Darwin, Then and Now

Archive for the ‘What Scientists Say’ Category

Jerry Coyne, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True, conveniently circumvents any reference to the butterfly, as does Darwin-Discovering the Tree of Life by Niles Eldridge. The California State sponsored website, “Understanding Evolution,” website completely ignores the notorious nature of butterflies—metamorphosis.

So, why is the evolution industry silent on butterfly metamorphosis? The answer is simple—the same DNA is found in all four life cycles; egg, caterpillar (larva), cocoon (pupa) and butterfly (adult). Metamorphosis, to the theory of evolution, is an enigma.

For over 3,500 years, to the Egyptians, Chinese, and Greeks, the butterfly symbolism was derived from the unique butterfly life cycles. The egg first develops into the caterpillar before transitioning into the cocoon. Amazingly, inside the cocoon, the caterpillar is destroyed before developing into the stunningly colorful butterfly cycle.

According to the theory of evolution, the DNA (genotype) determines the form (phenotype). The fact that the metamorphosis of the butterfly uses the same DNA in all four cycles, contradicts the theory of evolution. 

With the same DNA producing different forms, the message is clear: DNA is not the blueprint controller of life. Genetic evidence from the butterfly undermines the Central Dogma of evolution—“one gene, one protein.”

The butterfly is not an isolated phenomenon. Italian geneticist Giuesppe Sermonti points out that “examples of highly divergent forms possessing one and the same DNA are so conspicuous and so numerous that the marvel is that they have attracted so little attention.”

Even more astounding in the case of the butterfly, Sermonti notes, “what we call metamorphosis is not really a change in form. Once the pupa, or chrysalis, stage is reached, the caterpillar starts emptying itself: its organs dissolve, and its outer covering is shed. Only certain groups of cells, called marginal disks, remain vital. From these cells develop all the structures of adult.”

The larva of the butterfly not only changes form, but actually dissolves before rebuilding into the structure of a butterfly—a new life-form. From the same DNA arises a completely different organism. According to Sermonti, the same DNA, then, can play different roles: “DNA may lend itself to such diverse forms, but it is not the DNA that imposes the blueprint.”

The presence of the same DNA in different life-forms has been given the term “genomic equivalence”. This means that control of the cell is beyond the DNA, or “epigenetic.”

Brian Goodman, Canadian developmental biologist and key founder of theoretical biology, focuses on the methods of mathematics and physics to understand processes in biology concludes –

While genes are responsible for determining which molecules an organism can produce, the molecular composition of organisms does not, in general, determine their form.

H. Frederik Nijhout of the Department of Biology at Duke University, a critic of Crick’s central dogma, came to the conclusion that “the only strictly correct view of the function of genes [DNA] is that they supply cells, and ultimately organisms, with chemical materials.”

The butterfly nightmare phenomena in evolution adherents are real, the result of the holding on to the belief: DNA mutation + natural selection = evolution—a theory not supported by evidence in nature.

State funded evolutionary education along with the high priests of evolution, Jerry Coyne, and Niles Eldridge, should now deliver a therapeutic service to humanity by addressing blatant contradictions between the theory of evolution and natural history.

No wonder French geneticist, discoverer of the Down syndrome, Jérôme Lejeune, cut to the chase – “There is no theory of evolution.”

This year, 2010, has not been a good year for the “out of Africa” evolutionary theory of human origins. The following is why.

In October 2009, Time Magazine recognized Ardipithecus ramidus, now known as “Ardi,” the number one of “Top 10 Scientific Discoveries” of 2009. The journal Science declared Ardi the “breakthrough of the year.”

Ardi, an nearly complete fossilized female skeleton, was discovered by Timothy Douglas White, an American Paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley in the arid badlands near the Awash River in Ethiopia in 1994.

Examination and description of Ardi took nearly 15 years before releasing publication. Although it is not known whether Ardi’s offspring actually developed into Homo sapiens, the discovery was expected to be of great significance since Ardi is the oldest known hominid fossil. Ardi had been theorized to be an ancestor to Australopithecus afarensis, more commonly known as Lucy.

