Darwinists stand rebuked by their sacred text.

Problem 5: Abrupt Appearance of Species in the Fossil Record Does Not Support Darwinian Evolution

Casey Luskin January 29, 2015 3:12 A.M

 

 

 

Editor's note: This is Part 5 of a 10-part series based upon Casey Luskin's chapter, "The Top Ten Scientific Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution," in the volume More than Myth, edited by Paul Brown and Robert Stackpole (Chartwell Press, 2014). Previous installments can be found here: Problem 1, Problem 2, Problem 3, Problem 4. When the series is complete, the full chapter will be posted online.
The fossil record has long been recognized as a problem for evolutionary theory. In the Origin of Species, Darwin explained that his theory led him to believe that "[t]he number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous."⁶⁵ However, he understood that the fossil record did not document these "intermediate" forms of life, asking, "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?"⁶⁶ Darwin's answer showed the tenuous nature of the evidence backing his ideas: "Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."⁶⁷
Today, some 150 years later, out of thousands of species known from the fossil record, only a small fraction are claimed to be candidates for Darwin's intermediate forms. Fossil evidence of evolutionary intermediates is generally lacking, as the late evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted: "The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution."⁶⁸
Darwin attempted to save his theory of gradual evolution by maintaining that intermediate fossils are not found because of "the extreme imperfection of the geological record."⁶⁹ Even Gould noted that Darwin's argument that the fossil record is imperfect "persists as the favored escape of most paleontologists from the embarrassment of a record that seems to show so little of evolution directly."⁷⁰ But in the last few decades, this excuse has lost credibility.
Paleontologists today generally recognize that while the fossil record is imperfect, it is still adequate to assess questions about evolution. One study in Nature reported that "if scaled to the ... taxonomic level of the family, the past 540 million years of the fossil record provide uniformly good documentation of the life of the past."⁷¹ Another paper in Paleobiology evaluated our knowledge of the fossil record and concluded that "our view of the history of biological diversity is mature."⁷² Paleontologists now increasingly recognize that "jumps" between species, without intermediates, are not simply the result of an incomplete record. Niles Eldredge, an evolutionary paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, puts it this way with Ian Tattersal: "The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record."⁷³ This conclusion did not come easily, as one scientist who studied under Gould felt the need to implore his colleagues that "[e]volutionary biologists can no longer ignore the fossil record on the ground that it is imperfect."⁷⁴
A Pattern of Explosions
The eventual realization that the fossil record is not entirely incomplete has forced evolutionary biologists to accept that the record shows a pattern of explosions, not gradual evolution of living organisms. One biology textbook explains:

Many species remain virtually unchanged for millions of years, then suddenly disappear to be replaced by a quite different, but related, form. Moreover, most major groups of animals appear abruptly in the fossil record, fully formed, and with no fossils yet discovered that form a transition from their parent group.⁷⁵

Probably the most famous instance of abrupt appearance is the Cambrian explosion, in which nearly all of the major living animal phyla appear for the first time. An invertebrate biology textbook explains:

Most of the animal groups that are represented in the fossil record first appear, "fully formed" and identifiable as to their phylum, in the Cambrian, some 550 million years ago. These include such anatomically complex and distinctive types as trilobites, echinoderms, brachiopods, molluscs, and chordates. ... The fossil record is therefore of no help with respect to the origin and early diversification of the various animal phyla...⁷⁶

Evolutionary scientists acknowledge that they cannot explain this rapid appearance of diverse animal body plans by classical Darwinian processes, or other known material mechanisms. Robert Carroll, a paleontologist at McGill University, argues in Trends in Ecology and Evolution that "The extreme speed of anatomical change and adaptive radiation during this brief time period requires explanations that go beyond those proposed for the evolution of species within the modern biota."⁷⁷ Another paper likewise maintains that "microevolution does not provide a satisfactory explanation for the extraordinary burst of novelty during the Cambrian Explosion" and concludes "the major evolutionary transitions in animal evolution still remain to be causally explained."⁷⁸ Likewise a 2009 paper in BioEssays concedes that "elucidating the materialistic basis of the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself."⁷⁹
But the Cambrian explosion is by no means the only explosion of life recorded in the fossil record. Regarding the origin of major fish groups, former Columbia University geoscientist Arthur Strahler writes that, "This is one count in the creationists' charge that can only evoke in unison from paleontologists a plea of nolo contendere [no contest]."⁸⁰ A paper in Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics explains that the origin of land plants "is the terrestrial equivalent of the much-debated Cambrian 'explosion' of marine faunas."⁸¹ Regarding the origin of angiosperms (flowering plants), paleontologists have discovered a "big bloom" type of explosion event. As one paper states:

