Signature in the Cell

The latest in the recent onslaught of books attacking bold, purely materialistic philosophy and science is a book titled Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, written by Stephen Meyer.







Be sure to order your copy of Signature in the Cell ASAP!

Another Documentary Questioning Evolution

Expelled laid the ground work, and now it looks like there will be more of these type of documentaries to follow.

The Voyage that Shook the World will be coming to the cinema in the near future. Be sure to check out the website for further information.

HT: Uncommon Descent

Evolution would take a Miracle

HT: bornagain77 @ UD

The Creation Museum

All of my nieces and nephews attend private schools (we're the black sheep in the family with our two boys going the public school route). Four of them attend a Latin school where they do fairly extensive travel throughout the school year...some outstanding historical field trips. On their way to Virginia a few weeks ago, they stopped at the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I just found out about this stop the other day, and I've been promised pictures of the museum, so hopefully, I'll print some of them at some point in time.

Bill Maher a little out of character

Seems he's not thrilled with the Obama reality television the current administration has goin' on...



PS: More reality TV from the White House. After reading that, it's pretty obvious that Rush Limbaugh isn't the only instigator of divisiveness in this country. Obama seems to be taking the lead in that department. Not allowing opposing views in regard to sharing his health care plans during their TV coverage is going to cause turmoil.

No more Letterman

I'll be thrilled to death when the guy retires.

What the media has done to Sarah Palin and her family over the past 10 months is disgusting, and Letterman is pathetic beyond belief.

The Dinosaur / Bird Connection

...and the walls keep a tumblin' down....

Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links

ScienceDaily (June 9, 2009) — Researchers at Oregon State University have made a fundamental new discovery about how birds breathe and have a lung capacity that allows for flight – and the finding means it's unlikely that birds descended from any known theropod dinosaurs.

The conclusions add to other evolving evidence that may finally force many paleontologists to reconsider their long-held belief that modern birds are the direct descendants of ancient, meat-eating dinosaurs, OSU researchers say.

"It's really kind of amazing that after centuries of studying birds and flight we still didn't understand a basic aspect of bird biology," said John Ruben, an OSU professor of zoology. "This discovery probably means that birds evolved on a parallel path alongside dinosaurs, starting that process before most dinosaur species even existed."

...

The implication, the researchers said, is that birds almost certainly did not descend from theropod dinosaurs, such as tyrannosaurus or allosaurus. The findings add to a growing body of evidence in the past two decades that challenge some of the most widely-held beliefs about animal evolution.

"For one thing, birds are found earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That's a pretty serious problem, and there are other inconsistencies with the bird-from-dinosaur theories.

"But one of the primary reasons many scientists kept pointing to birds as having descended from dinosaurs was similarities in their lungs," Ruben said. "However, theropod dinosaurs had a moving femur and therefore could not have had a lung that worked like that in birds. Their abdominal air sac, if they had one, would have collapsed. That undercuts a critical piece of supporting evidence for the dinosaur-bird link.

"A velociraptor did not just sprout feathers at some point and fly off into the sunset," Ruben said.

The newest findings, the researchers said, are more consistent with birds having evolved separately from dinosaurs and developing their own unique characteristics, including feathers, wings and a unique lung and locomotion system.

OH, BUT WAIT...GOTTA GET THIS IN SO WE DON'T CREATE A STIR!!!!!

"We aren't suggesting that dinosaurs and birds may not have had a common ancestor somewhere in the distant past," Quick said. "That's quite possible and is routinely found in evolution. It just seems pretty clear now that birds were evolving all along on their own and did not descend directly from the theropod dinosaurs, which lived many millions of years later."

*eyes rolling*

Of course, as we all know...

"Frankly, there's a lot of museum politics involved in this, a lot of careers committed to a particular point of view even if new scientific evidence raises questions," Ruben said.

We'll just have to be paitent...one day things will definently take a turn in the right direction.

HT: Voxy

Related posts:

More Bird to Dino BS
Another Strike against Dino to Bird Evolution
Early History of Birds more Diverse than Once Thought
Another Interesting Dino Find

George Tiller

Some freaking idiot just shot and killed George Tiller this morning....in church no less.

