Research on Intelligent Design

To put together scientific advances from the perspective of Intelligent Design.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

The Intelligent Design... Of Mound Mountains With Pyramids Inside

Taken from: http://quezi.com/532 : JianJunTen (General's Tomb), or the "Pyramid of the East," in Ji'an, near the border with North Korea. - courtesy kevsunblush - CC-BY

"There was a time when Chinese pyramids were considered speculation and myth but now we can say, yes, there are pyramids in China. For many years scholars considered chinese pyramids as nothing more than large mounds, but things have changed... Most of the earlier stories were based on the existence of the “Great White Pyramid.” A photo of this pyramid in the Qinling mountains was said to have been taken by Americans in 1945, but it remained in military files for 45 years. Also US Air Force pilot James Gaussman claimed to have seen a white jewel-topped pyramid while flying between India and China during World War II. However, there is little evidence for this claim. Then, In 2000 China stated that there were some 400 pyramids in the Shanxi region. Smaller than the legendary “Great White Pyramid,” these ancient remains have been classified by some as burial mounds. In 2006 it was announced that Chinese archaeologists discovered a group of ancient tombs shaped like pyramids which dated back at least 3,000 years, in northeast China’s Jilin Province. The tombs covered an area of 500,000 square meters and were found after water erosion exposed part of a mountain, revealing two of the tombs. Six smaller tombs had eroded away leaving no clue as to their original size and appearance. But the biggest tomb, located on the south side of the mountain, could clearly be seen as a pyramid shape with three layers from bottom to top.
Some of the pyramids in China are as large as any that can be found in Egypt, Mexico or any other part of the world. However, one of the problems in studying them is that they are most all in a military restricted region and virtually closed off to outsiders. Following is a list of Chinese pyramids that are now recognized. Inner Mongolian pyramid (1 kilometer north of Sijiazi Town, Aohan County)Maoling MausoleumPyramid of Gathering (Tibet)Qin Shi Huang’s mausoleumZangkunchongStep Pyramid (Ziban). However, the elusive “Great White Pyramid” is still among the missing."
(Courtesy of Unjournaled! by Dino Avdibeg from Denmark)

Pyramid found - in the heart of Bosnia!! (Thursday, October 27, 2005)

Of it, 'digger' Slowspin wrote, 180 days ago (with 82 comments, to date):
"The pyramid is 100 metres high and there is evidence that it contains rooms and a monumental causeway... The plateau is built of stone blocks, which indicates the presence at the time of a highly developed civilisation."

The media, never up-to-date, just presented it the next way: Bosnian Town Hopes to Cash in on Pyramid. VISOKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Apr. 11, 2006 (CBS News.)

My Comment: When the Conquerors from Spain arrived to Mexico, the natives covered many of their Pyramids with stones and soil... so many of them also remain uncoverend 'till this day, looking something like:

Future holds a great future for ID researchers, most abundantly, in Central and South America, I think... so, ID can help in archaeology. Meanwhile, this work in Bosnia is amazing!

History-laden hill contains human-made tunnels, researchers say

For the last link, Zogger wrote:

"Researchers have started exploration into an elaborate underground tunnel structure found under a large hill in Bosnia. The quite regular shape of the small mountain combined with the discoveries and the old legends that go with the place have lead some to speculate it might be the first true man made pyramid found in Europe. Aerial remote sensing has located two other potential pyramids in the same area."

Many more amazing related pictures can be found at Google Images.

The Exquisite Intelligent Design of Those Petite Organs!

