The shock-wave from The Cambrian explosion continues to rock fortress Darwin.

Cambrian Explosion Shrapnel Still Hitting Evolutionary Scenarios
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

How many evolutionary explanations for the Cambrian explosion have come and gone so far? We’ve seen the oxygen theory, the cancer theory, the slime theory, and others. Here’s another contender reported by Quanta Magazine: the tipping-point theory. Animals were trying really hard to hit on regulatory gene networks by chance. It took a really long time, but — finally! —  they hit the lottery, and it all took off.

This model is the brainchild of Nicholas Butterfield of the University of Cambridge. He published it in Geobiology. It’s open access, so you can take a look. Back at Quanta, staff writer Jordana Cepelewicz says that the new theory not only explains the suddenness of the Cambrian explosion, but why it took so long.

Approximately 540 million years ago, life rapidly diversified in an evolutionary burst — a biological “Big Bang” that witnessed the emergence of nearly every modern animal group. Scientists have long sought to determine what caused the Cambrian explosion, and to explain why animal life didn’t take this step at any point about a billion years earlier.

Butterfield doesn’t buy the oxygen theory. He points to other situations where animals make do without modern levels of oxygen. Surely microbes could have figured out how to get the needed energy. Besides, there should have been enough oxygen in the oceans to support life long before the so-called Great Oxidation Event 2.4 billion years ago — and that was long before the Cambrian explosion (540 million years ago).

Before animals could explode onto the scene, he thinks, they needed two things: the ability to re-engineer oxygen structure in the oceans (what he calls “aquatic bioturbation”) and the invention of gene regulatory networks to adapt to the new environment.

Eventually, this cascading interplay between animals’ inadvertent re-engineering of ocean structure and their adaptive responses to those changes reached a tipping point. “The system went critical,” in Butterfield’s words, resulting in the sudden eruption of animal diversity and complexity during the Cambrian.

The delayed appearance of animals in the ocean was therefore not caused by a lack of oxygen, according to Butterfield, but rather because blind Darwinian evolution needed time to arrive at that tipping point. “The gene regulatory network to build an animal is the most complex algorithm that evolution has ever produced,” he said. “And it’s only ever happened once, [just as] it’s only ever happened once in land plants,” which he points out are the only other lineage of organisms to have derived differentiated tissues, organs and organ systems. “And that took even longer. It followed the evolution of animals by another 100 million years.”

Notice first of all that Butterfield turns the oxygen theory on its head. A rise in oxygen was a result, not a cause, of the explosion. Secondly, observe that his argument is basically a blind watchmaker argument: “blind Darwinian evolution” was trying very hard to arrive at the magic combination to unlock the inherent potential of animals to evolve. It took a long time, but once it happened, the rest was easy. Selective pressures would guarantee the emergence of muscles, eyes, digestive systems, armor, and all the rest.

All biological exchange ultimately depends on chemical diffusion, but it is the associated fluid‐dynamic context that determines physiological and ecological properties (Agutter, Malone, & Wheatley, 2000). In the context of early animal evolution, it was the evolutionary assembly of increasingly sophisticated devices for manipulating fluids that revolutionized the biosphere. Collectivized flagellar beating was clearly the place to start, providing the stepping stone to higher‐order divisions of labour … In its wake came efficiencies of scale, the evolutionary discovery of muscular propulsion and stepwise application of emergent hydrodynamic properties.

It all began with the first microbes inventing ways to utilize the available oxygen. They did this by creating currents around their bodies, increasing diffusion of dissolved oxygen so they could use it for energy. The more those microbes perfected this novelty, the more they restructured the ocean depths with aquatic bioturbation, sending more oxygen downward for more microbes to use. Once the gene regulatory networks were discovered by chance, the fuse was lit. Evolution was set to discover muscles and all kinds of other neat inventions.

Instant Flagella

Butterfield starts with flagella already working. Isn’t that a bit like assuming a can opener? Actually, yes, and he isn’t the only one. In Current Biology, Khan and Scholey take a look at the three different cases of rotary outboard motors in the three kingdoms life: the flagellum in bacteria (prokaryotes), the archaellum in archaea, and the cilium in eukaryotes. Guess which one they think emerged first. That’s right: according to Figure 1, the bacterial flagellum — the icon of intelligent design and irreducible complexity — emerged first. (If you’re going to believe in miracles of chance, might as well start big.) The other two, being structurally different, could not have evolved from it, because they “assemble from distinct subunits that do not share a common ancestor and generate torque using energy derived from distinct fuel sources…” In comes one of Darwinism’s favorite magic phrases to explain this situation:

Cells from all three domains of life on Earth utilize motile macromolecular devices that protrude from the cell surface to generate forces that allow them to swim through fluid media. Research carried out on archaea during the past decade or so has led to the recognition that, despite their common function, the motility devices of the three domains display fundamental differences in their properties and ancestry, reflecting a striking example of convergent evolution.

