Eugenics and Dog Breeds

When the science of genetics (pioneered by Gregor Mendel, peas be upon him) was still developing, well-heeled folks wanted the fruits of science. Back then, thinking and science were popular. So was Darwinism. Artificial selection (selective breeding) and eugenics were becoming fashionable. Dogs paid the price.

Credit: RGBStock / Richard Dudley

There are similar principles in the social Darwinist eugenics movement and dog breeding. Both have arbitrary criteria where only certain individuals are allowed to reproduce, and both began when genetics was not very well understood.

When it came to dog breeds, traits of temperament and appearance were emphasized. Unfortunately, undesirable and unseen traits would often appear, making the animal less able to survive. Dogs like pugs and others with faces that look pushed in often have the breathing problem known as brachycephalic syndrome. To be direct, much of selective breeding is ultimately cruel. Creationists believe that something like a wolf was the original dog kind from which all these others are derived, having a variety of good genetic characteristics. Want to own a healthy pet? Get a mutt.

Many people love purebred dogs. The distinctive features of each breed and their predictable temperaments draw many people to pay a high price to own one. But how did we come to value such features, and is this desired ‘purity’ better for the health of the dog?

Domestic dogs have been around for thousands of years, and distinct ‘types’ of dogs go far back in history, when people began selectively breeding their dogs for desirable characteristics, mostly related to the type of work the dog was supposed to do—like hunting, guarding, or herding livestock. As dogs particularly suited to their jobs were bred, some types began to take on a distinctive appearance. Some of this was due to mutations (affecting coat colour, size, facial shape, etc.). By identifying useful traits and then allowing dogs that carried the trait to inbreed with closely-related dogs, the traits were emphasized. This was the origin of dog ‘breeds’.

I won't make you sit up and beg to read the rest of this interesting article. Just get your paws on "Sick, suffering monsters and the eugenicists who created them".


As the old saying goes, dogs are man’s best friend. Dogs perform many useful tasks—from hunting to security to helping people with disabilities. Most of us would agree that we’re just glad they’re part of the family! Where did dogs come from? How can we explain the tremendous variety of dog breeds?



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The Amazing Design of Hemoglobin

Hemoglobin (HGB) is one of thousands of proteins designed by our Creator. We know that it carries oxygen through the bloodstream, but hemoglobin (Hgb) was designed Hgb to fulfill a number of detailed functions. Even the oxygen delivery is regulated for various needs.

Credit: Pixabay / Narupon Promvichai

The intricacies of the biology of living things continue to become more amazing and complex as more research is conducted, including a surprising blood component that was recently discovered.

Believers in universal common descent evolution cannot adequately explain Hgb and its specified complexities, so they simply evosplain it away. There are also Hgb molecules produced by humans for fetal development as needed for various functions. Also, organisms that breathe air experience regulation from Hgb so that when the need for oxygen is lower (at rest), not as much is delivered. The opposite is also true. Further, the gas nitric oxide is needed and Hgb extends its extremely short half-life so it can fulfill its function. There is a great deal to learn, but this article is quite technical and people with advanced medical and biological knowledge are the ones who would receive the most benefit from it.

In this article we first examine the structure of Hgb and how this makes Hgb ideally suited as an O₂ transporter. We’ll very briefly look at the genes that code for the various subunits of Hgb and how they are arranged on the chromosomes, and how their expression changes through development from embryo to adult, and how this is regulated. We will examine how hemoglobin structure enhances the binding and release of O₂, making hemoglobin an exquisitely designed sensor of the metabolic demands for oxygen. We will make some comparisons between Hgb and myoglobin, another O₂ binding protein found in muscle, and see how its structure suits it to be an excellent O₂ storage protein in cells. We examine some associated enzymatic activities of Hgb and Mb that protect us from nitric oxide (NO), but at the same time provide a way to preserve and deliver NO to where it’s needed. We briefly look at Hgbs from other mammals and see that their Hgbs are matched to their metabolic demands. Lastly, we mention some research advances and shortcomings in attempts to make artificial Hgb to meet many medical needs.

To learn more, you can read the entire article by clicking on "Hemoglobin: An Exquisitely Designed, Multifunctional Protein".



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Secular Geologists Determined to Deceive Themselves

A person may not be lying when what is related is considered true, and sometimes people have deceived themselves. The secular science industry is riding for the Darwin brand and they work and finding answers, but they are building on seriously flawed presuppositions. Two linked articles demonstrate this.

