Here is my nominee for the WORLD PRIZE, the best prize ever. The WORLD PRIZE should go to the producer of this Power Point. Think of the understanding, wisdom, beauty, eloquence, talent, love, etc. that went into this!

I received a power point email a few days ago that I thought was so beautiful and effective that I wanted to put it on my blog to go along with my previous posts on the subject of evolution.   It was a very convincing comparison of creations which are the product of the human mind and creations so beyond what humans can do that they are believed to be the product of a creator.   Since it was a Power Point presentation I had no idea how to get it on this site so I asked for help from son  Johnny.   He came up with the following link.   Please let me know if it works for you.

Creacion_o_Coincidencia_natural1

Dr. Jobe Martin, who has spent over 20 years exploring evolution vs. creation, discovers a unique proof of intelligent design. From whales and elephants to sparrows and dragonflies, he shows how the design of these creatures debunks evolution! Dr. Jobe was a traditional evolutionist, but his medical and scientific training would go through an evolution, rather a revolution when he began to study animals that challenged the scientific assumptions of his education. This was the beginning of the evolution of a creationist.

Dead chemicals come alive?

Woodpecker

The Giraffe

What happens inside a chicken egg on the nineteenth day?

Larry King, on Larry King Live, asked his interviewees to pretend they were being interviewed “by an idiot.”  To tell the truth, Larry’s questions are not the most thoughtful or perceptive.  He does not seem to have given much thought to the edges of the universe.  Nevertheless, these four are talking about Stephen Hawkings latest book, The Grand Design, and the participants in the discussion are physicist Leonard Mlodinow, co-author of the book, spiritual leader Deepak Chopra, and Jesuit priest Father Robert Spitzer.   This makes for quite a thought-provoking romp as they consider eternal verities, transcendence, nothingness giving rise to something and the origin of nothing!

Fr. Robert Spitzer Debates the Question, “Did God Create the Universe?” on Larry King Live from John A. Keenan on Vimeo.

Darwin’s theory that we humans gradually evolved from some accidental form of life appearing long, long ago in some prehistoric “soup” is well known and accepted as gospel truth by many. He expected that subequent archeological discoveries would confirm his theory but the gaps and the missing links remain. Darwin himself knew what would cause the downfall of his theory:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

— Charles Darwin from Origin of Species

Darwin also wrote:

To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.

Instead of trying to imagine how the human eye could have evolved step by step from some blind water-creature let us consider the “eye” on the tail of a peacock which is also quite wonderful and inexplicable, even to Darwin.  Technically known as an ocellus, it is a thing of awesome beauty, an intensely blue center surrounded by iridescent concentric colored circles, to be enjoyed many times over as the peacock raises and displays his plumage. It seems to have no purpose but to please the observer. Darwin called the peacock the most splendid of living birds.

He writes about the eye on the tail of the peacock:

That these ornaments should have been formed through the selection of many successive variations, not one of which was originally intended to produce the ball-and-socket effect, seems as incredible as that one of Raphael’s Madonnas should have been formed by the selection of chance daubs of paint made by a long succession of artists, not one of whom intended at first to draw the human figure.

Obviously, even Darwin had trouble in believing in his theory of natural selection!

Nevertheless, natural selection and sexual selection as described by Darwin MUST operate by chance. A brighter color or more beautiful design appears by happenstance, (or, as we would say today, by some quirk of a gene) and appeals to the peahen so that the more elegant peacock pleases her most and wins the opportunity to pass along his genes to the next generation. Darwin attributes to the peahen an apparent delight in beauty, which he also considers strange. Unlike the cock, the peahen remains drab, her coloring protecting her as she nests and cares for her young.

Consider again the eye on the tail of the peacock and the feather on which it is found. A feather consists of a central shaft with barbs on each side equipped with barbules which turn bear barbicels which interlock, velcro-fashion, with similar structures on the adjacent barb, producing a continuous vane. No person comes along and paints the ocellus on this plume after it has formed. No, each individual barb must “know how” to produce the right colors in the right place to achieve the overall ball-in-socket effect. It boggles the mind that there are those who would believe this marvelous arrangement of minutiae to produce an ocellus came about as the result of the random activity of atoms.

There is a PDF devoted to the evolution of feathers.   Obviously a feather must evolve before the beautiful  colorful eye can make its appearance on the feather.  In this little clip from the  PDF we read that the feather is said to have evolved but in the whole PDF there is not a clue as to HOW the feather evolved.  It is taken as fact that it just evolved.

