I forgot to post the same reply to Josh Greenberger here as I did when he spread his outdated claims elsewhere at Science Blog. <--Follow this link to see how I replied.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

by Josh Greenberger - http://JoshGreenberger.com

(July 2008) What are the methods used by scientists to date archeological finds? And do those methods tell the true age of buried organisms?

The method used by scientists to determine the age of archaeological finds is called radiometric dating. It involves measuring decayed radioactive elements and, by extrapolating backward in time, determining the age of an organism.

One element commonly used, in what's referred to as "radiocarbon dating" or "radiocarbon reading," is C-14, a radioactive isotope of carbon, which is formed in the atmosphere by cosmic rays. All living organisms absorb an equilibrium concentration of this radioactive carbon. When organisms die, C-14 decays and is not replaced. Since we know the concentration of radioactive carbon in the atmosphere, and we also know that it takes 5,730 years for half of C-14 to decay (called a "half-life cycle"), and another 5,730 years for half of what's left to decay, and so on, by measuring the remaining concentration of radiocarbon we can tell how long ago an organism died.

Since C-14 can only give dates in the thousands of years, elements with longer half-life cycles (such as Samarium-147, Rubidium-87, Rhenium-187, Lutetium-176, to name a few, with half-life cycles in the billions of years) are used to date what are believed to be older archaeological finds. The procedure is roughly the same; the amount of decay is measured against the initial amount of radioactive material, giving the object's supposed age.

One obvious flaw in this technique is that we don't really know the level of radioactive concentration acquired by an organism which lived before such recorded history. Scientists make a bold assumption that the atmospheric concentration of the radioactive material -- carbon or any other element -- being measured has not changed since the organism's death.

Another bold assumption made by scientists is that the rate of radioactive decay has remained constant throughout history.

Are these valid assumptions?

Hardly.

In 1994 Otto Reifenschweiler, a scientists at the Philips Research Laboratories in The Netherlands, showed that the radioactivity of tritium could be reduced by 40 per cent at temperatures between 115 and 275 Celsius. That is, under certain conditions, the environment can effect radioactive decay.

In 2006 Professor Claus Rolfs, leader of a group of scientists at Ruhr University in Bochum, Germany, in an effort to reduce nuclear waste radioactivity, has come up a with a technique to greatly speed up radioactive decay. Rolfs: "We are currently investigating radium-226, a hazardous component of spent nuclear fuel with a half-life of 1600 years. I calculate that using this technique could reduce the half-life to 100 years. At best, I have calculated that it could be reduced to as little as two years ... We are working on testing the hypothesis with a number of radioactive nuclei at the moment and early results are promising ... I don't think there will be any insurmountable technical barriers."

Reducing 1600 years to two years is a phenomenal 98 percent reduction. This means that an archeological find that has gone through environmental conditions similar to those in the lab could appear to be 300,000 years old when in fact it's only six thousand years old.

What's more, if scientists, with relatively limited resources, can speed up radioactive decay 800 times, the violent upheavals of earth's history could certainly have sped up radioactive decay by far greater numbers. Thus, if radioactive decay increased, say, 1 million fold, an organism thought to be 4 billion years old, based on today's rate of radioactive decay, would be no more than 4,000 years old.

What's interesting is that earth's history of cataclysmic events is not questioned by anyone -- scientist or Biblical scholar. They may differ in their accounts of what occurred, but not necessarily in the severity of the events.

The Bible's account of The Flood, of course, would have been the mother of all catastrophes. It entailed heat, pressure, and an unimaginable mixture of elements. This would certainly have far exceeded any extreme conditions created by scientists in a lab.

The scientific account of earth's formation and development is no less catastrophic:

Earth formed of the debris flung off the sun's violent formation about 4.5 billions years ago. Being a molten planet in it's initial stages, earth's dense materials of molten nickel and iron flowed to the center, and its lighter materials, such as molten silicon, flowed to the top. Eventually, earth cooled and solidified into a core, mantle and crust.

Earth's original atmosphere consisted of Hydrogen and Helium. This atmosphere subsequently heated to escape-velocity by solar radiation and escaped into space. It took about 2 billion years for oxygen to appear in earth's atmosphere, eventually resulting in an atmosphere consisting of 78% Nitrogen and 20% Oxygen.

