News to Note AIG by Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell

1. Yahoo! News: “Bizarre Mars Mountain Possibly Built by Wind, Not Water””

Wind, not water, may have built the Martian Mount Sharp.

“Time to see where our Curiosity will take us!” rang out from the ecstatic group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as soon as the Mars rover safely landed on the Red planet last August. Now it appears the answer will include a trip up a mountain formed not by water but by wind. Researchers still expect the mountain to provide a “book” of the planet’s history, including a possible answer about whether life once existed on this planet. But the tale of the mountain will not be told by water-borne sediment.

The Martian rover landed in the 96-mile-wide Gale Crater, which contains Mount Sharp. Views from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) were used in selecting a landing site where it appeared the lowermost portion of the mountain had been deposited by water. This suggests that at some time in the past Mars may have been host to liquid water.

Orbital photos of the upper portions of Mount Sharp, however, did not suggest a watery origin. Nevertheless, most scientists thought that the 3.4-mile-high mountain had been originally formed by layers of water-borne sediment and then, along with the surrounding crater, carved out by erosion. Scientists have therefore expected eventual analysis of the sediment layers in Mount Sharp would represent a timeline of Martian history.

A new analysis of photos of Mount Sharp taken from Curiosity’s vantage point, published in the journal Geology this month (volume 41, pages 543–546), suggests that water was not involved in the origin of the bulk of Mount Sharp. Researchers also used data from the orbital observations and ground-based measurements to model possible wind patterns and to suggest an alternate origin for the mountain.

Photos taken by Curiosity’s MastCam reveal an “unconformity” in Mount Sharp's composition, suggesting a place "where the process of sedimentation stopped." (Unconformities signify an erosional or a temporal break.) The researchers therefore suggest that, while the lower layers of sediment may have been deposited by water, the part of the mountain above the unconformity may have been deposited differently. The leading candidate suggested for an alternate mechanism is wind. Though the current study suggests ways in which wind patterns could have dumped debris to build the mountain, further research is needed to see if the sediment composing the mountain’s upper layers are consistent with that ordinarily associated with wind-borne material.

“Our work doesn't preclude the existence of lakes in Gale Crater, but suggests that the bulk of the material in Mount Sharp was deposited largely by the wind,” says study co-author Kevin Lewis.

Researchers suggests that wind sweeping up and down the crater slopes dumped loads of sediment that piled up to form Mount Sharp. “Every day and night you have these strong winds that flow up and down the steep topographic slopes. It turns out that a mound like this would be a natural thing to form in a crater like Gale,” says Lewis. “Contrary to our expectations, Mount Sharp could have essentially formed as a free-standing pile of sediment that never filled the crater.”

Once Curiosity completes its six-mile trip to the mountain and begins sampling the materials that comprise it, researchers hope analysis of those sediments will confirm their hypothesis. “One way or another, we're going to get an incredible history book of all the events going on while that sediment was being deposited,” Lewis says. “I think Mount Sharp will still provide an incredible story to read. It just might not have been a lake.”

While the composition of Mount Sharp may ultimately provide a peek into conditions existing in the Martian past, calibrating that timeline will be a worldview-based proposition. In other words, what scientists already believe about the age of the planet and the way they think the solar system formed will color their interpretation of how long it took the material comprising Mount Sharp to get there.

Curiosity’s main mission is to search for evidence that microbial life forms may have existed on Mars. Analysis of the first tablespoon-sized sample drilled from 2 ½ inches beneath the surface has revealed an assortment of chemicals that researchers believe could have supported microbial life. To date, however, no complex organic molecules or other evidence of life, past or present, has been found on Mars.

Evolutionary scientists tend to believe that given the right chemicals and habitable conditions, along with liquid water, life can evolve. And though it now appears that the massive Mount Sharp was not built by water, there is still evidence that liquid water may have once been present at its base. The presence of water, however, though essential for life, could not have led to the evolution of life through natural processes on Mars any more than on Earth.

Even if evidence that microbial life ever existed on Mars is someday found, that will not demonstrate that life actually evolved there. Such a finding would simply be evidence that life is (or once was) there, not proof of that life’s origins. The Bible does not say whether God created life on other planets, but the Bible does tell us God created all life on earth during the first six days of Creation week, the same week in which He created the rest of the universe, about 6,000 years ago. Discovery of evidence that a “habitable” environment containing liquid water once existed on Mars or even life itself would neither disprove nor undermine biblical truth.

2. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Is evolution the missing link in some Pennsylvania high schools?”

Are those who question evolution creating a missing link in Pennsylvania schools?

A recent survey of Pennsylvania teachers by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette revealed that 20% of high school science teachers “believe in creationism.” Coupled with a complaint by a college student that her Advanced Placement Biology teacher had “sped through the chapter on evolution,” this revelation has generated some harsh words about who should be teaching high school science and how.

The Duquesne University student, who had also been taught in her church youth group to believe that God is the Creator, complained, “In high school, a lot was not taught correctly, and it didn't prepare me for college. They should have gone into evolution in detail. The controversy should not be what is taught in school.”

The Pittsburgh paper’s columnist writes that this student’s experience “represents the ill-kept secret about public school biology classrooms nationwide—that evolution often isn't taught robustly, if at all.” And Duquesne University biology professor David Lampe, who organizes the university's annual Darwin Day celebration, complains:

I don't think we'll ever stop people from objecting to the teaching of evolution. It is not an issue of interpreting scientific data. No one in science seriously questions whether evolution is real. It is still a theological problem for people.

Those who want to teach creationism or can't teach evolution shouldn't be there. If they want to teach creationism or intelligent design, it's a nice Sunday school topic. There's a forum for that. People who don't believe in evolution should opt out of modern science and resort to rattling chicken bones.

Penn State University political science professor Michael Berkman, coauthor of Evolution, Creationism, and the Battle to Control America's Classrooms, believes that evolution should be the “driving theme of the biology course, beginning to end.” He notes that teacher skepticism is undercutting the effectiveness of evolutionary teaching. “How do you become a science teacher when you are a young-Earth creationist?” Berkman asks. He believes teachers are also reluctant to teach evolution “robustly” because “many students have been primed by parents and youth groups to raise difficult and challenging questions.”

As we have discussed before, teaching children to discern the difference between experimental testable “here-and-now” science and worldview-based interpretations about origins imposed on scientific data by evolutionists is key to developing critical thinking skills in students.

Abiogenesis, for instance, is never observed in biology, but most evolutionists believe life came from non-living elements through natural processes. Evolutionists claim new, more complex living organisms evolved through natural processes, but biology reveals that living things do actually reproduce “after their kinds,” as the Bible indicates. Evolutionists claim that variations in living organisms eventually produce novel genetic information and new kinds of creatures, but biology demonstrates that living organisms only vary within their kinds. Evolutionists claim mutations provide the raw material for evolution, but mutations destroy genetic information rather than create new genetic information as evolutionists claim.

The observable facts of science support the biblical history of life’s origin. And while current law prohibits the teaching of the Bible in public school science classrooms, students can be taught to think critically and look carefully at the claims of evolutionists. By questioning carefully, discerning students may learn that evolutionary claims really don’t hold water. Yet science educators are set against allowing high school teachers to encourage students to ask revealing questions.

By contrast, atheists Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss, stars of the just-released documentary The Unbelievers, in a recent interview discussing their plans to rid the world of Christianity declared they want their film to get viewers to question their religious beliefs. Dawkins and Krauss are confident that questioning, intelligent people will accept evolution and ultimately atheism.

So which is it, to question or not to question? Questioning is good, atheistic evolutionists say, so long as faith is being questioned. But questioning is not acceptable, they assert, when evolution is being questioned. Questioning is not okay, they believe, when it might reveal the fact that evolution’s primary principles are not supported by observational, experimental science.

We however are not afraid of questions. Scripture commands Christians to prepare themselves to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15, KJV). Our hope for the future depends on our faith in the grace of Jesus Christ, who is both Savior and Creator. Answers in Genesis seeks to equip people with the answers they need from both science and Scripture so that they will see that observable science affirms Scriptural truth. It is our hope to encourage people to have faith in God’s Word and in the God of the Bible.

Read more about the “evangelistic” agenda of atheists set to eradicate God from history in this week’s analysis of the claims of The Unbelievers.

To read AiG’s views on the teaching of origins in government-run schools, including the problem of mandating that instructors teach creation or intelligent design to their students, see What Happened in Kansas?

3. The Boston Globe: “Evolution in medical school: Do we need more of it?”

Could physicians be better doctors if they applied evolution to their practice of medicine?

