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Scifi and Fantasy Forum: Off-Topic Conversations: Evolution. Is it just a theory.:
Archive through Apr 16, 2003
Archive through Apr 16, 2003
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South American Plant Diversity Began Much Earlier Than Thought 04/03/2003
EurekAlert says Penn State scientists found evidence that Argentina had a lush tropical environment 50 million years ago, over twice the previous 5 to 20 million year estimate. The diversity of species greatly surpasses that of North American fossil sites. The article begins, “The extreme biological diversity found in today’s New World tropical forests began much earlier than previously thought and has researchers rethinking its origins, according to an international team of researchers studying fossil plants from Argentina.”
Rethinking its origins – does that mean design? Never. It means believing that mindless chance works faster and better than they thought. But when everywhere they look organisms burst onto the scene fully formed and already richly diverse, where does the evidence itself lead?
EurekAlert report here:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-04/ps-fse040103.php
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Brighter Beaks Signal Healthier Mates 04/04/2003
Beak brightness is a health-o-meter, according to two papers in the April 4 issue of Science, one by the French and another by the English. They claim that male birds with more carotenoids have a better immune system, and this makes their beaks brighter orange, which attracts the females. Elisabeth Pennisi in her summary of the papers says, “When bright-billed males claim they’re the best, females are therefore right to listen.” The story is making the rounds in the news media, such as BBC News and National Geographic, which says,
“It’s been known for a long time that females of many species choose to mate with the flashiest males, says Jonathan Blount at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. “Quite what they stand to gain from mating with these show-offs has been puzzling ecologists since the time of Charles Darwin.”
The work seems to support Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, which has come under fire lately. How the female benefits by begetting offspring that share the good genes responsible for their father’s health “remains to be tested.”
Well then, evolution should have produced supermales that have beaks that glow in the dark. How come some birds have black or dull beaks? How on earth do crows and ravens survive so well? Is this the sequel to the just-so story about bright feathers correlating with immune systems? Why doesn’t the bright beak attract the predators? Doesn’t the male care about the immune system of the female? Does a bird know what an immune system is? How could a female bird care whether its offspring have its father’s genes? Are they claiming that carotenoids are the only measure of fitness? Was Rudolph the Reindeer sexy? How come women aren’t attracted to men with red noses? Should GQ start advertising carrot juice to single guys? Why are we the only ones asking the follow-up questions to this tale, instead of swallowing the plastic worm and giving a cuckoo-bird grin like the other science news outlets?
Stories like this make it plausible to imagine our descendents wondering how so many intelligent people could be so birdbrained.
BBC article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2917937.stm
nationalgeographic article:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0403_030403_beaks.html
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Blood Clotting Regulated by Sodium Switch 04/04/2003
An article in the April issue of the Cell journal Structure says that another regulator of blood clotting, involving a sodium switch, has been discovered. The article begins by describing some of the tight regulation of blood clotting and why it is important:
Blood is probably one of the most versatile tissues. It transports nutrients, metabolites, signaling molecules, and immunoactive compounds throughout the body. When shed, it quickly clots. Clotting is induced by the thrombotic cascades, in which a fast, successive activation of enzymes ultimately transforms soluble fibrinogen into solid fibrin. The intricate pathways of these cascades allow rigorous checks and bounds, resulting in tight regulation, not only to prevent the loss of blood, but also to prevent the formation of inappropriate clots.
The article describes how sodium ions can throw either a fast or slow switch in thrombin, a protein that activates fibrin to begin clotting.
Michael Behe used blood clotting to illustrate irreducible complexity in his book Darwin’s Black Box. To show he was not exaggerating, we want to quote one paragraph from this secular paper to give readers a glimpse into all the tightly-regulated events involved in blood clotting. Don’t expect to understand it; just marvel at the level of irreducible complexity involved in this common repair mechanism:
Thrombin is one of the most downstream actors of the clotting cascades, where it cleaves fibrinogen into fibrin to induce its coagulation. Thus, thrombin also starts a positive feedback loop as the resulting clot further activates more upstream actors of the cascade. Thrombin’s activity and concentration levels are tightly regulated. In complex with thrombomodulin, thrombin switches its specificity and instead of cleaving fibrinogen, it activates protein C, which downregulates the thrombotic cascade. Furthermore, thrombin is irreversibly inhibited by antithrombin, a serpin that also inhibits the upstream activator factor Xa. Each of these regulatory mechanisms serves a specific purpose: (1) at the site where clotting is required, thrombin not only cleaves plasminogen, but also indirectly promotes the local activation of new thrombin molecules; (2) thrombin that has diffused away from the clotting area can bind to thrombomodulin, a membrane protein exposed by intact epithelial cells; (3) in complex with thrombomodulin, thrombin is prevented from cleaving plasminogen and instead activates protein C, thus indirectly preventing the local formation of new thrombin molecules; and (4) subsequently, escaped thrombin is rounded up by antithrombin, which for its activation requires a specific pentasaccharide motif within the heparan sulfates that line the surface of epithelial cells.
In addition to these mechanisms, thrombin’s activity is also regulated allosterically through a conformational switch that is activated by sodium ions. At low sodium concentrations, the “slow” form of thrombin dominates, which changes into the “fast” form at high concentrations. Intriguingly, the sodium levels in blood are tightly maintained at concentrations that promote thrombin’s fast form.
Got that all down? There will be a quiz Monday. Fortunately, your cells have this procedure down pat, or you would die the next time you prick a finger.
from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: I'm mess-about with the hex-code, to get some diff colours, enjoy 
Oldest Fossils Debated 04/07/2003
Space.com has an article presenting two sides of a debate about the world’s oldest alleged microfossils: are they from life, or chemistry? The dispute is about Western Australian greenstones. In 1993, J. William Schopf claimed that microscopic structures in the 3.465 billion year old dikes in the formations were bacterial in origin. This would have placed the origin of life a billion years earlier than previously assumed, indicating that “life had already established a firm foothold on Earth” shortly after its formation. Schopf and Donald Lowe are believers in the microfossils, but Martin Brasier believes the chert dikes in the greenstone were formed by hydrothermal vents, too hot for life. Lowe, however, thinks that spherules in the chert have an extraterrestrial origin (from meteorites), indicating they must have come from above, not below. Reporter David Tenenaum (Astrobiology Magazine) leaves the debate unsettled, admitting that interpreting ancient geology is like trying to read a book in a language we don’t understand.