John Noble Wilford, science writer for the New York Times reported that David Pilbeam, a professor of human evolution at Harvard University said that the Ardi skeleton represents “a genus plausibly ancestral to Australopithecus [Lucy]” and began ‘to fill in the temporal and structural ‘space’ between the apelike common ancestor and Australopithecus.”

In the excitement, the Discovery Channel produced a series of articles and videos arguing how Ardi, not the chimpanzee, were the common ancestors to humans. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, publisher of the journal Science, developed an educational series in five separate publications on Ardi.

Since Ardi was discovered in east Africa, the finding gained further support for the popular “out of Africa” model first proposed by Charles Darwin. In The Descent of Man, Darwin hypothesized - 

In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is, therefore, probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man’s nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere

Almost fifty years after the publication of The Descent of Man, Darwin’s speculations seemed to be supported following the discovery of numerous hominid fossils in several areas of Africa. The “out of Africa” model continued to be the most widely recognized theory since the publication of the Descent of Man—until May 2010.

Svante Pääbo of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany published in the journal Science in May 7, 2010, an article on the sequencing of the genome of the Neanderthal man entitled “A Draft Sequence of the Neanderthal Genome”.

According to Gregory Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow, N.Y., Svante Pääbo’s “publication of the full Neanderthal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement.” Pääbo noted, “In some of us they live on, a little bit” with on major caveat – not in African descendants.

Mark Henderson, science writer for The Sunday Times, London, explains – “Human genomes from France, China, and Papua New Guinea showed Neanderthal signatures, but not those from West and Southern Africa.” The absence of Neanderthal genetic evidence in Africans has devastated Darwin’s treasured “out of Africa” theory pushing the relevance of Ardi as an ancestor to humans into extinction.

Genetics is not Ardi’s only problem with the “out of Africa” theory—so is the paleontological analysis. Time Magazine, and the journals Nature and Science, after more thoroughly examining the available data, has started slow process of recanting on the role of Ardi as an early ancestor to man.

In the Time article entitled “Ardi: The Human Ancestor Who Wasn’t” now highlight that “Two new articles being published in Science question some of the major conclusions of Ardi’s researchers, including whether this small, strange-looking creature is even a human ancestor at all.”  

The British science journal Nature reports: “Ardi may be more of an ape than human.” In the article, Esteban Sarmiento, a primatologist at the Human Evolution Foundation argues in the article Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus ramidus, that the Ardi could not be an evolutionary ancestor to humans:

[White] showed no evidence that Ardi is on the human lineage…. Those characteristics that he posited as relating exclusively to humans also exist in ape and ape fossils that we consider not to be in the human lineage.

With Ardi as the celebutante, the evolution industry, in desperation to connect the dots for a human evolution theory, has once again fallen into another humiliating about-face based on the inescapable scientific evidence.

As the “out of Africa” model undergoes extinction, scientists are beginning to investigate the “multiregional origin of humans” theory in which man is simply “a single, continuous human species”—a theory approaching the recorded biblical account for the origin of man.

The fruit fly is celebrating 100 years of research. Charles W. Woodworth at the University of California, Berkley, at the turn of the twentieth century, was the first to use the fruit fly as model in the study of genetics. Today, Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, has become one of the most studied organisms in biological research, particularly in the field of genetics.

In 1910 following Woodworth’s footsteps, at Columbia University from the top floor of Schermerhorn Hall, now known as the Fly Room, Thomas Hunt Morgan confirmed and extended Gregor Mendel’s basic principles of genetics. A year later, Morgan published his findings in Science, establishing the foundation for the emerging neo-Darwinism movement.

Morgan, in the book entitled The Mechanism of Mendelian Inheritance (1915) demonstrated how mutations using radiation on two-winged fruit flies resulted in four-winged fruit flies. The four-winged fruit fly was widely heralded as the earliest evidence that the first evolutionary step to produce a new species was a mutation.

