The discovery eventually launched an international exploration the area the South African hills that started in 2006. This week, the results of the explorations were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto was the lead author.

Since 2005, ten nests have been discovered at several levels at this site, each with up to 34 round eggs in tightly clustered and carefully arranged clutches. The distribution of the nests in the sediments indicate that these early dinosaurs returned repeatedly (nesting site fidelity) to this site, and likely assembled in groups (colonial nesting) to lay their eggs.

Seven eggs are demonstrated in the image with one of the eggs scrapped open to reveal the underlying embryonic form of the dinosaur skeleton.

“Thus, fossil and sedimentological evidence from this nesting site provides empirical data on reproductive strategies in early dinosaurs”, the report concluded. The reproductive strategies discovered include: 1) repeated returns to the nesting site and 2) grouping of the eggs.

Entitled “Oldest known dinosaurian nesting site and reproductive biology of the Early Jurassic sauropodomorph Massospondylus”, the report was a featured story by the Smithsonian Institute, BBC News, Science Daily, Forbes, and The Huffington Post.

Amazingly, the report then claims that the evidence from the nests “provides additional insights into the initial stages of the evolutionary history of dinosaurs”. While the claim is intriguing, evidence from dinosaur nests cannot be used to validate a presupposed history of evolution.

Evidence for evolution requires transitional links between species, not evidence from nests within a species−typical evolution red-flag spin. In fact the report never even attempt to mention how these nests could even hope to provide evidence of transitional links between dinosaur species.

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin cut to the chase what investigators should be looking for: “We should always look for forms intermediate between each species” Reisz PNAS report just presumes that evolution magically happened, never even mentioning transitional intermediate links.

Simply finding and reporting on fossils is not evidence for evolution.  By using the words “dinosaur”, “fossil” and “evolution” together, the evolution industry is attempting to hoodwink support for evolution−a common trick.

More than 150 years ago, Darwin recognized that the fossil record was not kind to even his theory of evolution -

Why then is not every geological formation [fossil record] and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory.

The late Stephen Gould in The Panda’s Thumb recognized Darwin’s dilemma noting that the “fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy. Nothing distressed him more”.

Isolated evidence from the nests of a single dinosaur species alone cannot provide “additional insights into the initial stages of the evolutionary history of dinosaurs”. What evolution needs are the missing transitional links.

In an attempt to work-around the vacuum of transitional links that Darwin said should be found to exist once the Earth had been fully explored, committed evolutionary paleontologists have resorted to these hoodwinking tricks.

The absence of transitional links to support Darwin’s “slight, successive” gradual evolution changes is undeniable. Niles Eldredge, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History concluded -

Paleontologists have been insisting that their record is consistent with slow, steady, gradual evolution where I think that privately, they’ve known for over a hundred years that such is not the case.

“It has been the paleontologist, my own breed,” Eldredge opined, “who has been most responsible for letting ideas dominate reality.”

In April 2011, British palaeontologist Howard Falcon-Lang at Royal Holloway, University of London, walking through the GBS building of earth sciences spotted an old wooden cabinet hidden in a forgotten corner and “pulled open the door without breaking it, and found a series of drawers containing hundreds of rock samples.”

Normal enough stuff, until he took one out.

“I held it up to the light and tried to make out the words on the slide and there was the signature: C. Darwin, Esquire,” Falcon-Lang says, adding he could “hardly believe it. My heart was pounding all around my body.”

“Inside the drawer were hundreds of beautiful glass slides made by polishing fossil plants into thin translucent sheets,” Dr Falcon-Lang explained. “This process allows them to be studied under the microscope. Almost the first slide I picked up was labeled ‘C. Darwin Esq.’”

The specimen was a piece of fossil wood collected along the South American coast during his famous Voyage of the Beagle in 1834.

Most of the evidence Darwin used has been well documented, but the samples Howard Falcon-Lang accidentally found had been lost because Darwin entrusted them to a fellow scientist, Joseph Dalton Hooker. Hooker did not number these fossils, a problem now for a warehouse with more that 10 million rock samples. Hooker became a close friend of Darwin.

