Factors that Determine School Effectiveness

If we review the factors that determine school effectiveness we can see that education technology is only one of the issues in one of the sections of one of the factors (Teaching/Learning Process) from a number of factors that determine the effectiveness of schools. Education Technology is only 'an array of tools that may assist' and high-end education technology is not really an important Teaching and Learning issue for quality teachers and lecturers who are dynamic and creative in their teaching practices.
Below we can see in perspective the role of education technology in an effective school "".


Original Diagram from: Factors that Determine School Effectiveness (World Bank)

Adequate Facilities

Schools of course need basic facilities including a Computer Laboratory and Library that is sufficiently stocked with books. All schools are responsible for teaching computer and Information Technology Skills (ICT). The study of technology is an important issue for all school levels in Indonesia because all students who leave school need computer skills. In Indonesia many students leave school after Junior High School and there are still many students who leave after Primary School therefore it is important that all school levels teach basic computer skills including primary schools.

The Government and School Principals are responsible for achieving the pre-requisites for effective learning mentioned above including computer laboratories, libraries, School Climate and Enabling Conditions.
Variety in Teaching Strategies

It is the Teachers' and Lecturers' responsibility to provide variety and creativity in teaching strategies. Educators must maximize their abilities and creativity in order to provide lesson plans and strategies that are both interesting and effective. A major issue in the planning of these effective strategies is that the learners are encouraged to be as active in the learning process as possible. Teachers and Lecturers can choose from all forms of learning support including models, audio-visual aids, and an array of technological tools.

An important issue when choosing technology as a learning tool is that you use it for the shortest duration practicable because many forms of technology like video and data projectors can make the role of the student very passive during the Learning / Teaching Process, and can create boredom if not used carefully.

Copied from : http://educationtechnology.us/qualitye.html

Teaching & Learning Activities (TLA)

We believe that improving the quality of Teaching and Learning Activities (TLA) is the most important issue related to achieving quality education in Indonesia. However, before we discuss specific TLA issues we need to discuss some general issues and define some specific issues that determine the quality of education.

Is the objective of Teaching and Learning Activities to deliver/transfer some specific information or knowledge, or to teach a specific skill or competency to the learner? Or are there broder objectives to be achieved?

We can still remember when Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) emerged formally in Indonesia. Many teachers in the field were quite confused. This was due to a number of issues including the fact that many competencies itemized in the curriculum were not clear competencies, and they would be very difficult to assess. Another reason for the confusion was that teachers didn't believe that they would have enough time to teach and assess each of the competencies, as there were so many of them.

However, this is not a problem because we don't need to teach each of the competencies individually. In one lesson we can teach and assess many competencies simultaneously.

In fact in every class we are obliged to teach as many competencies as we can whether we use CBC or not.

What is Quality Education?

There are many definitions for quality education but we feel that this definition from UNICEF (below) is complete enough:
• Learners who are healthy, well-nourished and ready to participate and learn, and supported in learning by their families and communities;
• Environments that are healthy, safe, protective and gender-sensitive, and provide adequate resources and facilities;
• Content that is reflected in relevant curricula and materials for the acquisition of basic skills, especially in the areas of literacy, numeracy and skills for life, and knowledge in such areas as gender, health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS prevention and peace;
• Processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities;
• Outcomes that encompass knowledge, skills and attitudes, and are linked to national goals for education and positive participation in society.
How can we implement quality education in Indonesia?
"Learners who are healthy" Firstly we need to be aware that health and well-being are education issues. For instance when I mentioned at an education seminar recently that 5,000 children under 5 die each day in Indonesia because of diarrhea the reaction was one of silence, the relevance perhaps wasn't clear. This is why our Education Network has a specific news section "Education & Poverty" because poverty and health are two factors that significantly effect education (for all) here.

