the various means of generating immune system diversity in the animal kingdom makes it highly unlikely that one system could have evolved into another.

Creation scientists have also been hard at work in generating theoretical frameworks and hypotheses on a number of fronts.

1). A framework has been developed for explaining bacterial pathogenicity.

2). Fungi have been examined from a creationist perspective, and natural selection is considered as a process for the development of pathogenicity.  Similar to the first paper, evolutionary processes are considered corrupting influences of the original designs.

3). Initial work has been done on developing a field of creation microbiology.  Promising areas for future research and practical applications are also considered.

While those who pontificate about the absence of any real scientific progress being made from a creationist perspective, creation scientists are laying the groundwork for biological studies, and are generating testable scientific hypotheses.  Whereas materialist scientist do not often recognize their metaphysical assumptions, creationist scientists and IDers are generally much more aware of the metaphysical assumptions of science on both sides of the issue.

]]> http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/11/08/recent-work-in-creation-science/feed/ 6 http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/07/17/more-complex-than-previously-thought-part-viii-dna-differences/ http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/07/17/more-complex-than-previously-thought-part-viii-dna-differences/#comments Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:06:15 +0000 The Country Shrink http://www.intelldesign.com/?p=933 Previously, it was considered to be axiomatic that all cells in the human body contained the same DNA. However, recent research found differences between the DNA contained in blood cells and other tissue in the body.

This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years, studies which were supposed to isolate the causes of scores of human diseases.

Except for cancer, samples of diseased tissue are difficult or even impossible to take from living patients. Thus, the vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset.

This discovery sprang from an investigation into the underlying genetic causes of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) led by Dr. Morris Schweitzer, Dr. Bruce Gottlieb, Dr. Lorraine Chalifour and colleagues at McGill University and the affiliated Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital. The researchers focused on BAK, a gene that controls cell death.

What they found surprised them. AAA is one of the rare vascular diseases where tissue samples are removed as part of patient therapy. When they compared them, the researchers discovered major differences between BAK genes in blood cells and tissue cells coming from the same individuals, with the suspected disease “trigger” residing only in the tissue. Moreover, the same differences were later evident in samples derived from healthy individuals.
“In multi-factorial diseases other than cancer, usually we can only look at the blood,” explained Gottlieb, a geneticist with McGill’s Centre for Translational Research in Cancer. “Traditionally when we have looked for genetic risk factors for, say, heart disease, we have assumed that the blood will tell us what’s happening in the tissue. It now seems this is simply not the case.”

It remains to be seen how many other differences will be discovered. But what is certain, is that a whole other layer of complexity has been added to the enormous complexity of biological systems. Yet we are told that there is “no evidence of design or a Designer.”

Of course critics of ID (like the folks at the NCSE) should have every right to publish their views within academic circles and should have the full protection of academic freedom. But academic freedom doesn’t just mean the freedom to agree with the predominant viewpoint. Academic freedom in science means nothing if it doesn’t include the right to hold legitimate minority scientific viewpoints. ID proponents have published serious scientific research in mainstream, credible academic venues. Many of them have sterling academic qualifications and accomplishments. They have earned the right to freely express their views without fear of intimidation or discrimination.

But free expression of pro-ID views in the academy is exactly what the NCSE doesn’t want. “Expelled Exposed” is now exposed for what it really is: it’s not just a website making the case against ID (which is perfectly fine if that’s what ID critics want to do)—it’s a website attempting to convince people that ID deserves no academic freedom. In other words, “Expelled Exposed” is an effort to encourage the further persecution of ID-proponents.

Ironically, by denying that professionally qualified ID proponents have a right to “a place in academia,” “Expelled Exposed” has justified the central thesis of the documentary Expelled, namely that qualified ID proponents do not receive academic freedom to hold, discuss, and promote their views within the academy.

I like the Discovery Institute more all the time based in part on the rabid hatred that many Darwinists have for this tiny organization. Can such intense fear and hatred come from a defense of “science” or is there something deeper going on?

Can we get back to the original question posed on this thread and away from all this other stuff? I would like to hear from IDers/Creationists tell us what Intelligent Design is or isn’t? What in your view makes ID a science? It’s been said that the creator doesn’t have to necessarily be the God of the Bible. How would it affect your viewpoint if it was proven that the Devil, for example, was the creator, and that’s why life has been so unfair to so many living creatures on this planet throughout the course of time?

Can someone get the ball rolling and enlighten us a little bit on Intelligent Design?

ID is about examining what can be accomplished by naturalistic forces alone versus effects requiring a mind to produce. It has fewer philosophical/religious assumptions than the evolutionary theory because it actually seeks to test the assumption of whether life can arise and evolve through completely naturalistic processes. ID makes use of, and tests, information theory and evolutionary algorithms to examine whether blind processes can result in new complex specified information. Because of their philosophical/religious assumptions, evolutionists never ask IF evolution occurred, but only ask HOW. They don’t seek to delineate what evolution can actually accomplish through the scientific method, as Michael Behe has done in the Edge of Evolution, and as William Dembski and Robert Marks are doing in their evolutionary informatics labs. ID does not make any conclusions about the designer, for that could be ultimately a question of faith. Creationists, obviously conclude that the designer is God. Many IDists conclude the same, but this is a personal conclusion. You are free to conclude that the devil is the designer if you wish, because ID doesn’t speak to that.

——

For those who have followed my blog, it’s clear that I believe is the designer is God. That decision of faith is made on a number of factors which are not as scientific, and most importantly through God’s leading.

“The knowledge of the secrets of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. This is why I speak to them in parables, ‘Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand’” (Mat. 13:11,13).

When thinking about design in the universe, it makes one wonder why God created a universe where evidence seems to perpetually point in two possible directions.  In other words, we don’t find a message encoded into DNA that says something akin to “God was here,” written in every known language.  Certainly He could have done that, but it seemed to be part of His purpose that evidence for creation be presented in the same manner as He spoke through Jesus (i.e., in parables).  Unbelievers in the days of Jesus consistently misinterpreted the meaning of His parables, just as the evidence of design is consistently misinterpreted by today’s unbelievers.

That’s why I don’t ever expect ID theorists or creation scientists to find a “smoking gun,” that absolutely proves design in nature.  That would remove the necessity of faith.  Likewise, I don’t expect a smoking gun from the side of naturalism that proves that matter and energy are the only things that exist.

As a result, I’m skeptical whenever I hear claims that it has been proven that the mind is either completely material or immaterial, that it has been shown that there is no evidence for design, that there is no evidence for materialism, and so forth.  In other words, by design, there will always be evidence pointing in both directions.  However, when it comes down to an individual’s decision about whether to believe in God, there is enough evidence for each person to decide where they will place their faith in order to fulfill the following verses:

Psalms 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.

That said, ID is an important scientific endeavor that seeks to uncover the evidence for design, which is evident in nature.  For Christians thinking about the issue who might be confused, it is helpful  to remember that the evidence will never be bulletproof, but it will be sufficient for your decision of faith.  Furthermore, the evidence is strong enough so that we are without excuse.