News to Note, June 6, 2009

1. Island Evolves Lizards

Rapid evolution—“evolving in ways that would normally take millions of years to play out,” says National Geographic News. How does it confirm the Bible?

2. Robots and Evolution

Laboratory scientists designing robots, then making changes to improve the robots’ success—is that really evolution?

3. This Little Piggy

Week after week, scientists are reporting more sources and ways to produce embryonic-like stem cells out of adults cells. Now the stem cell research news turns to pigs.

4. Male Penguin Pairs Adopt Chicks

“Sex and coupling up in our world do not necessarily have anything to do with reproduction.” Is that what the animal world confirms?

5. On Persecution and Zoning Laws

Home Bible studies—do you need government approval to host one?

And Don’t Miss . . .

• In astronomy research this week: a new extrasolar planet “only” 20 light-years away. And while we’re on the topic of astronomy, one reader tipped us off to creation astronomer Spike Psarris’s new website, creationastronomy.com.
• Meet Lluc, the latest missing link, said to shine “important new light on the evolutionary development of hominids, including orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.” But after the whole Ida affair, we’re as skeptical as ever about such claims.
• Up to a third of all scientists admit to “failing to present data that contradict one’s own previous research,” and nearly three-fourths know a fellow scientist who has committed “questionable research practices.” While we certainly don’t think all scientists are liars, it’s important to be aware of biases and behaviors that promote groupthink—and cause individuals to bend the evidence, conscious and subconscious, to fit the dominant theory.
• A new study confirms (again) that junk DNA, contrary to its name, has important functions—it’s no evolutionary accident!
• “Plants are capable of more sophisticated behavior than we imagined” says one researcher on how some plants can identify themselves.
• Identical dinosaur tracks found in Wyoming and Scotland—a potentially “earthshaking” discovery if evolutionists are forced to explain how the same species was on both sides of the Big Pond at the same time (170 million years ago).
• Wanting students to “evaluate the sufficiency or insufficiency” of scientific theories is too dangerous: the implication of a recent Texas senate vote.
• An artistic carving of a mammoth on what is possibly an ancient mammoth bone could be “the oldest, most spectacular, and [most] rare work of art in the Americas.”
• A new study on abortion and religiosity shows that “unwed pregnant teens and 20-somethings who attend or have graduated from private religious schools are more likely to obtain abortions than their peers from public schools”—and that there was “no significant link between a young woman’s reported decision to have an abortion and her personal religiosity, as defined by her religious involvement, frequency of prayer and perception of religion's importance”—and that “conservative Protestants (which includes evangelicals and fundamentalist Christians) were the least likely to report having an abortion, less likely than mainline Protestants, Catholics and women with non-Christian religious affiliations.”
• A winged cat in China may look to some laymen like evolution in action, but in fact, it’s a reminder of how little mutations can do: these structures are nothing like the many sophisticated anatomical features birds have that show they were designed to fly.

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