Chimney Rock image credit: Freeimages / Steven Ritts

Scientists have ideas and work from those to see if they have validity. We get that. However, there are times when they have had numerous failures and dead ends that they should ask themselves if their starting points are correct in the first place. They often do not realize that they are mistaken by illusions of progress when they are cantering in the opposite direction. Deep time geology has a passel of problems, and geologists would do well to seriously consider the work of creation scientists instead of rejecting catastrophism out of hand for the sake of the naturalism narrative. Here is the first linked article:

It’s possible to collect clues that suggest your model is working, all while heading off in the wrong direction.

Here’s a way scientists can be clueless with clues. First, they accept a popular worldview we will call the Grand Myth. Then, they find a problem within the myth, a sub-myth, that requires a solution. Without ever questioning the foundational Grand Myth, they start collecting clues that “suggest” a certain solution to a problem in the sub-myth that “might” work. Notice:

“In a study published in the journal Science, our international team has moved a step closer towards resolving this problem.“

Did they “resolve” the “problem”? No. They moved a step closer. How many steps more are there? How do they know their steps are headed in the right direction? It doesn’t matter to believers in the Grand Myth. Like players of Blind Man’s Bluff, their intuition tells them. They’ll know it when they feel it.

To see some examples and learn more, click on "Geology: Bold Steps in Self-Deception". What follows is also quite startling.

Geologists who support uniformitarianism presuppose that the Genesis Flood never happened. Sure, they occasionally appeal to lesser floods in Earth's history when their methodology is too threatened by facts to be rescued; again, the old-earth narrative is more important than the evidence.

• We just passed the 40th anniversary of the main Mt. St. Helens eruption. This and subsequent geological events there have been used by biblical creation scientists in many ways to support Genesis Flood models. Secularists make excuses.
• Freestanding geological features such as arches are studied and are testimony to the Flood and recent creation. Secularists find something shiny to examine instead of seeing the greater implications of research.
• The Great Unconformity at the Grand Canyon is "missing" many Darwin years (in one place, a billion). Instead of cowboying up and facing the fact, these jaspers try to find ways to use the feature to make absurd statements and even make excuses for other conundrums.

To read about these items, click on "How Secular Geology Forces Observations into an Old-Earth Narrative". Also of interest is "Still Trying to Explain the Great Unconformity".

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Creation Science and Chromosome Fusion

Scientists operate from their worldviews, so it is entirely reasonable to get a notion and see if there is any evidence to support it. Secular biologists and so forth presuppose goo-to-geneticist evolution. There is a problem with the number of chromosomes between humans and apes, so something "must" have changed.

Evolutionists believe that there was chromosome fusion in human history, and that's why apes have a couple more than we do. They have a suspected site for this and papers have been written on it. Many important factors have been overlooked and even ignored, and a creation scientist has done his own research showing that this alleged fusion is yet another tale of mystery and imagination for the Darwin Zone. We were created differently from the animals, pilgrim, and in God's image.

One of the more popular arguments used for humans supposedly evolving from apes is known as the chromosome fusion. The impetus for this concept is the evolutionary problem that apes have an extra pair of chromosomes—humans have 46 while apes have 48. If humans evolved from an ape-like creature only three to six million years ago, a mere blip in the grand scheme of the evolutionary story, why do humans and apes have this discrepancy?

The evolutionary solution proposes that an end-to-end fusion of two small ape-like chromosomes (named 2A and 2B) produced human chromosome 2 (Figure 1). The concept of a fusion first came about in 1982 when scientists examined the similarities of human and ape chromosomes under a microscope. While the technique was somewhat crude, it was enough to get the idea going.

To read more about the truth regarding the fictional chromosomal fusion, click on "Human Chromosome 2 Fusion Never Happened". Also of interest is "Refusing the Fused Chromosomes".





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Polystrate Fossils and Long-Age Duplicity

Although we discussed polystrate fossils a few months ago (see "Let Me Be Polystrate With You"), it is time to run the subject up the flagpole again and see who salutes it. Like the problems of soft tissues, DNA, and such in dinosaur fossils, assorted rescuing devices are manufactured.

Original image from GoodFreePhotos / Paula Piccard

The main approach of secular geology is uniformitarianism, but occasionally Janus-faced geologists will invoke catastrophes when their philosophies fail. They have even imagined multiple small floods without evidence instead of the best explanation: the global Genesis Flood. Polystrate fossils are a serious problem, and these are often completely ignored in textbooks and such.