In spite of much research and analyses of different sources of data (e.g., fossil record and phylogenetic analyses using molecular and morphological characters), the origin of the angiosperms remains unclear. Angiosperms appear rather suddenly in the fossil record... with no obvious ancestors for a period of 80-90 million years before their appearance.⁸²

In a similar way, many orders of mammals appear in an explosive manner. Niles Eldredge explains that "there are all sorts of gaps: absence of gradationally intermediate 'transitional' forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between, say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals."⁸³ There is also a bird explosion, with major bird groups appearing in a short time period.⁸⁴ One paper in Trends in Ecology and Evolution titled "Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse" explains:

A literal reading of the fossil record indicates that the early Cambrian (c. 545 million years ago) and early Tertiary (c. 65 million years ago) were characterized by enormously accelerated periods of morphological evolution marking the appearance of the animal phyla, and modern bird and placental mammal orders, respectively.⁸⁵

Of course there are a handful of examples where evolutionary scientists believe they have found transitional fossils documenting gradual Darwinian evolution. The origin of whales has been called a "poster child for macroevolution,"⁸⁶ where it is believed that around 55 million years ago, certain land mammals lost their hind-limbs and evolved into fully aquatic whales. In particular, it is claimed there are fossil land-mammals with ear-bones similar to whales, and fossil whale-like mammals that retain their hindlimbs.
Even though vertebrate and whale expert Phillip Gingerich admits that we only have "fossils illustrating three or four steps that bridge the precursor of whales to today's mammals,"⁸⁷ let's assume for a moment that a full sequence of fossils exists. Is this enough to demonstrate that this transition occurred? Even if there are fossils that look like potential intermediate forms, if the overall evolutionary story does not make sense, then the fossils cannot be transitional. In this case, the Darwinian evolution of whales from land-mammals faces serious mathematical challenges from population genetics.
Many changes would have been necessary to convert a land-mammal into a whale, including:

• Emergence of a blowhole, with musculature and nerve control


• Modification of the eye for permanent underwater vision


• Ability to drink sea water


• Forelimbs transformed into flippers


• Modification of skeletal structure


• Ability to nurse young underwater


• Origin of tail flukes and musculature


• Blubber for temperature insulation⁸⁸

Many of these necessary adaptations would require multiple coordinated changes. But as we saw in Problem 3, such simultaneous mutations require extremely long periods of time to arise via the Darwinian mechanism. Whale evolution now runs into a severe problem. The fossil record requires that the evolution of whales from small land mammals would have to have taken place in less than 10 million years.⁸⁹ That may sound like a long time, but it actually falls dramatically short, especially given that whales have small population sizes and long generation times.⁹⁰ Biologist Richard Sternberg has examined the requirements of this transition mathematically and puts it this way: "Too many genetic re-wirings, too little time."⁹¹
Whale origins thus provides an interesting case study of evolutionary transitions: On a rare occasion where there actually are fossils that potentially show intermediate traits, unguided neo-Darwinian evolution is invalidated by the short amount of time allowed by the fossil record. If this "poster child" of macroevolution doesn't hold up to scrutiny, what does this tell us about other cases where evolutionists tout supposed transitional fossils?
Human Origins and the Fossil Record
Indeed, the public is commonly told that there are fossils documenting the evolution of humans from ape-like precursors, but a closer look at the technical literature tells a different story. Hominid fossils generally fall into one of two groups: ape-like species and human-like species, with a large, unbridged gap between them. In 2004, the famed evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr recognized the abrupt appearance of humans:

The earliest fossils of Homo, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, are separated from Australopithecus by a large, unbridged gap. How can we explain this seeming saltation? Not having any fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.⁹²

In light of such evidence, a paper in the Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution called the appearance of Homo sapiens "a genetic revolution" where "no australopithecine species is obviously transitional."⁹³ The lack of fossil evidence for this hypothesized transition is confirmed by Harvard paleoanthropologists Daniel E. Lieberman, David R. Pilbeam, and Richard W. Wrangham:

