Darwinism's narrative re:mitochondria takes it on the chin?

Rewrite the Textbooks (Again), Origin of Mitochondria Blown Up

Cornelius G Hunter  

There You Go Again

Why are evolutionists always wrong? And why are they always so sure of themselves? With the inexorable march of science, the predictions of evolution, which evolutionists were certain of, just keep on turning out false. This week’s failure is the much celebrated notion that the eukaryote’s power plant—the mitochondria—shares a common ancestor with the alphaproteobacteria. A long time ago, as the story goes, that bacterial common ancestor merged with an early eukaryote cell. And these two entities, as luck would have it, just happened to need each other. Evolution had just happened to create that early bacterium, and that early eukaryote, in such a way that they needed, and greatly benefited from, each other. And, as luck would have it again, these two entities worked together. The bacterium would just happen to produce the chemical energy needed by the eukaryote, and the eukaryote would just happen to provide needed supplies. It paved the way for multicellular life with all of its fantastic designs. There was only one problem: the story turned out to be false.

The story that mitochondria evolved from the alphaproteobacteria lineage has been told with great conviction. Consider the Michael Gray 2012 paper which boldly begins with the unambiguous truth claim that “Viewed through the lens of the genome it contains, the mitochondrion is of unquestioned bacterial ancestry, originating from within the bacterial phylum α-Proteobacteria (Alphaproteobacteria).”

There was no question about it. Gray was following classic evolutionary thinking: similarities mandate common origin. That is the common descent model. Evolutionists say that once one looks at biology through the lens of common descent everything falls into place.

Except that it doesn’t.

Over and over evolutionists have to rewrite their theory. Similarities once thought to have arisen from a common ancestor turn out to contradict the common descent model. Evolutionists are left having to say the similarities must have arisen independently.

And big differences, once thought to show up only in distant species, keep on showing up in allied species.

Biology, it turns out, is full of one-offs, special cases, and anomalies. The evolutionary tree model doesn’t work.

Now, a new Paper out this week has shown that the mitochondria and alphaproteobacteria don’t line up the way originally thought. That “unquestioned bacterial ancestry” turns out to be, err, wrong.

The paper finds that mitochondria did not evolve from the currently hypothesized alphaproteobacterial ancestor, or from “any other currently recognized alphaproteobacterial lineage.”

The paper does, however, make a rather startling claim. The authors write:

our analyses indicate that mitochondria evolved from a proteobacterial lineage that branched off before the divergence of all sampled alphaproteobacteria.

That is a startling claim because, well, simply put there is no evidence for it. The lack of evidence is exceeded only by the evolutionist’s confidence. Note the wording: “indicate.”

The evolutionist’s analyses indicate this new truth.

How can the evolutionists be so sure of themselves in the absence of literally any evidence?

The answer is, because they are evolutionists. They are completely certain that evolution is true. And since evolution must be true, the mitochondria had to have evolved from somewhere. And the same is true for the alphaproteobacteria. They must have evolved from somewhere.

And in both cases, that somewhere must be the earlier proteobacterial lineage. There are no other good evolutionary candidates.

Fortunately this new claim cannot be tested (and therefore cannot be falsified), because the “proteobacterial lineage” is nothing more than an evolutionary construct. Evolutionists can search for possible extant species for hints of a common ancestor with the mitochondria, but failure to find anything can always be ascribed to extinction of the common ancestor.

This is where evolutionary theory often ends up: failures ultimately lead to unfalsifiable truth claims. Because heaven forbid we should question the theory itself.

Planet of the monkeys?

Monkeys, Not Humans, Likely Made Ancient Brazilian Tools

 Evolution News 

There’s a danger in looking too hard for evidence of our ancient ancestors. Sometimes we could be seeing things that aren’t there. One group of stone tools from 50,000 years ago could, it is now suggested, have been made by monkeys:

Excavations at Pedra Furada, a group of 800 archaeological sites in the state of Piauí, Brazil, have turned up stone shards believed to be examples of simple stone tools. Made from quartzite and quartz cobbles, the oldest ones appear to be up to 50,000 years old, which would put them among the earliest evidence of human habitation in the Western Hemisphere.

However, the tools also bear a striking resemblance to the stone tools currently made by the capuchin monkeys at Brazil’s Serra da Capivara National Park. 

SARAH CASCONE, “ANCIENT STONE TOOLS ONCE THOUGHT TO BE MADE BY HUMANS WERE ACTUALLY CRAFTED BY MONKEYS, SAY ARCHAEOLOGISTS” AT ARTNET (JANUARY 3, 2023) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

But there’s a twist. Back in 2016, a similar point was raised at Nature:

In January, archaeologist Tomos Proffitt was examining a set of stone artefacts that his colleague Michael Haslam had brought to him. Some of the quartz pieces looked like sharpened stone tools made by human relatives in eastern Africa, some 2–3 million years ago.

