evolution

Darwin’s Blunder Lives On

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From Creation Evolution Headlines

David F. Coppedge writes

Darwin’s Blunder Lives On

A major journal publishes a paper
claiming that natural selection is
like human engineering

Darwin’s blunder was criticised by scientists in his own day. He likened natural selection to artificial selection: i.e., human breeding of plants and animals. The two concepts could not be farther apart. They are opposites. Now, three guys print the same blunder out in the open with shameless bravado.

Weinberg’s Law: an expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy.

What farmers and ranchers do as they try to produce better tomatoes or stronger horses has nothing to do with Darwin’s theory. Breeders have foresight. They have intentionality. They set a goal, and can gauge the success of their efforts by measurable results. Darwin’s Stuff Happens Law has none of the above.

Charley specifically denounced any role for foresight, intentionality, or purpose in the operation of natural selection (NS). NS was to be a blind, unguided mechanical process all the way down. Darwin’s own “intention” was to rid biology of any role for a Creator God or designer of any kind. And yet he repeatedly used a fallacious argument from analogy for support, claiming that natural selection is like artificial selection. He was still claiming this in 1876 in the 6th edition of Origin of Species, 17 years after the 1st edition.

Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature’s power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest. [Origin, 6th ed., ch. 4, p85]

Ah, the fittest. Yes, that was the purpose of the blind watchmaker: increasing an organism’s “fitness” (whatever that is). Please re-read our entry, “Fitness for Dummies” to recall that fitness is a slippery, undefinable tautological term that can mean anything the evolutionist wants it to mean. But why would a blind process even know or care about the definition of fitness? Stuff Happens; that’s fitness in a nutshell. Anyone who stuffs that idea into his skull has it in a nut shell.

Darwin never saw his own fallacy. He should have known better, having been a pigeon fancier and a friend of breeders. He should have known that the outlandish varieties produced by breeders, like poodles and dachshunds and pouter pigeons would never have arisen naturally—indeed, they could not survive in the wild. But Charley reasoned that if breeders could accentuate small variations to those extremes, couldn’t Nature accomplish much more, given millions of years? “I can see no limit,” he said. That’s because his eyes were closed, and he was daydreaming in his imagination.

Summing up, Darwin thought (illogically) that if human intelligence can accentuate variations for a purpose, why couldn’t blind nature accentuate variations for no purpose at all? He reasoned that Nature is just like a thinking, rational breeder, that purpose is just like chance, that foresight is like blindness, and that intention is like aimlessness.

He didn’t get it. In his new book Darwin’s Bluff, Robert Shedinger quotes from Darwin’s own correspondence how he persisted in this fallacy to his dying day.

Darwin’s disciples today still sweep on to the same grand fallacy. Here is a spectacular example printed by Nature yesterday.

Engineering is evolution: a perspective on design processes to engineer biology (Nature Communications, 29 April 2024). These three Darwinians (Simeon D. Castle, Michiel Stock and and Thomas E. Gorochowski) do a one-up on Darwin. Not only is evolution like breeding, they assert; it’s like engineering! Indeed, they say, engineering is evolution! The paper is open access, so go ahead: watch them sweep on to the grand fallacy.

Read the rest of the article here

Apollo Astronaut Doubts Consensus Age of Moon

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How Old Is The Moon?

From Creation Evolution Headlines

It started when he was told the same
moon rock had two vastly different ages

How old is the moon? Is it 4.6 billion years old, as consensus geologists insist, and as textbooks uncritically teach?

The Apollo astronauts were given extensive training in geology so that they would know what rocks on the moon were significant. This was true for Brigadier General Charles M. Duke (USAF), the Lunar Module Pilot on Apollo 16 who became the 10th man to walk on the moon. One of his geology trainers was Harrison Schmitt, a PhD geologist, who would fly on the final mission, Apollo 17 (see 14 Dec 2022). Apollo 16 (April 16-27, 1972) was the only mission to study the lunar highlands in the Descartes region, with its elevation 7,400 feet higher than the Sea of Tranquillity explored by Apollo 11. (Charlie Duke was also the CapCom, or capsule communicator, for Apollo 11.)

During their three extensive extra-vehicular activities (EVAs), including 16.6 miles of drives on the lunar rover, Charlie Duke and Mission Commander John Young collected 209 pounds of lunar samples.

Moonrock, by Alan Bean, depicts John Young and Charlie Duke (Apollo 16) collecting lunar samples. Used by permission from Alan Bean (Apollo 12 astronaut).

