NASA’s original press release on 29th November didn’t give any hint of what they had discovered,

WASHINGTON — NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.

But this was enough to induce extreme excitement in some quarters, and led to such speculation as Did NASA discover life on one of Saturn’s Moons?

Not exactly! They found a strain of bacteria which can metabolise arsenic and incorporate it in their DNA.

A good trick if you can do it, but we already know what amazing conditions life can survive in on earth.

People need a paradigm shift here. I speak as a Creationist, of course, but I believe there are dangerous misunderstandings which surround evolution. I don’t think “life” can occur as readily as many people have been led to believe.

There is a Law of Biogenesis which states that, “life arises from pre-existing life, not from non-living material”.

To believe contrary to Louis Pasteur’s Law is hardly a new idea, “The ancient Greeks believed that living things could spontaneously come into being from nonliving matter, and that the goddess Gaia could make life arise spontaneously from stones…”

This is especially interesting as we are again living in an age where Gaia worship is widely practised, this time in the form of devout environmentalism.

But I suspect that NASA will keep putting out “alien” stories, especially in times where money is tight, to keep the government funding coming through.

And it is vital to keep up the pretence if a government ever stages an “alien” invasion as a pretext to removing the remaining freedoms even the bin Laden fearmongering couldn’t reach.

Who could argue with Creation Ministries’ conclusions?

This whole episode seems like it was a well-orchestrated publicity stunt by NASA to get some attention for itself. While this find is a very important discovery about biology, it’s an important discovery about earth biology at its functional limits. Most biologists won’t abandon a single common ancestor for life based on this find because this is a modification of known biology that operates at suboptimal levels. A better analogy would be so-called “superbugs”, which are deadly in a hospital environment full of antibiotics, but can’t compete with their respective wild types outside of the hospital. This find hasn’t even served to uncover a completely different biology to what we know on earth, much less provide evidence for the existence of extraterrestrial life.

I kept some extra tardises in (if that’s the plural) for effect. Tom is probably more famous for his love of this TV programme than he is for his part in destroying the UK during his two terms as a New Labour MP.

Tom is also considering giving up his blog if he is elected onto the new Shadow Cabinet, which would be a shame as it is fairly readable. In fact, I have been reading it and commenting on it since near its beginning about thirty months ago. I have tried to encourage Tom, whose constituency I know and love and spent the first part of my life in, to stop looking at everything through the bottom of a dirty socialist glass.

He once described me as his,

resident creationist, conspiracy enthusiast and devout opponent of gay and abortion rights.

Despite claiming to be a Christian, and I am not trying to be judgmental as such, Tom has voted for a vast array of unchristian legislation which has in turn demonised and persecuted Christians throughout the land.

One of the subjects I have tried to help him understand, time and again, is Creation science, but he has thus far not been able to get past the false paradigm that says science and the Bible are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, and I’m finally getting to the point of this post, I knew straight away that his tweet would be one of his jolly japes. It links to an article in Liberal Conspiracy entitled, The conference that says the earth is flat!

For a start, this is completely misleading. The conference is: Galileo Was Wrong: The Church Was Right, the First Catholic Conference of Geocentrism.

They are not saying that the earth is flat, but rather it is the centre of the Universe and that modern scientific discoveries back up their theory.

These are the people who say the earth is flat: The Flat Earth Society. Their FAQ page explains why they believe this,

Q: “Why do you believe the Earth is flat?”

A:  It looks that way up close….

But so does an egg if you zoom in enough. Hold on though, a fried egg is flat. I must look into this a little further!

Does geocentrism make any more sense?

Actually it does. Is it not true that you could take any star or planet in the universe and make a case for the rest of the cosmos revolving around it?

Am I correct in deducing that it is scientifically feasible?

Discuss.

From this philosophy, developed by Scottish amateur geologist, James Hutton, assumptions about the earth’s past are made – that is, assumptions based on a philosophy and not on scientific evidence.

For example, when a modern geologist sees a massive canyon with a tiny river running through it, he assumes that this tiny river carved out the canyon, and of course, that would have taken millions of years. This assumption is based on a particular philosophy which has become the predominant one and so the assumptions are taken as facts. They aren’t facts, they are assumptions, based on the philosophy that “the present is the key to the past”.

By believing in uniformitarianism, the scientist is presented with a big problem. He has to make the evidence fit the philosophy. So, a tiny river must have carved out the Grand Canyon; mountain ranges must have developed over millions of years by tiny, gradual movements of the earth’s crust.

