Cicadas vs. Darwin

The Cicada Challenge to Darwinian Evolution

Evolution News & Views They'll create quite a commotion next month, but they're mostly a harmless nuisance or a wonder of nature, depending on your outlook. They're the northeast brood of Magicicada, the so-called 17-year locusts. Smithsonian Magazine tells about them:

Residents in the Northeast U.S. waiting for warm temperatures may get a surprise along with their May flowers: When the soil reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit, they'll also get a visit from billions and billions of cicadas.

This latest brood is composed of several species including Magicicada septendecim, M. cassini and M. septendecula, and is expected to take over West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and a tiny spot on Long Island. 

In an event that only happens once every 17 years for this brood, the creatures will soon dig their way out of the soil, shed their exoskeletons and emerge en masse. The swarm will spend two to six weeks mating and singing their grating, sing-song call before dying and blanketing the ground with their crispy brown corpses. [Emphasis added.]

Here's a natural wonder worth thinking about. There are 14 identified species of periodic cicadas in the United States. A southern brood on a 13-year cycle came up in 2011 (see Live Science). Both 13 and 17 are prime numbers. Evolutionists have long touted their adaptive story about why this is. Smithsonian says:

Researchers have theorized that the insects spend such a lengthy time underground in an effort to outlive parasites that may harm them, Eoin O'Carroll wrote for The Christian Science Monitor in 2013. Other researchers speculate that the 13 and 17-year life cycles, both prime numbers, are an evolutionary adaptation and a mathematical trick that keeps cicadas from emerging during peak population periods for their predators. 

"A cicada that emerges every 17 years and has a predator with a five-year life cycle will only face a peak predator population once every 85 years," writes Patrick di Justo in The New Yorker, "giving them an enormous advantage over less well-adapted cicadas."

Live Science adds that the sheer numbers provide an advantage, too: no predator could possibly devour so many of them. But it's the prime number quirk that attracts evolutionists' attention:

The key factor is that both numbers are prime; they can't be divided evenly by any smaller numbers (except one). It is no mere coincidence that cicadas have evolved indivisible life cycles. As explained by the entomologist Stephen Jay Gould, prime cycles have a major evolutionary advantage over cycles that are multiples of smaller numbers of years, and for a simple reason: They make cicadas more elusive.

"Many potential predators have 2-5 year life cycles. Such cycles are not set by the availability of cicadas (for they peak too often in years of non-emergence), but cicadas might be eagerly harvested when the cycles coincide," Gould wrote in his best-seller "Ever Since Darwin" (Norton 1977). "Consider a predator with a life-cycle of five years: if cicadas emerged every 15 years, each bloom would be hit by the predator. By cycling at a large prime number, cicadas minimize the number of coincidences (every 5×17, or 85 years, in this case)."

In summary: "Thirteen- and 17-year cycles cannot be tracked by any smaller number."

We could leave it at that, and agree that evolutionary theory is wonderful the way it explains things. Yet think again. Don't the two explanations work against each other? If predation is a problem, why the billions at once? With so many, they could come up every year and do just fine. Why wait? And if selection pressure helps the cicadas, can't it help the predators the same way? Where are the 17-year predators? Besides, you wonder what the predators are eating outside the two-to-six week window the cicadas are active. 

Like the peppered moths and the Galápagos finches, the evolutionary story of cicadas offers a certain intuitive satisfaction, until you start asking questions. Worse, it distracts from the really interesting aspects that really need explaining. To wit:

• The remarkable timekeeping ability of the nymphs to silently count 13 or 17 years.
• The trigger that makes all of them emerge simultaneously. The temperature gauge needs to coordinate with the clock, otherwise they would emerge every year.
• The "incomplete metamorphosis" they undergo (i.e., unlike butterflies shown in the film Metamorphosis, cicadas do not have a chrysalis or pupa stage; the nymphs grow directly into adulthood). Even so, the larvae have to transition from one body plan into another that has completely new structures, like wings, eyes, antennae and reproductive organs. 

Other amazing facts about cicadas tend to get drowned out in the rush to explain the evolution of prime numbers. For instance, cicadas have amazing wing surfaces that burst bacteria. Three years ago, Nature News described nanoscopic pillars on the wings that pop bacterial membranes, shredding them to pieces (see videos in the article). It was such a clever method for disinfection, scientists envisioned creating similar materials that "could one day be applied to public surfaces that commonly harbour disease, such as bus railings." 

PhysOrg mentioned other advantages: "In marked contrast to the biochemical mechanisms of antibiotics, which are subject to acquired resistance, physical mechanisms are non-specific, and cannot be reversed or altered, tackling bacterial cells as a whole." This kind of "anti-microbial physics" could be designed to simultaneously nourish human cells, supporting "a variety of biomedical implants, anti-fouling surfaces or biosensors."

Obviously, any creature capable of powered flight deserves our admiration for impeccable design. Add to that all the other systems required for complex animal life: (e.g., reproductive, digestive, respiratory) and traits characteristic of insects (e.g., articulated legs, compound eyes, antennae) and we see a whole package of systems that challenge blind processes of natural selection.

Rogues II

Barbarians at the gate III:Rogues.

Barbarians at the gate II:The opening engagement.

Wistar and DNA Day: A Fifty-Year Fuse Under Neo-Darwinism

Evolution News & Views 

Today, as we noted on Friday, marks two momentous anniversaries -- of the elucidation of the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick (they published in the journal Nature on April 25, 1953), and that of the opening of the Wistar Institute conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution" (1966). 

The latter, if only because fifty years is a nice round number and because Wistar is less familiar to the public, may for us be the more significant of the two. Wistar was the beginning of the end for neo-Darwinism, and in a sense the inception of the modern intelligent design movement. 

