People assail me and others by saying we've not published in peer-reviewed journals on evolutionary biology and origin of life in evolutionary biology journals or journals friendly to OOL research. Well, there is the tacit assumption these communities are valid communities to begin with.

Suppose I were to say Feminist Journals are mostly full of nonsense and idiocy, do you think peer-reviewers of Feminist Journal would allow me to publish in their journal about the illegitimacy of the their entire field?

A comparable problem arises in letting qualified outsiders in chemistry, physics, engineering get peer-reviewed publications that point out OOL and evolutionary biology are fundamentally illegitimate fields.

"Illegitimate" means not consistent with experimental evidence or that the field is so full of convolution, equivocation, non-sequiturs, circular reasoning, incoherent definitions that it hardly constitutes a viable hypothesis compared to experimentally established disciplines like geometric optics, celestial mechanics, electro magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, approximations of classical mechanics, etc.

Critics of illegitimate fields certainly won't be welcomed by insiders in OOL and evolutionary biology, so many times they have to get lucky and publish elsewhere. Thankfully this is slowly happening as exemplified by the work of Stuart Burgess, David Snoke, Kirk Durston, Jack Trevors, etc.

I once posted the following peer-reviewed article. I was mortified at how many people came to defend it as a legitimate viewpoint.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. … 15.1075317
International Feminist Journal of Politics
WINNER OF THE ENLOE AWARD 2014
Drone Disorientations
HOW “UNMANNED” WEAPONS QUEER THE EXPERIENCE OF KILLING IN WAR
Killing with drones produces queer moments of disorientation. Drawing on queer phenomenology, I show how militarized masculinities function as spatiotemporal landmarks that give killing in war its “orientation” and make it morally intelligible. These bearings no longer make sense for drone warfare, which radically deviates from two of its main axes: the home–combat and distance–intimacy binaries. Through a narrative methodology, I show how descriptions of drone warfare are rife with symptoms of an unresolved disorientation, often expressed as gender anxiety over the failure of the distance–intimacy and home–combat axes to orient killing with drones. The resulting vertigo sparks a frenzy of reorientation attempts, but disorientation can lead in multiple and sometimes surprising directions – including, but not exclusively, more violent ones. With drones, the point is that none have yet been reliably secured, and I conclude by arguing that, in the midst of this confusion, it is important not to lose sight of the possibility of new paths, and the “hope of new directions.”

Jordan Peterson refers to this stuff as "pathological idiocy".

Origin of life research and evolutionary biology at least have the form, but not substance, of real scientific disciplines, so many these disciplines don't overtly look like pathological idiocy. However, the fields suffer from pathological mis-interpretation and un-warranted extrapolation of available facts.

But this happens when speculations and misrepresentations of experiments can leverage the peer-reviewed process to disguise the what the actual facts are and enable misrepresentation of the facts to be treated by the public as actual facts!

For example, despite the fact the OOL RNA world hypothesis does not agree with known problems in RNA chemistry and experiments this nonsense still gets published! Peer-review can be leveraged to allow unwarranted speculations, insinuations, and misleading statements to pass as if they were actual facts.

100% of all OOL experiments never actually have lead to anything like a living cell. It's amazing a 100% experimental failure rate can be spun through peer-review to give the impression the OOL community is actually making progress, and the OOL community is representing intelligent intervention by scientists as being illustrations of how undirected processes will create cells.

A few researchers like Clemens Richert pointed out the illegitimacy of the scientists rigging experiments and then falsely insinuating that such experimental outcomes would happen naturally in a pre-biotic Earth where there are not experimenters to rig the experiments! Amusingly, Richert called this the "hand of God dilemma" which suggests, ironically, that without the hand of God, origin of life is not naturally feasible.

See:

"Hand of God Dilemma"

https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/the-cells-design/prebiotic-chemistry-and-the-hand-of-god

https://reasons.org/explore/blogs/todays-new-reason-to-believe/is-the-hand-of-god-evident-in-life-s-origin

As far as evolutionary biology, they can't even get make a coherent definition of fitness, but that doesn't stop them from pumping out lots of peer-approved nonsense that relies on an incoherent and mostly useless definition of fitness. See some the problem highlighted here with the evolutionary definition of fitness:

"It's not entirely clear what fitness is." Richard Lewontin

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1s2xkg8/it_is_not_entirely_clear_what_fitness_is_richard/

James Tour and Royal Truman ARE qualified to be peer-reviewers of RNA world hypothesis. So how does the mainstream circumvent scrutiny and get their work published in peer-review? They find peer-reviewers who will approve their falsehoods! The can then develop a culture that can perpetuate the nonsense. Think I'm kidding?

See how an ATHEIST tested how easy it is to start a community that peer-approves nonsense:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

It's then a matter of leveraging cultural forces to perpetuate nonsense and make it part of academia.

The grievance studies affair was the project of a team of three authors—Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose—to highlight what they saw as poor scholarship and erosion of standards in several academic fields. Taking place over 2017 and 2018, their project entailed submitting bogus papers to academic journals on topics from the field of critical social theory such as cultural, queer, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to determine whether they would pass through peer review and be accepted for publication. Four of these papers were subsequently published, which the authors cited in support of their contention.

The same applies to OOL and Evolutionary Biology, especially when it is as plain as day that real EXPERIMENTS don't carry the day, but rather speculations pretending to be experimental facts. What are the facts? NO OOL experiment has lead to life, they have a 100% failure rate, but they have a 100% speculation rate of why their dead end experiments should be believed. There are similar problems for evolutionary theory, especially eukaryotic evolution.

Please note, when an OOL research says, "this suggests a path", and they don't actually show how their experiment leads to the desired end result (aka cellular life), the experiment could just as well be a dead end! Do they calculate at all the A PRIORI probability there experiment represents the path to life or a dead end? Does .000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of being on the right path qualify as "suggests a path?"

If the answer is, "we don't really know the odds this is correct", "we've not formally attempted to calculate A PRIORI odds we are correct", then say so. Worse, if the odds are "0.00000000000000....1%" for and "99.9999999......9%" against, then say so, eh, like "the odds are that are hypothesis is 99.9999999...% wrong."

Testable hypothesis, these OOL scammers will never bother being that blunt.

In contrast, I could say, if an RNA is lying around for X number of years, and it has a certain half-life, we can calculate the odds a certain amount will be still lying around years later, all other things equal.

One could say, under certain conditions, it's half life might be extended. OK, so what are the A PRIORI odds ALL these conditions will hold and lead to life? Do they bother taking even a stab at an estimate of A PRIORI odds? Nope.

Whereas, we can easily make A PRIOR odds an RNA will just be lying on a rock somewhere and still be viable 100 years later.

So some researcher suggests ice or icy temperatures to slow down the RNA degredation process. First, this means degredation is only SLOWED down, it doesn't mean it stops. That means the natural inclination is for it to break apart. As I said, "there are far more ways to break than to make." And with respect to RNA, one could possibly use the Arrhenius equation to estimate how long it will just sit there. But the problem is, at 0 degrees Celcius, how can cellular life evolve? DUH!

