inaction in action

or, "the extended remix of 'the road to 9/11'."

i want a slurpee!

if i didn't know any better (and i do), i might think the fact that i haven't purchased a drop of citgo gas since chavez was elected in venezuela has finally caused the desired result.

going to get a slurpee on my way home from work tonight...

not quite nathan hale

but close.

very close.

misunderestimated

see who's at it this time, and read the comments too. (mild occasional vulgarity)

Osteen's book

Maybe he titled it "Your Best Life Now" because if you follow that positive-thinking nonsense, your afterlife is going to be infinitely disappointing...

also see this related pic.

yo yazdgerd

Viewpoint linked to this wonderful centuries-old response to the sadly-non-extinct islamic threat. Except for the references to yet another false god, Ahuramazda, it's excellent:

[Text of the ultimatum from Omar Ibn-Khat'tab the Calif of Islam to the Iranina Sovereign Yazdgerd III]

Bism-ellah Ar'rahman Ar'rhim
To the Shah of the Fars

I do not foresee a good future for you and your nation save your acceptance of my terms and your submission to me. There was a time when your country ruled half the world, but see how now your sun has set. On all fronts your armies have been defeated and your nation is condemned to extinction. I point out to you the path whereby you might escape this fate. Namely, that you begin worshipping the one god, the unique deity, the only god who created all that is. I bring you his message. Order your nation to cease the false worship of fire and to join us, that they may join the truth.

Worship Allah the creator of the world.
Worship Allah and accept Islam as the path of salvation.
End now your polytheistic ways and become Muslims that you may accept Allah-u-Akbar as your savior.

This is the only way of securing your own survival and the peace of your Persians. You will do this if you know what is good for you and for your Persians.

Submission is your only option
Allah u Akbar
The Calif of Muslims Omar Ibn-Khat'tab

[What follows is response of the Persian King.]

In the name of Ahuramazda the Creator of Life and Wisdom,

From the Shahan-Shah of Iran Yazdgerd to Omar Ibn Khat'tab the Arab Calif.

In your letter you summon us Iranians to your god whom you call "Allah-u-Akbar"; and because of your barbarity and ignorance, without knowing who we are and Whom we worship, you demand that we seek out your god and become worshippers of "Allah-u-Akbar".

How strange that you occupy the seat of the Arab Calif but are as ignorant as any desert roaming Arab! You admonish me to become monotheistic in faith.

Ignorant man, for thousands of years we Aryaee have, in this land of culture and art, been monotheistic and five times a day have we offered prayers to God's Throne of Oneness. While we laid the foundations of philanthropy and righteousness and kindness in this world and held high the ensign of "Good Thoughts, Good Words and Good Deeds", you and your ancestors were desert wanderers who ate snakes and lizards and buried your innocent daughters alive.

You Arabs who have no regard for God's creatures,
who mercilessly put people to the sword,
who mistreat your women and bury you daughters alive,
who attack caravans and are highway robbers,
who commit murder,
who kidnap women and spouses;
how dare you presume to teach us,
who are above these evils, to worship God?

You tell me to cease the worship of fire and to worship God instead! To us Iranians the light of Fire is reminiscent of the Light of God. The radiance and the sun-like warmth of fire exuberates our hearts, and the pleasant warmth of it brings our hearts and spirits closer together, that we may be philanthropic, kind and considerate, that gentleness and forgiveness may become our way of life, and that thereby the Light of God may keep shining in our hearts.

Our God is the Great Ahuramazda. Strange is this that you too have now decided to give Him a name, and you call Him by the name of "Allah-u-Akbar".

But we are nothing like you.

We, in the name of Ahuramazda, practice compassion and love and goodness and righteousness and forgiveness, and care for the dispossessed and the unfortunate; But you, in the name of your "Allah-u-Akbar" commit murder, create misery and subject others to suffering!

Tell me truly who is to blame for your misdeeds? Your god who orders genocide, plunder and destruction, or you who do these things in his name? Or both?

You, who have spent all your days in brutality and barbarity, have now come out of your desolate deserts resolved to teach, by the blade and by conquest, the worship of God to a people who have for thousands of years been civilized and have relied on culture and knowledge and art as mighty supports.

What have you, in the name of your "Allah-u-Akbar", taught these armies of Islam besides destruction and pillage and murder that you now presume to summon others to your god?

