More Useful Quotes for Creationists

words_against.jpgStanford Professor Paul Ehrlich says that the Theory of Evolution is “outside empirical science.”

Ehrlich, Paul and L.C. Birch (1967), “Evolutionary History and Population Biology,” Nature, 214:349-352, April 22, p. 352

Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more skepticism about many of its tenets.

This quote and many others are now available RIGHT HERE at my blog. The book pictured above is a wonderful resource for showing the inadequacy of the Theory of Evolution available from www.icr.org. I have used many of the quotes contained there and the CD-ROM is very easy to use. I have always wished there was a later volume (it was first published in 1997), but there is none. So I have begun compiling my own quotes and I now am making them available here free of charge. I own (or have online instant access to) many of the scientific papers from which these quotes come and I am very strict about dishonest quote mining. I always try to include the full context of the author so as not to be guilty of quote mining. In spite of this, some people accuse me of quote mining anyway. Some think that to draw any conclusion other than the conclusion drawn by the author is a quote mine. Some also think that by drawing a creationist conclusion from the author’s words is equivalent to saying that the author has become a creationist now, or that he rejects the Theory of Evolution. I do not say this at all. I simply note the words of the authors and draw my own conclusions as an independent thinker. Please feel free to use these quotes but always be sure to include the original source of the quote.

PAUL EHRLICH AND L.C. BIRCH ANNOUNCE THAT EVOLUTION CANNOT BE FALSIFIED.

Ehrlich, Paul and L.C. Birch (1967), “Evolutionary History and Population Biology,” Nature, 214:349-352, April 22.

Introduction to article

“While accepting evolutionary theory, should ecologists be more skeptical about hypotheses derived solely from untestable assumptions about the past? The authors put forward the view that many ecologists underestimate the efficacy of natural selection and fail to distinguish between phylogenetic and ecological questions.”

p. 349
“Some biologists claim that an understanding of the evolutionary history of organisms is a prerequisite to any comprehension of ecology. We believe that this notion is having the effect of sheltering large areas of population biology from the benefits of rigorous thought. It is clear that the phylogenetic origins of an organism, structure, or process may be of great interest, and that the elucidation of such origins is a legitimate subject for investigation and or speculation. We contend, however, that such investigation or speculation is not required for many studies of ecology and taxonomy. Indeed, since the level of speculation (rather than investigation) is inevitably high in phylogenetics of any kind, a preoccupation with the largely unknown past can be shown to be a positive hindrance to progress.

The data for the contemporary investigation of ecology and taxonomy are the distribution, numbers and variation of existing organisms in their present environments. When this ecology and taxonomy is understood we may, in some cases, be in a position to make reasonable guesses about phylogenetic origins. On the other hand, to reverse the process and attempt to investigate ecology and taxonomy through a series of inferences about the past is to base these sciences on non-falsifiable hypotheses.”

p. 352
“Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more skepticism about many of its tenets.”

CRICK: EVOLUTIONARY ARGUMENTS CAN CA– USE MISTAKEN INFERENCES

Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, 1988
pp. 138-139
Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To try to figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary arguments can usefully be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood.

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GRADUALISM IS A METAPHYSICAL STANCE, NOT A SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION

“The general preference that so many of us hold for gradualism is a metaphysical stance embedded in the modern history of Western cultures: it is not a high-order empirical observation, induced from the objective study of nature . . . We mention this not to discredit Darwin in any way, but merely to point out that even the greatest scientific achievements are rooted in their cultural contexts—and to argue that gradualism was part of the cultural context, not of nature.”

