Darwinism's ministry of truth maintains control of the origins' narrative?

 The Darwin Wall Still Stands; but for How Long?

David Coppedge 

Picture a city in which the city council has a super-majority in one political party. Those in the majority control the media outlets as well. Suppose they decide to flex their muscles and forbid any statements from the other party to be heard without having the right to filter them first. In this way, they keep the minority party in a virtual sound-proof room behind one-way glass. The majority leaders can hear the minority speaking, sometimes shouting to be heard, but nobody in the city can hear them because they are censored. Once in a while, the majority mentions something that the minority has complained about, but translates it for the media, and only responds with their own counterarguments. The minority can’t do anything about it because they lack the power, the communication channels, and the votes to change anything. Would this not be a case of totalitarian dictatorship?

Darwinians are like that. They control the narrative on origins in almost all the mainstream journals, the schools, the state universities, the national parks, and the natural history Museums . The mainstream media join in and take their side. A few exceptions can be noted, but the influential, powerful forces in academia all toe the Darwinian line. Science reporters accept their pronouncements as gospel and regurgitate them to the public, masticating them first into easily digested tidbits with sugar and spice. Professors open to ID know to keep quiet unless they have tenure, and even that is not a guaranteed protection from harassment or censorship.

A Forbidden Phrase

In a paper in Nature Communications, the forbidden phrase “irreducible complexity” appeared in scare quotes. It was mentioned not for the purpose of considering it fairly, but for shooting it down immediately with a preemptive strike. It was mentioned in an essay about the Type III Secretion System (T3SS) and its alleged evolutionary relationship to the bacterial flagellum. Here’s the quote:

The bacterial type III secretion system (T3SS) is an impressive biological machine known not only for its importance in bacterial virulence (1,2) but also, due to its evolutionary relationship to the bacterial flagellum, for its role in the negation of the ‘irreducible complexity’ of flagella (3). In their recent publication (4), Kaval et al. present new data on the process of expression, production, and assembly of a T3SS (termed T3SS2) in the bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus….

Did authors Itzhak Fishov and Sharanya Namboodiri cite Michael Behe’s work? No; they didn’t even mention his name. Reference 3 points to another Darwinist paper that presumably negates Behe’s argument. With a quick flick of the wrist, they eliminated what could have been a lively discussion about the said “evolutionary relationship” between the T3SS and the flagellum. Like the dictatorial city council, it wouldn’t matter how loudly Dr. Behe might shout his objections to the statement from the sound-proof room behind the one-way glass, he could not be heard in this leading journal, because he is a well-known “enemy of the regime” in Darwin Party circles. This insult against a tenured professor was peer-reviewed and published by Nature. I didn’t find any popular science article about this paper, but one can assume a reporter would obediently take the dictation and regurgitate it like, “the T3SS is a molecular machine whose evolutionary relationship to the bacterial flagellum squashes the unscientific notion of ‘irreducible complexity’ promoted by some religious fanatics.”

Let’s Dig into This a Little

Does Reference 3 negate Behe’s argument for irreducible complexity? I read the paper in Molecular Microbiology by Bailey Milne-Davies, Stephan Wimmi, and Andreas Diepold from November 2020. If one screens out the arguments by assertion, the answer is clearly no. By assertion, I mean statements like this:

Bacteria do not live in isolation. They constantly interact with and often actively move through their environment. Interestingly, in many cases, a single evolutionary ancestor evolved to meet both requirements, protein export and locomotion….

The T3SS is at the core of both the bacterial flagellum, a rotary motor that is the most widely distributed means of bacterial locomotion (Miyata et al., 2020), and the injectisome, a molecular injection device used by many Gram-negative bacteria to manipulate the eukaryotic host cells. Both systems harness ion gradients across the membrane to export the subunits of their extracellular appendages. While the flagellum then rotates this appendage in order to propel the bacterium through the surrounding medium, the injectisome evolved to specialize in protein export, specifically the translocation of effector proteins into eukaryotic host cells.

Talk about begging the question. From there, the three authors list proteins common to the T3SS and flagellum (as if this demonstrates common ancestry), but they also point out many unique proteins in the flagellum. 

Although the proteins that form the cytosolic complex in the flagellum and injectisome display clear sequence homology, the function and quaternary structure of the cytosolic complex strongly differ between the two machineries. On the distal side, flagella assemble a hook and the long flagellar filament, while injectisomes form a hollow needle. Beyond this core of proteins, the flagellum has additional components that form a bushing for rotation in the periplasm (L-/P-ring), and stator proteins that serve as an anchor in the rigid peptidoglycan, against which the rotor can rotate, powered by the influx of ions

Where did those come from? They evolved. Enough said. They share components, don’t they? What more proof do you need? 

Here’s where they mention irreducible complexity without attribution.

The T3SS is one of the most complex bacterial molecular machines, incorporating one to over a hundred copies of more than 15 different proteins into a multi-MDa transmembrane complex (Table 1). The system, especially the flagellum, has, therefore often been quoted as an example for “irreducible complexity,” based on the argument that the evolution of such a complex system with no beneficial intermediates would be exceedingly unlikely. However, it is now clear that, far from having evolved as independent entities, many secretion systems share components between each other and with other cellular machineries (Egelman, 2010; Pallen and Gophna, 2007).

So if a Porsche and a Chevy both have door handles and steering wheels, the former clearly evolved from the latter. Is that the depth of reasoning here?

Most of the paper involves similarities between protein machines. These protagonists on the one-sided debate stage smother the reader with similarities. They knock down their straw-man interlocutor by misconstruing his argument. As usual, they mis-define IC and ID with the boilerplate definitions that these machines are so complex, their evolution is “unlikely.” The true ID definition

 is that irreducibly complex systems are “best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” IC systems are composed of a number of independent parts, each necessary for the function of the system.

Even with their media advantage, the authors in Reference 3 admit, “the exact evolutionary relation between injectisomes and flagella is debated.” Species with supposed intermediate forms are proposed, but they look to me like broken T3SS or flagella, not machines evolving into each other. They wave the co-option argument and engage in possibility thinking, with 14 instances of the word “possible” to suggest what might be evolving.

