* Fossil Insect Ears Sound Warning to Darwinists: RSR co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams discuss a great David Coppedge story in the July - Sept., 2012 Creation magazine about fossilized insect ears. Darwinists have claimed that, prior to the (alleged) evolution of bat, early insects would be seen to lack ears. Lo and behold though, a study including by a scientist up the road from RSR, at the University of Colorado at Boulder, have found modern insect ears fossilized where they had expected to find deaf bugs.

Don't miss our DinosaurSoftTissue.com and YoungEarth.com sites!

* Jerry Coyne is a fruit-fly expert and evolution professor at the University of Chicago, well known for his opposition to creation and his website Why Evolution Is True. Bob Enyart is a young-earth creationist. So which man would you think, the evolutionist or the creationist, would more accurately understand and present the latest cutting-edge discoveries from the world of genetics, and which one would be in denial? See for yourself...

The following three screenshots are from Coyne's criticism of Real Science Radio in his Nov. 19, 2012 blog, with the third presenting his scientific criticism. Following them is the comment that Bob Enyart posted which Jerry has so far rejected from appearing on his blog. First, Coyne's heading...

Next, see Jerry's fun visual comparison of the logos (with RSR hoping that National Public Radio's SciFri sticks with their logo and doesn't copy ours ;)

And last, here is the main scientific criticism that Jerry Coyne chose to level against RSF.

So the question is, on this specific scientific matter, is the famed University of Chicago evolution professor correct, or is the fundamentalist Christian young earth creationist correct? Well, for starters, far from this being primarily a single-celled pheonomena, even vertebrate genomes are so erractic and unwilling to be forced into a Darwinian lineage, that in their January 2013 journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that horizontal gene transfer must have "transformed vertebrate genomes."

But that was published after Coyne's blog post. So here's my original, contemporaneous reply to Prof. Coyne that so far he has not OK'd for display:

* Feature Creep:  Real Science Radio co-hosts Fred Williams and Bob Enyart discuss articles from two great magazines Answers and Creation, including...

* Elephants Trunks: Engineers wanted to create a robot that reproduces just the function of an elephant's trunk that enables it to manipulate objects. They were astounded to find out that an elephant's trunk has 40,000 muscles that give it its amazing flexibility. If Darwinism were true, then evolution supposedly caused some creature's nose to begin growing longer and longer, enabling it to begin grasping things with its nose. The theory of neo-Darwinism fundamentally claims that evolution has no forward-looking mechanisms. So, without planning, supposedly, the elephant ended up with the additional ability to snorkel (with its trunk, which requires a significant and unique redesign of the lungs), and to siphon drinking water with it, and to spray water into the mouth, to shower with its trunk, to dig with it, to hear better by augmenting already amazing sound reception, to communicate with trumpet blasts, all while evolution (allegedly) also provided through that trunk the elephant's olfactory (smelling) abilities, breathing, and picking up and manipulating anything from a blade of grass to a tree trunk, with all of these features being enabled with no forward looking design planning. And as Dr. Walt Brown points out, damage to an elephant’s trunk usually results in death. Thus adding to the absurdity of the entire Darwinian claim, each of these features would have had to develop and integrate into the overall mission-critical system without sending the species to extinction.

* Poison Dart Frogs: Hunters in South America rub their blowgun darts onto the backs of these frogs to kill large game. But why would God create poisonous frogs? It turns out that Ken Ham's Creation Museum has a poison frog exhibit, which is perfectly safe, because the poison is a result of a very particular food chain, providing an example of a creature that might have been perfectly safe before the Fall but ...

* Two Pastors, Two Paths: One pastor found out that creation ministries like Creation Ministries Int'l are able to demolish the claims that undermine the truth of the Bible, and the other pastor gave into the false teachings of an old earth and evolution. The latter pastor eventually wrote a "letter to the editor" promoting homosexual marriage, arguing that since we no longer believe what the Scriptures and Jesus say about a global flood, we would be wise to also reject the Bible's opposition to homosexuality. Thus, typically, rejecting Genesis leads to rejection of many life-giving biblical truths.