"Environments that are healthy" Tens of thousands of schools in Indonesia are either damaged, collapsed, or collapsing. If we are serious about achieving quality education "for all" this must be the main priority for achieving basic education equity in Indonesia. Even though learning resources and facilities are very important issues, all students (and teachers) have the right to be able to access a school without fear for personal safety.

"Content that is reflected in relevant curricula and materials for the acquisition of basic skills, especially in the areas of literacy, numeracy and skills for life". Curriculum needs to go through constant review and update according to the changing environment and needs of our students so that they can face the future confidently and creatively.

There are usually three versions/variations of curriculum that we need to address; the National Curriculum, Regional Curriculum (perhaps includes some local language content), and the School Curriculum (reflects the desires and needs of the school community including the general local community and industry). Local school curriculum is very important and can take the form of extra-curricular activities for addressing specific issues like religion, social skills, independency skills, skills associated with local industry needs (vocational), etc. Local school curriculum can be very helpful for improving the quality of human resource outcomes at the local level.

"Processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches"
What do we mean by "child centered"? Child centered learning is a system of learning in which the focus for the learning is upon the learner, not the teacher. The teacher assumes a role as more of a facilitator or manager of the learning process. For instance in kindergartens the teachers often teach the children through their participation in games. In the game there will be learning activities which facilitate various types of learning for instance; social skills and resolution of problems, counting and numeracy, drawing, motor skills, telling stories in their own words, general creativity skills, etc.

At the Primary and Junior Secondary levels (Basic Education) there are already many fine examples which prove the benefits and gains from "Child Centered Learning". In Indonesia it is called Learning that is Active, Creative, Effective and Enjoyable (PAKEM) or Contextual Learning and you can find many examples at Basic Education (MBE).

At the Senior High School lever (SMU/A/K) we can still see many learning activities in the schools that are not yet Student Centered. Maybe because there are still many teachers that aren't familiar with the process, or as we sometimes hear, the teachers are still doubtful that they can finish the curriculum on time using PAKEM methodology. However, by utilizing the PAKEM L/T process the students can learn very quickly and enjoy the learning experience while gaining other forms of learning i.e. life skills, self-mangement, independence, research, etc, while they are learning the main or primary topic#.

#Remember we said above: "In fact in every class we are obliged to teach as many competencies as we can whether we use CBC or not"

Contextual learning is one of the issues that often signifies the differences in the quality of learning between national and international schools. However, several national schools have been using contextual learning for some time for instance Madania in Parung, Bogor, West Java.

It's in Higher Education where we can witness teaching and learning practices in most classes that are very passive. The learning process is usually very 'lecturer centered' with the students tending to "sit sweetly", and they are rarely involved actively in the learning process.

Does it have to be like this? Certainly not!

Lecturers, like teachers in schools, are responsible for making the learning experiences of our students as active, time-effective and as meaningful as possible. We need to be creative and utilize strategies, even though our classes may be quite large, whereby our students are as active as possible during the learning process.

A few years ago when I was working in a very well known Australian university I needed to improve my knowledge of anatomy for a professional massage course that I was undertaking. I asked some physiology students for recommendations about basic anatomy classes that would be useful. Their recommendation shocked me because they said that I would be better off just buying the anotomy textbook and reading it because that is all the lecturers do, they work their way through the textbook. As a teacher I found this revelation to be apalling.

For those lecturers that may be reading this, have you ever attended a series of semiars based mainly upon oration or speeches for a whole day? Were you longing to go home or go to sleep? Now most presenters use laptops and data projectors. Is it really any different? After two or three presentations aren't you still longing to go home or go to sleep? It's just the same, isn't it?

Sometimes the poor utilization of technology makes the situation even worse because if you are sitting at the rear of the room you may not be able read what is on the screen, and you feel that you are not even included because you can not access to the information.

The one issue that will most significantly raise the quality of education in Indonesia (and elsewhere in universities) is the activation of our learners in the learning and teaching process (LTA) at all levels of education, not issues like technology.