Of the various transitions that occurred during human evolution, the transition from Australopithecus to Homo was undoubtedly one of the most critical in its magnitude and consequences. As with many key evolutionary events, there is both good and bad news. First, the bad news is that many details of this transition are obscure because of the paucity of the fossil and archaeological records.⁹⁴

As for the "good news," they still admit: "although we lack many details about exactly how, when, and where the transition occurred from Australopithecus to Homo, we have sufficient data from before and after the transition to make some inferences about the overall nature of key changes that did occur."⁹⁵ In other words, the fossil record provides ape-like australopithecines ("before"), and human-like Homo ("after"), but not fossils documenting a transition between them. In the absence of intermediates, we're left with "inferences" of a transition based strictly upon the assumption of Darwinian evolution. One commentator proposed the evidence implies a "big bang theory" of the appearance of our genus Homo.⁹⁶ This does not make for a compelling evolutionary account of human origins.⁹⁷
Rather than showing gradual Darwinian evolution, the history of life shows a pattern of explosions where new fossil forms come into existence without clear evolutionary precursors. Evolutionary anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz summarizes the problem:

[W]e are still in the dark about the origin of most major groups of organisms. They appear in the fossil record as Athena did from the head of Zeus -- full-blown and raring to go, in contradiction to Darwin's depiction of evolution as resulting from the gradual accumulation of countless infinitesimally minute variations. . ."⁹⁸

This poses a major challenge to Darwinian evolution, including the view that all animals are related through common ancestry.
References:
[65.] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), p. 292 (reprint, London: Penguin Group, 1985).
[66.] Ibid.
[67.] Ibid.
[68.] Stephen Jay Gould, "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, 6(1): 119-130 (1980).
[69.] Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859), p. 292 (reprint, London: Penguin Group, 1985).
[70.] Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution's erratic pace," Natural History, 86(5): 12-16, (May, 1977).
[71.] M. J. Benton, M. A. Wills, and R. Hitchin, "Quality of the fossil record through time," Nature, 403: 534-536 (Feb. 3, 2000).
[72.] Mike Foote, "Sampling, Taxonomic Description, and Our Evolving Knowledge of Morphological Diversity," Paleobiology, 23: 181-206 (Spring, 1997).
[73.] Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall, The Myths of Human Evolution, p. 59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982).
[74.] David S. Woodruff, "Evolution: The Paleobiological View," Science, 208: 716-717 (May 16, 1980).
[75.] C.P. Hickman, L.S. Roberts, and F.M. Hickman, Integrated Principles of Zoology, p. 866 (Times Mirror/Moseby College Publishing, 1988, 8th ed).
[76.] R.S.K. Barnes, P. Calow and P.J.W. Olive, The Invertebrates: A New Synthesis, pp. 9-10 (3rd ed., Blackwell Sci. Publications, 2001).
[77.] Robert L. Carroll, "Towards a new evolutionary synthesis," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 15(1):27-32 (2000).
[78.] Jaume Baguña and Jordi Garcia-Fernández, "Evo-Devo: the Long and Winding Road," International Journal of Developmental Biology, 47:705-713 (2003) (internal citations removed).
[79.] Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich and Mark A. McPeek, "MicroRNAs and metazoan macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian explosion," BioEssays, 31 (7):736-747 (2009).
[80.] Arthur N. Strahler, Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy, pp. 408-409 (New York: Prometheus Books, 1987).
[81.] Richard M. Bateman, Peter R. Crane, William A. DiMichele, Paul R. Kenrick, Nick P. Rowe, Thomas Speck, and William E. Stein, "Early Evolution of Land Plants: Phylogeny, Physiology, and Ecology of the Primary Terrestrial Radiation," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 29: 263-292 (1998).
[82.] Stefanie De Bodt, Steven Maere, and Yves Van de Peer, "Genome duplication and the origin of angiosperms," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 20:591-597 (2005).
[83.] Niles Eldredge, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism (New York: Washington Square Press, 1982), 65.
[84.] See Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, "Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13 (April, 1998): 151-156; Frank B. Gill, Ornithology, 3rd ed. (New York: W.H. Freeman, 2007), 42.
[85.] Alan Cooper and Richard Fortey, "Evolutionary Explosions and the Phylogenetic Fuse," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 13: 151-156 (April, 1998).
[86.] J.G.M. Thewissen and Sunil Bajpai, "Whale Origins as a Poster Child for Maccroevolution," BioEssays, 51: 1037-1049 (December, 2001).
[87.] Philip Gingerich, "Fossils and the Origin of Whales," ActionBioScience.org (December, 2006), http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/gingerich.html
[88.] List provided courtesy of Dr. Richard Sternberg.
[89.] Alan Feduccia, "'Big bang' for tertiary birds?," Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 18: 172-176 (2003).
[90.] See Walter James ReMine, The Biotic Message: Evolution Versus Message Theory (Saint Paul: MN, Saint Paul Science, 1983).
[91.] Private communication with Richard Sternberg.
[92.] Ernst Mayr, What Makes Biology Unique?, p. 198 (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
[93.] John Hawks, Keith Hunley, Sang-Hee Lee, and Milford Wolpoff, "Population Bottlenecks and Pleistocene Human Evolution," Journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17(1):2-22 (2000).
[94.] Daniel E. Lieberman, David R. Pilbeam, and Richard W. Wrangham, "The Transition from Australopithecus to Homo," Transitions in Prehistory: Essays in Honor of Ofer Bar-Yosef, p. 1 (John J. Shea and Daniel E. Lieberman eds., Oxbow Books, 2009) (internal citations removed).
[95.] Ibid.
[96.] "New study suggests big bang theory of human evolution," (January 10, 2000) at http://www.umich.edu/~newsinfo/Releases/2000/Jan00/r011000b.html
[97.] For a more detailed discussion of the fossil evidence and human origins, see Casey Luskin, "Human Origins and the Fossil Record," pp. 45-83 in Science and Human Origins (Discovery Institute Press, 2012).
[98.] Jeffrewy Schwartz, Sudden Origins: Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species, p. 3 (Wiley, 1999).