Evolution Theory came along shortly afterwards. When scientists (natural philosophers) knew that evolution was a fact, they had to fit it into their philosophy of long ages and belief that “the present is the key to the past”

We all know that creatures evolve. A mutation in a bug can produce a resistance to insecticide. With billions of insects, one such mutation is possible; indeed can be expected. Natural selection means that most of the planet has life present, but this is due to fairly simple differences, for example, animals with longer fur survive in colder climates and wingless beetles survive on windy islands, where their now extinct winged predecessors were being blown out to sea. When a really big change occurs, such as a beetle loses its wings, it is still due to a very minor genetic change. The information that says “make wings” stopped working. All the information for wings is still in the beetle’s DNA, so that, if some time in the future these wingless beetles were seen to have sprouted wings, it is only because a mutation caused the gene to be switched on again. No amazing, very gradual, process has happened over millions of years to produce these complex wings. The information was there all along. Just like with the blind cavefish that can see again “after millions of years” when the gene pool is improved with blind cavefish from a separate population.

This is the vital information I wish to relay: that these scientists gave evolution abilities which it does not have. They had to in order to fit evolution into their philosophy. The mistakes were compounded. People were further separated from the truth. The layman became blinded by millions and billions of years and therefore believed that anything is possible given a vast amount of time.

It is, of course, theoretically possible, but so are lots of things, like drawing out all four aces from a thousand decks of cards consecutively. It’s never going to happen, though. The life we see around us is far too complex to have developed by random mutations and natural selection. The genetic information which builds complex structures has been there since the Creation. Mutations only enable creatures to evolve from their created state.

This is why we don’t see real evidence of transitional life forms. I discussed Archaeopteryx on Tom Harris’s blog earlier this month. Archaeopteryx is perhaps the best known alleged transitional fossil, even though it is a fully formed bird with wings, feathers and avian lungs.

The fossil record does not support the Theory of Evolution. It supports an ordered creation – one where relatively minor genetic changes enable animals and plants to adapt to various climates, terrains and diets.

To sum up:

Modern science is largely based on an assumption made by an amateur Scottish geologist. As natural philosophers started becoming known as “scientists” in the increasingly materialistic 19th Century, they had to incorporate evolution into their philosophy of long ages while simultaneously rejecting the Creator, or at the very least devaluing Him. This necessitated massively overestimating the capability of organisms to evolve. Tragically, this catalogue of errors is now considered to be the truth by most people: people who know little or nothing of where their beliefs come from, but will defend them anyway. 

Conspiracy theories:

1) The theory: mass immigration is being used to re-engineer society.

Typical response: “Racist scum,” etc.

Now proven to be true.

2) The theory: climate change is not primarily manmade, but is a ruse to impose a world government which will tax and control us.

Typical response: “You climate change deniers will kill millions of people,” etc.

Data now shown to have been falsified for political reasons and that the planet hasn’t been warming for years. A world government is being set up to make laws, collect taxes and implement carbon trading which will impoverish and probably destabilise the West. As planned.

It is claimed that the large amount of land given over to the farming of biofuels has already caused millions to starve.

3) The theory: the BBC is a propaganda machine for liberals and socialists.

Typical response: “Get a life, you sad man. By the way, did you see EastEnders last night?” Etc.

As if it wasn’t obvious enough anyway, we have revelations about Dr Who being used to try and topple Maggie Thatcher. The BBC is admittedly anti-Christian and pro-Muslim. There is also admittedly a disproportionate number of homosexuals in the Corporation, which, of course, is evident in the output.

4) The theory: the 9/11 attacks were an inside job.

Typical response: “You’re an anti-Bush, American-hating scumbag with no respect for the victims’ families,” etc.

While numbers who deny the official story are increasing, many still have to overcome their aversion to facing up to the terrible truth that buildings don’t turn to powder just because they are hit by planes. Building 7 wasn’t hit by a plane, yet also came crashing down into a neat pile of rubble. If it was science fiction you wouldn’t believe it, so why do so many still believe it when it is told in truth? Especially considering the history of false-flag operations carried out by Western governments.

5) The theory: the Theory of Evolution is a 19th Century misunderstanding, which is now clear from modern scientific discoveries.