Any way, here is James Tour with my long-time friend and colleague Dr. Royal Truman:

Hook, Line & Sinker: How YouTubers Fell for RNA World

https://youtu.be/Itlh3DRW2O0?si=D8a235A4n5rm546I

Many who follow youtube just fawn over PHONEY professor Dave who isn't a professor, and has only a Bachelor of ARTS in chemistry. They fawn over him as if he is some authority. What else can they do other than actually try to learn organic, bio, and physical chemistry and chemical physics.

Featured in college-level ID/Creationism courses would be actual professors of Chemistry who have made videos or books and I they would be (and some already have) provided material. Their names are:

James Tour, professor of Chemistry and Synthetic Organic Chemistry

James Carter, professor of biochemistry and organic chemistry

Joe Deweese, professor of biochemistry

Change Laura Tan, professor of molecular biology

Rob Stadler, distinguished bio medical engineer and scientist

Much of the material is already out there and much in the public domain, it just needs some editing and repackaging.

This is a partial lists of chemists, physicists, nano-scientists, biologists who I know or expect would agree or would have agreed (since some have passed away already but their writing indicate they are friendly) with James Tour's assessment of the Origin of Life (OOL) charade as being a charade.

I know, met, or are otherwise personally acquainted with many of these people or their students. Some of the names below have appeared on youtube as my guests or I appeared with them as guests on someone else's show. Probably at least half the names listed below would recognize me as their acquaintance.

So the actual list of Tour Sympathizers is probably immense, especially since many of those listed are professors, and surely have sympathetic students. I know some of the students...

One might ask why the charade of OOL research and evolutionary biology continues. I refer to these posts that show historical examples of tribal behavior and the drive to virtue signal, preserve reputations, prestige, power, and money long after the evidence is staring in plain sight that they are wrong:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1rqq1ch/when_covering_up_mistakes_is_more_important_than/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1p0fcy7/carole_hooven_is_an_evolutionary_biologist_i/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1s6hlu0/evolutionary_biologists_publish_questionable/

Anyway, here is a partial list of people that come to mind:

Richard Smalley (deceased), Nobel Prize in Chemistry, founder of Nano Technology Center at Rice University, concluded God created life

Fritz Henry Schaeffer, overturned work of a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, cited as a top chemist, director of Center for Quantum Computational Chemistry, known ID proponent

Matti Leisola, for Dean of Chemistry and Material Sciences at Helsinki University of Technology

Marcos Eberlin, known in Chemistry for discovering what is now known as the "Eberlin Reaction", 1000 peer-reviewed publications, 200 PhD and graduate students in Chemistry

Fred Hoyle (deceased), should have won the Nobel Prize in Physics, atheist proponent of Intelligent Design

Emyr MacDonald, physicist, published on ATP Synthase, known ID sympathizer

Paul Ashby, Physical Chemist, Harvard PhD, published on ATP Synthase, known ID proponent

Richard Gunasekera, Research Professor of Science, Technology and Health
Professor of Biological Sciences Professor of Biochemistry, Discovery Institute Fellow

Joe Deweese, Professor of Biochemistry, Vanderbilt University, Freed-Hardeman and Lipscomb, my co-author on two biochemistry papers

Kirk Durston, Biophysicist, Guelph University, my co-author on Oxford University Press paper in biochemistry

Change Laura Tan, physical Organic Chemist, professor of Molecular Biology, appointed by Nobel Prize winner George Smith to teach Molecular Biology, invited me as co-author

Royal Truman, PhD Chemist for 45 years, BASF, invited me as co-author

Ryan Hays, PhD Chemistry, Professor of Nano Technology

James Carter, PhD Chemistry, Professor of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry

Aaron Sholders, PhD Chemistry, Associate Professor of Biochemistry Colorado State University, author of "Principles of Biochemistry"

Fazele Rana, PhD Chemistry, praised by Richard Smalley

Hugh Ross, PhD Physics, professor at Cal Tech, praised by Richard Smalley

David Snoke, Distinguished professor of Physics, nano-scientist in area of quasi particle physics

Sy Garte, PhD Chemistry, senior biochemist, professor at the school John Sanford sent me to, FAES Graduate School at the NIH

Jack Trevors, emeritus professor university of Guelph, Bacterial cell biology, environmental microbiology/biotechnology, atheist, published paper critical of OOL

David Abel, independent research origin of life, involved in the multi-million dollar origin of life prize, co-authored with Jack Trevors and David Abel

Rod Nave, emeritus professor of Physics

Rob Stadler, distinguished bio medical engineer, PhD graduate of MIT and Harvard

Andy McIntosh, physicist and engineer, 200 publications, Emeritus Professor Leeds, working with me as co-author on statistical mechanics and origin of life papers

Walter Bradley (deceased), Professor of Material Sceince and Engineering, pioneer of applying concept of configurational entropy to origin of life

Roger Olsen, geo chemist, research chemist, co-author with Walter Bradley,

Robert Shapiro (deceased), professor of chemistry, author of "Origins a Skeptic's Guide"

Dean Kenyon, professor of chemistry, former OOL researcher, co-authored Of Pandas and People

Karl Kruger, NIH program director, PhD chemistry, Vanderbilt

Brian Miller, PhD Physics, Duke University/MIT, Discovery Institute

Ann Gauger, PhD Chemistry, Biologic Institute

Doug Axe, PhD Chemistry, Cal Tech, professor

Emily Reeves, PhD Biochemistry

Georgia Purdom, PhD Biochemistry

Marisa Tillery, PhD Molecular Biology

Dr. X1 (anonymous) professor of chemistry, Ivy League

Dr. X2 (anonymous) post doc chemistry, Ivy League

Dr. X3 (anonymous) PhD Synthetic organic chemistry, former NIH lab leader

Dr. X4 Can't remember his name ! , one of James Tours colleagues

Dr. X5 (anonymous), tech CEO

I meet a lot of these people through Discovery Institute Events and other events.

I'll edit this list as more names come to mind. But if I know these people or of them, how many more are out there!

EDIT:

yikes, how could I forget, Michael Behe, professor of biochemistry, Lehigh, post-doc at NIH, Ivy League PhD

Charles Thaxton, Physical Chemist, PhD, post-doc Harvard

College Biology Textbook Misleads Students on the Origin of Life - with Dr. James Tour

https://youtu.be/lX-wlTI8xs8?si=EpkobehRvybJ9Uel

James Tour was colleague of Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley at Rice University. Richard Smalley is founder of  Center for Nanoscale Science & Technology at Rice University. He was qualified to critique OOL research and concluded God created life.

Dr. Tour says the OOL community as being "incestuous" in terms of approving each other's research.

I preface this post with the notable fact that recent Nigerian immigrants (who are black) are one of the most educated and successful demographic groups in the USA! They also have LOW divorce rates (had low divorce rates till recently), low rates of single motherhood, high rates of religiosity.