Deconstructing David Hume.

What Darwin's Darlings Need to Know about David Hume

Michael Flannery January 29, 2015 11:11 AM

 

 

 

There is little question that David Hume (1711-1776), patron saint of nearly every skeptic who came after him, has profoundly influenced Darwin's most passionate believers. Michael Shermer touts the so-called "Hume Maxim," Daniel Dennett considers him his "favorite" philosopher, and Richard Dawkins's attack on the rationality of theism is said to have a particularly "Humean aroma." Indeed, as William B. Huntley has explained so well, Darwin himself took his cues from Hume.

But Darwin's contemporary and natural selection's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, was unimpressed by Hume, and his Miracles and Modern Spiritualism delivered a detailed response to Hume's many claims and assertions about belief and the miraculous that Darwin's darlings would do well to heed.

Referring to Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Wallace took careful note of Hume's definition of a miracle, which was that a miracle "is a violation of the laws of nature" and that it "is a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent." Wallace protested that "both these definitions are bad or imperfect. The first assumes that we know all the laws of nature, that the particular effect could not be produced by some unknown law of nature overcoming a law we do know." Why, he added, must products of intelligence in nature invariably violate natural laws? Wallace suggests that Hume's assertions about the violation of natural laws are assumed without, in his words, "a shadow of proof."

Wallace burrows further into Hume's argument. Hume insisted that one test for a miracle should be "uniform experience," which he asserts "amounts to a proof." For example, that a seemingly healthy man should die would not be considered a miracle because it has on occasion occurred, but that a dead man should rise from the grave would clearly be a miracle because, according to Hume, it has never been observed to occur. Upon such reasoning Hume built his case for discounting all miracles simply because of their sheer improbability.

Wallace replied:

This argument is radically fallacious, because if it were sound, no perfectly new fact could ever be proved, since the first and each succeeding witness would be assumed to have universal experience against him. Such a simple fact as the existence of flying fish [i.e. the Exocoetidae family comprising seven to nine genera] could never be proved, if Hume's argument is a good one; for the first man who saw and described one, would have the universal experience against him that fish do not fly, or make any approach to flying, and his evidence being rejected, the same argument would apply to the second, and to every subsequent witness; and thus no man at the present day who has not seen a flying fish alive, and actually flying, ought to believe that such things exist.

Wallace goes on to demonstrate how Hume contradicts himself. For example, in one passage Hume proclaims that in all of history no miracle has ever been attested to by a sufficient number of men of good sense, education, and learning. In the next passage Hume admits that the miracles of the then-popular Jansenist healings at the Abbé Paris from 1727-1730 were attributed in great number and "proved upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity." But, for Hume, ''we may establish it as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle, and make it a just foundation for any such religion.''

