Sermons From Science -- May 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 5 月

Sermons From Science -- May 2013科学布道-- 2013年5月 Sermons from Science is now published in both YouTube under the name “Pastor Chui” and also in PowerPoint slides in the website http://ChristCenterGospel.org. The contents of this presentation were taken from Dave Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. May God have all the glory. Let us pray for Dave Coppedge’s fast recovery from cancer surgery. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com 7/15/2014 1

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • Researchers are stating that beliefs about the origin of western mountains in North America are all wrong. • In “Geologic History of North America Gets Overturned,” Live Science described how thorough the overturning was: “It’s time to redraw the map of the world during the reign of the dinosaurs, two scientists say.” The scientists, from Germany and Canada, dispute the existence of the Farallon Plate, long thought to give rise to the Rocky Mountains. Instead, they posit an archipelago, such as those in the South Pacific, instead of a continental margin. Finding stacked remnants is their justification for the overhaul. The new model is more complex in some ways, but also simpler, Nature News claimed in “How the West Was Built.” 7/15/2014 2

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • [Mitchell] Mihalynuk said the new model will make waves, as it overturns 40 years of accepted wisdom about the evolution of western North America. “It will take a while to turn people around. That intellectual ship has a lot of inertia,” he said. But for Mihalynuk, “this is one of those eureka moments.” 7/15/2014 3

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • If they are right, 40 years of accepted wisdom was really never wise at all. While this new model “makes perfect sense” to some, will it make sense to geologists 40 years from now? There’s room for reconsideration. The paper in Nature by Sigloch and Mihalynuk lists four areas of uncertainty and a fudge factor to make the model work: “This is accomplished by introducing an additional degree of freedom, an ad hoc, otherwise non-observable, westward shift of the lithospheric shell relative to the lower mantle.” 7/15/2014 4

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • In a Perspective article in Nature, Saskia Goes said, “The tectonic history of western North America is a puzzle in which many of the pieces are mashed up or missing.” Although she believes the new seismic image data alters the reconstruction of the pieces, she described the observational data as complex: “The western margin of the North American continent, comprising the Cordilleran mountain chain that runs from Alaska to Mexico, consists of scores of continental jigsaw pieces of different origins, sizes and ages.” 7/15/2014 5

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • Goes made it clear that the new model is not fixed in stone. “Sigloch and Mihalynuk have incorporated several new pieces into the North American jigsaw, but others remain to be placed,” she said. More modeling and interpretation will be required. “The new pieces remain to be connected into a self-consistent framework of plates with continuous and dynamically evolving boundaries,” she added, implying that the model is not self-consistent yet. Her piece ended with a number of remaining questions. 7/15/2014 6

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • Nothing in historical geology is ever as clean cut as the popular media would lead you to believe. They give the impression of progress: the new model is superior to the old. Is it necessarily? When you are dealing with scores of “jigsaw pieces” without the box cover to show you what they are supposed to look like, and no human observer around to watch what really happened, there is ample room for another overturn in the future. 7/15/2014 7

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • There is also ample room for alternative theories with different assumptions or different ad hoc, non-observable fudge factors. Some philosophers even claim an infinite number of theories can explain the same observations. However stated, theories and models like this are always “underdetermined” by data. It means that a measure of divination is required to conjure an appropriate vision that suits the preferences of the day. 7/15/2014 8

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • Overhauls also remind us that the consensus is often wrong. Forty years of false belief is what these two upstart geologists have to allege by overturning the old model: forty years of “accepted wisdom” that was foolish in their view. The new accepted wisdom awaits future self-proclaimed wise men ready to upset the applecart all over again. 7/15/2014 9

North American Geology All Wrong所有北美地质学是错误 • This is accomplished by introducing an additional degree of freedom, an ad hoc, otherwise non-observable, westward shift of the lithospheric shell relative to the lower mantle. 7/15/2014 10

Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 7/15/2014 11

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • One might think that 154 years after Darwin’s book about it, natural selection would be empirically obvious. The journal Nature went on a search for it in DNA. • Nature’s piece, “Evolutionary Genomics: Detecting Selection” begins with hopes and worries: • “Advances in population genetics and genome sequencing have made it possible to identify anonymous fragments of DNA that have undergone selection. This yields some evolutionary answers, and a panoply of puzzles.” 7/15/2014 13

