- REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
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- Next year, 1999, will be the 140th anniversary
of the publication of Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. In that
landmark volume he postulated that life on Earth had developed into its
millions of forms through a long, slow series of fundamental changes in
the physical structure of all living things, plants and animals alike.
Though small and gradual, these changes would be relatively constant. Bit
by imperceptible bit, gills would turn into lungs, fins would turn into
limbs, scales would turn into skin, bacteria would turn into us. The problem
for Darwin, and for all Darwinists since, came when the mechanism behind
those changes had to be explained.
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- Because Darwin's era was only beginning
to understand cellular function (Gregor Mendel's treatise on genetics did
not appear until 1865), Darwin proposed a system of gradual physiological
improvements due to small, discreet advantages that would accrue to the
best-adapted progeny (his famous 'survival of the fittest') among all living
things (a bit stronger, a bit swifter, a bit hardier), making them subtly
different from their parents and producing offspring with similar advantages
accruing in their physiological makeup. When enough small changes had compounded
themselves through enough generations....voila! A new species would have
emerged, sexually incompatible with the original parent stock, yet inexorably
linked to it by a common physiological heritage.
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- Once cellular function came to be better
understood, particularly the importance of DNA as the 'engineer' driving
the entire train of life, it was quickly embraced as the fundamental source
of change in Darwin's original model. Darwinian evolution, as it came to
be called, was indisputably caused by mutations at the genetic level. Because
such mutations were obvious to early geneticists, and could eventually
be induced and manipulated in their laboratories, it seemed beyond doubt
that positive mutations in DNA sequencing were the key to explaining evolution.
That left neutral mutations exerting no effect, while negative mutations
afflicted only the unlucky individuals who expressed them but had no lasting
impact on a species' collective gene pool.
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- DARWIN'S BLACKEST BOX
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- In 1996 Michael Behe, a biochemistry
professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., published a book called
Darwin's Black Box. He defined a 'black box' as any device that functions
perfectly well, but whose inner workings remain mysterious because they
cannot be seen or understood. To Charles Darwin the living cell was an
impenetrable black box whose inner workings he could not even imagine,
much less understand. To scientists today the cell box is no longer quite
as black, but it is still dark enough to leave them with only a faint understanding
of how it works. They know its basic components and the functions of those
components, but they still don't know how all those pieces fit together
to do what cells do--live.
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- Life is still every bit the profound
mystery it was in Darwin's day. Many additional pieces of the puzzle have
found their way onto the table since 1859, but scientists today are not
much closer to seeing the whole picture than Darwin or his cronies. That
is an ironic reality which few modern Darwinists will accept in their own
hearts and minds, much less advertise to the world in general. So they
supply the media with intellectual swill that the media, in turn, unknowingly
palms off as truth, while the scientists edgily cross their fingers and
hold their breath in the hope that someday, maybe even someday soon, but
certainly before the great unwashed get wise to the scam, they will finally
figure out the great secret...they will see into the heart of the universe's
blackest box...they will understand how life actually works, from the first
moment of the first creation to evolution itself.
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- SHALL WE GATHER AT THE RIVER?
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- Darwinists teach and preach that life
began spontaneously in a mass of molecules floating freely in the Earth's
earliest rivers and seas. Those molecular precursors somehow formed themselves
into organic compounds that somehow formed themselves into the very first
living organism. This incredible feat of immaculately choreographed bioengineering
was, Darwinists insist, accomplished without the aid of any outside agency,
such as a Prime Mover (what some would call 'God'), and especially not
anything extraterrestrial. It was done using only the materials at hand
on the early Earth, and accomplished solely by the materials themselves,
with a probable assist from a perfectly timed, perfectly aimed lightning
bolt that, in the most serendipitous moment imaginable, swirled tens of
thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of inanimate molecules into a
living entity.
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- For as glibly as Darwinists have fashioned
and promoted this scenario in schools to this day, the complexity of its
mechanics might challenge the creative skills of a busload of Prime Movers.
Countless lipids have to somehow be coaxed to form a membrane that somehow
surrounds enough strands of DNA to create a cell that can manage life's
two most basic functions: it must absorb organic and inorganic compounds
in its environment and turn them into proteins, which can then be converted
into energy and excreta; and it must have the ability to reproduce itself
ad infinitum. If all of those varied factors, each a bona fide miracle
in itself, do not occur in the precise order demanded by all living cells
for their tightly orchestrated, step-by-step development, then the entire
process becomes laughably improbable.