Today, my people's fortunes have changed. Their armies, who were subjects of Ahuramazada, have now been defeated by the Arab armies of "Allah-u-Akbar". And they are being forced, at the point of the sword, to convert to the god by the name of "Allah-u-Akbar". And are forced to offer him prayers five times a day but now in Arabic; since your "Allah-u-Akbar" only understands Arabic.

I advise you to return to your lizard infested deserts.
Do not let loose upon our cities your cruel barbarous Arabs who are like rabid animals.
Refrain from the murder of my people.
Refrain from pillaging my people.
Refrain from kidnapping our daughters in the name of your "Allah-u-Akbar".
Refrain from these crimes and evils.

We Aryaee are a forgiving people, a kind and well-meaning people. Wherever we go, we sow the seeds of goodness, amity and righteousness. And this is why we have the capacity to overlook the crimes and the misdeeds of your Arabs.

Stay in your desert with your "Allah-u-Akbar", and do not approach our cities; for horrid is your belief and brutish is your conduct.

Yazdgerd Saasaani

McSoylent

it all started with the accident that horribly discolored Ronald while he was working on the Manhattan Project... ;)

more president bashing

...of the accurate kind.

Re: clinton's (spit) claim that the Bush administration had 8 months to work against terror and did nothing, Varifrank pulls some facts out of the memory hole:

See, I dont remember that. What I remember was Washington D.C. personnel and infrastructure at total loggerheads because the previous adminstration did everything short of lighting fire to the office buildings to keep the incoming Bush administration from being able to set up its government. It was an unprecendented display of childish,unprofessional, sophomoric crap. I remember lots of little cutesy games being played with keyboards and superglue and the near universal removal of the "W" from all computer keyboards. I remember President Clinton doing just about everything in his legal power to make it hard on the incoming Bush administration to be able to get started. I remember walkouts by union staff in D.C. office buildings and other forms of soft sabotage in the first few months of the Bush Administration. Did that stop President Bush? Well it sure as hell didnt help, and if it effected just "George W. Bush - the person" well thats fine, but the truth is that crap like that cost the government many, many manhours and those manhours had to come from someplace, didnt they? I also remember a dangerous little incident with China over a P-3 Orion and a Chinese fighter that had to be handled with deftness in the first few months, this was a might distracting to the government at the time Here you are, new to the job and the very real prospect of "war with the Chinese" and you havent even gotten your name on the White House stationary yet.

I remember "Jumpin Jim Jeffords" switching sides and throwing the Senate into the opposition partys hands just in time for the nomination process to slow to a crawl in the summer of 2001. I remember Robert Hanssen of the FBI being arrested for spying for Russia and I remember that it took until nearly August for most of the major offices, such as the head of the FBI to be filled, thanks to the antics of people like Jumpin' Jim Jeffords.

President Clinton wants to paint the 'Summer of 2001' as a period of peaceful calm, where the birds were singing and the squirrels were carefully gathering nuts on the Capitol Mall, but President Bush had his hands full trying to keep the collapsing Clinton economy from becoming a full on disaster. That summer, the world was certain that Bush would not get his tax cuts because of his weak political situation, but he got them, not because he was a great politician but because everyone knew, on both sides of the aisle that unless swift action was taken, we were looking at the very real possibility of an economic depression. The world losing faith in our banking institutions and our stock market was a very, very real threat in the Summer of 2001. It was dealt with successfully, and like all of President Bushs' successful stories, quickly forgotten and jammed into the 'memory hole'. In September of 2001, whatever cool designs we were drawing on the etch-a-sketch of that years history were obliterated forever.

and concludes:

I actually feel sorry for (slick willie). He is condemmed to spend the rest of his life trying to figure out why everyone is laughing at him behind his back. The rest of us are just looking at the historical record with a somewhat objective fashion but that poor bastard actually believes what he thinks he remembers about his record.

think global

triton does:

Never think for a moment that the Global Warmingists are simply environmentally-conscious folks who want to save the planet. They are in fact political activists who want federal and global governments to exert more control over our lives. They are totalitarians in the same mold as the Bolsheviks; the only difference is in the rhetoric they use to nudge us towards their unholy goal.

hook, lie, and stringer

Besides the hivemind of the newsroom, there's another contributing factor to the obviously shoddy MSM reporting from Iraq:

On any given day, fewer than a dozen reporters are embedded with combat units, and actually out there. A third or more of these are working for military oriented publications ("Stars and Stripes," Armed Forces Network). Most journalists are in the Green Zone, or some well-guarded hotel. There, they depend on Iraqi stringers to gather information, and take pictures for them. In reality, these reporters could do this from back home, and many more media organizations are doing just that.

