You may be a “Thought Criminal” and not know it. So, if you have not yet seen “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, I strongly suggest that you see it. Ben Stein produced this movie to alert the public to some very disturbing trends. The movie exposes a widespread effort in academia and the media to suppress the fact that a growing number of mainline scientists are beginning to consider Intelligent Design as an explanatory factor in their work or world view.

Intelligent Design is probably most often defined as the argument that the origin of the Universe and the origin of life cannot be completely explained by purely natural, random or unguided processes alone. This leads to the argument that at some point supernatural intervention was required to either start the process or to intervene in it. This supernatural force is usually identified as God. The movie shows what happened to some scientists and teachers who dared to openly consider Intelligent Design. They very quickly found themselves purged from the field, loosing their positions, abilities to publish, reputations and more.

This movie attempts to tackle an enormously large set of subjects. Adequately addressing such a large body of information in two hours is nearly impossible. A twenty-four part series would be inadequate to cover issues that include: science definitions, science history, biology, evolution, Darwinism, Social Darwinism, freedom of speech, freedom of thought, academic freedom and much more. But Stein did a good job of providing an overview and introduction to this battle that is being waged against scientists and scholars who want to consider Intelligent Design.

The film recounts what happened to several researchers who dared to write about scientific research findings that support the Intelligent Design argument. These people have paid dearly career-wise for openly thinking about Intelligent Design.
Keep in mind that in most cases they were not advocating it, but only discussing it. Their crime can best be described as a “thought crime.” Such crimes in the 20th Century generally occurred in the Marxist countries where such crimes were covertly and occasionally openly punished. In Marxist regimes anyone who dared question the Neo-Marxian worldview usually found themselves without a job and home and in some cases imprisoned, like Alexander Soljenitzen, and occasionally as under Stalin or Mao execution was also a real possibility.

The film also discusses some of the problems with Social Darwinism and its consequences. It briefly reviews the undeniable link between Darwinism and the Eugenics Movement and their use by regimes such as the Nazi’s with their theories about survival of the fittest between competing races and how this was directly linked to the Holocaust.

Not surprisingly the film has infuriated the Darwinists. The film is being attacked on all sides. The factual accuracy of the film is usually not attacked directly because many of the facts are undeniable so they speak for themselves. Therefore the criticisms have mostly fallen into marginal areas such as claims that the film does not tell the other side of the argument completely enough or that there are copyright issues about the use of some animations (it is hard to imagine a more irrelevant criticism).

Arguably the films most important point is that the effort to squelch discussion of Intelligent Design is an infringement of freedom of speech and thought. Whether or not Intelligent Design is factually correct is not the main issue for many, the main issue is freedom of thought. The Darwinists, materialists and atheists want to straight-jacket us all, having us put on blinders to the evidence that points to God’s creative role in the Universe by saying that Intelligent Design is not science. However at the same time they contradict themselves by also claiming that the scientific evidence against Intelligent Design is “irrefutable.” If this is the case, why are they trying to suppress free discussion of the subject? The truth is only too
obvious; they know that their beliefs are based on extremely weak evidence and in all probability will collapse under future scrutiny. However Darwinism is the basis for moral relativism and moral relativism is the foundation of the political left. Therefore there is no length these people will not be willing to go to in order to enforce their ideological orthodoxy.

By: Lawrence Vescera, Ph.D.

Imagine your surprise if you suddenly discovered that the person you thought was your grandfather was actually born more recently then your father.  Well, that is exactly the position that Darwinists are in, given new genetic studies of sponges and jellyfish.

Sponges are very simple, “primitive” life forms. They lack true tissues, having no muscles, internal organs or nervous systems.  They even lack a digestive system.  They resemble something like a colony of independent cells.  They have long been regarded as representing a first step in the evolutionary transition from single-celled organisms to the first multi-celled organisms. Comb jellyfish on the other hand are more advanced, complex organisms having such innovations as internal organs including a nervous system.

According to the Darwinian model of the “Tree of Life,” all life forms are descended from a single-celled ancestor which evolved through time by exclusively random, natural, accidental process into ever more complex multi-cellular organisms.  This model is a hierarchy, which requires that simple life forms must come first and give rise gradually to more complex life forms. Consequently, primitive organisms like sponges must evolve before more complex organisms like jellyfish can be “naturally selected” into existence.

So, imagine the surprise a group of scientists using powerful new genetic research tools had when they discovered that their data showed that comb jellyfish diverged onto their own evolutionary path before sponges. “This was a complete shocker. . . So shocking that we thought something had gone very wrong,” said Casey Dunn, the team’s lead researcher from the University of Hawaii. But despite checking and rechecking the data still pointed to the same conclusion – the more complex animal predated the simpler animal.

Despite this “shocking” finding in contradiction to the predictions of the Darwinian model, the Darwinian model was not brought into question.  After all, these scientists want to keep their jobs and one does not question Darwin in academia (an alleged bastion of unfettered “free thought”).  Consequently, two highly improbable alternative explanations were offered in an attempt to bludgeon the data back into the constraints of Darwin’s 1859 insights.  The suggested solutions are that either sponges devolved from a heretofore completely unknown, more complex ancestor or the comb jellyfish evolved their complexity independently after they went off onto their own evolutionary branch of the Tree of Life.

Why this is Important

This study raises three critical problems only one of which is even addressed by the authors.  The first problem is the fact that the higher form of life is more ancient than the lower form.  The evidentially unsupported speculations mentioned above that are offered to account for this are weak at best and will likely not find support by further research.  The second finding that is even more important is the undressed time factor.  The fossil record shows that jellyfish appeared suddenly in the fossil record.  The third problem is where are their ancestors in the fossil record? If jellyfish didn’t evolve from the sponges where did these complex creatures come from? In terms of the Darwinian model the evolution of organs such as a nervous system would have taken at least ten’s of millions of years.  So where are the original and intermediary forms?