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • Two things must be clarified before detecting natural selection. One is that artificial selection has nothing to do with it. Artificial selection is intelligently designed for a purpose; natural selection, by contrast, is unguided and purposeless. Even survival fails as a purpose; it’s only a consequence of selection, not a goal of selection. The other is that natural selection is more than variation. To differentiate itself from creationism, natural selection has to overcome small changes within a population that creationists willingly acknowledge help an organism adapt. Evolutionists need to demonstrate innovation, an undirected change providing new functional information. A mutation that produces “more of the same” effects, like a change in enzyme production, does not qualify. 7/15/2014 14

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • With that in mind, what did the Nature article find in its selection hunt? The authors acknowledged the “awesome power of artificial selection” directed by the mind of man, such as in dog breeding, but claimed that dogs and humans have been partners in natural selection for 10,000 years in a case of “parallel evolution.” They praised a recent paper in population genetics that “promises to revolutionize evolutionary biology, by challenging us to detect traits affected by evolution on the basis of genotype rather than an organism’s characteristics, or phenotype.” Then they praised two other papers that “rise to this challenge and show how hypotheses about an adaptive human genotype can be tested in controlled experiments.” Sounds impressive. But is this something new? What’s gone on in the past 154 years of research on natural selection? It must not have been very revolutionary. 7/15/2014 15

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • “Together, the three papers are a wonderful intersection between genomics, population science and experimental genetics — a synergy that has tremendous potential for teaching us more about how and why organisms evolve.” 7/15/2014 16

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • Unfortunately, the evidence cited in the first paper concerns genetic changes found between wolves and domestic dogs. Even the staunchest creationists put those two animals within the same created kind. The genetic changes, moreover, were in the “more of the same” category – enhanced ability to digest starch, presumably from crumbs dropped from the dog owners’ tables. Nevertheless, the authors were ecstatic that dogs and humans both produce more starch-digesting enzymes: “the same molecular mechanism has acted on similar genes in different species exposed to the same dietary pressure — a striking example of parallel evolution.” 7/15/2014 17

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • The other two papers merely found evidence of “selective sweeps” without tying the changes to phenotypic change. “Even when causal relationships seem obvious, caution is warranted,” the authors warned, noting a case with ambiguous results. Is detection of natural selection in human populations even possible? “Classical genetic studies are the optimal way to establish causal relationships, but in many cases these are impossible because the appropriate populations do not exist.” The third paper invented a “model organism” to tease out evidence of natural selection. Its researchers concluded that a mutation in East Asians produces thicker hair and more sweat glands; they verified that effect in mice (see 2/19/13, last section). But that’s another example of “more of the same” variation; people already had sweat glands and hair, and so did mice. 7/15/2014 18

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • Remarkably, this article, poised to showcase the power of natural selection, ended with ignorance: • “Kamberov and colleagues’ study is an exceptional example of experimental genetics, but does it provide, as the authors suggest, a general framework for assessing candidate adaptive mutations? Genetically altered mice are a powerful experimental tool, but the extent to which recent positive selection in humans acts on pathways and amino-acid residues that have been conserved across mammalian evolution is uncertain. More importantly, it is often not clear how to investigate positively selected genomic regions for which the target gene, let alone its action, is unknown. And so a major challenge for population genomics remains the construction of meaningful null hypotheses. As Charles Darwin, the best known evolutionary biologist, once said, “It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance”. 7/15/2014 19

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • So even though the paper they praised was “an exceptional example” of looking for natural selection, the authors of this article worried its conclusions are uncertain. Worse, (“more importantly”), it’s not even clear how to look for selection in genomic regions where the action is unknown. How does a researcher compare the findings with a null hypothesis—a baseline hypothesis that posits no effect from the cause-when “meaningful null hypotheses” are lacking? 7/15/2014 20

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • That’s why the summary of this triumphantly-titled article spoke of “some evolutionary answers, and a panoply of puzzles.” Even the answers, though, wouldn’t impress a creationist: no clear evidence of positive selection toward new functional information was presented. One can only hope the authors of all these papers are following Darwin’s advice to perceive clearly their ignorance. 7/15/2014 21