Simply unbelievable....

Yes, what Tiller has done over the years is horrifically wrong. Deep down, even liberal minded pro abortion folks know that. You don't rip babies in their 6th month of gestation from their mother's womb. But, the moronic fool who took Tiller's life just made the worst possible move ever for pro lifers.

*Shakes head in complete disbelief*

PS: According to this link, it appears that Tiller performed 1,436 abortions after 22 weeks from 1998 to 2001 alone. Here's a picture of an aborted fetus at 24 weeks. If that isn't considered hard core murder, I don't know what is.

He's been in practice since the early 70's. I can't imagine and don't want to know the number of babies he killed during his career. It boggles the mind that our former Governor, Kathleen Sebelius, and other far left Kansans vilified Phil Kline for taking Tiller to task for the murders he committed.

Guy Walks Into a Bar and Thinks He's a Chimpanzee: The Unbearable Lightness of Chimp-Human Genome Similarity

This post at Evolution News and Views, written by the infamous Richard Sternberg, is just too enjoyable not to pass on...:)

TEXAS ROCKS!!!

Huge win in Texas for scientific integrity!!!

Happy Birthday Darwin

ALL HAIL CHARLES DARWIN!!!

Some sciency types will be offering their worship and praise to the Almighty Darwin today.

I, OTOH, agree with David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen....

But "Darwinism" survives, especially in the English-speaking world, not as a quaint historical theory, but rather as a cosmological doctrine. The hard-core Darwinist is a "religious atheist," whose faith in the non-existence of God is anchored in the unshakable conviction that everything in this world that looks designed and purposeful will eventually be explained by random, gradual, purely "natural" (as opposed to supernatural) processes. And he defends himself by the method of the hedgehog: for when attacked he rolls up into an impregnably tautological ball.

Oh, and btw...

ID is winning big time in the public square. Screw the hardcore Darwin lover scientists...it won't always be the case that we continue to teach an ideology in the science classroom. Hopefully, at some point in time, much of Darwin's legacy will be shoved over into the philosophy classroom.

The latest Zogby poll (January), linked to above, shows that 78% of US voters favor teaching both strengths and weaknesses of evolution.

FAR OUT!

For regular readers...if you're still out there, let me assure you that I haven't given up the fight! My laptop has been revived, and I'm still at it...stronger than ever, but I've found an alternate venue. Hopefully, I'll get back to blogging at some point, though I can't say I haven't enjoyed the break. I still keep up with all the pertinent blogs and forums.

Keep up the fight! Looks like the numbers are leaning our way!!!!!!

PS: Casey Luskin from the Discovery Institute had a great opinion piece in the US News & World Report.

Be sure to read Uncommon Descent and Evolution News and Views to keep up to date with what is happening in the ID/Evo debates.

Nature's 15 "Evolutionary Gems"

From here:

Jan 2, 2009 — Like a showcase of pearl-handled revolvers, an armory of evidences Nature calls “Darwin’s Gems” have been exhibited to warn creationists that Darwin Day will be defended next month with a show of force. The authors, Henry Gee (former editor of Nature), Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell have made their 15 Evolutionary Gems freely available “and encourage its free dissemination.” Why? “Given that the concepts and realities of Darwinian evolution are still challenged, albeit rarely by biologists, a succinct briefing on why evolution by natural selection is an empirically validated principle is useful for people to have to hand.” This collected ammunition, they feel, demonstrates the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking.”

Their list includes 5 evidences from paleontology, 6 from ecology, and 4 from genetics and molecular biology (see Commentary for items on the list). The outline is followed by summary arguments for each “gem” of evidence for Darwinian evolution.

What matters on a pistol is not how pretty the handle looks but what it’s loaded with, and whether it will work without backfiring. To shoot down the creationist challengers riding into town, this trio of self-appointed sheriffs needs to stop polishing the handles and demonstrate their marksmanship. Better a slingshot that can hit its mark than a pearl-handled hunk of dead iron.