This new one was uploaded by: metsakos (in album: Chalkidiki, Greece. In: travel. Date uploaded: Sep 14, 2004 http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1187595559035364392IoesBu)

... Like that beautiful little toe that screams to the evolutionists, PLEASE "Don't Touch Me!" (a former picture that was in "The Texture of America!" with that statement painted over the feet at: ttp://imageserver4.textamerica.com/user.images.x/25/IMG_466325/_1203/TZ201203034949717.jpg)
Finding inspired by the writings of Breslin83 in his Intelligent Criticism Blogspot, as well as by his posted link on the writings of Dr. Giovanni J.R. Calla. So, here we are going to be "Understanding the Functional Relevance of the Once Thought Vestigial Organs":

The Changing Definition of the Thymus from a Believed Rudiment into One of the Most Important Organs in the Human Anatomy
http://www.geocities.com/gcalla1/thymus.htm

The Operative Significance Of The Appendix In Normal Systemic Functions
http://www.geocities.com/gcalla1/appendix.htm

Understanding the Functional Significance of the Once Thought Vestigial Tonsils
http://www.geocities.com/gcalla1/tonsils.htm

The Operative Significance of the Supposed Rudimentary Coccygeal Process
http://www.geocities.com/gcalla1/coccyx.htm

The Actual Significance of the Assumed “Junk” Deoxyribonucleic Acid
http://www.geocities.com/gcalla1/junkDNA.htm

In Breslin83's original posting on Vestigial Organs: A Vestige Of Outdated Science. Series of Essays: Part 1: Humans, we read the next:
"One of the 180 odd vestigial organs alluded to at the Scopes trial: The Appendix does indeed have a function..."
While Dr. Giovanni wrote:
"Initially, there was believed to have been at least 180 rudimentary or vestigial organs in the human body. However, this count has dwindled to approximately 14 structures. These structures are as follows: the adenoids, the APPENDIX, body hair, the COCCYX, the ear muscles, the little toe, the nictitating membrane of the eye, the nipples on males, the nodes on the ears, the parathyroid, the pineal gland, the thymus, the TONSILS, and lastly, the wisdom teeth... some relatively larger animals that are evolutionary linked to the hominid species do not have such vestigial organs at all and yet are perceived to be less developed (evolutionarily speaking) than the presently remaining representative of the order hominidae. Furthermore, some smaller animals that are also believed to be related to the above larger mammals do carry most if not all the said vestigial organs. Thus, upon reviewing this idea, there is therefore no logical pattern in the supposed eventual disappearance of these structures in more advanced organisms... Thus, through many separate research studies and experimentations, most if not all allegedly useless structures in the body are now found to have different tasks and serve extremely important purposes in the body on either insuring over-all structural stability or the assurance of appropriate processing of various internal functions."
Not to subestimate the aesthetic and spatially vital importance and beauty of such "petite organs"!

So, my very dear reader, please don't let those atheistic evolutionists and those living fossils of darwinism to cut off your own and beautiful little toes!

http://gorgeousfeet.textamerica.com/?r=3799050 (Quick time viedo of a gorgeous female little toe, courtesy of Gorgeous Feet, smile)

Or even the worst, please don't let those atheistic evolutionists and those living fossils of darwinism to slander you and to cut out your OWN SOUL!!!

In brief, don't let'em fools fool you anymore!

Monday, April 24, 2006

Intelligent Design In Cryptography: The Enigma Encryption Machine

Enigma machine's products decrypted by TICOM (Target Intelligence Committee).

Lönnig wrote:
"...Dembski has proposed and elaborated the term “specified complexity” by incorporating five main factors to guarantee its applicability not only to diverse human branches of research (e.g. forensic science, cryptography, intellectual property law, random number generation, insurance claim investigation, archaeology, SETI), but also to the origin of species and higher systematic categories..."
To decode a hidden message is as exciting as to interpret a 'new' archaeological puzzling language or to understand the translation of DNA into 'new' Peptides and Modular Proteins!

Related Links:

The United States National Cryptologic Museum (also go there to external links, for example).

Operation Paperclip (a.k.a., Project Paperclip and Operation Overcast)

Operation Alsos (see its missions) and sub-operations: Operation Big and Operation Harborage.

Operation Epsilon

Operation Stella Polaris

Also see in this site:

Decoding Intelligence, Joerg Arnu and Clark

Intelligent Design in Archaeology and in Biology

The Maya and Archaeological Decoding

Common Patterns in the Ancient World, their Pyramids and gods

Three Rivers and Six Fingers Thrice

Friday, April 21, 2006

Science Magazine Publishes a Paper to Oppose Irreducible Complexity (IC)

Long time ago I wrote that the materialists controlling science were in so an extreme paranoia that they will allow the publication of any article to oppose Intelligent Design, no matter how biased it should be.

