Occam's razor to too dull for Darwinism?

With Two New Fossils, Evolutionists Rewrite Narratives to Accommodate Conflicting Evidence
Günter Bechly 

Two new fossils, described in August and September 2017, have again forced evolutionists to rewrite their fanciful narratives of how major transitions in the history of life occurred. In this case the new fossils disarrayed, respectively, the origin of tetrapod land vertebrates and of bird feathers and flight.

The first fossil, described by Lefèvre et al. (2017), is a feathered dinosaur named Serikornis sungei (nicknamed “Silky”), which lived about 160 million years ago during the Upper Jurassic era. Found in China’s Liaoning province, it is a beautifully preserved complete animal with visible dino-fuzz covering its body. It was about the size of a pheasant and its morphology suggests that it was unable to fly and “spent its life scampering around on the forest floor” (Pickrell 2017). The most striking feature is the fact that even though its arms and legs have long feathers, so that the fossil seems to qualify as a member of the four-winged group of “dino-birds” such as Microraptor, Anchiornis, and Xiaotingia, the arms are much too short for wings. The feathers also lack the second order branchings (barbules) of true pennaceous flight feathers.

There are two interesting issues with this remarkable feathered dinosaur (and no, it does not seem to be a forgery like the “missing link” Archaeoraptor, Rowe et al. 2001):

The distribution and type of feathers on its body are not consistent with the currently preferred scenario about the evolution of bird feathers and flight. That scenario assumes that long pennaceous feathers on arms and legs originated with arboreal four-winged gliders such as Microraptor (Pickrell 2017)

The new phylogenetic tree in the original publication by Lefèvre et al. again reshuffles the feathered dinosaurs and early birds into a new branching pattern, disagreeing with previous trees that, in turn, all disagree with each other. Constructing phylogenetic trees looks more and more like an arbitrary enterprise, evolutionary biology’s equivalent of other pseudoscientific methods such as psychoanalysis or the Rorschach test.

The second fossil discovery, by  Zhu et al. (2017), is a new species of lobe-finned fish named Hongyu chowi from the Late Devonian. Discovered at the Shixiagou quarry in northern China, it was about 1.5 metres long, and lived 370 to 360 million years ago. One of its describers happens to be the famous Swedish paleontologist Per Ahlberg from Uppsala University, who also made worldwide headlines this month (e.g.,“Ancient footprints in Greece trample on the theory of human evolution,” in The Times of London) with the description of 5.7-million-year-old human footprints from Crete (see Bechly 2017).

Barras (2017) announces at New Scientist that this “Weird fish fossil changes the story of how we moved onto land.” From the article:

The evolutionary story we have written to explain our ancestors’ move from sea to land  may need a rethink. …

[W]hen the researchers tried to fit H. chowi into the existing evolutionary tree, it didn’t fit easily.

That’s because in some respects, H. chowi looks like an ancient predatory fish called rhizodonts. These are thought to have branched off from lobe-finned fish long before the group gave rise to four-legged land animals.

But Ahlberg says H. chowi has aspects that look surprisingly like those seen in early four-legged animals and their nearest fishy relatives —an extinct group called the elpistostegids. These include the shoulder girdle and the support region for its gill covers.

This implies one of two things, the researchers say. The first possibility is that H. chowi is some sort of rhizodont that independently evolved the shoulders and gill cover supports of a four-legged animal.

Alternatively, the rhizodonts may be more closely related to the four-legged animals and the elpistostegids than we thought. But this would also imply a certain amount of independent evolution of similar features, because the rhizodonts would then sit between two groups that have many features in common – features the two groups would have had to evolve independently. …

The find confirms an earlier suspicion that there was independent or “parallel” evolution between the rhizodonts, the elpistostegids and the first four-legged animals, says Neil Shubin at the University of Chicago.