* Gecko Feet: A recent journal paper claims that gecko feet, eleven separate times evolved their amazing ability (like the ability to run across a ceiling), which is similar to many other extreme claims, including for example that eyesight evolved 40 different times!

* Simplest Cell Would Need Half-a-Million DNA Letters: Evolutionary scientists, hoping to show how simple the first life could have been, have shown the opposite, that the simplest demonstrable life requires 500,000 letters of genetic information, ordered in particular sequences! (Remember, that vast quantity of genetic information is just one of many other requirements for life, including the protoplasm, a thousand non-genetic elements in the cell, and the cell's membrane.) For those like Darwin who think that if you get just the right chemical soup, life is likely to arise by chance occurrence, then consider that if you make a frog smoothie (or just observe any decomposing organism), all the chemical elements are there for life, yet no life arises from such chemical stews. Further, like cosmologists typically do, Darwin overreached with his title, Origin of Species, because his story begins with living creatures already in existence. Similarly, Big Bang theorists who claim that they can explain the origin of stars commonly begin their story with pre-existing stars which then explode to provide materials and conditions to form other stars.

* Craig Venter's Simplest Cell: Learn more about this extraordinary technical accomplisment in the journal Science, Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome. And remember that, as reported by the journal Nature in Synthetic genome resets biotech goals, "only the genome of the new cell was custom-built", yet "the researchers refer to the entire cell as 'synthetic'..." Though this Nature news report offers a justification for Venter, not uncharacteristically, exaggerating his extraordinary accomplishment, the parenthetical sentence in the above paragraph demonstrates that Venter's claim is false.

* Salt Water Binds with Phosphate: It's awfully tough for chemists to explain how amino acids begin to chain themselves together in long sequences. Why? Amino acids have very high decomposition and melting points, making it tough to get them to assemble in typical dry conditions on Earth. Now, evolutionists have realized that ions that are ubiquitous in salt water will bind with phosphate, making phosphate unavailable to form DNA, RNA, ATP, and OOPS! And even in fresh water, chemists have long realized that they'd need to get rid of water to assemble amino acid chains. In reality, as the law of biogenesis states, life comes from life!

* Humans Can Hear Each Other Even in Loud Environments: Cell-phone (and hearing aid) engineers are mimicing the human brain's ability to minimize background noise to focus on the human voice. Bob and Fred consider this as evidence against the theory of evolution.  

* Computer Animator Eric Donovan on RSR: Lobos Animation founder Eric Donovan, who's previous animation work helped keep the public safe from nuclear waste, shares with Real Science Radio the insights that arise from the technology when computer animating the tectonic implications of the global flood and Walt Brown's Hydroplate Theory.

* See Eric Donovan's Animations: Check out Eric's highlight reel with clips from his industrial, government, hydroplate, and Noah's Ark, animation projects. See also this Dropbox link to seven minutes of video that contains some of Eric's HPT animation and the older animation that Walt Brown has atop his homepage, at YouTube.

* RSR Developing New Hydroplate Theory Animations: Bob Enyart is working to produce animations of the global flood through the biblical and scientific insights of Dr. Walt Brown. As of January 1, 2017, we have raised enough funds to begin this project. Would you like to be a part of this wonderfully rewarding program? Through the tried and true method of state-of-the-art animation, we will both entertain and educate people so that more families will learn to trust God's Word, including its historically accurate account of Earth's tumultuous past. Whether you are a graphic artist, an animator, or if you would like to find out what is involved in funding a specific aspect of the Hydroplate Theory, we would be honored to hear from you! Please email Bob@RealScienceRadio.com or just call us at 1-800-8Enyart and Bob will return your call. to participate.