Other Cambrian News

Remember the Cambrian fossil bed in northern Greenland we recently talked about? Researchers found exquisite preservation of “not just one, but 15 fossilized brains from a 520-million-year-old marine predator,” reports Live Science. The discovery “is helping scientists understand how ancient brains evolved into the complex command centers they are today.” National Geographic breathes life into these complex National Geographic:

The extinct species, Kerygmachela kierkegaardi, swam in ocean waters during an evolutionary arms race called the Cambrian explosion. Flanked by 11 wrinkly flaps on each side of its body, the ancient predator sported a long tail spine and a rounded head. Its fearsome forward-facing appendages grasped prey, says UK-based paleontologist Jakob Vinther, “making lives miserable for other animals.”

Scientific names can be fun to analyze. This one, named by Graham Budd in 1993, honors philosopher Søren Kierkegaard for some reason. The genus name is even more peculiar for an evolutionary context. Kerygma is Greek for “the preaching of the gospel of Christ, especially in the manner of the early church,” and chela is Greek for pincer or claw. We leave it to the reader’s imagination how this creature got its name. Whatever you call it, it was a complex animal with image-forming eyes, looking somewhat like an anomalocarid. The main point was that its brain was so well preserved, the discoverers could make out details of its structure.

Did animal burrowing begin before the Cambrian explosion? News from Nagoya University  reports U-shaped tunnels under some Ediacaran environments found in Mongolia show “early origins of animal behavior.” No animals were found. The rest is optimistic speculation:

“It is impossible to identify the kind of animal that produced the Arenicolites traces,” lead author Tatsuo Oji says. “However, they were certainly bilaterian animals based on the complexity of the traces, and were probably worm-like in nature. These fossils are the earliest evidence for animals making semi-permanent domiciles in sediment. The evolution of macrophagous predation was probably the selective pressure for these trace makers to build such semi-permanent infaunal structures, as they would have provided safety from many predators.”

One would like to see actual worms before accepting the premise of this series of cumulative speculations. The centimeter-diameter traces, reported in the Royal Society Open Science journal, could have other explanations, given that they are not found anywhere else. It sounds like a case of exaggerated special pleading to call this the beginning of an “agronomic revolution” that “did not proceed in a uniform pattern across all depositional environments during the Cambrian radiation, but rather in a patchwork of varying bioturbation levels across marine seafloors that lasted well into the early Paleozoic.”

Another discovery should put the brakes on speculations that Cloudina was evolving into a Cambrian animal (see these March and July entries at Evolution News from last year). The simple cup-shaped Ediacaran was not a reef builder, according to PNAS. The title by Mehla and Maloof says it all: “Multiscale approach reveals that Cloudina aggregates are detritus and not in situ reef constructions.”

It has been suggested that some Ediacaran microbial reefs were dominated (and possibly built) by an abundant and globally distributed tubular organism known as Cloudina. If true, this interpretation implies that metazoan framework reef building — a complex behavior that is responsible for some of the largest bioconstructions and most diverse environments in modern oceans — emerged much earlier than previously thought. Here, we present 3D reconstructions of Cloudina populations, produced using an automated serial grinding and imaging system coupled with a recently developed neural network image classifier. Our reconstructions show that Cloudina aggregates are composed of transported remains while detailed field observations demonstrate that the studied reef outcrops contain only detrital Cloudina buildups, suggesting that Cloudina played a minor role in Ediacaran reef systems.

As a simple isolated organism that would get swept into heaps of debris, it was not complex enough to qualify as a transitional form to the Cambrian animals.

That’s it for this episode of the  Cambrian Explosion Gong Show.

Parental instinct v. Darwin.

Contradicting Darwinian Gradualism, Earliest Animals Show Complex Parental Behavior
Günter Bechly

Based on the Darwinian narrative, we should expect not only that morphological complexity increases gradually in the fossil record, but we should also expect the same for complex animal behavior. This is because according to Darwinists, “Evolution not only is a gradual process as a matter of fact, but…it has to be gradual if it is to do any explanatory work” (Dawkins 2009). Charles Darwin himself strictly insisted on gradualism and famously quoted the Latin phrase “natura non facit saltus” (“nature does not make jumps”) no fewer than six times in his Origin of Species. He realized that any kind of significant saltational change would imply a miracle-like intelligent intervention.