Wikipedia, that font of secularist propaganda, does not have a section on polystrate fossils, but there is a sentence in the fundamentally dishonest section on creationism about what creationists believe. Of course, they wave the fossils off without providing a reasonable explanation for their existence. Up yonder in Nova Scotia is an area called Joggins. There are numerous polystrate fossils there, but they are not mentioned in the Wikipedia section on the fossils there except for a drawing from 1868 of an "upright fossil". Like mainstream news sources, if something is inconvenient for a narrative, it tends to be ignored. That does not make the Flood any less real nor does it support secular geology.

Polystrate fossils punch vertically through multiple layers, or strata, within a geological formation. They have been a mainstay of the debates in geology going all the way back to the earliest days of the deep-time controversy arising in the 18^th century. They remain relevant to the discussion today.

In the 1800s, the primary debate over geology was waged between the competing ideologies of uniformitarianism and catastrophism. The former believed in slow gradual processes and long time periods, while the latter believed in rapid processes over short time periods. For a while, uniformitarianism was the dominant view. Today, however, the preferred term by long-age geologists is ‘actualism’, as they have been forced by the overwhelming evidence to abandon strict, classical uniformitarianism (a.k.a. gradualism) and include catastrophes to explain many parts of the geological record.

To read the rest, run on over to "How the Joggins polystrate fossils falsify long ages".






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Deep-Sea Squid Signals Defy Evolution

Here is another example of how the more we learn, the more we should realize that there is still much more to learn. We can narrow it down to communication. It is not just language between humans, and we have seen that many other creatures have their own methods. Consider the Humboldt squid.

Credit: NOAA / MBARI

You're not likely to find these deep-sea bad boys without special equipment, as they are often found in deep water where it's mighty dark. They're not the kind of squid you want to invite to a social gathering, either. They were observed at the chuck wagon, feeding on fish and zipping along. No collisions were noticed, but their Creator gave them bioluminescence.

Why would they need to glow in the dark (so to speak) down there? Communication! Not as involved as signaling in Morse code (such as on an Aldis lamp), but the senders and receivers must be able to understand the message. This is yet something else in organisms that defy evolution —

"When you're a creationist, everything 'defies evolution', Cowboy Bob!"

The usual Darwinian reaction is, "It evolved. Something something something natural selection." Things might be more interesting if naturalists provided more than arbitrary assertions and storytelling. A plausible model might be a nice starting point for conversation, but the accumulated evidence from everything around us testifies of God (Rom. 1:18-23).

In the deep, dark, cold waters of the Pacific Ocean—about 1,500 feet below the surface— hundreds of Humboldt squid the size of small humans (~ 5 feet long) were recently observed feeding on a school of lantern fish only about 3 to 4 inches long. The scientists used a high-tech remotely operated vehicle (ROV) with highly sophisticated photographic equipment to document the squid’s behavior. What they discovered was shockingly sophisticated.

You can read the rest by wrapping a tentacle around "Deep Water Squid Communication Mystifies Scientists". It will be interesting when more information about their bioluminescence comes to light.





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Asking Questions to Investigate Extraordinary Evidence

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

Unusual concepts require unusual discussions. A reader of The Question Evolution Project on Fazebook sent us a link to a TEDx Talk about orbiting the earth and the ancient past. Seemed like an interesting subject and it was only about twenty minutes, so I gave it a listen. Then I watched it more closely.

Proposed Mars Molniya orbit image credit: NASA
(Usage does not imply endorsement of site contents)

The Talk was given by Roger G. Gilbertson uploaded to YouTube on February 3, 2020. This was in the written introduction of the post:

In my years as a writer, inventor, researcher, filmmaker, skeptic, story teller and explainer, I have always tried to keep an open mind about what we do not yet know. I seek the truth wherever it resides, and try to follow wherever it may lead, for the greatest mysteries are often the ones that we are the closest to solving next.

You don't believe everything that "scientists say" or obediently run with the herd? You want to think outside established norms (as well as established Brians, Carls, and Toms)? I like it when people want to think instead of following established science dogma.

While I am not endorsing this video, it does merit examination. It also prompts pondering.

At the first minute, Mr. Gilbertson pointed out one simple fact: science changes. For example, plate tectonics was rejected until comparatively recently, and now it has been accepted by most geologists. (He might like to know about the scientific "fact" of phlogiston — nah, he probably knows that.) Shortly after this, he mentioned visiting a website on the fringes of scientific content. It calls into question some of the established beliefs of scientists. Well, sure, get inspiration from outside the mainstream. I'm using something outside of my own usual fare right here, and have even drawn inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft, Star Trek:TNG, and others, so this child can't be one to fault him.