Nothing new about using local stringers in dangerous areas. It's common sense, given that the bad guys are in the habit of kidnapping, or just killing, foreign reporters. The problem is, the pool of available Iraqi talent is mostly Sunni Arab. Many of these folks side with the bad guys. And all Iraqi journalists, especially those working for foreigners, are subject to intimidation, or bribery. While some of the foreign reporters may be aware of all this, some aren't, and many of the rest don't care. The truth won't set them free, but supplying stories their editors are looking for will.

soundfest

I was forwarded a link (thanks mom) to this cool commercial for Honda cars that has sound effects by... you'll see...

If you liked that, you might like Huutajat.

And here is a sound that is *supposed* to help stop telemarketing calls. According to this article, if you include the sound at the first of your outgoing answering machine message, it makes the autodialing machines think your phone is disconnected. I'm trying it now and i'll let you know if it works. (If it doesn't work, I may try some other solutions - the number of recorded sales calls i've been getting is ridiculous.)

for those of you who hadn't noticed

the clintons are scum.

From behind the benign façade and the tranquilizing smile, the real Bill Clinton emerged Sunday during Chris Wallace’s interview on Fox News Channel. There he was on live television, the man those who have worked for him have come to know – the angry, sarcastic, snarling, self-righteous, bombastic bully, roused to a fever pitch. The truer the accusation, the greater the feigned indignation. Clinton jabbed his finger in Wallace’s face, poking his knee, and invading the commentator’s space.

But beyond noting the ex-president’s non-presidential style, it is important to answer his distortions and misrepresentations. His self-justifications constitute a mangling of the truth which only someone who once quibbled about what the “definition of ‘is’ is” could perform...

One also has to wonder when the volcanic rage beneath the surface of this would-be statesman will cool. When will the chip on his shoulder finally disappear? When will he feel sufficiently secure in his own legacy and his own skin not to boil over repeatedly in private and occasionally even in public?

never.

i've said it before and i'll say it again: the clinton legacy is far lower than the pit where the twin towers stood.

Yo Yankovic

I'll never be as cool as Weird Al (or MacStansbury)...

what he said

Viewpoint:

(Last) week the president of Iran was invited to speak at the U.N., an opportunity he used to insult and attack the President of the United States. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad presides over a nation in which women are regularly and horribly stoned to death for commiting acts of sexual impurity. That the U.N. would allow such a man in the door, much less let him speak, is an utter disgrace to that body. That this Neanderthal would insult any leader of a Western country, much less the President of the United States, should outrage every decent human being.

Here's part of a letter from an organization set up to save the lives of women sentenced to stoning. The letter describes a recent case:

Once again, another Iranian woman has been sentenced to death by the barbaric practice of public stoning. On June 28, 2006, a court in the northwestern Iranian city of Urmia sentenced Malak Ghorbany to death for committing "adultery." Under Iran's Penal Code, the term "adultery" is used to describe any intimate or sexual act between a man and a girl/woman who are not married. The crime of adultery is also used in cases where a girl is deemed to have committed "acts incompatible with chastity," which includes instances of rape. The punishment for "adultery" is death.

On the day of her punishment, the woman's hands are tied behind her back as she becomes covered from head to toe in winding sheets and is placed seated in a pit. The pit is then filled up to her chest with dirt and the dirt is tamped down. At that point, members of the community are invited to murder her by hurling rocks at her. However, to ensure that the condemned woman/girl receives the absolute maximum amount of pain and torture, the Iranian government has even mandated the size of the stones that are to be used in this barbaric act of public execution. By law, the stones must not be too small as to prevent ultimate death, nor must they be too large that they could cause the girl's death "too soon."

At the page linked to above is another link to a video which documents the case of Atefeh Sahaaleh, a 16 year-old girl, who was stoned to death for having sexual contact with a 22 year old man.

What I'd like to know is where the outraged voices are who were so quick a few decades ago to condemn South Africa, Chile, and Israel for real and imagined human rights abuses. Where are Left-wing feminists who vigorously protest the slightest violations of the dignity, honor, and equality of American women? Where are the writers for Sojourners and other organs of the religious Left who wrote copiously on human rights abuses in Central America during the 70s and 80s. Why are they not marching in the streets demanding sanctions against Iran as they did against South Africa? Why were they not outside the U.N. in the thousands protesting the appearance of the odious man who presides over such inhumanity and who could stop it if he wished? Why are the Left-wing blogs completely silent about this?