Typical response: unprintable (based on replies to my posts on Richard Dawkins’ blog, from which I am now banned).

Not widely known as a conspiracy theory due to the alleged wealth of evidence supporting the Theory of Evolution. When supporters realise that evolution has its limits, e.g. that mosquitoes can become resistant to insecticides, but they never ever become anything other than what they have always been: mosquitoes, then we will get somewhere.

Here’s another part of the conspiracy: the Council of Europe want Creationism banned from science classrooms. Not just because they dispute the science, but because they reckon that, “If we are not careful, creationism could become a threat to human rights”.

And of course, nobody is allowed the ‘right’ to have access to all streams of thought and knowledge, only those which our masters graciously allow us access to, like fraudulent global warming claims and other distractions that would make the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, explode with ecstasy.

I would say this. We should enjoy the freedom to use the internet to discover the truth while we still have the opportunity.

I have read bits and pieces of Dawkins’ writings and I can agree with Cranmer when he says of him,

He displays a sub-GCSE level of comprehension of theology and an utterly simplistic caricature of religious philosophy. If one were to critique evolutionary biology in such crass terms, Professor Dawkins would be the first to dismiss one as being an intellectually deficient ignoramus.

This is one of the aspects of Dawkins’ writing that discourages me from giving him any credence whatsoever. To confuse his gentle readers (or perhaps he genuinely is confused himself), he constantly talks about ‘religion’ as if they are basically all the same. The major religions are wildly different. Trying to equate the Son of the Living God with the animal ‘gods’ of Hinduism and the warmongering paedophile Muhammad (as some people call him) is obviously a good way to discredit the notion of religion, but it doesn’t do anything for the pursuit of truth.

It does sell books though. Lots of them.

Dawkins replied to Cranmer privately, who in turn issued A response to Richard Dawkins.

Cranmer writes,

…this blog…appears is fast-becoming the last bastion of unfettered religio-political speech in the United Kingdom.

Well, this one is also available for all opinions to be expressed, but to back up his point, I was banned from Dawkins’ Clear-thinking Oasis last week. Apparently I was trolling. I have been leaving comments now and again for about a year (I think) and have even been told by some of the regulars that I am welcome.

My crime seems to have been talking about the salvation possible through Christ. I occasionally quote some scripture. Now this seems perfectly fair and logical to me based on the fact that the discussion is often about faith and I am responding to the questions others pose.

I suggest that the ‘atheists’ do not like their consciences pricked nor their souls inconvenienced with spiritual matters when there is so much sinning to be done! What else can they do but report me for ‘trolling’?

Here is a rare example of my downright proselytizing, but it was only in reply to somebody who doesn’t understand what saving faith is.

Anyway, I did resolve to spend less time on Dawkins’ blog, so they have done me a favour.

Dawkins begins his letter to Cranmer with this accusation,

I am intrigued by the Christian vitriol that is being thrown in my face after my article in The Times. You, Cranmer, have even suggested that I should be arrested for incitement to religious hatred.

Dawkins believes that religious people should be seen and not heard. Well, not seen either. We should leave our faith at home. He also seems to like labelling plain speaking as ‘vitriol’. I get the same accusations on a number of topics of discussion.

I am constantly tickled, and disturbed, by Dawkins’ insistence that his blog is a Clear-thinking Oasis. Strange, then, that judging from the comments on both blogs, Cranmer’s supporters are generally erudite and polite, appearing to be fully human – while Dawkins’ are rude, crude and give credence to the theory that man evolved from apes!

Firstly, I don’t know whether Dawkins added this article to his website himself, or if one of his evolved apes did, but it is quite bizarre that anyone could believe the angle to this story, which was reported in Popular Science. It is amazing how people who think of themselves as scientists can believe that ‘evolution’ can explain away everything.

For every 300 Muscovites, there’s a stray dog wandering the streets of Russia’s capital. And according to Andrei Poyarkov, a researcher at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the fierce pressure of urban living has driven the dogs to evolve wolf-like traits, increased intelligence, and even the ability to navigate the subway.

Poyarkov has studied the dogs, which number about 35,000, for the last 30 years. Over that time, he observed the stray dog population lose the spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves, while at the same time evolving social structures and behaviors optimized to four ecological niches occupied by what Poyarkov calls guard dogs, scavengers, wild dogs, and beggars.