Naturalistic philosophers in control of the current mainstream science journals are using the "ill-oriented philosophy" of publishing anything opposing Intelligent Design (ID) while at the same time blocking the publication of articles supportive of ID.

Originally I wrote what 'Science' is now confirming [Re: Wall St Journal on Rick Sternberg. 02/01/05]:
"...to write peer-reviewed papers to refute Intelligent Design and Creationism without having allowed BEFORE the publication of any Intelligent Design or Creationism peer-reviewed paper, is an inexcusable shame for the scientific community of today!"

Is the next scenario evidence of soundness of mind or rather reflects the pathology of evolutionism?

1- The logic of the scientific community of today is that "To publish peer-reviewed articles on "Intelligent Design" or on "Creationism" is forbidden, because both are against 'the soundness of science.' However, to publish peer-reviewed articles against "Intelligent Design" or against "Creationism" is, oh yes, that is "very scientific", and is allowed, indeed, encouraged!"

2- "Intelligent Design" is not science; however, to beat "Intelligent Design" is science indeed.

3- You are forbidden to publish in indexed journals your experimental results, theories and observations based on "Intelligent Design", but you are encouraged to publish anything you want against "Intelligent Design".

That is how the scientific community and the establishment are infested today with the pathological state of mind of evolutionism/darwinism!"
Then, I concluded:
"...I dream in a time in which you could be able to freely do good research, and publish it, no matter if you deeply reject the materialistic and biased assumptions, or I must say "impositions" of current evolutionism and darwinism."
Well, now Science magazine has joined such irrational flock of publishing opposition to ID before the publishing of any peer-review supporting ID. So, Who are those atheist authors and publishers fighting against? Are they fighting a ‘non-existing’ concept in their peer-reviewed journals? A concept (IC) published in a book (Behe's 'Black Box') that is so important to the real science that in order to oppose it, the "God-is-not-allowed" establishment 'escalates it' [IC] to the foremost 'prestigious' scientific journal on earth? Once more, the atheistic paranoia has 'escalated' to the point of confirming that for them, "beating ID is 'science' but supporting ID is 'not science at all'..."

So, did 'Science' published a paper on micro-evo to try to endorse macro-evo, or what...? If that's the case, that's just Darwinism at its very beast! (smile)

Let's check the facts to see how the IC and ID microevolutionary fact of antibiotic resistance-like modifications is now being 'ill-used' by evolutionists to try to oppose IC... Debating a controversy that 'does not exist' according to the outdated NCSE and its blind flocks at the AAAS, at the Smithsonian, etc... (including those atheists at National Geographic, at Scientific American, etc.)

On reviewing the case, Denyse O'Leary wrote: "Science and other sci mags are trying to take out intelligent design by flogging up a study that they claim disproves the ID concept of irreducible complexity [Dr. M. Behe's proposal]."

Dr. Michael Behe, the ID concept's author, has replied, of course with his article entitled: "The lamest attempt yet to answer the challenge Irreducible Complexity poses for Darwinian evolution."