The trio, unfortunately, loaded their chambers with blanks. Nobody cares about microevolution. That is accepted by even young-earth creationists. They’ve got to demonstrate that Charlie’s silver bullet, natural selection, can get out of the chamber with sufficient wallop to do more than tickle the creationists and make them laugh. His takeover of the town rested on the ability of his newfangled ideas to create new genetic information, structure and function. Charlie’s imagined ancestor of all life had no wings, teeth, legs, or brains. Can his mechanism of random mutation and natural selection, with no purpose or designing intelligence, get from slimy sea to Henry Gee? Let’s see.

The bad sheriffs best beware of backfires, or circular reasoning (i.e., using “evolutionary thinking” to argue for evolution as fact). They wanted to demonstrate the “breadth, depth and power of evolutionary thinking,” they said. Well, guess what. There’s something with even more breadth, depth and power than that: imagination. Take that up in the saloon, guys; it doesn’t belong in a scientific showdown. Show us your firepower.

1. Whale evolution: See our entries from 12/20/2007 and 05/28/2002 as an antidote to their bluffing and exaggeration about Thewissen’s alleged “great transformation.” Even they admitted at the end that his study “demonstrates the existence of potential transition forms in the fossil record,” not actual transitional forms, like the 50,000 David Berlinski estimated would be required to turn a cow into a whale. Then they bluffed that “many other examples could have been highlighted,” and distracted the reader’s attention to futureware: “there is every reason to think that many others await discovery,” they said. This was a major problem in Darwin’s time. How many more centuries do we have to wait?

2. Tetrapod evolution: They rehashed Tiktaalik as if it is problem-free. Find a dozen refutations by searching on the word Tiktaalik in the search bar above. How convinced should we be when they say that it represents “the stage before tetrapods evolved, and shows how the fossil record throws up surprises, albeit ones that are entirely compatible with evolutionary thinking”? This only makes sense if you already believe in evolution. If you are wowed by circular reasoning, wave your tetrapods.

3. Evolution of feathers: They argue from Archaeopteryx (with a historical plaudit to Thomas Huxley for his speculation about bird evolution), Sinosauropteryx (search on this word for 5 entries), and Epidexipteryx (10/22/2008) that feathers preceded flight. Again, this only makes sense if you already worship Darwin. Their closing statement is so bizarre, it wins Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week and a new cartoon by Brett Miller (click on the Tweety Bird). Watch for the glorification of Darwinian speculation, the big lie about feathered dinosaurs being “discovered,” and the miracle-working power of evolution personified:

Palaeontologists are now beginning to think that their speculations weren’t nearly wild enough, and that feathers were indeed quite common in dinosaurs.

The discovery of feathered dinosaurs not only vindicated the idea of transitional forms, but also showed that evolution has a way of coming up with a dazzling variety of solutions when we had no idea that there were even problems. Flight could have been no more than an additional opportunity that presented itself to creatures already clothed in feathers.

The leap of faith in that sentence is breathtaking. There are so many adaptations required for flight, to glibly say that an opportunity presents itself and it happens exceeds the faith of a creationist by orders of magnitude. Want to try out their explanation? Stand at the top of a skyscraper. Put on a Big Bird costume. An opportunity for flight presents itself....

4. Teeth: Microevolution; irrelevant. This gem is only a short, sweet anecdote about a lady scientist inspired by Darwin. It ends with a plaudit for evo-devo.

5. Vertebrate skeleton: This is a bizarre concoction of recapitulation theory, speculation, circular reasoning and imposing Darwin on the data in the absence of evidence. They pretend this helps doctors understand “several developmental disorders in humans,” as if evolution had anything to do with it. Creationists believe that we have skeletal similarities to our fellow vertebrates; so what? Circular argument; irrelevant.

6. Speciation: More stickleback fish propaganda (search on stickleback in the search bar above). Microevolution; irrelevant.

7. Lizards: Microevolution; irrelevant.

8. Co-evolution: A so-called evolutionary arms race between water fleas and parasites that infect them. Both species remain what they were; no new organs or new genetic information. Microevolution; irrelevant.

9. Bird dispersal: This is about gene flow in one species of bird. Microevolution; irrelevant.

10. Guppies: An argument for “frequency-dependent survival” in genetic polymorphisms of one species of guppy. Microevolution; irrelevant.