Therefore, it is a problem for Darwinism if we find evidence that complex behavior, instead of arising gradually, was already present in the oldest animals we know. And indeed, this is exactly what we do find.

Earlier this month the discovery of extended parental care was described for the 520-million-year-old arthropod Fuxianhuia protensa from the Early Cambrian Chengjiang locality in China (Fu et al. 2018). This new discovery made worldwide headlines (Davis 2018, Fox-Skelly 2018, Hugo 2018). It also paralleled two earlier discoveries from a few years ago (Fang 2015, Geggel 2015, Lacerda 2015), which documented brood care in the 508-million-year-old arthropod Waptia from the famous Burgess Shale in Canada (Caron & Vannier 2016), and the discovery of brood care in the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang arthropod Kunmingella douvillei (Duan et al. 2014).

Clearly, complex parental behavior was well established in different groups of the earliest known animals from the Cambrian explosion. This is especially significant because such parental behaviors imply complex morphological innovations as well as correlated changes in the behavior of adult and juvenile organisms. Complex codependent innovations of this nature are virtually impossible without coordinated mutations, which in turn creates a so-called “waiting-time problem.” We know from other examples (e.g., the origin of whales) that the waiting times (calculated with the mathematical apparatus of mainstream population genetics) for such coordinated mutations to originate and spread in a population are far too long to be possibly accommodated by the available windows of time established by the fossil record. Even millions and billions of years are not enough deep time to make the neo-Darwinian process feasible. 

Fuxianhuia protensa was first described in 1987 from incomplete material and remained for several years a relatively poorly known fossil taxon of controversial affinity. This changed when more complete specimens were discovered that showed the head segmentation and undifferentiated limbs. At first Fuxianhuia was considered a stem-group chelicerate, but modern cladistic analyses usually located this extinct taxon close to the stem of all euarthropods (Wills et al. 1996, Fortey & Thomas 2012). New material and more modern techniques have meanwhile made Fuxianhuia one of the best known fossil organisms.

Not only do we know now the complete external morphology of its body, including its growth pattern over fifteen larval stages (Fu et al. 2018), but also its head segmentation (Chen et al. 1995, Budd 2008), detailed brain structure and nervous system (Ma et al. 2012), its complete cardiovascular system (Ma et al. 2014), its digestive system (Bergström et al. 2008, Fu et al. 2018), and now even details about its brood care behavior (Fu et al. 2018). All these structures are as highly organized as in modern arthropods, even though Fuxianhuia lived 520 million years ago and ranks among the oldest known arthropods and animals.

Where is the gradual transition implied by Darwinian evolution? Complexity of all kinds and on all levels was there from the very beginning, and the fossil history of animal life gives no evidence that it developed over long periods of time in a gradual way with numerous small steps as suggested by Charles Darwin and his modern followers. The fossil record does not support but contradicts the evolutionary narrative.

Literature:

• Bergström J, Hu X, Zhang X, Liu Y, Clausen S 2008. “A new view of the Cambrian arthropod Fuxianhuia.” GFF 130(4): 189-201.
• Budd GE 2008. “Head structure in upper stem-group euarthropods.” Palaeontology 51(3): 561-573.
• Caron J-B, Vannier J 2016. “Waptia and the Diversification of Brood Care in Early Arthropods.” Current Biology 26: 69-74.
• Chen J, Edgecombe GD, Ramsköld L, Zhou G 1995. “Head Segmentation in Early Cambrian Fuxianhuia: Implications for Arthropod Evolution.” Science 268: 1339-1343.
• Davis J 2018. “Earliest Evidence of Parental Care Found in 520 Million-Year-Old Fossil.” IFL Science! 06 Mar 2018.
• Dawkins R 2009. The Greatest Show on Earth. Free Press (Google Books).
• Duan Y et al. 2014. “Reproductive strategy of the bradoriid arthropod Kunmingella douvillei from the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte, South China.” Gondwana Research 25: 983-990.
• Fang J 2015. “Oldest Evidence of Parental Care Discovered in Half-Billion-Year-Old Fossils.” IFL Science!18 Dec 2015.
• Fortey RA, Thomas RH 2012. Arthropod Relationships. Springer Science, 383 pp. (Google Books).
• Fox-Skelly J 2018. “Ancient sea animal doted on young.” New Scientist 10 March 2018: 6.
• Fu D, Ortega-Hernández J, Daley AC, Zhang X, Shu D 2018. “Anamorphic development and extended parental care in a 520 million-year-old stem-group euarthropod from China.” bioRxiv preprint.
• Geggel L 2015. “Ancient Mom: Oldest Brood of Preserved Embryos Found.” LiveScience December 21, 2015.
• Hugo K 2018. 520-million-year-old fossil of Fuxianhuia protensa and four babies is our oldest evidence of parenting. Newsweek 3/6/18.
• Lacerda J 2015. Oldest example of a caring mother found in Canada. Earth Archives.
• Ma X, Hou X, Edgecombe GD, Strausfeld NJ 2012. Complex brain and optic lobes in an early Cambrian arthropod. Nature 490: 258-261.
• Ma X, Cong P, Hou X, Edgecombe GD, Strausfeld NJ 2014. An exceptionally preserved arthropod cardiovascular system from the early Cambrian. Nature Communications 5:3560, doi: 10.1038/ncomms4560.
• Wills MA, Edgecombe GD, Ramsköld L 1996. Classification of the arthropod Fuxianhuia. Science 272(5262): 746-748.

Yet more trouble for Darwinism from ancient Whale.

Darwinism v. Naturalism?

The Amazing Randi vs.paranormal II

Irreconcilable differences?

Be very afraid?

Be afraid?

Tricks of the trade?

On Darwinism's gestapo.

The river dries up?

'Christianity as default is gone': the rise of a non-Christian Europe

Figures show a majority of young adults in 12 countries have no faith, with Czechs least religious

Europe’s march towards a post-Christian society has been starkly illustrated by research showing a majority of young people in a dozen countries do not follow a religion.

The survey of 16- to 29-year-olds found the Czech Republic is the least religious country in Europe, with 91% of that age group saying they have no religious affiliation. Between 70% and 80% of young adults in Estonia, Sweden and the Netherlands also categorise themselves as non-religious.

The most religious country is Poland, where 17% of young adults define themselves as non-religious, followed by Lithuania with 25%.

In the UK, only 7% of young adults identify as Anglican, fewer than the 10% who categorise themselves as Catholic. Young Muslims, at 6%, are on the brink of overtaking those who consider themselves part of the country’s established church.

The figures are published in a report, Europe’s Young Adults and Religion, by Stephen Bullivant, a professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University in London. They are based on data from the European social survey 2014-16.

Religion was “moribund”, he said. “With some notable exceptions, young adults increasingly are not identifying with or practising religion.”

The trajectory was likely to become more marked. “Christianity as a default, as a norm, is gone, and probably gone for good – or at least for the next 100 years,” Bullivant said.

But there were significant variations, he said. “Countries that are next door to one another, with similar cultural backgrounds and histories, have wildly different religious profiles.”

The two most religious countries, Poland and Lithuania, and the two least religious, the Czech Republic and Estonia, are post-communist states.

The trend of religious affiliation was repeated when young people were asked about religious practice. Only in Poland, Portugal and Ireland did more than 10% of young people say they attend services at least once a week.

In the Czech Republic, 70% said they never went to church or any other place of worship, and 80% said they never pray. In the UK, France, Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands, between 56% and 60% said they never go to church, and between 63% and 66% said they never pray.

Among those identifying as Catholic, there was wide variation in levels of commitment. More than 80% of young Poles say they are Catholic, with about half going to mass at least once a week. In Lithuania, where 70% of young adults say they are Catholic, only 5% go to mass weekly.

According to Bullivant, many young Europeans “will have been baptised and then never darken the door of a church again. Cultural religious identities just aren’t being passed on from parents to children. It just washes straight off them.”

The figures for the UK were partly explained by high immigration, he added. “One in five Catholics in the UK were not born in the UK.

“And we know the Muslim birthrate is higher than the general population, and they have much higher [religious] retention rates.”

In Ireland, there has been a significant decline in religiosity over the past 30 years, “but compared to anywhere else in western Europe, it still looks pretty religious”, Bullivant said.

“The new default setting is ‘no religion’, and the few who are religious see themselves as swimming against the tide,” he said.

“In 20 or 30 years’ time, mainstream churches will be smaller, but the few people left will be highly committed.”

The book of Leviticus :The Watchtower society's commentary.

