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Tuesday 10 January 2023
Some more on the business of war.
An architectural icon examined.
The Chrysler building
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Lamarck's revenge?
On Lamarck
Cornelius G Hunter
In the twentieth century Lamarckian Inheritance was an anathema for evolutionists. Careers were ruined and every evolutionist knew the inheritance of acquired characteristics sat right along the flat earth and geocentrism in the history of ideas. The damning of Lamarck, however, was driven by dogma rather than data, and today the evidence has finally overcome evolutionary theory.
Indeed there is much contemporary discussion, observations and critical analysis consistent with this position led by Corrado Spadafora, Yongsheng Liu, Denis Noble, John Mattick and others, that developments such as Lamarckian Inheritance processes (both direct DNA modifications and indirect, viz. epigenetic, transmissions) in evolutionary biology and adjacent fields now necessitate a complete revision of the standard neo-Darwinian theory of evolution or “New Synthesis " that emerged from the 1930s and 1940s.
Indeed, we now know of a “plethora of adaptive Lamarckian-like inheritance mechanisms.
””
Samuel Clarke on the trinity.
Stanford Encycloedia
In his lifetime, Clarke was infamous for his view of the trinity, and he sparked a vociferous debate (Ferguson 1974, 59–149; Pfizenmaier 1997, 179–216). Clarke was not officially censured (but nearly so), but it surely prevented his rising to higher office. Clarke’s writing on the trinity are relevant for understanding his other metaphysical positions, especially his identification of “person” with intelligent, acting agent rather than with a particular substance, which has not been sufficiently reconciled with his account of personal identity as wrapped up with an immaterial soul.
In Christian theology, God is represented as tripartite—three persons but one God. In the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, in use in England during Clarke’s lifetime, one of the liturgies draws from the Athanasian Creed, which includes the following discussion of the Trinity: “For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son: and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one… So the Father is God, the Son is God : and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three Gods: but one God.” In his position as a cleric, Clarke was required to subscribe to this formulation. In 1712, against the advice of his friends, he published The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity, in which he diverged from what his opponents considered the plain sense of this formulation. The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity begins by collecting all the passages of the New Testament that relate to the Trinity. It then sets out a series of 55 propositions regarding the Trinity, each supported by references to the texts collected in the first section and writings from the early Christian church. However, the biblical texts do not primarily discuss God’s metaphysical attributes, according to Clarke, but ascribe dominion to God (W 4.150; Snobelen 2004, 265–275). The third section relates these propositions to the Anglican liturgy. This approach reflects Clarke’s general expectation that the correct theological doctrines are found in the Bible, are endorsed by the early church, and are compatible with reason. Through hundreds of years of what he considered bad metaphysics, the correct and intelligible doctrine of the trinity had become obscured, and Clarke hoped to return to a pre-Athanasian understanding of the trinity.
Clarke’s position in The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity was labeled by his opponents as “Arian,” “Socinian,” and “Sabellian.” Although they were commonly used as abusive terms for anyone holding non-traditional or anti-trinitarian views, they also have more precise meanings. An Arian holds that the Son (the second person of the Trinity) is divine but not eternal; he was created by God the Father out of nothing before the beginning of the world. A Socinian holds that the Son is merely human and was created at or after the conception of Jesus. A Sabellian holds that the Son is a mode of God. In the precise use of the terms, Clarke is none of these. Unlike the Arians, Clarke affirmed that the Son is co-eternal with the Father and not created (W 4.141). (Pfizenmaier 1997 provides further textual and historical arguments that Clarke should not be classified as an Arian.) From this it also follows that, contra the Socinians, the Son existed before the conception of Jesus. Unlike the Sabellians, Clarke denied that the Son was a mode of the Father. (This would have been very problematic given that he sometimes claimed that space is a mode of God.) Clarke’s claimed ignorance about substance made him reluctant to declare that the Father and the Son were the same divine substance, but the Son is endowed by the Father with all of the power and authority of the Father. He also called the manner of the Son’s generation from the father “ineffable.” So while Clarke denied that the trinity was a “mystery,” he did believe that the manner in which the Father’s power is communicated to the Son is “after a manner to us unknown” (Proposition 35; 4.159).
Clarke affirms that each member of the trinity is a person, but only the Father is self-existent, which means that the Father by essence (rather than by “office”) has a property that the Son does not. His views are best described as subordinationist but he could also be called a unitarian, in at least some senses of the term (Tuggy 2014; 204–205). See especially Prop. 25 (W 4.150); Prop. 27 (W 4.151); and Prop. 34 (“The Son, whatever his metaphysical essence of substance be, and whatever divine greatness and dignity is ascribed to him in scripture; yet in this he is evidently subordinate to the Father, that he derives his being, attributes, and powers, from the Father, and the Father nothing from him”; 4.155). To the Father alone are ascribed “independence and supreme authority” (Proposition 27; 4.151). Every other attribute and power that can be ascribed to the Father can also be ascribed to the Son, “but the titles ascribed to the Son, must always carry along with them the idea of being communicated or derived” (4.153).
Monday 9 January 2023
David Berlinski :Ace Darwin Skeptic on Darwinism v. Maths
David Berlinski on Darwinism.
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Darwinism's fall of Rome moment at hand?