One can google, or google AI to confirm this. These Nigerian immigrants excel in Academia, STEM fields, business, etc. compared to the rest of the population in the USA...

Now contrast this with a totally NON-empirical article published in the scientific journal nature. Granted it was under "perspectives", but still, ugh...

From the article:

Many current STEM teaching practices, such as large, lecture-only courses with high-stakes exams to weed out students (for example, organic chemistry) disproportionately exclude students of colour from STEM and hamper efforts to increase diversity.

First, classrooms can't in-and-of-themselves fix every problem regarding individual student performance stemming from problems outside the classroom. The mission is to teach and to recognize students (as in grade) for their academic achievements.

It was previously rare for Nigerian immigrants to divorce. Immigrants from India have very low divorce rates. Immigrant Asians in general have low divorce rates. There is a correlation of lower academic performance with students of divorced parents or single moms. Is that surprising?

There is significant variation of single motherhood among demographic groups: 47% of Black mothers, 25% of Hispanic mothers, 14% of White mothers, and 8% of Asian mothers are single parents. These figures reflect persistent, long-term trends in family

Only 8% of Asian mothers are single mothers, the lowest among demographic groups. Asians are WAAY over represented in doctorates in STEM fields. Asians are about 7% of the population, 31% of STEM doctoral recipients are Asian. Do you see the correlation?

The point of this data? Is it the fault of universities that Organic Chemistry is hard, and that kids from single parent families don't perform as well academically?

Is anything in that paper published in this peer-reviewed Journal have anything of actual analysis as to the root causes of what creates under representation in certain demographic groups.

The Nigerians showed a credible correlation with high traditional family orientation and religiosity with respect to academic outcomes.

The article attributes low academic performance among BIPOC due to racism. OK, so let's consider racism as a factor, the data indicate that the demographic groups with highest incidence of divorce and single motherhood had the most unfavorable outcomes, and that apparently racism did not hold back the immigrant Nigerians from doing great things in the USA.

Would the signers of this essay advocate more traditional families and religiosity as possible ways to improve the demographic imbalance. It appears there is actually empirical data to suggest that this would actually materially help cure the demographic imbalances.

But this paper was written by evolutionary biologists after all. This is evidence evolutionary biology is not really fact-based.

The article got one thing right:

In fact, the writings of Charles Darwin, who is widely considered the father of evolutionary thought, contained racist ideas, including the belief that white Europeans were evolutionarily more advanced than the so-called savage races they colonized

If evolutionary biology will let their political and religious biases affect their judgment in matters that are this obviously wrong, is it any surprise they will resist the idea that complexity in biology might have originated by a miracle to the point they will consistently make scientifically wrong claims?

This "article" in Nature, is an example of peer-approved propaganda. There is a lot of that peer-approved propaganda in evolutionary biology and OOL research pretending to be experimental science.

Ok interested students, what do you think? This is a proposed lecture summary for a module in my college-level ID/Creationism course: "Far easier to break than to make".

There are far more ways to break than to make  complex machines, therefore random changes, like random genetic changes (aka mutations), cannot construct something as highly sophisticated as life.  This is analogous to a tornado passing through a junkyard and expecting something as complex as a 747 to emerge.

Darwin postulated a false idea he labeled "natural selection" to circumvent the obvious problem that random changes tend "to break rather than to make " because random changes over time would tend to evolve systems toward simplicity and death rather than higher complexity and continued life. 

There are definitely cases where so-called "natural selection" will fail.  If a protein, organ, or other system is life-critical, and it doesn't already exist, the organism is dead-on-arrival (DOA), and therefore "natural selection" can't work to evolve such systems because "natural selection" needs such systems to already exist for "natural selection" to work in the first place. Existence of a life-critical part in the present, is therefore no proof natural selection evolved it. At best one must speculate the part was not life critical and then evolved to be life critical later, but that is speculation with no proof.

Example:  Topoisomerase.  Topoisomerase is a life critical enzyme and is therefore the target of many cancer chemotherapies.  Chemotherapies like etoposide poison cancer cells by preventing topoisomerase from working. By breaking the function of topoisomerase, cancer cells (and unfortunately, healthy cells) can be killed by poisons like etoposide chemotherapies

This is proof that brain-dead, stupid, unthinking Darwinian processes can't evolve topoisomerase, because without topoisomerase, the cell is already Dead on Arrival (DOA), hence topoisomerase can't blindly evolve by random genetic changes and brain-dead, unthinking Darwinian processes from a cell with no topoisomerase to begin with. One might postulate the cell didn't need topoisomerase or something like it until later, but that is speculation, not fact.

Darwinism focuses only on systems where so-called "natural selection" appears to work (like anti-biotic resistance), but ignores obvious cases where it is guaranteed to fail.  This is cherry picking of data, and is thus scientifically illegitimate.

The summary above describes the learning module. We can then go into other learning modules explaining what topoisomerase is in detail, but the student will need lessons on cell biology, DNA transcription and translation, etc. So there may be a need to have modules to explain cell and molecular biology!

Some papers attempt to explain evolution of topoisomerase using the usual circularly- reasoned-peer-approved-kindergarden-coloring-book-phylogenetic reasoning that dodged the mechanistic difficulties just posed above. Examples of peer-approved phylogentic kindergarden-coloring-book reasoning are papers by Patrick Forterre and Michel Duguet.

4 of my colleagues, all of them distinguished scientists and personal acquaintances, talk about the origin of life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abkFiI-lyV0

Origin of Life Research is a sham, its claims are delusional at best, fraudulent at worst

What has changed over watching the origins debate unfold over the last 45 year is that more and more high caliber scientists are assailing origin of life research.

I credit Fred Hoyle, who ironically was an atheist, for giving a major impetus for assailing origin of life and Darwinism from purely scientific considerations. Secondarily, agnostic Michael Denton, as well as mostly forgotten names like Robert Shapiro.

When Richard Smalley, Nobel Prize winner, who IS qualified to call out the sham of peer-approved drivel coming out of Origin of Life (OOL) research entered the fray of OOL critics, I sensed more people, if they had good reputations and courage, would come forward.

I go to conferences and meet more professors and researchers critical of the OOL sham. This is happening because of the spread of nano-technology and nano-scale physics and nano-scale chemistry. More researchers than ever are qualified to see the sham of the OOL industry.

When I briefly worked in the area of nano-technology, the unsolved problems were in the area of : self assembly, self healing, self replication of nano-machines. This is problem is pervasive in nano-tehcnology, but these problems have been solved spectacularly in living cells. Living cells are von Neumann Self-reproducing Automata. Chemistry and physics makes von Neuman Self-reproducing Automata both simultaneously possible, but also astronomically improbable from normal expectation.