Thus, this fossil raises two important problems for evolutionary biology:

The character distribution is incongruent and implies independent parallel origins of the same tetrapod-like or rhizodont-like characters (convergence). The alternative explanations of independent origin (homoplasy) versus common origin (homology) of a character trait is not alone decided based on anatomic (dis)similarities but mainly based on the (in)congruence with other data. The same data that are considered evidence of convergence can become evidence for common ancestry when you switch positions in the tree, and vice versa. What most evolutionary biologists have exorcised from their mind is that such incongruences (homoplasies) per se are not evidence for evolution as some evolutionists boldly proclaim (Wells 2017) but, instead, prima facie conflicting evidence against it (Hunter 2017). Convergence, which Lee Spetner has called “even more implausible than evolution itself” (Klinghoffer 2017), and other incongruent similarities have to be explained away with ad hoc hypotheses. In past decades, convergence morphed from an inconvenient exception to the rule — to a ubiquitous phenomenon, found virtually everywhere in living nature. In his book Life’s Solution, paleontologist Conway Morris (2003) felt compelled to declare it a kind of necessary natural law. It thus cannot really be considered a success story for the Darwinian paradigm.

Rhizodontids,the group to which this fossil fish belongs, are believed to have branched off early from the lobefin-tetrapod lineage, more than 415 million years ago. However, the oldest fossils are dated to only 377 million years ago, implying a so-called “ghost lineage” of 38 million years when the group should have existed but left no fossil record at all. Such “ghost lineages” are one of the many instances of discontinuity in the fossil record and require ad hoc assumptions in order to be accommodated by evolutionary storytelling.

These two new fossils represent further evidence conflicting with previously accepted evolutionary narratives. But thank God evolutionary theory can easily adapt to such inconvenient evidence, simply by rewriting the story. That way, the new evidence fits perfectly.

Dubious procedures like these would be unthinkable in other natural sciences, such as physics. They call into question whether evolutionary biology really qualifies as a hard science at all. Arguably it is not a testable theory, or even a well-defined one, but merely a loose collection of narratives that are forged to fit the evidence — any evidence whatsoever.

Literature:

Barras C 2017. Weird fish fossil changes the story of how we moved onto land.  New Scientist 4 September 2017.

Bechly G 2017. Fossil Footprints from Crete Deepen Controversy on Human Origins. Evolution News September 6, 2017.

Carassava A 2017. Ancient footprints in Greece trample on the theory of human evolution.  The TimesSeptember 4 2017.

Hunter C 2017. The Real Problem With Convergence. Evolution News May 25, 2017.

Klinghoffer D 2017. “Convergent Evolution Is Even More Improbable than Evolution Itself.”  Evolution News September 5, 2017.

Lefèvre U, Cau A, Cincotta A, Hu D, Chinsamy A, Escuillié F, Godefroit P 2017. A new Jurassic theropod from China documents a transitional step in the macrostructure of feathers.  The Science of Nature 104:74.

Conway Morris S 2003. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge University Press.

Pickrell J 2017. New Feathered Dinosaur Had Four Wings but Couldn’t Fly.  National Geographic August 28, 2017.

Rowe T et al. 2001. Forensic palaeontology: The Archaeoraptor forgery. Nature 410: 539-540.

Wells J 2017. Zombie Science: Jonathan Wells on Convergence Versus Common Ancestry.  Evolution News June 28, 2017.

Zhu M, Ahlberg PE, Zhao W-J, Jia L-T 2017. A Devonian tetrapod-like fish reveals substantial parallelism in stem tetrapod evolution. Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Talk about fighting for your life!

Wesley Smith Visits Jahi McMath
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer  

Jahi McMath is a neurologically disabled young woman who, like Schrödinger’s cat, is, or has been, both dead and alive. Our colleague Wesley Smith visited the patient and offers a powerful account for First Things.

In California, Jahi McMath is legally dead. In New Jersey, she is legally alive. Now, the deceased — or profoundly disabled — teenager is the subject of litigation that could make history.