Punctuated equilibria; the tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered, SJ Gould, N Eldredge – Paleobiology, 1977 – Paleontological Soc, p. 145
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_structure.html

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EVOLUTION COMPRISES ALL STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSE

“Evolution comprises all the stages of development of the universe: the cosmic, biological, and human or cultural developments. Attempts to restrict the concept of evolution to biology are gratuitous. Life is a product of the evolution of inorganic matter, and man is a product of the evolution of life.” (Dobzhansky, Theodosius, Science, 27 January 1967, Volume 155, Number 3761, p.409). http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/155/3761/409.pdf

Interestingly, some evolutionists include Origin of Life (OOL) under the heading of “Evolution.” See Dr. Edward Max’s article http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/molgen/ Also, the current Biology textbook at local high school in my area has a whole section (Section 17-2) on OOL and it falls under “Unit 5: Evolution.” (Miller, Kenneth R., Levine, Joseph, Biology, Prentice Hall, 2006, Miller/Levine. pp. 422-426).

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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN EDITOR IN CHIEF SAYS EVOLUTION INVOLVES INFERENCE

“the historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation” Rennie, John, “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense,” , Scientific American, (2002, 287[1]:80).

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CORNELL PROFESSOR ALLEN MACNEILL SAYS MODERN SYNTHESIS OF EVOLUTION IS DEAD.

(Posted at www.uncommondescent.com)

3. Allen_MacNeill // Oct 16th 2006 at 11:58 pm

On the contrary, the evidence that macroevolution has happened is all around us, in the patterns of biogeographical distribution of species and in the fossil record. What is not so obvious is the mechanism(s) by which such macroevolution has occurred. Prof. Giertych is probably right in asserting that the “modern synthesis” mechanisms grounded in theoretical population genetics are insufficient to explain macroevolution. However, scientists within the field of evolutionary biology have been saying the same thing for over a century. The distinction between microevolution and macroevolution was probably first drawn by the Russian entomologist Iuri’i Filipchenko in around 1927 (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html). In the first half of the 20th century, Richard Goldschmidt did pioneering work into possible mechanisms of macroevolution, work that was later discredited and/or ignored by the population geneticists of the “modern synthesis” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Goldschmidt). Eldredge and Gould, in their landmark 1972 paper on punctuated equilibrium (http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/eldredge.asp) initiated the newest revolution in macroevolutionary theory, pointing out that the “modern synthesis” model of gradualistic macroevolution via purely population genetics mechanisms is not compatible with much of the fossil record.

So, the history of the concept of macroevolution is not entirely compatitible with the neo-darwinian “modern synthesis” – this is supposed to be some sort of surprise, or to undermine the idea that macroevolution has not occurred? You folks need to pay a little more attention to what has actually been going on in evolutionary biology over the last half century, and less time tilting at “modern synthesis” windmills that have long since fallen into disrepair within our discipline.

The “modern synthesis” is dead – long live the evolving synthesis!

Comment by Allen_MacNeill — October 16, 2006 @ 11:58 pm
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1711#comment-69014

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Allen_MacNeill // Oct 17th 2006 at 6:35 pm

Before people on this list start hanging the crepe and breaking out the champagne bottles, I would like to hasten to point out that evolutionary theory is very much alive. What is “dead” is the core doctrine of the “modern evolutionary synthesis” that based all of evolution on gradualistic changes in allele frequencies in populations over time as the result of differential reproductive success.

This idea was essentially based on theoretical mathematical models originally developed by R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright, with some experimental confirmation (using Drosophila) by Theodosious Dobzhansky and field observations (chiefly of birds) by Ernst Mayr (with some supporting observations on the fossil record by G. G. Simpson and plants by G. Ledyard Stebbins). Its high water mark was the Darwin centenial celebration at the University of Chicago in 1959, which most of the aforementioned luminaries attended, and which has been chronicled by Ernst Mayr and William Provine.

