CrAzY CrEaTiOnIsT NeWs!!!!

This is a very special edition of the CrAzY CrEaTiOnIsT NeWs, a feature where I examine, from a layman's perspective, the science news of the day that the folks at Answers in Genesis have failed to understand. But before I start, I want to give a shout out to the Ben, Flavin and Dmitri from the Wash U physics department. (Physicists do it with uniform harmonic motion, baby!) We showed those pitchers who was boss. Animala and I had a great time talking about all things skeptical and academic at Cicero's last night. I'm always impressed by the important research that graduate students routinely do, both in the sciences and the humanities (lawyers and MBAs can suck it!). Ben is working on dark matter (he had a jar of it but misplaced it), Dmitri is surfing on gravity waves, and Flavin, well, he showed that time accelerates when you are playing a video game.

Now, on to the stupid:

1. New Scientist: “Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab”

Has E. coli evolved in front of our very eyes? A recent report in New Scientist claims that it has—and is a poke in the eye for creationists. But when we take a look at the facts, is this actually the case? Or is this another example of the emperor trying on new clothes?

I bet it's a poke in the eye.

To get an idea of the evolutionary presuppositions and interpretations the article is filled with, take a look at the first web comment it inspired:

Wait a minute! Aren't you going to talk about the article itself or what one anonymous person with an Internet connection said? Oh well, I'm game. I could throw a hundred rocks into a crowd and hit 99 people smarter than any member of the AiG staff. Let's see what this person says:

More proof, if any were needed, that Darwin is right, and the God squad wrong. But it won’t make any difference to them . . . the truth is to be found in the holy texts, and not laboratories.

OK, the gauntlet is thrown down. Now, don't make asses of yourselves and say that the truth is found in the Bible.

The New Scientist article, “Bacteria Make Major Evolutionary Shift in the Lab,” starts off, “A major evolutionary innovation has unfurled right in front of researchers’ eyes. It’s the first time evolution has been caught in the act of making such a rare and complex new trait.” But let’s take a look at this “evolutionary innovation,” this “rare and complex new trait” that the evolution god has “created.”

The story starts 20 years back at Michigan State University. Evolutionary biologist Richard Lenski took a single E. coli bacterium and propagated it, using its descendants to “found” 12 laboratory populations that have continued to grow since then. [...]

The most notable change happened in just one of the populations: around the 31,500th generation, the bacteria “suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate,” which E. coli cannot normally process. The E. coli that developed the citrate-processing ability then increased in population size and diversity.

Lenski figures that this “citrate-plus” ability was an unusual circumstance. New Scientist explains, “either it was a single mutation of an unusually improbable sort, a rare chromosome inversion . . . or else gaining the ability to use citrate required the accumulation of several mutations in sequence.”

But Lenski wondered: would that same ability have evolved again? He has since “replayed” the evolution from frozen samples, but only the original population of E. coli has supposedly re-evolved the citrate-processing capability, and only from generation 20,000 or later. Thus, Lenski and his team have concluded that something occurred in the single population after generation 20,000 that enabled the citrate processing around generation 31,500.

I'll say this is mostly fair. Of course, in a part I edited out silently because it simply is not relevant, they pointed out that Lenski hasn't literally watched every generation (this is their approach to the fossil record as well). Well, on to their inept criticism:

While Darwinists are quick to claim this experiment as support for “evolution” (in reference to full-blown, molecules-to-man evolution), let’s first take a step back and review what “evolution” is, along with the different narratives evolutionists and creationists tell.

“Evolution” (in a biological sense), strictly defined, is simply a change in a population’s gene frequencies over time (as generations come and go). Thus, even mutations that remove genetic information can spread if they confer some reproductive and survival advantage.

Thus, any time a biological population is observed undergoing any sort of heritable change—even a change that keeps genetic information constant or that reduces genetic information—it is “evolution” in action. This evolution “before our very eyes” is usually then touted as proof for molecules-to-man evolution, even though the latter would require a massive increase in genetic information. It’s the old “bait and switch” tactic, as “evolution” shifts meaning from experimentally shown change to unobservable molecules-to-man change.

OK, I've seen that definition before. We'll go with it. Let's see the last paragraph of the article they are quoting:

Lenski's experiment is also yet another poke in the eye for anti-evolutionists, notes Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. "The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

Even though they clearly just read this statement and incorporated the "poke-in-the-eye" language into their discussion, the wacktards at AiG say:

This evolution “before our very eyes” is usually then touted as proof for molecules-to-man evolution, even though the latter would require a massive increase in genetic information.

