On Darwinism's whale of a tale re:a tail of a whale.

Jonathan Wells on the “Fairy Tale” of Whale Evolution
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

Biologist Jonathan Wells, author of Zombie Science slices up the “fairy tale” of whale evolution. He describes three massive acts of re-engineering — under the general headings of breathing, swimming, and reproduction — that would need to be accomplished in turning a land creature into a fully marine one like a whale:

If we wanted to turn a land mammal into a whale, these are a few of the changes we would have to implement. Could the changes have happened accidentally, without design?

People who believe in Darwinian evolution point out that fossils have been found of animals that might have been transitional between fully terrestrial mammals and fully aquatic cetaceans. The fossil animals had legs but probably spent much of their time in the water. Darwinian paleontologists call them “walking whales” because they have a particular ear bone that had previously been found only in cetaceans (though the bone has now been found in an extinct land mammal, Indohyus, that is not classified as a cetacean). But the supposedly transitional animals are anatomically more like amphibious sea lions and otters than whales, and the transition from amphibious to fully aquatic must have happened in a geological blink of an eye.11

Even if the transition were perfectly documented with intermediate forms, however, it would not answer the “how” questions. How did the features needed for a fully aquatic lifestyle originate? How would the hind limbs of a sea lion turn into a fluke (which is very different)? How would a male’s testicles become simultaneously internalized and surrounded by countercurrent heat exchange systems? How would a female develop specialized nursing organs to inject milk forcibly into her calf? Indeed, why would any of these changes occur? Sea lions are already well adapted to their amphibious lives.

An intelligence could have planned to make fully aquatic mammals and designed these features to actualize the plan. But Darwinian theory says no design is allowed, and that leaves us with little more than a fairy tale about how natural selection could turn swimming bears into whales.

The rest is over at Salvo. Read it there.

Darwin thought the ancestral land beast was something like a bear. Even after scrubbing this from updated editions of the Origin of Species, stung by mockery for the suggestion, he continued to hold the view privately. Current theories are hardly more credible.

Biological information v.Darwin

New Peer-Reviewed Paper Challenges Darwinian Evolution
Jonathan M.

Over recent months, papers challenging key elements of Darwinian theory -- the kind of papers which are supposed not to exist -- have increasingly been slipping through the net and finding their way into the peer-reviewed literature. One such paper, "Is gene duplication a viable explanation for the origination of biological information and complexity?," authored by Joseph Esfandier Hannon Bozorgmeh and published online last week in the journal, Complexity, challenges the standard gene duplication/divergence model regarding the origin of evolutionary novelty.

The abstract reports,
All life depends on the biological information encoded in DNA with which to synthesize and regulate various peptide sequences required by an organism's cells. Hence, an evolutionary model accounting for the diversity of life needs to demonstrate how novel exonic regions that code for distinctly different functions can emerge. Natural selection tends to conserve the basic functionality, sequence, and size of genes and, although beneficial and adaptive changes are possible, these serve only to improve or adjust the existing type. However, gene duplication allows for a respite in selection and so can provide a molecular substrate for the development of biochemical innovation. Reference is made here to several well-known examples of gene duplication, and the major means of resulting evolutionary divergence, to examine the plausibility of this assumption. The totality of the evidence reveals that, although duplication can and does facilitate important adaptations by tinkering with existing compounds, molecular evolution is nonetheless constrained in each and every case. Therefore, although the process of gene duplication and subsequent random mutation has certainly contributed to the size and diversity of the genome, it is alone insufficient in explaining the origination of the highly complex information pertinent to the essential functioning of living organisms.
The mechanism under discussion is the phenomenon of gene duplication, which occurs by means of unequal chromosomal crossovers, the retropositioning of spliced mRNA, and copying of an entire chromosome, or even an entire genome. The gene duplication paradigm, as far as the origin of evolutionary novelty is concerned, is as follows: When a gene becomes duplicated, one copy of the gene is retained for its phenotypic utility (e.g. encoding for a protein or functional RNA), while the other copy of the gene is free from selective constraint, and is thus able to mutate and 'explore' alternative combinatorial possibilities (promoted by near neutral drift), in the hope of stumbling upon something useful.

The review paper attempts to "determine the existence and extent of any novel information produced as a consequence of gene duplication." The author further remarks, 
"At stake is whether there is sufficient supporting evidence that the digitally communicated instructions encoded in DNA could have been constructed through known evolutionary processes, or whether the data suggests that an alternative explanation is required as in all codified nonbiological information. Therefore, this would serve as assessing the current arguments regarding the origins of biological and genomic complexity.
The author is careful to delineate what he is describing when he speaks of "information". Carefully contrasting the information present in biological systems with mere Shannon complexity, the author defines a gain in exonic information as "[t]he quantitative increase in operational capability and functional specificity with no resultant uncertainty of outcome." He then procedes to propose means of empirically verifying the role of natural selection in the creation of novel functionality.

Bozorgmehr winds up drawing similar conclusions to those drawn by Behe in his recent Quarterly Review of Biology paper: While many mutations can, at first glance, appear to have resulted in evolutionary novelty (such as in the case of antibiotic resistance), closer inspection reveals that the selected adaptations do not, in fact, result in novel genetic components. Bozorgmehr explains that "[i]n many instances...a loss of function and regulation in a harsh or unusual environment can have a beneficial outcome and thus be selected for -- bacteria tend to evolve resistance to antibiotics in such a way through mutations that would otherwise adversely affect membrane permeability," (see Delcour 2009). One example cited in the paper concerns the acquisition of organophosphorus insecticide resistance in blowflies, which is conferred by a single amino acid substitution in a carboxyl esterase. But this insecticide resistance -- though adaptively selected -- is not a case of neo-functionalization, but rather a loss in enzyme activity (Newcomb et al. 1997).