How should you celebrate? First of all, for the background on Wistar, watch Discovery Institute's Paul Nelson, below. Dr. Nelson predicts that the upcoming Royal Society meeting will be a replay or update of Wistar (see "Intelligent Design Aside, from Templeton Foundation to the Royal Society, Darwinism Is Under Siege"):econd, the truth is the mathematical challenge to Darwinism is alive and well today. We describe it, and more about the Wistar conference, in the Discovery Institute documentary The Information Enigma, featuring the work of Stephen Meyer and Douglas Axe. See it here if you haven't already:his math, quite accessible really, also forms the background to Richard Dawkins's recent dispute with Dr. Meyer. See Meyer's post, "Dawkins's Dilemma: Misrepresent the Mechanism...or Face the Math."

Called forth by MIT's Murray Eden, Wistar commenced with the memorable words of Nobel laureate Sir Peter Medawar:

[T]he immediate cause of this conference is a pretty widespread sense of dissatisfaction about what has come to be thought as the accepted evolutionary theory in the English-speaking world, the so-called neo-Darwinian Theory. ... There are objections made by fellow scientists who feel that, in the current theory, something is missing ... These objections to current neo-Darwinian theory are very widely held among biologists generally; and we must on no account, I think, make light of them. The very fact that we are having this conference is evidence that we are not making light of them.

But, finally, of course there would be no Wistar, and no consideration of DNA as life's celebrated information carrier, were it not for the vital first step -- Watson and Crick's description of the molecule's double helix structure. How long ago that seems. Just how far we've come since 1953, and the light that distance sheds on evidence for design in the genome, is the subject of a new website, "DNA and Beyond," from our friend, the tireless scholar Thomas E. Woodward. team of science educators and medical professors, is staging "DNA and Beyond" as a month-long celebration. It begins today, DNA Day, with the unveiling of a new DNA model that illustrates the latest discoveries in the genetic control system -- "epigenetics."

The "DNA and Beyond" teaching group highlights recent research on the mysterious epigenetic system of chemical markers, comprising millions of chemical flags and tags that have been discovered "above" or "on top of" (Greek, -epi) the genetic code. The area is not only one of the hottest fields in biology; it is dynamically related to health factors such as diet, exercise, and stress management.

DNA Day is, in addition, the kickoff for the release of a series of short videos, some of which feature CGI action clips of the "dance" of DNA, all available for free streaming at dnaandbeyond.org. Celebrate by learning more there -- and by reading Dr. Woodward's fine books, which include The Mysterious Epigenome and Doubts About Darwin: A History of Intelligent Design.

Another failed Darwinian prediction XX

Cell death

According to evolutionary theory, biological variation that supports or enhances reproduction will increase in future generations—a process known as natural selection. The corollary to this is that biological variation that degrades reproduction will not be selected for. Clearly, natural selection could not result in destructive behavior. Here are two representative statements from Origins:

we may feel sure that any [biological] variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. (Darwin, 63)

Natural selection will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each. (Darwin, 162-3)

But are not examples of such “injurious” behavior obvious? When the rattlesnake rattles its tail, is this not injurious to its hunt for food, and ultimately to its reproductive chances? Darwin argued that this and other such examples are signals to frighten away enemies, not warn the intended prey.

But today we have many examples of injurious behavior that falsify Darwin’s prediction that natural selection “will never produce in a being any structure more injurious than beneficial to that being.” In bacteria, for example, phenomenally complicated mechanisms carefully and precisely destroy the individual. Clearly, this suicide mechanism is more injurious than beneficial to the bacteria’s future prospects.

One such mechanism consists of a toxic gene coupled with an antitoxic gene. The toxic gene codes for a protein that sets the act of suicide into motion and so ultimately kills the bacteria. The antitoxic gene inhibits the toxic gene from executing its mission. Except, that is, when certain problems arise. Lack of proper nutrients, radiation damage and problems due to antibiotics can all cause the antitoxin to be diluted, thus allowing the toxin to perform its mission. (Chaloupka, Vinter; Engelberg-Kulka, Hazan, Amitai; Engelberg-Kulka, Amitai, Kolodkin-Gal, Hazan; University Of Nebraska)

This bacterial suicide is probably good for the bacteria population on the whole. If nutrients are running low, then better for some bacteria to die off so the neighbors can live on. Not only will the reduced population require less nutrients, but the dismantled bacteria help to replenish the food supply. Therefore evolutionists can explain the suicide mechanism as having evolved not for the individual bacteria, but for the population. But the explanation introduces major problems for the theory.

Suicide is probably good for the bacteria population, on the whole, in challenging conditions. Since gene sharing within a bacteria population is at its maximum, evolutionists have no problem explaining such altruism as a result of kin selection (see Altruism). Such a facile response, however, misses the profound problem of how such a design could arise in the first place, for the mechanism is immensely complex.

In this example of bacteria suicide, the antitoxic gene normally inhibits the toxic gene from executing its mission. When the antitoxic gene is diluted then the toxic gene can perform its mission. The toxin does not, however, single-handedly destroy the cell. The toxin is an enzyme that cuts up the copies of DNA (i.e., messenger RNA, or mRNA) that are used to make other proteins. By slicing up the mRNAs, the cell no longer produces the proteins essential for normal operation. But the toxin does not cut up all mRNAs. Some mRNAs escape unscathed, and consequently a small number of proteins are produced by the cell. These include death proteins that efficiently carry out the task of disassembling the cell.

Death proteins are not the only proteins that the toxin allows to be produced. As researchers reported, the toxin “activates a complex network of proteins.” (Amitai) While some of the proteins bring death to the bacteria, others can help the cell to survive. The result is that most cells in the population are destroyed, but a fraction is spared. This of course makes sense. The suicide mechanism would not help the bacteria population if every individual was destroyed. Instead, some survive, and they can be the founders of a new population when conditions improve.