Evolutionary Magic

Finally, they land on their trusty magic wand, convergent evolution: “Besides the general diversification of both systems, a case of convergent evolution of flagella and injectisomes was recently discovered.” Their final summary turns evolution into a magician, and personifies bacteria and molecular machines as if they take conscious charge of their own evolution:

Evolution allows adaptation of a functional concept to many different needs. In this review, we highlighted the amazing capability of the T3SS to vary its components, structure, and function to the specific requirements of bacteria in different ecological niches and under changing external conditions. Flagella not only ensure motility in a variety of environments, but also play an essential role in pathogenicity. By modifying their flagella, bacteria can find suitable colonization sites and enhance attachment to surfaces, which can increase infection success. In the same light, the injectisome permits the bacterium to exploit host cells for promoting infection, whether by controlling immune responses or establishing suitable sites for dissemination. Together these systems work to promote bacterial survival in constantly changing environments. Beyond these adaptations, it has become clear that the T3SS is a dynamic structure, with subunits exchanging in working complexes. Given the limited number of studies on protein exchange in the T3SS, it is possible that more cases of dynamic components will be discovered and that the benefits for the bacteria will become clearer. Research on how bacteria can adapt and evolve virulence mechanisms such as the T3SS will not only allow to better understand how bacteria and their environment interact, but also uncover potential ways to combat pathogenic bacteria by targeting their T3SS.

This is known as cheating. The whole point of Darwinian evolution was to rid biology of teleology. Irreducible complexity is ignored other than the one swipe at the straw man. Only once do they demonstrate loss of function from an essential part: “Although most flagellins are partially functionally redundant, deletions of additional flagellins negatively affects flagellar formation and function.” Nowhere do they point to random mutations able to innovate essential proteins to build a flagellum or T3SS in the first place.

Behind the one-way soundproof glass, Casey Luskin is waving his article (also here) on why these machines could not have evolved from one another, and Michael Behe is giving his debate rebuttal unheard by the audience. 

Censorship Is a Doomed Strategy

In my experience as a science writer, I have never in 22 years seen a Darwin-orthodox journal or science news site take ID arguments seriously. If mentioned at all, they are mis-defined and immediately dismissed. The science establishment, consisting of academic deans, lobbyists, and journal editors, pretty much treats the thriving ID community like it doesn’t exist. 

On the bright side, one can always tell who is on the wrong side of history. It’s the totalitarians — the ones who try to stifle debate and censor those not friendly to the regime. We can take heart that experience shows that Berlin walls are erected to fall. They have finite lifetimes. Not everyone in East Germany agreed with the regime, but they were powerless, and many were scared. If we stay the course, and continue to influence individuals, we will undoubtedly find many behind the Darwin Wall welcoming a path to freedom of thought.

Carbon :the Divine element?

Curiousity + Industry< IQ?

Future AI overlord vs. Titan.

The biggest and blackest hole yet?

Yet more on why no simple beginning

What is the biblical orthodoxy re: the only true God?

Darwinism vs. the history of life.

 A Question For Larry Moran

Cornelius G Hunter 

Recently Larry Moran, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, asked for assistance. Professor Moran will be attending the upcoming “New trends in evolutionary biology” Scientific meeting at The Royal Society, and he has asked for help in deciding what question to pose to the speakers. For Douglas Futuyma, who will be defending the status quo against the scientific evidence, Moran already has a couple of ideas, such as:

As you explain in your textbook, describing the pathways to modern species contributes to the FACT of evolution and the FACT of descent with modification but how those genetic changes actually occur and become fixed is part of evolutionary theory. Do you distinguish between evolutionary theory and the actual history of life?

Moran, like Futuyma, defends the belief that the species arose by chance. As the all-caps help to illustrate, he is a modern-day Epicurean. And I’m sure Professor Moran would not disagree that this is a softball question—a setup for Futuyma to rail on those who think the scientific evidence is actually a problem for evolution. But Moran is mistaken here, as this is not a debate against creationists.

This line of defense—that scientific failures are relevant to the theory of evolution, but not to the fact of evolution—is standard theory protectionism, routinely used by evolutionists when they are presented with any of the many empirical problems with their Epicurean theory.

Not only is this argument a revealing own-goal (it provides a live demonstration that evolution is not exposed to the empirical evidence and is not falsifiable), but it is not relevant in The Royal Society meeting since the bad guys, in this case, are fellow evolutionists who simply are beginning to reckon with the science.

They completely agree that evolution is a fact. So Moran can set aside the silly canards about “the FACT of evolution and the FACT of descent with modification.”

On the other hand, Darwin’s God suggests a slightly different approach. If Moran wants to ask a meaningful question of Futuyma, why not query his fellow Epicurean where and how he discovered that “the Creator” would not likely have bestowed “two horns on the African rhinoceroses and only one on the Indian species.” That was, after all, one of Futuyma’s points in his book, Science on Trial.

And if there is time for a follow-up Moran might, as diplomatically as possible, ask the ardent evolutionist why anyone should take him seriously?

On the myth of the gay gene.

 No ‘gay gene’: Massive study homes in on genetic basis of human sexuality

Scientific American 

Massive Study Finds No Single Genetic Cause of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior

Analysis of half a million people suggests genetics may have a limited contribution to sexual orientation

By Sara Reardon on August 29, 2019

Few aspects of human biology are as complex—or politically fraught—as sexual orientation. A clear genetic link would suggest that gay people are “born this way,” as opposed to having made a lifestyle choice. Yet some fear that such a finding could be misused “cure” homosexuality, and most research teams have shied away from tackling the topic.

Now, a new study claims to dispel the notion that a single gene or handful of genes make a person prone to same-sex behavior. The analysis, which examined the genomes of nearly half a million men and women, found that although genetics are certainly involved in who people choose to have sex with, there are no specific genetic predictors. Yet some researchers question whether the analysis, which looked at genes associated with sexual activity rather than attraction, can draw any real conclusions about sexual orientation.

“The message should remain the same that this is a complex behavior that genetics definitely plays a part in,” said study co-author Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a computational biologist at genetic testing company andMe in Mountain View, Calif., during a press conference. The handful of genetic studies conducted in the past few decades have looked at only a few hundred individuals at most—and almost exclusively men. Other studies have linked sexual orientation with environmental factors such as hormone exposure before birth and having older brothers.

             In the new study, a team led by Brendan Zietsch of the University of Queensland, Australia, mined several massive genome data banks, including that of 23andMe and the UK Biobank (23andMe did not fund the research). They asked more than 477,000 participants whether they had ever had sex with someone of the same sex, and also questions about sexual fantasies and the degree to which they identified as gay or straight.

The researchers found five single points in the genome that seemed to be common among people who had had at least one same-sex experience. Two of these genetic markers sit close to genes linked to sex hormones and to smell—both factors that may play a role in sexual attraction. But taken together, these five markers explained less than 1 percent of the differences in sexual activity among people in the study. When the researchers looked at the overall genetic similarity of individuals who had had a same-sex experience, genetics seemed to account for between 8 and 25 percent of the behavior. The rest was presumably a result of environmental or other biological influences. The findings were published Thursday in Science.