The paper goes on to examine eight case studies of adaptive evolution which have involved gene duplication, a few examples of which I will summarize in a second post.

Arguing with ghosts?

Revealing Michael Behe, Intelligent Design's "Revolutionary" Biologist

David Klinghoffer

Thanks to a cocktail of misguided public policies, Seattle's downtown core, where we work, is awash with the mentally ill homeless. A sadly familiar figure is the man or woman furiously shouting, cursing, and gesticulating at an unseen conversation partner. There are many such individuals roaming about, crossing paths with the tourists, businesspeople, high-end shoppers, and art museum and symphony patrons. They remind me of a strange feature of the evolution debate.Just as the mentally ill person's fury is directed at an unknown party, much of scientific and popular publishing about evolution is aimed at an unnamed opponent. As a random example, here's an article from Science Daily that crossed my desk this week, "A short jump from single-celled ancestors to animals," reporting a study in the journal Developmental Cell. Without going into detail on the merits of this effort to minimize a glaring difficulty with Darwinism, the article doesn't mention intelligent design. But it's surely directed at us. Major evolutionary transitions are an aspect of life's long history that Darwinian theory can't explain but design can.

Often, when evolutionists argue with an unseen ID proponent, when the context is the Cambrian explosion or life's mysterious origin, the object of their fury is Stephen Meyer. In other contexts, it might be Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger with their incisive questions on protein evolution. Mathematicians William Dembski and David Berlinski are invisible opponents, and so too is our daily reporting and analysis here at Evolution News.

Very often, though, when it comes to the concept of irreducible complexity -- typically unnamed -- the opponent they clearly have in mind is biochemist Michael Behe.

The highly effective new 60-minute documentary Revolutionary: Michael Behe and the Mystery of Molecular Machines, on sale now,makes the invisible visible. The film, written and directed by John West, is an introduction to Behe's thought timed to the 20th anniversary of his revolutionary book  Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.I'm proud to have played a small part in bringing the book before the public. As the literary editor at National Review at the time, I commissioned the (laudatory) review from distinguished NYU chemist Robert Shapiro that is briefly shown in the film.

Among other things, Revolutionary is a vindication of Behe, showing how science has refuted objections by Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller and others to Behe's case for design, highlighting molecular machines like the bacterial flagellar motor. Those machines were of course unknown to Darwin, who would be flabbergasted by them. Their exquisite, irreducible complexity is still being investigated and revealed -- making the invisible visible in another sense. For more, see the film's trailer here. Of course Behe is not actually invisible on the stage of biology. His presence is strongly felt. As the film shows, he has changed the terms of evolutionary discussions, an honor that also belongs to another Discovery Institute biologist, Michael Denton, whose book  Evolution: A Theory in Crisis,we learn, inspired Behe's scientific journey.

Oh yes, evolutionists know who they're shouting at, and to prove it, the phrase "irreducible complexity" is sometime allowed to pass their otherwise carefully sealed lips. It's just that Darwin's defenders strain to avoid tainting themselves by directly confronting the mild-mannered professor at Lehigh University. Revolutionary undoes their discretion by introducing us to Behe (and other ID theorists) in a dramatic and personally and intellectually revealing way. It's a fine and accessible primer on ID that tells the story of what really is a scientific revolution.

We see Behe on the Lehigh campus, at home -- just a hundred miles from Dover, Pennsylvania, where he famously clashed with Professor Miller at the 2005 Kitzmiller trial, under the eyes of John E. Jones and his ghostwriters from the ACLU. (That is Judge John E. Jones who, the film amusingly reveals, hoped that Tom Hanks would play him in the movie version of the court battle.) Behe is shown with his family -- talking with his kids, and washing post-supper dishes. The humanizing effect is welcome.

As one paleontologist recounts here, after his own mind was opened to the cogency of design arguments, he met ID scientists and scholars and was surprised to find they bore little resemblance to what he expected based on media caricatures. The shy (as he describes himself), self-effacing, yet stubborn Dr. Behe may also come as a revelation to those who don't know him but assume he must be a cartoon "creationist."

Revolutionary is unlike other ID films I'm familiar with in the way it offers personal stories. One of the most startling concerns University of Idaho microbiologist Scott Minnich, who like Behe, testified at Dover and was censured for it by officials at his university. When contemplating the career perils of coming out for ID and publishing a journal article with Stephen Meyer on the bacterial flagellum, Dr. Minnich happened to be participating as a member of the Iraq Survey Group, assisting the U.S. government in a search for biological and chemical weapons hidden in the country.He was taking shelter, in fact, in Saddam Hussein's Perfume Palace, under approaching mortar fire, as a critical submission deadline loomed. Minnich recalls reflecting that "I may not be here tomorrow morning," as he finally hit the button on his computer to send the file. Now that's a kind of story from the scientific world that you don't hear every day.

Behe, Minnich, Meyer, et al. continue to take fire from opponents who, frankly, don't earn a lot of respect from me by failing to give credit to the authors of the theory they seek to surreptitiously assail. Revolutionary pays fitting tribute Professor Behe, who deserves to be called a hero.