However, cracks were already showing in the “synthesis” by 1964, when W. D. Hamilton proposed his theory of kin selection. They widened considerably in 1969 when Lynn Margulis proposed her theory of serial endosymbiosis. Then, in 1972, the dam broke, when Niles Eldredge and Stephen J. Gould published their landmark paper on “punctuated equilibrium. Not content to pull the rug out from under the “micro=macro” doctrine lying at the heart of the “modern synthesis”, Gould went on to publish yet another landmark paper with Richard Lewontin, this one undermining the “Panglossian paradigm” promoted by the founders of the “modern synthesis”: that natural selection is the primary mechanism of evolutionary change at all levels, and that virtually all of the characteristics of organisms are adaptive.

And then Motoo Kimura and Tomiko Ohto dealt the “modern synthesis” its coup de grace: the neutral theory of genetic evolution, which pointed out that the mathematical models upon which the “modern synthesis” was founded were fundamentally and fatally flawed.

But what has come out of all of this is NOT the end of the theory of evolution, but rather its further integration into the biological sciences. Darwin only hinted at (and the founders of the “modern synthesis” mostly ignored) the idea that the “engine of variation” that provided all of the raw material for evolutionary change is somehow intimately tied to the mechanisms by which organisms develop from unicellular zygotes into multicellular organisms, and the mechanisms by which genetic information is transferred from organism to organism.

We are now in the beginning stages of the greatest revolution in evolutionary biology since the beginning of the last century, perhaps since the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859. Rather than dying away to a trickle as the field of evolutionary biology collapses, the rate of publication on all aspects of evolution is accelerating exponentially. IDers and YECs who hail the “death of Darwinism” are like the poor benighted souls who hailed the death of the “horseless carriage” and the return to “normal equine transportation” in 1905 or thereabouts: they are either ignorant of the most basic principles of current evolutionary theory, or they see the onrush of the juggernaught [sic] and close their eyes to avoid witnessing the impending impact.

It is indeed a wonderful time to be an evolutionary biologist, and a wonderful time for anyone whose curiosity about nature exceeds their fear of the unknown.

Comment by Allen_MacNeill — October 17, 2006 @ 6:35 pm
http://www.uncommondescent.com/archives/1714#more-1714

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WILLIAM PROVINE SAYS NATURAL SELECTION IS NOT A ToE MECHANISM

Here’s a more complete quote of Provine’s comments regarding a debate he had with Stephen C. Meyer, at the National Press Club (from http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/04/) :

Steve Meyer’s criticism of neo-Darwinism was surprisingly narrow, emphasizing natural selection acting upon mutations. I have a far deeper quarrel with the evolutionary biology of the 1960s. I no longer see natural selection as a mechanism, or an active cause of evolution. Natural selection (or adaptation) is a result of many interacting ecological and genetic causes and does not “work upon” individual genes. I reject random genetic drift and see the movement of neutral DNA by hitchhiking with pieces of chromosome with high or low survival rates. I reject gene pools, genetic homeostasis, am critical of the biological species concept and all hopes of generating robust phylogenetic trees older than 700 million years ago because of the wide exchange of DNA and RNA between one-celled organisms. Thus I turn out much more critical of neo-Darwinism than does Steve Meyer. None of my criticisms, however, suggest a ID creator, but a more lively and realistic view of evolution than I learned in graduate school.

And here’s even more Provine from http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00020722-64FD-12BC-A0E483414B7FFE87&pageNumber=8&catID=4

Natural selection does not shape an adaptation or cause a gene to spread over a population or really do anything at all. It is instead the result of specific causes: hereditary changes, developmental causes, ecological causes, and demography. Natural Selection is the result of these causes, not a cause that is by itself. It is not a mechanism.

Link to RD.net debate on this quote

The poster, Voxrat, states in his e-mail to Dr. Provine that creationists like me imply that “selection is immaterial to evolution.” But this is not what I said. I said only what Provine himself said … that Natural Selection is not a cause of Evolution.