The question, however, centered on whether the mutated four-winged fruit fly was a new species or an unsustainable aberrational freek. By 1963 after decades of research, the question could be answered definitively. Ernst Mayr, Charles Darwin’s twentieth century Bulldog, viewed the mutated four-winged fruit flies as “such evident freaks that these monsters can be designated only as ‘hopeless.’ They are so utterly unbalanced that they would not have the slightest chance of escaping elimination.” Mutation is not the gateway to evolution.

While mutations on the two-winged fruit fly served as a window to study theroretical evolutionary genetics for decades, mutations are now known not supply the raw materials for evolution. Italian geneticist Giueseppe Sermonti explains –

One spur to research on mutations was the hope that an accumulation of these might lead to a new species. But this never happened.

The fruit fly as a model for evolution via mutations gets even worse—there are no “slight, successive” genetic changes even between over 1,400 closely related Drosophila species.

The number of nucleotide base pairs Drosophila species ranges from 127 to 800 million. The probability of constructing a Tree of Life with “slight, successive” changes in nucleotide base pairs from species to species approaches the realm of impossible.

Each species of Drosophila appears to remain distinct and unique. The following table is the number of estimated genome sizes as measured by the number of nucleotide base pairs in several different Drosophila genomes.

Pierre-Paul Grassé, past-president of the French Academie des Sciences in the book entitked  Evolution of Living Organisms concludes – “The fruit fly [Drosophila melanogaster],the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotopical, urban, and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest times”—evolution never happened. 

No wonder genetic researchers at Bioinformatics Research Center, North Carolina State University now bring into question whether genes even play a role in evolution between related Drosophila species. Wen-Ping Hsieh and collegues published in Genetics -

An emerging issue in evolutionary genetics is whether it is possible to use gene expression profiling to identify genes that are associated with morphological, physiological, or behavioral divergence between species and whether these genes have undergone positive selection. (1)

Genetic researchers from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, similarly discovered that “no strong evidence” in gene selection exists between Drosophila species and the respective proteins produced, “divergent expression”. Between Drosophila species, changes in genes do not correllate with changes in proteins. Jeffrey M. Good and collegues in an article published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2006, conclude -

Overall, we found no strong evidence for an increase in the incidence of positive selection on protein-coding regions in genes with divergent expression in Drosophila (2)

Genomic research looking for the “slight, successive” genetic changes required by neo-Darwinism is no friend of evolution. The survivors of 100 years of lab torture continue just as fruit flies.

The genome of D. melanogaster was sequenced in 2000. Most surprisingly, nearly 75% of known human disease genes are now known to have a recognizable match in the genetic code of fruit flies, and 50% of fly protein sequences have mammalian homologs. Mutations are either neutral or lead to disease—not evolution.

Today, over 100 years later, Drosophila serves as a genetic model for several human diseases including the neurodegenerative disorders Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, spinocerebellar ataxia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Reflecting on the limits of genetics in establishing the validity of evolution, Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti weighs in –

Science has taken on the great wager … and lost.

1.  Wen-Ping Hsieh, Tzu-Ming Chu, Russell D. Wolfinger, and Greg Gibson. Mixed-Model Reanalysis of Primate Data Suggests Tissue and Species Biases in Oligonucleotide-Based Gene Expression Profiles. Genetics. 2003. 165: 747-757

2.  Jeffrey M. Good, Celine A. Hayden, and Travis J. Wheeler. Adaptive Protein Evolution and Regulatory Divergence in Drosophila. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 2006, 23(6):1101-1103

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  Charles Darwin

Darwin argued in The Origin of Species that evolution develops through the processes of natural laws, changing the simple into the complex, in ways analogous to the laws of gravity -

[W]hilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

The chromosome is the organizational structure of DNA and proteins in cells. DNA contains the nucleotide sequences that form the genes. During the twentieth century, determining the number of chromosomes in species has been in the investigative forefront.

Since Darwin envisioned that “natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable variations; it can produce no great or sudden modifications”, according to the theory, chromosomes were expected to demonstrate evolution from the simple into the more complex via “slight, successive” changes.  