                  Despite the associations, the authors say that the genetic similarities still cannot show whether a given individual is gay. “It’s the end of the ’gay gene,’” says Eric Vilain, a geneticist at Children’s National Health System in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the study.

The research has limitations: almost all of the participants were from the U.S. or Europe, and the individuals also tended to be older—51 years old on average in the 23andMe sample and at least 40 in the UK Biobank sample.

Still, researchers welcome the data. “A lot of people want to understand the biology of homosexuality, and science has lagged behind that human interest,” says William Rice, an evolutionary geneticist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who also was not involved in the work. “It’s been a taboo topic, and now that we’re getting information I think it’s going to blossom.”

                  The study will not be the last word on the vexing question of what causes homosexuality, however. In 1993 geneticist Dean Hamer of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and his colleagues published a paper suggesting that an area on the X chromosome called Xq28 could contain a “gay gene.” But other studies, including the new paper, found no such link, and Sathirapongsasuti says that the new study is the final nail in the coffin for Xq28 as a cause of same-sex attraction.

But Hamer, now retired, disagrees. His study, which analysed the genomes of 40 pairs of gay brothers, looked exclusively at people who identified as homosexual. He sees the new paper as an analysis of risky behavior or openness to experience, noting that participants who engaged in at least one same-sex experience were also more likely to report having smoked marijuana and having more sexual partners overall. Hamer says that the findings do not reveal any biological pathways for sexual orientation. “I’m glad they did it and did a big study, but it doesn’t point us where to look.”

Rice and Vilain agree that the conclusion is unclear. A more detailed questionnaire that looks at more aspects of sexuality and environmental influences would allow the researchers to better pinpoint the roots of attraction.

                        The authors say that they did see links between sexual orientation and sexual activity, but concede that the genetic links do not predict orientation. “I think it’s true we’re capturing part of that risk-taking behavior,” Sathirapongsasuti says, but the genetic links still suggested that same-sex behavior is related to attraction.

Nevertheless, Hamer and others praise the new contribution to a field that suffers from a dearth of good studies. “I hope it will be the first of many to come.”

Nationalism, and evangelicalism's divided house..

 

Ps. John ch.18:36LSB"Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be delivered over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not from here.”

1Corinthians ch.2:6ESV"Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. "

On the DEI Gordian knot.

Face to face with a monster.

A priest who honours his God.

 1Samuel ch.2:30ASV"Therefore JEHOVAH, the God of Israel, saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now JEHOVAH saith, Be it far from me; for them that honor me I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed."  

The Christ being preached by Christendom seems to me to more closely resemble the Satan of the bible (see 2Corinthians11:14) than that loyal and submissive servant of JEHOVAH portrayed in Scripture. A "priest" who honors himself above his God like high priest Eli whom is rebuked by JEHOVAH in the above quote for permitting his sons to help themselves to the best part of the offering meant exclusively for the Lord JEHOVAH. The Lord JEHOVAH makes it clear in this quote that it is well beneath his dignity to receive any offering or countenance any mediation from such a "priest".

Only the true Christ(i.e the Christ of scripture) can mediate acceptably for our sins. In him JEHOVAH has provided a priest who honors his God and not himself.

1Samuel ch.2:35ESV"And I will raise up for myself a faithful priest, who shall do according to what is in my heart and in my mind. And I will build him a sure house, and he shall go in and out before my anointed forever."

 John ch.7:18ASV"He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory: but he that seeketh the glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him."

John ch.8:50ASV" But I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth."

Fraternising with the enemy?

Design deniers schooled again?

 Sandgrouse Takes the Royal Society to Design School

Evolution News 

A new episode of ID the Future offers a look at how scientists from MIT and Johns Hopkins University are picking up clever engineering tricks by studying the feather design of the Namaqua sandgrouse. Ordinary bird feathers are already a master class in ingenious design, but as Jochen Mueller and Lorna Gibson show in a recent Royal Society Interface paper, the males of this desert-dwelling sandgrouse from southwestern Africa “have specially adapted feathers on their bellies that hold water, even during flight, allowing the birds to transport water back to the chicks at the nest.” Episode guest Brian Miller talks with host Casey Luskin about the details of the ingenious design and tells how these feathers are inspiring human inventions, one of which could help desert communities collect water from the air more efficiently. Dr. Miller takes listeners through a summary of other inventions inspired by designs in biology. He discusses how this invention strategy is proving so fruitful that it’s now treated as an interdisciplinary subdiscipline, known as biomimetics.

Download the podcast or listen to it here. For more from Miller about this exciting field and how it repeatedly highlights evidence of intelligent design in biology, see his chapter in the new book Science and Faith in Dialogue, available as a free digital Download.

Breaking News : Evolution is still a fact.

 The BBC on Evolution: It Just Gets Worse

Cornelius G Hunter

The previous post reviewed Chris Baraniuk’s Article for the BBC about why evolution is such a great theory (“one of the greatest theories in all of science”), a fact, and so forth. The post showed how terrible the evidence is for evolution. In a sense, evolutionists themselves provide the most powerful critique of their theory. Just listen to their own explanations of why it is a fact. But there is more to the story. It gets worse because, well, that previous post didn’t cover Baraniuk’s complete article. That previous post only looked at part of Baraniuk’s article. It only looked at those parts of Baraniuk’s article that at least made some sense.

After discussing Richard Lenski’s long term experiment (LTEE), Baraniuk steps back to discuss the role of genes in evolution. Here is what he has to say

Over the last century scientists have catalogued the genes from different species. It turns out that all living things store information in their DNA in the same way: they all use the same "genetic code".

What's more, organisms also share many genes. Thousands of genes found in human DNA may also be found in the DNA of other creatures, including plants and even bacteria.

These two facts imply that all modern life has descended from a single common ancestor, the "last universal ancestor", which lived billions of years ago.

So, to paraphrase, we have two premises and a conclusion. The premises are:

P1: All living things store information in their DNA in the same way.

P2: Organisms also share many genes.

And the conclusion is:

C1: All modern life has descended from a single common ancestor.

It would be wrong to say this is a false claim. When we say that someone has made a false claim, the implication is that, while wrong, there was at least some logical reasoning present, some logical thread to follow. A false claim is a claim that starts with some evidence and in the process of getting to the conclusion, fouls up in some sort of an observable way. There was a stumble in an otherwise, at least somewhat, logical train of thought. We can at least see what the fellow was getting at. We can sympathize a bit, and reconstruct his attempt, and fix if for him, at least as best as we can. It may still be a hopeless argument, but at least we can see where he was going.