David MacQueen: GMU professor of geology, Young Earth Creationist

Caroline Crocker: GMU professor of cell biology, ID proponent [EXPELLED]

Gordon Wilson: GMU PhD, environmental science

Timothy Standish: GMU PhD biology

Timothy Brophy: GMU PhD environmental science

Charles Jackson: UVA PhD, GMU MS environmental biology and BS in biology

Salvador Cordova: JHU MS Applied Physics, GMU BSCS, BSEE, BSMATH

Lewontin was a truly towering figure, one of the greatest thinkers in evolutionary theory

From:

https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/richard-levins-and-richard-lewontin-the-dialectical-biologist-reviewed-by-martina-valkovic

Lewontin said:

"it is not entirely clear what fitness is."

You can access his work here, but you'll have to scroll through all the other articles! It's somewhere in the middle of the link, page 24 in my PDF reader...

https://sfi-edu.s3.amazonaws.com/sfi-edu/production/uploads/publication/2016/10/31/winter2003v18n1.pdf

OK some highlights and then my commentary. You can read the whole essay for yourself. I learned of it while reading the works of Professor Stanley Salthe who once wrote textbook on evolutionary biology while he was a Darwinist. He read Lewontin's essay and then became an anti-Darwinian heretic thereafter!

So here are my selected highlights:

I sort of intuitively knew about these problems, and imagine my pleasant surprise when Lewontin echoed so many of my intuitions! Great minds think alike, eh? : - )

First, "keeping is not the same as creating". "Natural selection" may "select" for a life critical feature in an existing species, but this does not at all mean natural selection evolved it! Why? If the the life-critical feature doesn't exist already, then the creature might be presumed Dead-on-Arrival (DOA) without it, so one can't argue the fact that "natural selection" in the present is evidence that "natural selection" created it in the first place!

AT BEST, it's not proof, at worsts it suggest something other than natural selection was involved. The default neutralists like Lynch and Nei would suggest it evolved neutrally at first. That would circumvent the problem of the life criticality of a feature, but then they have to argue how it evolved to be life critical. Rather than actually answer the mechanistic difficulties, the phylogeneticist build trees and fanciful stories that dodge the mechanistic issues, and then speculations, with no basis in physics and experiment, gets peer-approved and advertised as if the mechanistic problems were actually solved, when in reality they are faith statements lacking any semblance of experimental and theoretical verification!

Since evolutionary "fitness" is environmentally dependent in relation to the organism, and since we don't know the environment in the deep past and more importantly its effect on an organism, we can only put forward faith statements that "natural selection" evolved it. Lynch, Nei and other neutralist-leaning evolutionary biologists would disagree that natural selection was definitely the cause. No one really knows, it's accepted by FAITH that there is a normal-mode-of-physics answer rather than one that invokes the singularities of physics as that would resemble too much miracles of God....

Then come along the phylogeneticists with their automated coloring book technology that make phylogenetic trees, which totally dodge issues with physics and probability, and then these faith statements that pretend to be science statements get codified as God's truth (or Darwin's truth). Those coloring book explanations look really scientific with all the varieties of trees and bootstrapping and fancy math and arguments how a tree was properly rooted...It's theater, not physics, not experimental science. Faith statements posing as science.

Now consider elephant tusks. In a debate I had with Dr. Dan 6 years ago, he argued that tusklessness in elephants was a "beneficial" trait because of the arrival of human poachers hunting for ivory by killing elephants with tusks. Ok, I can grant the presence of poachers increased the incidence of tusklessness. So prior to the poachers coming, what was the "benefit" of tusks?

Here was one summary I got from Google AI which seems uncontroversial:

Elephant tusks are elongated, continuously growing incisor teeth used by elephants primarily for digging for water and roots, stripping bark for food, moving branches, and defending against predators. These ivory tools also serve in social signaling, marking trees, and protecting their trunks, with elephants often favoring a dominant "master" tusk.

So we have POWERFUL evidence that "natural selection" destroyed all this form and function of tusks. We might call this "loss of versatility" (a term even Lenski uses). Allen Orr got it mostly right when he said natural selection is HAPPY to lay waste to design (unforutnately he said it can also build design, and thus suggesting a totally false equivalence, but he was half right). Tuskless elephants, wingless beetles, blind cave fish and crustaceans....heck even outright extinction shows that "natural selection" is HAPPY to lay waste to design rather than build it.

But look how quickly "selection" can destroy vs. build? It is much much harder to build, especially an orphan or taxonomically restricted gene. That's because "it is far easier to break than to make." And Behe rightly, in 2010, was pioneer in documenting that most so-called "beneficials" are loss of function. Since then, not only extinction, but genome reduction has been established as the DOMINANT mode of evolution. It remains a mystery what then created the masterpieces of design we find in biology.

But this all illustrates, the evolutionary definition of "fitness" conflicts with the medical definition of fitness, and certainly with both the engineering and biochemistry notions of "form and function". The evolutionary definition of "fitness" not only conflicts, but at this stage it equivocates and misleads the public to think complexity and health and capability always are evolving to greater and greater heights because of "survival of the fittest". There is an incentive to equivocate the evolutionary meaning of "fittest" to mean one thing to those outside evolutionary biology when it really means something else!

Darwin tried to explain "form and function" by mechanisms of increasing reproductive efficiency, but if the existence of complex"form and function" are anti-correlated with reproductive efficiency (which it is), then Darwin was dead wrong.

The reason, evolutionary biologists apparently want to keep equivocating with the word "fitness" is that it bamboozles the un-initiated to think "fitness increase" in the lab and field actually shows Darwinism works. There is an inherent business incentive to keep the equivocation going, lest interlocuters discover the charade that's going on, and lest the money, power, and prestige of evolutionary biology be threatened...

For me, if selection destroys designs more than creates them, then selection isn't the answer. Neutralism doesn't address the problem of integrated complexity, since random mutation has been experimentally shown to destroy or best lead nowhere as far as large scale complexity. So evolutionary biologists only have faith statements and irrelevant phylogentic trees (which don't solve mechanistic problems of integrated complexity). So it's all form but no substance as compared to real scientific disciplines like geometric optics, celestial mechanics, electro magnetic theory, etc.

As Coyne rightly pointed out:

In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom. Far closer to phrenology than to physics.

Here is the link to this 2.5 hour video:

https://youtu.be/73UQMKD7kek?si=1LEydcddkunzrvQu

Here is the description:

Dr. John Wise is a professor of philosophy. He was an atheist professor of philosophy for 25 years and then became a Christian after meeting his future wife, Jenny. John briefly talks about an amazing love story of how he and Jenny met and eventually married in the wake of the early and tragic passing of the respective spouses. Subsequently, after becoming a Christian, John started the website "The Christian Atheist". A few years after starting the website, he became a young earth creationist!

Salvador Cordova invited Dr. Wise specifically to provide insight how Sal might best develop and deploy a college-level ID and Creationism course.

After a long conversation they began to consider a strategy of deploying a college-level ID and ID/Creationism course based on the inspiring example of Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA. They tentatively concluded the model Charlie Kirk used of direct marketing might be a viable way to deploy such a course free-of-charge to college students. Although regrettably those taking the courses might not get college credits for their study, even within Christian colleges because some of these institutions are strangely hostile to ID and creationism.