Despite the wide acceptance of evolutionary beliefs among mainstream scientists, many physicians—whether they accept evolution or not—find evolutionary claims neither relevant nor useful. And the distinction is not due to a deficit of educational attainment: a medical degree is as much a doctoral degree in science as a PhD in the U.S. (and many other countries). Some claim that physicians would be better doctors if they understood evolution better, but many disagree.

Evolution is not emphasized in most medical schools. Medical educators have a great deal to teach to budding physicians in a short time. The least important topic is evolution. As the Dean of Yale Medical School, Robert Alpern, explains, “I think evolutionary biology could be taught to a much greater extent, but as a dean who has many passions about education, there are many competing priorities for the time in the curriculum.” Asked whether additional training in evolution would improve the way doctors treat patients or conduct research, Alpern says, “I don’t think they’d change a lot.” Others disagree. Psychiatrist Randolph Nesse, who teaches evolutionary biology at the University of Michigan, has been crusading for decades to get medical schools to give evolution a prominent place. Nesse says, “It’s not too hard to demonstrate that doctors are ignorant about real fundamentals of evolution,” says Randolph Nesse. But Nesse believes “A doctor who has a deep foundation in evolution will think different about disease. Instead of just seeing disease as some screw-up in the machine, they will ask of every disease, why didn’t natural selection make the body more resistant to this particular problem?”

Nesse, along with Yale evolutionary biologist Stephen Stearns and Dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey Flier, co-authored an eight-page essay, “Making evolutionary biology a basic science for medicine,” which was published in the 2009 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors believe evolutionary biology “is an essential foundation for a biological understanding of health and disease.” They write that evolutionary methodology is needed to understand population genomics, pathogen evolution, and “why natural selection leaves bodies vulnerable to disease.” The essay notes that the study of DNA has progressed a great deal in recent years and can be used to track the prevalence of observable inheritable traits in populations. The remainder of the essay is largely a summary of Nesse’s 1994 book, Why We Get Sick: The New Science of Darwinian Medicine.

In asserting the need to be taught evolution to understand population genomics, Nesse and his coauthors list the various genetic mechanisms that can affect the fitness and overall makeup of population. They note that those most able to survive and reproduce are those most likely to produce the populations of tomorrow. They therefore conclude, “Natural selection and these other evolutionary mechanisms change species, and, equally important, keep them the same via stabilizing selection that disfavors individuals with extreme traits.”

Natural selection within the human species has nothing, however, to do with evolution of complexity. In fact, biblical creationists commonly cite the same genetic factors when explaining how various people groups developed after the global Flood and the subsequent dispersion from the Tower of Babel. The genetic tools Nesse believes depend on evolutionary thinking have nothing to do with evolution of complexity. Doctors do not need an evolutionary look at an untestable past to interpret the epidemiologic and genomic data before their eyes.

Evolutionist Richard Dawkins has suggested Nesse’s 1994 book Why We Get Sick? could help get all physicians to become Darwinists. Dawkins said, “If doctors had been wise to natural selection we wouldn't have the problem we now have with antibiotic resistance evolving by natural selection by bacteria.”¹ Yet antibiotic resistance has nothing to do with evolution of new genetic information. Antibiotic resistance, as we discussed yet again recently involves natural selection and the genetic shuffling of genes that bacteria already possess. Doctors don’t need to believe in evolution to understand the interaction of natural selection with the rapid shuffling of genetic material in microbes to understand antibiotic resistance.

The essay’s authors cite the importance of understanding and the development of pathogenicity. But as many articles on this website (listed below) have discussed, microbial pathogens can be best understood by realizing the beneficial roles of microbes in the original good, disease-free creation and then examining the changes brought about since sin and death entered the world.

Historically, evolutionary thinking has even caused physicians to make poor medical decisions. Erroneous beliefs that “vestigial organs” were useless evolutionary leftovers led many physicians to destroy them needlessly. For instance, many unnecessary appendectomies were done on the grounds of Darwin’s evolutionary explanations of the differences between human and ape digestive systems.

While premedical students will have to be familiar with evolutionary claims in order to do well on the 2015 version of the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT), which is being revised to include more questions about evolution, there is no necessity that they actually believe them. In fact, discerning students need instead to understand the difference between evolutionary conjecture and experimental, testable, clinical science (including natural selection) on which they should base their future medical decisions.