Will an Engineering Paradigm Supplant Darwinism?
David Coppedge
The heyday of Darwinism may be coming to an end. Its summer of dominance after neo-Darwinism arose and conquered every field of biology led to an autumn of colorful just-so stories, and now a Narnian rule, where it is always winter and never Christmas. Evolutionary biologists repeat the old dogmas with less and less creative insight, as if cranking out expected boilerplate in a spirit of drudgery. But like a waft of a slightly less-cold breeze, with a slightly higher sun in the sky, hints of a new paradigm may be signaling that biology is about to turn over a new leaf.
One such tender shoot of greenery appeared in Science Magazine, where Maria Clara Zanellati and Sarah Cohen wrote a perspective piece titled, “The endosome as engineer.” It’s an example of an ever-so-slight tendency in mainstream journals — perhaps too early to call a trend — that ignores Darwinism completely while warming up to the engineering paradigm. It is often done without voicing the name of the Enemy, intelligent design.
A hallmark of eukaryotic cells is that they are compartmentalized into membrane-bound organelles. This allows for the spatial separation of biochemically incompatible processes. Nevertheless, organelles must work together for the cell to function. There has been increasing interest in organelle communication at membrane contact sites — where two organelles are anchored in close apposition by “tether” proteins. These contact sites allow the exchange of materials and information between cellular compartments. Intriguingly, organelles can also influence one another’s abundance and morphology. Most studies have focused on the role of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) in shaping other organelles. However, on page 1188 of this issue, Jang et al. show that the endosome can reengineer ER shape in response to changing nutrient levels, which in turn affects the morphology and function of additional organelles.
The word “engineering” appears briefly in the above-referenced paper by Jang et al., but only in regard to the scientists who engineered the cell lines and their genomes. Still, significantly, evolution was notable for its absence, while engineering terms were used to describe what the endosome is doing: rewiring, signaling, orchestration, function, program, coordination, and regulation.
It’s Logical
Another paper, in Science Advances, is almost comical in its dissing of Darwinism. The paper is all about logic, using the word 18 times. Authors Sun and Horrigan from Baylor College of Medicine describe “A gating lever and molecular logic gate that couple voltage and calcium sensor activation to opening in BK potassium channels.” Sounds like what an IT engineer might do. Here’s their only mention of evolution:
The logic gate–like integration of V and Ca2+ signaling by the YFF pathway is a potentially unique mechanismthat raises many interesting questions regarding its physiological role and evolution. While we cannot speculate about the latter, the most obvious role of the mechanism is to enhance both V- and Ca2+-dependent coupling, and it may also act paradoxically to simplify the physiological response to V and Ca2+, as discussed below.
Forward they proceed into engineering language, leaving Darwinism behind, mumbling in his beard about what “seems to me.” Sun and Horrigan are more interested in couplings and sensors:
In conclusion, our results suggest that coupling mechanisms can be indirect and distributed and that resolving these mechanisms requires structure-function analysis that can distinguish changes in coupling from changes in sensor or gate equilibria, as well as structural information in different states to distinguish static and dynamic interactions.
Nature Feeling the Warmth, Too?
Norman Lockyer founded the journal Nature in the days of the X Club to promote Darwinism. The first issue had a frontispiece by Thomas Huxley, and in the first year there were half a dozen articles “urging Darwin’s scheme, two of which were written by Darwin himself” (Browne, p. 248). That was in 1869. As everyone knows, the Nature Publishing empire proceeded to dominate the journal business and continues its “polemic purpose” in support of materialist science.
Recently, however, at Scientific Reports, one of Nature’s open-access journals, three scientists wrote a Darwin-free editorial on “3D Genome Organization.” Like the paper described above, this editorial portrays biological engineering without using the word. More importantly, it promotes interdisciplinary research focused on how genomes achieve structure-function relationships from a linear sequence. This opens doors for engineering-based research that scientists weary of Darwinism might find attractive.
We are still a long way from understanding how 3D genome organization is linked precisely to genome function. A concerted multi-disciplinary effort is needed to develop new tools and computational prediction methods, multi-target chromatin imaging techniques in live-cells, and efficient manipulation methods for 3D genome structures. These efforts should be accompanied by the collection of 3D genome data from different diseased and healthy cells and tissues in humans, as well as a range of model organisms. Our increased knowledge of 3D folding of the genome will lead to a better appreciation of the regulatory potential of the linear genetic sequence. 3D genome organization emerges as a cell type specific epigenetic mechanism and gives us clues about the regulatory effect of the non-coding genome in the 3D context. This understanding will allow for enhanced interpretation of genetic variants and their potential phenotypic effects. Finally, such studies will bring new 3D insights into diagnostics and therapies for different conditions including cancer, developmental diseases, ageing, and related disorders.
One can almost sense the excitement at the potential of looking at genomics with an engineer’s eyes.
Disruptors Needed
Nature complained this month that “‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why.” Max Kozlov explained, “The proportion of publications that send a field in a new direction has plummeted over the last half-century.” Kozlov gropes for reasons for it. A related paper by Park, Leahey and Funk in the same issue likewise comes to no firm conclusion. All they can suggest are possible ways to stir the embers and ignite something exciting.