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- British astronomer Fred Hoyle has offered
the classic analogy for this scenario, stating that its actual likelihood
of being true and real equals 'that of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard
and correctly assembling a Boeing 747.' It did not and could not happen
then, just as it cannot be made to happen now. The very best our biochemists
can do today is construct infinitesimal pieces of the puzzle, leaving them
little nearer to seeing how life truly works than Darwin and his cohorts
140 years ago. But why? What's the problem? Haven't we cracked the atom?
Haven't we flown to the moon? Haven't we mapped the ocean floors? Yes,
yes, and yes. But those things were easy by comparison.
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- LOOKING FOR LIFE IN ALL THE
WRONG PLACES
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- If the Darwinists are so wrong, where
are they wrong? What is the fundamental mistake they are making? It has
to do with where they are looking, which is the cell, inside the cell,
and specifically at the functioning of DNA. Because the twisting double-helix
of DNA contains the instructions for all of life's processes, the assumption
has always been that disruptions in the patterns of those instructions
are the only logical explanation for how physiological changes at both
the micro (small) and macro (large) level must be created and executed.
In other words, changes in DNA (mutations) must be the engine driving all
aspects of evolutionary change. Nothing else makes sense.
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- Sensible or not, however, it is wrong.
Why? Because in 1984 a group of British researchers decided to do an experiment
utilizing what was then considered to be a universal truth about genes,
handed down from Gregor Mendel himself: the idea that genes are sexless.
Mendel had postulated that a gene from either parent, whether plant or
animal, was equally useful and effective throughout the lifetime of the
individual possessing it. This was taken as gospel until those British
researchers tried to create mouse embryos carrying either two copies of
'father' genes or two copies of 'mother' genes. According to Mendel's laws
of inheritance, both male and female embryos should have developed normally.
After all, they had a full complement of genes, and if genes were indeed
sexless they had all they needed to gestate and thrive.
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- The researchers were stunned when all
of their carefully crafted embryos were dead within a few days of being
transferred to a surrogate mother's womb. How could it happen? What could
have gone so wrong in a scenario that couldn,t go wrong? They were completely
baffled. But what they didn't know, and what many refuse to accept even
now, fourteen years later, is that they had unwittingly opened their own--and
their icon's--darkest, blackest box. They had ventured into a region of
the cell, and of the functioning of DNA, that they hadn,t imagined was
off-limits. And by taking that inadvertent journey they ended up forging
an entirely new understanding of Mendelian inheritance, while driving a
stake through the already weakened heart of Darwinian evolution.
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- A TIME TO LIVE AND A TIME
TO DIE
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- Normally, father genes or mother genes
control the expression of their own activity. A father gene might give,
for example, the signal for a crop of head hair to grow--to 'express' itself--and
to stop expressing when the follicles had been constructed in their proper
places in the scalp. The cessation of the expressing process is called
methylation, which is the surrounding of expressing genes with clusters
of chemicals that shut them off (picture the cap being put back on a toothpaste
tube). In the same way, a mother gene might express a pair of eyes and
then, when they were completed, 'methylate' the gene's growth processes
into inactivity.
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- Until 1984, it was believed that all
genetic function operated the same way. If a gene or suite of genes came
from Dad's side of the mating process, then those genes managed their own
affairs from birth until death. And the same held true for genes coming
from Mom's side of the mating. But certain genes turned out to exhibit
radical differences, depending on whose side of the mating process they
came from. When the female mouse embryos died, it was found that genes
vital to their growth had inexplicably never been turned on at all, while
still others were never turned off (methylated) and spiraled unchecked
into cancers. Even more baffling, the fatal processes in the all-male embryos
were entirely different from those in the all-females. The embryos were
dying for reasons that were clearly sex-biased. What could it possibly
mean?