LEVITICUS

The third book of the Pentateuch, containing laws from God on sacrifices, purity, and other matters connected with Jehovah’s worship. The Levitical priesthood, carrying out its instructions, rendered sacred service in “a typical representation and a shadow of the heavenly things.”​—Heb 8:3-5; 10:1.

Period Covered. Not more than a month is covered by the events given in the book. Most of Leviticus is devoted to listing Jehovah’s ordinances rather than recounting various happenings over an extended period of time. The tabernacle’s erection on the first day of the first month in the second year of Israel’s departure from Egypt is mentioned in the final chapter of Exodus, the book preceding Leviticus. (Ex 40:17) Then, the book of Numbers (immediately following the Leviticus account) in its first verses (1:1-3) begins with God’s command to take a census, stated to Moses “on the first day of the second month in the second year of their coming out of the land of Egypt.”

When and Where Written. The logical time for the writing of the book would be 1512 B.C.E., at Sinai in the wilderness. Testifying that Leviticus was indeed written in the wilderness are its references that reflect camp life.​—Le 4:21; 10:4, 5; 14:8; 17:1-5.

Writer. All the foregoing evidence likewise helps to identify the writer as Moses. He received the information from Jehovah (Le 26:46), and the book’s closing words are: “These are the commandments that Jehovah gave Moses as commands to the sons of Israel in Mount Sinai.” (27:34) Besides, Leviticus is a part of the Pentateuch, the writer of which is generally acknowledged to be Moses. Not only does the opening “And . . . ” of Leviticus indicate its connection with Exodus, and therefore with the rest of the Pentateuch, but the way in which Jesus Christ and the writers of the Christian Scriptures refer to it shows that they knew it to be the writing of Moses and an unquestionable part of the Pentateuch. For example, see Christ’s reference to Leviticus 14:1-32 (Mt 8:2-4), Luke’s reference to Leviticus 12:2-4, 8 (Lu 2:22-24), and Paul’s paraphrasing of Leviticus 18:5 (Ro 10:5).

Dead Sea Leviticus Scrolls. Among the manuscripts found at the Dead Sea, nine contain fragments of the book of Leviticus. Four of them, believed to date from 125 to 75 B.C.E., were written in ancient Hebrew characters that were in use before the Babylonian exile.

Value of the Book. God promised Israel that if they obeyed his voice they would become to him “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex 19:6) The book of Leviticus contains a record of God’s installing a priesthood for his nation and giving them the statutes that would enable them to maintain holiness in his eyes. Even though Israel was only God’s typical “holy nation,” whose priests were “rendering sacred service in a typical representation and a shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:4, 5), God’s law, if obeyed, would have kept them clean and in line for filling the membership of his spiritual “royal priesthood, a holy nation.” (1Pe 2:9) But the disobedience of the majority deprived Israel of filling exclusively the place of membership in the Kingdom of God, as Jesus told the Jews. (Mt 21:43) Nevertheless, the laws set down in the book of Leviticus were of inestimable value to those heeding them.

Through the sanitary and dietary laws, as well as the regulations on sexual morality, they were provided with safeguards against disease and depravity. (Le chaps 11-15, 18) Especially, however, did these laws benefit them spiritually, because they enabled them to get acquainted with Jehovah’s holy and righteous ways and they helped them to conform to His ways. (11:44) Furthermore, the regulations set out in this portion of the Bible, as part of the Law, served as a tutor leading believing ones to Jesus Christ, God’s great High Priest and the one foreshadowed by the countless sacrifices offered in accord with the Law.​—Ga 3:19, 24; Heb 7:26-28; 9:11-14; 10:1-10.

The book of Leviticus continues to be of great value to all today who desire to serve Jehovah acceptably. A study of the fulfillment of its various features in connection with Jesus Christ, the ransom sacrifice, and the Christian congregation is indeed faith strengthening. While it is true that Christians are not under the Law covenant (Heb 7:11, 12, 19; 8:13; 10:1), the regulations set out in the book of Leviticus give them insight into God’s viewpoint on matters. The book is, therefore, not a mere recounting of dry, inapplicable details, but a live source of information. By getting a knowledge of how God views various matters, some of which are not specifically covered in the Christian Greek Scriptures, the Christian can be helped to avoid what displeases God and to do what pleases him.