Dude, in a mere twenty years of undirected breeding, a population of delicious e coli, with no guidance from the outside world, developed an entirely new type of metabolism. 20 years! Consider what you could do in, say, 6,000 years. You'd probably have squid or Ken Ham or something. How about millions of years? They are moving in the general direction of larger organisms--see the increased size, for instance. Fer cryin' out loud, it jumped out of the traditional definition of e coli, which does not typically metabolize citrate: "Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species." I mean, wow! So, what, the evolution of new species does not count if it's microscopic? You flatulent monkey tampons.

So what’s really going on in Lenski’s experiment? Actually, nobody really knows! Lenski’s team is still working to understand “just what that earlier change was, and how it made the . . . mutation possible.” They will likely be analyzing the genome of the original E. coli parent and the genomes of its “evolved” offspring. The citrate-processing ability may be due to the activation of a latent function or a beneficial (but not information-gaining) mutation that allows citrate processing.

"...We'll make sure to not report it when it turns out that is not the case. Because we're dishonest." "Nobody really knows!" NOBODY KNOWS (yet)--IT MUST BE MAGIC!!!! YOU GET THE HOLY WATER, I'LL GET THE CAT O' NINE TAILS

It’s important for us all to remember that when we read science news that seems to “confirm” evolution, it’s never a true threat to the biblical worldview and the creation account because God’s Word never changes but man’s fallible ideas do.

Yeah, screw science and observation. We are going to make ourselves completely incapable of learning ANYTHING. Man's understanding of reality changes, but the brute fact that we can learn something from observing the universe is not, nor does the fact that the accumulation of knowledge allows us to improve our understanding of the universe. You, however, reject this and think that the Flintstones was a documentary.

Also, by invoking the Bible, you are only proving that anonymous commentator 100% right, you retards. Sweet Jesus, how do these people manage to not decapitate themselves while combing their hair?

2. BBC News: “Hints of ‘Time Before Big Bang’”

Physicists in the U.S. have claimed we may be able to detect time before time: what existed before the fabled big bang.

The Caltech team, which hopes to publish their study in Physical Review Letters, has hypothesized that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a trace of radiation hitting earth from all directions and thought by some to date to some 12.5 billion years ago, may contain the signature of time before the big bang.

Although the CMB is mostly uniform, big bang theorists have speculated that the slight variations may represent the “seeds from which the galaxy clusters we see in today’s [u]niverse grew.” But the Caltech team, headed by Adrienne Erickcek, believes the CMB fluctuations show that our universe may have “bubbled” out of another one—in other words, supporting the idea of multiple universes.

To get an idea of where this idea falls on the practical physics–wild ideas spectrum, hear what study coauthor Sean Carroll said of the hypothesis at the American Astronomical Society meeting: “A universe could form inside this room and we’d never know.”

Interestingly, the scientists claim their idea is an attempt to explain why time flows in one direction only. BBC News explains:

Physicists have long blamed this one-way movement, known as the “arrow of time[,]” on a physical rule known as the second law of thermodynamics, which insists that systems move over time from order to disorder. . . . The second law cannot be escaped, but Professor Carroll pointed out that it depends on a major assumption—that the [u]niverse began its life in an ordered state. This makes understanding the roots of this most fundamental of laws a job for cosmologists.

Carroll contributed a few other quotations that again fall on the “wild ideas” end of the physics spectrum:

“Every time you break an egg or spill a glass of water you’re learning about the [b]ig [b]ang.”

Detailed measurements . . . have shown that the fluctuations in the [CMB] are about 10% stronger on one side of the sky than those on the other. Carroll conceded that this might just be a coincidence, but pointed out that a natural explanation for this discrepancy would be if it represented a structure inherited from our universe’s parent.

“We’re trained to say there was no time before the Big Bang, when we should say that we don’t know whether there was anything—or if there was, what it was.”

There are numerous lessons creationists can take away from this research. First, and perhaps most obvious, is the blatant speculative nature of modern, big-bang-based astrophysical science. The data (in this case, the raw microwave radiation that we observe) is buried under layer after layer of unsupported (and often unsupportable) interpretive hypotheses (such as the idea that another universe spawned our own, which begs the question of where that universe came from).