Understanding the decline in disruptive science and technology more fully permits a much-needed rethinking of strategies for organizing the production of science and technology in the future.
One factor they ignore is the stupor of consensus. In biology, the aging Darwinian consensus has stifled fresh, disruptive thinking outside the box. Many scientists have contented themselves with describing whatever complex phenomenon is under investigation by saying with a ho-hum that it “evolved” to do what it does. To this day, though, nobody has witnessed a new organ or programmed system come into being by Darwin’s mutation/selection “mechanism” (as if “mechanism” can properly be applied to products of mindless processes).
People do, by contrast, witness new products coming from engineers. Intelligent minds possess foresight and creativity that can find elegant solutions to problems. That’s what life does. The engineering paradigm is explicitly and effectively applied within the intelligent design community, such as in the new book Your Designed Body by an engineer and an MD. Their interdisciplinary collaboration achieves credible understanding: the body looks designed because it is designed in ways that would make human engineers envious.
Discovery Institute leads the world in design-based initiatives, events, and publications. If the engineering paradigm succeeds in bringing a new leaf to biology after the long Darwinian winter, DI may not get the credit it deserves. It is still hard for scientists to overtly embrace intelligent design because the Darwin empire’s punishment of all who stray from the consensus is legendary. But if, after a century of Darwin’s reign of terror, with its racism, eugenics, meaninglessness, ugliness, and censorship, an engineering-theoretic paradigm offers a new way of doing research, it promises to bring not only superior understanding of how life works, but with it untold practical benefits to the whole world — not the least of which might be great pleasure and satisfaction at rediscovering purpose at the root of life.
On origin of life science's spectacular fail re:design denial.
The mystery of life's origin.
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On the prehuman singularity.
Cosmologist Frank Tipler on the Singularity Atheists Try To Evade
Evolution news
On a classic ID the Future episode we hear commentary on the singularity from distinguished cosmologist Frank Tipler, co-author of The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. The singularity in question isn’t the supposed future singularity imagined by transhumanists, but the evidentially well-supported singularity at the foundation of the Big Bang. The equations are clear, says Tipler, as are their implications: among its many arresting features, the Big Bang singularity had an existence outside of space and time, was intrinsically infinite, and was not subject to any laws of physics. Atheists today still resist this conclusion, Tipler says, but only this conclusion has experimental support, and the negative implications for atheism are hard to miss.Download the podcast or listen to it here.
Sunday 8 January 2023
On the zombies prowling Darwinism's badlands.
Icons of evolution
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On Darwinism's gradualism(or lack thereof) problem.
Diversity of Life
Cornelius G Hunter
But the origin of life is just the beginning of evolution’s problems. For science now suggests evolution is incapable of creating the diversity of life and all of its designs:
Before the extensive sequencing of DNA became available it would have been reasonable to speculate that random copying errors in a gene sequence could, over time, lead to the emergence of new traits, body plans and new physiologies that could explain the whole of evolution. However the data we have reviewed here challenge this point of view. It suggests that the Cambrian Explosion of multicellular life that occurred 0.54 billion years ago led to a sudden emergence of essentially all the genes that subsequently came to be rearranged into an exceedingly wide range of multi-celled life forms - Tardigrades, the Squid, Octopus, fruit flies, humans – to name but a few.
As one of the authors writes, “the complexity and sophistication of life cannot originate (from non-biological) matter under any scenario, over any expanse of space and time, however vast.” As an example, consider the octopus.
Octopus
First, the octopus is an example of novel, complex features, rapidly appearing and a vast array of genes without an apparent ancestry:
Its large brain and sophisticated nervous system, camera-like eyes, flexible bodies, instantaneous camouflage via the ability to switch colour and shape are just a few of the striking features that appear suddenly on the evolutionary scene. The transformative genes leading from the consensus ancestral Nautilus (e.g., Nautilus pompilius) to the common Cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis) to Squid (Loligo vulgaris) to the common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) are not easily to be found in any pre-existing life form.
But it gets worse. As Darwin’s God has explained, The Cephalopods demonstrate a highly unique level of adenosine to inosine mRNA editing. It is yet another striking example of lineage-specific design that utterly contradicts macroevolution:
These data demonstrate extensive evolutionary conserved adenosine to inosine (A-to-I) mRNA editing sites in almost every single protein-coding gene in the behaviorally complex coleoid Cephalopods (Octopus in particular), but not in nautilus. This enormous qualitative difference in Cephalopod protein recoding A-to-I mRNA editing compared to nautilus and other invertebrate and vertebrate animals is striking. Thus in transcriptome-wide screens only 1–3% of Drosophila and human protein coding mRNAs harbour an A-to-I recoding site; and there only about 25 human mRNA messages which contain a conserved A-to-I recoding site across mammals. In Drosophila lineages there are about 65 conserved A-sites in protein coding genes and only a few identified in C. elegans which support the hypothesis that A-to-I RNA editing recoding is mostly either neutral, detrimental, or rarely adaptive. Yet in Squid and particularly Octopus it is the norm, with almost every protein coding gene having an evolutionary conserved A-to-I mRNA editing site isoform, resulting in a nonsynonymous amino acid change. This is a virtual qualitative jump in molecular genetic strategy in a supposed smooth and incremental evolutionary lineage - a type of sudden “great leap forward”. Unless all the new genes expressed in the squid/octopus lineages arose from simple mutations of existing genes in either the squid or in other organisms sharing the same habitat, there is surely no way by which this large qualitative transition in A-to-I mRNA editing can be explained by conventional neo-Darwinian processes, even if horizontal gene transfer is allowed.