Education technology is only an "array of tools that might prove useful" for where they can improve the learning and teaching process, but the technology must be appropriate and doesn't need to be highly sophisticated. If we frequently use the same technologies, even the most hi-tech, our students can quickly become bored. Often the simplest form of technology can provide the greatest assistance to our teaching and learning activities (TLA).
Copied from : http://educationtechnology.us/kbme.html

Creating an Automatic Saving Program in New Document of Microsoft Word

Creating a new document is an activity simply. But we sometime forget to saving it. So this article helps us to saving the document automatically.

When you click File New or Ctrl+N the dialog will seen like :


After it you give a file name, for example Fitri:



Like last article, We use Visual Basic Editor fasility. Follow the steps behind:
You click Tools => Macro => Visual Basic Editor or enter keyboard together (ALT+F10) so will dialog visual basic editor. After that step is done, then right click project


then copy this code into place of source code:
------------------

'Tips dan Trik Visual Basic Editor
'CopyLeft by Sutrisno
'http://trisnowlaharwetan.net

Sub AddName()
On Error Resume Next
Dim NamaFile
NamaFile = InputBox("Enter File Name", "Trisno's Project")
If NamaFile = "" Then Exit Sub
Documents.Add
ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:=NamaFile
End Sub

Sub FileNew()
Call AddName
End Sub

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

Good luck...

An Illustrated History of Computers

The first computers were people! That is, electronic computers (and the earlier mechanical computers) were given this name because they performed the work that had previously been assigned to people. "Computer" was originally a job title: it was used to describe those human beings (predominantly women) whose job it was to perform the repetitive calculations required to compute such things as navigational tables, tide charts, and planetary positions for astronomical almanacs. Imagine you had a job where hour after hour, day after day, you were to do nothing but compute multiplications. Boredom would quickly set in, leading to carelessness, leading to mistakes. And even on your best days you wouldn't be producing answers very fast. Therefore, inventors have been searching for hundreds of years for a way to mechanize (that is, find a mechanism that can perform) this task.

The abacus was an early aid for mathematical computations. Its only value is that it aids the memory of the human performing the calculation. A skilled abacus operator can work on addition and subtraction problems at the speed of a person equipped with a hand calculator (multiplication and division are slower). The abacus is often wrongly attributed to China. In fact, the oldest surviving abacus was used in 300 B.C. by the Babylonians. The abacus is still in use today, principally in the far east. A modern abacus consists of rings that slide over rods, but the older one pictured below dates from the time when pebbles were used for counting (the word "calculus" comes from the Latin word for pebble).

In 1617 an eccentric (some say mad) Scotsman named John Napier invented logarithms, which are a technology that allows multiplication to be performed via addition. The magic ingredient is the logarithm of each operand, which was originally obtained from a printed table. But Napier also invented an alternative to tables, where the logarithm values were carved on ivory sticks which are now called Napier's Bones.

Napier's invention led directly to the slide rule, first built in England in 1632 and still in use in the 1960's by the NASA engineers of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs which landed men on the moon.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) made drawings of gear-driven calculating machines but apparently never built any.

The first gear-driven calculating machine to actually be built was probably the calculating clock, so named by its inventor, the German professor Wilhelm Schickard in 1623. This device got little publicity because Schickard died soon afterward in the bubonic plague.

In 1642 Blaise Pascal, at age 19, invented the Pascaline as an aid for his father who was a tax collector. Pascal built 50 of this gear-driven one-function calculator (it could only add) but couldn't sell many because of their exorbitant cost and because they really weren't that accurate (at that time it was not possible to fabricate gears with the required precision). Up until the present age when car dashboards went digital, the odometer portion of a car's speedometer used the very same mechanism as the Pascaline to increment the next wheel after each full revolution of the prior wheel. Pascal was a child prodigy. At the age of 12, he was discovered doing his version of Euclid's thirty-second proposition on the kitchen floor. Pascal went on to invent probability theory, the hydraulic press, and the syringe. Shown below is an 8 digit version of the Pascaline, and two views of a 6 digit version.