Stage IV
The evolution of differentiated distal and proximal
barbules created the closed, pennaceous vane.
Terminally hooked pennulae on the distal barbules
evolved to attach to the simpler proximal barbules
of the adjacent barb to form the closed vane.  (Emphasis added)

Dropping the discussion of the evolution of eyes of any sort, consider the “evolution” of sexual reproduction which Darwin does not even attempt to explain.

This is what Wikipedia says:

“How sexual reproduction evolved and survived is an unsolved puzzle.”

I must give credit to the authors of Wikepedia for being up-front about the fact that there has not been any plausible explanation for the origin of sexual reproduction.  Apparently Darwin did not wonder about it.  Either it has not occurred to his followers  that they have no explanation for the beginning of sexual differentiation into male and female, or they are deliberately ignoring it.  They do, indeed, treat at length the advantages of sexual differentiation.

Evolutionists have many theories about the “‘why” of sexual differentiation.  They think reproducing sexually is costly in that time and energy have to be devoted to finding an suitable partner, there is a risk of remaining unmated, there is a risk of producing offspring less fit than themselves because of recombination. Other things being equal, asexual reproduction is quicker and easier.     On the other hand, sexual reproduction increases diversity and the likelihood of  survival in changing circumstances, it purges the species of damaging mutations, they are able to evolve new defenses against infections.  Some animals actually breed sexually and asexually at different times!

But as to  “how” sexual reproduction first came about there is nothing said.  In Why Have Sex?  The Population Genetics of Sex  and Recombination, (2006) Otto and Gerstein mention some of the reasons for sex listed in the previous paragraph.  But they offer no answer as to how it all got started.

Confronted with the fact that sexual differentiation actually does exist in most multicellular animals, we have to surmise that at some point throughout the millenia one of these creatures in the process of cell division just happened to  develop a cell with only half the usual complement of genetic material. We might call this a rudimentary egg (oocyte or ovum). Whatever could be the advantage of producing an egg? An egg would be of absolutely no use unless there was a sperm to fertilize it. If this animal found no mate, it would, of course, have been the first and last of its kind!

If we accept evolutionary theory we are required to imagine that each animal that today reproduces sexually,  was, in the distant past,  going about its business of reproducing asexually, dividing and budding away, then ALL OF A SUDDEN it accidentally produced an egg and at the same time, in the same locale, another animal of the same species just happened to make a sperm cell. Also, simultaneously and independently they each accidentally acquired the apparatus to get the egg and sperm together so they could produce offspring with a full set of genes.

Are you buying this?

If ever there was a case of “irreducible complexity” we have one in the transition from asexuality to sexuality.  (Irreducible complexity means simply that the process cannot be reduced to a series of simple steps one after another.  If a number of things do not happen and come together all at once, nothing works.)

Asexual reproduction is going to produce progeny identical to the parent, unless genetic accident occurs.    For an organism to initiate sexual reproduction there is required additional genetic information, not only added to one organism but simultaneously to two organisms of the same type, at the same time, but differing so that the changes will be complementary.  There is no point in having a genetically female animal if there is no matching male anywhere around.

Accidental genetic mutations are almost always deleterious and have never been shown to involve an increase in genetic information. Consider that the informational content of the DNA in a single human cell equals that of 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica or 10,000 floppy discs. Where did all the new additional information required for sexual differentiation come from?

Like sexual coupling, the supposed evolution of mammary glands is another case in which two individuals have to come together at the same time:  the needy offspring and the parent able to supply that need.  In a rather humorous criticism of Darwin a Mr. Mivart asks: “Is it conceivable that the young of any animal was ever saved from destruction by accidentally sucking a drop of scarcely nutritious fluid from an accidentally hypertrophied cutaneous gland of its mother? And even if one was so, what chance was there of a perpetuation of such a variation?”  Darwin goes back to the baby kangaroo suckling in its pouch but does not deal with the beginning of this process.

s?

What about DNA?    What about those things we call instincts?  What would Darwin have said if the chemistry of heredity, now known as DNA, had been discovered in his lifetime?  If we did not know it was true, the fact that a package as small as the period at the end of this sentence could contain all the programming necessary for the life cycle of the butterfly we would find it unbelievable.  Consider the butterfly egg  (.)  That egg will become a caterpillar — which will eat and grow — which will make itself into a chrysalis.  Inside the chrysalis the caterpillar will dissolve and rearrange itself into a butterfly — which will emerge and fly and find another of  its species of the opposite sex and mate and, behold, more eggs!!!!   Awesome!

Consider the human sperm.  How does it know to swim upstream to find a human egg?  How does it “recognize” an egg?  How do the egg and sperm merge to create a new human entity which will traverse the fallopian tube until it nests in the lining of a uterus and goes about the business of making a baby?