Another look at Darwinism '" simple beginning" issues.
Origin of Life
Cornelius G Hunter
Regarding origin of life studies, which try to explain how living cells could somehow have arisen in an ancient, inorganic, Earth, the paper explains that this idea should have long since been rejected, but instead it has fueled “sophisticated conjectures with little or no evidential support.”
the dominant biological paradigm - abiogenesis in a primordial soup. The latter idea was developed at a time when the earliest living cells were considered to be exceedingly simple structures that could subsequently evolve in a Darwinian way. These ideas should of course have been critically examined and rejected after the discovery of the exceedingly complex molecular structures involved in proteins and in DNA. But this did not happen. Modern ideas of abiogenesis in hydrothermal vents or elsewhere on the primitive Earth have developed into sophisticated conjectures with little or no evidential support.
In fact, abiogenesis has “no empirical support.”
independent abiogenesis on the cosmologically diminutive scale of oceans, lakes or hydrothermal vents remains a hypothesis with no empirical support
One problem, of many, is that the early Earth would not have supported such monumental evolution to occur:
The conditions that would most likely to have prevailed near the impact-riddled Earth's surface 4.1–4.23 billion years ago were too hot even for simple organic molecules to survive let alone evolve into living complexity
In fact, the whole idea strains credibility “beyond the limit.”
The requirement now, on the basis of orthodox abiogenic thinking, is that an essentially instantaneous transformation of non-living organic matter to bacterial life occurs, an assumption we consider strains credibility of Earth-bound abiogenesis beyond the limit.
All laboratory experiments have ended in “dismal failure.” The information hurdle is of “superastronomical proportions” and simply could not have been overcome without a miracle.
The transformation of an ensemble of appropriately chosen biological monomers (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides) into a primitive living cell capable of further evolution appears to require overcoming an information hurdle of superastronomical proportions, an event that could not have happened within the time frame of the Earth except, we believe, as a miracle. All laboratory experiments attempting to simulate such an event have so far led to dismal failure.
Saturday 7 January 2023
The question of the millennium: Can we talk about this?
Listen: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya on COVID-19 as One of the Most Divisive Events in American History
Evolution news
Copernicus redux?
paper demonstrates superiority of the design heuristic
Friday 6 January 2023
A heavenly witness against design deniers?
Animals Tune Behavior by Lunar Cycle; but How?
David Coppedge
Tonight’s moon will be full, so here is a timely question. Many unrelated animals tune their behavior by the lunar cycle. How do they do it, given that sunlight overpowers moonlight?
Researchers in Austria think they have found a clue: a cryptochrome protein that appears to respond to the lunar cycle. Cryptochrome proteins are also implicated in the geomagnetic sense in birds. Whatever they found, it surely must represent only a piece of a biological puzzle. Let them explain in this from the University of Wien:
Many marine organisms, including brown algae, fish, corals, turtles and bristle worms, synchronize their behavior and reproduction with the lunar cycle. For some species, such as the bristle worm Platynereiis dumerilii, lab experiments have shown that moonlight exerts its timing function by entraining an inner monthly calendar, also called circalunar clock. Under these laboratory conditions, mimicking the duration of the full moon is sufficient to entrain these circalunar clocks. However, in natural habitats light conditions can vary considerably. Even the regular interplay of sun- and moon creates highly complex patterns. Organisms using the lunar light for their timing thus need to discriminate between specific moon phases and between sun and moonlight. This ability is not well understood.
The first statement should alarm evolutionists. Circalunar clocks are found in very unrelated animals (evolutionarily speaking): vertebrates like fish and turtles and invertebrates like worms and corals. Each of these must have hit upon lunar tuning independently.
The researcher’s paper in Nature Communications points out that we humans have connections to the lunar cycle, too:
In addition, lunar timing effects have also been documented outside the marine environment, and recently uncovered correlations of human sleep and menstrual cycle properties with moon phases have re-initiated the discussion of an impact of the moon even on human biology. As recently documented for corals, desynchronization of these reproductively critical rhythms by anthropogenic impacts poses a threat to species survival.
The Bristle Worm as a Test Case
Unbeknownst to most landlubbers, polychaetes rule the seas. There are at least 10,000 species of these swimming bristly worms, some of which pop with brilliant colors or light up with a bioluminescent glow. They’ve adapted to every imaginable marine habitat, from deep hydrothermal vents to crowded coral reefs to the open ocean—and many have found ways to survive that are definitely bizarre.
Interested readers can browse through Smithsonian’s list of facts and look at the pictures. A short horror movie shows a lionfish learning too late not to mess with a bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois), a different species of bristle worm in the Atlantic. It’s a creature of nightmares, so be forewarned. The poisonous lionfish can’t use its defensive weapons against this lightning-fast monster: a worm! It’s a terrifying creature right out of the movie Tremors. More about bobbit worms can be found at ARCReef.com. Do not read this: some bobbit worms grow up to ten feet long! Fortunately, attacks on humans are rare, limited to “nasty bites” (Daily Mail).