Here are some of those comments by Dr. Behe:
"The authors [Jamie Bridgham, Sean Carroll and Joe Thornton, including Christoph Adami in his commentary] are conveniently defining “irreducible complexity” way, way down. I certainly would not classify their system as IC. The IC systems I discussed in Darwin’s Black Box contain multiple, active protein factors. Their “system”, on the other hand, consists of just a single protein and its ligand. Although in nature the receptor and ligand are part of a larger system that does have a biological function, the piece of that larger system they pick out does not do anything by itself. In other words, the isolated components they work on are not irreducibly complex... In the experiment just two amino acid residues were changed! No new components were added, no old components were taken away... Nothing new was produced in the experiment; rather, the pre-existing ability of the protein to bind several molecules was simply weakened. The workers begin their experiments with a protein that can strongly bind several, structurally-very-similar steroids, and they end with a protein that at best binds some of the steroids ten-fold more weakly... Such results are not different from the development of antibiotic resistance, where single amino acid changes can cause the binding of a toxin to a particular protein to decrease (for example, warfarin resistance in rats, and resistance to various AIDS drugs). Intelligent design proponents happily agree that such tiny changes can be accomplished by random mutation and natural selection.... Although the authors imply (and Adami claims directly) that the mutated protein is specific for cortisol, in fact it also binds aldosterone with about half of the affinity. (Compare the red and green curves in the lower right hand graph of [their article's] Figure 4C.) What’s more, there actually is a much larger difference (about thirty-fold) in binding affinity for aldosterone and cortisol with the beginning, ancestral protein than for the final, mutated protein (about two-fold). So the protein’s ability to discriminate between the two ligands has decreased by ten-fold... One would think that the hundred-fold decrease in the ability to bind a steroid would at least initially be a very detrimental change that would be weeded out by natural selection. The authors do not test for that; they simply assume it wouldn’t be a problem, or that the problem could somehow be easily overcome. Nor do they test their speculation that DOC [11-deoxycorticosterone] could somehow act as an intermediate ligand. In other words, in typical Darwinian fashion the authors pass over with their imaginations what in reality would very likely be serious biological difficulties... The fact that such very modest results are ballyhooed owes more, I strongly suspect, to the antipathy that many scientists feel toward ID than to the intrinsic value of the experiment itself... In conclusion, the results (and even the imagined-but-problematic scenario) are well within what an ID proponent already would think Darwinian processes could do, so they won’t affect our evaluation of the science. But it’s nice to know that Science magazine is thinking about us!"
Update:

On April 20, 2006, at 09:20 AM, Bruce Chapman Posted:
Now That Science Magazine Recognizes That Behe's Theory of Irreducible Complexity Is Science, Will They Let Him Respond?
The contention that biochemist Michael Behe's intelligent design argument of "irreducible complexity" (IC) is not science was undercut in a recent issue of Science magazine which contains a paper purporting to falsify the theory.

If it's not science, why bother to try to falsify it? Further, the hapless case made against Behe’s theory--as Dr. Behe explains in his detailed response--shows that irreducible complexity is also good science.

Unintentionally, this paper in Science puts the lie to the whole line used in the Dover trial against Behe and his theory of irreducible complexity. It will be interesting to see whether Science lets Behe reply to the Thornton paper in its pages.

If you can't find it [Behe's Response Printed] in Science, you can read it elsewhere [i.e., Previous Link]. Here's a page with links to several articles about irreducible complexity.
Also see that the deceptive nature of such paper published in Science used a "Step One. Find something that is not irreducibly complex, and explain that, sort of". Also see Paul Nelson's "Debating the Controversy That Doesn't Exist" (smile)

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Macroevolution, The Overselling of a Speculation

Dear Stu,

In your comment (# 5) you declare that for you, macroevolution is a non falsifiable inference instead of being a mere speculation, as I held it to be.

First, it must be said that for staunch evolutionists the word "macroevolution" doesn't exist! They don't want even to allow us to dissect their fiction from reality!

However, the evidence indicates that every living organisms considered by evolution as diverging into two separate and non-compatible groups of organisms (their speculated "speciation") are indeed compatible varieties of organisms able to interbreed (a compatible variation)!

The evolutionary overselling and distortion of reality that I have been denouncing here is precisely that specific aspect of a biased evolutionary theory (fact that can be verified by my posting on Laupala compatibility where initially S.C. clearly exposed how the (and his) atheistic philosophy is currently biasing biology).