Hooker had assembled this collection of 314 slides while working for the BGS in 1846. The slides – “stunning works of art,” according to Falcon-Lang, contain bits of fossil wood and plants ground into thin sheets and affixed to glass in order to be studied under microscopes.

John Ludden, executive director of BGS said: “This is quite a remarkable discovery. It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections.”

The discovery was made in April, but it has taken “a long time” to figure out the provenance of the slides and photograph all of them, Falcon-Lang said. The slides have now been photographed and will be made available to the public through a new online museum exhibit opening Tuesday.

“Scientists are only now starting to study it and understand its scientific importance,” according to Falcon-Lang.

“This is quite a remarkable discovery,” John Ludden, executive director of the Geological Survey, said. “It really makes one wonder what else might be hiding in our collections.” Could the fossil wood specimens be Darwin’s holy fossil grail? Probably not.

In The Origin of Species, Darwin never used fossilized trees to as examples of evolutionary transitional forms. While the specimens Falcon-Lang rediscovered are stunning, the specimens failed to capture a convincing attention of Darwin or Hooker. Historically, little evidence has been gleaned from fossilized plants or from fossilized animals.

Even the infamous evolution of the horse story espoused by Darwin in The Origin of Species was disintegrated in the twentieth century.

Grasping for significance in the wood fossil highlights the problem with the theory of evolution – lack of fossil record evidence for Darwin’s “innumerable transition” links in the fossil record.  In fact, the lack of fossilized transitional links was a known problem in 1834, and the problem continues to persist.

“The distinctiveness of specific forms and their not being blended together in innumerable transitional links”, Darwin argued in 1872 edition of The Origin of Species, “is a very obvious difficulty.” Darwin continued, “Geology [the fossil record} assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against my theory.”

In the words of American evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, “fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy.”

In the Presidential Address at the Geological Association, Derek V. Ager dismayed of the fossil record, went on the record to say, “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student … have now been ‘debunked.”

Senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, Colin Patterson, brings the importance of the fossil record into perspective: “Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else.”

While Darwin would not be surprised by Gould, Ager, or at Colin Patterson comments, he would be disappointed in the intense interest in the trivial evidence shown by the media.

The evolution industry was once a theory in crisis, now the evolution industry is in crisis without a theory−with believers begging for any scrap of evidence.

In November 1859, Charles Darwin released the first edition of The Origin of Species. While an instant worldwide sensation – all 1250 copies sold on the first day – critics kept Darwin returning to the drawing board. Over the next thirteen years, Darwin edited, added and deleted major sections of The Origin of Species eventually leading to six editions. The Sixth Edition was published in February 1872.

Now, Ben Fry of Computational Information Design has retraced these evolutionary changes through Darwin’s six editions, chapter by chapter, highlighting the changes in a color-coded greeked version of the text at pixel-scale, as seen in the illustration.

Wordsmithing Darwin’s title, Fly entitled his project “On The Origin of Species: The Preservation of Favored Traces” – substituting “species” with “traces”.

In collaboration with John van Wyhe, founder and director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online, Fry graphically details the evolution of Darwin’s book. On the website, Fry animates Darwin’s changes over time starting with the First Edition with the actual specific changes to the text viewable while hovering with the mouse.

According to Fry, this is “a simpler version of a larger effort that looks at the changes between editions, and is intended as the first in a series looking at how the book evolved over time”.

While The Origin of Species started with fourteen chapters, Darwin expanded the number of chapters to fifteen chapters with the addition of “Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection”. It was not until the last edition, the Sixth Edition, Darwin that used the term “evolution” for the first time.

Darwin used the successive editions to address a wide range of criticisms and to align with emerging evolutionary concepts of the time. The key phrase associated with The Origin of Species, “survival of the fittest,” did not appear until the Fifth Edition. In the First Edition, the title of Chapter IV was “Natural Selection.” By the Fifth Edition, the title was changed to “Natural Selection; or the Survival of the Fittest.”