It is a slight improvement to see two sides of a controversy presented, but there is a third side totally ignored: that the dating is unreliable and the assumption of abiogenesis is irrational. All the scientists in the story believe life arose by chance from chemistry. The only question is when, and whether or not these particular rocks support one believer’s incredible claim. The article shamelessly prints a date of four significant figures without error bars, without any hint of the assumptions on which the the dates were calculated, as if they are rock solid and indisputable.
For other examples of obfuscation on Space.com, see another article today on Space.Com that calls water “the elixir of life” (Experiment: Take sterile dirt, just add water, and watch.) It also shows pictures of earth organisms with the suggestion similar life-forms may have evolved on Mars – with no evidence whatsoever – just the assumption that if there is water, life is inevitable.
Fair and honest science reporting needs to expand its horizons beyond the Darwin Party. The astrobiologists at Space.com give a false appearance of impartiality by having only evolutionists debate the evidence. This would be akin to the Chaldean Tribune of 604 BC reporting a debate between leading soothsayers on the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, while refusing to grant an interview to Daniel.
for the "another article today on Space.Com" click here:http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mars_experiments_030407.html
News from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: Daniel and Nebuchadnezzar's dream are from the bible, to read the passage from the bible click here:
http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=Dan+2&NKJV_version=yes&language=english
Bacterial Fossils Challenge “Snowball Earth” Hypothesis 04/08/2003
Three University of California earth scientists found alleged microfossils in Death Valley that left them puzzled. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they present evidence of a rich community of prokaryotes and eukaryotes that appear to have been healthy and diverse both before and after the assumed deep-freeze that evolutionists say occurred around 750 million years ago. “No significant changes are noted between older, presnowball biotas and the synglacial snowball biotas,“ they conclude:
The fact that heterotrophic and autotrophic eukaryotes appear to have survived unscathed through this interval leads one to question the severity of glacial environments in the tropical marine realm during these glacial times, the amount of ice-covered oceans, and the inhospitable nature of the snowball aftermath. While we must accept the credibility of low-latitude glaciation in Neoproterozoic time, and accept that these conditions represented a stressful environment on many parts of the globe, the extend of ice-covered oceans, and thus the ability to affect severely the course of evolution, is less clear.
So although they are not ready to overthrow the snowball earth hypothesis, they are puzzled that these organisms show no apparent stress during a long period of deep freeze. “The California microfossils,” they say, ”challenge the ideas that climatic perturbations catastrophically affected the marine biosphere and they suggest that a completely ice-covered ocean was unlikely, or that the resiliency of life has been underestimated.” The paper is entitled, “A complex microbiota from snowball Earth times: Microfossils from the Neoproterozoic Kingston Peak Formation, Death Valley, USA.”
If earth were ever a snowball, it very likely could never have recovered. Raw data again challenge an evolutionary story. “The snowball Earth hypothesis predicts a ‘freeze-fry, double-whammy,’ to have affected the course of evolution in a bottleneck and flush style (a complete global freeze followed by an intensely hot and inhospitable aftermath),” they explain. “The Kingston Peak Formation microbiotas contradict these hypothesized extremes. Taxonomic and trophic complexity does not appear to have changed significantly during the glaciation.”
These scientists opt for a soft, smushy snowball instead of a hard bunker-buster. But the fossils indicate that complex eukaryotic bacteria, including photosynthetic types that rely on sunlight, were doing just fine the whole time, enjoying the balmy weather (it probably wasn’t like present-day Death Valley when they lived). Where is the evidence for any snowball fight? There were glaciers, there are fossils, but an ice-covered globe is just a story somebody made up. How long will it take for this theory to be tossed into the dust bin, and the picturesque phrase “snowball earth” drop out of the vocabulary?
The ability of a stressful environment “to affect severely the course of evolution, is less clear,” they say. You don’t say.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0730560100v1
News from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Article: Does Science Point to God?
The Intelligent Design Revolution
By Benjamin D. Wiker
DK: I'm not posting this whole article, just extracts, for the full article click here:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2003/feature1.htm
Extracts:
"The revolution began in the latter half of the 20th century as a result of discoveries in the various sciences that seemed to point to an intelligent being as the cause of nature’s amazing intricacies. The aim of ID is included in its origin: the ever-deeper investigation of nature to uncover every aspect of its stunningly contrived complexity. Such complexity is the sure sign of intentional design, and the discovery and contemplation of it is also the natural delight of our intellect."
"The ID movement seeks to restore sanity to science, philosophy, and hence culture by investigating the possibility that nature, rather than being the result of unintelligent, purposeless forces, can only be understood as the effect of an Intelligent Designer. But again, to say that the ID revolution contradicts the claims of secularized science does not mean that the contradiction arises from some contrariety or conspiracy on the part of ID proponents. It arises from the evidence of nature itself, and the ID movement is merely pointing to the evidence nature has provided (even while, as an active mode of scientific inquiry, it seeks to uncover more). In science, it points to the growing evidence of intelligent fine tuning, both cosmological and biological, and to the various failures of secularized science to make good its claims that the order of nature can be completely reduced to unintelligent causes."
What ID critics say: "’Tis all fine and good, they say, to investigate cosmological fine-tuning but anathema to consider biological fine-tuning. Indeed, such critics seem to think that doubting evolutionary theory’s claims to have eliminated design from biology could only occur if one has either lost one’s mind or placed it on an out-of-the-way shelf marked “Do Not Disturb” (the embarassing result of irrational adherence to an entirely mytho-theological account of creation). They seem—to get to the bottom of it—to agree with the words of zoologist and evolutionary spokesman laureate Richard Dawkins: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” "
The Design Revolution in Cosmology
Allow me to point out to Pennock that the “tendency to anthropomorphize the world” is coming from the world itself, or more accurately, from the entire cosmos. In fact, in physics it is called the anthropic principle. In short form, it is the discovery that the universe appears rigged, astoundingly fine-tuned, suspiciously calibrated as part of some kind of a conspiracy of order to produce life—indeed intelligent life. This fine-tuned conspiracy occurs on all levels, from the fundamental constants governing the formation of all the elements in the cosmos, to the extraordinarily precise relationship of planets in our solar system, to the delicate balances on our own planet.
If, for example, the strong nuclear force that holds together the protons and neutrons in the nucleus of atoms were a tad weaker, elements other than hydrogen would either be unlikely or impossible; if a tad stronger, you wouldn’t have hydrogen. Change the ratio of the mass of the electron to the proton just a mite and molecules cannot form. If gravity were made just a bit weaker, stars large enough to produce the heavier elements necessary for biological life would not exist; a bit stronger, and stars would be too massive, producing the necessary elements but burning too rapidly and unevenly to support life. Fiddle a smidgeon with the expansion rate of the universe, and you either cause it to collapse or exceed the ideal rate at which galaxies, and hence solar systems, can form.