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- Imprinted genes were found to be the
culprit. Imprinted genes, it turned out, could be expressed by either parent
and, incredibly, methylated by the other parent! Somehow, someway, by means
not clearly imagined, much less understood, genes from one parent had the
ability to independently begin or end processes that were critical to the
lives of forming embryos. In the world of genetics as it had always been
perceived, that was impossible. Only a localized (sexless) gene should
be able to control its own destiny or purpose, not a separate gene from
an entirely different parent. Cooperating genes broke all the rules of
physical inheritance that had been written by Gregor Mendel. Yet imprinted
genes do, in fact, disregard Mendel's rules; and by doing so they provide
the above mentioned stake that will inevitably be driven through the heart
of classic Darwinian evolution.
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- LIFE'S BLUEPRINT WRIT WRONG
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- So far geneticists have identified about
20 imprinted genes embedded within the 80,000 to 100,000 believed to comprise
the entire human genome. New ones are discovered on a regular basis, with
many geneticists predicting the final tally will reach hundreds, while
others suspect the total might reach into the thousands. But whether hundreds
or thousands, any imprinted genes at all means that classic Darwinism can
no longer count on mutations in DNA as a plausible mechanism for fundamental
physical change.
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- For mutations to be acceptable as the
engine of Darwinian change, they have to be able to occur in isolation
and then, as stated earlier, pass themselves intact to succeeding generations.
By definition that means they have to be able to regulate their own functions,
both to express and to methylate their genetic processes. Whenever a trait
mutates, whether a longer limb, a stronger muscle, or a more efficient
organ, it should pass into the gene pool whole and complete, not half of
it being expressed from the male side of a pairing and half from the female
side. Why? Because both parents would have to mutate in complementary ways
at the same time to the same degree...and then they would have to find
each other and mate in order to have even a chance to pass the mutation
on!
Natural mutations, while statistically rare, are clearly documented. They
can be neutral, negative, or positive. So when geneticists contend that
isolated mutations in DNA can occur and be passed on to succeeding generations,
they first assume the individual with the mutation has been fortunate enough
to have the correct one out of the three possibilities. They further assume
the individual survives the brutal winnowing process Darwin so correctly
labeled 'survival of the fittest.' But fittest or not, any fledgling animal
or plant must contend with an infinite number of ways to miss the boat
to maturity. Assuming that passage is safe, the lucky individual with the
positive mutation has to get lucky several more times to produce enough
offspring so that at least a few of them possess his or her positive mutation
and also survive to maturity to pass it along. It is a series of events
every bit as unlikely as Fred Hoyle's tornado sweeping through a junkyard,
but at least it is remotely feasible.
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- Imprinted genes neatly sever those imperceptible
threads of feasibility by making it literally impossible for any mutation,
positive or otherwise, to effect more than the individual expressing it.
There is certainly no way for it to work its way into a gene pool regulated
by imprinted genes. Why? For the reasons just stated above: for a mutation
to be implemented, it must be beneficial and it must be paired with a similar
change in a member of the opposite sex. Thus, if only a handful of genes
are capable of being turned on and off by different parents, then Darwinian
evolution has no place in the grand scheme of life on Earth. Imprinting
shoves Darwinists well beyond any hope of feasibility, to a region of DNA
where change is incapable of being positive.
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- TIMING REALLY IS EVERYTHING
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- What we are really talking about with
imprinting processes is timing, the most exquisite and incomprehensible
faculty any gene possesses. By knowing when--and being able--to turn on
and off the millions to billions of biological processes that create and
sustain living organisms, genes control the switches that control life
itself. In effect, whatever controls the timing switches controls the organism.
If, for example, only one methyl group misses its turn-off signal on an
expressing gene, the resultant non-stop expressing will lead to cellular
overproduction and, ultimately, cancer. Conversely, if only one gene fails
to express when it should, at the very least a seriously negative event
has occurred, and at worst the organism has suffered a catastrophe that
will terminate its life.
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- More important than this, however, is
that timing sequences cannot be altered in any way, shape, or form that
will not be detrimental to offspring. In other words, the 'evolution' of
a timing sequence in the development of an embryo or a growing offspring
simply cannot be favorable in the Darwinian sense. Why? Because in terms
of results it is already perfect. And how do we know it is perfect? Because
the parents both reached maturity. What is so special about their reaching
maturity? It means their own timing sequences performed perfectly in their
own embryos, with their initial sperm and egg differentiating in millions
of ways to become their bodies. (In plants the same principle holds true).