This suicide mechanism and “behavior” is altruistic. Some bacteria die off to save others. And the explanation that this bacteria suicide is due to kin selection adds tremendous complexity to the theory of evolution. Kin selection can select from only that which is available. This elaborate suicide mechanism must have just happened to arise from some combination of random mutations, and then remained in place until the time when it would succeed in surviving a stressful environment. The toxin and antitoxin genes with their clever functionality, the death and survival proteins, the inter cellular communications—all these were needed to be in place and to be coordinated before the kin selection could even begin to act. This is highly unlikely and adds considerable complexity to the theory.

References

Amitai, Shahar, Ilana Kolodkin-Gal, Mirit Hananya-Meltabashi, Ayelet Sacher, Hanna Engelberg-Kulka. 2009. “Escherichia coli MazF leads to the simultaneous selective synthesis of both ‘death proteins’ and ‘survival proteins’.” PLoS Genetics 5:e1000390.

Chaloupka, J., V. Vinter. 1996. “Programmed cell death in bacteria.” Folia Microbiologica, 41:6.

Engelberg-Kulka, Hanna, Ronen Hazan, Shahar Amitai. 2005. “mazEF: a chromosomal toxin-antitoxin module that triggers programmed cell death in bacteria.” J Cell Science 118:4327-4332.

Engelberg-Kulka, Hanna, Shahar Amitai, Ilana Kolodkin-Gal, Ronen Hazan. 2006. “Bacterial programmed cell death and multicellular behavior in bacteria,” PLoS Genetics 2:e135.

University Of Nebraska. 2007. “New Hope For Fighting Antibiotic Resistance,” ScienceDaily April 27.

Darwinism vs.the real world XXVII

Temperature Control: Too Hot, Too Cold, or Just Right?
Howard Glicksman

Editor's note: Physicians have a special place among the thinkers who have elaborated the argument for intelligent design. Perhaps that's because, more than evolutionary biologists, they are familiar with the challenges of maintaining a functioning complex system, the human body. With that in mind, Evolution News is delighted to offer this series, "The Designed Body." For the complete series, see here. Dr. Glicksman practices palliative medicine for a hospice organization.

Since the body is made from matter, it must follow the laws of nature that affect the atoms and molecules making up its trillions of cells. These laws tell us that heat is the transfer of energy from one object to another and temperature is a measure of the random motion within an object or its internal energy. The body's core temperature is directly related to how much heat it produces from its metabolism, whether at complete rest or with activity, and how much heat it loses to or gains from its environment. The body must control its core temperature because, if it isn't just right, it can adversely affect enzyme function, the integrity of the plasma membrane, and other cellular structures.

The body's normal core temperature is set by the hypothalamus at 97o-99oF (36o-37oC). It receives data from the central thermoreceptors and keeps the core temperature at this set-point

using both voluntary and involuntary means. When your core temperature rises or falls outside the normal range, and you feel too hot or too cold, there are things you can do, like take off or put on warm clothes, to help bring the core temperature back towards normal. At the same time, the hypothalamus, using the sympathetic nerves, automatically sends out messages to the blood vessels and sweat glands in the skin to either promote or limit heat loss. Using both of these mechanisms, the body is usually able to keep its core temperature where it should be while staying active. Let's look at what happens when the numbers dictating core temperature just aren't right.

The commonest cause of an elevated core temperature is fever, also called pyrexia. Thistakes place when, under the influence of pyrogens, the hypothalamus increases the set-point. The body responds by reducing heat loss through the skin and increasing production through shivering to preserve this abnormally high temperature. That's why you feel chilly and shake prior to developing a fever. Pyrogens are chemicals released by invading bacteria, immune cells involved in inflammation and fighting infection, and even some types of cancer cells.

Hyperthermia, another common cause of high core temperatures, is when the core temperature is above 99oF (37.2oC) despite having normal thermoregulatory mechanisms in place. This usually takes place when a person is working or playing hard, generating excessive amounts of heat within a hot and humid setting, and the mechanisms for thermoregulation become overwhelmed.

Whether due to a very high fever (hyperpyrexia) from illness or heat stroke from physical and environmental factors, a core temperature above 107oF (42oC), means that several life-threatening reactions are likely to take place. These include things like protein and enzyme breakdown, impairment of mitochondrial function, and loss of plasma membrane stabilization. All of this culminates in severe brain dysfunction, muscle breakdown, loss of thermoregulation, and multi-organ system failure, resulting in death.

Hypothermia exists when the body's core temperature drops below 95oF (35oC) despite having normal thermoregulatory mechanisms in place. This usually happens when people are in a very cold environment without adequate protection. Hypothermia affects every tissue in the body by reducing cell metabolism and diminishing enzymatic activity, including the enzymes needed for energy production and usage. As the core temperature drops below 91oF (33oC), mental confusion is soon followed by loss of consciousness and thermoregulation itself.

Based on our knowledge of how the body works, the ability for our earliest ancestors to survive and reproduce depended on their ability to maintain the right core temperature no matter where they were or what they were doing. For if the system of control they used allowed the core temperature to drop below 91oF (33oC) or go above 107oF (42oC), they would have died. Real numbers have real consequences when it comes to dealing with the laws of nature. Not just any core temperature works for survival. It has to be the right one to preserve protein integrity and cell function in order to keep the brain and all the other organs and tissues in the body working properly.

Just because a system is irreducibly complex does not automatically mean that it will be able to function well enough to allow for life. Besides being irreducibly complex, systems that allow for life must also have natural survival capacity. By this I mean that each system must take into account the laws of nature. This involves having an inherent knowledge of what is needed to keep the organism alive and the ability to do what needs to be done.