Our planet has been pounded by meteorites throughout history. One such impact, in Mexico, around 65 million years ago, was so intense that it resulted in mass extinctions, including the extinction of the dinosaur.

Earth has gone through several ice ages. The last one ended around 10,000 years ago, after lasting roughly 60,000 years. At one point 97% of Canada was covered in ice.

Given scientists' belief of earth's chaotic and turbulent past -- the formation of the planet itself, the development of its atmosphere, the transformation in its atmosphere, the ensuing geological upheavals -- it is grossly dishonest of them to then claim to be able to determine the age of an organism or fossil based on the remnants of radioactive elements in the atmosphere. The assumption that their saturation levels remained constant for billions or even millions of years is simply preposterous.

Not only must radioactive dating be wrong, but it can't even be consistent, since earth's violent past oscillated so dramatically.

The problem goes even deeper. With the recent discovery (as described earlier) that the rate of radioactive decay can be altered so drastically in a mere lab, we cannot trust, for dating purposes, the radioactive reading of any material in the universe. The entire universe, not just earth, has been undergoing constant cataclysmic events since the beginning of time.

So after years of telling the public that the rate of radioactive decay is constant, you'd think scientists would now go back to the drawing board and at least entertain the thought that radioactive dating might not be an accurate dating method. But that hasn't happened. At least not in a public way.

It seems, the way evolutionists work is they make public declarations about things that give the slightest hint of supporting evolution and then completely suppress everything that totally undermines that same theory. In legal circles, I believe this is called "suppression if evidence." With such a flagrant disregard for truth and honesty, you could "prove" that parking tickets grow on windshields.

Who knows how many other findings have been deliberately suppressed because they contradicted what evolutionists have been trying to prove for years. And who knows how many otherwise honest scientists are being lead to false conclusions as a result of the unethical and dishonest ones.

The fact is we don't debate the existence of Mars because it's provable. We don't debate the existence of bacteria because it's provable. After 150 years, we continue to debate evolution, not because it "controversial," but because it's not provable and not science.

Evolution has all the markings of a religious cult. The vast majority of people who believe in evolution give lip service to the catch phrases "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest" without having a clue as to what they entail. This is, they have faith in their "gurus" (scientists) about a concept they don't comprehend, a concept for which there is not a shred of evidence.

For evolution to be considered science it should be as provable as Mars or the Moon or bed bugs. Evolution is a pseudo science that's being kept alive by zealots. Indoctrinating school children with this utter nonsense is not that far removed from totalitarian governments that force fanatical views on their young ones.

We must give scientists a deadline -- let's say a year or two -- to prove evolution beyond a shadow of a doubt, the way many other scientific concepts are provable beyond debate. If they can not, evolution needs to be completely eliminated from all public educational curriculums and all institutions supported by the government.

by Josh Greenberger - http://JoshGreenberger.com

by Josh Greenberger - http://JoshGreenberger.com

Does the fossil record disprove the theory of evolution?

(March 2008) The scientific concept of the origin of life on earth begins with the premise that life first appeared billions of years ago with the formation of microscopic organisms out of inanimate matter. In the billions of years which followed, small organisms evolved into higher and more complex forms of life through random mutations, and one species evolved into another.

Over the years, a process referred to as "natural selection" weeded out those mutations and organisms less fit to survive than others. Thus, it was mostly the more "fit" that passed on their genetic character traits to subsequent generations. And that's how we and all other life forms got here.

On the surface, this sounds great. However, a deeper analysis of the underlying mechanism and the fossil record, leaves little doubt that mutations of a random nature could not possibly have been the driving force behind the development of life on earth.

There has been opposition to the theory of evolution on the basis of whether a random process can produce organization. An analogy often given is, can a monkey on a typewriter, given enough time, produce the works of Shakespeare purely by random keystrokes? Let's assume for the purpose of this discussion that this is possible -- and that random mutations, given enough time, can also eventually produce the most complex life forms.

Let's begin by rolling a die (one "dice"). To get a "3," for example, you'd have to roll the die an average of six times (there are six numbers, so to get any one of them would take an average of six rolls). Of course, you could get lucky and roll a 3 the first time. But as you keep rolling the die, you'll find that the 3 will come up on average once every six rolls.

The same holds true for any random process. You'll get a "Royal Flush" (the five highest cards, in the same suit) in a 5-card poker game on average roughly once every 650,000 hands. In other words, for every 650,00 hands of mostly meaningless arrangements of cards (and perhaps a few other poker hands), you'll get only one Royal Flush.