Then their growing period developed perfectly, with its millions of different
timing events leading to their limbs and organs growing to their proper
sizes and carrying on their proper functions.
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- Any alteration of that perfection can
be, and nearly always is, devastating. In golf a putt drops or it doesn't.
In timing sequences, they are started and stopped precisely, or not. There
is no room for error or improvement (no third condition called 'better').
Thus, no genetic alteration to timing can create the faster legs, larger
horns, sharper teeth, etc., called for by Darwin's theory of piecemeal
change. This is why gills cannot become lungs, why fins cannot become limbs,
why scales cannot become fur or skin. No single timing mechanism can 'evolve'
without altering the perfection that has been passed to offspring by parents
through untold generations.
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- A good analogy is the building of a house.
We start with a blueprint. Analogize this with the genetic blueprint provided
by DNA. The former outlines the physical materials that go into a house:
wood, nails, sheetrock, doors, etc. The latter outlines the physical materials
that go into creating a body: blood, bones, skin, hair, etc. Next, we bring
in the carpenters who will build the house. It is they who, following our
carefully drawn blueprint, will determine everything that will be done
to create our house. More importantly, they will determine when all parts
of the house will be built, when any particular process will start and
when it will stop. They will build the floor before the walls, the walls
before the roof, etc.
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- Building our house is thus a two-part
project: what to build, and how and when to build it. It is the same with
living organisms, whose carpenter genes (the mysterious timing mechanisms
that turn growth processes on and off) determine their success. Now it
becomes easy to understand Darwin's fundamental error. While examining
the widely varied houses of living organisms, he saw no trace of the invisible
carpenters who have the decisive hand in their creation. Therefore, his
theory did not--and so far cannot--account for the fact that carpenter
genes invariably prohibit alterations.
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- IF I HAD A HAMMER
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- As with a house, DNA contains or provides
everything necessary to create a particular organism, whether animal or
plant. DNA has the further capacity to define and manufacture the physiological
materials needed to create the entirety of the organism, precisely when
they are needed and to the exact degree they are needed. And, perhaps most
wondrous of all, DNA contains the ineffable carpenter genes that determine
when each phase of the organism's construction will begin and end. Any
organism's parents will have passed to it a set of DNA blueprints of what
to build and how to build it, which are nearly always perfect with respect
to timing, but allowing slight variations in what is built. On the occasions
when faulty timing does lead to tragedy, the imperfections are due to sperm-egg
misconnects, or molecular anomalies in DNA caused by radiation or chemicals.
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- Where classic Darwinian evolution completely
breaks down is in not allowing carpenter genes to exist separately from
end results. Darwinism contends that when any aspect of an organism's materials
change (i.e., a mutation in some strand of DNA which changes some aspect
of physical structure), that organism's carpenter genes smoothly accommodate
the change (alter the blueprint) by adjusting the timing sequences (beginning
and end) of that structure's development. This is not reality. A Watusi's
thighbone takes just as long to form as a Pygmy's thighbone (about 18 years),
so only the end results--their respective sizes--have changed, not their
timing processes. This is one reason why all human beings can so easily
interbreed, even the unlikely combination of Watusis and Pygmies. Our vast
array of underlying genetic timing mechanisms, including our imprinted
genes, have been handed down intact (unevolved!) since the beginning of
our existence as a species.
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- Thus, what is built can be slowly, gradually
altered; how it is built cannot. This obvious fact...this undeniable truth...has
the most profound implications: In the carpenter genes of successful organisms,
no improvement is possible! And without improvement, via Darwinian change,
how could they have evolved? Not just into something from nothing, but
into millions of interlocking, tightly sequenced commands that smoothly
mesh over extended periods as organisms develop from embryo to birth to
sexual maturity? The short answer is, 'They can't.'
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- What all this means, of course, is that
everything we think we know about how life develops on Earth is flatly
wrong. It means all of our 'experts' are totally mistaken when they tell
us that Darwins theory of gradual mutations has led to the development
of all species of plants and animals on the planet. Nothing could be further
from the truth. Darwinism cannot work now, it has never been able to work,
and the time has come for its supporters to stop their intellectual posturing
and admit they need to go back to their drawing boards to seek a more plausible
explanation for what is surely life's greatest single mystery.
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