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • And they call creationists ignoramuses. OK, show us, Darwinites. Darwin believed people have bacteria ancestors. All the advances beyond bacteria for every species on earth—be they wings, eyes, or brains—are supposed to be the result of natural selection. Yet here it is, 154 years after the Origin, and evolutionists still cannot show any example in the genes bigger than starch digestion in dogs, or thicker hair and more sweat glands in certain humans (all interfertile members of the same species, Homo sapiens). The authors admit the studies are unclear. It’s appalling that the sole theory allowed to be presented in public school science classes is ignorant, not only of examples, but of ways to test them. What hath evolutionary theory wrought? A panoply of puzzles! Schools are teaching ignorance! 7/15/2014 22

The Hunt for Selection in the Genes 寻找基因的选择 • If evolutionists do not perceive clearly their ignorance, those of us who do perceive it need to hold it up to their faces. We can quote Darwin for support: “It is always advisable to perceive clearly [y]our ignorance.” 7/15/2014 23

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • Fudging and finagling often underlie the confident-sounding claims of cosmologists. • Finagle’s Rules prescribe ways to ameliorate Murphy’s Law in science. They are needed because, according to Finagle, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.” Here are the rules: • 1. To study a subject, understand it thoroughly before you start. • 2. Always keep a record of data – it indicates that you have been working. • 3. Draw your curves first, then plot your data. • 4. If in doubt, make it sound convincing. • 5. Experiments should be reproducible — they should fail in the same way. • 6. Do not believe in miracles, rely on them. 7/15/2014 26

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • The case of the impossible star: A “Methuselah” star older than the universe was reported on Space.com. That, of course, is impossible, so what did astronomers do? In order to keep current theory intact, they worked the puzzle from both ends. They increased the age of the universe, and worked to decrease the estimated age of the star from 16 billion years down to a more reasonable level, by altering theory to let it burn faster. But the new estimate is still paradoxical, because the star has to be significantly younger than the big bang to allow time for gas to condense into galaxies. “In the end, the astronomers estimated that HD 140283 was born 14.5 billion years ago, plus or minus 800 million years,” the article ends. “Further observations could help bring the Methuselah star’s age down even further, making it unequivocally younger than the universe, researchers said.” Is that further observations, or further finagling? 7/15/2014 27

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • The case of the unwelcome supernova: Type-Ia supernovas are the “standard candles” of cosmology, critical links for determining distance and age of the universe. An upstart new type of Type-Ia has been found, potentially blurring the calibration. Called Type-Iax, it is 1/100th fainter and less energetic than classical Type-Ia supernovae, Science Daily said, and may account for a third of all Type-Ia supernovae. Couldn’t that call into question earlier estimates, making some supernova events look farther away than they were? The article didn’t say. What it did say was not particularly encouraging for standard theory. “Researchers aren’t sure what triggers a Type Iax,” for one thing. What one astronomer said was even more disconcerting: “The closer we look, the more ways we find for stars to explode.” Maybe that’s why Space.com’s headline read, “Whoa! Mini-Supernovas Discovered.” 7/15/2014 28

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • The case of the anomalous good fit: Most of the science news media gave excited headlines about how a new map of the cosmic background radiation made from Planck Telescope data “confirms standard cosmology” (Science Now; see Finagle Rule #4). The Planck telescope, three times more sensitive than its predecessor WMAP, “backs sudden ‘inflation’ after the big bang,” according to Nature News. They were less excited, and more worried, about the “anomaly” in the data, the so-called “axis of evil.” Planck seems to have confirmed the presence of a preferred direction in space – a violation of the so-called “Copernican Principle” that expects every direction to look the same: 7/15/2014 29

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • “The asymmetry “defines a preferred direction in space, which is an extremely strange result”, says Efstathiou. This rules out some models of inflation, but does not undermine the idea itself, he adds. It does, however, raise tantalizing hints that there may yet be new physics to be discovered in Planck’s data.” 7/15/2014 30

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • Not only that, Planck found a “‘cold spot’ that covers a large area.” Space.com discussed how the new map makes the universe “older than thought” by about 100 million years, based on its calculated value of the Hubble constant. The new truth to be told in textbooks is 13.82 billion years, not 13.7, meaning that “space and time are expanding slightly slower than scientists thought.” The phrase “than thought” appears again in New Scientist: “The universe is almost perfect, 80 million years older than we thought, and maybe a little bit evil.” New Scientist suggested the anomaly might represent a bump from a neighboring universe born from “eternal inflation” putting a “bruise” on ours – a speculative notion far beyond experimental confirmation. At best, Efstathiou said, “There is less stuff that we don’t understand, by a tiny amount.” 7/15/2014 31