You can easily see that biased evolutionists still use Archaeopteryx as their icon of an extinct and non-granted or false "speciation", as the mythical intermediate between reptilian dinosaurs and birds... read those lies by yourself:
"Dr. Novacek [Michael J. Novacek, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan] responded: "We've got Archaeopteryx, an early whale that lived on land, and now this animal showing the transition from fish to tetrapod. What more do we need from the fossil record to show that the creationists are flatly wrong?" ... "Dr. Shubin [Neil H. Shubin of the University of Chicago plus Edward B. Daeschler of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and Farish A. Jenkins Jr., a Harvard evolutionary biologist], an evolutionary biologist, let himself go... Tiktaalik is so clearly an intermediate "link between fishes and land vertebrates" ...it "might in time become as much an evolutionary icon as the proto-bird Archaeopteryx," which bridged the gap between reptiles (probably dinosaurs) and today's birds."
And who is behind such "calculated" lies?
"The science foundation [the National Science Foundation] and the National Geographic Society were among the financial supporters of the research."
However, Archaeopteryx today is fully considered as a bird. Let me recap with you the next references:

Alonso PD, Milner AC, Ketcham RA, Cookson MJ, Rowe TB. The avian nature of the brain and inner ear of Archaeopteryx. Nature. 2004 Aug 5;430(7000):666-9. Archaeopteryx, the earliest known flying bird

Burish MJ, Kueh HY, Wang SS. Brain architecture and social complexity in modern and ancient birds. Brain Behav Evol. 2004;63(2):107-24.
Archaeopteryx, an ancient bird

Zhang F, Zhou Z. Palaeontology: leg feathers in an Early Cretaceous bird. Nature. 2004 Oct 21;431(7011):925.
the earliest known bird, Archaeopteryx

Chatterjee S, Templin RJ. The flight of Archaeopteryx.
Naturwissenschaften
. 2003 Jan;90(1):27-32.
bird, Archaeopteryx

Below of my original posting for those references, you can see the answer of Neil A. Wells, an atheist and evolutionist, like all of those "S" guys that have been posting here (Smile):
"Sorry, I wasn't very clear about the status of Archaeopteryx... Archaeopteryx has precisely "average" wing geometry (aspect & loading) relative to modern bird wing types."
Do you want to remember a previous hoax perpetrated by National Geographic? Check on the Archaeoraptor Liaoningensis: Fake Dinosaur-bird ancestor

Want to check something about The Overselling of Whale Evolution?

[?] Want to see something scholarly oriented related to the classic Piltdown Fraud: Available Evidence Reviewed. Weiner and Oakley. American Journal of Physical Anthropology March 1954.

The same can be said of any other myth for an extinct "speciation", you can check it by yourself about the very alive one: The Coelacanth. And the many varieties of it that still are being discovered today and today and tomorrow! (smile).

The same can be said of: The Australian Lungfish and its varieties.

The same can be said of: The African Lungfish and its varieties.

How long it will take to demonstrate that Tiktaalik is another example of a false evolutionary overselling of a non-existing event of an extinct "speciation", exactly like the Coelacanth and the Lungfish were before?

PS:

Coelacanth fossils have even been found in Kansas by Pam Everhart in 1990, the subject of a presentation (Stewart, J.D., et al., 1991) at the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and the Kansas Academy of Science annual meeting in 1995.

Lung Fish fossils have been found in Quebec, Canada as reported to the Canadian Journal of Earth Science 24: 2351–2361.

Update: Next, an important related statement by Andrew Rowell, from his posting "Macro-evolution as religious doctrine":
"A much wider audience has learned that some supposedly objective scientists who are only concerned with “facts” actually have a deeply emotional and what could accurately be described as a “religious commitment” to macro evolution as the central dogma of naturalism. This emotional and “religious” commitment extends well beyond the realm of facts and functions in a way analogous to any organised religion."
And for those atheists reading this posting, go to: Atheism/secularism a religion and A. Rowell's most recent one: Secularism one religious viewpoint?

The Intelligent Design of a Robotic Coelacanth and of a Cartoonic Lungfish

Incredible Aquarium Fish Robot
Swims Just Like the Real Thing.
Terada Yuji holds a robotic fish that closely resembles a real coelacanth. Terada developed this silicon resin fish, and says that a lot of difficult research went into making it.