For the evolutionist there is no train of thought—no logical reasoning present. It is closer to, ironically, what Darwin described as “the convictions of a monkey's mind.”

It is complete gibberish.

To say that the conclusion C1 above does not follow from the premises P1 and P2 would be like saying your pet dog failed to beat you at chess when all he did was barf all over the board. Your dog not only failed to beat you, he didn’t even play the game.

It is not that evolutionists make a few mistakes here and there in an otherwise well thought out attempt. It is that they completely fail to provide anything remotely resembling a scientific argument for their Epicurean conviction that the entire biological world (and everything else for that matter), arose by itself.

On the cosmogony of the physical and moral universes

 Watch: Brian Keating and Jordan Peterson on All Things Cosmological

Emily Sandico 

Our friend Professor Brian Keating recently joined Jordan Peterson for an intriguing dialogue about all things cosmological and Keating’s book Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor. Keating is a brilliant astrophysicist, an observant Jew, and a fascinating figure in the dialogue about science and religion. He and Peterson discuss how to fight your personal dragons and find the great adventure of your life, how to distinguish evidence for the multiverse from mere dust, and what we learned in 2015 when scientists found gravitational radiation from the fusion of two massive black holes a billion years ago.  

A couple of years ago on his podcast Into the Impossible, Dr. Keating interviewed our own Dr. Stephen Meyer about his  book Return of the God Hypothesis. Check out both interviews!    

“The Jordan Peterson Podcasts: Black Holes, Time Travel, and the Origin of the Universe with Dr. Brian Keating“

“Into the Impossible with Dr. Brian Keating: Stephen Meyer and the Return of the GOD Hypothesis"

The "hammer of God" saves Christendom.

Darwinism's version of the design inference?

 Meet Intelligent Design’s Naturalistic Cousin: Assembly Theory

Evolution News 

From “A New Idea for How to Assemble Life,” by science writer Philip Ball at Quanta Magazine

Assembly theory started when [Lee] Cronin asked why, given the astronomical number of ways to combine different atoms, nature makes some molecules and not others. It’s one thing to say that an object is possible according to the laws of physics; it’s another to say there’s an actual pathway for making it from its component parts. “Assembly theory was developed to capture my intuition that complex molecules can’t just emerge into existence because the combinatorial space is too vast,” Cronin said.

See if you can spot the notion highly similar to Bill Dembski’s “specification” in this section:

for a complex object to be scientifically interesting, there has to be a lot of it. Very complex things can arise from random assembly processes — for example, you can make protein-like molecules by linking any old amino acids into chains. In general, though, these random molecules won’t do anything of interest, such as behaving like an enzyme. And the chances of getting two identical molecules in this way are vanishingly small. Functional enzymes, however, are made reliably again and again in biology, because they are assembled not at random but from genetic instructions that are inherited across generations. So while finding a single, highly complex molecule doesn’t tell you anything about how it was made, finding many identical complex molecules is improbable unless some orchestrated process — perhaps life — is at work.

We should be crystal clear — calling Assembly Theory the “naturalistic cousin” of ID is OUR take on the work of Cronin’s group. Dr. Cronin himself (pictured above), and his collaborators, would disavow any connection to intelligent design reasoning, and they should not be held responsible for our interpretation. 

But, when one notices conceptual similarities and parallels, it would be remiss for us not to highlight them. Assembly Theory is fascinating and potentially fruitful, and so, we’re over here cheering on the effort. 

The fossil record's uprising against gradualism continues apace.

 Fossil Friday: The Stubborn Mystery of the Tully Monster

Gunter Bechly 

Tullimonstrum gregarium is an enigmatic but abundant fossil organism from the famous locality of Mazon Creek, which is dated to a Carboniferous age of about 307 million years. The Tully monster, named after its discoverer the amateur fossil collector Francis Tully, has been designated as the official state fossil of Illinois, but it has puzzled scientists for more than 50 years since its first description by Richardson (1966). 

Tullimonstrum is a relatively large (about 13 inch), soft-bodied bilaterian animal with an apparently segmented body, unpaired fins, a pair of long stalked eyes, and a long proboscis terminating in a toothed pincer-mouth. Based on the same evidence of thousands of fossils, different scientists have identified Tullimonstrum in dozens of studies either as a relict from the strange Cambrian phyla, anomalocarid-like or rather Opabinia-like arthropod, annelid worm, mollusk, tunicate, or conodont, but until recently never as a vertebrate. A few years ago, two high-profile studies, published in the prestigious journal Nature and involving 22 scientists, surprisingly claimed to finally have solved the mystery. They identified Tullimonstrum not only as a vertebrate (Clements et al. 2016) but more precisely as a relative of modern lampreys (McCoy et al. 2016).

A Very Comprehensive Analysis

These experts based their results on a very comprehensive analysis of more than 1,200 museum specimens. But just a year later a team of seven eminent paleontologists published a new study (Sallan et al. 2017), based on the very same fossil evidence, which strongly disputed this identification as vertebrate and lamprey, as well as the detailed interpretations of the different body structures as trilobed brain, gill pouches, chorda, myomeres, and fin rays. These authors boldly stated that “the ‘Tully Monster’ is not a vertebrate,” and suggested that alternative identifications as mollusk, anomalocarid, or non-vertebrate deuterostome (e.g., tunicate larva) are more congruent with the data. While Clements et al. (2016) found the melanosome structure of the eyes of Tullimonstrum to prove a vertebrate affinity, a synchrotron spectroscopic analysis of the eye pigments by Rogers et al. (2019) found them more similar to those of cephalopod mollusks.

Now, a new paper by a team of five Japanese scientists has published a micro-CT analysis of 153 fossils of the Tully monster (Mikami et al. 2023). These authors also came to the conclusion that it is definitely not related to vertebrates, but represents an invertebrate of unknown affinity.

How Much Confidence?

This is yet another case where groups of renowned scientists, who all look at the very same evidence of numerous well-preserved fossils, can neither agree upon the identification of the preserved body structures nor even the phylum to which the animal should be attributed. How much confidence should we really place in such dubious fossil evidence when it is boldly claimed to prove Darwinian evolution as a fact or to represent long-sought “missing links”?