MORE FROM PROVINE EMPHASIZING HIS EARLIER POINTS

As an undergraduate studying evolutionary biology — like many other such students, I suppose — I [Paul Nelson] read Will Provine’s classic The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics (University of Chicago Press, 1971), a standard history of the laying of the mathematical and conceptual foundations, in the work of Fisher, Haldane, and Wright, of what later came to be known as the Evolutionary Synthesis (i.e., textbook neo-Darwinism).When Chicago reissued the book in 2001, Provine added a remarkable Afterword. With characteristic candor, he wrote that “my views have changed dramatically.” Natural selection, for instance, Provine no longer saw as a “force” or “mechanism” of any kind:

Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing….Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets. (pp. 199-200)

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/provine-and-nelson-at-cornell-november-12-if-neo-darwinism-fails-then-what/#comments

AYALA ON MUTATIONS
(from Morris: Words Against Them)

Ayala, Francisco J., “The Mechanisms of Evolution,” Scientific American, vol. 239 (September 1978), pp. 56-69.
p. 58
“A mutation can be considered an error in the replication of DNA prior to its translation into protein.”
p. 59
“The forces that give rise to gene mutations operate at random in the sense that genetic mutations occur without reference to their future adaptiveness in the environment.”
p. 63
“It therefore seems clear that, contrary to Darwin’s conception, most of the genetic variation in populations arises not from new mutations at each generation but from the reshuffling of previously accumulated mutations by recombination. Although mutation is the ultimate source of all genetic variation, it is a relatively rare event, providing a mere trickle of new alleles into the much larger reservoir of stored genetic variation. Indeed recombination alone is sufficient to enable a population to expose its hidden variation for many generations without the need for new genetic input by mutation.”

p. 64
“In any case there can be no doubt that the staggering amount of genetic variation in natural populations provides ample opportunities for evolution to occur. Hence it is not surprising that whenever a new environmental challenge materializes—a change of climate, the introduction of a new predator or competitor, man-made pollution—populations are usually able to adapt to it.
“A dramatic recent example of such adaptation is the evolution by insect species of resistance to pesticides. Insect resistance to a pesticide was first reported in 1947 for the housefly (Musca domestica) with respect to DDT. Since then resistance to pesticides has been reported in at least 225 species of insects and other arthropods. The genetic variants required for resistance to the most diverse kinds of pesticides were apparently present in every one of the populations exposed to these man-made compounds.”

LEADING GENETICIST KONDRASHOV ON MUTATION ACCUMULATION

Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over?

Author: Kondrashov A.S.
Source: Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 175, Number 4, 1995 , pp. 583-594(12)
Publisher: Academic Press

Abstract:

It is well known that when s, the selection coefficient against a deleterious mutation, is below ~ 1/4 N e , where N e is the effective population size, the expected frequency of this mutation is ~ 0.5, if forward and backward mutation rates are similar. Thus, if the genome size, G, in nucleotides substantially exceeds the N e of the whole species, there is a dangerous range of selection coefficients, 1/ G < s < 1/4 N e . Mutations with s within this range are neutral enough to accumulate almost freely, but are still deleterious enough to make an impact at the level of the whole genome. In many vertebrates N e ~ 10 , while G ~ 10 , so that the dangerous range includes more than four orders of magnitude. If substitutions at 10% of all nucleotide sites have selection coefficients within this range with the mean 10 , an average individual carries ~ 100 lethal equivalents. Some data suggest that a substantial fraction of nucleotides typical to a species may, indeed, be suboptimal. When selection acts on different mutations independently, this implies to high a mutation load. This paradox cannot be resolved by invoking beneficial mutations or environmental fluctuations. Several possible resolutions are considered, including soft selection and synergistic epistasis among very slightly deleterious mutations.