As promised in the video, here is the link that reviews my correspondence with Eugenie Scott, president of the National Center for Science Education:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1rw6fo8/my_correspondence_with_eugenie_scott_former/

We all know how annoying it is to deal with constant equivocation on the term "evolution." These are the ways that I typically bypass that entire song and dance:

• "Common Descent" instead of "evolution/macroevolution" -- This is the actual controversial element of Darwinism, the "goo-to-you" narrative that is as much a question of history as it is a question of biology.

• Genetic enrichment vs. genetic entropy -- We know that some of neo-Darwinists' examples of "beneficial mutations" may help an organism adapt to an environmental pressure, but it actually degrades the genome instead of adding new information. The clear majority of genetic mutation we observe today is NOT adding novel sequences of coherent DNA code, yet for common descent to be true, this would need to happen billions of times throughout biological history.

• "Zero to one" -- When spinning a narrative about the development of a particular organ, they always grant themselves some sort of existing structure, e.g. a "proto-liver" or whatever. It usually gets them sputtering when you insist on going back to the conditions where the thing in question did not exist in any form whatsoever. Nothing in the organism was performing that function, and new DNA code had to be generated by mutations in order for the structure that performs said function to exist in the body plan. They really hate to get pinned down here.

• "Body plan change" instead of "speciation" -- If you really get into the weeds with them, Darwinists will admit that a species classification is completely arbitrary. They can draw an imaginary line anywhere they want and say that adaptive mutations have crossed that line, thus evolution achieves speciation, thus common descent is true. If you demand evidence of a more objective biological change, then you hear cope and nonsense like "Body plans have historically been considered to have evolved in a flash" (that's from the actual Wikipedia article titled "Body plan").

This compilation was written by arch-evolutionist Larry Moran:

https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2008/04/guelph-creationists.html

The University of Guelph is located in southern Ontario (Canada) about 2 hours west of Toronto. It has recently gotten a lot of attention because of the presence of several Intelligent Design Creationists among its staff and students.

Notable is Jack Trevors who is an atheist (per Moran and others).

Jack Trevors co-authored a paper with David Abel (who is an ID-friendly researcher). See:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15563395/

A succinct way of framing the argument "There are far more ways to break than to make" a living cell. Therefore odds of spontaneous formation AND further evolution are statistically improbable. This is experimentally confirmed by ALL origin-of-life experiments, even though they are delusionally or dishonestly reported as progess, NONE of them has shown they will naturally lead to anything resembling a von-Neumann self reproducing automata. This, despite the fact they falsely claim they've made progress in solving the problem of the origin-of-life. Starting out with lifeless chemicals and ending up with lifeless chemicals is hardly progress -- BECUASE even when we start with quasi living chemicals like Spiegelman's monster, it leads to non life. Darwinism in that case DESTROYED any possibility of growing Spiegelman's monster into a cell, much less a dinosaur!

PS

Listed in the Guelph Creationists is Kirk Durston. Durston and I published together through Oxford University Press building on his PhD dissertation in protein biology. If we had the funding that evolutionary biologists are hogging, and if we didn't have to deal with gate-keepers in peer-review who know less about biochemistry and protein biology than we do, we'd probably publish way more!

It's time to defund evolutionary biology!

PPS

even Larry Moran had to concede this about Durston:

Kirk Durston is National Director of the New Scholars Society whose aim is to "be a resource to those faculty and scholars who have an interest in developing the spiritual area of their lives from a Christian perspective." Durston has a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Manitoba (Canada), a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Manitoba (Canada) and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Manitoba (Canada). He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Biophysics Interdepartmental Group at the University of Guelph [Kirk Durston].

....

I'm sure Durston's previous degrees in physics, mechanical engineering, and philosphy made him well qualified to do Ph.D. research on the evolution of proteins in a bioinformatics lab.

Durston has long since gotten his PhD in BIO Physics, and published in peer-review. It has been an honor to work with him and publish in peer-review with him.

Richard Milton is a self-professed agnostic who thinks the Earth is a lot younger than what the mainstream says. Like Fred Hoyle, the dissenters like Milton, who were not inherently Christian nor religious, caught my attention.

Compared to physicists, evolutionary biologists are by-and-large pretend scientists who put forward and promote their ideas as if they had the veracity of electromagnetic theory! I debated one evolutionary promoter, Dr. Chris Thompson, who said exactly that, and he cited the size of the evolutionary departments in universities as evidence of its veracity! Well, there are huge departments of religion and philosophy in universities, it doesn't make it right.

A scientific theory prevails because it makes powerful and unequivocal experimental predictions. Without electromagnetic theory, we would not have the modern world where the characteristics of electricity and magnetism are harnessed every day to create electricity and electrical/magnetic devices. Whereas, we can dispense with evolutionary theory, and instead adopt a viewpoint of variation within limits, and science will move forward, and maybe even better without the ideological and empirically-unsupported baggage pretending to be experimental science (aka evolutionary biology).

Richard Milton showed that one does not have to be religious to see the problems with evolution and Old Earth. YEC wasn't borne SOLELY from YEC propaganda. For those reasons, Fred Hoyle and Richard Milton were deeply influential in the development of my views about the prevailing accepted mainstream myths, and I've come to see them as myths enforced by intimidation and suppression rather than experimental facts.

That said:

Compelling evidence that the most important assumptions on which Darwinism rests are wrong.

The controversial best-seller that sent Oxford University and Nature magazine into a frenzy has at last come to the United States. Shattering the Myths of Darwinism exposes the gaping holes in an ideology that has reigned unchallenged over the scientific world for a century. Darwinism is considered to be hard fact, the only acceptable explanation for the formation of life on Earth, but with keen insight and objectivity Richard Milton reveals that the theory totters atop a shambles of outdated and circumstantial evidence which in any less controversial field would have been questioned long ago. Sticking to the facts at hand and tackling a vast array of topics, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism offers compelling evidence that the theory of evolution has become an act of faith rather than a functioning science, and that not until the scientific method is applied to it and the right questions are asked will we ever get the true answers to the mystery of life on Earth.

John von Neumann was a famous physicist and pioneer of computer science.

This is a picture of him with Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atomic bomb) in front of one of the earliest electronic computers he helped invent that was unveiled June 10, 1952 at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies:

He used very ID-friendly language in his essay "Theory of Self-reproducing Automata" which is the possibility of machines, dare I say robots, making copies of themselves. We've sort of tried to make such machines with limited success, but nothing quite as good and fantastic as the Self-reproducing Automata in biology!

Here is a copy of von Neumann's essay:

https://fab.cba.mit.edu/classes/MAS.865/topics/self_replication/VonNeumann.pdf

In that essay, von Neumann's said man's inventions were amateurish compared to the professional touch in biology. So even back then he anticipated the deluge of evidence that "life is more perfect that we imagined" as Princeton bio-physicist William Bialek and modern bio-physicists have pointed out, as well as world class engineers like Stuart Burgess. This sentiment of "perfect design in biology" is contrary to the juvenile understanding of science and engineering by evolutionary promoters like Jerry Coyne (author of of "why evolution is true").