On April 6, during an interview before an audience of nearly a thousand people, Duke related a strange thing that the experts said about one of the lunar rocks he collected.

I picked up a rock on the moon, and it was about the size of my hand. And on one end it dated 3.9 billion years. On this end it dated 1.6 billion years. So there was two billion years between six inches! [audience laughter]. And, something was wrong here, somewhere!

Duke went on to say that he “began to doubt a little bit,” but not to the point of disbelieving evolution. At the time, he was a non-Christian, thoroughly preoccupied with his own career success within the NASA community. It was only later, when he became a Christ follower after seeing the dramatic change in his wife Dotty’s conversion, that his earlier doubts about that rock made sense. “I became a believer, and I went from an evolutionist to a creationist.”

At age 88, Charlie Duke is the youngest of four surviving Apollo astronauts among the 12 men who walked on the moon. Another Apollo astronaut who was a young-earth creationist and Christ follower was Apollo 15 astronaut James Irwin (1930-1991).

Bit of a problem with the time line (yet again)

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Ken Kam writes:

Animal Evolution Pushed Back Hundreds of Millions of Years

New sponge pushes back the “settled science” on evolution but doesn’t change the biblical narrative—since people didn’t evolve from sponges.

by Ken Ham on November 12, 2021Featured in Ken Ham

“Newly discovered sponge-like animals could change the known history of animal evolution.” Claims like this are ones we often hear—the evolutionary story and timeline are constantly changing as new finds upset everything they thought they knew, such as when animals first evolved from sponges (if they even evolved from sponges—that’s much debated in the evolutionary community!).

Now, some will claim this is just how science works. After all, our knowledge about the natural world adjusts as we make new discoveries. But it’s interesting to note how frequently this happens with the idea of evolution—timelines that were “settled science” or “undebatable” are suddenly changed by hundreds of millions of years (no small amount of imaginary time!), and now everything must change in light of the new interpretation of the evidence. It seems stories about such changes are now happening weekly! Why is the story changing so frequently?

The reason evolutionary ideas are constantly in flux, with “settled science” being overturned constantly, is that millions of years/evolution is the wrong worldview and the wrong starting point.

Well, because animals didn’t evolve from sponges (or anything else!) in the first place. The reason evolutionary ideas are constantly in flux, with “settled science” being overturned constantly, is that millions of years/evolution is the wrong worldview and the wrong starting point. It relies on the faulty interpretations of people who weren’t there, who don’t know everything, who frequently make mistakes, and who are attempting to explain the origin of the universe and all life apart from the eyewitness account God has given us in his Word! Wrong starting points mean wrong conclusions regarding the data.

When we start with God’s Word, we have an unchanging basis on which to ground our thinking. Only then can we properly understand the world around us and develop models and hypotheses that are consistent with both the evidence and the eyewitness of all history.

Read the full article here

Creation Ministries: Snakes v. Cane Toads

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A good article from Creation Ministries about why snakes adapting to cane toads is natural selection not evolution

Do toads goad snake evolution?

by David Catchpoole

First published: 27 April 2006 (GMT+10)
Re-featured on homepage: 10 March 2021 (GMT+10)
toad

When leading public institutions repeatedly broadcast as fact that ‘we see evolution happening today’,1 it’s not surprising that many people believe it.

One example is a recent prime-time breakfast radio segment on Australia’s national broadcaster, ABC Radio National. The University of Sydney’s Professor Richard Shine told the presenter Fran Kelly that he and his co-researchers studying snakes have observed ‘genuine evolutionary changes’.2

What were they? Allegedly snakes are evolving to cope with the spread of cane toads across the Australian continent. (Cane toads were introduced to north Queensland in the 1930s, and have steadily expanded their range, moving south into New South Wales and west into the Northern Territory.) The changes are making snakes ‘much less vulnerable’ to the toxin in the toad’s skin. (One reason that the cane toad has spread so rapidly is its toxic gland that can kill native predators that eat it.)Creationists do not dispute natural selection—indeed it is an important part of the biblical creation/Fall/
Flood/Dispersion model, and was theorized by creationists even before Darwin!

But as the interview progressed, the discerning listener would have picked up from Professor Shine’s own words that he and his colleagues had not observed evolution at all. Rather, it was an example of natural selection acting to favour certain already-existing genetically determined traits in the snake populations. Creationists do not dispute natural selection—indeed it is an important part of the biblical creation/Fall/Flood/Dispersion model, and was theorized by creationists even before Darwin!