This is not the first case where genetic research has collided with Darwinism.  Genetic research has been making it harder and harder to maintain the Darwinian straight jacket that claims that life appeared and evolved without any divine or intelligent intervention.

Sources:

“Broad Phylogenomic Sampling Improves Resolution of the Tree of Life”, Casey Dunn et. al., Nature, April 10, 2008 pp 745-749.

“The First Animal on Earth Was Significantly More Complex The Previously Believed”, Science Daily, April 11, 2008.

By Lawrence Vescera Ph. D.

“Meteorites Delivered The ‘Seeds’ Of Earth’s Left-handed Life, Experts Argue”, read the headline in this Science Daily story of April 7, 2008. This claim was quickly advertised around the world by the media as a major breakthrough in the effort to explain the origin of life on Earth by purely natural, unguided processes. However, what the headline claimed and what the story actually reported are two far different things. This story is a classic example of how the media mis-informs and dis-informs the public on issues of great import. It is also an example of the widespread misuse of science and scholarly research to promote the materialist/humanist agenda.

Here is how the media operates this abuse: first they make a bold claim such as that in the above story. They then report the details in the story, realizing that few will read beyond the headline and knowing that even if they do, very few will understand what is being written at a level necessary to evaluate the claim in the headline and accurately conclude that the headline’s claim is so weakly supported by the data that the story is not really worth reporting. Also when competent scientists criticize the story, if reported at all, will be printed on page 36 under a headline such as “Scientist Question Chirality Claim.” A title, which will guarantee that almost no one will read it.

Let us examine the above story to see this pattern at work. The opening paragraphs tell an imaginative tale of the early Earth:

“Flashback three or four billion years – Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteorite slams into the desert plains at over 10,000 miles per hour. With it this violent collision may have planted the seeds of life on Earth.” “Scientists have presented evidence that desert heat, a little water and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up the first prerequisites of life: The dominance of “left-handed” amino acids, the building blocks of life on this planet.”

The story claims to answer one of the greatest mysteries in biology, known as the “chirality problem.” Chirality here refers to the molecular mirror image symmetry of proteins. This symmetry is labeled as either left or right-handedness depending on how amino acid molecules polarize light. This is a very complex problem, which cannot be discussed here in detail, but in summary is as follows: With a few exceptions almost all of the amino acids in living systems are left-handed. However, in the inorganic world, amino acids because of the physics of their formation process are always found in mixtures of equal parts of left and right-handed forms. These amino acids are the raw material from which proteins are constructed. If protein synthesis occurs in a mixture of left and right-handed amino acids, even if the right-handed molecules constitute only a tiny fraction of the whole, the molecules formed will be biologically useless because they will fold in a manner that causes them to be inactive. Consequently when life was first synthesized on Earth it was necessary to start in environment of pure left-handed only amino acids.

Getting and maintaining a solution of purely left amino acids even under laboratory conditions is extremely difficult. This means finding a natural route to the synthesis of purely left-handed amino acids in the very messy natural world, full of right-handed amino acids, contaminants and thermodynamic problems seems almost insurmountable. Consequently origin of life researchers have long despaired over finding a materialist explanation for this phenomenon.

The article in question claims to provide a solution to this problem. According to this article: researchers examining the amino acids on the surface of some meteorites from Australia and Tennessee found a 5% to 10% excess of left-handed molecules over right- handed molecules. They then postulate that if this is combined with a series of natural processes (not currently known to exist), which could purify and amplify left-handed molecules, this concentration level can be increased to higher levels and (add another mere 100,000 or so other critical steps) you “voila” get life.

The article does not mention several interesting facts. First researchers have been examing meteorites for years looking for evidence of this chiral excess. Up until now all have always found that meteorites contain equal amounts of left and right-handed molecules. Ancient rocks in the Earth’s crust also always show this same racemic mixture. Would anyone like to bet that this finding will not be replicated when preformed at different labs using different meteorites? The fact that the excess of left-handed amino acids comes from the surface and not the interior of the meteorites should raise a big red flag because the surface is where contaminants from Earth life are likely to be found. Also not mentioned is the fact that even if there is a slight abundance of left-handed amino acids in meteors and a natural process did amplify this concentration (of which there is currently absolutely no evidence) it would still not provide the purely left-handed solutions of amino acids which is necessary for life to start from. In a mind-boggling step of illogic, the process of amplification postulated in this article requires preexisting biological organisms to carry out the process of amplification. So the way life originates under this scenario is through the mediation of preexisting life.

Why This Is Important

This piece of extremely questionable research will now begin to work its way into the public forum. It will become used as evidence to support the claim that “life originated through strictly natural processes.” It will probably become common knowledge that “meteorites brought left-handed amino acids to Earth and these formed the basis of life.” The reality however is that this common knowledge will be based on a greatly overstated case standing on the shakiest of evidence. This is reminiscent of that fact that many people now believe that there is genetic evidence to support the claim that homosexuality is genetically based. Such claims are based on several pieces bogus research, which were touted with extravagant headlines in the media. This research was all later shown to be specious, yet it is not unusual today to be told, “Everybody knows that scientists have shown that homosexuality is genetic.”

Source: www.eurekalert.org “Meteorites Deliver The ‘Seeds’ Of Earth’s Left-hand Life”, AAAS, April 6, 2008.

By: Lawrence Vescera Ph.D. - Isaac Newton Institute