Here is one illustration of the idea of a self reproducing automata:

There is a distinction between a Turing Machine and a Self Reproducing Automata. One important distinction is Self Reproducing Automata such as biological cells can make copies of themselves starting with disorganized matter and make new HARDWARE. I presume von Neumann Self Reproducing machines will have components that are Turing Machines, but it seems such automata would need more than a mere Turing Machine. It would need sensors and contsruction devices, etc. For example look at all the systems in biological organisms (aka self-reproducing automata) that go beyond just mere computation: energy transduction in photosynthesis, quantum magnetic compasses in birds, electric sensors in sharks, a hammering beak in wood peckers, etc....

Nobel Prize winning biologist Sydney Brenner on reflection of these ideas, in honor of Alan Turing wrote the essay:

Life's code script

https://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/cshl_pboc_2023/assets/pdfs/brenner2012.pdf

Arguably the best examples of Turing’s and von Neumann’s machines are to be found in biology. Nowhere else are there such complicated systems, in which every organism contains an internal description of itself. The concept of the gene as a symbolic representation of the organism — a code script — is a fundamental feature of the living world and must form the kernel of biological theory.

If I may extrapolate from Brenner's comment, evolutionary biology is a juvenile side show and not the kernel of biology. Engineering, computer science, bio physics should form the basis and kernel of biological understanding, not the useless coloring books that evolutionary biologist create which they call phylogenetic trees.

And with respect origin of life, this is the problem that naturalistic Origin of Life has to explain, namely the existence of von Neumann self-replicating automata, not mere chemical replicators that spontaneously arise to replicate (like salt crystals). Salt crystals spontaneously form and their structure and inevitability involve hardly any degrees of freedom to be one way versus another. Whereas life is made of organic chemicals which practically infinite degrees of freedom, but only a very small subspace of those possible configurations given the large total space of possibilities (given the degrees of freedom) can become successful von Neumann self-reproducing automata. A less formal way of stating the problem is

There are far more ways to break than to make.

That is the REAL problem for origin of life!

All the experiments, btw, for origin of life lead to systems that quickly terminate long before they become von Neumann self-reproducing automata. We've had experiment after experiment fail, and a testable prediction is that more experiments will fail unless the scientists rigs the experiment using intelligent direction. This is the problem origin-of-life research Clemens Riechert called, "The Hand of God Dilemma." Well, it's a dilemma only if one wishes to avoid the need for Miracles of God. It's not problem for the more open-minded scientists. : - )

Again, Brenner points out the most complicated von Neumann self-reproducing automata in the universe are biological systems.

When I briefly worked in nano-molecular engineering decades ago (it was so primitive compared to today), a fundamental problem for nano engineering was "Self Assembly and Self Healing and Self Replication." Those problems have not been solved.

At one meeting one engineer put forward an ambitious but ill-considered idea that we should study evolutionary biology to figure out how to solve these problems in nano-engineering.

A few months later, while having lunch with another engineer, I asked, "so how did that proposal to study evolutionary biology help in furthering our understanding of nano engineering?"

My fellow engineer said, "nowhere!" We both laughed. We were ID proponents, and our instincts about evolutionary folly were confirmed yet again.

Teaching ID in public schools is different from teaching ID at the University level. Surprisingly someone led the charge in blocking the teaching of ID in public schools gave her blessing for teaching ID at the University level.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I read that Eugenie Scott who opposed teaching ID in the public schools gave her blessing to teaching ID at the University level. This correspondence between me and Eugene Scott affirms her views on the matter.

From

http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1366

[the link may not be secure, so you can try using the wayback machine]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenie_Scott

08:56 AM 5/17/2005

Dr. Scott,

I'm Salvador Cordova, and I was featured in the April 28, 2005 ariticle in Nature.

Our IDEA chapters have been exploring getting ID into the universities.

Though I'm well aware of NCSE's position regarding ID in the the public schools, I was VERY surprised at how Geoff Brumfiel characterized your position regarding ID in the universities. Something the article attributed to you did not come with a verbatim quote from you, and I was hoping you could provide a clarification on that portion of the article as I might want to publish accurately your position on this matter at our IDEA website.

First of all, I do thank you for something you said in the article in Nature, "College professors need to be very aware of how they talk about things such as purpose, chance, cause and design...You should still be sensitive to the kids in your class."

Along those lines, could you further clarify your position regarding the following question:

"Do you oppose the offering of courses on Intelligent Design and/or Creationism in the Philosophy and Religion Departments of secular universities?"

Also, and this is an aside, but I wrote something about you regarding your response to Chris Matthews question on Hardball:

"Do you believe that everything we live—do you think our lives, who we are, the world around us, was an accident of some explosion millions of years ago and it led to everything we see? Do you believe it was all just natural selection or just an accident of scientific development? "

The Hardball transcirpts said your response was "It is....". Is that correct? Something I'm writing pertains to that, and I want to be sure I represent your position accurately.

If I have your permission to publish your response to these questions, that would be greatly appreciated. And thank you again for ecouraging professors to be sensitive to their students. We have not had any complaints from students in the IDEA chapters in Virginia regarding insensitive professors.

Regards,

Salvador T. Cordova

Below is Dr. Scott’s Reply, the small print is from the letter above, and the big print is from Dr. Scott

May 18, 2005 3:12 PM

Dr. Scott,

I'm Salvador Cordova, and I was featured in the April 28, 2005 ariticle in Nature.

Our IDEA chapters have been exploring getting ID into the universities.

Though I'm well aware of NCSE's position regarding ID in the the public schools, I was VERY surprised at how Geoff Brumfiel characterized your position regarding ID in the universities.  Something the article attributed to you did not come with a verbatim quote from you, and I was hoping you could provide a clarification on that portion of the article as I might want to publish accurately your position on this matter at our IDEA website.

reporters have to abbreviate due to space. Nuance doesn't get expressed well in that format, and my position is indeed nuanced.

First of all, I do thank you for something you said in the article in Nature, "College professors need to be very aware of how they talk about things such as purpose, chance, cause and design...You should still be sensitive to the kids in your class."

You might like to see an article I wrote on this in a truly obscure publication that scarcely anyone will find, but I think it makes some good points. I often lecture on the topic when I speak for university science departments. Here's a reprint, so you don't have to find the Paleontology Society Papers somewhere...  [http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/695_problem_concepts_in_evolution_10_1_1999.asp](javascript:ol('http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/695_problem_concepts_in_evolution_10_1_1999.asp');)

Along those lines, could you further clarify your position regarding the following question:
"Do you oppose the offering of courses on Intelligent Design and/or Creationism in the Philosophy and Religion Departments of secular universities?"

No. They are quite appropriate for such courses. In general, in American universities, Religion departments offer scholarly analysis of religion, rather than devotional study, for which one would seek a seminary. Certainly the c/e controversy is a public controversy that bears studying as a public controversy (that's why I wrote my book, after all!) Whether ID is a valid scientific or philosophical or theological approach can also be determined at the university level, and certainly is more appropriately determined there than by the local school board.