The researchers had firstly been able to rule out learned behaviour as a factor in this case. ‘We’ve done a bunch of trials to see if it could just be that the snakes are learning and so forth but they seem to be remarkably stupid …’, said Professor Shine, going on to emphasize the genetic basis to snake behaviour:

‘Basically you’ve got a strong genetic component to feeding responses, and some snakes really go mad on eating frogs and others really want to eat nothing but mammals and so forth, and it’s actually pretty sophisticated. And there’s a lot of work overseas showing that even within a single litter of baby snakes you’ve got genetic variation in what kinds of things they treat as prey. And it’s just that the only snakes that survive after the toads arrive are the ones that happen to be born with a set of genes saying: “If it looks and smells like a cane toad, don’t eat it.”’

And genetically-determined physical attributes such as the snake’s head dimensions and body size are key factors too.

‘Essentially the size of the toad you can eat depends on the size of your head, so if you’ve got a small head you can’t eat a very big toad.’

So, if you’re a snake, having a small head stops you eating big toads, which have more poison, therefore helps you to survive. And having a big body helps as well:

Read the full story here

Not So Much Water On Mars After All

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Remember all the hype about evidence of flowing water on Mars and the possibility of life being there?

Well NASA is now saying that the gullies on Mars were not caused by erosion due to water, although the presence of some salty deposits that indicate water has not yet been ruled out.

A lot less sexy than the “life on Mars” meme but not unexpected.

From the ABC:

Mars gullies not caused by flowing water, NASA says

 

Gullies on MarsPHOTO: Scientists examined high-resolution compositional data from more than 100 gully sites throughout Mars.(NASA: JPL-Caltech/UA/JHUAPL)
RELATED STORY: Evidence of flowing water found on Mars
MAP: United States

New NASA research has shown the gullies on Mars were not formed by flowing liquid water.

Key points:

  • Study of gullies on Mars found no evidence of water or its by-products
  • Scientists say gullies could have been formed on Mars by freezing and thawing carbon dioxide frost
  • Previous research showed signs of water on slopes and streaks on Mars

 

The data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter released on Monday will allow researchers to narrow down theories about how Martian gullies formed and reveal more details about Mars’ geologic processes, NASA said in a statement.

The gullies are different to another prominent feature of Mars— slopes and streaks called recurring slope lineage (RSL) which are distinguished by seasonal darkening and fading.

Water in the form of hydrated salt was identified at RSL sites in September last year, also using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data.

Chemical analysis of dark streaks on the surface of the planet identified the presence of hydrated salts that are the signature of liquid salty water.

But the new research — which focused solely on gullies — found no trace of water, by looking at the gully formation process and adding composition information to previous imaging, NASA said.

Mars gulliesPHOTO: The highly marked Mars gullies resembles gullies on Earth that are carved by water. (NASA: JPL-Caltech/UA/JHUAPL)

 

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland in the US examined high-resolution compositional data from more than 100 gully sites throughout Mars.

NASA said the findings showed no mineralogical evidence of liquid water or its by-products.

The research suggested the gullies could have been formed by the freeze and thaw of carbon dioxide frost.

The findings were published in Geophysical Research Letters.

“On Earth and on Mars, we know that the presence of phyllosilicates — clays — or other hydrated minerals indicates formation in liquid water,” lead paper author Jorge Nunez said in a NASA statement.

“In our study, we found no evidence for clays or other hydrated minerals in most of the gullies we studied, and when we did see them, they were erosional debris from ancient rocks, exposed and transported down-slope, rather than altered in more recent flowing water.

 

“These gullies are carving into the terrain and exposing clays that likely formed billions of years ago when liquid water was more stable on the Martian surface.”

Amazing Numbers of Stone Tools in Africa

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Creationists believe that evolution is fundamentally flawed. I tend to agree with them on that, especially on the issue of how life began.

But here is an article that shows that stone agers must have had factories for the mass production of tools if they were to fit into the Young Age timeline.

From godandscience.org

Trillions of Stone Age Artifacts: A Young Earth Anthropology Paradox
by Naturalis Historia

Stone tools galore!

Young earth creationists say that the “Stone Age” in Africa lasted less than 500 years. However, a survey of the African landscape shows that there are 15 to 150 trillion stone tools, requiring hundreds of thousands of years (minimum) to produce. Did God plant all those tools to trick us into believing they had been produced over millennia?