* Animation Helps Confirm Hydroplate Model: The Hydroplate Theory that Donovan has investigated addresses many observations from the physical sciences, including explaining:

- that the continents do not fit together well against each other, as presented in the Pangaea hypothesis, unless you shrink Africa by 30%, and make other dramatic manipulations.
- that the jigsaw shape of the continents does fit well against the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
- what formed the 46,000-mile long Mid-oceanic Ridge.
- that the Atlantic Ocean is relatively shallow, whereas the Pacific is relatively deep.
- what formed the deep Pacific trenches including the 36-thousand foot-deep Marianas Trench.
- that the fountains of the great deep launched the solar system's asteroids and comets.
- that Mars is not the source of Antarctica meteorites, but they were launched from Earth.
- that the debris launched from the Earth beat up the moon, which helps to explain why the near-side has suffered much greater impactors.
- that NASA discovered the earth-like composition of comets, fulfilling Dr. Walt Brown's published prediction that they would find minerals common from Earth, as they indeed found minerals in the olivine family.

* UPDATE on NPR Program's Lawsuit Against Bob Enyart and KGOV's Science Program: As reported by the NY Post in their article, Science radio showdown, and with more detail by the Denver Post, National Public Radio host Ira Flatow of their Science Friday program filed suit in the State of New York against Bob Enyart over the name of our weekly program, Real Science Friday. This week our attorney filed papers in a Manhattan court and successfully moved the case out of state court and into federal court, which is a more natural venue for our free speech defense. We'll keep you informed! And meanwhile, check out, from a well-known evolutionist, Jerry Coyne's scientific criticism of RSR (and our rebuttal). University of Chicago Professor Coyne's scientific allegation against RSR has already been refuted, not by research done here at Real Science Radio, but by published work from cutting-edge evolutionary geneticists at some of the world's leading institutions. Jan. 2013 Update: The Denver Post reports that the NPR radio program settled its lawsuit with Bob Enyart's Real Science Radio program.

* We're REAL Thankful: to have this great program to air over the Thanksgiving weekend while your hosts Bob and Fred enjoy a leisurely respite (while frantically preparing for the first court hearing from a National Public Radio program's lawsuit against RSR). And check out evolutionist Jerry Coyne's criticism of RSR, rebutted.

* Real Science Radio has a Far Ranging Conversation with Krauss: In this re-run, co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams present Bob's interview of theoretical physicist (emphasis on the theoretical), atheist Lawrence Krauss. As the discussion ranges from astronomy and anatomy to cosmology and physics, most folks would presume that Dr. Krauss would take apart Enyart's arguments. But he planned 27-minute interview ran 40 minutes, so there's also a Krauss Part II. Also, make sure to read the really fun show summary at the original realscienceradio.com/krauss show page!

For today's show RSR recommends
the best astronomy science DVD ever made!
What You Aren't Being Told About Astronomy:
Our Created Solar System!

Post-show update: Jerry Coyne, fruit-fly expert and evolution professor, has just blogged against Real Science Radio. Bob Enyart's comment in reply is "awaiting moderation" :) See all of this at our article at realscienceradio.com/Jerry-Coyne.

* Flying Like a Falcon: Bob and Fred talk about the terrific new issue of "Answers," the magazine by AnswersInGenesis.org. The fastest land animal on earth is the cheetah, but the fastest animal of all is the peregrine falcon. Dr. Don DeYoung, one of the foremost Creationist research scientists in the world and president of the Creationist Research Society, recently spoke at the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship. His article about peregrine falcons describe how they can fly at speeds of 200 mph thanks to highly specialized "equipment" in their physiology.

For the falcon to breathe at such high speeds, their nostrils have a conical structure in the center of their nostrils, functioning as a “baffle” which is copied in the designs of jet engines to this day. Did this “evolve” independent of the bird’s body shape, feather design, wing angle and optical system?

A falcon's eyes must be exceptional, with four times as many photo-receptor cells as a human eye, helping give it amazingly clear long-distance vision. Their eyes are also capable of functioning while speeding through the air at such high speeds, unlike the human eye, in part thanks to nictitating membranes, which are transparent eyelids, so that they can "close" their eyes and yet still see clearly.