Notes

Clements T, Dolocan A, Martin P, Purnell MA, Vinther J & Gabbott SE 2016. The eyes of Tullimonstrum reveal a vertebrate affinity. Nature 532(7600), 500–503. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17647

McCoy VE, Saupe EE, Lamsdell JC, Tarhan LG, McMahon S, Lidgard S, Mayer P, Whalen CD, Soriano C, Finney L, Vogt S, Clark EG, Anderson RP, Peterman H, Locatelli ER & Briggs DEG 2016. The ‘Tully monster’ is a vertebrate. Nature 532(7600), 496–499. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature16992

Mikami T, Ikeda T, Muramiya Y, Hirasawa T & Iwasaki W 2023. Three-dimensional anatomy of the Tully monster casts doubt on its presumed vertebrate affinities. Palaeontology 66(2):e12646. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/pala.12646

Richardson ES Jr 1966. Wormlike Fossil from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois. Science 151(3706), 75–76. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.151.3706.75-a

Rogers CS, Astrop TI, Webb SM, Ito S, Wakamatsu K & McNamara ME 2019. Synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy of melanosomes in vertebrates and cephalopods: implications for the affinity of Tullimonstrum. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 286(1913):20191649, 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1649

Sallan L, Giles S, Sansom RS, Clarke JT, Johanson Z, Sansom IJ & Janvier P 2017. The ‘Tully Monster’ is not a vertebrate: characters, convergence and taphonomy in Palaeozoic problematic animals. Palaeontology 60(2), 149–157. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/pala

OOL Science looks to the heavens for a boost?

 Uracil Discovered on Asteroid Ryugu — What Does It Mean for the Origin of Life?

Carl Linnaeus 

Recently, chemical composition data were obtained from samples retrieved by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2 that was landed in two locations on the asteroid (162173) Ryugu. In December 2020 Hayabusa2 successfully returned to Earth with its precious pristine samples, uncontaminated by residues from Earth (except maybe some metallic material originating from the collection device). Published in Science, early analysis of organic compounds extracted from the collected samples included significantly racemic mixtures of several amino acids, indicating that these samples were relatively free of Earthly contamination from biopolymers.1 (All proteins in life are made of racemically pure L-amino acids.) Prior analysis of meteorites could not boast of such purity uncontaminated by Earth’s biological products. 

Therefore, these Ryugu samples appear to be our first chance to examine which organic compounds may be produced in a prebiotic setting in our solar system. In addition, we don’t have to rely on uncertain estimates of the conditions on Earth when the solar system was forming. Asteroids containing significant amounts of carbon, never visited by extraterrestrials like us, may provide a reasonable idea of what abiotic chemistry can produce.

It Came from Outer Space?

A recent article in Nature Communications reported that uracil, one of the nucleobases found in RNA, was identified in these pristine Ryugu samples.2 For those who place their bets on the RNA world hypothesis, this is a significant finding, at least in their opinion. They finally have evidence that at least one of the nucleobases of RNA has been discovered outside of Earth, thus, they say, upholding the notion that our biochemistry could have been seeded from outer space! As Live Science summarizes, “After becoming trapped on asteroids like Ryugu, these molecules may have eventually hitched a ride to Earth via meteorite impacts, where they sparked the first stirrings of life in primordial oceans.”

This may be our earliest chance to remark on valid data of prebiotic chemicals free of Earthly contamination. So it would be logical to consider first the initial chemical analysis described in Science to broadly classify all organic compounds, identified using two sensitive analytical methods. Concerning the building blocks of life, they found several amino acids, but all in racemic mixtures. This is precisely what chemists predict. It is extremely difficult to produce optically pure compounds from smaller compounds. The chemistry of mirror-imaged compounds is exactly the same, differing only in the spatial orientation of covalently bonded atoms (analogous to your right and left hands being equivalent). Life only uses one of these chemical forms to make proteins, RNA, DNA, complex carbohydrates and many lipids. 

Only the Simplest Amino Acids

On Ryugu just some of the simplest amino acids were detected, including glycine, D/L-alanine, D/L-serine, and D/L-valine, along with other amino acids not used to build proteins (Fig. 1). These results agree well with the earlier experiments by Stanley Miller and others where simple organic structures were readily produced in prebiotic simulations. However, over eight amino acids with more complex critical functional groups have still not resulted among the various permutations of prebiotic reactions tested. It’s not just dealing with racemic mixtures that confounds the supporters of abiogenesis, but how to form those more elaborate amino acids whose side chains play critical roles in the activity and structure of all proteins.

Fig. 1. Chemical structures of the four amino acids identified from Ryugu that match those found in proteins plus examples of three amino acids (among 11) that are not found in proteins.

The chemical analysis also reported thousands of organic compounds, classified in multiple groups, that may or may not be found in the context of living organisms. If a primordial soup were to originate from this mixture, any biomolecules would have to contend with a myriad of possible side reactions with a variety of reactive compounds competing for the rights to produce a biopolymer. Would the situation be different if the asteroid material were to simply seed the Earth with these needed building blocks? The competing contaminants still far outnumber the biologically relevant molecules. 

The RNA Route

Let’s consider whether the prospects are better if we take the RNA route. Uracil was clearly identified from Ryugu. The engineering threshold to form nucleotides, the building blocks for RNA, is much higher than that for proteins. The core unit to which nucleobases and phosphate are bound is the 5-carbon sugar D-ribose. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain how carbohydrates may have originated in an abiotic environment.3 The challenges to integrate D-ribose into nucleotides abiotically can be summarized as three major chemical barriers. 1) Abiotic production of five-carbon sugars will yield four chemically equivalent stereoisomers in both the D and L forms, thus resulting in eight stereoisomers at approximately equal levels (Fig. 2A). How does D-ribose get selected through random chemistry without even considering that longer chain sugars will also be present? 2) Ribose can interconvert from an open-chain form to a six-membered ring structure (pyranose form) or to a five-membered ring (furanose), both of which present as alpha and beta configurations at carbon 1 (Fig. 2B). At equilibrium the pyranose form comprises 80 percent while the furanose form is 20 percent of the ribose. RNA uses the furanose form, so how does this minor component win out in any abiotic reactions? 3) Nitrogen at position 1 of uracil needs to be bonded with carbon 1 of D-ribose in a beta configuration through a thermodynamically unfavored reaction. How can this reaction occur abiotically?

Fig. 2 Chemistry of 5-carbon sugars. A. Structures of the four D-pentoses are shown with stereochemical projections (bold bars are bonds extending towards the viewer while hatched bars extend away). Note the differences in spatial orientations of all hydroxyl (OH) groups. L-sugars are simply the mirror images of these structures accounting for a total of eight stereoisomers. B. Interconversion of D-ribose between pyranose and furanose ring structures. Arrangements of alpha and beta configurations are indicated by hatched lines at carbon 1. RNA uses only the furanose form with the nucleobase bonded in the beta configuration. C. Enzymatic coupling of uracil to ribose 5-phosphate. The enzyme positions both substrates appropriately to catalyze this stereospecific displacement forming a new chemical linkage.