Or to focus on our own home in the Milky Way, it has become increasingly clear that the conditions of our solar system are wonderfully intricate. For example, our sun is not a typical star but is one of the 9 percent most massive stars in our galaxy, and it is also very stable. Further, the sun hits the Goldilocks mean for life—neither too hot (like a blue or white star) nor too cold (like a red star)—and its peak emission is right at the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum—the very, very thin band where not only vision is possible but also photosynthesis. Earth just “happens” to have the right combination of atmospheric gases to block out almost all the harmful radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum but, strangely enough, opens like a window for visible light. Jupiter is deftly placed and sized so that it not only helps to balance Earth’s orbit but also acts as a kind of debris magnet keeping Earth from being pummeled. Our moon is just the right size and distance to stabilize Earth’s axial tilt so that we have seasonal variations but not wildly swinging temperature changes.
.....The ID movement, understood in its proper and widest context, is cosmological in scope, looking for evidence of design in all of nature, and biology is just one aspect of nature where it seeks evidence of fine-tuning. Against those who would so jealously guard biology from ID, one must ask: How could the fundamental physical constants be fine-tuned, our solar system be fined-tuned, the atmospheric and geological features of our planet be fine-tuned, but all biological beings and processes be the result of unintelligent, purposeless forces?
But as the growing anthropic evidence attests, the conviction that the universe is not just accidentally pitched together, but finely tuned, has led many scientists to look for additional instances of fine-tuning—and they have not been disappointed. (Have a go at the incredibly dense Anthropic Cosmological Principle by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, if you have doubts, or simply browse Amazon.com for books on the anthropic principle or cosmology.) Thus, the common charges made by critics of ID that it is mere religion disguised as science, and that the assumption of ID has led to no scientific discoveries, is misplaced. Since the last half of the 20th century, the discovery of fine-tuning has been the impetus leading to the discovery of more fine-tuning, and the inference to a designer (as we see from Hoyle) is quite natural and quite respectable on the cosmological level.
In fact, one of the leading scientists using this mode of scientific discovery is astronomer and ID proponent Guillermo Gonzalez, who extends the anthropic principle to its logical conclusion, arguing that human beings are an intended effect of an intelligent cause. This has led him to question the so-called Copernican Principle or Principle of Mediocrity, that Earth-like planets are as common as dandelions in spring. Against this assumption, Gonzalez has found that the parameters for life are very finely drawn, and that means that they are rarely met.
Rather than the ID movement being mocked as some kind of creationist backlash, then, it should be understood as part of a larger revolution within science that began on the cosmological level in physics and chemistry. What raises the hackles of ID critics, as we have seen, is that ID proponents have taken the next logical step, daring to enter the biological domain and question Darwinian orthodoxy. But again, the move from cosmology to biology is inevitable.
The Design Revolution in Biology
As should be clear, the designer-free cosmos is the cosmos according to the secularized view of science (as buttressed by the secularized view of philosophy). But that is the view of the cosmos that the growing evidence of cosmological fine-tuning is calling into question. Therefore, it’s both legitimate and inevitable that the designer-free inference in biology should likewise be called into question. Now there are, in science, two intimately related ways of calling a theory into question: First, you notice its defects, and then you go about the more difficult secondary task of demonstrating that another approach has more merit. Given this, it’s no surprise, then, that ID theorists concerned with things biological would first spend significant efforts on a negative critique of Darwinists’ claims, before hammering out a full-scale alternative.
Where has Darwinism succeeded grandly? Exactly where it succeeded at first, in describing relatively small-scale evolution, often called microevolution. So where has it failed? In those precise places where it would need to have succeeded in order to make good on the great daring inference. We will look at two: (1) the need for a gradual appearance of the highest biological taxa and (2) the extension of design-free biology backwards to a gradual nondirected rise of the first cells from prebiological materials. Both of these are necessary to exclude ID from biology.
The sharpest rocks to dash the expectations of Darwinism were quarried in Canada at the beginning of the 20th century, and the fossils taken from this wonderful site, called the Burgess Shale, lay entirely misinterpreted for almost three-quarters of a century. They provide us with a most illuminating window into the Cambrian explosion, where, in evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould’s words, “in a geological moment near the beginning of the Cambrian [about 570 million years ago], nearly all modern phyla made their first appearance, along with an even greater array of anatomical experiments that did not survive very long thereafter” (emphasis added). This appearance is not the result of a gradual rise (through innumerable intermediate species) of increasingly more complex life leading up to the Cambrian period. Rather, in Gould’s words, it occurs “with a bang” in a “geological flash” as a “gigantic burp of creativity.”
Why is the Cambrian such a stick in the craw of Darwinism? Darwin’s principle natura non facit saltum (nature does not make a leap) is the principle by which evolutionary theory can eliminate intelligence as a cause. How so? Intelligence, as a cause, can create elaborate order quickly and efficiently:_ratio facit salta (reason does make leaps), we might well say. If the unintelligent meanderings of natural selection are to displace an Intelligent Designer, then, as Darwin realized, all big differences must be the result of the addition of countless very little differences. The sudden appearance of nearly all modern biological phyla completely contradicts the expectations of Darwin’s theory.
Does that prove that ID theory has won in biology by default? No. It only proves that (1) it is reasonable to doubt that natural selection, powerful as it may be in certain domains, can displace intelligence as a cause in the origin of animal design, and more particularly, (2) it is reasonable to investigate the fossil evidence from the perspective of design.
As it turns out, there are insuperable problems in trying to explain, via some mode of design-free evolutionary theory, how the first cells could have arisen. Nobel laureate biochemist Francis Crick, codiscoverer of the helical structure of DNA, has even remarked, “An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.” The enigma drove Crick to offer a nonevolutionary solution to the origin of life, the theory of panspermia, the belief that intelligent aliens seeded life on earth.
Others, such as Dawkins, lapse into an irrational faith in the powers of chance to avoid an ID inference. While Dawkins agrees with Crick that the origin of life is a miracle, by that he means a miracle of chance. But Dawkins believes that anything can be explained by chance, even a miracle. Speaking of a marble statue, Dawkins (with a straight face) argues that “if, by sheer coincidence, all the molecules [in the hand of the statue] just happened to move in the same direction at the same moment, the hand would move. If they then all reversed direction at the same moment the hand would move back. In this way it is possible for a marble statue to wave at us. It could happen.”