The system that uses thyroid function and uses the sympathetic nervous system to adjust the blood vessels and sweat glands in the skin to keep the body's core temperature between 97o-99oF (36o-37o C) seems to naturally know how to get the job done. The same can be said for each of the control systems discussed in this series that manage things like oxygen, carbon dioxide, hydrogen ion, hemoglobin, iron, water, sodium, potassium, glucose, respiratory and heart rate, and blood pressure. Not only do each of these systems demonstrate irreducible complexity with natural survival capacity, but the absence or serious dysfunction of any one of them results in death.

Given what you have learned so far about what it actually takes to keep you alive, are you, like Richard Dawkins, intellectually satisfied about the explanatory power of evolutionary biology?

The more you understand what it takes for life to survive within the laws of nature, the more you will come to realize how inadequate and overly simplistic the theories of evolutionary biologists. How cold-blooded animals evolved into warm-blooded ones is a case in point. That's what we'll consider next time.

Back by popular demand:Darwin's finches

Darwin's Finches: The Hype Continues
Jonathan Wells

Every few years we are treated to glowing news stories about "Darwin's finches." The latest, published today in The Washington Post, is titled "200 years after Darwin, this is how the iconic Galápagos finches are still evolving," and, as usual, it is full of hype.

When Charles Darwin visited the Galápagos Islands in 1835, he collected specimens of the local wildlife. These included some finches that he threw into bags, many of them mislabeled. Although the Galápagos finches had little impact on Darwin's thinking (he doesn't even mention them in The Origin of Species), biologists who studied them a century later called them "Darwin's finches" and invented the myth that Darwin had correlated differences in the finches' beaks with different food sources (he hadn't). According to the myth, Darwin was inspired by the finches to formulate his theory of evolution, though according to historian of science Frank Sulloway "nothing could be further from the truth."

In the 1970s, biologists studied a population of medium ground finches on one of the islands in great detail. When a severe drought left only large, hard-to-crack seeds, 85 percent of the birds perished. The survivors had beaks that were about 5 percent larger than the average beak size in the original population. The biologists estimated that if similar droughts occurred once every ten years, the population could become a new species in only 200 years. In a 1999 booklet defending evolution, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences called the finches "a particularly compelling example" of the origin of species.

But after the drought, birds with smaller beaks flourished again, and the average beak size of the population returned to normal. No net evolution had occurred. No matter; Darwin's finches became an icon of evolution that is still featured in most biology textbooks.

In the 1980s, a population of large ground finches, with larger beaks than the medium ground finches, migrated to the island. When a drought in 2004-2005 again reduced the food supply, the medium and large ground finch populations both declined. But since even the largest beaks among the medium ground finches were no match for the beaks of the large ground finches, the latter pretty much monopolized the larger seeds and the former had to make do with smaller seeds. This time, the medium ground finches that survived the drought had beaks that were smaller than the average size in the original population. Biologists studying the finches argued that birds with smaller beaks were better able to eat the tiny seeds that were left after the large ground finches ate the big ones, and they concluded that this was again an example of "evolutionary change."

Then those biologists, together with some colleagues, studied DNA sequences in the medium ground finches. They correlated several regions of DNA with the 2004-2005 decrease in average beak size, and they concluded that one region in particular, called HMGA2, is associated with beak size. (Note, however, that HMGA2 did not cause the decrease.)

Enter The Washington Post. According to today's article, the biologists "pinpointed the bit of finch DNA behind the swift transition" in average beak size and "now have a pretty thorough blueprint of how these famous finches evolve."

Wait a minute. Average beak size increased slightly during one drought, only to return to normal after the rains return. Then average beak size decreased slightly during another drought. A region of DNA is correlated with beak size. And somehow that tells us how finches evolved in the first place?


As Winston Churchill might say, "Never in the field of science was so much based by so many on so little."

Immigration now too much of a good thing :Pros and Cons

Barbarians at the gate?

Intelligent Design Aside, from Templeton Foundation to the Royal Society, Darwinism Is Under Siege

David Klinghoffer 

y paradigm isn't in serious turmoil. Science Magazine announces an $8.7 million project by the Templeton Foundation seeking an "evolution rethink." I'm trying to think of the last time I heard Science reporting on support for a "gravity rethink," or a "heliocentrism rethink." The gist of it: 

For many evolutionary biologists, nothing gets their dander up faster than proposing that evolution is anything other than the process of natural se- lection, acting on random mutations. Suggestions that something is missing from that picture -- for example, that evolution is somehow directed or that genetic changes can't fully explain it -- play into the hands of creationists, who leap on them as evidence against evolution itself.

Oh, those dreaded "creationists" and evolution deniers. They mean us. 

No wonder some evolutionary biologists are uneasy with an $8.7 million grant to U.K., Swedish, and U.S. researchers for experimental and theoretical work intended to put a revisionist view of evolution, the so-called extended evolutionary synthesis, on a sounder footing. Using a variety of plants, animals, and microbes, the researchers will study the possibility that organisms can influence their own evolution and that inheritance can take place through routes other than the genetic material.

Whatever the outcome, the news has yanked Jerry Coyne's chain. He complains in the article:

Evolutionary biologists shouldn't accept its money, says Jerry Coyne, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who has been a persistent critic of the foundation for linking science and religion. "It really slants the way science is done," he told Science. 

And again:

Some prominent evolutionary biologists have pushed back against this seeming rebellion. "It's a mixture of old ideas that aren't novel and reasonable ideas that haven't been shown to be of any importance," Coyne says. He and others insist that evolutionary bio- logy has already incorporated some of these ideas or is in the process of doing so -- meaning no "extension" is necessary.