But if we may doubt all human testimony -- something Wallace emphatically denied -- then all our epistemological certainties could be called into doubt, and the courtrooms that rely upon them might as well (by Humean standards) be shut down.

Hume continued to insist that various religions "abound in miracles" and that some are very different, and moreover, that "whatever is different is contrary." So the sheer number of miracles associated with various different, and therefore contrary, faiths undermine or negate the validity of these alleged miracles. Wallace retorts that Hume "confounds the evidence for the fact [of a miracle] with the theories to account for the fact, and most illogically and unphilosophically argues, that if the theories lead to contradictions, the facts themselves do not exist."

In the end, Wallace leveled four charges against Hume:

1. Hume's definition of miracles is false and simply begs the question of their possibility;
2. Hume claims that miracles are isolated facts, a fallacy to which the entire course of human testimony -- and human history -- is opposed;
3. Hume deliberately and absolutely contradicted himself as to the amount and quality of the testimony in favor of miracles; and
4. Hume propounds a fallacy that miracles connected with opposing religions destroy each other or negate each other by contradictory claims. The miracles may stand separate and distinct from whatever religious claims might be made for them.

It should be said that Wallace objected to Hume's assumption that every miraculous act had to come directly from God in some unmediated sense. Wallace believed that there were an "infinite number of intelligent beings who may exist in the universe between ourselves and the Deity." And before we get too taken aback at this statement as merely exchanging Hume's blasphemy for Wallace's heresy, it is worth a reminder that Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica believed that God governs many things through angels that allows for a sharing of the causality inherent in God's nature -- the First Cause. Dominican Aidan Nichols has noted, "the First Cause gives being; secondary causes determine it." But perhaps more importantly the occasion of a miracle and the specific operations behind a miracle are two separate things; uncertainty of operation does not equal negation of the act.

In any case, it is clear that Wallace was unimpressed by Hume's skepticism. He felt Hume's arguments failed the test of logic and posed simplistic -- even naïve -- formulations about religion and religious claims. Insisting upon the utmost rationalism, Hume's own argument would stop all rational inquiry in its tracks since no human testimony could ultimately be admitted into court unless it met a test of "uniformity" defined and constructed so as to affirm the very premise in question, namely, that miracles cannot exist.

Wallace's dissection of Hume anticipated C.S. Lewis's Miracles some 73 years later. What a shame that such "informed" and "rational" men of "science" as Shermer, Dennett, and Dawkins have been so limited in their reading as to continue to praise ideas long since refuted.

Do try this at home.

No Spin: Endogenous Retroviruses Are Important for Brain Function, and Aren't Junk

Casey Luskin January 26, 2015 3:10 AM

 

 

Ann Gauger recently wrote an excellent piece about interpreting scientific writings minus all the unnecessary evolutionary gloss. Let's apply her methods to a recent news story.

The claim is that junk DNA helped our brain cells evolve. The raw data shows that what we typically have called endogenous retroviruses are not necessarily junk but are genetic elements that are important for controlling brain function. Yet science journalists have been spinning the demise of this evolutionary icon as a win for Darwinian theory, the very opposite of what it really is. The Daily Mail frames the study this way:

It's long been known that DNA from so-called retroviruses make up around 5 percent of our genetic makeup.

But for years, this was dubbed junk DNA with no real use, and was considered to be a side effect of evolution -- until now.

New research suggests that, over the course of evolution, the viruses took an 'increasingly firm hold' on how cells work, and they may have made brain cells in particular more active and dynamic, ultimately making us smarter.

In particular, the study from Lund University in Sweden claims that inherited viruses, which are millions of years old, play an important role in building up the complex networks that characterise our brains.

Very similarly, an article at R&D Magazine states:

Researchers have long been aware endogenous retroviruses constitute around 5 percent of our DNA. For many years, they were considered junk DNA of no real use, a side effect of our evolutionary journey.

In the current study, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues show that retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain, more specifically in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when. The findings indicate that, over the course of evolution, the viruses took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. ...

"We have been able to observe that these viruses are activated specifically in the brain cells and have an important regulatory role. We believe that the role of retroviruses can contribute to explaining why brain cells in particular are so dynamic and multifaceted in their function. It may also be the case that the viruses' more or less complex functions in various species can help us to understand why we are so different," says Jakobsson, head of the research team for molecular neurogenetics at Lund University.