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QUOTES FROM NON-CREATIONISTS WHICH SUPPORT THE CATASTROPHIC FLOOD MODEL

MUDSTONE PROBABLY DEPOSITED BY MOVING WATER, NOT STILL WATER

Science 14 December 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5857, pp. 1760 – 1763

Accretion of Mudstone Beds from Migrating Floccule Ripples

Juergen Schieber,1* John Southard,2 Kevin Thaisen1

Mudstones make up the majority of the geological record.Because mudstones were long thought to record low-energy conditions of offshore and deeper water environments, our results call for reevaluation of published interpretations of ancient mudstone successions and derived paleoceanographic conditions. A key issue in mudstone sedimentation is flocculation, a phenomenon in which a number of these parameters, such as settling velocity, floccule size, grain-size distribution, ion exchange behavior, and organic content “come together.” A joining of smaller particles to form larger aggregates, flocculation enhances the deposition rate of fine-grained sediments, and its understanding is critical for modeling the behavior of mud in sedimentary environments.

The notion is widely held that slow-moving currents or still water are a prerequisite for substantial mud deposition because shear stress in swift-moving currents disrupts previously formed fragile floccules and prevents their deposition, but our observations suggest an alternative mode of mud deposition that apparently left its imprint in the rock record.

Mudstones constitute up to two-thirds of the sedimentary record and are arguably the most poorly understood type of sedimentary rocks (9).

Our observations do not support the notion that muds can only be deposited in quiet environments with only intermittent weak currents (8).
Instead, bedload transport of flocculated mud and deposition occurs at current velocities that would also transport and deposit sand (21). Clay beds can accrete from migrating floccule ripples under swiftly moving currents in the 10 cm/s to 26 cm/s velocity range, a range likely to expand as flows with larger sediment concentrations are explored.

Many ancient shale units, once examined carefully, may thus reveal that they accumulated in the manner illustrated here, rather than having largely settled from slow-moving or still suspensions. This, in turn, will most likely necessitate the reevaluation of the sedimentary history of large portions of the geologic record.

Elucidating the mechanisms of mudstone deposition not only helps to better understand the rock record but also benefits hydrocarbon exploration, hydrogeology, and coastal and shelf engineering.

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Ager, Derek V., The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 151 pp. Ager was Professor and Head of the Department of Geology and Oceanography, University College of Swansea. He had also served as president of the British Geological Association.

pp 68, 69
“Uniformitarianism triumphed because it provided a general theory that was at once logical and seemingly ‘scientific.’ Catastrophism became a joke and no geologist would dare postulate anything that might be termed a ‘catastrophe’ for fear of being laughed at or (in recent years) linked with a lunatic fringe of Velikovsky and Californian fundamentalists. But I would like to suggest that, in the first half of the last century, the ‘catastrophists’ were better geologists than the ‘uniformitarians.’”
p 132
“I am coming more and more to the view that the evolution of life, like the evolution of continents and of the stratigraphical column in general, has been a very episodic affair, with short ‘happenings’ interrupting long ages of nothing much in particular.”
p 141
“In other words, the history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier, consists of long period of boredom and short periods of terror.”

Note that Ager admits ‘episodes’ of rapid geologic activity because the evidence forces him to. But he stops short of admitting one big episode, i.e. the Global Flood of Noah, for fear of being laughed at. Peer pressure is very strong.

Allmon, Warren D., “Post-Gradualism,” review of The New Catastrophism, by Derek V. Ager (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 231 pp.), Science, vol. 262 (October 1, 1993), pp. 122-123. Allmon is at the Paleontological Research Institution, Ithaca, New York.
p 122
“Indeed geology appears at last to have outgrown Lyell. In an intellectual shift that may well rival that which accompanied the widespread acceptance of plate tectonics, the last 30 years have witnessed an increasing acceptance of rapid, rare, episodic, and ‘catastrophic’ events.
p 122
“The volume is the summation of a lifetime of global geological work by one of the most influential stratigrapher-paleontologists of his generation, a highly eclectic compilation of the author’s geological observations from around the world in support of the general view that the geological record is dominated not by slow, gradual change but by episodic rare events causing local disasters.”
pp 122-3
“Yet by the eminence of its author and the straightforwardness of its tone this volume may mark the arrival of catastrophism at the status quo.”