Multi-million dollar lotteries are also based on this concept. If the odds against winning a big jackpot are millions to one, what will usually happen is that for every game where one person wins the big jackpot with the right combination of numbers, millions of people will not win the big jackpot because they picked millions of combinations of meaningless numbers. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a multi-million dollar lottery yet where millions of people won the top prize and only a few won little or nothing. It's always the other way around. And sometimes there isn't even one big winner.

How does this relate to evolution?

Let's take this well-understood concept about randomness and apply it the old story of a monkey on a typewriter. As mentioned earlier, for the purpose of this discussion, we'll assume that if you allow a monkey to randomly hit keys on a typewriter long enough he could eventually turn out the works of Shakespeare. Of course, it would take a very long time, and he'd produce mountains and mountains of pages of meaningless garbage in the process, but eventually (we'll assume) he could turn out the works of Shakespeare.

Now, let's say, after putting a monkey in front of a typewriter to type out Shakespeare, you decide you also want a copy of the Encyclopedia of Britannica. So you put another monkey in front of another typewriter. Then, you put a third monkey in front of third typewriter, because you also want a copy of "War And Peace." Now you shout, "Monkeys, type," and they all start banging away on their typewriters.

You leave the room and have yourself cryogenically frozen so you can come back in a few million years to see the results. (The monkeys don't have to be frozen. Let's say they're an advanced species; all they need to survive millions of years is fresh ink cartridges.)

You come back in a few million years and are shocked at what you see. What shocks you is not what you find, but what you don't find. First, you do find that the monkeys have produced the works of Shakespeare, the Encyclopedia of Britannica and "War and Peace." But all this you expected.

What shocks you is that you don't see the mountains of papers of meaningless arrangement of letters that each monkey should have produced for each literary work. You do find a few mistyped pages here and there, but they do not nearly account for the millions of pages of "mistakes" you should have found.

And even if the monkeys happened to get them all right the first time, which is a pretty big stretch of the imagination, they still should've type out millions of meaningless pages in those millions of years. (Who told them to stop typing?) Either way, each random work of art should have produced millions upon millions of meaningless typed pages.

This is precisely what the problem is with the Darwinian theory of evolution.

A random process, as depicted by Darwinian evolution and accepted by many scientists, even if one claims it can produce the most complex forms of life, should have produced at least millions of dysfunctional organisms for every functional one. And with more complex organisms (like a "Royal Flush" as opposed to a number 3 on a die), an even greater number of dysfunctional "mistakes" should have been produced (as there are so many more possibilities of "mistakes" in a 52-card deck than a 6-sided die).

The fossil record should have been bursting with billions upon billions of completely dysfunctional-looking organisms at various stages of development for the evolution of every life form. And for each higher life form -- human, monkey, chimpanzee, etc. -- there should have been millions of even more "mistakes."

Instead, what the fossil record shows is an overwhelming number of well-formed, functional-looking organisms, with an occasional aberration. Let alone we haven't found the plethora of "gradually improved" or intermediate species (sometimes referred to as "missing links") that we should have, we haven't even found the vast number of "mistakes" known beyond a shadow of a doubt to be produced by every random process.

We don't need billions of years to duplicate a random process in a lab to show that it will produce chaos every time, regardless of whether or not it might eventually produce some "meaningful complexity." To say that randomness can produce organization is one thing, but to say that it won't even produce the chaos that randomness invariably produces is inconsistent with established fact.

A process that will produce organization without the chaos normally associated with randomness is the greatest proof that the process is not random.

The notion that the fossil record supports the Darwinian theory of evolution is as ludicrous as saying that a decomposed carcass proves an animal is still alive. It proves the precise opposite. The relative scarcity of deformed-looking creatures in the fossil record proves beyond a doubt that if one species spawned another (which in itself is far from proven) it could not possibly have been by a random process.

To answer why we don't see many of the "mistakes" in the fossil record, some scientists point out that the genetic code has a repair mechanism which is able to recognize diseased and dysfunctional genetic code and eliminate it before it has a chance to perpetuate abnormal organisms.