While the simplest known organism, Mycoplasma hominis, does have only one chromosome, Darwin’s simple to complex theory quickly breaks down. Unless the Gorilla, Chimpanzee, Cow, Guinea Pig, and Goldfish evolved from Humans, the simple to complex theory of evolution is simply incompatible with the scientific evidence.

If natural selection acts only, as Darwin suggests, by “slight, successive” changes and “must advance by the short and sure, through slow steps”, then scientific evidence from chromosomes clearly contradicts the Darwinian theory of evolution.

In the book Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne conveniently and completely overlooks the lack of evidence for “slight, successive” changes in chromosomes. Coyne never even listed the term “chromosome” the Index. Reason—chromosomal evidence destroys the theory of evolution.

Niles Eldridge of the American Museum of Natural History in his companion book Darwin – Discovering the Tree of Life for the Darwin exhibit never mentions that the “slight, successive” sequences of the chromosome never happened. Evolutionist avoid chromosome like the plague. Reason, again—chromosomal evidence destroys the theory of evolution.

The evolution of the chromosome parallels horse evolution tales. Swedish geneticist Heribert Nilsson pointed out as early as 1954 that the “family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous only in the textbooks.”

In 1996, Stephen J. Gould used stronger words in his book Full House: The Spread of Excellence From Plato To Darwin, concluding that the “popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes… has long been known to be wrong.” Rather than “slight, successive” changes as envisioned by Darwin, “fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown.”

Bemoaning the continued use of what he termed “misinformation,” such as horse evolution, Gould, in 2000, pined in a 2000 article that appeared in the journal Natural History – “Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because … textbooks copy from previous texts.”

In the molecular world, biochemist Richard E. Dickerson at Cambridge University notes that the “more one approaches the molecular level in the study of living things, the more similar they appear, and the less important the differences between, for instance, a clam and horse become.”

Molecular biologist Michael Denton clarifies – “Instead of revealing a multitude of transitional forms through which the evolution of the cell might have occurred, molecular biology has served only to emphasize the enormity of the gaps.”

Mounting scientific evidence continues to erode any known comprehensive theory of evolution. The evolution industry should heed Darwin’s warning that “[i]gnorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” by starting to count chromosomes.

Faced with the failure of the Stanley-Urey model to explain the origin of life, evolutionary scientists have been exploring the RNA World theory. With only the four nucleic acids required to form RNA rather than the twenty amino acids to form a protein, the chance probability tipped the advantage to the RNA-first theory, but that is not all.

In The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution, Richard Dawkins explains

“This is the RNA World. To see how plausible it is, we need to look at why proteins are good at being enzymes but bad at being replicators; at why DNA is good at replicating but bad at being an enzyme; and finally why RNA might just be good enough at both roles to break out of the Catch-22.”

The RNA World theory solved the chicken-or-the-egg Catch-22 conundrum. At least that was the hope. Notice Dawkins use of the word “plausible.” Building proteins requires information from DNA, but information in DNA cannot be processed without protein enzymes—the Catch-22.

The Catch-22 conundrum dogged origin of life research for decades. Like DNA, since RNA contains information. The discovery that certain RNA molecules also have enzyme activity to self-replicate paved the way to solving the Catch-22 puzzle. RNA acts like a protein at times, and at times like DNA.

The RNA World theory has emerged as the most popular natural mechanism for the origin of life. The National Science Foundation (NSF) now actively promotes the RNA World theory. NSF is a United States government agency; its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health.  

In association with Harvard University, the NSF RNA World theory initiative now exists for “Synthesizing Darwinian Chemical Systems.” Under the direction of Jack Szostak from the Center for Computational & Integrative Biology, Gerald Joyce from The Scripps Research Institute, and Steven Benner from The Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution state -

“As both a storehouse of genetic information and a catalyst of metabolic reactions, RNA may have been the critical component that enabled the evolution of life”

The RNA World concept started in 1959 when Spanish Catalan biochemist Joan Oró synthesized adenine, a key component of RNA and DNA, from hydrogen cyanide, similar to a Miller–Urey experiment at high temperatures.