11. Evolutionary history matters: This entry assumes evolution to prove evolution. Circular reasoning; irrelevant. The authors talk about “evolution’s breathtaking solution” to a feeding problem in moray eels. No transitional forms mentioned, nor any mechanism for producing this “innovation” – just the assumption that Darwin did it somehow. They opened, “Evolution is often thought to be about finding optimal solutions to the problems that life throws up. But natural selection can only work with the materials at hand – materials that are themselves the results of many millions of years of evolutionary history.” Is restating their belief with sufficient chutzpah supposed to convince a doubter?

12. Galapagos Finches: Good grief. For them to keep tossing up this discredited story and thinking that an admitted case of microevolution that oscillates beak size with climate by a few millimeters is going to convince the rest of us that humans have bacteria ancestors, it’s no showdown at all. “The study shows how biologists are going beyond the mere documentation of evolutionary change to identify the underlying molecular mechanisms,” they said. Well, fine. The history of alchemy motivated many new techniques that later helped chemists.

13. Microevolution meets macroevolution: All right, folks, here it is: the rubber meets the road. This must be a good one. Ready? “We can infer from the fossil record that larger species-to-species changes, or macroevolution, also occur,” they said, ignoring the Cambrian explosion, “but they are naturally harder to observe in action.” Enter Sean Carroll (the one at Howard Hughes Medical Institute) demonstrating spots on the wings of one species of fruit fly. Whoa, that’s rich. It gets worse. The story revolves around considering some genes and transcription factors evolutionarily “ancient” and “ancestral.” They just can’t quit their drunken-sailor walk of circular reasoning. “This shows that a gene involved in one process can be co-opted for another, in principle driving macroevolutionary change.”

14. Toxin resistance: A mutation breaks the gate that would otherwise allow a toxin to enter, in two different kinds of animals. So evolution breaks things. And your point is?

15. Variation vs stability: Let’s see if they saved their best for last. Nope; foul. They have just inserted teleology back into evolution, committing the very infraction Darwin declared a mortal sin.

Species can remain mostly unchanged for millions of years, long enough for us to pick up their traces in the fossil record. But they change, too, and often very suddenly. This has led some to wonder whether species – usually those developing along specific tracks – store the potential for sudden change under the hood, unleashing a flood of otherwise hidden variation at times of environmental stress – variation on which selection can act.

They call this phenomenon of stored variation “evolutionary capacitance”. Giving something a name is not an argument. Need we remind the gunslinger trio that capacitors are built by intelligent engineers? This argument does not rule out a Creator planning in some adaptability and robustness to his intelligently-designed creations – organisms that must survive a dynamic environment. The creationists demand their gems back.

Notice the reliance of this argument on punctuated equilibria, Stephen Jay Gould’s pet theory on why the evidence for evolution is missing. You would think they would not entertain such anti-gradualist heresies for Darwin Day (read what one Darwinist thinks about Gould in the 12/19/2008 entry, bullet 2). You would think also that this trio would not be handing their ammunition to the creationists to use against them.

Creationists really don’t mind the arsenal. They will let the Darwinists shoot a thousand pearl-handled hunks of dead iron loaded with blanks all they want. They’re still comin’ to save the town from the crooked sheriffs holding the citizens hostage.

Exercise: Explain why “evolutionary thinking” is an oxymoron.

My Laptop Finally Bit the Dust

Bummer...

Well, it looks like my blogging days have come to an end. The 'ol laptop took it's last dying breath late last night. A new one is just not in the budget at the moment, so Reasonable Kansans will be signing off indefinitely.

Hopefully one day I'll be back...

Thanks for reading, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the discussions and the comments. It's been a blast.

All the best....

~FtK

World Aids Day

December 1st has been designated as World Aids Day for bloggers. The badge on the right column of my blog provides tons of information about how you can get involved.

If you're a member of Second Life, a new island has been created where participants in the event will help educate the public about the disease in efforts to decrease the spread of AIDS/HIV. On the 1st, there will be an entire day of activities to attend.

Worldwide, an estimated 33 million people are living with HIV. In the United States, an estimated one million Americans are living with HIV.