Of course, one would have to be insanely wedded to materialism and have more faith in the powers of chance than any theist has in the powers of God to believe an actual waving statue was not a miracle. With this faith in the random jostling of molecules, Dawkins sees no trouble in believing (even without evidence) that a materialist miracle occurred, albeit he knows not how, allowing for the rise of the first living cells. Such faith, however, is not evidence itself but a telling lapse into a materialist credo quia absurdum est.
Now What? Now Where?
I have spent quite a few words trying to show that the ID movement is both larger than its well-publicized and strongly criticized attempts to question Darwinism and also that it is justified in publicly and strongly criticizing Darwinism. I believe that this analysis allows us to see the merit of the work done so far by ID proponents Michael Behe and William Dembski. Behe’s wonderful arguments about the irreducible complexity of biological structures (Darwin’s Black Box) show clearly that biological fine-tuning is a real problem for Darwinism precisely because of the discovery of the unfathomable complexity of even the smallest biological structures. Dembski (most recently, No Free Lunch) has declared war, so to speak, on the kind of irrational reliance on chance all too characteristic of Darwinism and seen all too clearly in Dawkins. Such reliance, we recall, is rooted in the desire to eliminate the design inference in biology, and Dembski’s arguments are essential to removing such irrational obstacles.
whoops I mentioned god.....
I note from the article above that I'm ignorant, stupid or insane or wicked, and that also goes for anyone who doesn't believe in evolution.
Also I have lost my mind or placed it on an out-of-the-way shelf marked “Do Not Disturb”. Could someone please look for it, I would be most pleased if someone would returned it to me. However there is currently no reward being offered for the return of my mind (O.K. who ever returns my mind can have a drink, at the bar).
Apes are our brothers—just ask the Post Office
by Michael Matthews, AiG–US
7 April 2003
‘Did you know our DNA is 98 percent similar?’ These are the words in an advertisement for the first-class stamp (top right) in a new series called ‘The secret of life,’ released by Royal Mail (UK). The stamps commemorate the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s structure and recent advances in human genome research.
Posters advertising the stamps are plastered all over Post Offices in the UK—even AiG staff from the US were bombarded with this message during a recent speaking trip there [see Busy in Britain].
Cartoonist Peter Brookes of the London Times drew the pictures, using humor to make his message clear. For his first-class stamp, he chose to show the link between apes and scientists, and label it ‘comparative genetics.’ Obviously, this implies that one of the most significant outcomes of DNA research is its evidence for human evolution.
Another stamp in the collection promotes a similar message. According to Royal Mail’s promotion on its Web site, the stamp titled ‘The End of the Beginning,’ which shows scientists completing a jigsaw puzzle, ‘signifies that the discoveries made so far, and the mapping that continues, present us with the method of finding the beginning of life (emphasis added).’
Discrediting ‘the god hypothesis’
Indeed, the title of the whole series, ‘The secret of life,’ is taken from a famous quote by one of the discoverers of DNA’s double-helix structure, Francis Crick, who saw it as a confirmation of evolution and a death knell to religion. (Crick announced fifty years ago at a pub in Cambridge: ‘We have discovered the secret of life.’)
An outspoken atheist, Crick was motivated by a bigger prize than the Nobel laureate. He openly admits that he has devoted his life to discrediting what he considers to be the two most powerful ‘design’ arguments for God: chemicals can’t explain life and chemical processes can’t explain human consciousness. As he explained to the London Telegraph:
‘I went into science because of these religious reasons, there's no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs: the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness.’
Although Crick’s work with DNA is more widely known than his work on the human brain, both lines of research were intended to confirm the same conclusion: ‘The god hypothesis is rather discredited.’
Of course, nobody can deny the significance of Crick’s discovery. In 1953, it was still a deep mystery how heredity worked—how living things reproduced and transmitted their characteristics. The discovery of DNA’s structure truly revolutionized biology, and led to the mammoth Human Genome Project (see Genome Mania—Deciphering the human genome: what does it mean ... ). The potential medical benefits from this project are truly exciting, as the stamp ‘Medical futures’ emphasizes.
On the other hand, the belief that DNA research improves our understanding of human origins is a farce. Although the field of comparative genetics has revealed some interesting facts about the similarities (and differences) of DNA among different species, it says nothing about the origin of our DNA or the historical relationship between species.
Just because we share half our genes with bananas, doesn’t mean we’re ‘half a banana.’ Similarly, if there were 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimps wouldn’t mean that we were 98% chimps. But in fact, recent evidence indicates that the genetic similarity is significantly less than this.
The real lesson of DNA
The real, unheralded lesson of the past 50 years of DNA research is the evidence of an amazing Designer, who made all things, including a marvelously complex, efficient ‘information system’ for encoding life—something that could not have arisen by mere time and chance.
DNA obeys the laws of physics and chemistry, but it carries something much more than that, something which is not known to arise from mere physics and chemistry—information. A car functions according to the physical laws—i.e. there is nothing ‘spooky’ that makes cars operate. But the physical laws plus time plus chance could never build a car. The missing ingredient is information—the intelligent purposive design impressed onto those raw materials.
In the same way, DNA carries the blueprint for living things, which is transmitted from one generation to the next, like a series of robots programmed to pass on their programs to other robots. But since observational science has never revealed any natural process that can create information, i.e. ‘write the program,’ the most logical conclusion is that the programs themselves, i.e. the information in the original created kinds, arose from an intelligent mind—the same way programs arise today.
But don’t expect such an obvious scientific conclusion from a world steeped in evolutionary rebellion against its Maker.
For the article: Genome Mania
Deciphering the human genome: what does it mean?
go here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0309_genome.asp
Article from here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0407apes.asp
The link has pics (the stamps).
DK: I'm sure I posted something on "Busy in Britain", (in the creation topic) but I can't be really sure, I have lost my mind.....
Colorful Birds Go Extinct More – Or Do They? 04/08/2003
National Geographic reports on a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Paul F. Doherty et al that claims that bird populations with colorful males go extinct 23% more often than birds where males and females are both the same color. Doherty feels this lends support to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection; bright plumage incurs a cost but yields the benefit of greater reproductive success. But according to the study, based on 21 years of results from the North American Bird Breeding Survey, colorful species quickly recolonize the area, so there is no net loss of dichromatic (two-color) species.