Evolutionary Challenges
Back to P. dumerilii, a much more benign polychaete only 2-4 cm long. A type of ragworm, this species is found worldwide. Wikipedia calls it a living fossil. Although it’s an invertebrate, “it has an axochord, a paired longitudinal muscle that displays striking similarities to the notochord regarding position, developmental origin, and expression profile.” It swims with a coordinated system of cilia on its surface. “Whole-body coordination of ciliary locomotion is performed by a ‘stop-and-go pacemaker system’,” the article says. That’s not the only pacemaker in this amazing little worm. Despite having “a pair of the simplest eyes in the animal kingdom,” it can “see” the phases of the moon. Those little eyes do not help the evolutionary story:
The ciliary photoreceptor cells are located in the deep brain of the larva. They are not shaded by pigment and thus perceive non-directional light. The ciliary photoreceptor cells resemble molecularly and morphologically the rods and cones of the human eye. Additional [sic], they express an ciliary opsin that is more similar to the visual ciliary opsins of vertebrate rods and cones than to the visual rhabdomeric opsins of invertebrates.
The bristle worm’s genome also challenges Darwinism:
The genome of Platynereis dumerilii … contains approximately 1 Gbp (giga base pairs) or 109 base pairs. This genome size is close to the average observed for other animals. However, compared to many classical invertebrate molecular model organisms, this genome size is rather large and therefore it is a challenge to identify gene regulatory elements that can be far away from the corresponding promoter. But it is intron rich unlike those of Drosophila melanogaster and Caenorhabditis elegans and thus closer to vertebrate genomes including the human genome.
Wikipedia prudently abstains from speculating on how these worms evolved.
Possible Lunar Oscillator Found in P. dumerilii
In the introduction to the paper, the authors say, “Despite the importance and widespread occurrence of lunar rhythms, functional mechanistic insight is lacking.” They found a cryptochome protein they call L-Cry that appears to keep time to the full moon. Its asymmetric dimer appears to have two monomers with very different light sensitivities, which “provides the molecular basis to sense and interpret light intensities across five orders of magnitude.”
This is important because full sunlight swamps moonlight, so the worm brain must be able to discriminate the smaller peaks of illumination from larger ones. Additionally, L-Cry must be able to avoid being tricked by artificial light that can also outshine full moonlight. It must also be robust against darkness on cloudy full-moon nights and by “natural acute light disturbances, such as lightning.”
Experiments in the “worm room” under controlled simulations of sun and moon illumination cycles demonstrated this ability. “L-Cry’s major role could be that of a gatekeeper controlling which ambient light is interpreted as full-moonlight stimulus for circalunar clock entrainment,” they say. If an organism can set its lunar clock to a full moon, it can also discriminate other lunar phases.
The full moon is unique in having the longest duration of light at night, followed by sunrise. A circalunar clock presupposes, therefore, the ability to measure the duration as well as intensity of light. L-Cry may do this with a ratchet mechanism: as the protein accumulates photons, it reaches higher quantum levels that photoreduce parts of the low-sensitivity monomer. The authors also observed L-Cry accumulating in the nucleus and diminishing in the cytoplasm during the simulated moonlight exposure time. “This suggests that different cellular compartments convey the different light messages to different downstream pathways.”
Even so, this cryptochrome discovery only delivers “the first molecular entry point into the mechanisms underlying a moonlight-entrained monthly oscillator.” The photoreceptor for L-Cry is unknown. Additionally, L-Cry must cooperate with the circadian clock genes, adding to the regulatory complexity. How these proteins signal a cascade of physiological behaviors when it’s time to spawn remains curious. “Certainly, more extensive mechanistic studies are required to further verify our models.”
Convergent Functionality
Finally, an evolutionary consideration: Monthly synchronization by the moon has been documented for a wide range of organisms– including brown and green algae, corals, crustaceans, worms, but also vertebrates… Furthermore, recent reports also provide increasing evidence that the lunar cycle influences human behavior… Are the lunar effects mediated by conserved or different mechanisms?
Since L-Cry is not known in these other species, the authors speculate that either conservation of other proteins will be discovered, or that other proteins with analogous functions will be found.
Last, but not least the molecular mechanisms underlying the circalunar oscillator also await identification, and it is possible that conservation exists on this level. Examples are known from circadian biology and it will now require further work to reach a similar level of understanding for moon-controlled monthly rhythms and clocks.
Surely, though, conservation of function using entirely different molecular mechanisms poses a severe challenge to Darwinism. It would seem to require entirely different sets of mutations to be selected for a common function. In design theory, intelligence starts with the concept and can use different instruments to play the same tune.
The Palolo Worm
We end with a spectacular case of circalunar time tuning. Another polychaete, the Palolo Worm of the South Pacific, undergoes a remarkable reproductive cycle timed to both lunar and annual cycles. Britannica explains its life cycle:
The palolo worm of the South Pacific (Palolo siciliensis [P. viridis or Eunice viridis]) inhabits crevices and cavities in coral reefs. As the breeding season approaches, the tail end of the body undergoes a radical change.The muscles and most of the organs degenerate, and the reproductive organs rapidly increase in size. The limbs on the posterior segment become more paddlelike. After the animal backs part way out of its tubelike burrow, the posterior section breaks free and swims to the surface as a separate animal, complete with eyes. The anterior end, still attached to its tube, regenerates a new posterior end.