Let's try rewriting that without the evolutionary overlay. Here's what the Daily Mail story might look like, with my inserted words italicized and their deleted words struck through:

It's long been known that DNA from so-called retroviruses make up around 5 percent of our genetic makeup.

For years, this was dubbed junk DNA with no real use, and was considered to be a side effect of evolution -- until now.

New research suggests that, over the course of evolution, the what we once thought were viruses and a form or parasitic, junk DNA took an 'increasingly firm hold' on how cells work, and they may have made are actually important genetic elements that play a vital role in making brain cells in particular more active and dynamic, ultimately making us smarter.

In particular, the study from Lund University in Sweden claims that what we once thought were mere inherited viruses, which are millions of years old, are actually normal DNA sequences that play an important role in building up the complex networks that characterise our brains.

Likewise, we can rewrite this passage from R&D Magazine:

Researchers have long been aware endogenous retroviruses constitute around 5 percent of our DNA. For many years, they were considered junk DNA of no real use, a side effect of our evolutionary journey.

In the current study, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues show that genetic elements which we used to think were mere retroviruses seem to play a central role in the basic functions of the brain, more specifically in the regulation of which genes are to be expressed, and when. The findings indicate that, over the course of evolution, the viruses these genetic elements aren't mere retroviruses but actually are genetic elements that play an important role in brain function, and take a took an increasingly firm hold on the steering wheel in our cellular machinery. ...

And there you have it: the functions of endogenous retroviruses, no longer to be considered junk DNA, are perfectly well explained without reference to Darwinian evolution. Feel free to try this at home, if you like.

On separating science from mysticism II

It Takes Great Faith to Be an Astrobiologist

Evolution News & Views January 22, 2015 4:28 AM | 

NASA's Astrobiology Magazine, funded with taxpayer dollars, illustrates the mystical view -- what else to call it? -- of nature in the astrobiologist community. In Elizabeth Howell's article, "How the Code of Life Passed Through Primitive Kinds of Cells," we see Harold Fellerman of the University of Denmark showing his mystical streak:

"I'm very interested in the creative potential of nature," he said. "Nature in general seems to be fertile with creativity that outperforms any human imagination. We find solutions to problems in nature that no engineer would envision." [Emphasis added.]

The statement is hardly distinguishable from animism. To see why, we need to nail down some rules. These rules should be uncontroversial to any modern scientist, because they follow logically from naturalism.

1. "Nature" to a materialist has no spirit, imagination, or goal.
2. Inanimate matter has no "desire" to become animate; vitalism is out.
3. "Building blocks of life" have no obligation or desire to assemble into a living thing.
4. A lucky accident in one part of the origin-of-life scenario has no obligation or desire to join forces with another lucky accident somewhere else.
5. A random chain of building blocks is not "information" in a biological sense, nor is a "pattern" of building blocks, nor are copies of a random chain or a pattern.
6. Investigators are not allowed to interfere with natural processes in origin-of-life scenarios, because this sneaks information into the system.
7. Wishful thinking is not science. One needs evidence. Putting the evidence into the future, "i.e., further research is needed," is a cop-out.
8. The complex functions of living cells cannot be used to infer origins in inanimate matter without begging the question raised by Rules 2 and 3.

Go ahead and call foul any time someone violates one of these rules in Howell's story:

• "Life's origins are a mystery, but every year scientists get a little bit closer to understanding what made life possible on Earth, and possibly on other planets or moons." [Violates Rules 1, 4 and 7]

• "We only have one known case study of life so far, on our own planet, but microbial life is considered possible in many other areas around the Solar System, such as on Mars, Jupiter's icy Europa, and on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that erupts water as geysers." [Violates Rule 7]

• "One large wish of scientists these days is to create artificial cells that closely mimic what biological ones do so that it would be easy to create laboratory conditions to test out how they evolve." [Violates Rules 2, 6, 7, and 8]

• "Researchers would be happy to create an artificial protocell, but that's far from easy. Figuring out how inheritance work [sic] -- how traits of a parent protocell are passed on to the next generation -- is one of the largest problems facing scientists today." [Violates Rules 6, 7, and 8]

• "The researchers brought in a hypothesis from three decades ago that assumed that any sequence of polymers (chain of small molecules) can encode information, and can becopied from one polymer strand to another using a process called template directed replication." [Violates Rules 5 and 7]

• "When simulating information strings in the computer simulation, the researchers came up with a surprising discovery. Replication occurred as expected, with information strings duplicating themselves, but the scientists were surprised to see shorter and longer strings being created in strikingly regular patterns." [Violates Rules 3, 4, 5 and 6]

• "Over time, the simulation showed the information strings were occurring in equal proportions of long and short lengths in predictable patterns. While the scientists can't say for sure that this was a step along the road to life, they said it bears further investigation as they work to create artificial protocells." [Violates Rules 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8]

You get the idea. Check the rest of the article by the rules as an exercise in critical thinking. So what remains after the violations are stricken? Essentially, nothing. There is hardly a sentence in this article that does not violate one or more rules.