But Haslam told Proffitt that the artefacts had been made the previous year by capuchin monkeys in Brazil. “I was pretty gobsmacked,” he says. “I did my PhD looking at hominin stone tools. I’ve learnt how to make these things. I was looking at this material, and it looked like it had been made by humans.” …

The capuchins make the fragments unintentionally while bashing rocks into dust, the researchers find. Some scientists say that the results call into question whether some stone tools have been incorrectly attributed to hominins — including 3.3-million-year-old artefacts from Kenya that are the oldest on record. 

EWEN CALLAWAY, “MONKEY TOOLS RAISE QUESTIONS OVER HUMAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD ” AT NATURE (OCTOBER 19, 2016) THE PAPER REQUIRES A FEE OR SUBSCRIPTION.

Not Even Tools 

The twist is that those artifacts were not even tools. The monkeys were producing them accidentally…

Many life forms shape and use objects as tools: These include crows, dolphins, octopuses, alligators, and ants.

The casualty in this case is the contention — attractive to many researchers, of course — that humans were living in the Americas 50,000 years ago based on the presence of what are thought to be tools:

Coupled with the lack of other evidence of human habitation from 50,000 years ago, such as concrete traces of dietary remains or hearths — charcoal at the site could have originated from naturally occurring fires — the tools’ resemblance to rock fragments created by monkeys calls into question the likelihood that humans were responsible for their creation.

The new findings could have a major impact on our understanding of when the first humans arrived in the Americas. 

SARAH CASCONE, “ANCIENT STONE TOOLS ONCE THOUGHT TO BE MADE BY HUMANS WERE ACTUALLY CRAFTED BY MONKEYS, SAY ARCHAEOLOGISTS” AT ARTNET (JANUARY 3, 2023) THE PAPER IS OPEN ACCESS.

A Calendar in the Mix?

We need to be clear about what part of the archeological record is under question. Another current dispute, for example, turns on whether the dots that accompany many Ice Age paintings from 20,000 years ago are evidence of a lunar calendar. It’s quite likely that the series of dots and symbols represent some form of record-keeping or communication. There may or may not be a lunar calendar in the mix but there is no possibility that these artworks were created by monkeys. We know that we are in a human world here. We just aren’t sure what its inhabitants were trying to say. 

If we are going to offer theories about ancient humans, it is best to be on ground as sure as that.

Darwinism's quest for a simple beginning rolls on.

Centrobin Found to be Important in Sperm Development

Cornelius G Hunter  

Numerous, Successive, Slight Modifications 

Proteins are a problem for theories of spontaneous origins for many reasons. They consist of dozens, or often hundreds, or even thousands of amino acids in a linear sequence, and while many different sequences will do the job, that number is tiny compared to the total number of sequences that are possible. It is a proverbial needle-in-the-haystack problem, far beyond the reach of blind searches. To make matters worse, many proteins are overlapping, with portions of their genes occupying the same region of DNA. The same set of mutations would have to result in not one, but two proteins, making the search problem that much more tricky. Furthermore, many proteins perform multiple functions. Random mutations somehow would have to find those very special proteins that can perform double duty in the cell. And finally, many proteins perform crucial roles within a complex environment. Without these proteins the cell sustains a significant fitness degradation. One protein that fits this description is centrobin, and now a new study shows it to be even more important than previously understood.

Centrobin is a massive protein of almost a thousand amino acids. Its importance in the division of animal cells has been known for more than ten years. An important player in animal cell division is the centrosome organelle which organizes the many microtubules—long tubes which are part of the cell’s cytoskeleton. Centrobin is one of the many proteins that helps the centrosome do its job. Centrobin depletion causes "strong disorganization of the microtubule network" and Impaired cell division .

Now, a New study shows just how important centrobin is in the development of the sperm tail. Without centrobin, the tail, or flagellum, development is “severely compromised.” And once the sperm is formed, centrobin is important for its structural integrity. As the paper concludes:

Our results underpin the multifunctional nature of [centrobin] that plays different roles in different cell types in Drosophila, and they identify [centrobin] as an essential component for C-tubule assembly and flagellum development in Drosophila spermatogenesis.

Clearly centrobin is an important protein. Without it such fundamental functions as cell division and organism reproduction are severely impaired.

And yet how did centrobin evolve?

Not only is centrobin a massive protein, but there are no obvious candidate intermediate structures. It is not as though we have that “long series of gradations in complexity” that Darwin called for:

Although the belief that an organ so perfect as the eye could have been formed by natural selection, is enough to stagger any one; yet in the case of any organ, if we know of a long series of gradations in complexity, each good for its possessor, then, under changing conditions of life, there is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection.

Unfortunately, in the case of centrobin, we do not know of such a series. In fact, centrobin would seem to be a perfectly good example of precisely how Darwin said his theory could be falsified:

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. But I can find out no such case.  

Darwin could “find out no such case,” but he didn’t know about centrobin. Darwin required “a long series of gradations,” formed by “numerous, successive, slight modifications.”

With centrobin we are nowhere close to fulfilling these requirements. In other words, today’s science falsifies evolution. This, according to Darwin’s own words.

Let there be light

 The wave nature of light

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