Rich Deem, editor

Introduction

Trillions of stone artifacts cover the surface of the African continent. The product of the manufacturing of stone tools by hunters and gathers over long periods of time, these stone artifacts literally carpet the ground in some places in Egypt and Libya.

Just how much Stone-Age produced rock could be strewn across the African continent?

Imagine a volume of rockequivalent to 42-84 million Great Pyramids of Giza.

The “million” isn’t a typo. That number sounds absolutely fantastic, doesn’t it? Let’s take a look at how these numbers were derived.

PLoS Study

The results of a study just published (seereferencesbelow) shows how incredibly dense stone artifacts can be in some places in Africa. Working in a remote location in southern Libya, researchers took surveys from hundreds of one or two-meter square plots. From the tens of thousands of artifacts found in them, they estimateda minimum density of 250,000 stone artifacts per square kilometeris present in this portion of Libya.

And this only included what was visible on the surface.

Figure C of the supplemental material from ????? PLOSone
Figure C of the supplemental material from the paper by Foley RA, Lahr MM (2015) Lithic Landscapes: Early Human Impact from Stone Tool Production on the Central Saharan Environment. PLoS ONE 10(3): e0116482. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0116482. This shows the rocky landscape of southern Libya and the artifacts that are found in high abundance.

The researchers surveyed other published estimates of stone-tool densities in other areas of Africa. For example, some parts of the Nubian Desert average 12 million artifacts per square kilometer. They also calculate expected stone production given certain assumptions about population size and stone tool use over time. Overall, the researchers estimate that stone tool production across the entire continent of Africa has resulted in an average of 500,000 to 5,000,000 artifacts per square kilometer.

Africa is roughly 30 million square kilometers in area, so that would put the total number of stone artifacts between 15 and 150 trillion. Yes, that is trillion with a T—an astounding number.

The authors of this paper turn their estimate of stone production into a volumetric estimate and reach the following equally amazing conclusion:

“Taking the maximum figures, this yields … 2.1 x 10 14 cubic meters of rock. This is the equivalent of 84 million Great Pyramids of Giza… or 42 million taking into account the uneven hominid occupation suggested above. To extend the comparison further, it would be the equivalent of finding between 1.2 and 2.7 Great Pyramids per square kilometer throughout Africa.”Lithic Landscapes: Early Human Impact from Stone Tool Production on the Central Saharan Environment.

A few months ago I wrote (How Rare Are Stone Age Artifacts? A Visit to a Stone Tool-Making Factory in South America) about a dense stone artifact site in South Africa and stated that in just a few acres there had to be billions upon billions of artifacts. As well, in South America alone, there must be hundreds of billions of artifacts.

But this new analysis shows that my estimates were far too conservative.

 

Full article here

Double Coded DNA

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There is just no way this could have happened by random mutation. DNA is one of the biggest, most explicit declarations by God, to all who will listen, that there is a creator.

From the ABC

Scientists discover second, secret DNA code

Friday, 13 December 2013
AFP

DNA

While we all know DNA instructs our cells how to make proteins, scientists have now discovered a second DNA code that suggests the body uses the same alphabet to speak two different languages.

The findings in the journal Science may have big implications for how medical experts use the genomes of patients to interpret and diagnose diseases, say researchers.

The newfound genetic code within deoxyribonucleic acid, the hereditary material that exists in nearly every cell of the body, was written right on top of the DNA code scientists had already cracked.

Rather than concerning itself with proteins, this one instructs the cells on how genes are controlled.

Its discovery means DNA changes, or mutations that come with age or in response to viruses, may be doing more than what scientists previously thought, say the researchers.

“For over 40 years we have assumed that DNA changes affecting the genetic code solely impact how proteins are made,” says lead author Dr John Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and of medicine.

“Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture.”

“Many DNA changes that appear to alter protein sequences may actually cause disease by disrupting gene control programs or even both mechanisms simultaneously.”

Double meaning

Scientists already knew that the genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons.

But now researchers have figured out that some of these codons have two meanings.

Coined duons, these new elements of DNA language have one meaning related to protein sequence and another that is related to gene control.

The latter instructions “appear to stabilise certain beneficial features of proteins and how they are made,” say the researchers.

The discovery was made as part of the international collaboration of research groups known as the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project, or ENCODE.

It is funded by the US National Human Genome Research Institute with the goal of finding out where and how the directions for biological functions are stored in the human genome.