This paper illustrates dogmatism that will spin any collection of data, no matter how contradictory or counter-intuitive, into support for its assumptions. Evolutionary theory is so flexible it can explain anything. In Texas, the species counts are stable, so Doherty’s findings don’t hold. The conclusions are all based on inferences from statistical counts, not actually watching species go extinct because they weren’t the fittest. There is no net evolution, because dichromatic species don’t decrease in numbers. Doherty presents no evidence that any one species evolved into something else, or that colorful males got more and more extreme till they went extinct (we still have peacocks, don’t we?). If sexual selection is a basic principle of nature, why does it produce dull-colored birds where the sexes look the same? Why don’t the females get colorful half the time – is this a kind of chauvinism on the part of male evolutionary biologists? There are so many conundrums with the theory of sexual selection, and so many exceptions to the “rule”, it should be tossed out as Charlie’s little pet theory that couldn’t stand up to scrutiny.
The PNAS article here: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0836953100v1
news from here: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Is Polyploidy a Mechanism for Evolution? 04/09/2003
What happens to genes in duplicated genomes? This is a question Elizabeth A. Kellogg (U. of Missouri) addresses in a Commentary in the April 7 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Occasionally, despite the cell’s quality controls (see previous headline), an entire copy of a gene makes its way into a daughter cell, resulting in what is called polyploidy. Each metazoan cell is diploid at least, because it has copies from each parent. Some plants are tetraploid, with four copies. Plant breeders can induce polyploidy in the lab, and it can occur in nature. Biochemists have uncovered what appear to be past duplication events in some organisms, including yeast and humans, “ in which the chromosome complement doubled at some time in the past and then, through gene silencing, mutation, and loss, reverted to a diploid-like state.” For viability, cells must carefully regulate which genes in which copies get expressed.
Evolutionists have expected to find some things by studying these extra copies: (1) Copies would mutate faster, since they would be inactive, and not subject to natural selection. In time, these would become pseudogenes, a form of “junk” DNA; i.e, functionless vestiges of the organism’s evolutionary past. (2) It might be possible to trace family trees by deducing when the duplication events occurred. (3) Polyploidy might be a source of variation on which mutation and natural selection could give rise to new species.
Kellogg’s paper explores some possibilities there is more going on than mere cluttering of the genome with dead copies. For instance, both copies might have taken on individual roles of an original multi-function gene (a hypothesis called subfunctionalization). Although Ohno suggested a copy could mutate and gain a new function, Kellogg says “Hughes presents extensive data to argue against this possibility, at least in the form outlined by Ohno.” She provides no example of a copy that improves fitness; “Positive selection,” she comments, “is presumed to be rare.” Perhaps the copies remain viable, but any mutation and selection occurs upstream, via epigenetic factors that control gene expression.
It appears from more recent studies that the organism does not end up with a live copy and a dead copy; gene expression occurs in both, without “biased gene expression” (i.e., all the expression going to one of the copies). Nevertheless, certain genes are silenced on one copy and activated on the other in a complex way. For instance, one organ might have the gene expressed from one copy, and another organ from the other copy.
How long does it take for the copies to differ? Adams et al found no differences between ancient diploids compared to modern polyploids, a surprising result “if biased gene expression requires millions of years of genomes coexisting in a common nucleus.... This then suggests that expression changed immediately on formation of polyploids.”
Does a useless copy slowly mutate into oblivion? Kellogg says, “There is no evidence that mutation rate suddenly jumps with polyploid formation. Instead, it is more likely that initial expression changes are caused by epigenetic mechanisms.” Epigenetic (above-gene) mechanisms contradict biochemistry’s “central dogma” that DNA is the master control of the cell. Scientists now suspect that other heritable controls, such as methylation of histones in chromatin (the histone code), can regulate gene expression and may be just as important as DNA itself. If this is the case, polyploidy may only provide spare parts for an already-rich toolkit used by all organisms. Kellogg explains the analogy (emphasis added):
Expression and function of many genes have apparently been conserved over evolutionary time. This observation has led to suggestions that all organisms, at least those in the same kingdom, may work with the same basic genetic toolkit. Although this is undoubtedly true in general, polyploidy provides a way to diversify the basic set of tools, and plants in particular have taken advantage of this opportunity. By copying their genomes, they retain the tool kit and at the same time generate a garage full of spare parts. Gene duplication can provide the raw material for expression changes to occur, and polyploidy itself can trigger epigenetic changes.
“The next step,” Kellogg concludes, “is to connect differential gene expression to selectable changes that drive the origin of species.”
So the article ends with another promissory note for an evolutionary story. You will read in vain to find some hard evidence that polyploidy is a major mechanism for the origin of species, like some evolutionists claim. “The origin of species,” Darwin’s famous title, is Kellogg’s last phrase, but only in reference to unfinished business. No connection between polyploidy and the origin of species is provided; it’s always “the next step” for evolutionary theory to explain.
Furthermore, the changes in differential gene expression do not require millions of years; they occur immediately. Kellogg gives no hope that studying polyploidy will help produce trees of common ancestry. Though sequence similarities appear to be orthologous (related), “because the term ‘orthologous’ is defined solely with reference to a gene tree, orthology can only be demonstrated with a molecular phylogeny.” That’s it. You have to already know the tree to call something orthologous – a case of circular reasoning.
If any evolutionary conclusions can be drawn from this paper, it is only that downhill or horizontal variation occurs, not the kind of variation that leads to new organs, functions, and complexity. Copies either degenerate into pseudogenes, or (if subfunctionalization occurs), they divide the functions that already existed. Nothing novel or better arises; the Hughes citation makes the point. All said and done, Kellogg ends with a reference worthy of intelligent design theory: organisms have a toolkit, and they maintain spare parts. Use of the toolkit depends on epigenetic mechanisms even more complex than DNA that we are just beginning to uncover. Where is the evolutionary explanation for all this design? As usual, “Oh—that’s the next step.”
If you’re sick and tired of waiting for the UN (United Naturalists) to come to a resolution, study DNA from an intelligent design perspective. It’s good for a dose of shock and awe.
Fail-Safe Mechanism Protects Against Gene Reduplication 04/09/2003
As if you didn’t already have enough to worry about: some 8 million of your cells are dividing at any one time, and they had better get it right, each and every time, because mistakes can be disastrous. During the cell division process (the cell cycle), all those DNA base pairs need to be duplicated so that each daughter cell has a copy. How does the cell guarantee no strand is accidentally copied twice? The cell has a system of checks and balances. A stretch of DNA needs to first obtain a license to be copied. Once the copy is done, the license is removed. Writing in the April 4 issue of Cell, Scottish biologist J. Julian Blow explains how this works:
The replication of eukaryotic chromosomal DNA requires the initiation of replication forks from thousands of replication origins. These must be regulated so that none fires more than once in each cell cycle. The cell achieves this by breaking the initiation process into two nonoverlapping phases. In the first phase, occurring in late mitosis and early G1, replication origins are “licensed” for replication by assembly of a prereplicative complex (pre-RC) of initiation proteins. When replication forks are initiated at licensed replication origins during the subsequent S phase, the pre-RC is disassembled, converting the origin to the unlicensed state incapable of supporting further initiation. In order for this system to work properly, the licensing system that assembles new pre-RCs must shut down before S phase starts.