This brings to mind Bob's debate with a University of California professor of Ophthalmology on the evolution of the eye, in which the evolutionist made the following erroneous claims about the human eye:

* Evolution Makes Eye Expert Ignorant on the Eye: Gary Aguilar repeatedly claims that the plica semilunaris (in the corner of your eye), is a functionless leftover of evolution. However, according to the authoritative Foundations of Clinical Ophthalmology (Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Plica Semilunaris), the plica functions during movement of the eye, to help maintain tear drainage, and to permit greater rotation of the eyeball, for without the plica, the membrane called the conjunctiva would attach directly to the eyeball, restricting movement. Rather than being informed with the latest knowledge from his own field, Aguilar is decades out of date on the anatomy of both the wiring of the retina and on the plica, claiming it is a functionless leftover of the nictitating membrane (an additional, transparent eyelid in some creatures). Rather than researching his Darwinian claims in the most relevant scientific literature, Aguilar, following Dawkins, gets his outdated claims from a 150-year old book by Charles Darwin. Aguilar also repeats Dawkins' long-refuted claim, based on scientific ignorance and evolutionary bias, that the human eye is wired backward. For an explanation of why our eye is wired the reverse of an octopus, and optimally for human vision, listen to the Enyart-Aguilar-Eye-Excerpts, see Dr. Carl Wieland's article, and the peer-reviewed paper by Peter Gurney, a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Ophthalmologists, as well as his popular article that deals with both the plica and the wiring. (See more at realscienceradio.com/eye.)

* The Planet Mercury Leaves NASA Jaw-Dropping Shocked: RSR co-hosts Bob Enyart and Fred Williams have a ball talking about the amazing planet of Mercury and how, for such a small planet, it's causing such a load of trouble for the evolutionists.

- Details: Big Bang proponents can look on the bright side, where Mercury is 800 degrees Fahrenheit and 200 below zero at night. But after that, the Mercury messenger is a harbinger of bad news for evolutionary astronomers.
- Density: From its pull on NASA's 1974 Mariner space probe, we learned that Mercury's density is far beyond what evolutionary accretion could produce. So as they do with most of the planets, Big Bang proponents including theoretical physicists (with the emphasis on the theoretical, as in the RSR interview with Lawrence Krauss), appeal to catastrophism, whereby first Mercury formed in the traditional way claimed through the condensing swirling nebula (which Isaac Newton evaluated as impossible via gravity), but then a planet-level collision ejected all the light matter off of Mercury and left just the heavy stuff. Really.
- Magnetism: The claim that Mercury is four billion years old led BB proponents to predict that it would be a dead (so to speak), inert rock having no magnetic field. But in 1974, NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft readings contradicted that fundamental evolutionary assumption, detecting a significant magnetic field. Then in 2008, NASA's Messenger craft measured the field's strength as significantly decreased, in only those few decades, which again contradicted their theory. Then in 2011, Messenger orbited the planet, and confirmed a startling (to old-earthers) 8% decrease since 1974. So, as with the Earth's rapidly decaying magnetic field, if Mercury were billions of years old, planet-wide features like it's magnetism would have reached stasis and not demonstrate such rapid change.
- Angular momentum: Mercury's rotation and orbit around the sun, as representative of the other planets, points out a huge contradiction to the most fundamental assumptions of evolutionary solar system formation. For its Sun rotates seven degrees off the ecliptic! That alone validates Isaac Newton's scientific insight against the nebula hypothesis because if it were true, then something would have to either tilt the massive sun (something rather difficult, to put it mildly, to get a handle on), or shift, as a group, the orbits of the planets. Then to pile on, when adding up the mass of Mercury and all its fellow planets, you get only about one percent of the mass of the Sun, whereas 99% of the energy of the spin of the solar system (its angular momentum) resides in the planets, with the Sun, contrary to all evolutionary expectations, has only one percent of the spin, which at least on the surface, directly contradicts the conservation of angular momentum. (And to make matters worse yet again, exoplanets and their stars appear to contradict the secondary assumptions appealed to for explaining away this one particular problem, just as exoplanets are contradicting the solar system formation theory in many ways, a theory created to explain our own system, which it fails to do at almost every point, and fails again with exoplanets.)