Might it be that just as they were largely silent about what Hussein did to the Iraqi people as long as Iraq was antagonistic to Washington, perhaps these champions of human rights are really not alarmed about what Iran does to it's people as long as Iran is hostile to America? Could it be that the Left only cares about human rights when those protections are under assault by allies of this country and that they are loath to protest when there is a possibility that their protest might encourage the use of military force against the offending nation? I'd like to hope not, but it would be good to have some evidence to support that hope.

Ahmadinejad has threatened to destroy Israel in a nuclear holocaust, yet he gets a hearty ovation from the assembled thugs in the U.N. General Assembly, and the American Left, by and large, merely yawns. That really is inexcusable.

Genesis to Romans, pt.2

This previous post has links to explanations of how Noah's descendants may have become the nationalities of today. Here is some related information about what may have become of the ten lost tribes of Israel.

Flyboys

I haven't been to a movie in a while, largely do to massive disinterest in paying to be at the receiving end of a sewer line. But I did want to see 'Flyboys' for two reasons: I have a deep-seated fondness for airplanes, and there are hardly any movies made about WWI aviation any more.

Oh well...

...with one exception

okay, three exceptions... check out these great motivational posters:

opportunity

leadership

legacy

break

no posts this weekend. see you again on monday.

while we're talking about proof

...here is an excellent article on the many logical and historical evidences of the resurrection of Jesus.

proclaiming themselves to be wise, they became monkeys

This will probably be my longest post ever, but the article I just read really annoyed me a lot, and I couldn't help but fire back.

15 Answers To Evolutionist Propaganda:

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty--above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses."

No argument here, but note the tacit admission that scientists are willing to modify definitions to suit their purposes.

No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution--or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter--they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

Translation: "No, we can't actually prove evolution, just trust us."

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

Intelligent people are free to make their own conclusions. Scientists' observations and conclusions are not the prime arbiter of truth.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild. The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival: large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

A straw man carrying a red herring.

I've never heard any creationist use this argument against evolution, and there is no correlation between the refutation and its intended target.

(And note the kowtowing to Darwin's Holy Temple of Galapagos.)

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas: microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time--changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms--such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization--can drive profound changes in populations over time.

Brace yourself for the huge (il)logical leap from micro- to macro- evolution, where bacteria can grow eyeballs and gills, and fish can breathe air and walk upright...

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not--and does not--find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

And when things don't add up (and they never will), evolutionary scientists will just make up more theories to patch the hole.

Sort of like Windows "security" updates...

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too.

When only one side gets to make up their own rules, that side usually wins the game. Imagine that!

If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

See? When creationists can't point to the evidence, evolutionists claim victory, but evolutionists have absolutely no qualms about not having any evidence for their arguments.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

Eliminating too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor would lead to elimination of the research funding, and scientists simply cannot allow that. Follow the money...

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents.

Translation: "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LA LA LA NOBODY DOUBTS US LA LA LA LAAAAAA!!!!!!"

Isn't ignoring evidence what got you evolutionists in trouble in the first place?

Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal, and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.

And according to alJazeera, the Guardian, and the Village Voice, few anti-liberal manuscripts are even submitted. Evolution would have us accept this as proof that there are no conservatives.

Those paragraphs have proven that the scientific press is thoroughly biased.

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.

Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

That the "acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence" has become a requirement to gain employment as a biologist has zero impact on the actual facts.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements.

Unfortunately, dishonest evolutionists have shown a willingness to take the evidence out of context to create their own fictitious world.

Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals--which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

"Punctuated equilibrium" is just one of those little patches evolutionists made up to cover one gaping hole in their story. It is presented "as though it allows new species to materialize overnight" because that is precisely how evolutionists intend for it to work.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

Liars think all truth is illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

Another straw man. The alleged quote of "If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" is more often used as a humorous jibe, or perhaps is used in exasperation after extended evolutionist rant of sophistry.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery,

(to the willfully blind, perhaps)

but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

"Could", "might", "may" - oh, yes, they're quite sure...