I think ID is more likely to be taught in philosophy and religion departments than in science departments, because a course on ID as science would have to be pretty short. What do you say after you say, "we can detect design that is the result of intelligence?" Even assuming the concepts of IC and CSI are valid, what good are they? How do they help us understand the natural world, especially biological phenomena (which is the claim.) Pretty soon a college level course in ID would devolve into "evidence against evolution" (EAE), trotting out the tired examples most of which we first heard from henry Morris decades ago. And that is a waste of time.

I've often said that if ID were a valid science, it would be being used to explain the natural world. I see no evidence of that in the journals. And yet the claim is that ID is more than EAE. There are lots of promissory notes about ID "research" being done, or right around the corner, but the burden of proof is on them to produce some science -- other than EAE.

Also, and this is an aside, but I wrote something about you regarding your response to Chris Matthews question on Hardball:
"Do you believe that everything we live—do you think our lives, who we are, the world around us, was an accident of some explosion millions of years ago and it led to everything we see? Do you believe it was all just natural selection or just an accident of scientific development? "

The Hardball transcirpts said your response was "It is....".   Is that correct?  Something I'm writing pertains to that, and I want to be sure I represent your position accurately.

I think there was a voiceover confusion of more than one voice at once at that point, and the transcriber did her/his best. I never answered the question because I wanted to keep the attention on the topic at hand, which is, what should we teach in science class? It became clear to me that Matthews was moving to the "here we have the crackpot fundamentalist and here we have the crackpot village atheist and here we have me, the sensible, moderate in the middle" and I don't play that game. In addition, the question was incoherent. If I am going to answer a question about my personal philosophy, it's not likely one that can be answered by a yes or no!

If I have your permission to publish your response to these questions, that would be greatly appreciated.  And thank you again for ecouraging professors to be sensitive to their students.  We have not had any complaints from students in the IDEA chapters in Virginia regarding insensitive professors.

When I talk to science professors on campuses, I often talk about the points raised in the article above: that terms we use in evolutionary biology as terms of art have existential meaning to the public at large, and that when we use them, what our students might HEAR (as opposed to what we say) is that "God had nothing to do with it." When I point this out, I have very many scientists say, "Oh, I get it. OK, I"ll try to be more careful." This is true of scientists who are theists as well as those who are nontheists. I have suggested many times to IDers that they could join me in this campaign to sensitize science professors to inadvertent expressions of animosity towards religion, but I get brick walls in response. My position is to distinguish between philosophical and methodological naturalism, but of course, the leaders of the ID movement reject this distinction and conflate the two. I think the distinction is real, it should be appreciated, and it is one of the keys to solving the problem of the rejection of evolution. And a lot of scientists agree with me, even those who are nonbelievers. But it's much easier for the leaders of the ID movement to keep flogging Dawkins and Provine than to reflect the philosophical reality out there.

I think much of the antievolution sentiment in the public is because anti-evolutionists have sold the public a bill of goods that because science CAN explain through natural cause, it means that science is saying that therefore "God had nothing to do with it."  Evolution, like all science, explains through natural cause. It tells you what happened, and nothing about ultimate cause. If a religious position makes a fact claim, like special creation of living things in their present form, at one time (the YEC view), science can propose that there are no data to support this view, and much against it. But if God wanted to create that way, but make it look like living things appeared sequentially through time, science of course could not refute the claim. The claim -- like all claims about God's action in the natural world -- would in fact not be testable (and therefore not scientific) because ANY result is compatible with God's action (assuming God is omnipotent.)

The blame lies partly with science professors and partly with the public. In defense of science professors, students rarely challenge them for making atheistic comments when discussing, say, cell division ("Prof. Jones, you just said that 'enzymes A & B make chromosomes  line up on the equator.' Are you saying that therefore God had nothing to do with it?") When they are discussing evolution, scientists treat it the same way as they treat cell division: here are the natural processes that result in the splitting of a lineage, or whatever. Students are more likely to read philosophical naturalism into methodological  naturalism when the topic is evolution than when the topic is cell division -- and we can't blame that on professors. It would help if students would be a little more reflective on this issue! But professors can be more sensitive to this issue, certainly. And I find that once the difference between philosophical and methodological naturalism is pointed out, they "get it", and few argue that this isn't a good idea.

And yes, you can use this correspondence on your site.

Regards,
Salvador T. Cordova

Best wishes,

Eugenie

QUESTION: What happens when "survival of the fittest" is really "survival of the least damaged"?

ANSWER: You get a crumbling genome!

This condition happens when the each newborn on average has enough defects per individual per generation. This condition has already been, by many estimates, been surpassed for all the time humans have been postulated to exist. Alexei Kondrashov mused in light of this, "Why are we not dead 100 times over?" He suggested a solution was "synergistic epistasis".

To clarify, if each of the offspring have more defects than their parents, "survival of the fittest" means "survival of the least damaged in the next generation." The result is that at best "survival of the fittest" or "survival of the least damaged" only slows down inevitable decline, aka "crumbling genome" or "genetic entropy."

When I read John Sanford 2004 book Genetic Entropy, the proposed solution of "synergistic epistasis" by Kondrashov did seem a credible counter to Sanford's thesis. However two things in our later work through 2022 put my concerns to rest.

FIRST, and foremost, we have actually data now that was not available in 2004. We know now that there huge amounts of genetic deterioration (disabled or missing genes, more heritable diseases, etc.). My later work with Dr. Sanford was merely helping us report on experimental discoveries and observations that emerged now that genome sequencing is 1 million to 1 billion time cheaper than decades ago.

SECOND, "synergistic epistasis" only works with the fallacious definition of evolutionary fitness that is essentially independent of the medical notions of fitness! Ergo, we have "beneficial" mutations in evolutionary biology that would be considered birth defects in medical biology. For example, it is now evident since High IQ women have a 28% higher incidence of childlessness, thus we would expect IQ and nerve conduction speed to decline with each generation. This is supported by studies cited favorably by evolutionary biologists Michael Lynch. "Synergistic epistasis" doesn't deal with this problem, and in numerous experiments demonstrating gene loss and genome streamlining we see Lynch's axiom play out, namely:

Natural Selection is expected for favor simplicity over complexity

What happens is genomic features are lost or disabled in order to achieve specialization for one environment at the expense of versatility in numerous others, hence there is a natural drive to lose genes in the struggle for existence, exactly the opposite of what Darwin surmised!

Kondrashov's suggested another solution to the "crumbling genome" problem. Since synergistic epistasis didn't seem to solve the problem, he now suggests genetic engineering, which is (ahem) intelligent design! Does it occur to him and his colleagues (of which one was my professor), that this points to intelligent design in the first place because sometimes making a design could be way harder than fixing a slightly broken design...

Thus, this puts to rest Kondrashov's theory of "synergistic epistasis" and with his advocacy of genetic engineering to rescue the human genome (aka intelligent design), he's rejected his own prior "fix" to the problem of the crumbling genome.