The scope is impressive -- "49 researchers from different fields and ... 22 interconnected projects across eight institutions." Coyne's dyspeptic reaction gives you an idea of what a huge deal this is.

Oh, so you want to dismiss Templeton because its perspective isn't rigidly materialist enough? Fine, meanwhile this coming November, the Royal Society plans a conference on "New trends in evolutionary biology: biological, philosophical and social science perspectives." Despite the subdued title -- reflecting British understatement, perhaps -- this is more big news, a gathering of major mainstream voices from the world of biology and other fields to hash out the merits of the call for a Third Way for evolution -- not classic Darwinism, not intelligent design, but something...else:

Scientific discussion meeting organised in partnership with the British Academy by Professor Denis Noble CBE FMedSci FRS, Professor Nancy Cartwright, Sir Patrick Bateson FRS, Professor John Dupré and Professor Kevin Laland.

Developments in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields have produced calls for revision of the standard theory of evolution, although the issues involved remain hotly contested. This meeting will present these developments and arguments in a form that will encourage cross-disciplinary discussion and, in particular, involve the humanities and social sciences in order to provide further analytical perspectives and explore the social and philosophical implications.

When it comes to "hotly contesting" the "standard theory of evolution," the timing couldn't be better. This coming Monday we'll have the opportunity to celebrate two significant anniversaries -- that of the description of the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick (they publishedon April 25, 1953) and the fiftieth anniversary of the Wistar Institute conference on "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution." 

Note the conference's title. It wasn't about "rejecting" or "denying" evolution but searching for a justified interpretation of the agreed scientific evidence. The Philadelphia meeting, spurred on by MIT's Murray Eden and planting a seed for what would become the modern ID movement, which offers its own positive interpretation, convened on April 25-26, 1966.

If you'll forgive a morbid metaphor, Wistar was like the ominous spot first seen on the X-ray of a vital organ -- the beginning of the end for unguided Darwinian processes as the sole, satisfactory explanation of how complex biological features evolve.

ID, obviously, is one source of the current challenge to Darwinism, but it's only one source. You could erase ID advocates entirely from the battle map, and Darwinian theory would still be under siege. Evolution's smug cultists are in denial about that, but it's true.

A clash of Titans XV

On the history of life a question worth asking:The Watchtower Society's commentary.IV

Has All Life Descended From a Common Ancestor?
Darwin thought that all life might be traced to a common ancestor. He imagined that the history of life on earth resembled a grand tree. Later, others believed that this “tree of life” started as a single trunk with the first simple cells. New species branched from the trunk and continued to divide into limbs, or families of plants and animals, and then into twigs, all the species within the families of plants and animals alive today. Is that really what happened?

What do many scientists claim? Many give the impression that the fossil record supports the theory of a common origin for life. They also claim that because all living things use similar “computer language,” or DNA, that all life must have evolved from a common ancestor.

What does the Bible say? The Genesis account states that plants, sea creatures, land animals, and birds were created “according to their kinds.” (Genesis 1:12, 20-25) This description allows for variation within a “kind,” but it implies that there are fixed barriers separating the different kinds. The Bible account of creation also leads us to expect that new types of creatures would appear in the fossil record suddenly and fully formed.

What does the evidence reveal? Does the evidence support the Bible’s description of events, or was Darwin correct? What have discoveries over the past 150 years revealed?

DARWIN’S TREE CHOPPED DOWN
In recent years, scientists have been able to compare the genetic codes of dozens of different single-celled organisms as well as those of plants and animals. They assumed that such comparisons would confirm the branching “tree of life” proposed by Darwin. However, this has not been the case.

What has the research uncovered? In 1999 biologist Malcolm S. Gordon wrote: “Life appears to have had many origins. The base of the universal tree of life appears not to have been a single root.” Is there evidence that all the major branches of life are connected to a single trunk, as Darwin believed? Gordon continues: “The traditional version of the theory of common descent apparently does not apply to kingdoms as presently recognized. It probably does not apply to many, if not all, phyla, and possibly also not to many classes within the phyla.”29*

Recent research continues to contradict Darwin’s theory of common descent. For example, in 2009 an article in New Scientist magazine quoted evolutionary scientist Eric Bapteste as saying: “We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.”30 The same article quotes evolutionary biologist Michael Rose as saying: “The tree of life is being politely buried, we all know that. What’s less accepted is that our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change.”31*

WHAT ABOUT THE FOSSIL RECORD?
Many scientists point to the fossil record as support for the idea that life emerged from a common origin. They argue, for example, that the fossil record documents the notion that fish became amphibians and reptiles became mammals. What, though, does the fossil evidence really show?

“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life,” says evolutionary paleontologist David M. Raup, “what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”32

In reality, the vast majority of fossils show stability among types of creatures over extensive amounts of time. The evidence does not show them evolving from one type into another. Unique body plans appear suddenly. New features appear suddenly. For example, bats with sonar and echolocation systems appear with no obvious link to a more primitive ancestor.

In fact, more than half of all the major divisions of animal life seem to have appeared in a relatively short period of time. Because many new and distinct life forms appear so suddenly in the fossil record, paleontologists refer to this period as “the Cambrian explosion.” When was the Cambrian period?

Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear? As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!

The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory. For example, in an interview in 2008, evolutionary biologist Stuart Newman discussed the need for a new theory of evolution that could explain the sudden appearance of novel forms of life. He said: “The Darwinian mechanism that’s used to explain all evolutionary change will be relegated, I believe, to being just one of several mechanisms—maybe not even the most important when it comes to understanding macroevolution, the evolution of major transitions in body type.”33

PROBLEMS WITH THE “PROOF”
What, though, of the fossils that are used to show fish changing into amphibians, and reptiles into mammals? Do they provide solid proof of evolution in action? Upon closer inspection, several problems become obvious.