Using Finagle’s Rules in Cosmology在宇宙学中使用哄骗的规则 • If you don’t know how much you don’t understand, then you don’t know how much you do understand. Suppose you don’t understand 99.99% of reality. Improving that to 99.98% (“a tiny amount”) is hardly cause for rejoicing. A bad sign is when you have to conclude, based on your favored notions, that the stuff of stars and galaxies is perverse or evil. Since gas cannot be evil, the evil must reside in the minds of the theorists who fudge and finagle the data, or invent new physics, to keep their presumably righteous theories intact. When you hear a cosmologist worrying about an “extremely strange result,” ask whether it is the evidence, or the astronomer, that deserves the adjective. 7/15/2014 32

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • A new record for soft tissue in a dinosaur fossil was reported in Nature: collagen in dinosaur eggs from the early Jurassic. • The Nature paper is all over the news, but not all the science reporters are mentioning the most damaging admission to long ages: the preservation of organic material in fossil sauropod eggs from China, said to be 190–197 million years old from the early Jurassic – 100 million years older than the previous record. The Nature paper by Reisz et al. states, “This discovery also provides the oldest evidence of in situ preservation of complex organic remains in a terrestrial vertebrate.” Here’s how Chris Palmer reported it in Nature News: 7/15/2014 35

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • “But it is not just the age of the fossils that is notable, the researchers say. Spectroscopic analysis of bone-tissue samples from the Chinese nesting site revealed the oldest organic material ever seen in a terrestrial vertebrate. That was surprising because the fossilized femur bones were delicate and porous, which made them vulnerable to the corrosive effects of weathering and groundwater, says Reisz. • “That suggests to us that other dinosaur fossils might have organic remains,” he says. “We just haven’t looked at them in the right ways.” 7/15/2014 36

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • The organic material is thought to be collagen. The researchers reported “organic residues, probably direct products of the decay of complex proteins, within both the fast-growing embryonic bone tissue and the margins of the vascular spaces.” They mentioned Schweitzer’s “controversial” reports of dinosaur soft tissue and corroborated them by their own methodology: 7/15/2014 37

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • “The embryonic bones were also studied using synchrotron radiation-Fourier transform infrared (SR-FTIR) spectroscopy. In contrast to previous studies of organic residues based on extracts obtained by decalcifying samples of bone, our approach targeted particular tissuesin situ (Fig. 5). This made it possible to detect the preservation of organic residues, probably direct products of the decay of complex proteins, within both the fast-growing embryonic bone tissue and the margins of the vascular spaces (Fig. 5a, b). 7/15/2014 38

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • “This is indicated by the multiple amide peaks revealed by both infrared (1,500–1,700 cm−1 strong band from amide I and II, and 1,200–1,300 cm−1 weak band from amide III) and Raman spectroscopy (amide A peak at 3,264 cm−1) (Supplementary Figs 6.1 and 6.2). Previous reports of preserved dinosaur organic compounds, or ‘dinosaurian soft tissues’, have been controversial because it was difficult to rule out bacterial biofilms or some other form of contamination as a possible source of the organics. Our results clearly indicate the presence of both apatite and amide peaks within woven embryonic bone tissue (Fig. 5a), which should not be susceptible to microbial contamination or other post-mortem artefacts.” 7/15/2014 39

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • References in that quote were to Schweitzer’s 2005 and 2007 papers. The Supplementary Material indicated that mathematical manipulation was necessary to see the amide peaks: • “The original FT-IR amides peaks from the organic residues of Dawa (Lufeng) embryonic limb bone were convoluted, and provided relatively little detailed information (Fig.5, main document), showing a big unresolved hump around 1600 cm–1. Deconvolution is a mathematically based process to reverse the effects of convolution on recorded data. The deconvoluted peaks shown above match well known secondary structures of protein. Thus, it can be concluded that complex proteins were preserved in our specimen.” • A table after this statement shows that they identified typical secondary structures of protein, such as alpha helices, beta sheets, and side chains – i.e., actual protein structures, not just amino acid “building blocks” of protein. 7/15/2014 40