"Funky Lungfish"
"My pet Lungfish was the inspiration for my character design. I wanted to do an appealing character so I chose a popular culture to base him on. I chose hip hop. The character's attributes are: smooth, greedy, cool and odd. This was the recipe to my design [Joe Watson © copyright 2003]"

Friday, April 14, 2006

Specialized Book on Obesity Published in Spanish

A specialized book on obesity (a book in Spanish) was published, see for example its chapter:

Castro-Chávez, Fernando. Genes Implicados en la Susceptibilidad a Obesidad y Genes Antiobesidad (pp. 63-94). In: Méndez-Sánchez N y Uribe M. Obesidad. Conceptos Clinicos y Terapeuticos. Elsevier Masson-Doyma, México 2005. 470 pp.


It is in Spanish but a relevant fragment of it has been translated by me here.

This was its public presentation:

http://www.inmegen.gob.mx/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=275&Itemid=155

Thursday, April 13, 2006

My Response to Atheist Sean C.

Like every other typical atheist involved in messing with biology, what atheist Sean C. wrote is in >: [for a sad and purposeless face (smile)]

>: I had to laugh when I read this blog.

Sean, thanks for reading the blog. Remember that the one that laughs the last laughs the best.

>: As a bona fide evolutionary biologist...

"bona fide" means "in good faith", "acting without the intention of defrauding", so, what do you mean here, oh Sean?

Do you mean that by being "evolutionary biologist" you are an atheist philosopher blinded to everything that counters a speculative macroevolutionary biology currently shaped a la Darwin?

>: I'm constant amused by the time and effort creationists expend trying to debunk evolutionary studies.

Even thought Intelligent Design is not "creationism", creationists and anyone else are rightfully entitled to debunk baseless speculations sold as "proof" for a speculative and macroevolutionary "closed" worldview.

To point out the precision of a real microchange (call it microevolution) versus an ideological and baseless speculated macrochange (call it macroevolution) it is a legitimate scientific endeavor, always ignored by the ideologues of materialism such as Sean C.

Please Sean, don't you run like every other materialistic darwinian evolutionist which ever posted here... I need to ask you: Do you think that under the current dominance of Darwinism in biology we already have an adequate identification of biological varieties in nature? My own answer is a sounding NO!

Sean, are you blinded not to see that what is currently sold as examples of "speciation" are indeed examples of variation within compatible groups of organisms, hence microevolution is fraudulently being sold as macroevolution by "bona fide" atheistic "evolutionary biologists", er, pseudo-philosophers like you, Sean? That's SAD!

>: Sad.

Yes, sad is Sean's atheism blinding his "objectivity" as when he writes the very next line:

>: Better to ask, what would it matter if God didn't exist?

Well, Sean, by your choosing you can live very empty in your closed worldview and then, at the end, just to wait to die uneventfully. What would it matter to you anyway, oh Sean? However, it is very clear that your atheism is biasing all your possible science, if any.

Sean, your writing demonstrates that you are only an atheist philosopher attempting to put some of your poison on the minds of objective scientists.

Sean, is it not plausible and testable the precise identification of biological varieties and the consequent generation of new biodiversity that we are proposing here? By your atheistic thumb, supposedly this pursuit is not scientific.

>: I would have thought that the recent landmark decision against intelligent design in Pennsylvania would make you folks take a step back and actually think.

Sean, you evidently are not an objective scientist but an atheistic philosopher and a baseless politic. Intelligent Design researchers are not affected at all by biased decisions not to think! You need to consider that the rigorous identifying of biological compatible varieties and the consequent generation of new biodiversity is science indeed.

>: Carry on, however, it makes little difference.

It really makes a Universe of difference for the minds of thinking people!

>: Cheers

Sean, answer the points that here I posted in bold.

PS,
Teleologist declared: "What Hunt and other religious Darwinists are so adept at doing is take minute changes over time and make leaps of faith to macro changes." More comments on the deception of macroevolution as well as here.

