Email sent to Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science on April 29, 2013
I'm trying to get the American Journal of Physics to retract the attached article because it propagates misinformation about evolution and thermodynamics. My correspondence with the AJP and other physics organizations in on my blog at http://www.newevangelist.me. I recently submitted a 10-page document with 9 exhibits to my congressman explaining why the fraudulent nature of the article and its maliciousness is a matter of national concern. The absurdity of the AJP article is explained at http://creationwiki.org/Pseudoscience_in_the_American_Journal_of_Physics.

If the article is not retracted, I'd like to submit a manuscript explaining this affair. What follows is a redaction of what I gave Congresswomen Yvette Clarke of New York. None of this material is copyrighted. Feel free to do with it whatever you want.

The theory of evolution is that microscopic organisms evolved into whales and elephants in about a billion years. This gives rise to the question of what caused this to happen. The only theory supported by the evidence is natural selection acting upon innovations. Not enough is known about the innovations to understand this increase in the complexity of life. In other words, natural selection doesn’t explain common descent. Evolutionary biologists always speak of “adaptive evolution.”

The only theory that even attempts to explain the complexity of life and common descent is the theory of intelligent design (ID). The trouble with this theory is that there is no evidence for it. To make their theory look better, ID advocates compare ID with natural selection. Many people go along with this scam because they don’t want to admit ID is a better theory than natural selection in some sense. They are more interested in arguing against God’s existence than in evolutionary biology.

As a result of this conflict about ID, many non-biologist think natural selection does explain the complexity of life and common descent. I call this ignorance and irrationality level 1 of the fraud being perpetrated upon the citizens of the United States by an article published in the American Journal of Physics (“Entropy and evolution,” Am. J. Phys., Vol. 76, No. 11, November 2008). Level 2 of the fraud is that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Level 3 of the fraud is the idea that evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because evolution did not occur in a closed system.

Level 4 of the fraud is the absurd calculation in “Entropy and evolution.” The author estimates the probability of an organism A evolving into organism B in 100 years as being 1/1000. He then plugs this number into the Boltzmann equation for entropy to calculate the change in entropy of the biosphere.

Email from editor on May 14, 2013
Dear Mr. Roemer:
Thank you for sending Zygon your manuscript entitled "Exploring the Conflict Between Science and Religion" (ID: ZYGON-A-2013-05-0043).

We receive many proposals that, for one reason or another, we must decline to pursue. Yours falls in this category given our current volume of papers. I don't think that it is of sufficient interest for the readers of Zygon to become involved in a dispute regarding another journal. Furthermore, a central element in the argument seems to be that the conflict between ID and Darwinists is due to different views of the cosmological argument, which seems historically and philosophically inaccurate.

Please accept my best wishes for your future work.
Sincerely,
Willem B. Drees
Editor, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science
w.b.drees@hum.leidenuniv.nl
http://www.zygonjournal.org/

Faxed letter to Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science dated May 14, 2013
Re: ZYGON-A-2013-05-0043
To: Debra H. Van Der Molen, Willem B. Drees, and Karl E. Peters:
I think my submitted manuscript proved that the AJP article (“Entropy and evolution,” Am. J. Phys., Vol. 76, No. 11, November 2008) is a hoax analogous to the infamous Piltdown Man. I made it very clear in my submission and in my email to Karl Peters dated April 29 that I am not interested in publishing another article exposing this scam. My goal is to get the AJP to retract this article. I consider Willem B. Drees’s email to me dishonest. Just like the AJP, Zygon is trying to create a fraudulent paper trail that will make it look like Zygon carried out its professional and moral responsibilities.

What Zygon should do re-write the article in a way that your readers will be interested in. If you don’t do this, you will be helping the AJP perpetrate a fraud. All of the supporters of Zygon will become collaborators. I will make sure that their guilt will be documented by sending faxes, emails, and certified letters.