Catastrophism making an arrival as the ‘status quo’? Note that it was the status quo for many centuries and got booted out of fashion by Lyell and his associates.

Hsü, Kenneth J., “Actualistic Catastrophism and Global Change,” Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, Paleoecology (Global and Planetary Change Section), vol. 89 (1990), pp. 309-313.
p 310
“In my presidential address to the International Association of Sedimentologists, I pointed out the fallacy of the Lyellian dogma and coined the term actualistic catastrophism. Statistics have shown that frequency of occurrence of natural processes is inversely related to their magnitude.”

Thanks, Dr. Hsu. I agree. And when we have an enormous natural process, such as the distribution of sediment over hundreds of thousands of square miles, how often do you think that occurred in history? This is hard to admit for many scientists, but the answer is “Probably once.”

RAPID FORMATION OF COAL IN THE LAB

Nuclear microprobe analysis of artificial coal
Alan M. Bailey, William A. Hollerman, Rudolph Gibbs, Arthur D. Cohen, Gary A. Glass, Shelly F. Hynes, Justin Fournet and Richard Greco

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms
Volume 189, Issues 1-4, April 2002, Pages 418-420
Department of Geology, University of Louisiana at Lafayette – 70504-4530, Lafayette, LA, USA, Acadiana Research Laboratory, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, P.O. Box 44210, Lafayette, LA 70504-4210, USA, Department of Geological Sciences, University of South Carolina – 29208, Columbia SC, USA

Abstract
An artificially coalified Taxodium peat was used to examine the behavior of inorganic constituents in terrestrial organic matter during the early coalification process. The artificial coal is produced by subjecting the peat to incremental increases in temperature up to 60 °C and pressures to 14.48 MPa over a four-week period in a partially open reactor. A standard polished thin section 30 μm thick is then cut from the resulting disk and examined using light microscopy to select and mark areas to be cut from the polished thin section. The distribution of inorganic constituents in these areas of the solid produced during the coalification process is then studied using nuclear microscopy. Results suggest that concentrations of inorganic constituents, including silicon, are lower in the newly produced solids than in the initial material. Distributions of other inorganic elements, including aluminum, sulfur, chlorine, potassium, calcium, barium and iron are also investigated. Link to abstract

RAPID FORMATION OF OIL

Animal Wastes Become OilTurkey and pig slaughterhouse wastes are daily trucked into the world’s first biorefinery, a thermal conversion processing plant in Carthage, Missouri.1 On peak production days, 500 barrels of high-quality fuel oil better than crude oil are made from 270 tons of turkey guts and 20 tons of pig fat.
Lemley, B., Anything into oil, Discover 27(4), 2006.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n1/origin-of-oil

HYDRODYNAMIC SELECTIVITY OF MOVING WATER

Early Burial of Marine Creatures. The Biblical Record says that the “fountains of the great deep were broken up.” If the record is correct, we would expect that marine organisms would be fossilized first and appear lowest in the geologic column. This is exactly what we do find.

The settling velocity of large particles in independent of fluid viscosity; it is directly proportional to the square root of particle diameter, directly proportional to the square root of particle diameter, directly proportional to particle sphericity, and directly proportional to the difference between particle and fluid density divided by fluid density. (W.C. Krumbein and L.L. Sloss: Stratigraphy and Sedimentation, San Fransisco, W.H. Freeman and Co., 1951, p. 156, quoted in The Genesis Flood, p. 273)

“It is significant that the organisms found in the lowest strata, such as the trilobites, brachiopods, etc. are very “streamlined” and are quite dense … of course, these very pronounced “sorting” powers of hydraulic action are really only valid statistically, rather than universally. Local peculiarities of turbulence, habitat, sediment composition, etc., would be expected to cause local variations in organic assemblages … But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such a fashion as they are found, with certain fossils predominant in certain horizons, the complexity of such “index fossils” increasing with increasing elevation in the column, in at least a general way.” (TGF, p. 274)