The guard dogs follow around, and receive food from, the security personnel at Moscow’s many fenced in sites. They think the guards are their masters, and serve as semi-feral assistants. The scavengers roam the city eating garbage. The wild dogs are the most wolf-like, hunting mice, rats, and cats under the cover of night.

But beggar dogs have evolved the most specialized behavior. Relying on scraps of food from commuters, the beggar dogs can not only recognize which humans are most likely to give them something to eat, but have evolved to ride the subway. Using scents, and the ability to recognize the train conductor’s names for different stops, they incorporate many stations into their territories.

You have probably noticed the silliest suggestion, i.e. that the dogs are evolving “wolf-like traits”.

Domestic dogs were bred from wild dogs, silly. And with an increased gene pool due to interbreeding, the dogs will be more like their wild ancestors than domestic dogs are, which were bred to favour certain characteristics.

The spotted coats, wagging tails, and friendliness that separate dogs from wolves can be explained by an experiment carried out by Soviet biologist Dmitri Belyaev, who:

…set up a Russian silver fox research centre in Novosibirsk, setting out to test his theory that the most important selected characteristic for the domestication of dogs was a lack of aggression. He began to select foxes that showed the least fear of humans and bred them. After 10-15 years, the foxes he bred showed affection to their keepers, even licking them. They barked, had floppy ears and wagged their tails. They also developed spotted coats – a surprising development that was connected with a decrease in their levels of adrenaline, which shares a biochemical pathway with melanin and controls ­pigment production.

Biologist Andrei Poyarkov explains,

With stray dogs, we’re witnessing a move backwards, that is, to a wilder and less domesticated state, to a more ‘natural’ state.” As if to prove his point, strays do not have spotted coats, they rarely wag their tails and are wary of humans, showing no signs of ­affection towards them.

Poyarkov reckons that “dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence” and “fewer than 3 per cent survive”.

So there are tough mutts down there. Wily ones too.

Naturally, the dogs have adapted (not evolved) to their new environment. Poyarkov reckons that the pack leader is “not necessarily the strongest or most dominant dog, but the most intelligent – and is acknowledged as such. The pack depends on him for its survival.” With fewer than one in thirty abandoned pet dogs surviving, we can understand why intelligence is so respected by the other dogs.

It should worry us that such bad science is being perpetuated in the popular media. A lie told often enough becomes the truth. I suggest this describes the Theory of Evolution. If there is so much indisputable evidence for it, why are we presented with such desperate attempts to try and convince us/perpetuate the myth?

The other posts to date:

Richard Dawkins Exposed: Part I

Richard Dawkins Exposed: Part II – Five Minutes

Richard Dawkins Exposed: Part III – Indoctrination Camp for Children

New research shows that they [i.e. animals] can even communicate across species. Quite apart from what this article tells us about Darwinian evolution, further undermining the absurd medievalist claims of creationist fundamentalists…

After I raised this issue in the comments, Creationism became the new topic for discussion. So I asked,

What is the law that states that every thread where Creationism is even barely mentioned ends up with that as the topic? You mean there’s not one? Well, let us honour our host. Let this phenomenon be known as “Gledhill’s Law”!

Of course, what Ms Gledhill was saying is patently nonsense, as I explained,

I communicate with my dogs all the time and vice versa. Doesn’t mean we have a common ancestor that evolved from pond slime.

You don’t think the Lord created the earth to be interactive?

Science has moved on a great deal since Darwin’s ideas made him famous. Life is far more complex than he could possibly have imagined.

Why would God, who obviously knows everything, including genetics, have played dice with evolution, when He could have created man in his own image precisely as He wanted us – and straight away – using His perfect knowledge?

Nevertheless, I give you Gledhill’s Law. Let’s get this baby into the language!

Leonard Stern, writes,

Here’s the problem: The atheists don’t understand that it’s possible to reject scripture as history but still accept it as sacred narrative.

I would say the problem for Christians is that they are cowed by atheists’ ridicule. Christ spoke about Genesis like it was literal, e.g. when talking of the importance of marriage (and quoting Genesis 2) and so should we.

We can count on the new atheists to remind us yet again that the Sumerians had their own version of a flood story (the Gilgamesh epic)

What does the Bible say? There was a global Flood. Many cultures all around the world relate a flood story. Why? Because there was a global flood! It explains an awful lot about our planet that a uniformitarian worldview cannot.

Do Not Covet Thy Neighbour’s Wife, reduces women to property.