This scandal sheds light on the murders committed by the Nazis during WWII. No one was ever forced to kill anyone. However, there were severe penalties for telling about the murders. Collaboration took the form of being silent.
Very truly yours,
David Roemer
Faxed to 773 256 0782,
emailed to w.b.drees@hum.leidenuniv.nl and zygon@lstc.edu

Email to presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America sent on May 22, 2013
Dear Right Reverend Mark Hanson,
The American Journal of Physics published an article with a fake calculation showing that biological evolution did not violate the laws of physics (“Entropy and evolution,” Am. J. Phys., Vol. 76, No. 11, November 2008). I have a Ph.D. in physics, and I cannot understand how such an article could be written and published. In its correspondence with me, the editor of the AJP engaged in trickery to avoid having to retract the article. That the science establishment is allowing the AJP to continue to spread misinformation about physics and evolution is even more unfathomable. The closest I can come to a real-life analogy is the murder of civilians by the German government during World War II. No one was ever forced to kill anyone. But, there were severe penalties for telling about the murders.

The AJP article is a piece of anti-religious propaganda. Creationists are explicitly mentioned and slandered with the accusation that they think evolution violates the laws of physics. Creationists know no more about physics than Lutherans, Muslims, and any other religious group. The science of the Big Bang, the origin of life, evolution, and fine-tuning of physical constants are nevertheless part of our salvation history because the Bible says God created the universe from nothing. The inability of science to explain these phenomena is a reason to believe in the Bible. Lying about science, or covering up a lie, is equivalent to lying about our salvation history.

One of the persons I’v accused of wrongdoing is Willem Drees, the editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in American has a close association with through the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and its Zygon Center for Religion and Science. Dr. Drees rejected the attached article in a disingenuous manner. I’v asked James Nieman to mediate this dispute with Willem Drees and gave him the attached letter and manuscript. I have also contacted through email, faxes, and telephone calls the 46 editors Zygon lists on its website. Only Frans de Waal, an anthropologist at Emory University, has shown an interest.
Very truly yours,
David Roemer

Open letter sent to advisors of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science on March 11, 2014
To Francisco J. Ayala, Zainal Abidin Bagir, Anindita N. Balslev, Joseph Bulbulia, Ronald Cole-Turner, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Terrence Deacon, Celia Deane-Drummond, Willem B. Drees, George Ellis, Dirk Evers, Owen J. Flanagan, Mohammed Ghaly, Ursula Goodenough, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Nidhal Guessoum, Peter Harrison, Philip Hefner, Michael S. Hogue, Antje Jackelén, Melvin J. Konner, Seung Chul Kim, Li Jianhui, Liu Xiaoting, Lu Feng, Ann Milliken Pederson, Gregory Peterson, James F. Moore, Andrew B Newberg, Karl E. Peters, Varadaraja V. Raman, Holmes Rolston III, Robert J. Russell, Robert A. Segal, Christopher Southgate, Ann Taves, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, Mary Evelyn Tucker, Claudia Vanney, Frans de Waal, Wesley J. Wildman, Amos Yong, Solomon H. Katz, Edwin C. Laurenson, Michael Ruse, John A. Teske, and Gayle E. Woloschak

I am accusing the editor of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science (Willem Drees) of rejecting two manuscripts I submitted (ZYGON-A-2014-03-0019 and ZYGON-A-2013-05-0043) in a dishonest manner with the goal of helping of the American Journal of Physics cover up the mistake it made in publishing an article about evolution and the second law of thermodynamics (Am. J. Phys., Vol. 76, No. 11, November 2008).

The AJP article mistakenly applies the Boltzmann equation for entropy to a living organism in order to squelch creationists for saying that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics has nothing to do with the evolution of stars or biological evolution. I told my congressman (Yvette Clarke, D-NY, 9th district) that the AJP is perpetrating a hoax with the goal of promoting atheism. My correspondence with the U.S. House of Representatives is here:
http://newevangelist.me/2013/04/12/national-science-foundation/

Instead of forwarding my correction of the article to the author, the AJP suggested that I submit my own article. I did so (manuscript ID No. 25055), and an anonymous reviewer said that I was wrong. In this way, the AJP and Zygon are undermining the integrity of science in the United States.

This hoax is related to the conflict over the theory of intelligent design. The following 3-minute podcasts gives my explanation for this conflict:

http://www.buzzsprout.com/16337/143091-the-intelligent-design-scam
Very truly yours,
David Roemer