For today's show RSR recommends
What You Aren't Being Told [by NPR's Science Shows for example] About Astronomy:
Our Created Solar System!

* The World's Best-selling Creation Author on RSR: Creation Ministries International's Dr. Jonathan Sarfati talks to Bob Enyart about the most recent scientific discoveries which have been disturbing the evolutionists. Real Science Radio is happy to get input from a Ph.D. chemist who's done post-graduate work in nuclear physics, on the science themes that we've covered so far this year. UPDATE: See also our 2014 interview, rsr.org/jonathan-sarfati. 

* Jonathan Sarfati Coming To Denver: You are invited to join Bob in attending the Rocky Mountain Creation Fellowship meeting to hear Dr. Sarfati, the world's most-popular creation scientist! Click for more info. Opportunities to see Dr. Sarfati:
- Fri, Nov. 9, 7 pm, Lakewood, Rocky Mtn Creation Fellowship, 2100 N. Wadsworth
- Sat. Nov. 10, 7 pm, Longmont, Faith Baptist Church, 833 15th Ave
- Sun Nov. 11, 9am & 10am, Longmont, Faith Baptist
- Sun. Nov. 11, 6pm, Littleton, 6100 S. Divinney Way

* FLASHBACK: Dr. Sarfati Rebuts Richard Dawkins:  The world's #1 creation author takes on the world's #1 evolution author Richard Dawkins. The pro-evolution book, The Greatest Show on Earth, is refuted by Dr. Sarfati's The Greatest Hoax on Earth! In this chat with Jonathan Sarfati, BEL's producer re-airs a caller from 1997 who asked about Dawkins and Bob pointed out then that in all Dawkins' books, this famous atheist doesn't give evidence for evolution: he only assumes it is true. Dr. Sarfati agrees and quotes from Dawkins own book in which he admits that he had never given the evidence for evolution. Huh! [Update: BEL has now spliced audio of Dawkins admitting exactly what Bob had accused him of back in that 1997 call. See it below or on YouTube: Dawkins Proves Creationist Right.)

* BEL Telethon: We're at $20,150 of our $30,000 goal to help keep Bob Enyart Live and Real Science Radio on the radio for another year! Please click to help!

Today’s Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? You’ll love our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s tremendous Creation magazine that features the writings of Dr. Sarfati!

* Enyart's Creationist Claim from 1997 Eventually Confirmed By Richard Dawkins: On national TV, Bob Enyart claimed that Richard Dawkins' books never presented any evidence for evolution but only the assumption that evolution were true. A dozen years later, Dawkins admits that in all of his previous books, he only assumed, but did not provide evidence for evolution. That vindicates Bob Enyart's direct statement to a caller who recommended that Bob read Dawkins (which Bob had done, but which the caller had not). See it unfold:

* Real Science Radio Talks to the CSHF Chairman: RSR co-host Bob Enyart introduces Nick Lally, chairman of the board of the Creation Science Hall of Fame, to our creationist friends in the audience.

 
* Lally and Enyart also Discuss:
- creation scientists who should be honored, even though they don't move within the circles of the mega-ministries
- the human and dinosaur footprint argument that creation ministries should begin using
- the dust on the moon argument that creation ministries should begin using, and
- the career-killing persecution of scientists who merely question Darwinism.

* RSR Interviews a UC San Francisco Professor of Ophthalmology: [Update: To hear RSR's 2014 analysis of this debate, go to rsr.org/eye-evolution.] Real Science Radio co-host Bob Enyart debates clinical professor of ophthalmology Dr. Gary Aguilar on the evolution of the eye. Six months ago Gary recommended that Bob read a 2012 book by Dr. Schwab, a  colleague of Aguilar's at UC Irvine, about which Russell Fernald says that Evolution's Witness is "likely to be consulted by everyone interested in evolution and eyes." Hear that 40-minute debate about the eye by clicking any of our standard audio links above, or click here for an 83-minute wide-ranging discussion that also addresses many non-science issues.