[Box on page 243]

HIGHLIGHTS OF LEVITICUS

God’s laws, especially concerning the service of the priests in Israel, with emphasis, for the benefit of the nation as a whole, on the seriousness of sin and the importance of being holy because Jehovah is holy

Written by Moses in 1512 B.C.E., while Israel was camped at Mount Sinai

Aaronic priesthood is installed and begins to function

Moses carries out the seven-day installation procedure (8:1-36)

On the eighth day, the priesthood begins to function; Jehovah manifests his approval by displaying his glory and consuming the offering on the altar (9:1-24)

Jehovah strikes down Nadab and Abihu for offering illegitimate fire; subsequently the use of alcoholic drinks when one is serving at the sanctuary is forbidden (10:1-11)

Requirements are outlined for those who will serve as priests; regulations are laid down about eating what is holy (21:1–22:16)

Use of sacrifices in maintaining an approved relationship with God

Laws are given regarding animals acceptable as burnt offerings and how they should be prepared for presentation (1:1-17; 6:8-13; 7:8)

Kinds of grain offerings are stipulated as well as how they are to be presented to Jehovah (2:1-16; 6:14-18; 7:9, 10)

Procedure is laid down for handling communion sacrifices; the eating of blood and fat is forbidden (3:1-17; 7:11-36)

Animals are specified for sin offering in the case of a priest, the assembly of Israel, a chieftain, or one of the people; procedure for handling this offering is outlined (4:1-35; 6:24-30)

Laws are given on situations requiring guilt offerings (5:1–6:7; 7:1-7)

Instructions are handed down regarding the offering to be made on the day of the priest’s being anointed (6:19-23)

All offerings must be sound; defects making an animal unfit for sacrifice are listed (22:17-33)

Atonement Day procedures are outlined involving the sacrifice of a bull and two goats​—one goat for Jehovah and the other for Azazel (16:2-34)

Detailed regulations to safeguard against uncleanness and to maintain holiness

Certain animals are acceptable as clean for food and others are prohibited as unclean; uncleanness results from contact with dead bodies (11:1-47)

A woman should be purified from her uncleanness after giving birth (12:1-8)

Procedures for handling cases of leprosy are detailed (13:1–14:57)

Uncleanness results from sexual discharges, and purification is required (15:1-33)

Holiness must be maintained by respecting sanctity of blood and by shunning incest, sodomy, bestiality, slander, spiritism, and other detestable practices (17:1–20:27)

Sabbaths and seasonal festivals to Jehovah

Sabbath days and years as well as regulations and principles touching the Jubilee are laid down (23:1-3; 25:1-55)

The manner of observing the annual Festival of Unfermented Cakes (following Passover) and the Festival of Weeks (later called Pentecost) is detailed (23:4-21)

The procedure for observing the Day of Atonement and the Festival of Booths is outlined (23:26-44)

Blessings for obedience, maledictions for disobedience

Blessings for obedience will include bountiful harvests, peace, and security (26:3-13)

Maledictions because of disobedience will include disease, defeat by enemies, famine, destruction of cities, desolation of land, and exile (26:14-45)

All in the family?

Computer Software Sheds Light on Human and Chimp DNA Similarity
Walter Myers III

Recently I had the opportunity to hear Discovery Institute’s Stephen Meyer provide an update on the progress and current state of the theory of intelligent design. At the end of Meyer’s lecture, he took questions from the audience. Inevitably, the question came up about humans and chimpanzees with their “98 percent” similarity in DNA. Isn’t that evidence in favor of evolution and against design?

Meyer’s reply was to compare DNA code to differing computer programs that share an underlying code base. As a professional software engineer over more decades than I care to express here, I can attest to the accuracy of Meyer’s comparison. As he demonstrated in his book Signature in the Cell, the cell is a microscopic factory bustling with the activity of thousands of tiny machines built from the instructions provided by DNA code in the nucleus of the cell.

I am not going to enter into the debate about what precisely is the percentage of similarity in DNA between humans and chimps. That is wholly immaterial to the point I want to make. Instead, let’s see how the analogy that Meyer presented holds up by providing more depth and color using a practical example from the hardware and software most of us use in everyday life. Everyone reading this post (I suspect) is using a browser on either a computer, tablet, or smartphone. The device you are using has something installed on it called an operating system (OS). That is defined as “the collection of software that directs a computer’s operations, controlling and scheduling the execution of other programs, and managing storage, input/output, and communication resources.” The operating system provides all of the underlying functions necessary for the browser or any other application software (program) you may access on your device. Whatever the device you are using, the OS consists of tens of millions of lines of code. For example, the Windows operating system is estimated to have in excess of  50 million lines of code.