With each successive edition, the length of the book increased, from 3,878 in the first edition to 5,088 sentences. According to Morse Peckham of the University of Pennsylvania Press, between just the Fifth and Sixth Edition, Darwin changed twenty-nine percent of the sentences.

Today, the Sixth Edition is considered Darwin’s final word. Like an artist, though, a creative work is never complete. In 1869, Darwin expressed in a letter to Joseph Hooker that if “I lived twenty more years and was able to work, how I should have to modify the Origin, and how much the views on all points will have to be modified!”

The fact that The Origin of Species is not used at any level, high school or university, in the teaching of scientific principles indicates that Darwin’s work is, in all practicality, philosophical, not scientific. Unlike the natural laws discovered by Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, Darwin was forced to constantly revise his proposed natural law− natural selection.

The constant revisions trapped Darwin into a litany of contradictions on the subject of natural selection. Contradictions on fifteen aspects are detailed in Darwin, Then and Now – The Most Amazing Story in the History of Science.

While arguing that “There is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection” in one context, Darwin flips the argument to “Natural selection will not produce absolute perfection” in another context.

Even Charles Lyle, the founder of modern geology, recognizing the contradictions rejected natural selection as a natural law.

In What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), self-proclaimed “out-right, card-carrying, sign-up, dye-in-the-wool, no-holds barred atheists” Jerry Fodor of Rutgers University and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini of the University of Arizona pined that “Darwin’s theory of natural selection is fatally flawed” because “the theory of natural selection is internally flawed” and now stands as an “intensional fallacy”.

Keenly aware of the theoretical and practical problems presented in The Origin of Species, in Chapter XIV Darwin, dismissed the mounting criticism. “The several classes of facts which have been considered … innumerable species … are all descended”, argued Darwin, “even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.” For Darwin, evolution was considered a fact, even in the absence of scientific evidence.

Amazingly, Darwin clearly recognized the problem with his theory. In a letter to Hugh Falconer in October 1862, Darwin wrote, “I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish.”

Even in the Introduction of The Origin of Species Darwin recognized the inadequacy of the theory: “I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived.”

Darwin was clearly not satisfied with The Origin of Species. In the same year as the Fifth Edition in 1869, Darwin expressed in a letter to Joseph Hooker that if “I lived twenty more years and was able to work, how I should have to modify the Origin, and how much the views on all points will have to be modified!”

Today, as the Origin of Species evolution continues, Darwin’s influence only continues only as a philosophy, not as a science. The animation developed by Ben Rye illustrates the evolving nature of evolutionary philosophy−not a scientific fact.

Famous British evolutionist Richard Dawkins in Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science on the supporting side simply declares “Feathers are modified reptilian scales.”

More than twenty species of dinosaur have been collected with preserve feathers.

While birds and dinosaurs share a range of common features such as feathers, hollow pneumatized bones, gastroliths in the digestive system, nest-building and brooding behaviors, however, the sharing of features between different species is ubiquitous throughout nature. For example, while the eye of the octopus and human share common features, the octopus is not considered an ancestor to man.

Without fossil record evidence, ancestral relationship is simply speculative, at best. “Among the consensus that supports dinosaurian ancestry [of birds]”, WIKIPEDIA acknowledges, “the exact sequence of evolutionary events that gave rise to the early birds… is a hot topic.”

One of the major reasons for the dinosaur-to-bird evolutionary contention centers on evidence from the fossil record for the dinosaur scale gradually evolving into the bird feather.

Study on the origin of birds began shortly after the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. Described as a nearly complete skeleton in 1863, a new fossil bird discovery was noted to have reptilian features, including clawed forelimbs and a long, bony tail−part bird and part reptile features.

The bird fossil was named Archaeopteryx lithography−Archaeopteryx meaning “ancient wing.” The Archaeopteryx feather is recognized as one of the most beautiful fossils ever unearthed.