He reports on a new function of a multi-talented protein named Ran that is involved in this last step. But it is probably far from the whole story. Blow concludes, “it is unlikely that direct inhibition of licensing by Ran-GTP is the only control. Previous work suggests that several redundant mechanisms might exist to minimize the risk of re-replication occurring, an event with potentially catastrophic consequences.” The Preview article is entitled, “A New Role for Ran in Ensuring Precise Duplication of Chromosomal DNA.”
What amazing and wonderful mechanisms are being discovered at work in the basic unit of life, the cell. Think of it: quality control, checks and balances, high-availability, redundant hardware and software, security procedures, ultra-high fidelity, homeland security – all at the nanometer scale. Can the totalitarian dictatorship of Darwinism in the sciences handle this flood of new discoveries? Scientists need the freedom to think outside the box of the current reigning philosophy of naturalism. There is no mention of evolution in this paper. Perhaps scientists are afraid to say anything if they cannot pay homage to Darwin. It’s time for regime change, and there will be dancing in the labs.
From http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: Sometimes I don't provide the links to the articles that are covered in news articles. The above news mentions an article that is from Cell, but you need a individual subscription to a Cell Press journal, or to buy the article "on a pay per article basis", this is the case on other websites as well......
Impact Theory for Dinosaur Extinction Debated 04/10/2003
“Listeners were shocked and stunned that two groups could disagree so much,” reports Nature Science Update about heated debate in Nice, France between geophysicists. They were evaluating evidence from the first drilling of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan. One researcher claims to have found fossils of plankton that survived 300,000 years after the alleged impact; it must have been smaller than assumed. Others deny the fossil evidence or think a series of impacts might have led to the extinction.
We can’t let the impact theory go extinct. Just think of all the great cartoons made over the last 25 years.
Article: Nature Science Update:
http://www.nature.com/nsu/030407/030407-7.html
news from here: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
The Cannibal in Your Evolutionary Past 04/11/2003
National Geographic reports on a paper in the Apr. 11 issue of Science that cannibalism may have been common among our primitive ancestors. This is based on genetic evidence that humans evolved a defense against prion diseases that can result from eating one’s own kind. A critic disagrees, based on Darwinian theory: “You would think in terms of evolution that if people ate each other we wouldn’t be around. It’s not a good survival strategy, not a way for a species to proceed.”
Did you want freedom fries with that?
National Geographic report:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/04/0410_030410_cannibal.html
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DNA Play a Bigger Production than First Realized 04/12/2003
“DNA’s Cast of Thousands” is the subject of Elisabeth Pennisi’s commentary in the April 11 issue of Science special issue on “Building on the DNA Revolution.” She recounts the history of the discovery of DNA, and where research is headed. The story line is one of increasing complexity: nucleic acids (1860), a blurry idea of a helical molecule (1951), the genetic code deciphered (1953), then a mushrooming bonanza of discoveries about supporting cast: messenger RNA, transfer RNA, transcription factors, polymerases, repair teams, histones, chromatin, and more. Typical quote: “Again, the process is proving to be even more complicated than researchers initially realized.” Pennisi ends on the recent suggestion that a histone code exists that is “as complex and important as the DNA code.” She ends, “Forty years ago, Brenner and others were convinced that the central questions in molecular biology would be answered well before the turn of the century. Now they know better. The nature of the histone code is just one of many problems whose complexities are left to be unraveled.”
Funny; no mention of evolution in the whole screenplay. Wasn’t Darwin voted Best Director of this cast of thousands?
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Science requires a subscription
Can Molecules Dance Without a Choreographer? 04/12/2003
Harvard chemist David Liu is following nature’s way of producing new organic compounds: evolution, claims Robert F. Service in the April 11 issue of Science. “By linking organic reactants to a series of DNA molecules preprogrammed to bind to one another, his team coaxed the organic molecules to react together in multiple steps to form desired compounds,” Service explains. “By starting with an assortment of DNA molecules, the researchers can choreograph reactants to assemble themselves into a wide variety of products in the same beaker.” Liu then selects the products he wants from a “library” of similar molecules. Paraphrasing Liu’s comments, Service says, “in this case molecules found to be reactive can easily be identified, selected, and put to work, just by borrowing tools nature has used for billions of years.” In his article entitled, “Synthetic Chemists Cast DNA as Molecular Dance Master,” Service builds on the choreography metaphor.
How many times do we have to point out the fallacy of this kind of argument? This is not evolution; it is intelligent design! Liu is preprogramming and strategizing and coaxing and filtering and selecting and choreographing a desired result. These are attributes of mind and purpose, not chance. Even if you outsource the production of building blocks to a quasi-random source then select what you want, you are not “evolving” products, you are designing them. Nature has neither the desire nor the power to select optimum designs unless you personify her as a goddess. This kind of directed evolution is anathema to the purist naturalist, and should have been scorned by Science magazine and condemned by Cardinal Ruse. Without a choreographer, you won’t get a dance. The blind, undirected dancers will step on each other’s toes until a dogpile results.
from http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Again for the Science mag article you needed to sign up....
Traffic Controls in the Cell Prevent Traffic Jams 04/14/2003
Cells have a variety of cargos that need shipping, including messenger RNA particles, mitochondria, endosomes, lipid droplets, and more. These are continually on the move in the cell, going from one part of the cell to another, where needed. They are carried along by molecular motors that move along tracks called microtubules that have a + (plus) end and a - (minus) end. Each transporter moves toward its specific polarity: kinesin moves toward plus, and dynein moves toward minus. Both motors can grab a piece of cargo simultaneously, but this creates a situation like a boxcar being pulled by engines facing opposite directions. How does the cell coordinate the movements? Is it a tug-o-war, or is there some switching action that coordinates the traffic?