Ignoring Conundrums

While the first two conundrums are most often sidestepped by those upholding the RNA-world philosophy, the latter reaction is not an impossible task so we will consider how life manages this feat. Most cells can salvage RNA or DNA building blocks normally obtained nutritionally following digestion. The liberated nucleobases can be coupled using D-ribose charged with a pyrophosphate group at carbon 1 in the alpha configuration. Notice the specificity life uses where neither the beta configuration nor the pyranose ring form will work for this reaction. This substrate permits a specifically oriented approach by the appropriate nitrogen of the nucleobase, directed completely by the respective enzyme, to effect displacement of pyrophosphate. This results in the nucleobase bonding to carbon 1 in the beta configuration (Fig. 2C). The release of pyrophosphate fulfills the thermodynamic requirements of this elaborate reaction. 

Attempts have been made to carry out this reaction under purportedly abiotic conditions. These efforts led to some ingenious planning to devise new chemical synthetic schemes involving electrospray of microdroplets containing D-ribose, phosphate, and nucleobases.4 Researchers provide evidence proposing how the microdroplets might make this reaction more thermodynamically favored. It’s feasible for all four nucleotides to be made via this route. 

Other Serious Concerns

But this report did not address the other serious concerns already discussed. They used pure D-ribose, not a mixture of sugars as would be expected prebiotically, and minimally not D/L-ribose. The alpha/beta configuration of the products, or their ring structures, were not indicated (most likely resulting in mixtures of all possible products). It thus becomes difficult to evaluate the relevance of this reaction to producing biologically viable RNA building blocks. Finally, the yields of desired products by this mechanism were low, at 2.5 percent or less. While the attempt to produce RNA building blocks via an abiotic mechanism is to be applauded, this still falls far short of what life needs to get started from the complex mixture of organic compounds present in a prebiotic world. 

Readers are encouraged to investigate further to more fully understand the difficult issues involved in forming life using undirected organic chemistry alone. Chemist Dr. James Tour at Rice University, for one, has addressed abiogenesis including in discussions on his YouTube Channel . See also his chapter in the freely downloadable book Science and Faith in Dialogue.

Darwinism : Pros and Cons

 New DiscoveryU Course: Jonathan Wells Takes an Objective Look at the Evidence for Evolution

David Klinghoffer 

The word “science,” as molecular and cell biologist Jonathan Wells notes, comes from the Latin scientia, or knowledge. There’s nothing about the idea that remotely suggests that knowledge about life, the universe, or their origins must be strictly materialist in nature. The notion that such knowledge must reject mind as a casual factor is a materialist presumption — not science.

In a new course from Discovery U , Dr. Wells asks what happens when we discard the ideology and ask candidly about biological origins without recourse to presumptions. This is what’s called empirical science, and it is open to natural explanations of phenomena, or explanations that include intelligent design. It all depends on the evidence! “Darwin,” says Jonathan Wells, “redefined science to exclude design,” but we needn’t accept that redefinition.

In 40 lectures, including quizzes, Dr. Wells leads students through the evidence that supports, or fails to support, chemical evolution at the origin of life, natural selection as a creative force in nature, Darwin’s tree of life, and more. At the DiscoveryU page, you can watch free previews of Lecture 1 and Lecture 2. It’s a fine resource for homeschool students, and public school and university students looking for a supplement to their biology coursework, and for anyone else curious to know what an objective consideration reveals about life, how it arose and attained the complexity we see today.

There couldn’t be a more qualified instructor to cover this material. Dr. Wells holds two PhDs, from UC Berkeley in molecular and cell biology, and from Yale in religious studies. He is a Senior Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture and the author of Icons of Evolutions, The Design of Life, The Myth of Junk DNA, and other books.

Yet more scientific confirmation of the thumb print of JEHOVAH.

Nothing simple about this beginning.

 The Marvel of a Seed

Eric Hedin 

Imagine offering a large cash prize to any research group that can achieve the goal of making a flower grow out of a bucket of dirt. If you wonder what’s the challenge in that — “We grow flowers out of dirt all the time!” — you’d better read the fine print. For this challenge allows you to start with nothing more than the bucket of dirt, along with all the water and air you want.

Sometimes, we can take for granted the most commonplace things, when in reality these may be exhibitions of the highest wonder. After a hard winter in the Midwest, the ground is frozen, the trees are bare, the grass is brown, and not a flower can be found. But then something wonderful unfolds as the season cycles towards spring — warmth from the sun thaws the ground and the landscape begins to transform from the shadow of death to life. In the woods near our house, springtime brings forth thousands of bluebells, carpeting the ground that has appeared dead for months. Soon, daffodils blossom around the house, followed by tulips and phlox, and the yard quickly fills with yellow dandelions, alas. (Dandelions are mostly considered a nuisance weed where I live.)

A Challenge for the Researchers

So, what’s so hard about producing a flower from a bucket of well-watered dirt? Naturally, it seems to happen prolifically, but of course it all starts with a seed. So, the challenge for the researchers is to produce a seed that grows into a flower, using the available ingredients of dirt, water, and air. Game on!

From a cursory examination, a seed may seem like a fairly simple little thing, but more analysis reveals layers of functional complexity. The following highlights this:

                    Seed development is a complex process that requires coordinated integration of many genetic, metabolic, and physiological pathways and environmental cues. Different cell cycle types, such as asymmetric cell division, acytokinetic mitosis, mitotic cell division, and endoreduplication, frequently occur in sequential yet overlapping manner during the development of the embryo and the endosperm, seed structures that are both products of double fertilization.

RICARDO A. DANTE, BRIAN A. LARKINS AND PAOLO A. SABELLI, “CELL CYCLE CONTROL AND SEED DEVELOPMENT,” FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE, VOLUME 5 (2014) 

               To claim that researchers in synthetic biochemistry have no idea how to form even a single cell out of prebiotic materials, let alone the complex interactions of many cells within a seed, is no exaggeration. If a well-equipped research facility, staffed by the world’s best scientists, couldn’t produce a seed or even a single living cell from raw materials, what basis is there for assuming unguided natural processes could do it?