Given the optimal fossil conditions in German limestone, even the finest detail structures of the feather have been preserved. Armed with a combination of dinosaur and bird features, the Archaeopteryx launched the dinosaur-to-bird controversy.  By the sixth edition of The Origin of Species in 1872, Darwin gave credence to the dinosaur-to bird theory -

Even the wide interval between birds and reptiles has been shown by [Huxley] to be partially bridged over in the most unexpected manner, by the ostrich and extinct Archeopteryx.

In the words of evolutionary biologist Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Archaeopteryx “may well be the most important natural history specimen in existence … Beyond doubt it is the most widely known and illustrated fossil.”

Analysis of the fine feather details has been central to studying the transitional status of the dinosaur-to-bird theory. The Archaeopteryx quickly became recognized one of the most famous fossils ever discovered.

By the late twentieth century, the verdict on the transitional status of Archaeopteryx was settled. Barbara Stahl in Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (1974) weighed in –

How [birds] arose initially, presumably from reptile scales, defies analysis.

Alan Feduccia, writing in the journal Science in 1979 , in the paper entitled “Feathers of the Archaeopteryx: Asymmetric Vanes Indicate Aerodynamic Function,” likewise have concluded that the feather was “essentially like those of modern birds” and not a transitional form of the feather.

John Ostrom in 1979 published a paper in the American Scientist, concluding that not only is the Archaeopteryx not a missing link, but that “No fossil evidence exists of any pro-avis. It is purely hypothetical.”

Harvard professor, known as Darwin’s 20^st-century bulldog, Ernest Mayr in 1982, even began to weigh in with caution, backpedaling by calling the Archaeopteryx discovery: “the almost perfect link between reptiles and birds.”

Paleontologist Larry Martin of the University of Kansas declared in 1985 that the “Archaeopteryx is not ancestral of any group of modern birds.”

At the International Archaeopteryx Conference in 1985, Peter Dodson concluded that the Archaeopteryx was a bird capable of flight and published his conclusion in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology: “The general credo runs as follows: Archaeopteryx was a bird that could fly” – not a transitional dinosaur-to-bird transitional link.

Robert L. Carroll, professor of biology at McGill University, in 1997 concluded, “The geometry of the flight feathers of Archaeopteryx is identical with that of modern flying birds, whereas non-flying birds have symmetrical feathers. The way in which the feathers are arranged on the wing also falls within the range of modern birds.”

Henry Gee, the chief science writer for Nature, wrote in 1999 that the missing link status of the Archaeopteryx is only an illusion; a “once upon a time” story.

So what is the truth about Archaeopteryx? Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, may have summed it up best in a letter to Luther Sunderland on April 10, 1979, writing, “such stories are not a part of science.”

Since the Archaeopteryx discovery in 1860, evolutionists have continued to flounder for feathers in the fossil record long after the evidence has been weighed.  No small wonder that WIKIPEDIA opened the discussion of the Origin of Birds with “The origin of birds is a contentious and central topic within evolutionary biology.”

Evolution was once a theory in crisis with speculative evidence, now evolution is in crisis without scientific evidence.

The evolution industry continues with an addiction to old speculations, like the Archaeopteryx, long known to be scientifically bogus.

The Archaeopteryx feather story underscores why evolution is viewed today as only a philosophy, not science.

“On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man… it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject.” Charles Darwin, 1871

On the one hand, speculating on the subject of human origins, was “useless” yet in The Origin of Species, Darwin countered this argument by noting that “We should always look for forms intermediate between each species and a common but unknown progenitor.” Over the past 150 years, then, in the midst of this confusion, evolutionists have continued to look for the intermediate species leading to humans.

With new fossils are continually being found throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe, however, resolving any presumed evolutionary theory on the origins of humans continues to reinforce the long recognized reputation of the evolution industry−constant revision and contention.

Amazingly, the world of paleoanthropology since the publication of The Origin of Species has become a legacy of conflicting personalities and cliquish scientific groups. Some ideas, particularly when they are backed by arguments from authoritative figures in the industry, continue to persist long after they have been proven to be untenable.