* Ivan Schwab's Evolution's Witness -- How Eyes Evolved: Within minutes of the mailman delivering this book, on March 31, 2012, Bob wrote on the title page, with a number of folks around him signing as witnesses: "Prediction: Very little of this book will be about how eyes evolve." Dr. Aguilar described this textbook as a "tour de force" showing clearly how eyes evolved. During today's interview, Bob asserts that his prediction was valid, and that 99% of this book has nothing to do with how eyes evolve. It's a great anatomy book though!

* The Opsin Missing Chapter: Opsin is the protein in photoreceptor cells that can detect a single photon and then signal that a photon has struck it. One might expect from a book on the eye's evolution, that after a book's introduction, the author might include a chapter on an explanation, conceptually, of how opsin might evolve. In vertebrates and invertebrates, opsin requires a chain of 150 to 250 amino acids, which then must be folded correctly into a very specialized nano-machine which can pass along an output signal whenever the protein gets hit with a single photon. But, as creationists would expect, no such chapter exists in the book. And actually, all the difficult problems that one would have to address if he were actually writing a book on "How eyes evolved," do not appear in the book.

* The Vision Challenge Missing Chapter: Bob Enyart brought up this vision challenge to Gary Aguilar, but, like most atheists and evolutionists we've discussed this with, Gary was unresponsive. It appears that atheists and evolutionists do not even know how to think about this problem, let alone can they offer any conceivable notion about how it could even theoretically be solved. See this vision challenge presented in full from our debate with TheologyOnline.com's resident atheist Zakath. Bob had predicted that even a state-of-the-art "tour de force" textbook by an ophthalmology professor would not even begin to describe how vision might evolve, and also, that this interview with an ophthalmologist professor would demonstrate their basic inability to substantively think through something that they routinely oversell to the public as a done deal. "We know 'how eyes evolved,' only an ignorant person would doubt our claims." At 2:33 into an interview on The Evolution of the Eye, Richard Dawkins illustrates the RSR "APPtitude test," aka, the Atheist Popularity Postulate, that the evolutionists who become the most popular are the ones who say the most absurd things with the straightest face. Imagine his evolving, curling, sheet of light-sensitive paper sending a static-like data stream to an unwitting brain that must then interpret the predator's shadow or direction of light (from the data represented by the screen above, on the left).

* Evolution Misled Eye Expert About the Eye: Gary Aguilar repeatedly claimed that the plica semilunaris (in the corner of your eye) is a functionless leftover of evolution. For example, at 3:15 into our interview, he said, "There are aspects of the human eye, for example, the nictitating membrane [which in some creatures is an additional, transparent eyelid] in lower animals is present in the plica semilunaris which has no function in humans; none whatsoever." Then to Bob's question, "Dr. Aguilar, can you repeat that, what is it that has no function whatsoever?" Gary answered, "The plica p-l-i-c-a semilunaris." However, according to the authoritative Duane's Foundations of Clinical Ophthalmology (Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Plica Semilunaris), the plica functions during movement of the eye, to help maintain tear drainage, and to permit greater rotation of the eyeball, for without the plica, the membrane called the conjunctiva would attach directly to the eyeball, restricting movement. Gary here illustrated something we describe about evolutionists, that rather than being informed with the latest knowledge from his own area of expertise, Aguilar claimed decades out of date "evidence", in his case, on the anatomy of both the wiring of the retina, and on the plica, claiming it is a functionless leftover. Rather than researching his Darwinian claims in the most relevant scientific literature, Aguilar, following Dawkins, ultimately got his outdated claims from a 150-year old book by Charles Darwin. Aguilar also repeats Dawkins' long-refuted claim, based on scientific ignorance and evolutionary bias, that the human eye is wired backward. For an explanation of why our eye is wired the reverse of an octopus, and optimally for human vision, listen to the Enyart-Aguilar-Eye-Excerpts, and see Dr. Carl Wieland's article, and a paper by Peter Gurney, a fellow of the Royal Colleges of Ophthalmologists in a peer-reviewed creation journal, as well as Gurney's popular article that deals with both the plica and the wiring. And read and hear Dr. Jerry Bergman explain that the function of the plica semilunaris has been documented since the 1930s. 2013 UPDATE: Dr. Aguilar wrote to Bob Enyart, "...let me acknowledge that the plica semilunaris is considered to have some function..." though he denied the plica aids in globe movement, thereby apparently disagreeing with the statement in Duane's Ophthalmology that, "if the conjunctiva were to directly join the eyelids to the globe, the globe and eyelids would both be restricted in movement." Perhaps Gary could share his disagreement with DO's Darlene Dartt and help everyone get to the bottom of that one particular detail.