Copied from : http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/History.htm

IMAGINARY MECHANISMS OF EVOLUTION

The neo-Darwinist model, which we shall take as the mainstream theory of evolution today, argues that life has evolved through two natural mechanisms: "natural selection" and "mutation". The theory basically asserts that natural selection and mutation are two complementary mechanisms. The origin of evolutionary modifications lies in random mutations that take place in the genetic structures of living things. The traits brought about by mutations are selected by the mechanism of natural selection, and by this means living things evolve.

When we look further into this theory, we find that there is no such evolutionary mechanism. Neither natural selection nor mutations make any contribution at all to the transformation of different species into one another, and the claim that they do is completely unfounded.


Natural Selection

As process of nature, natural selection was familiar to biologists before Darwin, who defined it as a "mechanism that keeps species unchanging without being corrupted". Darwin was the first person to put forward the assertion that this process had evolutionary power and he then erected his entire theory on the foundation of this assertion. The name he gave to his book indicates that natural selection was the basis of Darwin's theory: The Origin of Species, by means of Natural Selection...

However since Darwin's time, there has not been a single shred of evidence put forward to show that natural selection causes living things to evolve. Colin Patterson, the senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History in London and a prominent evolutionist, stresses that natural selection has never been observed to have the ability to cause things to evolve:

No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has ever got near it and most of the current argument in neo-Darwinism is about this question.13

Natural selection holds that those living things that are more suited to the natural conditions of their habitats will prevail by having offspring that will survive, whereas those that are unfit will disappear. For example, in a deer herd under the threat of wild animals, naturally those that can run faster will survive. That is true. But no matter how long this process goes on, it will not transform those deer into another living species. The deer will always remain deer.

When we look at the few incidents the evolutionists have put forth as observed examples of natural selection, we see that these are nothing but a simple attempt to hoodwink.


"Industrial Melanism"

In 1986 Douglas Futuyma published a book, The Biology of Evolution, which is accepted as one of the sources explaining the theory of evolution by natural selection in the most explicit way. The most famous of his examples on this subject is about the colour of the moth population, which appeared to darken during the Industrial Revolution in England. It is possible to find the story of the Industrial Melanism in almost all evolutionist biology books, not just in Futuyma's book. The story is based on a series of experiments conducted by the British physicist and biologist Bernard Kettlewell in the 1950s, and can be summarised as follows:

According to the account, around the onset of the Industrial Revolution in England, the colour of the tree barks around Manchester was quite light. Because of this, dark-coloured (melanic) moths resting on those trees could easily be noticed by the birds that fed on them and therefore they had very little chance of survival. Fifty years later, in woodlands where industrial pollutionhas killedthe lichens, the barks of the trees had darkened, and now the light-coloured moths became the most hunted, since they were the most easily noticed. As a result, the proportion of light-coloured moths to dark-coloured moths decreased. Evolutionists believe this to be a great piece of evidence for their theory. They take refuge and solace in window-dressing, showing how light-coloured moths "evolved" into dark-coloured ones.

However, even if we assume these to be correct, it should be quite clear that they can in no way be used as evidence for the theory of evolution, since no new form arose that had not existed before. Dark colored moths had existed in the moth population before the Industrial Revolution. Only the relative proportions of the existing moth varieties in the population changed. The moths had not acquired a new trait or organ, which would cause "speciation". In order for one moth species to turn into another living species, a bird for example, new additions would have had to be made to its genes. That is, an entirely separate genetic program would have had to be loaded so as to include information about the physical traits of the bird.

