Other Articles on Evolution Vs Creation

Creation Triumphs
Over Evolution

Appendix

The Blood-Clotting System

Michael Behe invoked the idea of a “Rube Goldberg Machine” to describe how blood clots. A Rube Goldberg machine is a silly machine which operates in a complex and contorted fashion. A ball drops on a see-saw, which is a slide, which dislodges a rock sending it down the slide into a water tank which overflows, etc. All of these functions eventually end up doing something productive. But take any one of its “components” away and it will not function. We can see that a Rube Goldberg Machine is “irreducibly complex.”

The following is an excerpt from Behe’s description of this “irreducibly complex” micro-biological system (from page 85):

When an animal is cut, a protein called Hageman factor is then cleaved by a protein called HMK to yield activated Hageman factor. Immediately the activated Hageman factor converts another protein, called prekallikrein, to its active form, kallidrein. Kallidrein helps HMK speed up the conversion of more Hageman factor to its active form. Activated Hageman factor and HMK then together transform another protein, called PTA, to its active form. Activated PTA in turn, together with the activated form of another protein (discussed below) called convertin, switch a protein called Christmas factor to its active form. Finally, activated Christmas factor, together with antihemopilic factor (which itself activated by thrombin in a manner similar to that of proaccelerin) changes Stuart factor to its active form.

Like the intrinsic pathway, the extrinsic pathway is also a cascade. The extrinsic pathway begins when a protein called proconvertin is turned into covertin by activated Hageman factor and thrombin. In the presence of another protein, tissue factor, convertin changes Stuart factor to its active form. Tissue factor, however, only appears on the outside of cells that are usually not in contact with blood. Therefore, only when an injury brings tissue into contact with blood will the extrinsic pathway be initiated.

A massive system of proteins work in concert to create the “blood coagulation cascade.” When trying to simplify the system, we realize that the removal of any one of the proteins would cause the blood to clot inappropriately. The problem with simplifying the blood-clotting system is not the final result, but the control system.

Even if we had a simple system, it would not be able to evolve to the more complex system because the introduction of a new protein “would either turn the system on immediately—resulting in rapid death—or it would do nothing, and so have no reason to be selected.” Each protein has to be regulated with a proenzyme and enzyme. Thus, each step in the blood clotting system is also “irreducibly complex.” After reviewing the attempts to explain the evolution of the blood-clotting system, Behe concludes:

The bottom line is that clusters of proteins have to be inserted all at once into the cascade. This can be done only by postulating a “hopeful monster” who luckily gets all the proteins at once, or by the guidance of an intelligent agent.

Endnotes
 

Chapter 1 
Molecular Evidence — 
Darwinists Confirm God Created Man

1. Christianity Today, April 28, 1997, 15. 
2. Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 39. Darwin, C.,The Origin of Species, 6th ed (1988), NYU Press, NY, 154.
3. Ibid, 39.
4. Ibid
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. Ibid
8. Psalm 139:13-17, New English Bible.
9. Robert L. Dorit, Hiroshi Akashi and Walter Gilbert, “Absence of Polymorphism at the ZFY Locus on the Human Y Chromosome,” Science, 268 (1995), 1183-1185; Svante Paabo, “The Y Chromosome and the Origin of All of US (Men),” Science, 268 (1995), 1141-1142.
10. Michael F. Hammer, “A Recent Common Ancestry for Human Y Chromosomes,” Nature, 378 (1995), 376-378; I. Simon Whitfield, John E. Sulston and Peter N. Goodfellow, “Sequence Variation of the Human Y Chromosome,” Nature, 378 (1995), 379-380.
11. Jeffrey A. Schwartz and Ian Tottersall, “Significance of Some Previously Unaccompanied Apomorphies in the Nasal Region of Homoneandertalenses,” Proceedings of The National Academy of Science USA, 93 (1996), 10852-10854; Patricia Kahmark, Ann Gibbons, “DNA from An Extinct Human,” Science, 277 (1997), 176-178.
12. Genesis 2:7, 21, 22.

Chapter 2 
Who Fine-Tuned the Universe
for Life on Earth?

1. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, #8414, Hebrew.
2. Ibid, #922, Hebrew.
3. Fred Hoyle, The Nature of the Universe, 2nd ed. rev. (Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell, 1952), 109-111; Astronomy and Cosmology: A Modern Course (San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman, 1975), 522, 684-685; “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982), 1-3.
4. Fred Hoyle, Galaxies, Nuclei, and Quasars (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 147-150.
5. Hoyle, “The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 20 (1982)16.
6. Paul Davies, God and The new Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), viii, 3-42, 142-143.
7. Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 243.
8. Paul Davies, The Cosmic Blueprint (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 203; “The Anthropic Principle,” Science Digest, 191, No. 10 (October, 1983), 24.
9. George Greenstein, The Symbiotic Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 27.
10. Tony Rothman, “A ‘What You See Is What You Beget’ Theory,” Discover (May, 1987), 99.
11. Bernard Carr, “The Anthropic Principle,” Nature, 153.
12. Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 298.
13. Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Varghese, ed., Cosmos, Bios, and Theos (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1992), 52.
14. Margenau and Varghese, Cosmos, Bios, and Theos, 83.
15. Stuart Gannes, Fortune, October 13, 1986, 57.
16. Fang Li Zhi and Li Shu Xian, Creation of the Universe, trans. T. Kiang (Singapore: World Scientific, 1989), 173.
17. Edward Harrison, Masks of the Universe (New York: Collier Books, MacMillan, 1985), 252-263.
18. John Noble Wilford, “Sizing Up the Cosmos: An Astronomer’s Quest,” New York Times, March 12, 1991, B9.
19. Tim Stafford, “Cease-fire in the Laboratory,” Christianity Today, April 3, 1987, 18.
20. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 116.

Chapter 3 
The Fingerprints of God

1. James S. Trefil, The Moment of Creation (New York: Collier Books, MacMillan, 1983), 127-137.
2. Ray White III and William C. Keel, “Direct Measurement of the Optical Depth in a Spiral Galaxy,” Nature 359 (1992), 129-130.
3. Guillermo Gonzales, “Is the Sun Anomalous?” Astronomy & Geophysics, 1999. 
4. Walter Dehnen and James J. Binney, “Local Stellar Kinematics from Hipparcos Data,” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 298 (1998), 387-394. 
5. O. Bienayme, Astronomy and Astrophysics 341 (1999), 86. 
6. Michael Denton, Nature’s Destiny (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 127-131.
7. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth (New York: Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, 2000), xxviii, xxvii, 222-6.
8. Ibid., 36-40.
9. Ibid., 245.
10. Paul Crutzen and Mark Lawrence, “Ozone Clouds over the Atlantic,” Nature 388 (1997), 625.
11. J. Achenbach, “Life Beyond Earth,” National Geographic, Jan. 2000, 29.
12. New York Times, February 8, 2001, F1
13. Brandon Carter, Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology (Boston, MA: Dordrecht-Holland, D. Reidel, 1974), 291-298.

Chapter 4 
The Seven Days of Creation—
How Long Are They?

1. C. I. Scofield, D. D., The Scofield Reference Bible (New York: Ford University Press, 1917), 3 footnote.
2. Ibid, 4.
3. Bernard Ramm, The Christian View of Science and Scripture (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdman's Publishing Co., 1954), 180.
4. Creation Research Society, Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2, July, 1966, 24.
5. Ronald L. Numbers, Creating Creationism: Meanings and Usage Since the Age of Agassiz
6. Justin Martyr, “Dialogue With Trypho,” Chapter 81, “Writings of Saint Justin Martyr,” The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 6, Ludwig Schoop, Editorial Director (New York: Christian Heritage, 1948), 277-278; Iranaeus, “Against Heresies,” Book V, Chapter XXIII, Section 2, The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, Ed. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1981), 551-552. 
7. Harris, Archer, Walke, Theology Word Book of the Old Testament (Chicago: Moody Press, 1980); J. P. Green, The Interlinear Hebrew-Greek English Bible (Lafayette, IN: Associated Publishers and Authors, Inc., 1980), 689.

Chapter 5 
Darwinian Evolution — 
Fact or Theory?

1. Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 17.
2. Douglas Futuyma, Science on Trial, 1983.
3. Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisims, 1977, 124-125, 130.
4. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 21.
5. C. H. Waddington, “Evolutionary Adaptation,” Evolution after Darwin, ed. 1960, Vol. 1, 381-402.
6. Johnson goes on to recommend R. H. Brady's “Dogma and Doubt,” in the Biological Journal of the Linnaen Society (1982); 17:79-96, “for an excellent review of the tautology issue and the flaws in the arguments for natural selection.”
7. Richard Goldschmidt, American Scientist, V. 40, 84.
8. Ernst Mayr, Toward A New Philosophy of Biology, (1988), 72, 464-466.
9. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (Penguin Library, 1982), 305.
10. Stephen Jay Gould, “The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change,” The Panda’s Thumb.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Darwin, Ch. 13.
14. Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution as Fact and Theory,” Hen’s Teeth and Horse's Toes.
15. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 67.
16. Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Harvard Belknap, 1977).
17. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 73.
18. Gareth Nelson, The Wall Street Journal, December 9, 1986.
19. Genetics, Paleontology and Evolution, Ed. By G.L. Jepsen, E. Mayr, G. G. Simpson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949).
20. Ibid.
21. R. B. Goldschmidt, “Evolution as Viewed by One Geneticist,” American Scientist, 40 [1952]:97).
22. Barbara J. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (Dover), 1985, Chapters 5 & 6.
23. Frank Lewis Marsh, Evolution, Creation, and Science (Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Assoc., 1947), 179.
24. James A. Hopson, “The Mammal-Like Reptiles,” The American Biology Teacher, Vol. 49. No. 1, 16 (1987).
25. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 79.
26. Stahl, Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (Dover), 1985, viii, 369.
27. Solly Zuckerman, Beyond the Ivory Towers, 1970, also Monkeys, Men and Missiles, 1988.
28. Ibid.
29. Charles Darwin, Letter (1871), Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 103.
30. Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth, (1986)
31. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 103.
32. R. W. Kaplan, Chemical Evolution, “The Problem of Chance Information of Protobionts by Random Agreement of Macromolecules,” 319-321; E. Borel, Elements of the Theory of Probability (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1965), 62; P. T. Mora, The Origins of Prebiological Systems and Their Molecular Matrices, “The Folly of Probability,” Ed. S. W. Fox (New York: Academic, 1965), 62; A. S. Antonov, Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, “DNA: Origin, Evolution and Variability,” Eds. R. Buver and C. Ponamperuma (New York: American Elsevier, 1971), 422.
33. Fred Hoyle quoted by Richard Dawkins, “Origins and Miracles,” The Blind Watchmaker (1986).
34. “Spontaneous Order, Evolution and Life,” Science, March 30, 1990, 1543.
35. “RNA Evolution and the Origins of Life,” Nature, Vol. 338, March 16, 1989, 217-224.
36. Robert Shapiro, Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth (1986).
37. Klause Dose, “The Origin of Life: More Questions than Answers,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 13, No. 4, p. 348 (1988); See also the brief review by Dose of a collection of papers about the mineral origin of life thesis appearing in Bio Systems, Vol. 22 (I), 89 (1988).
38. Christopher Wills and Jeffrey Bada, The Spark of Life: Darwin and the Primeval Soup (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, 2000), 61-62.
39. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000), 19-22.
40. Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth (Copernicus, Springer-Verlag, New York, 2000), 68.
41. N. R. Pace, “Origin of life–facing up to the physical setting,” (1991) Cell 65:531-533.
42. Karl O. Stetter, “The Lesson of Archaebacteria,” in Early Life on Earth: Nobel Symposium No. 84, Stefan Bengtson, ed. (New York: Columbia University Press 1994), 143-51.
J. P. Amend and E. L. Shock, “Energetics of Amino Acid Synthesis in Hydrothermal Ecosystems,” Science 281 (1998): 1659-62.
43. Francois Raulin, “Atmospheric Prebiotic Synthesis,” presentation at the 12th International Conference on the Origin of Life and the 9th meeting of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life, San Diego, CA, 1999.
44. Martin A. A. Schoonen and Yong Xu, “Nitrogen Reduction Under Hydrothermal Vent conditions: Implications for the Prebiotic Synthesis of C-H-O-N Compounds,” Astrobiology 1 (2001): 133-42.
45. Claire M. Fraser et al., “The Minimal Gene Complement of Mycoplasma genitalium,” Science 270 (1995), 397-403.
46. Clyde A. Hutchinson, III et al., “Global Transposon Mutagenesis and a Minimal Mycoplasma Genome,” Science 286 (1999), 2165-69.
47. Arcady R. Mushegian and Eugene V. Koonin, “A minimal Gene Set for Cellular Life Derived by Comparison of Complete Bacterial Genomes,” Procedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 93 (1996): 10268-73.
48. Nikos Kyrpides et al., “Universal Protein Families and the Functional Content of the Last Universal Common Ancestor,” Journal of Molecular Evolution 49 (1999): 413-23.
49. Hubert Yockey, Information Theory and Molecular Biology (New York: Cambridge University, 1992), 198, 246-257.
50. Richard Losick and Lucy Shapiro, “Changing Views on the Nature of the Bacterial Cell: From Biochemistry to Cytology,” Journal of Bacteriology 181(1999): 4143-45.
51. Lucy Shapiro and Richard Losick, “Dynamic Spatial Regulation in the Bacterial Cell,” Cell 100 (2000): 89-98.
52. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 1045.
53. D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123, 1929, 233.

Chapter 6 
It’s a Matter of Life or Death

1. Nancy R. Pearcey, The Evolution Backlash: Debunking Darwin (Asheville, North Carolina: God’s World Publications, Inc. World, March 1, 1997), 15.
2. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New York: MacMillan Publishing company, 1993), 5.
3. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954), 401-402.
4. Pearcey, 15.