* The Missing Trochlea Challenge Chapter: Ivan Schwab doesn't include a chapter on how simple mechanics of the eye would have evolved, as illustrated in this trochlea challenge which has been circulating on the web in evolution circles from well before Schwab's book was published. Back on April 18th, we sent to Gary our PZ Myers Trochlea Challenge. It's this simple sketch of the human eye, with a single question in its caption. PZ has responded to us, admitting that he cannot answer this challenge, and we appreciate that truthfulness.

Special Silly Episode

* Star Trek Borrows Technology from Lost in Space: Trekkie fanatics think that Gene Roddenberry introduced the world to many of our new technological concepts. Even the book, The Physics of Star Trek, written by our debate opponent physicist Lawrence Krauss, should have been titled The Physics of Lost in Space. (Krauss is known for mistitling his books, including for example, A Universe from Nothing). In reality, all those fun technological concepts came not from Star Trek, but from Lost in Space!

* Warning, warning Will Robinson: There are Bible verses up ahead. As Solomon wrote: "There is no new thing under the sun…" or, beyond it for that matter. Lost in Space first aired on TV in 1965, a year before Star Trek, and prefigured much of the technology and culture of its step-child spin off. Like these…

"Resistance is futile!" says an alien to the robot! (Wreck Of the Robot)

Transporter beam: (Prisoners of Space)

Ship's velocity: Can travel at near light speed

Weapons: Laser guns, i.e., “phasers”

Mechanical personality: Like androids on the ship, the robot is sentient, develops human emotions; experiments with humor, and like Data from The Next Generation, grows beyond his programming

Speech: Aliens always speak English except when episodic communication difficulties aid the plot

Replicator: An alien device, a "molecular replicator," can make whatever Dr. Smith wants (The Dream Monster)

Alien forms: Most aliens look humanoid while some look like reptiles

Force field: An invisible shield can protect the ship

War: Some alien civilizations have evolved beyond the use of war

Tractor beam: Invisible force that can tow an entire space ship or pull a ship even against its own propulsion into a space dock

Ethics: This is the only general category where Star Trek truly broke new ground. On Lost in Space, Captain John Robinson and his family are relatively consistent with the application of justice (except for their irritating, relentless, and unbiblical forgiving of Dr. Smith). On the other hand, Star Trek captains seem to violate their federation's Prime Directive on every other episode. :) Captain Kirk, Captain Picard, and Janeway, the first-ever female star ship captain (who got lost on her very first episode, didn't like asking for directions, took seven full seasons to find her way back, and who in the real world, as played by Kate Mulgrew, narrated an unfortunate documentary on geocentrism that claims that the sun and the universe orbit the Earth every 24 hours), not only violate the Prime Directive repeatedly by interfering with underdeveloped alien civilizations, but always with positive results. The Federation has itself evolved beyond warfare and the use of force yet every ship is equipped with weapons of mass destruction, the inventory of which is frequently restocked. (Picard himself personally killed more than three-dozen "people", i.e., sentient beings, not counting the annihilation of entire crews on ships blown to bits by the Enterprise.)

* We're Not Saying that Gene Rodenberry Wasn't a Visionary: If imitation is the sincerest form of flatterys, Rodenberry was exceedingly magnamous. It's not that he wasn't a visionary; we're just saying that he was even better at ripping off other people! Like the episode of The Outer Limits which featured William Shatner in the lead role as a space explorer involved in a mission called "Project Vulcan".