Apparently the latter. In the April 15 issue of Current Biology, Steven P. Gross of UC Irvine reviews today’s understanding on the subject. Although much remains to be explained, a complex of proteins appears to act like springs to engage or disengage the transporter when necessary, as if putting the idle engine in neutral so the driving engine can have priority. In addition, additional regulation is needed to govern which direction has priority. The result is that even with one-way engines, interference is avoided, so that cargo can move both forward and backward on the track, and even reverse direction if the need arises. By removing these controls, scientists have been able to create traffic jams and pile-ups in a system that otherwise works in smooth coordination.
All this, and no need for traffic reports every six minutes on the radio. How many commuters have any conception of the fact that deep inside their bodies, a transportation network vastly exceeding the freeway system of a large city, functions smoothly, night and day, without accidents?
Out of mercy, we will spare you a description of the complex procedures involved in getting a new protein into a mitochondrion, described in another article in the same issue of Current Biology.
http://www.current-biology.com (Note: this is their homepage, sub needed to get article)
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
DK: This took billions of yrs acorrding to evolutionists, so in a billions yrs time we should get the traffic problem storted....
Origin of Sex: “Queen of Evolutionary Problems” 04/14/2003
Despite the suggestions given on the PBS Evolution TV episode Why Sex?, the origin of sex is still hard to explain in evolutionary terms, because it involves a high cost without a clear benefit. Now, according to a piece in the April 15 Current Biology, the conundrum got deeper. Some evolutionists have hypothesized that sex provides an advantage by purging the genome of debilitating mutations. Presumably, asexual organisms have a tougher time shedding mutations than sexual populations, who can dilute a mutation by half every time a couple mates. A tiny crustacean named Darwinula stevensoni, however, appears to have maintained its genomic integrity across long ages and widely separated habitats. This may be due to enhanced DNA repair mechanisms; so it not only avoids mutation load, but has the asexual benefit of passing 100% of its genome along.
Reporter Nigel Williams remarks that there are now more than 20 hypotheses concerning the advantages of sex. He calls it the ‘queen of evolutionary problems’. Williams leaves the problem unsolved, stating that if this crustacean has enhanced DNA repair, “then these small crustaceans may have beaten sex at its own ubiquitous and influential game.”
If this is the queen of evolutionary problems, then the king is how you get life at all without intelligent design, and the joker is the evolutionary storyteller. Good parents warn their children that if you tell one lie, you usually have to tell additional lies to back up the first lie, until you get caught in your own “tangled web” of deceit. Here, evolutionists have told the whopper that you can get a universe and life without design, and now they’ve devised 20+ tales in response to the interrogation, “If what you told me is true, then why did sex evolve, when it costs far more than any supposed selective advantage it would give an organism?” The only way out of this web is to go back to square one and start over with the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The truth: http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=John+1&NKJV_version=yes&language=english&x=15&y=11
from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
Flood articles:
Three Sisters–evidence for Noah’s Flood
Getting to know the three sisters reveals more than just natural beauty
By Tas Walker
First published in:
Creation 25(2):38–42
March–May 2003
Full article here:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v25n2_sisters.asp
Has diagrams and pics....
Extract:
For these rocks, long-age geologists have assigned an age of around 230 million years based on their fossil content and their relative position in the sequence of rock layers in the region. Recently, a creationist geologist measured the carbon-14 content of a piece of wood found in a quarry in the overlying Hawkesbury Sandstone. Long-age geologists wouldn’t bother analyzing for carbon-14 because they believe the rock is 230 million years old. All carbon-14 should have disappeared by 50,000 years, at the most. There should be no carbon-14 left. However, the analysis confirmed a small but significant amount of carbon-14 in the wood—clear evidence that the sandstone is less than 50,000 years old. The small level of carbon-14 does not reflect an age, but rather the low concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere before the Flood (carbon-14 has been building up since the Flood).
Article: Dating Dilemma:
Fossil wood in ‘ancient’ sandstone
by Andrew Snelling
First published in:
Creation Ex Nihilo 21(3):39–41
June–August 1999
Full article here:http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v21n3_date-dilemma.asp
Extracts:1)The laboratory staff were not told exactly where the fossil wood came from, or its supposed evolutionary age, to ensure there would be no resultant bias. Following routine lab procedure, the sample (their lab code GX–23644) was treated first with hot dilute hydrochloric acid to remove any carbonates, and then with hot dilute caustic soda to remove any humic acids or other organic contaminants. After washing and drying, it was combusted to recover any carbon dioxide for the radiocarbon analysis.
The analytical report from the laboratory indicated detectable radiocarbon had been found in the fossil wood, yielding a supposed 14C ‘age’ of 33,720 ± 430 years BP (before present). This result had been ‘13C corrected’ by the lab staff, after they had obtained a d13CPDB value of –24.0 ‰.9 This value is consistent with the analyzed carbon in the fossil wood representing organic carbon from the original wood, and not from any contamination. Of course, if this fossil wood really were 225–230 million years old as is supposed, it should be impossible to obtain a finite radiocarbon age, because all detectable 14C should have decayed away in a fraction of that alleged time — a few tens of thousands of years.
2)Although demonstrating that the fossil wood cannot be millions of years old, the radiocarbon dating has not provided its true age. However, a finite radiocarbon ‘age’ for this fossil wood is neither inconsistent nor unexpected within a Creation/Flood framework of Earth history. Buried catastrophically in sand by the raging Flood waters only about 4,500 years ago, this fossil wood contains less than the expected amount of radiocarbon, because of a stronger magnetic field back then shielding the Earth from incoming cosmic rays. The Flood also buried a lot of carbon, so that the laboratory’s calculated 14C ‘age’ (based on the assumption of an atmospheric proportion in the past roughly the same as that in 1950) is much greater than the true age.
Human Genome Project complete ... again
16 April 2003
The Human Genome Project has officially finished its task of sequencing the human genome, according to a press conference on Monday, 14 April 2003. A ‘working draft’ was completed in June 2000 (see Genome Mania), to much fanfare, but this new sequence is much more accurate.
Does this mean that the work is over? Definitely not. First, it could take another 10 to 20 years before every last ‘letter’ in the human genetic code is in place (the current researchers intentionally ignored some of the more complex areas of DNA because they don’t produce proteins). Moreover, biologists have only begun to explore a much deeper mystery: how does the human body actually ‘read’ the instructions in human genes to produce the complex variety of proteins essential for life? And how do these genes direct the production of the hundreds of thousands of components that make up a human body?
Despite years of continuing investigation by a host of brilliant scientists, they still can’t explain how the human genome works. Yet throughout the project, many biologists argued that the sequence has resulted from mere chance and natural selection. It’s sad to see how evolutionary assumptions have blinded so many scientists to the most obvious message of DNA. Design by an intelligent Creator.