Wesley witnessed what appeared to be a response on Jahi’s part to a request that she move her thumb and index finger — “I nearly jumped out of my shoes,” he reports. I think I would, too.

He has changed his mind about her status.

If Jahi is not — or, perhaps better, no longer — brain dead, this may be an unprecedented event, as there are no known cases of a properly diagnosed brain-dead patient experiencing restored neurological function. And I am stunned that the medical and bioethics communities generally show such a pronounced lack of curiosity about Jahi’s situation. True, there have been rare cases of the bodies of brain-dead people not deteriorating over time. But surely the other factors described by [Dr. Alan] Shewmon and the videos should pique their interest.

Perhaps it is just a case of “experts” not wanting to know — because if Jahi isn’t dead, it would have epochal legal, social, medical, and scientific ramifications. But so what? Jahi deserves justice. If alive, she is a full and equal member of the moral community.

I hope that several prominent neurologists without a stake in the situation will step forward and volunteer to examine Jahi — and not just for a day or two but over an extended period of time, to test her brain and body functions thoroughly and determine whether she does indeed respond to requests. Then, if she lacks even one criterion for brain death, Jahi’s California death certificate should be revoked — let the chips fall where they may.

No longer brain dead? This is quite remarkable and testifies among other things to the tenacious commitment of Jahi’s mother, Nailah, whom Wesley also interviewed, to “choose life” on behalf of her daughter. Read the rest here.

Yet more on the undeniability of the case for design.

The Unmistakable Imprint of Purpose — Response to a Theistic Evolutionist
Douglas Axe | @DougAxe 

I’ve been discussing my book  Undeniable with Hans Vodder, who favors the evolutionary explanation of life. In our fifth exchange,Hans referred to what has been called a “natural nuclear reactor.” Whatever it was, it seems to have existed eons ago in the rock formations of what is now the Oklo region of Gabon. Hans thinks this so-called reactor may have exhibited the kind of functional coherence I point to as a hallmark of invention, making it a noteworthy counterexample to my argument.

I responded by suggesting that reactor is an overblown term for what was really nothing more than a reaction. Back in its day, that Oklo reaction required only: 1) a moderately large uranium deposit, and 2) a source of water to percolate through it. This, I said, doesn’t qualify as high-level functional coherence.

I brought up the comparison to an adjustable wrench — a very modest example of functional coherence. How is it, I asked, that people expected natural nuclear reactions to be found but no one expects a natural adjustable wrench to be found?

Here is Hans’s reply:

Your two-condition assessment of the requirements for the reactor seems a little minimalistic. The Kuroda study (cited in the  Scientific American article) mentions four general conditions, and Maynard Smith and Szathmary describe further particulars in  The Major Transitions in Evolution. The latter authors mention things like the 45 degree tilt of the sandstone and underlying granite layers which allowed the reactions to occur in a self-sustaining manner; the increased solubility of oxidized uranium, which helped it accumulate in the delta in the first place; and so on. So whether something is considered functionally coherent might depend largely on how relevant conditions are assessed.

But suppose we go with the two-condition assessment. There still doesn’t seem to be anything in the bare definition of functional coherence — “the hierarchical arrangement of parts needed for anything to produce a high-level function — each part contributing in a coordinated way to the whole” (144) — that would exclude Oklo. Consider this adaptation of figure 9.3 from your book:

A critic might reasonably argue that Oklo qualifies as functionally coherent. To make the case more “extensive,” all said critic would have to do is add a few more components or break down the current ones into further detail.

Now, I  suspect this doesn’t really capture the property of “functional coherence” that Undeniable is after. But here’s the rub: It does seem, so far as I can tell, to satisfy the definitional criteria laid out in the book. If that’s right, then one of two conclusions seems to follow. Either:

a) Oklo is a genuine case of functional coherence, with the result that nature can produce at least some functional coherence (pace the “Summary of the Argument” on p. 160 of Undeniable), or

b) Oklo is only a superficial case of functional coherence, with the result that further criteria are needed to distinguish Oklo-type cases from genuine ones.