 

As Time Goes By

Time is not the golden ticket for nature to succeed at producing a complex, functional arrangement of atoms resulting in a living cell. Our observations of natural processes demonstrate that over time, natural processes degrade all complex, functional systems. New cars gradually turn into rusty wrecks; a newspaper left outside turns to pulp with no legible information; an unfortunate opossum killed on a country road isn’t regenerated by sunlight and rain but suffers decomposition. The more time passes, the more such systems dissolve, until they blend with the surrounding environment to become unrecognizable. Nature relentlessly degrades information-rich systems, inexorably moving them towards an equilibrium characterized by homogeneous mixtures, nearly devoid of information.

If nature has shown itself time and time again to be an agent of decay, what has science discovered concerning the development of cells? Just this, that every cell comes from a preexisting cell. The supposition of materialism, that at some point in the early history of Earth a cell arose from “dirt,” is utterly without observational support. To suppose that the unguided effects of some combination of gravity and the electromagnetic force brought together millions of atoms of dirt, water, and air into the phenomenally complex, interdependent, functional structures and mechanisms of a living cell, is not supported by science. Such a belief ignores and defies centuries of scientific observations and study. It is a fantasy requiring an a priori commitment to an idea, akin to believing the Earth is flat. 

Far Beyond Human Limits

The marvel of the seed extends beyond its ability to grow into a flower or other type of plant. The design of the seed includes producing myriads of other seeds via successive generations of growth. 

Given our observations of nature, and realizing that the intelligence required to produce a seed from the raw materials of Earth far exceeds human limitations, what shall we conclude produced such marvels as the welcome sight of springtime flowers? Ascribing their origin to intelligent design is a rational conclusion consistent with the facts. 

The science of identifying the thumb print of JEHOVAH?

 God’s Grandeur: Ann Gauger on the Scientific Case for Intelligent Design

Evolution News 

On a new episode of ID the Future, host Jay Richards begins a two-part conversation with biologist Ann Gauger about her newly edited volume, God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design. Part 1 of their discussion focuses on the scientific case presented in the book. Dr. Gauger gives an engaging overview of some of the most compelling biological evidence for design, including the genetic code that governs storage and transmission of information and the origin and purpose of molecular machines. Gauger also clarifies what science shows about human uniqueness, revealing how different we are from animals and arguing that it is indeed possible that the entire human race came from two original parents. Learn more about the book and get a free chapter at GodsGrandeur.org. Download the podcast or listen to it here

Why chance and necessity can't be trusted with the puzzles of the origin of life.

People Can Do Puzzles — And Why That matters

Eric Hedin 

Occasionally, during the winter months, my family enjoys doing a jigsaw puzzle. We recently completed two 1,000-piece puzzles. If you’ve ever worked on one of these puzzles, when you first dump the pieces in a jumble onto the table, it can seem like a daunting task. With persistence, however, the thing begins to come together. 

Our ability to complete a puzzle hinges upon clues that are unavailable to nature, were natural processes given the task of assembling the puzzle. Assembling proteins, DNA, and other molecular components of a living cell are the puzzles of nature. Why do I say this?

Clue #1: We are given a clear picture of how the completed puzzle should look. The picture on the puzzle box gives the overarching meaning or purpose for the many interlocking pieces. Nature has no teleological picture of how things should turn out. Whatever nature attempts to assemble is done blindfolded, without foresight. What difference would this make? Just imagine trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle without having a clue about how the completed picture should look. I suppose some intrepid puzzle enthusiasts might attempt this, but without the end goal in view, progress would at best be painstaking, tentative, and slow.

Clue #2: We can constantly visually examine each piece to observe its relationship to other pieces. These visual clues include information about the shape and orientation of the puzzle piece cutouts that allow it to uniquely connect with its neighboring pieces. We also have available to us the visual clues of the image fragments on each piece, helping us to quickly discern if a given piece matches others.

Very Picky About Relationships

What does nature have available to it, when attempting to assemble a system such as a complex biomolecule? The nature of chemical bonding will allow some “pieces” to be selected, while excluding others. But nature has no clues concerning which atom or molecule, among those that could bond, is the appropriate one to bring the project closer to a particular end result. End results, such as functional proteins, are known to be very picky when it comes to getting the right relationships among the component pieces.

To better understand the handicap nature plays with, imagine trying to complete a puzzle blindfolded! Undaunted, someone might maintain that it could still be done, however tediously, by trying one piece after another, until your sense of touch informed you that you had found the piece that uniquely fit with its neighbor. Some puzzles are designed this way, where only one piece has the appropriate cutouts to fit in a particular location. However, what if multiple different pieces had the same shape, but only one piece had the correct image to match the pattern building up to form the predetermined completed picture? Your sense of touch would be insufficient. The tactile clues for which piece to insert next couldn’t supply you with the necessary information. Getting the right pieces assembled in the right arrangement to produce the right final picture would be reduced to luck. 

What’s the Chance of That?

Let’s start with a simple puzzle with a child’s level of difficulty, having only 60 pieces. Trying to assemble it blindfolded, not knowing what the final image is, and wearing mittens so that you can’t feel the cutout shapes makes this “simple” task impossible. Let’s see why. 

The first piece is “free.” Then you have 59 choices for the second piece. If, by luck you got it right, you would then have 58 choices for the third piece, and so on. So, the probability of getting all the pieces assembled correctly is 1:59! That is, 59 factorial, which works out to about 1 chance in 1080. This is equivalent to finding one unique proton out of all the protons in the entire universe! These impossibly small odds are for something that is merely “child’s play” for a normally intelligent human.

Humans Can Do Puzzles

The point here is not really to ponder how improbable it would be for natural processes to correctly assemble a jigsaw puzzle (and admittedly, the real odds would be much smaller than calculated in the paragraph above, since each piece has two sides and each piece has a continuous degree of orientations it could be rotated through in order to properly fit it into place). The point is that humans can do puzzles. This has consequences for our picture of reality. Under a materialistic view, holding that nothing exists except the matter and energy and spacetime of our universe, the inescapable, but absurd, conclusion is that natural processes can correctly assemble jigsaw puzzles.

Under the materialistic view, natural processes gave rise to humans (as a sort of intermediate step to the completed puzzle), and humans then put together puzzles (as well as cars and computers and cities). So, from beginning to end, the materialist must believe that the primordial hydrogen plasma of the universe, governed by nothing other than the laws of physics, will in just a few billion years turn into humans who do jigsaw puzzles!