Please join us in educating the public about AIDS/HIV on December 1st!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into God's presence with singing! Know that the Lord is God! It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures for ever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

~Psalm 100

Yeah....well, okay, this is kinda true....

He is hawt...I'll give him that. Let's just hope Mr. Hawt doesn't sink the ship.

Good grief...

What's Thanksgiving without Pilgrims and Indians. Ridiculous.

The Country is Screwed...

Read more.

Waaaaaahhhhhh!!!!! Is it a helpless feeling or what?

We're never going to sell that house we still have sitting on the market ravaging our finances. Our realtor told me that none of the comparable homes in our immediate area have sold in the last 6 months.

Just freaking great....

Here we walked the conservative walk for our entire lives....no debts (other than our house)...playing it safe, and now when we'd like to help our kids with a college education soon, we'll be in debt up to our asses.

UGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Christians and Gays Behaving Badly

This gal is spot on in regard to the fallout following the Prop8 vote...

Reportedly the Christians met once a week to pray and sing on the public corner. Whether they’re hoping to “straighten out” gays or simply trying to facilitate encounters with Christ is unclear, but their method is problematic; it’s not how Jesus would do it.

Jesus went to the people he wanted to meet and he ate with them — or served them. He fellowshipped and got to know the community in personal and intimate ways. He attracted them with his love and his stability. He didn’t stand around singing hymns and praying for them, which might have seemed both separatist and condescending — and therefore off-putting — to the very people he hoped to engage.

The Christians may have unintentionally come off as condescending. We may presume that they would not want a crowd of gays meeting on their curb each week to proselytize. As a Catholic I would take issue with other Christians, no matter how well-intentioned, standing at the curb praying for my redemption based solely upon their knowledge not of me, but of my habits or my religion. Their singing songs for my salvation would come off as sitting in judgment of me. Even if that’s not how they meant it.

You can read the author's views about the Gay community and their behavior at the same link. I'd rather focus on the Christian perspective for a moment...or at least my personal thoughts.

This issue creates such volatile responses that it's heart breaking at times, and extremely frustrating at others. There is also such hypocrisy boiling from both sides of the debate. One side cries intolerance never looking back to discern their own intolerance of other groups. Regardless, there are no easy answers in this decision.

My perspective is that God has allowed us free will to make the decision to follow his advice and live life according to the way He created us to live, or we can live according to our own will. I don't think He meant for Christians to coerce or force others to live according to God's plan.

That being said, I think it is everyone's right to vote in the way in which they feel they are lead in relationship to their worldview or religious beliefs. I don't think that the gay community should coerce Christians into voting for gay marriage by demanding that they are intolerant if they don't comply.

I don't have a problem with civil unions allowing homosexuals legal rights that married couples have, but I would vote against gay marriage because I believe marriage is reserved for a man and woman. Though I wouldn't picket, engage in a sing-in, or throw a raging hissy fit in attempt to coerce others to do the same.

Again, it's a matter of free will, IMHO.

The part of her article that really hit home with me is where she explains that Christ met, ate and communed with those whose worldviews were in conflict with his own. Actually, guys like Oleg, Rob and a few others take this approach when they come to my blog and chat in a respectful manner. Rather than scream and rant on and on about IDist views from the familiarity and comfort of their own side, they reach out and attempt to actually try to converse with me on my turf without being total jerks. Though we may never agree on anything, it certainly helps me learn to respect them if not their position. I just think that in so many of these controversial topics, there is too much preaching to the choir. Granted, there are times when you have to walk away, but if people can just *try* to understand each other better, it certainly helps ease the hatred and misunderstanding.

Just my 2 cents.

Actually it's Joy Behar who is "demented"

What a loon....she states that home schooled children are "demented".



Far from it, luv. I cannot tell you how impressed I am with some of the home school mothers who blog about what they are teaching their children. These gals have it going on! I ran across a whole slew of them about a year ago, and I just couldn't believe all the stuff they crammed into each day. Studies are showing that home schoolers are passing up their public school peers.

Side note: How in the bloody hell do you suppose Elisabeth Hasselbeck puts up with those other three far left liberal lunatics day in and day out???! Lord, I can't even watch them let alone imagine having to sit at that table with them everyday...gag.