That’s right. The latest and allegedly “new” species of bacteria has been discovered in one of the most inhospitable environments known to man. The next in a long line of extremophiles, e.g. organisms that thrive in environments hostile to most life forms, has been cultured and dubbed for posterity as Herminiimonas glacieie. This Gram-negative ultramicrobacterium (designated strain UMB49T) was isolated from an allegedly 120,000-year-old 3,042 meter deep, Greenland glacier as described in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (Loveland-Curtze et al., 2009).
Most of the hype surrounded the speculation that these newly discovered bacilli were the last in a line of frigid friendly bacteria that might give microbiologists and their extraterrestrial friendly astrobiologist cousins some traction in the never ending search for life in outer space. I say the last in a line of discoveries because this latest announcement is similar to other work published previously in the American Society of Microbiology’s Journal of Applied Environment Microbiology which heralded a similar discovery in their 2006 research paper entitled Phylogenetic Analysis of Bacteria Preserved in a Permafrost Ice Wedge for 25,000 Years. (Katayama et al., 2007)

While these scientists are less apt to speculate in the published versions of their work, they are much more open to discuss the evolutionary ramifications of their work in interviews. LiveScience.com published an article entitled “Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years” and quotes Dr. Loveland-Curtze as saying the following:

“These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats.” Referring to the Greenland glacier” she continued, “The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years.”

The interviewer did not think to ask the follow-up question seeking any evidence that might support the “millions-of-years” time line. After all, when asked to actually supply evidence for these fanciful evolutionary statements, no evidence is ever forthcoming. The reason is two-fold. First, the evolutionary faithful operate most of the time in the realm of blind faith. They blindly accept the one and only explanation they, themselves have postulated and any evidence to the contrary is quickly and summarily dismissed. Secondly, they believe that Darwinian evolution is an indisputable fact. At least, that’s their story and their sticking to it so any information to the contrary is not even given a fair hearing.

The dirty little secret within the evolutionary community, and in the sciences in general, is that sometimes the evolution faithful have to address dissension in their own ranks, Not only do evolutionary scientists disagree with one another sometimes they come to different conclusions. The same can be said of Creationists who have disagreements among themselves as to young earth (creationism) versus old earth (creationism). Still, the major tenant of creationism, e.g. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, Gen. 1:1, is not in dispute.

When is comes to the speculation of extraterrestrial life, we have a dissenting opinions, even among the evolutionary faithful. While Dr. Loveland-Kurtze speculates about the extraterrestrial associations of the newly discovered glacial microbes an article by Professors Kay Bidle and Paul Lalkowski of Rutgers University came to a far different conclusion.

“It’s the cosmic radiation that’s blasting the DNA into pieces over geologic time, and most of the organisms can’t repair the damage.” Because the DNA had deteriorated so much in the old ice, the researchers also concluded that life on Earth, however it arose, did not ride in on a comet or other debris from outside the solar system. “…(T)the preservation of microbes and their genes in icy comets may have allowed transfer of genetic material among planets,” they wrote, “However, given the extremely high cosmic radiation flux in space, our results suggest it is highly unlikely that life on Earth could have been seeded by genetic material external to our solar system.” (Bidle and Lalkowski 2007)

There you have it. The only avenue left open to the naturalism masquerading as evolutionary science is to evoke the alien connection. While neither of these sources actually broached the subject, let me assure you that Directed Panspermia, originally made popular by Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of the DNA molecule Francis Crick and another research professor Leslie Orgel, is a well respected hypothesis endorsed by some evolutionary heavy hitters such as Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickshamasinghe.

The this leap of blind faith does not end here, currently NASA is planning to send its Kepler spacecraft out into the great beyond in search of extraterrestrial life or the elusive building blocks thereof. The 600 million dollar Kepler spacecraft has one goal, e.g. the find earth size planets existing in an inhabitable zone. This will follow up on the French project in search of possible life-friendly planets known as the French Convection Rotation and planetary Transits (CoRoT) spacecraft that earlier announced the discovery COROT-exo-7b. This allegedly earth-like planet is the tiniest terrestrial planet ever detected outside our Solar System and it allegedly orbits a sun-like star.

Never mind that the surface of COROT-exo-7b is described a “boot-melting hot” it’s one of several planets that inhabit one of these alleged habitable zones. It’s nice to know that all of these scientific disciplines are working hand in glove together with one another to promote their naturalistic/materialistic worldview. As someone who has viewed the evidence for Creationism from such powerful arguments such as the anthropic principle, I am not surprised that the evolutionary faithful ignore the arguments of The Privileged Planet (Gonzalez and Richards 2004).