The free-swimming half-worms contains sperm and eggs. Tens of thousands of these half-worms swim to the surface as if on cue, and release their reproductive cells always at the same time of year and at a particular phase of the moon.
The free-swimming section always makes its appearance in the early morning for two days during the last quarter of the Moon in October. Twenty-eight days later, it appears in even greater numbers in the final quarter of the November Moon. At the surface of the sea the sperm and eggs are discharged, and fertilization occurs. Palolo tails, considered a delicacy by the Polynesians, are gathered in vast numbers during swarming.
Worms. Such simple, lowly creatures. But what wonders await the biologists who delve into their mechanisms. Like everything else in biology, design-inspired awe explodes in the details.
The fossil record continues to be a bomb thrower for Darwinism
Fossil Friday: Fossil Golden Moles and the Abrupt Origin of Afrosoricida
Günter Bechly
Last week we looked into the fossil history of elephant shrews. This first Fossil Friday in the new year we will move on in our series on placental mammal origins to another group of mainly insectivorous afrotherians: the order Afrosoricida, which comprises golden moles (Chrysochloridae), otter shrews (Potamogalidae), and the iconic tenrecs (Tenrecidae) from Madagascar. As in other small mammals their fossil record mostly consists of isolated jaw fragments and teeth, just like the featured fossil of the golden mole Diamantochloris inconsessus from the Eocene of Namibia (Pickford 2018).
Mainly based on molecular data (Springer et al. 2003) it has been suggested that the Afrosoricida originated 65 million years ago, right after the K/Pg impact event or even before (Tabuce et al. 2007: fig. 5, Poux et al. 2008: fig. 3, Everson et al. 2016: fig. 4). Of course, the fossil record does not at all support such a view (Sargis & Dagosto 2008: fig. 5.17, Asher 2010: fig. 9.1), so that some authors decided within a year to simply place the assumed origin 10 million years later (Tabuce et al. 2008: fig. 1). Isn’t evolutionary biology a wonderful science? Here is a brief list of the oldest known fossil genera in each group of Afrosoricida with their estimated stratigraphic range (based on PaleoDB and Seiffert 2010):
Afrosoricida (48.60–0 mya)
Chrysochloridae (48.6–0 mya)
Damarachloris Pickford, 2019b (48.6–40.4 mya)
Diamantochloris Pickford, 2015a (48.6–40.4 mya, primitive Chrysochloridae acc. to Pickford 2018)
Namachloris Pickford, 2015c (40.4–37.2 mya)
Prochrysochloris Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (20.43–15.97 mya)
Tenrecoidea (= Tenrecomorpha) (48.6–0 mya)
Dilambdogale Seiffert, 2010 (37.2–33.9 mya, rather about 37)
Eochrysochloris Seiffert et al. 2007 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 33)
Jawharia Seiffert et al. 2007 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 33)
Nanogale Pickford, 2019a (48.6-40.4 mya)
Plesiorycteropus Filhol, 1895 (0.012–0.0 mya)
Qatranilestes Seiffert, 2010 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather about 30)
Widanelfarasia Seiffert & Simons, 2000 (33.9–28.4 mya, rather 33.9)
Potamogalidae (40.4–0 mya)
Namagale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)
Tenrecidae (40.4–0 mya)
Arenagale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)
Erythrozootes Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (24-16 mya)
Parageogale Butler, 1984 (= Butleriella) (24-16 mya)
Protenrec Butler & Hopwood, 1957 (23.03–11.608 mya)
Sperrgale Pickford, 2015b (40.4–37.2 mya)
Golden Moles (Chrysochloridae)
Golden moles are small, burrowing mammals endemic to sub-Saharan Africa with 21 living species (Asher et al. 2010). The oldest and most primitive fossil golden moles, Diamantochloris and Damarachloris, were discovered in Middle Eocene (Lutetian) sediments from Black Crow in Namibia, which are maximally 48.6 million years old (Pickford 2015a, 2018, 2019b). Together with the tenrecomorph Nanogale (see below) they also represent the earliest fossil record of Afrosoricida known so far. The best known but slightly younger genus is Namachloris, of which about 120 remains from almost the complete skeleton have been found (Pickford 2015c). They show that even these early representatives already had the burrowing adaptations of their living descendants. Another very old alleged chrysochlorid is Eochrysochloris from Fayum in Egypt (Seiffert et al. 2007, Seiffert 2010). However, Pickford (2015a, 2015c, 2018) suggested that Eochrysochloris “is probably not a chysrochlorid” but rather a tenrecid.
Tenrecoidea
The oldest representative of Tenrecoidea or Tenrecomorpha is Nanogale fragilis from the Eocene freshwater limestone of Black Crow in Namibia that can be dated to maximally 48.6 million years (Pickford 2019a). There is only a single mandible fragment known, which represents the smallest mammal from the fossil record in Africa. It has some characteristics resembling tenrecs and others rather resembling otter shrews, so that it may belong to their common ancestral lineage. Other very old tenrecoids were found in Eocene/Oligocene (37-30 mya) outcrops of the Jebel Qatrani Formation in the Fayum region of northern Egypt (Seiffert 2006), and include the genera Dilambdogale, Eochrysochloris, Jawharia, Widanelfarasia, and Qatranilestes (Seiffert & Simons 2000, Seiffert et al. 2007, Seiffert 2010).