Around the 2 minute 20 second mark, Roger began to wonder, "Can a satellite orbit the earth in such a way that it travels over a single, circular ground path on the earth below?" He asked and was told that it could be done over the equator. Of the various kinds of satellite orbits, Mr. Gilbertson most interested in two: geostationary (at 5:12, it stays locked in the same place over the planet's surface), and the Molniya (at 6:02, elongated and highly inclined, taking half a day). Then he got an idea.

As we move to the 6:38 mark, Roger was wondering if he wanted a longer orbit. He checked his calculations and verified them with a friend who does aerospace work. Yes, a certain 2-day orbit would put the object in the same position over the earth after that amount of time. Checking with the STK analytical graphics site, he saw that a circular ground-path orbit could work. Another friend in the aerospace industry verified his results.

Now we're at 8:25, and he was excited about what he called the 2DO, the two-day orbit. Fine tuning it for a thirty-one degree orbit and making other adjustments (include the time needed), he found that the satellite or person could be outside the Van Allen radiation belt and also outside Earth's magnetic field. Nor would it ever be in Earth's shadow. This would have potential for useful applications

At 10:05, Gilbertson goes back to the site that got his wheels turning. It was about the alignment of many of the ancient wonders of the world in an almost circular path. Not all ancient wonders, but they were not scattered all over the face of the globe. (We are at 12:20 if you're keeping score at home.) Many of these many had noteworthy features, including their tremendous size, precise stone cuts, unusual knobs in the stone, and more.

At 14:45, we wonder along with him: what kind of people did this? People might expect R.G. to bring up "ancient astronauts" and UFOs, but that is not the case. He wants to know about how and when ancient peoples did these things. 15:20, he says there was a more advanced form of human civilization way back when. Some catastrophe must have happened. Ancient coast lines were much lower long ago, but oceans rose and temperatures dropped. Did a comet hit North America, does that explain some of the geological features?

We need more data (now we've reached 17:18). People need to think in terms of science fiction, get ideas and engineering involved to make these ideas into science fact. Use some imagination to investigate. He modified the Carl Sagan remark about extraordinary claims needing extraordinary evidence and said, "Extraordinary evidence deserves extraordinary investigation". We have a passel of such evidence to investigate.

The part about orbits at the beginning was somewhat interesting, but as he went on with the presentation, I began to wonder if Roger would be willing to seriously, honestly investigate biblical creation science. The Genesis Flood explains geological features better than the established secularist methods and paradigms, and this includes the post-Flood Ice Age and changes affected by the tremendous volcanic activity involved. People ask where the water went after the Flood — it's right here.

We believe and teach that humans were created in the image of God and are not the products of purposeless Darwinism. While creationists believe that there would be no remnants of the pre-Flood world after the global cataclysm, intelligent descendants of Adam and Eve got off the Ark and began to rebuild. After the dispersal at Babel, civilizations were built in many parts of the world. History and archaeology show us that the ancients were indeed very intelligent.

Creation scientists dare to question evolution and deep time assertions. Secular scientists have made many assumptions that have been harmful to medical science, were extremely reluctant to submit dinosaur bones to radiocarbon dating, are puzzled when fossils are found in places where they are not expected, and more. If science was an actual being, people like this would be an embarrassment to it.

Evidence for statements in the previous three paragraphs are all over this site, and most of those link to other sites for further information. I hope Mr. Gilbertson is led to investigate in the biblical creation science direction. After all, he is willing to question proclamations of the secular science industry. In my opinion, he's not far from the truth right now.

One last thought about the whole shootin' match. There was a disclaimer in the text that it was flagged, and included the statements, "...because it appears to fall outside the TEDx content guidelines. Claims made in this talk only represent the speaker’s personal views which are not corroborated by scientific evidence." 

My suspicion is that he was dry gulched because he dared to question established evolutionary dogma, even though it was implicit at best. It is interesting to see that the TEDx Talk by Ben Mezrich titled, "Why I believe in UFOs, and you should too..." was full of assertions (including that the sighting at Roswell was indeed a UFO), opinions, and not corroborated by scientific evidence. Double standard? I found the UFO Talk to be a waste of time, but linked to it anyway if you take a notion to watch it. I would like to give one of these Talks, but we know that such a thing could not happen.





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