First, the comparative size of the creatures placed in the reptile-to-mammal sequence is sometimes misrepresented in textbooks. Rather than being similar in size, some creatures in the series are huge, while others are small.

A second, more serious challenge is the lack of proof that those creatures are somehow related. Specimens placed in the series are often separated by what researchers estimate to be millions of years. Regarding the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”34*

Commenting on the fossils of fish and amphibians, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times.” He further says: “There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.”35*

WHAT DOES THE “FILM” REALLY SHOW?
An article published in National Geographic in 2004 likened the fossil record to “a film of evolution from which 999 of every 1,000 frames have been lost on the cutting-room floor.”36 Consider the implications of that illustration.

Imagine that you found 100 frames of a feature film that originally had 100,000 frames. How would you determine the plot of the movie? You might have a preconceived idea, but what if only 5 of the 100 frames you found could be organized to support your preferred plot, while the other 95 frames tell a very different story? Would it be reasonable to assert that your preconceived idea of the movie was right because of the five frames? Could it be that you placed the five frames in the order you did because it suited your theory? Would it not be more reasonable to allow the other 95 frames to influence your opinion?

How does that illustration relate to the way evolutionists view the fossil record? For years, researchers did not acknowledge that the vast majority of fossils—the 95 frames of the movie—showed that species change very little over time. Why the silence about such important evidence? Author Richard Morris says: “Apparently paleontologists had adopted the orthodox idea of gradual evolutionary change and had held onto it, even when they discovered evidence to the contrary. They had been trying to interpret fossil evidence in terms of accepted evolutionary ideas.”37

What about evolutionists today? Could it be that they continue to place fossils in a certain order, not because such a sequence is well-supported by the majority of fossil and genetic evidence, but because doing so is in harmony with currently accepted evolutionary ideas?*

What do you think? Which conclusion fits the evidence best? Consider the facts we have discussed so far.

▪ The first life on earth was not “simple.”
▪ The odds against even the components of a cell arising by chance are astronomical.
▪ DNA, the “computer program,” or code, that runs the cell, is incredibly complex and gives evidence of a genius that far surpasses any program or information storage system produced by humans.
▪ Genetic research shows that life did not originate from a single common ancestor. In addition, major groups of animals appear suddenly in the fossil record.

In light of these facts, do you think it is reasonable to conclude that the evidence is in harmony with the Bible’s explanation of the origin of life? Many people, however, assert that science contradicts much of what the Bible says about creation. Is that true? What does the Bible really say?
(The biological term phyla (singular, phylum) refers to a large group of animals that have the same distinctive body plan. One way that scientists classify all living things is by a seven-step system in which each step is more specific than the one before it. Step one is kingdom, the broadest category. Then come the categories phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. For example, the horse is categorized in the following way: kingdom, Animalia; phylum, Chordata; class, Mammalia; order, Perissodactyla; family, Equidae; genus, Equus; species, Caballus.

It should be noted that neither the New Scientist article nor Bapteste nor Rose mean to suggest that the theory of evolution is wrong. Their point, rather, is that Darwin’s proposed tree of life, a mainstay of his theory, is not supported by the evidence. Such scientists still seek other explanations involving evolution.

Henry Gee does not suggest that the theory of evolution is wrong. His comments are made to show the limits of what can be learned from the fossil record.

Malcolm S. Gordon supports the teaching of evolution.)
  FACTS AND QUESTIONS
▪ Fact: Two of evolution’s fundamental ideas—that life has a common origin and that major new body types appear as a result of the slow accumulation of small changes—are being challenged by researchers who do not support the Bible account of creation.

Question: Given the controversy over these pillars of Darwin’s theory, can his version of evolution honestly be referred to as scientific fact?

▪ Fact: All living organisms share similarly designed DNA, the “computer language,” or code, that governs much of the shape and function of their cell or cells.


Question: Could this similarity exist, not because they had the same ancestor, but because they had the same Designer?
What About Human Evolution?
Look up the topic of human evolution in many textbooks and encyclopedias and you will see a series of pictures—on one side a stooped, apelike creature followed by creatures that have progressively more upright posture and larger heads. At the end stands modern man. Such renderings along with sensational media reports of the discovery of so-called missing links give the impression that there is ample evidence that man evolved from apelike creatures. Are such assertions based on solid evidence? Consider what evolutionary researchers say about the following topics.*
 WHAT THE FOSSIL EVIDENCE ACTUALLY SHOWS
▪ Fact: At the beginning of the 20th century, all the fossils that were used to support the theory that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor could fit on a billiard table. Since then, the number of fossils used to support that theory has increased. Now it is claimed that they would fill a railroad boxcar.38 However, the vast majority of those fossils consist only of single bones and isolated teeth. Complete skulls—let alone complete skeletons—are rare.39

Question: Has the increased number of fossils attributed to the human “family tree” settled the question among evolutionary experts as to when and how humans evolved from apelike creatures?