This stripped-down remainder is sheer mysticism, as expressed in the Fellerman quote:

"I'm very interested in the creative potential of nature," he said. "Nature in general seems to be fertile with creativity that outperforms any human imagination. We find solutions to problems in nature that no engineer would envision."

It takes great faith to be an astrobiologist.

Iconoclasm II

Now It's Whale Hips: Another Icon of Darwinian Evolution, Vestigial Structures, Takes a Hit

David Klinghoffer September 15, 2014 4:05 AM 

In the case presented by advocates of Darwinian evolution, vestigial organs are a star in the firmament, frequently and gloatingly pointed to. Darwin himself cited them as such in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, referring to body parts like the human appendix that, he believed, no longer serve a function:

On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility... should so frequently occur.

Of course the appendix is a great example of an organ once thought to be without utility that now turns out to serve a vital role.

In the catalogue of purported vestigial parts, whale hips are "the marquee example," writes Stephanie Keep at the absurdly named "Science League of America" blog populated by our Darwin-lobbying friends at the National Center for Science Education. Unfortunately whale hips have now gone the way of appendix. A paper in the journal Evolution reports that rather than being a useless reminder of the evolutionary past, when whale ancestor Pakicetus strode thThe pelvic bone supports the muscles that guide the penis. In male whales and other cetaceans, performance and thus successful sexual competition hinge on the size of the hips. The paper explains:

Male genitalia evolve rapidly, probably as a result of sexual selection. Whether this pattern extends to the internal infrastructure that influences genital movements remains unknown. Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) offer a unique opportunity to test this hypothesis: since evolving from land-dwelling ancestors, they lost external hind limbs and evolved a highly reduced pelvis which seems to serve no other function except to anchor muscles that maneuver the penis. Here we create a novel morphometric pipeline to analyze the size and shape evolution of pelvic bones from 130 individuals (29 species) in the context of inferred mating system. We present two main findings: 1) males from species with relatively intense sexual selection (inferred by relative testes size) have evolved relatively large penises and pelvic bones compared to their body size, and 2) pelvic bone shape diverges more quickly in species pairs that have diverged in inferred mating system. Neither pattern was observed in the anterior-most pair of vertebral ribs, which served as a negative control. This study provides evidence that sexual selection can affect internal anatomy that controls male genitalia. These important functions may explain why cetacean pelvic bones have not been lost through evolutionary time.

Under selection pressure from reality, Darwinists have already had to back away from Darwin's own understanding of what it means for a structure to be vestigial. Rather than serving no purpose, writes Jerry Coyne in Why Evolution Is True, now being vestigial can mean serving adifferent purpose than in one's distant ancestors. He defines "vestigial trait" this way:

A trait that is the evolutionary remnant of a feature once useful in an ancestral species but that is no longer useful in the same way. Vestigial traits can be either nonfunctional (the wings of the kiwi) or co-opted for new uses (the wings of the ostrich).

Stephanie Keep agrees:

[T]here's a problem when vestigial structures are defined as evolutionary remnants that have no function. As I discussed in a previous post, the correct way to describe a vestigial structure is to say that it no longer has its original function.

She is excited about Carl Zimmer's post on the subject, which elaborates:

While [whale hips] may not be essential for walking, they still matter a lot to whales. To see why, we have to go back to those hips of land mammals. They are important for walking on land, but they serve other purposes, too. Among other things, they anchor muscles that control the sex organs. If these muscles are anesthetized in men, for example, they have a hard time gaining an erection.

As whale hips stopped mattering to walking, they didn't stop mattering to having sex. In male whales, the pelvis controls the penis with an especially elaborate set of muscles. In some whale and dolphin species, these muscles make the penis downright prehensile.