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

But it wouldn't explain where the aliens came from. ;)

The fantasies that evolutionists will invent to avoid the possibility of God's existence are utterly amazing (and pathetic).

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite: natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

No fair, that computer program was intelligently designed.

If evolutionists could - without ANY outside intervention - show us a pile of sand which had organized itself into a computer, written its own programming, and produced the plays of Shakespeare, they might have something. (That scenario is actually easier to believe that the tripe they're selling.)

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

There is enough energy in the closed system of the solar system (extrasolar sources contribute negligible amounts of energy) to explain crystal formation and lower levels of complexity. To believe that there is enough energy in the system to explain the amazing complexity of every single type of living being on the Earth and the complexity of the interwovenness of all of those systems into a viable whole is ludicrous.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)--bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

A microevolutionary trait, at best.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Except for the fact that most of these mutations render the specimen incapable of reproduction and passing their genes to the next generation, that might almost work.

And if a fish suddenly mutated lungs, wouldn't it drown?

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

Here's a thought experiment.

Calculate the odds of the random occurence of every single one of the mutations necessary to produce life as we know it, down to the last detail of its incomprehensible complexity. Then go bet everything you own at those odds in Vegas. How utterly foolish would that be?

As foolish as believing in evolution.

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species.

And sci-fi authors have written extensively about how Martians could take over the Earth.

For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

For instance, in a book called "War of the Worlds", by H.G. Wells, if Martians were envious of Earth, they might get into spaceships and kill us all!

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

Translation: "We're open to any non-intelligent solution, just so long as it plays by our rules."

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries.

Now they're saying mutations are "fairly rare", whereas before they were gushing about how easy it was for them to occur. But guess what - in over 3000 years of recorded history, it still hasn't been seen. And with the rate of mutation necessary to fulfill the evolutionary fantasy, we'd have to expect that 1 out of 100 babies would be sprouting wings, tails, antennae, or something to keep the ball rolling....

Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

If you look at physical and behavioral traits closely enough, by their method there could be over 6 billion species of humans on the face of the earth.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection--for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits--and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

The flies did have a little outside help though - isn't that cheating?

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

That there were different sizes of horses and seashells is hardly proof of macroevolution. And there is no proof that any particular set of bones is "related" to any other set of bones. Also notice that most of the alleged "sets" of bones are wildly incomplete and often mis-reconstructed (see Brontosaurus).

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group.

Creationists don't want evolutionists to produce a weird chimeric monster, they would like them to admit that the whole evolutionary belief system is a weird chimeric monster.

Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

To which evolutionists, like a parent vexed by a child's questions, eventually respond "BECAUSE I SAID SO!"

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

"Molecular clock"?? I smell another "security" patch...

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Just like when the wind blows over the desert and sculpts the sand into Notre Dame Cathedral!

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution--what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Or were designed that way.

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

How much proof do evolutionists need that their theories are untenable? Certainly more than they provide in support of their fantasy. The term "willful ignorance" leaps to mind...

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap--a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

So what that a couple of components happen to match? Perhaps they were designed that way as well. Perhaps many components were designed in similar fashion simply because that was the best design suited for living conditions on this planet (liquid water, nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere, etc).

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind--"specified complexity"--is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

The only logical conclusion, evolutionists assert, in an echo of a serpent 6000 years ago, is that humans have no need of God.

Dembski's argument contains several holes.

They're not holes, it's just "punctuated equilibrium". You evolutionists are okay with that, right?

It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences.

Who are they to declare right and wrong?

Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

Again, their experiments always have outside intelligence directing the results.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms.

"Evolution science" more so.

A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms.

"methodological naturalism" - hmm, isn't that a belief system? Do they attend First Methodological downtown, or South Side United Methodological?

Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

Making up stories to fit their framework - right.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Even within this article, evolutionists have admitted doing the exact same thing - invoking shadowy theories (like "punctuated equilibrium") that conveniently have whatever unconstrained properties are needed to force the evidence into their belief system.

(How does one disprove the existence of these mystical "selective forces" and "molecular clocks"?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones?

The article's author is apparently unfamiliar with the Book of Genesis.

Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Translation: Evolutionists ridicule all religions but their own.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

Time and again, evidence has shown that evolutionary theory is ignorance, failing to find any informative answers to mysteries like the nature of truth, the causes of evil, how the soul works. Evolution, by any name, adds nothing of eternal value to the effort.