Sure. Going strictly from my bare definition, one could easily call things functionally coherent that, as you say, don’t really capture the sense of the term as used in Undeniable.

So, I agree with your b option, except I would say context is needed instead of criteria, and I think the book supplies that context. In other words, my definition of functional coherence should make sense to readers who have followed the discussion up to the point where that term is introduced (more on that in a moment).

With respect to Oklo, keep in mind that Maynard Smith and Szathmary, being evolutionary biologists, wanted to “see some parallels with the origin of life” (p. 20 of their book). This raises the possibility that they saw what wasn’t really there.

Here’s a more objective account of the requirements for a uranium-235 fission chain reaction from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State University:

If at least one neutron from U-235 fission strikes another nucleus and causes it to fission, then the chain reaction will continue. If the reaction sustains itself, it is said to be “critical,” and the mass of U-235 required to produce the critical condition is said to be a “critical mass.” A critical chain reaction can be achieved at low concentrations of U-235 if the neutrons from fission are moderated to lower their speed, since the probability for fission with slow neutrons is greater.

Strictly speaking, then, all that’s needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction is a critical mass of uranium-235. Uranium is number 92 on the periodic table of elements, so it literally belongs on the bottom layer of the hierarchy in that figure (you can’t get more elementary than an element). Despite all the fuss over Oklo, then, it really didn’t rise above the behavior of that one element.

Interestingly, Maynard Smith and Szathmary acknowledged the obvious fact that “the Oklo reactor does not look like a man-made reactor.” My question is — what makes this so obvious?

The answer is hinted at by the way these authors inadvertently portray the Oklo reaction as though it had been intended. For example, they say “some moderator material was needed to slow down neutrons.”

Needed?

The raw fact is merely that water happened to be present as a moderator, causing the neutrons to be slowed. To say that water was needed is to imply not just that something important was at stake but that this was somehow recognized at the time — as though the Oklo reaction had been arranged for a purpose.

Neither Maynard Smith nor Szathmary believed that for a moment, but somehow they couldn’t keep themselves from implying it. Their next sentence reads: “Perhaps most surprising of all, the reaction had to be self-regulating.” Really? Who says it had to be self-regulating? And what definition of “regulate” are we using here? All the usual definitions invoke purpose.

Returning to raw facts, the evidence suggests that the rate of fission at Oklo may have oscillated, peaking when water was present and dropping when it was absent. But again, so what? Fission chain reactions are always limited. They end when critical mass is exhausted. So the suggestion that Oklo was “regulated” is just plain odd. Regulated to what end?

By the time I introduce readers of Undeniable to functional coherence, they know the book is all about purpose. In that context, they know purpose is at the heart of this term. Our design intuition tells us that “tasks that we would need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.” Despite their exaggeration, Maynard Smith and Szathmary knew full well that the Oklo reaction wasn’t an accomplishment. Indeed, we can’t see Oklo as a task that required things to be cleverly arranged because it shows absolutely no sign of having been that.

With sufficient cleverness and determination, the elements from the periodic table can be arranged to accomplish tasks that aren’t even hinted at by the properties of the elements themselves — challenges whose solutions have to be dreamed up by fertile imaginations. We instantly spot the fruits of those imaginations by spotting their characteristic functional coherence. Dragonflies. Smartphones. Nuclear power plants. Even adjustable wrenches.

I’m sure this reasoning can be formalized, Hans, but do keep in mind that Undeniable isn’t meant to be that. Undeniable shows in a commonsensical way how it is that no one confuses things like radioactive rocks for inventions and, conversely, how no one confuses things like adjustable wrenches for accidents.

Nothing you’ve said so far challenges that main thesis, Hans. So if we’re in agreement there, I’m wondering why you think life should be exempt from reasoning that works everywhere else.