This is the answer to be given to the evolutionist story of Industrial Melanism. However, there is a more interesting side to the story: Not just its interpretation, but the story itself is flawed. As molecular biologist Jonathan Wells explains in his book Icons of Evolution, the story of the peppered moths, which is included in every evolutionist biology book and has therefore, become an "icon" in this sense, does not reflect the truth. Wells discusses in his book how Bernard Kettlewell's experiment, which is known as the "experimental proof" of the story, is actually a scientific scandal. Some basic elements of this scandal are:

* Many experiments conducted after Kettlewell's revealed that only one type of these moths rested on tree trunks, and all other types preferred to rest beneath small, horizontal branches. Since 1980 it has become clear that peppered moths do not normally rest on tree trunks. In 25 years of fieldwork, many scientists such as Cyril Clarke and Rory Howlett, Michael Majerus, Tony Liebert, and Paul Brakefield concluded that "in Kettlewell's experiment, moths were forced to act atypically, therefore, the test results could not be accepted as scientific".

* Scientists who tested Kettlewell's conclusions came up with an even more interesting result: Although the number of light moths would be expected to be larger in the less polluted regions of England, the dark moths there numbered four times as many as the light ones. This meant that there was no correlation between the moth population and the tree trunks as claimed by Kettlewell and repeated by almost all evolutionist sources.

* As the research deepened, the scandal changed dimension: "The moths on tree trunks" photographed by Kettlewell, were actually dead moths. Kettlewell used dead specimens glued or pinned to tree trunks and then photographed them. In truth, there was little chance of taking such a picture as the moths rested not on tree trunks but underneath the leaves.14

These facts were uncovered by the scientific community only in the late 1990s. The collapse of the myth of Industrial Melanism, which had been one of the most treasured subjects in "Introduction to Evolution" courses in universities for decades, greatly disappointed evolutionists. One of them, Jerry Coyne, remarked:

My own reaction resembles the dismay attending my discovery, at the age of six, that it was my father and not Santa who brought the presents on Christmas Eve.15

Thus, "the most famous example of natural selection" was relegated to the trash-heap of history as a scientific scandal which was inevitable, because natural selection is not an "evolutionary mechanism," contrary to what evolutionists claim. It is capable neither of adding a new organ to a living organism, nor of removing one, nor of changing an organism of one species into that of another.

Why Cannot Natural Selection Explain Complexity?

There is nothing that natural selection contributes to the theory of evolution, because this mechanism can never increase or improve the genetic information of a species. Neither can it transform one species into another: a starfish into a fish, a fish into a frog, a frog into a crocodile, or a crocodile into a bird. The biggest defender of punctuated equilibrium, Stephen Jay Gould, refers to this impasse of natural selection as follows;

The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well.16

Another of the misleading methods that evolutionists employ on the issue of natural selection is their effort to present this mechanism as conscious. However, natural selection has no consciousness. It does not possess a will that can decide what is good and what is bad for living things. As a result, one cannot explain biological systems and organs that possess the feature of "irreducible complexity" by natural selection. These systems and organs are composed of a great number of parts cooperating together, and are of no use if even one of these parts is missing or defective. (For example, the human eye does not function unless it exists with all its components intact). Therefore, the will that brings all these parts together should be able to foresee the future and aim directly at the advantage that is to be acquired at the final stage. Since natural selection has no consciousness or will, it can do no such thing. This fact, which demolishes the foundations of the theory of evolution, also worried Darwin, who wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." 17

Through natural selection, only the disfigured, weak, or unfit individuals of a species are selected out. New species, new genetic information, or new organs cannot be produced. That is, living things cannot evolve through natural selection. Darwin accepted this reality by saying: "Natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur".18 This is why neo-Darwinism has had to elevate mutations next to natural selection as the "cause of beneficial changes". However as we shall see, mutations can only be "the cause for harmful changes".

Copied from : http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter4.php

The Desperate Efforts of Neo-Darwinism

Darwin's theory entered into a deep crisis because of the laws of genetics discovered in the first quarter of the 20th century. Nevertheless, a group of scientists who were determined to remain loyal to Darwin endeavoured to come up with solutions. They came together in a meeting organised by the Geological Society of America in 1941. Geneticists such as G. Ledyard Stebbins and Theodosius Dobzhansky, zoologists such as Ernst Mayr and Julian Huxley, paleontologists such as George Gaylord Simpson and Glenn L. Jepsen, and mathematical geneticists such as Ronald Fisher and Sewall Right, after long discussions, finally agreed on ways to "patch up" Darwinism.