The first big stumbling block in the theory of evolution, much discussed, is the source of the first living cell.  The likelihood that it put itself together (spontaneous generation) has been judged by Yale physicist Harold Morowitz, in the Origin of Cellular Life (1993) to be one chance in 10^{100,000,000,000}.  Francis Crick, Nobel prize winning co-discoverer of DNA, thought the possibility of life arising spontaneously in some super-soup so unlikely that he posited “interstellar spores” coming from outer space as the source of life on planet earth!

There are too many stumbling blocks before one can believe that the theory of evolution actually explains present day creatures!  No explanation for the first cell with its cell membrane,  its DNA, ability to assimilate and reproduce!   No explanation for the mammalian eye or the eye on the peacock’s tail!     No explanation for the shift from asexual reproduction to sexual reproduction.  Who has even attempted to explain why Darwin does not deal with this?

What did Darwin say?

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.

— Charles Darwin from Origin of Species

I think Darwin’s theory just broke down.   All of the above are examples of programming — programming beyond understanding and almost beyond belief.   Programming requires intelligence.  It doesn’t just happen accidentally, by chance!

In the end, Darwin found the whole subject “too profound for the human intellect.”

I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.

(emphasis added) — Charles Darwin

Letter to Asa Gray (22 May 1860). In Charles Darwin and Francis Darwin (ed.), Charles Darwin: His Life Told

~~~

The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic.  —  Charles Darwin

This past May the scientific world rocked with the news that Craig Venter and his team had created the first “self-replicating synthetic cell.”    The result of a 15-year-quest and 40 million dollars, Venter describes the achievement thus:   “This is the first self-replicating cell we’ve had on the planet whose parent is a computer.”   Venter is well-known for participating in mapping the human genome a decade ago.

According to science writer Logan Ward:

To make the manmade distinguishable from the natural, they imbedded DNA sequences that “watermark” the synthetic genome. Venter would not reveal the secret behind the code, but hinted that “this is the first species to have its own website encoded in its genetic code.” Other watermarks spell out complete sentences, including a quote by the physicist Richard Feynman: “What I cannot build, I cannot understand.”

Details of this achievement are outlined in a press release from the J. Craig Venter Institute.

Scientists agree that Venter has achieved a brilliant  technical feat in synthesizing the largest piece of DNA so far — a million units in length — and in making it accurate enough to substitute for the cell’s own DNA. According to Venter: “We created a new cell. It’s alive. But we didn’t create life from scratch.”

Dr. Stephen Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, has produced a simply beautiful video explaining the role of design in creation and the role of DNA in Venter’s work.

Link to Stephen Meyer’s interaction video as mentioned in the above clip.

As Bill Gates says, DNA can be compared to a software program in that it contains information. What Venter has done is produce an intricate DNA software program which works when inserted into a living cell, much in the way a downloaded program will work in your computer. He has not produced the computer.

It might be well to add that not everything downloaded into your computer is beneficial. Some software has been well-tried by time and does what you want it to do. Other software is appropriately labeled “malware” because it wreaks havoc. The Vatican has urged caution in this area and even Venter has urged government regulation to oversee the fast-developing synthetic biology industry.

This month marks two years of blogging – who knew it would come to this? Almost 300 posts with subjects ranging all over the place. This being Lent I have given up TV which leaves more time for musing and wondering where I am going, what I’ve done, and why.

Just put up a little TED video on how to live to 100+. Much of my blog has to do with the pluses and problems of aging. Unfortunately there aren’t many people my age who follow my blog but it might be of some help to those who have to deal with, cope with, care for older folks. If you’re browsing this blog to see what old age is really  like, don’t stop here. Click on Days With My Father. This is how 98 looks and acts.   If it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, you must have a heartstring missing.

In the past two years my own walking has become progressively worse – much slower, not nearly as sure-footed, with an occasional stagger.  My “senior lapses” and word-finding difficulties have become more frequent. At Christmas-time, for example, I tried to remember the name of my poinsettia and could only come up with forsythia and pachysandra (they had the right number of syllables and both ended with “a”) but the word poinsettia was nowhere to be found. Yesterday, saying the  rosary with a group, I couldn’t remember what day it was and what mystery we were saying. But, as you see, right now I’m pretty sharp! My blogging skills are increasing somewhat. When I forget how to embed or upload an image, it will probably be time to stop.

Early on, I thought I’d be writing about the things I wrote about all my life – mostly religion (catholicity, charismatic renewal) and science ( covering a broad range of subjects from evolution to motherhood and breastfeeding to homosexuality) and these things have indeed been frequent topics. Who could have told me I’d be taking on the Mormons? In my humble opinion, the video on my recent post on DNA and Mormonism is as devastating at it can get.

And who would have guessed I’d become so political and have so much to say about persons known as Obama and Palin, who I place at opposite ends of the poles of trustworthiness. These have been two of the most critical years in our country’s history. We went from a pro-life president to the most pro-abortion president in our history. We went from a country with the motto “In God I Trust” to a county antagonistic to any sign of religion in the public square. We went from a culture of life to a culture of death. Against the manifest will of the people, the Democrats wheeled and dealed themselves, Chicago-style, into the most astounding power grab ever!

Recent release of visitor logs at the White House revealed that Nancy Keenan, head of NARAL (National Abortion Rights Action League) , visited the White House ten times in Obama’s 13 months and Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards has had frequent access as well. Pro-life groups were left out in the cold. How’s that for an inside glimpse into the heart of the presidency? Now the most powerful woman in Washington is not Nancy Pelosi but Kathleen Sebelius, Health and Human Services Secretary, who could not possibly be more pro-abortion.

Obamacare has put the health of all Americans into government hands – and we all know how efficient the government has been to date.   The issue is not really health care – it is freedom.

Here I am, getting all wound up again. My blog seems to have covered not only the daily happenings in an old lady’s life, but a national upheaval in our beloved country which I find most disturbing. Lou Pritchett, former Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and Gamble, has written a more trenchant commentary on what has happened than I ever could. Pritchett “is one of corporate America’s true living legends – an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher…foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as “partnering.” He wrote the following open letter to President Obama. He sent it to the New York Times but they did not acknowledge it.  (Hardly a surprise.)

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core

You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaugh’s, Hannitys, O’Reillys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

A recent CNN special revealed that Americans generally view their government as corrupt. On this rather dismal note, I begin a third year of blogging. Did I tell you I saw an opossum in my yard last week? And yesterday, two robins (or perhaps the same robin twice.) The crocuses and daffodils are blooming,  the peach tree and the lilac bush are budding, and my daughter has moved in next door. There’s a new greatgrandbaby up in New Hampshire. His name is Caleb Nicholas. It would seem life will go on, willy-nilly.

As Thomas Paine wrote, “These are times that try men’s souls.”  We obviously need serious prayer and much moral courage.

I just want to say, “Welcome into my life, such as it is. I would be pleased if we were friends.”