Answer: No. In fact, the opposite is true. When it comes to how these fossils should be classified, Robin Derricourt of the University of New South Wales, Australia, wrote in 2009: “Perhaps the only consensus now is that there is no consensus.”40 In 2007 the science journal Nature published an article by the discoverers of another claimed link in the evolutionary tree, saying that nothing is known about when or how the human line actually emerged from that of apes.41 Gyula Gyenis, a researcher at the Department of Biological Anthropology, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary, wrote in 2002: “The classification and the evolutionary place of hominid fossils has been under constant debate.”* This author also states that the fossil evidence gathered so far brings us no closer to knowing exactly when, where, or how humans evolved from apelike creatures.42
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF “MISSING LINKS”
▪ Fact: The media often widely broadcasts the announcement that a new “missing link” has been discovered. For example, in 2009 a fossil dubbed Ida was unveiled with what one journal called “rock-star hype.”43 Publicity included this headline in The Guardian newspaper of the United Kingdom (UK): “Fossil Ida: Extraordinary Find Is ‘Missing Link’ in Human Evolution.”44 However, just days later, the UK science journal New Scientist said: “Ida is not a ‘missing link’ in human evolution.”45

Question: Why is each unveiling of a new “missing link” given wide media attention, whereas the removal of that fossil from the “family tree” is hardly mentioned?


Answer: Regarding those who make these discoveries, Robin Derricourt, quoted earlier, says: “The leader of a research team may need to over-emphasize the uniqueness and drama of a ‘discovery’ in order to attract research funding from outside the conventional academic sources, and they will certainly be encouraged in this by the print and electronic media, looking for a dramatic story.”46
TEXTBOOK DRAWINGS AND MODELS OF APE-MEN
▪ Fact: Depictions in textbooks and museums of the so-called ancestors of humans are often shown with specific facial features, skin color, and amount of hair. These depictions usually show the older “ancestors” with monkeylike features and the ones supposedly closer to humans with more humanlike facial features, skin tone, and hair.

Question: Can scientists reliably reconstruct such features based on the fossilized remains that they find?


Answer: No. In 2003, forensics expert Carl N. Stephan, who works at the Department of Anatomical Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Australia, wrote: “The faces of earlier human ancestors cannot be objectively constructed or tested.” He says that attempts to do so based on modern apes “are likely to be heavily biased, grossly inaccurate, and invalid.” His conclusion? “Any facial ‘reconstructions’ of earlier hominids are likely to be misleading.”47

DETERMINING INTELLIGENCE BY BRAIN SIZE
▪ Fact: The brain size of a presumed ancestor of humans is one of the main ways by which evolutionists determine how closely or distantly the creature is supposed to be related to humans.

Question: Is brain size a reliable indicator of intelligence?

Answer: No. One group of researchers who used brain size to speculate which extinct creatures were more closely related to man admitted that in doing so they “often feel on shaky ground.”48 Why? Consider the statement made in 2008 in Scientific American Mind: “Scientists have failed to find a correlation between absolute or relative brain size and acumen among humans and other animal species. Neither have they been able to discern a parallel between wits and the size or existence of specific regions of the brain, excepting perhaps Broca’s area, which governs speech in people.”49

What do you think? Why do scientists line up the fossils used in the “ape-to-man” chain according to brain size when it is known that brain size is not a reliable measure of intelligence? Are they forcing the evidence to fit their theory? And why are researchers constantly debating which fossils should be included in the human “family tree”? Could it be that the fossils they study are just what they appear to be, extinct forms of apes?

What, though, about the humanlike fossils of the so-called Neanderthals, often portrayed as proof that a type of ape-man existed? Researchers are beginning to alter their view of what these actually were. In 2009, Milford H. Wolpoff wrote in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology that “Neandertals may have been a true human race.”50


Honest observers readily recognize that egos, money, and the need for media attention influence the way that “evidence” for human evolution is presented. Are you willing to put your trust in such evidence?

The internet of trees Vs.Darwin

Forests Use an Underground Supply Network
Evolution News & Views

It was a big surprise. Scientists at the University of Basel report an unexpected finding: trees in the woods -- even unrelated species -- trade large amounts of carbon with each other. How? They communicate through an even more unrelated organism: fungi.

Forest trees use carbon not only for themselves; they also trade large quantities of it with their neighbours. Botanists from the University of Basel report this in the journal Science. The extensive carbon trade among trees -- even among different species -- is conducted via symbiotic fungi in the soil. [Emphasis added.]
This is more than a free trade agreement. It's a veritable economy, as the paper in Science describes:

Forest trees compete for light and soil resources, but photoassimilates, once produced in the foliage, are not considered to be exchanged between individuals. Applying stable carbon isotope labeling at the canopy scale, we show that carbon assimilated by 40-meter-tall spruce is traded over to neighboring beech, larch, and pine via overlapping root spheres. Isotope mixing signals indicate that the interspecific, bidirectional transfer, assisted by common ectomycorrhiza networks, accounted for 40% of the fine root carbon (about 280 kilograms per hectare per year tree-to-tree transfer). Although competition for resources is commonly considered as the dominant tree-to-tree interaction in forests, trees may interact in more complex ways, including substantial carbon exchange.
The carbon takes the form of "photoassimilates," i.e., complex compounds produced by photosynthesis. 280 kilos is a lot. In English units, that's over 600 pounds. In a five-year study, the team watched labeled carbon dioxide assimilated into the compounds traverse from the tree tops down through the root tips, and up into surrounding trees:

The only way the carbon could have been exchanged from spruce to beech, pine or larch tree -- or vice versa -- is by the network of tiny fungal filaments of the shared mycorrhizal fungi. Understory plants which partner up with other types of fungi remained entirely unmarked. The research group called the discovered exchange of large quantities of carbon among completely unrelated tree species in a natural forest "a big surprise".
One of the scientists remarked, "Evidently the forest is more than the sum of its trees." In a Perspective piece for Science, Marcel G. A. van der Heijden referred to this process as "underground networking" through "mycorrhizal pipelines." Small seedlings had been known to share carbon this way, but not mature trees.

Does this improve forest fitness? Van der Heijden is not sure. Carbon does not seem to be a limiting resource. One could imagine that pathways for carbon could emerge haphazardly as symbiotic fungi spread their hyphae, and that resources would reach equilibrium by diffusion. There are hints more is going on, however. For one thing, the relationships are complex. For another, they function in symbiosis.