This cadre focused on the question of the origin of the advantageous variations that supposedly caused living organisms to evolve-an issue that Darwin himself was unable to explain but simply tried to side-step by depending on Lamarck. The idea was now "random mutations". They named this new theory "The Modern Synthetic Evolution Theory", which was formulated by adding the concept of mutation to Darwin's natural selection thesis. In a short time, this theory came to be known as "neo-Darwinism" and those who put forward the theory were called "neo-Darwinists".

The following decades were to become an era of desperate attempts to prove neo-Darwinism. It was already known that mutations-or "accidents" -that took place in the genes of living organisms were always harmful. Neo-Darwinists tried to establish a case for "advantageous mutation" by carrying out thousands of mutation experiments. All their attempts ended in complete failure.

They also tried to prove that the first living organisms could have originated by chance under primitive terrestrial conditions that the theory posited but the same failure attended these experiments too. Every experiment that sought to prove that life could be generated by chance failed. Probability calculations prove that not even a single protein, the building-blocks of life, could have originated by chance. And the cell-which supposedly emerged by chance under primitive and uncontrolled terrestrial conditions according to the evolutionists-could not be synthesised by even the most sophisticated laboratories of the 20th century.

Neo-Darwinist theory is also defeated by the fossil record. No "transitional forms", which were supposed to show the gradual evolution of living organisms from primitive to advanced species as the neo-Darwinist theory claimed, have ever been found anywhere in the world. At the same time, comparative anatomy revealed that species that were supposed to have evolved from one another had in fact very different anatomical features and that they could never have been ancestors or descendants of each other.

But neo-Darwinism was never a scientific theory anyway, but was an ideological dogma if not to say some sort of "false religion". The Canadian philosopher of science Michael Ruse, a staunch evolutionist himself, confesses this in a speech he gave at a 1993 meeting:

And certainly, there's no doubt about it, that in the past, and I think also in the present, for many evolutionists, evolution has functioned as something with elements which are, let us say, akin to being a secular religion ... And it seems to me very clear that at some very basic level, evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to a kind of naturalism...11

This is why the champions of the theory of evolution still go on defending it in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. One thing they cannot agree on however is which of the different models proposed for the realisation of evolution is the "right" one. One of the most important of these models is the fantastic scenario known as "punctuated equilibrium".

Trial and Error: Punctuated Equilibrium Most of the scientists who believe in evolution accept the neo-Darwinist theory of slow, gradual evolution. In recent decades, however, a different model has been proposed. Called "punctuated equilibrium", this model maintains that living species came about not through a series of small changes, as Darwin had maintained, but by sudden, large ones.

The first vociferous defenders of this notion appeared at the beginning of the 1970s. Two American paleontologists, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, were well aware that the claims of the neo-Darwinist theory were absolutely refuted by the fossil record. Fossils proved that living organisms did not originate by gradual evolution, but appeared suddenly and fully-formed. Neo-Darwinists were living with the fond hope-they still do-that the lost transitional forms would one day be found. Realising that this hope was groundless, Eldredge and Gould were nevertheless unable to abandon their evolutionary dogma, so they put forward a new model: punctuated equilibrium. This is the claim that evolution did not take place as a result of minor variations but rather in sudden and great changes.

This model was nothing but a model for fantasies. For instance, European paleontologist O.H. Shindewolf, who led the way for Eldredge and Gould, claimed that the first bird came out of a reptile egg, as a "gross mutation", that is, as a result of a huge "accident" that took place in the genetic structure.12 According to the same theory, some land-dwelling animals could have turned into giant whales having undergone a sudden and comprehensive transformation. These claims, totally contradicting all the rules of genetics, biophysics, and biochemistry are as scientific as the fairy tales about frogs turning into princes! Nevertheless, being distressed by the crisis that the neo-Darwinist assertion was in, some evolutionist paleontologists embraced this theory, which had the distinction of being even more bizarre than neo-Darwinism itself.