The diagram below represents the architecture of Windows NT, which is the line of operating systems produced and sold by Microsoft. Actually this diagram is a bit dated as Windows has “evolved” quite a bit with new features since 2000, but the fundamental concepts have not changed. It’s not essential that you understand this in full, but note the various subsystems that make up a modern OS.

Specifically, you have the “kernel” which is the core of the OS connecting application software to the underlying hardware. The kernel exercises complete control over the system and is fully protected from user applications, providing a set of well-defined interfaces by which an application can interact with the underlying services. You can liken the kernel here to the nucleus of a cell, which maintains the security of DNA and controls the functions of the entire cell by regulating gene expression. On top of the kernel, you have a “user” mode coordinating with the kernel that provides higher-level services such as your user interface, authentication mechanism (for logging in), and the environment in which your application code runs (in this case, your browser).  This would be analogous to the working proteins in the cell which would be the running code performing the everyday work of the cell.

Now let’s focus further on application code. While the OS is code that an OS company writes, such as Microsoft, Apple, or various open-source Linux distribution companies, applications are written by software developers. Applications themselves can also run to millions of lines of code. It depends upon the complexity and functionality of the application itself. What software developers have discovered over the decades, however, is that there are specific functions or patterns that developers perform over and over, and thus a considerable part of the software business consists of “third-party” developers writing and selling reusable “libraries” that make work easier for other developers. For example, in a typical application, you might have a library that assists with building the user interface, a library for database access, or a library for communications over a wireless network.

Applications on a smartphone, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, can be thousands of lines of code, accessing component libraries that provide services made up of thousands or millions of lines of code, and of course accessing the aforementioned millions of lines of code in the underlying OS.

Now, comparing this to humans and chimps, what do we find? While much of the DNA code may be the same, the parts that are not the same have significant differences. The programs I described above, such as Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, have different purposes, yet they all depend on the same OS that consists of tens of millions of lines of code. To be specific, let’s say you are using an iPhone with iOS 11 (the Apple mobile OS) installed. iOS is estimated to take up about 4 GB of space on your iPhone. Facebook takes up about 297 MB. Snapchat is about 137 MB. Instagram is about 85 MB. Respectively, that’s 7.4 percent, 3.4 percent, and 2.1 percent of the size of iOS. Now would anyone say that Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are pretty much the same thing since they are each well over 90 percent the same? Of course not. It’s not so different with humans and chimps. In the case of these programs, the vast majority of their total code base is shared, yet each is a distinct creative expression that leverages a shared base of code. In the case of humans and chimps, one would expect a designer to use shared code where functions are the same, and different (new) code where functions are different. When we examine computer programs, which are the inventions of human minds, why would they not reflect the mind of the designer that wrote the code to produce humans, chimps, and every other biological organism?

There is a further relevant analogy between application software and DNA code. In biological organisms, not all genes are expressed in every cell. For example, there are specific genes active in liver cells, specific genes active in heart muscle cells, and specific genes active in brain cells. Different cell types express themselves in both appearance and function. So not all of the DNA code is in use in each cell. Additionally, environmental factors affect what genes are expressed in a group of cells, allowing an organism to respond in various ways to the situations in which it finds itself. Similarly, with software programs, not all pathways to all code are in use. There are “settings,” whether set by the user or programmed automatically in the application by the developer, that determine how a program will individually function. For example, when a user changes the privacy, language, or chat settings in the Facebook mobile app, it modifies the many pathways the code may execute. Or if a malevolent user tries to log in to a program multiple times, attempting to hack into a user account, the program will itself execute a code pathway to lock the malevolent user out and notify the legitimate user.

Again, the functions in a computer program reflect the mind of the human designer. In the same way, the functions in the human being programming a computer reflect the mind of the designer of both humans and chimps.

On the evolution of a Darwinist.

How Scott Turner Evolved
David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

On a new ID the Future episode, Rob Crowther talks with biologist J. Scott Turner about his book  Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. Crowther wants to know how Turner and his thinking on evolution…evolved. Turner, of the State University of New York and currently a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, is a really interesting and sympathetic case of a scientist who straddles design and evolutionary thinking. How did he get to be where, intellectually, he is today?

He explains the impact that media coverage of the Dover trial had on in him, the smears directed at ID proponents, the trite attacks on “creationism” that seemed to have been preserved in vinegar from the Scopes Monkey Trial eighty years before. Turner met Stephen Meyer and other advocates of intelligent design. He was startled to find that they were quite a different crowd from what you’d imagine based on press coverage and published comments from Darwin defenders. Listen to the podcast or download it here.