Higher Mobility of the Vertebrates “It is reasonable also, in the light of the Flood record, to expect that vertebrates would be found higher in the geologic column than the first invertebrates. Vertebrates in general possess much greater mobility, and this factor, together with their pelagic habitats, [pelagic – Refers to living in the water of the ocean above the bottom] would normally prevent their being entrapped and deposited in the deepest sediments. The simplest vertebrates, the ostracoderms [Ostracoderms (“bone-skinned”) are any of several groups of extinct, primitive, jawless fishes that were covered in an armor of bony plates.], are first found, and only sparingly then, in Ordovician strata. Fishes are found in profusion in the Devonian, often in great sedimentary “graveyards,” indicating violent deposition, and often in fresh-water deposits. It is obvious that fish do not normally die and become fossilized in such conditions as these but usually are either destroyed by scavengers or float on the surface until decomposed. The whole aspect of the fossil fish beds bespeaks violent burial in rapidly moving deltaic sediments.” … In other localities, and perhaps somewhat later in the period of the rising waters of the Flood, in general, land animals and plants would be expected to be caught in the sediments and buried; and this, of course, is exactly what the strata show.”(The Genesis Flood, p. 275) …

“In general though, as a statistical average, beds would tend to be deposited in just the order that has been ascribed to them in terms of the standard geologic column. That is, on top of the beds of marine vertebrates would be found amphibians, then reptiles and finally birds and mammals. This is in the order: (1) of increasing mobility and therefore increasing ability to postpone inundation; (2) of decreasing density and other hydrodynamic factors tending to promote earlier and deeper sedimentation, and (3) of increasing elevation of habitat and therefore time required for the Flood to attain stages sufficient to overtake them. The order is exactly what is to be expected in light of the Flood account and, therefore, gives further circumstantial evidence of the truthfulness of that account;” (The Genesis Flood, p. 276)

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RICHARD DAWKINS AND BRUCE ALBERTS ON DESIGN IN NATURE

Richard Dawkins spends an entire chapter on bat echolation in The Blind Watchmaker and then says …

“I hope the reader is as awestruck as I am, and as William Paley would have been, by these bat stories. My aim has been in one respect identical to Paley’s aim. I do not want the reader to underestimate the prodigious works of nature and the problems we face explaining them. (p. 37)”

then he says …

“We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully ‘designed’ to have come into existence by chance. (p. 43)”

Here are two more nice tidbits on Molecular Machines from a non-YEC source … Bruce Alberts, President of the National Academy of Sciences, introduced this issue with an article entitled, The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines. In his article, Alberts admits that …

“We have always underestimated cells . . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts (Alberts, Bruce. 1998. The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the NextGeneration of Molecular Biologists. Cell 92 (8 February): 291-94).”

Most important for the future of our field, the departmental structures at most universities seem to have thus far prevented any major rethinking of what preparation in mathematics, what preparation in physics, and what preparation in chemistry is most appropriate for either the research biologists or the medical doctors who will be working 10 or 20 years from now. The result is a mismatch between what today’s students who are interested in biology should be learning and the actual course offerings that are available to them. It is largely for this reason, I believe, that so many talented young biologists feel that mathematics, chemistry, and physics are of minor importance to their careers.

It is my hope that some of the young scientists who read this issue of Cell will come to the realization that much of the great future in biology lies in gaining a detailed understanding of the inner workings of the cell’s many marvelous protein machines. With this perspective, students may well be motivated to gain the background in the quantitative sciences that they will need to explore this subject successfully. But they will need faculty in our colleges and universities to lead them.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Jonathan Alberts for his explanations of how engineers analyze machines, Mei Lie Wong for preparation of the figure,and Teresa Donovan for manuscript preparation. Link Here