Aside from this not being the issue, this isn't even entirely true. Although genetic code has the ability to repair or eliminate malfunctioning genes, many diseased genes fall through the cracks, despite this. There are a host of genetic diseases -- hemophilia, various cancers, congenital cataract, spontaneous abortions, cystic fibrosis, color-blindness, and muscular dystrophy, to name just a few -- that ravage organisms and get passed on to later generations, unhampered by the genetic repair mechanism. During earth's history of robust speciation (species spawning new ones) through, allegedly, random mutation, far more genes should have fallen through the cracks.

And, as an aside, how did the genetic repair mechanism evolve before there was a genetic repair mechanism? And where are all those millions of deformed and diseased organisms that should've been produced before the genetic repair mechanism was fully functional?

But all this is besides the point. A more serious problem is the presumption that natural selection weeded out the vast majority, or all, of the "misfits."

A genetic mutation that would have resulted in, let's say, the first cow to be born with two legs instead of four, would not necessarily be recognized as dysfunctional by the genetic repair mechanism. (I'll be using "cow" as an example throughout; but it applies to almost any organism.) From the genetic standpoint, as long as a gene is sound in its own right, there's really no difference between a cow with four legs, two legs, or six tails and an ingrown milk container. It's only after the cow is born that natural selection, on the macro level, eliminates it if it's not fit to survive.

It's these types of mutations, organisms unfit to survive on the macro level, yet genetically sound, that should have littered the planet by the billions.

Sure these deformed cows would have gotten wiped out quickly by natural selection, since they had no chance of surviving. But how many millions of dysfunctional cows alone, before you even get to the billions of other species in earth's history, should have littered the planet and fossil record before the first stable, functioning cow made its debut? If you extrapolate the random combinations from a simple deck of cards to the far greater complexity of a cow, we're probably talking about tens of millions of "mistakes" that should have cluttered planet earth for just the first functioning cow.

Where are all these relics of an evolutionary past?

Did nature miraculously get billions of species right the first time? Of the fossils well-preserved enough to study, most appear to be well-designed and functional-looking. With the low aberration ratio of fossils being no more significant, as far as speciation is concerned, than common birth deformities, there seems to have been nothing of a random nature in the development of life.

One absurd response I've gotten from a scientist as to why a plethora of deformed species never existed is: There is no such thing as speciation driven by deleterious mutation.

This is like asking, "How come everybody leaves the lecture hall through exit 5, but never through exit 4?" and getting a response, "Because people don't leave the lecture hall through exit 4." Wasn't this the question?

What scientists have apparently done is look into the fossil record and found that new species tend to make their first appearance as well-formed, healthy-looking organisms. So instead of asking themselves how can a random series of accidents seldom, if ever, produce "accidents," they've simply formulated a new rule in evolutionary biology: There is no such thing as speciation driven by deleterious mutation. This answer is about as scientific, logical and insightful as, "Because I said so."

It's one thing for the genetic code to spawn relatively flawless cows today, after years of stability. But before cows took root, a cow that might have struck us as deformed would have been no more or less "deleterious," from the genetic standpoint, than a cow that we see as normal. The genetic repair mechanism may recognize "healthy" or "diseased" genetic code, but it can't know how many legs or horns a completely new species should have, if we're talking about a trial-and-error crapshoot. If the genetic repair mechanism could predict what a functioning species should eventually look like, years before natural selection on the macro level had a chance to weed out the unfit, we'd be talking about some pretty weird, prophetic science.

In a paper published in the February 21, 2002, issue of Nature, Biologists Matthew Ronshaugen, Nadine McGinnis, and William McGinnis described how they were able to suppress some limb development in fruit flies simply by activating certain genes and suppress all limb development in some cases with additional mutations during embryonic development.

In another widely publicized experiment, mutations induced by radiation caused fruit flies to grow legs on their heads.

These experiments showed how easy it is to make drastic changes to an organism through genetic mutations. Ironically, although the former experiment was touted as supporting evolution, they both actually do the opposite. The apparent ease with which organisms can change so dramatically and take on bizarre properties, drives home the point that bizarre creatures, and bizarre versions of known species, should have been mass produced by nature, had earth's history consisted of billions of years of the development of life through random changes.

To claim that the random development of billions of life forms occurred, yet the massive aberrations didn't, is an absurd contradiction to everything known about randomness.

Evolutionists tend to point out that the fossil record represents only a small fraction of biological history, and this is why we don't find all the biological aberrations we should. But the issue here is not one of numbers but one of proportion.