Rob Crowther asks Dr. Turner what he’s learned since his book came out, and Turner mentions that it’s been a lesson in how “worldviews” shape and limit thinking. Do they ever.

What is a worldview, though? Sometimes I think the concept is not applied broadly enough. We all tell a story to ourselves about who we are, what kind of people we are, what kind of people it must be who would disagree with us on emotionally charged matters. This goes beyond controversies in biology, of course.

I was listening to an NPR report about — naw, I’m not going to say what it was about, it doesn’t matter. But I was listening to all these voices, the reporter and the people she was interviewing, and I was thinking about how they all sound so remarkably alike. Same manner of speaking, which is echoed by the distinctive production style. The reporter was telling a story, and everyone else was in her story, and she was in theirs, and they were all, transparently, just as pleased with themselves as they could be. That quality of almost giddy self-satisfaction is highly diagnostic. It is diagnostic of someone telling himself a tale, living in the world generated by his tale, but not realizing he is doing so.

Joan Didion famously said that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” The problem comes when you cannot identify your personal narrative, cannot step back and see it and yourself objectively. A tendency to uncontrolled storytelling continually molds Darwinist responses to Darwin skeptics. That, I think, is another way of stating the lesson Scott Turner has taken away from the experience of publishing Purpose and Desire.

Octopi v. Darwin and it's not even close.

More on Octopus RNA Editing — A Problem for Neo-Darwinism
Evolution News | @DiscoveryCSC

Eric Metaxas at BreakPoint is one of our favorite popular commentators on evolution. In a broadcast, he takes note of our commentary here. As we noted last month, “Octopus Genetic Editing — Animals Defy Their Own Neo-Darwinism.”
From Metaxas on how “The Octopus Outsmarts Darwin Again”:

The Tel Aviv researchers found “tens of thousands” of such RNA recoding sites in cephalopods, allowing a creature like the octopus to essentially reprogram itself, adding “new riffs to its basic genetic blueprint.” In other words, these invertebrates don’t care that they didn’t inherit the smart genes. They make themselves smart, anyway.

Of course, an animal can’t be the author of its own intelligence, and this is not a process anyone believes cephalopods perform consciously. Rather, it is a marvelous piece of “adaptive programming” built-in to their biology.

Darwinists have tried to spin this feat as “a special kind of evolution.” But the folks at Evolution News cut through this nonsense and identify RNA editing for what it is: “non-evolution.”

“Neo-Darwinism did not make cephalopods what they are,” they write. “These highly intelligent and well-adapted animals edited their own genomes, so what possible need do they have for…blind, random, unguided” evolution?

This is also an emerging field of research, which means it’s possible, in theory, that other organisms make extensive use of RNA editing, and we’re just not aware of it, yet.

If, as  one popular science website puts it, other creatures can “defy” the “central dogma” of genetics, the implications for Darwin’s “tree of life,” and his entire theory, are dire.

But if cephalopods and the complex information processing that makes them so unique are in fact the result of a Programmer — of a Designer — the waters of biology become far less inky.
A friend asks if this phenomenon is an example of Lamarckism, according to which organisms evolve by adapting to their environments and then passing on newly acquired characteristics to their offspring. We wouldn’t call it that, but we do call it a problem for neo-Darwinism. Among other reasons, that’s because it reveals that organisms need much more information than is provided by DNA sequences. Therefore, DNA mutations cannot provide sufficient raw materials for evolution.

This latest research is impressive, but RNA editing is not new. As Eric Metaxas smartly anticipates, there is indeed extensive RNA editing in other organisms, too — including humans.

Care for documentation? Find it here:

Peng Z, Cheng Y, Tan BC, Kang L, Tian Z, et al. (2012) Comprehensive analysis of RNA-Seq data reveals extensive RNA editing in a human transcriptome.Nature Biotechnology 30:253-260
Bahn JH, Lee JH, Li G, Greer C, Peng G, et al. (2012) Accurate identification of A-to-I RNA editing in human by transcriptome sequencing.   Genome Research 22:142-150
Sakurai M, Ueda H, Yano T, Okada S, Terajima H (2014)  A biochemical landscape of A-to-I RNA editing in the human brain transcriptome.  Genome Research (January 9, 2014)

That would make the problem for Darwinism even more acute than Eric suggests.