The power of intelligence is remarkable. What could never happen by the unguided operation of the forces of nature acting on matter, is done as a relaxing pastime by intelligent humans. If this unnatural accomplishment seems a puzzle to the materialist, then perhaps a different perspective is in order. Since our intelligence instantiates outcomes (cars, computers, cities, and puzzles) that cannot arise by unguided nature, then our humanness cannot be naturally derived either. A view of reality that embraces an intelligent mind behind the universe corresponds most reasonably to the big picture that emerges when we properly fit together all the puzzling pieces of our existence.

File under "well said." XCVI

 "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)."

Mark Twain.

On using stats for illumination rather than support?

 Ross Pomeroy Reminds us of P-Value Problems

Cornelius G Hunter 

Ross Pomeroy’s Article in yesterday’s Real Clear Science was a much needed reminder about the dangers of statistical hypothesis testing. But while Pomeroy rightly points out important problems, particularly with the so-called P-value, out here on the ground, the problem is much worse.

One of Pomeroy’s several legitimate concerns is the use of what is essentially a default value of 0.05 for P. Too often scientists don’t realize that, as David Colquhoun has pointed out, this will lead to false conclusions at least 30 percent of the time. Pomeroy also points out the common fallacy of interpreting the P value as the probability that the null hypothesis is true.

The result of such mishandling of hypothesis testing is that, “Quite simply, a large amount of published research is false.” 

                     The result of such mishandling of hypothesis testing is that, “Quite simply, a large amount of published research is false.”

Would that it would end there. Unfortunately, when it comes to evolutionary studies, fixing these problems is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. These concerns about selecting a good alpha value and understanding the nuances of what P actually means, while important, pale in comparison to a much larger infraction: using the P-value to mask what is, in fact, a strawman argument.

One of the key, underlying, assumptions in using the P-value is that there are only two alternatives, the null and alternative hypotheses. These two hypotheses must be complementary—they must be distinct, mutually exclusive, and exhaustive. In other words, one of them must be true, and the other must be false. They cannot both be true, or both be false. They cannot overlap, and there can be no other possibilities.

And while such a perfect pair of hypotheses is possible in simple academic problems such as colored marbles in an urn, real world problems often are more complicated. Take something as seemingly simple as the question of whether or not it will rain today. Is it not binary? Either it will rain, or it will not rain. Right?

Well no. The weather has a multitude of complexities. It is spatially and temporally varying, with an infinite degree of variation. What if it sprinkles? What if the rain evaporates before it reaches the ground? How do you define the time and location? What if it rains in one location but not another?

What the P-value, and its null hypothesis, allows is for trivial null hypotheses to be erected and easily knocked down like strawmen, thus “proving” ones favored explanation. 

Curtains for the selfish gene?

 New Book Puts Richard Dawkins’s “Selfish Genes” in the ICU

Emily Reeves 

Biologist Richard Dawkins came to prominence in 1976 with his Book The Selfish Gene. Nearly half a century later, we’re entitled to wonder how the work has held up. In his recent book, Selfish Genes in ICU?, Dr. Michael Jarvis considers that question, asking whether recent findings in biology match the predictions of Dawkins’s selfish gene concept.

Jarvis, who holds a PhD in biology from the University of Cape Town (where he focused on zoology), takes his reader on a historical journey. He first describes the origin of the universe and the history of Earth, and moves on to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Here, he outlines four key points in The Origin of Species, while paying special attention to one challenge Darwin faced: the Cambrian explosion. From there, Jarvis describes Dawkins’s selfish gene concept — the idea that a gene can be seen as a “selfish unit” that exploits an organism to carry out its own process of replication. Stated another way, the selfish gene concept holds that natural selection takes place at the gene level.

In subsequent chapters Jarvis dives into some discoveries that (spoiler alert!) don’t really match with the selfish gene idea. Jarvis does a nice job of laying out the evidence so that the reader can decide what to think.

                          

Teaser on the Human Eye

One of my favorite parts of the book is the sections on biological function and complexity. I won’t give it all away, but here’s a teaser from the section on the human eye:

                      In the past some scientists suggested that the human eye retina was actually a poor design. Richard Dawkins proposed this argument. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker he concluded that the vertebrate eye is functionally sub-optimal because the retina photoreceptors are oriented away from incoming light.

                        Jarvis addresses head-on this frequently repeated claim of poor design. He goes on to cite recent discoveries and explains how this new research affects our understanding of the purported “sub-optimal” design. He notes that our retinas contain special Müller cells which funnel light through the optic nerve onto the retina, compensating for any loss of vision related to the “backwards wiring” of the vertebrate retina:

                      Research by Amichai Labin and Erez Riba from Israel’s internationally recognized Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa has shown that the surface of the retina also has so-called Müller cells. These cells not only compensate for the light sensitive receptors being “back to front.” Their function actually results in vision being better than it would have been if the light sensitive cells had been the so-called “right-way round.”

                               To learn more about the complexity of the eye you can read my article here or Casey Luskin’s article here.

                        

An Update on Two Decades

In the final chapters of the book, Dr. Jarvis updates his reader on what the last twenty years have revealed about evolution. His focus here is on the study of epigenetics, orphan genes, Hox genes, mitochondrial DNA, and directed mutagenesis, all shedding light on how genes evolve and whether or not they are units of selection. Throughout, he argues that these recently discovered genetic features don’t fit the selfish gene concept. 

Here’s one example from the field of epigenetics. Epigenetics is the study of mechanisms that change gene expression but that are not heritable. Epigenetic mechanisms allow for both behavior and the environment to affect how a gene works. Here’s the problem epigenetics poses for selfish genes: if a gene is the unit of selection, what benefit does a non-heritable change that is only evidenced in the organism have for the unit of selection? Why would such a mechanism ever be selected in the first place? Hence, epigenetics only makes sense in a system-wide context.

Let’s look at one more of Jarvis’s examples: master regulatory genes, aka Hox genes. These genes have the purpose of being master regulators within a system context. Their activation and function depend upon upstream and downstream genes respectively. A master regulatory gene is helpless without its system context. How then could such a gene be a unit of selection? Do master regulatory genes really desire to reproduce more than they do to serve the organism? Is there evidence for that? Definitely not.

Into the Melting Pot

In gentle fashion, Jarvis lays out numerous pieces of evidence that jeopardize Dawkins’s view that genes are selfish and act as the units of selection. That makes this book the perfect gift for an inquisitive friend who might not be familiar with some of the recent challenges to Dawkins’s ideas. 

Jarvis concludes that “selfish genes are in the ICU” and he encourages the reader to place recent discoveries into what he calls a melting pot — a place where many different people and ideas exist and often produce something new. He concludes with a question to the reader: “Are you and I ready for a new theory of evolution that may be as difficult to accept as were the revelations of Albert Einstein?”