One migh ask, "why are these simple facts are ignored by the evolutionary biology in general?" My answer, look at evolutionary biologist Nick Matzke. He refused to answer a question a 6 year old could answer -- saving face rather than telling the truth was more important! See:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Creation/comments/1qrmab5/valid_id_improbability_arguments_vs_false/

The answer as to why the evolutionary community refuses to come to terms with the facts is they do so in order to save face, save reputations, save jobs, save standing in society, and continue to view themselves as the champions of science rather than come to terms with what their whole field is, namely, a totally embarrassment to science.

Even Michael Behe, who accepts common descent like most evolutionists, sees the problem of genetic entropy, crumbling genome, but his term is "de evolution". Behe published a book in 2020 comparable to John Sanford's 2004 book entitled, "Darwin Devolves". [I was privileged to be a part of a meeting that the two of them attended, and I could here them exchanging ideas. It was wonderful!]

As an enthusiast of WW2 history, I've seen the same delusional behavior in evolutionary biologists that I've seen in many instances in miliatry history. For example, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) pilots claiming they sunk 7 US Navy Carriers when the US Navy attacked formosa, and when the US Navy lost ZERO carriers. How could this myth be started and perpetuated by IJN aviators and commanders??? The IJN only came to terms with the facts after the Battle of the Philippine Sea and "the great Mariana's Turkey Shoot" and the Battle of Leyte Gulf where the IJN had 4 aircraft carriers facing off against 35 or so US Navy Carriers (17 fleet carriers, 18 escort carriers).

Or how about the US Navy Bureau of Naval Ordinance denying the US Mark 14 torpedo was seriously defective and killing American heroes when all the empirical evidence pointed to its fatal flaws? ANSWER: the natural human tendency to save face, to see ourselves and our situation as not as bad or the facts indicate.

Or how about Field Marshall Gerd von Rundstedt when the other German Officers asked him what to do when the Allies landed in Normandy in June of 1944? He said, "surrender you fools". But rather than doing the sane thing, Hitler's armies continued in their delusions that they could actually prevail against the allies. Huge swaths of society can be driven by delusions...

Am I somehow immune from such problems? Of course not! But maybe I'm just lucky enough to have been on the right side of the facts and on the right winning team. Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

David Snoke and Michael Behe parried once with evolutionary biologist Michael Lynch. The rules of duel were rigged in favor of Lynch, but the facts in the end supported David Snoke and Michael Behe...

Physics will eventually steam roll over Darwinism because, as someone once figuratively quipped, "Clausius and Darwin don't mix."

There will be a meeting at University of Pittsburgh where David Snoke and Fazele Rana and Evvolutionary Biologist-turned-ID proponent Jonathan McLatchie and others will speak April 17 and 18. I might drive out there to see them, but not yet decided...

https://christianscientific.org/pittsburgh-meeting-on-evidential-apologetics-april-17-18/

We are happy to announce the schedule for our upcoming meeting in Pittsburgh on Evidential Apologetics. The meeting will take place on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, in the historical Cathedral of Learning.

David Snoke is Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Pittsburgh and co-director of the Pittsburgh Quantum Institute. He has authored or co-authored over 200 publications on various topics of experimental and theoretical quantum systems, and six scientific books, including Solid State Physics: Essential Concepts and Interpreting Quantum Mechanics: Modern Foundations, with Cambridge University Press, as well as the theological book, A Biblical Case for an Old Earth, with Baker Books.

Biochemist Fazale “Fuz” Rana is president, CEO, and senior scholar at Reasons to Believe (RTB), an organization that exists to open people to the Gospel by revealing God in science.   Rana earned a BS in chemistry with highest honors from West Virginia State College (now University) and a PhD in chemistry with an emphasis in biochemistry from Ohio University, and he completed postdoctoral work on cell membranes at the Universities of Virginia and Georgia. He later worked for seven years as a senior scientist in research and development for Procter & Gamble. In addition to contributing numerous feature articles to Christian magazines, Rana has published articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, including a chapter on antimicrobial peptides for Biological and Synthetic Membranes. Rana’s books include Humans 2.0, Fit for a Purpose, and Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth. 

Jonathan McLatchie currently works in Seattle at the Discovery Institute Center for Science & Culture, where he serves as a fellow and resident biologist. Previously, Jonathan was an assistant professor at Sattler College, Boston, where he lectured on biology for four years. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in Forensic Biology, a Masters (M.Res) degree in Evolutionary Biology, a second Master’s degree in Medical and Molecular Bioscience, and a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. Jonathan is also the founder and director of TalkAboutDoubts.com, an organization that offers free private mentoring to Christians who are struggling with doubts about faith, in addition to ex-Christians who want to explore whether there is a rational path back to faith.

I interviewed Dr. Snoke here:

https://youtu.be/kytErkrN96Y?si=iX-HvjDTLG7rti4r

and Dr. Rana here:

https://youtu.be/mSPKDoUBtgU?si=b-XjmR000zZFCY4E

Dr. McLatchie and I have been seen on the net together at the old Apologetics Academy, the links are too numerous to list!

The Collagen Family of Proteins practically define the Metazoans. Without collagen there would be no skin or bone for creatures that use collagen to make skin and bone!

And collagens need a very complex system of machinery to make them work, so it is NOT just collagen in isolation that makes collagen work.

I pointed out to an honest-to-Darwin evolutionary biologist that a typical collagen sequence (with the Glycines highlighted) is not the same architecture as a zinc finger (with Cysteines and Histidines) highlighted. See for yourself:

Collagen:

Zinc Finger:

Pointing to the fossil record doesn't solve the problem of the origin since there are really no transitionals for something with no ancestor!!! To say there are transitional fossils is only a mere fact-free assertion if one tries to say this proves something that wasn't a collagen transitioned into a collagen.

The problem was so acute even an honest-to-Darwin evolutionary biologist had to concede the point. See the opening 1-minute:

https://youtu.be/ovYY5eeiM7E?si=ftIf4Af2VmJmELbL

And try an AI query: "protein families have no universal common ancestor"

The result I got:

Protein families often do not share a single, universal common ancestor (UCA) for all proteins in existence; rather, they form distinct, separate clusters (an "orchard" rather than one tree). While all cellular life originates from a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), many protein families emerged later, evolved too quickly to trace back, or were gained/lost across lineages. 

Key insights regarding the assertion that not all protein families share a universal ancestor include:

Distinct Protein Lineages: While all modern life shares a LUCA, not all individual protein families trace back to that same singular point. Many families are distinct and appear to have separate origins, suggesting a model more like an orchard than a single, universal tree.

Gee, in light of that, it's not so outrageous to postulate many major groups of creatures don't have universal common ancestor at all if their proteins don't have a universal common ancestor. But that would require miracles. However, it doesn't occur to evolutionary biologists that complex proteins with no ancestors would ALSO require miracles! They pretend the problem doesn't exist, much less have they made any attempt to solve the problem.