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • Science Now said the researchers “suspect” the presence of organic remains, but maintained some caution on the grounds that it’s hard to rule out contamination. “Still, if the evidence holds up, the find could finally tip the scale in favor of soft tissue preservation,” the article said. The BBC News and New Scientist didn’t mention the organic remains, but Science Daily did, based on a press release from the University of Toronto where Robert Reisz works. He said, “To find remnants of proteins in the embryos is really remarkable, particularly since these specimens are over 100 million years older than other fossils containing similar organic material.”Live Science briefly mentioned the soft tissue, and added an Image Album about the story. 7/15/2014 41

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • National Geographic completely ignored the soft tissue evidence, but did add this detail: the eggshells were found crushed, and the bones were sorted and concentrated. Reisz presumes they were buried in a flood: “It became inundated, the embryos were smothered by sediment and water, and [they] basically rotted and fell apart,” he said. The original paper described what the site looked like: “completely disarticulated skeletal elements at various stages of embryonic development… with calcium carbonate nodules often surrounding tightly packed appendicular skeletal elements.” What does this imply? The paper continues, 7/15/2014 42

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • “We interpret the bone bed as a para-autochthonous assemblage, formed by low-energy flooding and slow inundation of a colonial nesting site. The host sediment is a heavily bioturbated, massive siltstone, throughout which are dispersed isolated skeletal elements, eggshell fragments and the small, fossil-rich nodules of calcium carbonate. There are no preserved nest structures or uncrushed eggs.” • It would seem that vulnerable, porous bones buried underwater in silt subject to bioturbation would have difficulty preserving the dinosaurs’ protein parts for 197 million years. It would also seem that a low-energy local flood by a riverbank would not leave “massive siltstone” filled with bone fragments. 7/15/2014 43

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • Interesting that the Brits at BBC & New Scientist (as well as NG) ignored the most important part of the story, the soft tissue, as if trying to protect their national hero Charlie from embarrassment. The other articles simply assumed that soft tissue can last almost 200 million years! Why isn’t anyone seeing the obvious? Chris Palmer admitted that the eggs were “vulnerable to the corrosive effects of weathering and groundwater,” making it unbelievable that up to 197 million years passed without obliterating the proteins. Who are you going to believe, evolutionary scientists or your own eyes? 7/15/2014 44

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • Notice also that Reisz suggested soft tissue would likely be found in other dinosaur fossils. Why haven’t they all been looking? Evolutionary theory often dictates what scientists look for and what they expect to see. Thank goodness Reisz & team made an effort to find the protein signal, even if they didn’t dwell on the implications for geological dates. This is a hot topic for creation research. Unfortunately, when they try, they are often severely criticized for (1) poor technique or (2) agenda-driven bias (example to be forthcoming). As if those problems never occur in the secular world. 7/15/2014 45

Intact Protein Remnants Found in Dinosaur Eggs发现恐龙蛋的完整蛋白质遗迹 • Multiple reports now from different parts of the world are making a watertight case for soft tissue in dinosaur bones. Critics of the reports are not necessarily driven by respect for the evidence, but by fear of what it means to evolutionary geology, evolutionary dating and the whole evolution industry. 7/15/2014 46

Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It 学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵 • A professor of science education has a radical idea: teach science through argumentation, because that’s the way scientists do it. • If you were bored in science class having to learn a bunch of facts, you might have perked up if your teacher taught it the way Jonathan Osborne recommends: argue a position from available evidence. PhysOrg introduced its article by saying, “Teaching students how to argue based on available evidence engages them in the scientific process and provides a better idea of how science actually works.” 7/15/2014 49

Students Need to Argue Science, Not Memorize It 学生需要辩论科学，而不是背诵 • “Earth orbits the sun. Microorganisms cause infectious disease. Plants use carbon dioxide to grow. Most of us know these scientific truths from our earliest school days. They’re accepted facts. But astronomers, microbiologists and botanists once fought for these concepts using arguments based on evidence. Science, it seems, arrives at its tenets through argument. • “Science education should follow suit, says Stanford education Professor Jonathan Osborne. Teachers should help students learn to argue a position from available evidence, he says, helping them learn why we know what we know.” 7/15/2014 50

Sermons From Science -- May 2013 科学布道 -- 2013 年 5 月