Genome Mania: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2001/0309_genome.asp
news from: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2003/0416genome.asp
Gene for Speciation Found? 04/15/2003
What splits a species in two, such that reproductive isolation occurs? A team of Cambridge geneticists, writing in the April 14 preprints of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, thinks they have uncovered a gene in fruit flies that drives different species apart, making hybrids incapable of producing fertile or viable offspring.
In the 1940s, Dobzhansky and Muller theorized how genes might diverge between two populations and become lethal to each other:
Their theory envisions that during or after speciation different alleles will evolve in different species. These alleles can reach fixation by either positive selection or neutral drift, but during this period, there is no selection against potentially deleterious interactions with derived alleles that are evolving in other species. These deleterious interactions will be observed only in hybrids between the species.
John Roote et al claim to have discovered a hybridization gene Hmr in fruit flies that keeps Drosophila melanogaster (the widely-studied species) from being able to produce fertile hybrids with others. The gene has diverged rapidly, they claim, between various species of Drosophila, at an “extraordinarily high rate” of amino acid substitutions, insertions, and deletions, such that crosses between species are either sterile or lethal. This hints at a mechanism that produces reproductive isolation; “Population genetic analysis will be required to test the hypothesis,” they caution, “that the divergence of Hmr reflects positive selection, but our present results do strongly suggest that this divergence cannot be explained as nonfunctionalization of Hmr caused by a loss of selective constraint.” Other clues suggest to them that the changes are not due solely to neutral drift (i.e., random substitutions due to mutations or copying errors), but are being acted on by natural selection in some way, and quickly: “Our first glimpses of speciation genes therefore suggest that they may have the special property of rapid sequence divergence.” So have they found the answer to speciation? Can one rapidly-evolving gene explain it? They map out the action items, in conclusion (emphasis added):
These findings raise important questions about the mechanism of species incompatibilities. If the rapid evolution of speciation genes is found to be typical, it might suggest that multiple substitutions with synergistic effects are required before a gene becomes functionally diverged enough between species to cause a hybrid phenotype. Alternatively, a few substitutions, or even a single substitution, might be sufficient to create a hybrid incompatibility allele, with their high divergence rates reflecting the fact that many substitutions must occur before one has functional significance in hybrids. These possibilities can be addressed by investigating the mechanism of hybrid lethality by using the powerful genetic resources of D. melanogaster. Identifying the genes that interact with or are downstream of Hmr will also help to answer whether hybrid incompatibility genes are in general evolving rapidly.
The paper is entitled, “A rapidly evolving MYB-related protein causes species isolation in Drosophila.”
Judge: You may now question the witness. Prosecutor: Thank you, your honor. Mr. Roote, what led you to conclude this gene had evolved rapidly? (We found homologues in other species with numerous substitutions, insertions, and deletions.) And yet these genes were functional, correct? (Yes.) How did you know they were homologous? (Presumably they derived from a common ancestor.) How do you know they had a common ancestor? (Because they have these homologous genes.) I see. How did you calibrate the speed at which this gene diverged? (We used the molecular clock, the rate at which mutations accumulate.) And how is the molecular clock calibrated? (By invoking the time of the last common ancestor, and counting the changes since then.) In this exhibit, I show two family trees of arthropods from two scientists that differ radically in their placement and timing of the last common ancestor. Can you tell me which one I should use to calibrate the molecular clock? Defense Attorney: Objection! Teasing the witness! Judge: Sustained. Prosecutor: Did the rapidly-evolving gene you describe run on a different molecular clock than other genes on the same chromosome? (Apparently, probably because it was being acted on by positive selection.) Did you discover any evidence of positive selection, or that the gene led to any increase in information or improvement of function in the new species? (No, but we assume it must have, because the nature of the changes appeared to be non-random.) Yet all species of fruit flies are still fruit flies, correct? (Yes.) Did you start and end with fruit flies? (Of course.)
Are you aware of any species of Drosophila that has a new organ or function that is in some way superior, or more fit, than another species? (Well, some are adapted to different habitats or food sources.) But they all have the same basic structures and functions: wings, mouth parts, and so forth, is that correct? (I suppose so.) Nothing that might involve new genetic instructions that imply an increase in information or function? (Adaptation does not always have to be upward...) I understand, but what I’m asking is, do you have any evidence from your observations of fruit fly genes that one species has evolved a new organ or function that a previous species did not have? (I suppose if you ask it that way, the answer is no.) And yet your paper says that multiple substitutions would have had to occur in synergy to produce new function? (Yes.) Any evidence that has happened? (No, except that the substitutions did not appear to be random.) But you could not determine if these changes occurred together? (No.) Is synergy permissible in evolutionary theory? (What do you mean?) I mean, having several random changes occurring synergistically – wouldn’t that be teleological? Defense Attorney: Objection! Leading question. Judge: Sustained; rephrase the question without the T word. Prosecutor: Mr. Roote, you stated in your conclusion that multiple substitutions with synergistic effects would be required, or that many substitutions must occur before the gene has functional significance. Do you have any evidence that this occurred? (No, other than that the genes do show a marked degree of divergence now.) Do you know of a way that unguided mutations could produce this synergy of effects? (Only via natural selection.) And yet each mutation would have to confer a functional advantage in some way to be selected, is that right? (Yes, that is my understanding of how natural selection works.) Did you and your colleagues map out any plausible sequence of changes in this gene, and calculate any fitness benefit or cost of each substitution? (No, that would be highly speculative and nearly impossible to test.) Is there any other functional part of a fruit fly for which this has been done? (Pause... Not to my knowledge.)
Do you feel your paper lends support to the theory of common descent? (Absolutely; not that there is not a lot more work to do, but we are slowly putting the pieces of a vast puzzle together to attack this major question of how species originate, which will take a great deal of time and the efforts of scientists around the world for a long time to come.) So Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species 164 years ago, but even in our age of genomics, the puzzle remains to be solved? (Yes.) Did you ever consider how your data might fit into any alternative paradigm? Defense Attorney: Objection! Irrelevant. Religion has no place in a scientific discussion! Judge: Overruled; counsel made no reference to religion in his question. Please restate the question. Prosecutor: I assume you believe that all living things, including fruit flies, derive from a common ancestor, is that right? (Yes, that is the only scientific approach.) Did you ever take your raw data and consider whether it might fit with any alternative approach that does not use common descent as a starting assumption? (Long pause and quizzical look... We did not consider that possibility, no, but...) Prosecutor: No further questions, your honor.
news from: http://www.creationsafaris.com/crevnews.htm
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Dark Knight
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