Second, it is not surprising that astrophysicists are attempting to justify the existence of other universes; the idea of multiple universes, in fact, is a key counter argument to the Anthropic Principle, which points out the numerous “just-right” factors that allow life on earth. The “coincidence” of these factors goes away if one believes there could be an infinite number of universes out there, with every possible variation.

So why all these wild ideas? As astrophysicists try to look “beyond” time and ask questions beyond human understanding, we shouldn’t be surprised their ideas sound so wild!

God, I dislike these people. This topic is outside my area of expertise (which is defined as "How to eat a salad"), but I will take a crack at this. Let's start at the end: "As astrophysicists try to look “beyond” time and ask questions beyond human understanding, we shouldn’t be surprised their ideas sound so wild!" You want to talk about "wild" ideas? How about, "Snakes can talk?" Or "Whale bellies were once an acceptable mode of transportation?" "People turn into pillars of salt?" "Once there was a world language, but then because people built a tower, God gave everyone a different language?" At least these people have evidence for what they are claiming. This is my understanding of what is happening. There seems to be an asymmetry in the CMB (cosmic microwave background). There are apparently fluctuations in temperature of one part in 100,000--tiny, and they seem to be distributed unevenly in the sky. What gives? This is big important important stuff because out of those little fluctuations comes the big clumpy universe we now find ourselves trapped in. So, these guys are trying to explain this. Totally respectable.

Believe me, your failure to understand something does not make it ridiculous; indeed your refusal to even try to understand these things makes you ridiculous.

Also, I would like to point out the AiGers' penultimate paragraph:

Second, it is not surprising that astrophysicists are attempting to justify the existence of other universes; the idea of multiple universes, in fact, is a key counter argument to the Anthropic Principle, which points out the numerous “just-right” factors that allow life on earth. The “coincidence” of these factors goes away if one believes there could be an infinite number of universes out there, with every possible variation.

Well, what does the author Sean Carroll have to say about this?

One of the people in the audience was Chris Lintott, who wrote up a description for the BBC. Admittedly, this is difficult stuff to get all straight the very first time, but I think his article gives the impression that there is a much more direct connection between my arrow-of-time work and our recent paper on the lopsided universe. In particular, there is no necessary connection between the existence of a supermode and the idea that our universe “bubbled off” from a pre-existing spacetime. (There might be a connection, but it is not a necessary one.) If you look through the paper, there’s nothing in there about entropy or the multiverse or any of that; we’re really motivated by trying to explain an interesting feature of the CMB data.

EAT IT, AiG. Also, even your understanding of the Anthropic Principle is backasswards. It doesn't point out "just-so" calibrations so as to justify a designer tweaking the cosmic spheres just for us. It says, with a note of exasperation in its voice: "Well, what type of life do you expect to evolve in a universe like this except...the type that could survive in a universe like this? Also, duh?" These people don't understand cosmetology, much less cosmology!

3. BBC News: “How dangerous is a Komodo dragon?”

Rare and rarely seen outside of zoos, the Komodo dragon is the world’s largest lizard. But recently group of stranded Britons had an encounter with a Komodo dragon that was reminiscent of a dinosaur-era battle.

British divers stranded on a remote Indonesian island were forced to defend themselves when a “man-eating” Komodo dragon appeared on their beach looking for an easy meal. The divers had already spent half a day in shark-infested waters and were dehydrated and exhausted.

To protect themselves, the divers hurled rocks at the Komodo dragon, which eventually retreated. The castaways were eventually rescued.

This rare encounter, along with others in which humans have been attacked, killed, and even eaten by Komodo dragons, give us a glimpse of what life was like during the age of “dinosaurs”—though we’ll note that if the Komodo dragon were extinct today, it would probably be considered a long-lost dinosaur that died off millions of years before humans.

Sure, why not make shit up? Anyway...

Skeptics often scoff at how dinosaurs and man could have coexisted, but the same tactics humans use against large beasts today (big cats, for example), would have been effective against dinosaurs: avoidance, defense in groups, use of simple weapons, and even trapping. In fact, it was likely human self-defense and possibly outright human predation that contributed mainly to the demise of the dinosaurs.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Oooh! I wet 'em!

Are you suggesting that there are dinosaur hunts in the Bible? Perhaps in the New American Asshole Bible. Jesus.

Also, as Animal discovered recently, dinosaurs also like to play with laser pointer cat toys (known around the McGhandi apartment as "laser mousey"--see the silhouette on the right, or click to see full-size):

Oh, well. I've had enough of these guys for one night. Join us for next week's episode of Stupid Bible Tricks.

HJ