You see the problem. Whale hips are "vestigial" yet still extremely important. Comments our colleague Michael Behe, "So doesn't that make everything a vestigial structure from a Darwinian viewpoint? And if so, of what use is the word?" Or as Jonathan Wells wrote here back in 2009 in reviewing Coyne's book ("The Myth of Vestigial Organs and Bad Design: Why Darwinism Is False"):

As [biologist Steven] Scadding had pointed out nearly thirty years ago, ... Darwin's argument rested on lack of function, not change of function. Furthermore, if vestigiality were redefined as Coyne proposes, it would include many features never before thought to be vestigial. For example, if the human arm evolved from the leg of a four-footed mammal (as Darwinists claim), then the human arm is vestigial. And if (as Coyne argues) the wings of flying birds evolved from feathered forelimbs of dinosaurs that used them for other purposes, then the wings of flying birds are vestigial. This is the opposite of what most people mean by "vestigial."

In this way, the concept of a vestigial trait is reduced to meaninglessness. In the most minimal definition, evolution denotes change over of time. No trait goes unchanged. Under the framework of Darwinian evolution, therefore, everything is vestigial. So nothing is.

This is not just our observation. The scientists who revealed the usefulness of whale hips are rethinking what it means to be vestigial. Or so it sounds from the remarks of biologist Matthew Dean at USC, a co-author of the paper in Evolution, commenting in Science Daily:

"Our research really changes the way we think about the evolution of whale pelvic bones in particular, but more generally about structures we call 'vestigial.' As a parallel, we are now learning that our appendix is actually quite important in several immune processes, not a functionally useless structure," Dean said.

Anyone who thinks whale hips are functionless, just like your appendix, should try telling that to a lonely gentleman whale. The career of this evolutionary icon isn't over yet, I'm sure, but its importance in the evolutionary pantheon is due for a serious downgrade.e land on all fours, they in fact serve an unquestionably important purpose.

Iconoclasm

Moth turns from black to white as Britain's polluted skies change colour

 The Peppered moth, which changed its colour from white to black in areas of Britain with heavy pollution, is now reverting to its original appearance.The moth was white with small black speckles but over time it evolved to being almost black in parts of the UK because of heavy industrial pollution. The change made it less obvious to predators against backgrounds of grime and soot.

Having declined by more than two thirds compared to 40 years ago, it is regarded as a classic example of natural selection and has consequently become known as "Darwin's moth."

Now in post-industrial Britain, 200 years after Darwin's birth, the moth is changing back to its original white colour.

Scientists at Butterfly Conservation, based in Dorset, are now appealing to the public for help in finding out how widespread this change has become.

As part of Garden Moths Count 2009 they want people to search their gardens for the moth and log their sightings.

"We have seen these moths making a big swing back to their original colour," said Richard Fox, project manager of Moths Count.

"It has been happening for decades as air pollution is cleaned up and with the demise of heavy industry in the big cities.

"The moths have been responding to this and the numbers of black and white moths will vary across the county.

"In Dorset it is very rare to see the moth in its dark form, but in industrial cities 150 years ago they were almost all black and that's where we will notice the greatest changes now."

He said they were also hoping to discover why the moth has been declining so dramatically since the 1960's.

"It's an iconic moth, the one that everyone learns about at school because it is such an amazing example of natural selection," he said.

"But it has actually undergone a major decline of 61 per cent since the 1960's and we don't know why.

"We will be fascinated to see where people are finding the two different forms of the moth and whether in fact people are finding it in their gardens at all."

Moth experts are also asking the public to look out for the beautiful day-flying Scarlet Tiger, which until recently was rarely seen outside South West England and South Wales.

In recent years the moth has spread to further parts of Britain as a result of climate change.

Scientists want to access how far they have flown to access the impact of climate change on our wildlife.

Garden Moths Count is part of the national Moths Count project, established after research indicated massive declines in moth numbers, especially in the southern half of Britain.

Some people are put off moths by the myth that they all eat clothes.

But in reality only half a dozen of Britain's 2,500 moth species do this - and they prefer dirty items that are hidden away in the dark in places where they are not disturbed.

Mr Fox added: "Moths are important indicators and observing them can tell us a lot.

"They are an essential food source for many birds and they are important pollinators in the garden.

"Some are very beautiful and, despite their recent decline, there are still very colourful moths to be seen in all of our gardens."

Sightings of moths seen by day or at night can be logged at the Garden Moths Count website www.mothscount.org .

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