These underground networks can be highly complex because each individual tree and fungus has its own network and can associate with different partners.
The results reported by Klein et al. also have implications for key questions in mycorrhizal research: Why is this symbiosis so widespread and why has it evolved so successfully? The observation that 4% of net primary productivity is transferred to neighboring trees suggests that carbon is a nonlimiting resource, and not growth-limiting for these large trees. Thus, carbon allocation and loss to mycorrhizal fungi does not necessarily impair plant fitness. The exchange of "nonlimiting" carbon for nutrients may be one of the key factors responsible for the evolutionary stability of the mycorrhizal symbiosis.

If plants have an intranet (as we reported recently), why not an internet? One suspects that this system involves information transfer as well as carbon transfer. It's already been determined that plants communicate through the air with volatile organic compounds. They can signal one another about threats, for instance. If they already communicate through one medium, why not another? It would be analogous to the Internet using both wired and wireless channels.

Other hints of regulated function include (a) hosts make specific connections, (b) the communication is bidirectional, and (c) the shared carbon products are diverse. Indeed, the authors know that theories of regulated sharing have been around for years.

It has been suggested that because of the unpredictability of disturbance events and the divergence of responses among plant communities, mycorrhizal fungi and their host plant species are under selective pressure to evolve generality. The groups of plants that are interlinked through a common mycorrhizal network are hence termed "guilds". The identity and ensemble of fungal species may affect plant community structure and ecosystem productivity, with mycorrhiza improving plant fitness by increasing phosphorus and nitrogen uptake. As a result, mycorrhizal networks are considered an integral part of the autotrophic system and are essential components in ecosystem resilience to change. Yet, these benefits have traditionally been studied from a nutrient supply perspective, and the mycorrhiza "pipeline" was never shown to transfer considerable amounts (>1 g) of mobile carbon compounds among trees.
Contrary to evolutionary expectations, this network of supply lines is cooperative rather than competitive. It promotes ecosystem resilience to change. It looks designed for productivity of the community as a whole.

Determining the function of this carbon transfer will require additional research. Care for a prediction? The system likely includes bidirectional information transfer that leads to specific responses. It won't reduce to random diffusion of compounds that happen to find pathways this way or that. The sharing of resources will be found to be regulated and purposeful. Perhaps it's a form of cloud backup, where resources can be stashed for sharing in stressful times. Brian Owens at New Scientist suggests that this "wood wide web" will aid scientific "understanding of how forests can respond to the stresses of climate change, like drought or new insect pests."

Intelligent design can prompt new research into this newly-recognized phenomenon, leading to understanding and appreciation for the overall beauty of a forest ecosystem. The science-stopper would be to shrug and say, "It evolved."

On 21st century divination

Science as Astrology: A Gene for, or Rather Against, Virginity?
Evolution News & Views


As a kid we used to look forward to visits to the International House of Pancakes, where the highlights included not just pancakes but, just inside the entrance to the restaurant, a device like a gumball machine that dispensed horoscopes. For 25¢ the Starscroll device offered little scrolls the size of a cigarette, color-coded to the month and your sign. Scorpio was always orange.

The scroll, more detailed than what you'd find in a daily newspaper, included general prognostication and advice plus more specific forecasts as to your character, tendencies, challenges, etc. So this story from the world of science brings back unexpected fond memories.

Sometimes, in fact, it seems much of the most hyped research is about relieving us of the burden of personal moral responsibility. Except instead of it all being written into the stars, it's written into your genes. You couldn't ask for a better illustration than the hubbub around a paper out yesterday from Nature Genetics. A headline at Scientific American captures the gist: "Do Genes Time One's Loss of Virginity?"

Get that -- genes, not choice:

A person's age at the onset of sexual behavior matters, because early sexuality and becoming a parent at a young age are linked to many measures of health and economic success. "If you look in [scientific] literature, relatively early ages at first sex and first birth have been associated with lower educational achievement, poorer physical health, poorer mental health -- a complex web of negative stuff," says John Perry, a geneticist at Cambridge who led the research, published Monday in Nature Genetics. Perry says he was particularly intrigued by the idea that something people think of as purely a matter of free choice would have a large contribution from genetics.

Yes, intriguing. More:

The team found that 38 specific regions of the genome contributed to the age at which people first had sex. Those regions roughly fell into two groups, Perry says: genes that act on reproductive biological processes such as estrogen signaling and genes that appear to play a role in behavior and personality. One gene that the team associated with early sexual behavior, CADM2, influences risk-taking behavior, and another, MSRA, leads to irritability. "We weren't expecting to find this sort of thing when we started out," Perry says.

They weren't expecting it. They always have to say that, don't they? We looked up CADM2 and found:

This gene encodes a member of the synaptic cell adhesion molecule 1 (SynCAM) family which belongs to the immunoglobulin (Ig) superfamily. The encoded protein has three Ig-like domains and a cytosolic protein 4.1 binding site near the C-terminus. Proteins b elonging to the protein 4.1 family crosslink spectrin and interact with other cytoskeletal proteins. Multiple transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been found for this gene. [Provided by RefSeq, Feb. 2012.]

We're not sure how a variant of CADM2 could, as The Guardian puts it in another credulous article, "link an early start to one's sex life with risk-taking behaviour and having a large number of children."


It's utterly arbitrary, not less so than adducing the day of your birth to predict romantic, economic, and other fortunes. All of this reads exactly like a horoscope. For a more sober take on the relationship between genes and you, see our current podcast over at ID the Future, "Dr. Jonathan Wells: Biology's Quiet Revolution."