By the late in the twentieth century, origin of life researchers began to examine the RNA World theory. American physicist, biochemist, and molecular biology pioneer Walter Gilbert, in 1986, was the first to coin the term “RNA World” 

Gilbert envisioned a RNA-first model on primordial Earth. By the actions of natural selection on RNA, DNA and protein molecules theoretically formed with the DNA molecule evolving into an information role, the protein molecules evolving into a catalytic role.

Like the Miller–Urey experiment though, the lack of geological evidence for hydrogen cyanide in the fossil record emerged as a telltale sign. Even worse, hydrogen cyanide is a gas toxic to cellular metabolism. During the German Nazi regime, hydrogen cyanide was the gas-of-choice at Auschwitz.

To date, not one laboratory experiment with realistic early Earth elements and conditions has produced a single nucleic acid. In 1981, Francis Crick published Life Itself, a book critical of the RNA World theory. “It may turn out that we will eventually be able to see how this RNA world got started” Crick later wrote in 1993. “At present, the gap from the primal ’soup’ to the first RNA system capable of natural selection looks forbiddingly wide”

Scripps Research Institute biochemist Gerald Joyce states that the “most reasonable interpretation is that life did not start with RNA.” The origin of life is so difficult a problem that German researcher Klaus Dose stated in 1988 that the RNA theory is “a scheme of ignorance. Without fundamentally new insights in evolutionary processes … this ignorance is likely to persist.”

Origin of life scientist, Robert Shapiro from New York University, a RNA World critic, notes – “no nucleotides of any kind have been reported as products of spark-discharge experiments or in the studies of meteorites.”

Stanley Miller, who performed the original Miller-Urey prebiotic simulation test points out problems with Oro’s simulation – “a high temperature origin of life involving these compounds [the RNA bases] therefore is unlikely.” The presumption of “bases, adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil were readily available on the early earth,” Miller continues, is “not supported by existing knowledge of the basic chemistry of these substances.”

At the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Leslie Orgel in 1994 noted – “Because synthesizing nucleotides and achieving replication of RNA under plausible prebiotic conditions have proved so challenging, chemists are increasingly considering the possibility that RNA was not the first self replicating molecule…”.

NASA lost enthusiasm for the RNA world, as well. In the Final Report issued after the “Astrobiology Workshop” in 1996 at Ames Research Center, California, concluded –

“It has been postulated that there was a time in protobiological evolution when RNA played a dual role as both genetic material and a catalytic molecule (“the RNA world”). However, this appealing concept encounters significant difficulties. RNA is chemically fragile and difficult to synthesize abiotically. The known range of its catalytic activities is rather narrow, and the origin of an RNA synthetic apparatus is unclear.”

“It goes without saying that the emergence of this RNA world and the transition to a DNA world imply an impressive number of stages, each more improbable than the previous one”, noted the eminent François Jacob in 1997 

In 1998, Leslie Orgel, senior research fellow and research professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, where he directed the Chemical Evolution Laboratory, acknowledged that “we are very far from knowing whodunit” or what were the early environmental conditions on the Earth.

After 150 years running, how life spontaneously began, to which Darwin alluded, remains a mystery. The deputy editor of the journal Nature, and science writer, Nicholas Wade, reported in the New York Times in June 2000 “everything about the origin of life on the Earth is a mystery, and it seems the more that is known, the more acute the puzzle gets.”

Nearly twenty years later after Gilbert introduced the RNA World theory, the role of RNA in the origin of life remains elusive, if not improbable. In 2007, commenting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on a paper by Phillipp Baaske, Eugene V. Koonin, Senior investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, and National Institutes of Health noted -

“[RNA World] still is a hypothetical entity… the evolutionary path to the translation systems remains essentially uncharted.”

Richard Dawkins premise in The Ancestor’s Tale – “This is the RNA World. To see how plausible it is” – demonstrates how the common practice of word slighting in the evolution industry. The veiling of impossible as “plausible” reaches the edge of fraud—supported by US tax dollars.