Otter Shrews
Otter shrews (Potamogalidae) only include two living genera with three species of nocturnal and amphibious mammals, feeding off crustaceans and fish. They are believed to be closely related to the Malagasy tenrecs but only occur in Western and Central Africa. According to molecular clock studies their lineage should at least date to the Lower Eocene (Everson et al. 2016), but the possible fossil record is very sparse and controversial. Van Valen (1967) thought that the genera Erythrozootes and Protenrec might be fossil otter shrews, but most other and later workers rather attributed them to the genuine tenrecs. Seiffert (2007) again found the Miocene Protenrec as sister group of Potamogale instead on tenrecs, but subsequent studies did not accept this position. The only unequivocal fossil record of otter shrews is Namagale described by Pickford (2015b) from the Late Eocene (Bartonian) Eocliff in Namibia, which is 40.4-37.3 million years old.
Tenrecs
Living tenrecs are hedgehog-like mammals endemic to Madagascar with 31 living species classified in 8 genera and 3 subfamilies. Until recently the oldest fossil tenrecs were the three genera Erythrozootes, Parageogale, and Protenrec from the Miocene of Kenya and Namibia (Butler & Hopwood 1957, Butler 1984, Poduschka & Poduschka 1985, McKenna & Bell 1997, Mein & Pickford 2003, 2008, Asher & Hofreiter 2006, Seiffert et al. 2007, Pickford et al. 2008, Poux et al. 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010). Strangely, these genera seem to be most closely related to the Malagasy tenrec genus Geogale (Asher & Hofreiter 2006). Poduschka & Poduschka (1985) disputed the relationship of Parageogale, which they had invalidly named Butleriella, with the living genus Geogale, but this very relationship was vindicated by new material and further studies (see Asher & Seiffert 2010). This relationship arguably would imply a back dispersal event from Madagascar to Eastern Africa more than 267 miles across the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean (Douady et al. 2002, Poux et al. 2008, Everson et al. 2016). This is a quite daring hypothesis to say the least (see Bechly 2018). Apart from this anomaly the general colonization of Madagascar by tenrecs has been dated with molecular evidence to have happened between 55 mya and 37 mya by Douady et al. (2002) or between 56-30 mya by Everson et al. (2016), which falls well within the range of the oldest African fossil stem tenrecs and well after the separation of Madagascar from mainland Africa about 165-120 mya.
These oldest putative stem tenrecs are the two species Arenagale calcareus and Sperrgale minutus described by Pickford (2015b) from the Late Eocene (Bartonian) Eocliff in Namibia, dated to about 40 million years ago.
We should also briefly mention the Malagasy Aardvark Plesiorycteropus, which is known from two subfossil species. Apparently, these animals went extinct just a few hundred years ago, likely due to anthropogenic causes like overhunting and deforestation. They were long believed to be related to Xenarthra or Tubulidentata, and even assigned to its own distinct mammal order Bibymalagasia. However, a molecular study of ancient collagen revealed that they represent another major branch of Tenrecoidea (Buckley 2013), though no older fossils are known yet.
But, we have not yet exhausted the potential candidates for the oldest Afrosoricida. There are two obscure fossil mammals from the Late Paleocene of Morocco that may qualify: Todralestes variabilis was originally described as an insectivoran of the polyphyletic waste basket taxon “Proteutheria” (Gheerbrant 1991, 1994, Gheerbrant et al. 1998), while Afrodon chleuhi was described from the same outcrops as an insectivoran of the extinct family Adapisoriculidae (Gheerbrant 1988, Gheerbrant & Russell 1989, Gheerbrant et al. 1998).
Both Todralestes and Afrodon share dental similarities with supposed early afrosoricids like Widanelfarasia, Protenrec, and Dilambdogale (Seiffert & Simons 2000, Seiffert et al. 2007). Asher & Seiffert (2010) and Seiffert (2010) even recovered these two genera as most basal stem Afrosoricida in their cladogram. If this should be correct, it would place the origin of the afrosoricid lineage into the Late Paleocene, right in the brief window of time when most of the placental mammal orders first appear in the fossil record. Of course, as always there is considerable disagreement about the phylogenetic affinities of these taxa: Tabuce et al. (2008: fig. 1) put a question mark at the alleged Late Paleocene occurrence of stem afrosoricids suggested by Seiffert et al. (2007), without explicitly listing the concerning genera. Pickford et al. (2008) considered Todralestes as a member of the unrelated extinct mammal order Cimolesta, and Afrodon still as an adapisoriculid insectivoran of the living mammal order Lipotyphla. The consensus tree of Halliday et al. (2015) did neither support a relationship of Todralestes nor of Widanelfarasia and Dilambdogale with Afrosoricida or even Afrotheria.