Interesting postings here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

----------------------------------

Scott E. Page (pangloss, a Prof. of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics at U. Mich. attempted to ridicule the statement:

"The discovery of genes expressed only in particular organisms or species (“species specific genes”) can be emphasized as a product of intelligent design, as these are not present in any other organism, discarding a continuous evolutionary way of transmission of genetic material, and enforcing the discontinuous, nonlinear origin of the genomic organization of living beings."

Then, Page went after the statement: "For example, the human genome contains at least 223 genes that do not have "the required predecessors on the genomic evolutionary tree", never transmitted "vertically"."

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives/showthread.php?t=79771

The original number of 223 genes not found in primates was written in three places:

1- Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. Nature. 2001. 409, 860-921.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/full/409860a0.html
“An interesting category is a set of 223 proteins that have significant similarity to proteins from bacteria, but no comparable similarity to proteins from yeast, worm, fly and mustard weed, or indeed from any other (nonvertebrate) eukaryote.”

2- The Human Genome, Elizabeth Pennisi. Science. 16 Feb 2001. 291(5507): 1177-1180.
http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/news/0102/44.htm
"Another head-scratching discovery, made by the public consortium, is that the human genome shares 223 genes with bacteria--genes that do not exist in the worm, fly, or yeast"

3 -
Microbial Genes in the Human Genome: Lateral Transfer or Gene Loss? Steven L. Salzberg, Owen White, Jeremy Peterson, Jonathan A. Eisen. Science. 8 June 2001. 292(5523):1903 – 1906.
http://scienceonline.org/cgi/content/full/292/5523/1903
“223 bacterial genes have been laterally transferred into the human genome” and “In the analysis used to support the claim that 223 genes have been laterally transferred into human.”

The 2001 reported 223 non-linearly transmitted genes were re-visited in at least two places:

4 –In the 2 August 2001 correction: Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. Pages 565-566:
“Extensive sequence data from many additional organisms will be required to assess definitively the provenance of each gene.”

5 - In 2003 Steven L. Salzberg in his power point presentation (Genome Paleontology: Discoveries from complete genomes) declares:
“Our re-analysis finds just 41 genes (Ensembl) or 46 (Celera) with best hits to bacteria – not 223… At least 3 have already been found in Drosophila, 10 more in other species.”
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~zaki/Workshops/BIOKDD03/Salzberg-Talk.ppt

6-Meanwhile a 2008 staff blogger wrote in "Figuring Out The Role Of Human-Specific Genes" that "There are around 23,000 genes found in human DNA but perhaps 50 to 100 that have no counterparts in other species."
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/figuring_out_the_role_of_human_specific_genes

7 - In the most recent paper dealing with this information:

"The three genes reported here are the first well-supported cases of protein-coding genes that arose in the human lineage and are not found in any other organism," Knowles and McLysaght concluded. "It is tempting to infer that human-specific genes are at least partly responsible for human-specific traits and it will be very interesting to investigate the functions of these novel genes."
http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/irish-researchers-sleuth-out-unique-human-genes-originating-non-coding-dna

"Based on these findings, the team estimates that about 0.075 percent of human genes — roughly 18 of the 24,000 — are human-specific and arose from formerly non-coding sequence."

http://www.physorg.com/news171051139.html

"The authors also note that because of the strict set of filters employed, only about 20% of human genes were amenable to analysis."

More information: Knowles DG, McLysaght A. Recent de novo origin of human protein-coding genes. Genome Res. 2009 Oct;19(10):1752-9., doi:10.1101/gr.095026.109

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/19/10/1752.full

So, we do research because there are innumerable things that we are still ignorant of. Here Scott needs to remember the title words on the book that he himself wrote: "The difference, how the power of diversity creates better groups, firms, schools and societies"...

Salvador wrote:
"Secondary pupils in Northern Ireland are spearheading a campaign to introduce a scientific concept, banned in the United States, into the curriculum. Students from both secondary schools and some of the province’s most prestigious grammar schools claim that so-called intelligent design will give a “more balanced view of how the world came into being”."