Hitchens is so ‘new man’ isn’t he? Except a wife does belong to her husband and vice versa. Successful cultures have men as the head of the family. Hitchens’ mistake is to believe (or wish) that this means women are treated as second-class citizens, which it doesn’t necessarilly.

Religion is ridiculous for Hitchens because, in his view, it means that you necessarily believe that Eve was made from Adam’s rib.

Ribs are the only bones that will grow back.

Wilson really believes, for example, that Noah crammed all those animals on a single boat. I wonder how many times Hitchens has patiently crunched the numbers for his pal, calculating the mass of the animals in order to show that Noah’s task was an engineering impossibility.

The Ark was not an ‘engineering impossibility’. Korean naval architects, using the dimensions stated in Genesis, calculated that it would be extremely stable in high seas. As for the sheer number of animals, it is not nearly as many as people imagine. Like humans adapted to suit different parts of the world, so did the animals. There weren’t hundreds of different people groups on the Ark, just eight people in total. There needed to be just one or two types of cat, dog and bear for example and as they spread and bred after the waters receded, natural selection provided the speciation.

Yet all the professional atheists want to do is take out a Bible, flip to the story of Balaam in Numbers 22:1-35, and demand to know if you believe in talking donkeys.

Why shouldn’t we believe that the Almighty can make an animal talk? He created them in the first place. He made Balaam speak his words as well. Christ ordered devils to leave a man and they entered the Gadarene swine. God can do things that we cannot. It can’t be that hard to understand.

The problem with the “atheist”, and I like to put this word in inverted commas because I don’t believe anyone is totally atheist, (Richard Dawkins has described himself as a 6.8/6.9 out of 7 atheist. That makes him an agnostic!) is that he seems to have a limited capacity for imagining what could be, and is contented to settle for what is. He finds it hard to understand that an Almighty Creator can do whatever he wants.

Christians should stop apologising for scripture and realise that atheists, or rather agnostics, have problems understanding the world around them and the spirit within them.

So basically this icon of our age…

…could well be total nonsense.

Of course it is. The Theory of Evolution is nonsense.

UPDATE 3/10/09 – I see the Mail’s headline now reads, “First ape woman suggests human ancestors may have started walking in pursuit of sex.”

“Some scientists” apparently believe this. Other creatures have managed to survive perfectly well by staying on all fours (sixes, eights, etc.). Not necessarily when ‘in the act’ of course, but that’s a different matter altogether.

Experts, schmexperts.

These two (Reiss is a ‘humanist’ and White is ordained in the Church of England) believe that an understanding of non-religion, like an understanding of religion, is a vital part of education.

Nowadays, according to an ICM poll in 2006, the majority of adults in Britain describe themselves as non-religious.

Non-religious is not the same as being an atheist. Not the same at all.

…one would expect most young children of, say, nine or 10 years of age, to be intellectually mature enough to think about how the world came about and why we should be good.

Why would one expect them to be ‘intellectually mature enough’?

For a start, those who espouse humanism/atheism are those who deny children the right to study Creation science, so these kids couldn’t make an informed choice even if some were mature enough to understand the issues.

And what is all this “why we should be good” stuff all about? We used to know! Humanists seem desperate to convey the message that they can be good without God. What does ‘good’ mean when your worldview is that you are descended from pond slime? Why should you be ‘good’ anyway if there is no punishment for sin or even such a thing as sin?

Perhaps by ‘good’ they mean sitting still in class, believing everything you’re fed and growing up to be a good little prole.

I think humanists realise they have a problem with ‘good’ and are trying to convince themselves rather than the rest of us. Maybe they accept that by denying a Creator, there can be no real definition of good and evil so they have to invent a system.

So if they get their wish and introduce the teaching of non-religion, look out for lessons in non-maths, non-english and non-science.

Actually, judging by the level of ‘education’ achieved by many pupils after their thirteen years of state indoctrination it looks like these subjects are already on the curriculum.

In fact, the atheist agenda is fascinating, but I imagine that any ‘education’ on the subject would involve the usual humanist trick of deliberately confusing people by lumping all religions together and creating the illusion that atheism has spread because people are more intelligent now, which is clearly not the case.

I would definitely support teaching children about how humanists/atheists have infiltrated education, government and the media to further their agenda. Somehow I don’t think this is the sort of knowledge that they want spread.

Article spotted by the Christian Institute.