Like in all the other groups of afrotherian mammals, the modern consensus of attributing Afrosoricida to the African mammal clade Afrotheria is almost exclusively based on molecular data (Nishihara et al. 2005, Seiffert 2003, 2007, Tabuce et al. 2007, 2008, Asher & Seiffert 2010, Heritage et al. 2020), while anatomical similarities were universally interpreted as evidence for a relationship with insectivorans (e.g., Van Valen 1967, Butler 1984, Novacek et al. 1985, McKenna & Bell 1997) and even explicitly rejected an afrotherian clade (Asher 1999). Pickford (2019a) mentioned that “many recent phylogenetic analyses of Afrotheria seem to be incompatible with each other.”
A Repeating Pattern
Again and again we find the same pattern:
Darwinism predicts gradual accumulation of small changes over long periods of time but the empirical data of the fossil record point to rapid bursts of biological novelty.
Darwinism predicts that anatomical similarities should align with genetic similarities but the actual trees and/or classifications generated from these data conflict with each other.
Darwinism predicts that molecular clock estimates should agree with the stratigraphic appearance of taxa in the fossil record but they don’t.
Should we draw any conclusions from such consistent empirical failures of a theory? Maybe we should instead modify a popular dictum by the famous evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky into “Nothing makes sense in biology in the light of (Darwinian) evolution” to align it better with reality.
Next Fossil Friday we will have a look at the early fossil record of hyraxes, another afrotherian group with an interesting history.
A hill to die on?
Astrophysicist Bijan Nemati: Why Intelligent Design Matters
Evolution news
Thursday 5 January 2023
Darwinism's simple beginning problem 2.0?
Minimal Complexity Problem in Prey Detection by the Sand Scorpion
A Spectacular Ability
Irreducible Complexity
Tito: a brief history.
Josip Broz Tito
Wikepedia
Ann Guager on becoming Ann Guager
The Evolution of Dr. Ann Gauger
Stephen Dilley
Editor’s note: We are delighted to present a new, occasional series on the “evolution” of top scientists who have helped advance the case for intelligent design.
“It was like the cast of characters from an Illustra Media film.”
That was biologist Ann Gauger’s droll comment on her first visit to Discovery Institute’s offices in Seattle. The year was 2004. Dr. Gauger’s scientific credentials had caught the eye of Stephen Meyer and he had invited her to come talk with him. On the day of the meeting, Gauger arrived and settled into a conference room. In walked Meyer, Jay Richards, and Jonathan Wells — the usual suspects from Illustra films such as Unlocking the Mystery of Life.
The occasion of the meeting went back to two weeks earlier. A friend had recommended to Gauger an article in DI’s newsletter, Nota Bene. The article summarized Steve Meyer’s controversial piece on the Cambrian explosion in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.1
Gauger had been reading ID literature for some time. She was interested and decided to subscribe to Nota Bene. When she signed up, she included “PhD” after her name. “I wonder what will happen?” she mused.
Twenty minutes later, she received a phone call from Logan Gage, an administrative liaison. Logan went through a checklist.
“You have a PhD, right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re aware of the Dissent from Darwin list?”
“Yes. In fact, I’ve already signed it.”
A pregnant silence. Then a reply, “Can you send me your CV?”
Gauger promptly did so. “I wonder what will happen?” she thought again.
Twenty minutes later, Logan was on the phone again. “Can you come in to DI to talk with Steve Meyer?” Nothing was the same after that.
Evolution as Default
Yet by the time Gauger watched the Illustra movie cast walk into the room at Discovery Institute in 2004, her concerns about evolution had grown. Why? There were many reasons, yet chief among them was the Cambrian explosion.
The fossils of the Cambrian era raised the puzzle that Gauger had pondered while studying invertebrates: how did all of these different body plans emerge? Of the 27 phyla recorded in the fossil record, an astonishing 20 of them emerged during the Cambrian explosion. Only 3 phyla appear before the Cambrian, and only 4 others appear after that era.2 It is the major event within organic history.
Gauger also realized that the neo-Darwinian mechanism lacked the creative power to generate so many new body plans in the time available.3 And even the promise of evo-devo had fallen short. In particular, Gauger was impressed with the Nobel Prize-winning work of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric Wieschaus. These geneticists had studied the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, mapping its genome and analyzing is early development. They discovered that mutating or perturbing early-acting body plan molecules invariably kills the fruit fly.4 In order to generate a genuinely new body plan, early embryonic changes must take place. Yet for evolution to occur, these changes must be viable rather than lethal. By contrast, Nüsslein-Volhard and Wieschaus observed that early developmental mutants never even hatched as larvae.5 Other problems plagued evo-devo, too.6
Moreover, Gauger’s own research after 2004 helped illuminate key problems for evolutionary theory. Among others, she articulated the causal circularity problem,7 the waiting times problem,8 and the implausibility of human evolution.9 Gauger has also helped to show that a first couple is possible in the context of human origins.10 And more on the way: a volume she has edited on the positive case for intelligent design, by contributors arguing from a Catholic perspective, is just around the corner.11
Full Circle
Gauger recalls with a chuckle her initial meeting with the Illustra cast in 2004. “Steve Meyer walked me through his PowerPoint presentation on the Cambrian explosion. He had the right argument. But I spotted a typo and said so.”
The “typo,” as it turns out, was a technical point about invertebrates. Only someone well-versed in the field would have had that kind of knowledge. Dr. Gauger’s years of research and study had prepared her perfectly for the road ahead.12