The only purpose of this model was to provide an explanation of the gaps in the fossil-record that the neo-Darwinist model could not explain. However, it is hardly rational to attempt to explain the fossil gap in the evolution of birds with a claim that "a bird popped all of a sudden out of a reptile egg", because by the evolutionists' own admission, the evolution of a species to another species requires a great and advantageous change in genetic information. However, no mutation whatsoever improves the genetic information or adds new information to it. Mutations only derange genetic information. Thus the "gross mutations" imagined by the punctuated equilibrium model would only cause "gross", that is "great", reductions and impairments in the genetic information.

Moreover, the model of "punctuated equilibrium" collapses from the very first step by its inability to address the question of the origin of life, which is also the question that refutes the neo-Darwinist model from the outset. Since not even a single protein can have originated by chance, the debate over whether organisms made up of trillions of those proteins have undergone a "punctuated" or "gradual" evolution is senseless.

In spite of this, the model that comes to mind when "evolution" is at issue today is still neo-Darwinism. In the chapters that follow, we will first examine two imaginary mechanisms of the neo-Darwinist model and then look at the fossil record to test this model. After that, we will dwell upon the question of the origin of life, which invalidates both the neo-Darwinist model and all other evolutionist models such as "evolution by leaps".

Before doing so, it may be useful to remind the reader that the reality we will be confronting at every stage is that the evolutionary scenario is a fairy-tale, a great deceit that is totally at variance with the real world. It is a scenario that has been used to deceive the world for 140 years. Thanks to the latest scientific discoveries, its continued defence has at last become impossible.

Copied from : http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter3_1.php

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE THEORY

The roots of evolutionist thought go back as far as antiquity as a dogmatic belief attempting to deny the fact of creation. Most of the pagan philosophers in ancient Greece defended the idea of evolution. When we take a look at the history of philosophy we see that the idea of evolution constitutes the backbone of many pagan philosophies.

However, it is not this ancient pagan philosophy, but faith in God which has played a stimulating role in the birth and development of modern science. Most of the people who pioneered modern science believed in the existence of God; and while studying science, they sought to discover the universe God has created and to perceive His laws and the details in His creation. Astronomers such as Copernicus, Keppler, and Galileo; the father of paleontology, Cuvier; the pioneer of botany and zoology, Linnaeus; and Isaac Newton, who is referred to as the "greatest scientist who ever lived", all studied science believing not only in the existence of God but also that the whole universe came into being as a result of His creation. 6 Albert Einstein, considered to be the greatest genius of our age, was another devout scientist who believed in God and stated thus; "I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame."7

One of the founders of modern physics, German physician Max Planck said: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality which the scientist cannot dispense with."8

The theory of evolution is the outcome of the materialist philosophy that surfaced with the reawakening of ancient materialistic philosophies and became widespread in the 19th century. As we have indicated before, materialism seeks to explain nature through purely material factors. Since it denies creation right from the start, it asserts that every thing, whether animate or inanimate, has appeared without an act of creation but rather as a result of a coincidence that then acquired a condition of order. The human mind however is so structured as to comprehend the existence of an organising will wherever it sees order. Materialistic philosophy, which is contrary to this very basic characteristic of the human mind, produced "the theory of evolution" in the middle of the 19th century.


Darwin’s Imagination

The person who put forward the theory of evolution the way it is defended today, was an amateur English naturalist, Charles Robert Darwin.