For every fossil of a well-formed, viable-looking organism, we should have found an abundance of "strange" or deformed ones, regardless of the total number. What we're finding, however, is the proportional opposite.

Evolution may have made some sense in Darwin's days. But in the 21st century, evolution appears to be little more than the figment of a brilliant imagination. Although this imaginative concept has, in the years since Darwin, amassed a fanatical cult-like following, science, it is not. Science still needs to be proven; you can't just vote ideas into "fact." And especially not when they contradict facts.

One sign of the desperation of evolutionists to get their fallacious message across is their labelling of all disproofs of evolution as "Creationism," even when no mention of Creation or a deity is made. Ironically, it's evolutionists' dogmatic adherence to concepts that are more imagination than fact that smacks of a belief in mystical, supernatural powers. What evolutionists have done, in effect, is invented a new god-less religion and re-invented their own version of creation-by-supernatural-means. However, the mere elimination of God from the picture doesn't exactly make it science.

So if the development of life was not an accident, how did life come about?

Well, pointing out a problem is not necessarily contingent upon whether or not a solution is presented. In this case, presenting an alternative may actually be counterproductive. Evolutionists often get so bogged down with trying to discredit an proposed alternative, frequently with nothing more than invectives, that they tend to walk away believing evolution must still work.

The objective here, therefore, is to point out that Darwinian evolution does not fall apart because a solution being presented says it happened differently. The objective here is to show that the mechanics of evolution are incompatible with empirical evidence, verifiable science and common sense, regardless of whatever else may or may not take its place.

For a true study of science, we need to put the theory of evolution to rest, as we've done with so many other primitive concepts born of ignorance. Science today is far beyond such notions as metals that turn into gold, brooms that fly, earth is flat, and mystical powers that accidentally create life. What all these foolish beliefs have in common is that they were popular in their own time, were never duplicated in a lab, and were never proven by any other means.

We'd be doing society a great service if we filled our science textbooks with verifiable facts that demonstrate how science works, instead of scintillating fabrications that demonstrate how imaginative and irrational some scientists can get.

by Josh Greenberger - http://JoshGreenberger.com

This article describes the politics of Intelligent Design in Louisiana, where the new, charismatic, Roman Catholic governor has allied himself with religious fundamentalists; and he apparently does not care about redefinition of natural science to include the possibility of a supernatural intelligence.

As Miller notes, the battle will continue and those who are concerned about preserving the integrity of science can't afford to let their guards down.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

This is not as damning as the refutation of "irreducible complexity" as Miller notes in his book, but it does refute arguments against evolution of fish with two eyes on the same side of their bodies. For those who argued, "Where's the intermediate state?", this finding says, "Right here!"

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

I think Anon goes too far with "freedom of expression." Teachers are hired to work within a curriculum, and the school board is responsible for developing that curriculum.

In any reasonable school system, the board and administrators work with the teachers on curriculum issues. The curriculum provides necessary structure to promote the best possible education for the students. That structure necessarily puts some constraints on a teacher's freedom of expression, just as the Constitution and laws place constraints on the school board's choices for that curriculum.

The message of the Kitzmiller v. Dover verdict is that the school board did not follow the Constitution when it implemented a curriculum that established a particular religious doctrine.

Likewise, if a teacher were to assert "freedom of expression" and teach ID as an alternative to a Darwinian view of evolution, the school board would be obligated to intervene.

Coglanlab is correct that the argument is over what the curriculum should include and how curriculum decisions should be made.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)

The argument then, is about what the proper limits are, and what is included or excluded by those limits.

No. The argument is not about what the limits are nor what is included or excluded in those limit. It is about who sets those limits.

The government has no legal business constraining thought or expression.

Let teachers teach without big brother sitting in the corner of the classroom.

Anonymous:

In schools, children are taught that 1 + 1 = 2. Should more freedom of expression be allowed?

As far as I can tell, the point of school is to teach children useful knowledge and skills. That may be liberally defined, but not so liberally defined that it includes teaching information known to be false. What exactly would be the point of that.

So unless you are a total anarchist, I will assume you agree that there are limits on what should be taught in school. The argument then, is about what the proper limits are, and what is included or excluded by those limits.

Please try my web-based experiments

They argue that our economy thrives with fewer controls.

Our education system will thrive with fewer controls too.

The federal government should stop controlling expression in the schools.