~~~

Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered: let them also that hate him flee before him. – Psalm 68:1

I’ve just come from a veritable blogfest!  Elizabeth Esther of the Saturday Evening Blog Post has assembled (and is still assembling) a collection of the favorite posts of various bloggers in 2009.   Each blogger is invited to choose the 2009 post they would like to share and to add a link for it to Mr. Linky.    (See the Saturday Evening Blog Post site for complete details.)  When I last looked,  78 people had provided favorite posts.  As she says, “You’re next!.

I must admit, however, besides the wonderfulness of being able to quickly review the favorite posts of 77 people, I have the distinct feeling of being quite out of place.  The blogs are mostly bubbly and bursting with babies, and child-raising experiences .    I was there once there myself – the newborns are SO precious — and it’s truly all very wonderful!  Then I come back to my own blog with its parchment wallpaper and sedateness and wonder why anyone would stop there to read.   Of course my original reason for blogging was to preserve my memories and thoughts as an old lady,  primarily for my family,  and perhaps shed some light on the aging process for others on the downhill slope.

And my favorite post for 2009?  My thoughts on evolution – The Evolution Fairy Tale!    But if I have written anything momentous in 2009, that is it.   Sorry.

I invite others to join in the blogfest and enjoy the best of 2009.  (Thank you, Elizabeth Esther, for this feast.)   Leave a link to your own favorite post.  And if you don’t chose to read about evolution today, that’s OK.  I still think it’s an important post.  Enjoy the babies.  God knows they’re our hope!

During  the 60 or so years that I have mulled over Darwinian theory some thoughts have crystallized and I have presented them on my blog  in Of God, Eyes, and Evolution and in The Evolution Fairy Tale .  This past year has marked the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his The Origin of Species. To commemorate these anniversaries MercatorNet, an Australian  website which aims to “defend human dignity” in the areas of family, bioethics, religion, philosophy and media has run a number of articles on evolution over the past year.

When I offered them The Evolution Fairy Tale with its rehash of the many problems  with the theory of evolution, they felt its focus should be narrowed to deal with one problem  with Darwinism, a major problem  which has not, to our knowledge, been satisfactorily addressed.

I am happy that they have published on their site Vive La Différence–But How Did It Begin? which wonders about the origin of sexual differentiation.

It is to be hoped that many more people will discover and enjoy MercatorNet and a few will even leave intelligent comments.

~~~

Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure. — Psalm 147:5