Darwin had never undergone a formal education in biology. He took only an amateur interest in the subject of nature and living things. His interest spurred him to voluntarily join an expedition on board a ship named H.M.S. Beagle that set out from England in 1832 and travelled around different regions of the world for five years. Young Darwin was greatly impressed by various living species, especially by certain finches that he saw in the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the variations in their beaks were caused by their adaptation to their habitat. With this idea in mind, he supposed that the origin of life and species lay in the concept of "adaptation to the environment". Darwin opposed the fact that God created different living species separately, suggesting that they rather came from a common ancestor and became differentiated from each other as a result of natural conditions.

Darwin's hypothesis was not based on any scientific discovery or experiment; in time however he turned it into a pretentious theory with the support and encouragement he received from the famous materialist biologists of his time. The idea was that the individuals that adapted to the habitat in the best way transferred their qualities to subsequent generations; these advantageous qualities accumulated in time and transformed the individual into a species totally different from its ancestors. (The origin of these "advantageous qualities" was unknown at the time.) According to Darwin, man was the most developed outcome of this imaginary mechanism.

Darwin called this process "evolution by natural selection". He thought he had found the "origin of species": the origin of one species was another species. He published these views in his book titled The Origin of Species, By Means of Natural Selection in 1859.

Darwin was well aware that his theory faced lots of problems. He confessed these in his book in the chapter "Difficulties of the Theory". These difficulties primarily consisted of the fossil record, complex organs of living things that could not possibly be explained by coincidence (e.g. the eye), and the instincts of living beings. Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome by new discoveries; yet this did not stop him from coming up with a number of very inadequate explanations for some. The American physicist Lipson made the following comment on the "difficulties" of Darwin:

On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled "Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen. 9

While developing his theory, Darwin was impressed by many evolutionist biologists preceding him, and primarily by the French biologist, Lamarck. 10 According to Lamarck, living creatures passed the traits they acquired during their lifetime from one generation to the next and thus evolved. For instance, giraffes evolved from antelope-like animals by extending their necks further and further from generation to generation as they tried to reach higher and higher branches for food. Darwin thus employed the thesis of "passing the acquired traits" proposed by Lamarck as the factor that made living beings evolve.

But both Darwin and Lamarck were mistaken because in their day, life could only be studied with very primitive technology and at a very inadequate level. Scientific fields such as genetics and biochemistry did not exist even in name. Their theories therefore had to depend entirely on their powers of imagination.

Darwin's Racism

One of the most important yet least-known aspects of Darwin is his racism: Darwin regarded white Europeans as more "advanced" than other human races. While Darwin presumed that man evolved from ape-like creatures, he surmised that some races developed more than others and that the latter still bore simian features. In his book, The Descent of Man, which he published after The Origin of Species, he boldly commented on "the greater differences between men of distinct races".1 In his book, Darwin held blacks and Australian Aborigines to be equal to gorillas and then inferred that these would be "done away with" by the "civilised races" in time. He said:

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.2

Darwin's nonsensical ideas were not only theorised, but also brought into a position where they provided the most important "scientific ground" for racism. Supposing that living beings evolved in the struggle for life, Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences, and turned into a conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism.

Supposing that living beings evolved in the struggle for life, Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences, and turned into a conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism".

Social Darwinism contends that existing human races are located at different rungs of the "evolutionary ladder", that the European races were the most "advanced" of all, and that many other races still bear "simian" features.

1 Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said. London: Sphere Books, 1971, pp. 54-56
2 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed., New York: A.L. Burt Co., 1874, p. 178

While the echoes of Darwin's book reverberated, an Austrian botanist by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance in 1865. Not much heard of until the end of the century, Mendel's discovery gained great importance in the early 1900s. This was the birth of the science of genetics. Somewhat later, the structure of the genes and the chromosomes was discovered. The discovery, in the 1950s, of the structure of the DNA molecule that incorporates genetic information threw the theory of evolution into a great crisis. The reason was the incredible complexity of life and the invalidity of the evolutionary mechanisms proposed by Darwin.

These developments ought to have resulted in Darwin's theory being banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the theory to a scientific platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we realise that behind the theory lay ideological intentions rather than scientific concerns.

Copied from : http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter3.php