FLAGELLAR MOTOR LINKS

Nature created a rotary motor with a diameter of 30 nm. Motility of bacteria, such as “Salmonella” and “E. coli” with a body size of 1 – 2 micron, is driven by rapid rotation of a helical propeller by such a tiny little motor at its base. This organelle is called the flagellum, made of a rotary motor and a thin helical filament that grows up to about 15 micron. It rotates at around 20,000 rpm, at energy consumption of only around 10^-16 W and with energy conversion efficiency close to 100%. Prof. Namba’s research group is going to
reveal the mechanism of this highly efficient flagellar motor that is far beyond the capabilities of artificial motors. http://www.nanonet.go.jp/english/mailmag/2004/011.html

Motile Behavior of Bacteria
E. coli, a self-replicating object only a thousandth of a millimeter in size, can swim 35 diameters a second, taste simple chemicals in its environment, and decide whether life is getting better or worse.

Escherichia coli is a single-celled organism that lives in your gut. It is equipped with a set of rotary motors only 45 nm in diameter. each motor drives a long, thin, helical filament that extends several cell body lengths out into the external medium. The assemblage of motor and filament is called a flagellum. The concerted motion of several flagella enables a cell to swim. A cell can move toward regions that it deems more favorable by measuring changes in the concentrations of certain chemicals in its environment (mostly nutrients), deciding whether life is getting better or worse, and then modulating the direction of rotation of its flagella. Thus, in addition to rotary engines and propellers, E. coli’s standard accessories include particle counters, rate meters, and gear boxes. This microorganism is a nanotechnologist’s dream. I will discuss the features that make it so, from the perspectives of several scientific disciplines: anatomy, genetics, chemistry, and physics.
— Howard C. Berg, Harvard Prof
http://www.aip.org/pt/jan00/berg.htm

“There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”  Harold, F. 2001. The Way of the Cell: Molecules, Organisms and the Order of Life. New York: Oxford University Press.
http://www.designinference.com/documents/2003.02.Miller_Response.htm

RADIOMETRIC DATING

Houtermans, F. G. 1966. The Physical Principles of Geochronology. SR No. 151, p. 242.
“Sometimes the dates given by radioactive methods are accepted enthusiastically by the classical
geologists, sometimes if these dates do not fit their previously formed hypotheses they come to the conclusion to deny the usefulness of radioactive methods altogether.”

Mauger R. L. 1977. K-Ar Ages of Biotites from Tuffs in Eocene Rocks of the Green River, Washakie, and Uinta Basins, Utah,Wyoming, and Colorado. (University of Wyoming) Contributions to Geology 15(1):37.
“In general, dates in the ‘correct ball park’ are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully explained.” (Quoted by Woodmorappe, CRSQ 16:2, p. 114, 123)

JUNK DNA

“Genomes are littered with nonfunctional pseudogenes, faulty duplicates of functional genes that do nothing, while their functional cousins (the word doesn’t even need scare quotes) get on with their business in a different part of the genome. And there’s lots more DNA that doesn’t even deserve the name pseudogene. It, too, is derived by duplication, but not duplication of functional genes. It consists of multiple copies of junk, “tandem repeats”, and other nonsense which may be useful for forensic detectives but which doesn’t seem to be used in the body itself. Once again, creationists might spend some earnest time speculating on why the Creator should bother to litter genomes with untranslated pseudogenes and junk tandem repeat DNA.” Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain, 2003, p.99.

“From a design point of view, pseudogenes are indeed mistakes. So why are they there? Intelligent design cannot explain the presence of a nonfunctional pseudogene, unless it is willing to allow that the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, however, can explain them easily. Pseudogenes are nothing more than chance experiments in gene duplication that have failed, and they persist in the genome as evolutionary remnants of the past history of the b-globin genes.”
Kenneth Miller, Life’s Grand Design, Technology Review, February-March 1994, Volume 97(2): pg. 24–32.

See this link … http://www.whoisyourcreator.com/junk_dna.html … for more quotes.