In the mid-twentieth century, the evolution debate as to when and where Darwin’s intermediate transitional links gave rise to modern humans diverged from the other great apes became mired in philosophical perspectives−not science.

In particular, one archeologist whose name is synonymous with paleoanthropology, Louis Leaky, was perhaps one of the greatest perpetrators. While Darwin suggested that humans originated from Africa, by the early twentieth century many European scientists were beginning to be convinced otherwise.

In 1912, Charles Dawson presumably discovered a fossil from a gravel pit in the town of Piltdown in East Sussex, England. The new “fossil discovery” was given the named Eoanthropus dawson, now more commonly known as the Piltdown man. In 1913, the Piltdown man was then placed on exhibit in the British Museum of Natural History as fossil for the evolution of humans, even though undermining Darwin’s tenuous out-of-Africa theory.

British scientists, such as Sir Arthur Keith, anthropologist and fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, were so convinced that humans originated in Britain that fossils found in other areas were discredited, especially the South African fossils identified by Raymond Dart in 1925 named Australopithecus africanus. Keith considered Dart’s find, also known by the nickname the Taung Child, as another unimportant species of extinct ape.

In 1938, at the Barkham Manor in Piltdown, Sir Arthur Keith unveiled a memorial to mark the site where Piltdown man was discovered by Charles Dawson. Sir Arthur finished his speech saying:

So long as man is interested in his long past history, in the vicissitudes which our early forerunners passed through, and the varying fare which overtook them, the name of Charles Dawson is certain of remembrance.

Lee Berger, paleontologist from the University of Witwatersrand, suggests that Keith’s philosophy, not science, was the source of his dismissal of the Taung Child.  Unfortunately, over time, as Dart’s colleague Robert Broom began to find more fossil specimens in South Africa, Keith was forced to re-evaluate the Taung Child and his out-of-Europe model of evolution. Then, finally, after decades of display in the museum, in November 1953 the British Museum removed the Piltdown man exhibition because the exhibit was nothing more than an elaborate hoax. The Piltdown man was simply a fraudulent construction of a skull of a man and the jaw of an orangutan.

Nearly a decade later in 1934, a little known American paleontologist from Yale University, G. Edward Lewis, published a paper describing a number of fossil ape species he had discovered in the Siwalik Hills of northern India. Among these apes was a species he named Ramapithecus brevirostris. In 1960, Elwyn Simons pieced together more jawbone fragments and announced the fossils as evidence for the evolutionary origin of humans from ape-like animals.

This out-of-India theory ran in opposition to the more popular out-of-Africa model of human evolution theory espoused by paleoanthropologists in the early 1960s lead by Louis Leaky. In particular, Leaky argued that the series of fossil his team discovered in east Africa later named Kenyapithecus africanus was the evolutionary origin of humans.

Even though Simons’ fragmentary jaw of Ramapithecus was hardly a match for Leaky’s Kenyapithecus, the Kenyapithecus was never been too far out of the woods. Ramapithecus had supporters. During the 1950’s, the renowned paleoanthropologist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark, who along with Joseph Weiner and Kenneth Oakley who had exposed the British Museum Piltdown man fraud, advanced the argument in support of Ramapithecus as the more likely evolutionary origin of humans based on dental arcade.

While the dental arcade of Ramapithecus was V-shaped, similar to humans, by contrast the Kenyapithecus the dental arcade was U-shaped.

During the mid-twentieth century, the Simons Ramapithecus camp versus Leaky Kenyapithecus camp debate raged. Leaky was stuck on the out-of-Africa model largely from Darwin’s vague endorsement of the out-of-Africa model.

Although these two hypotheses were in direct opposition to each other, they were linked by a central anthropocentric principle. Both believed the apes were the evolutionary origins of humans. Perhaps because Leaky followed Darwin’s suggestion, he tyrannically gained the most support.

When confronted with scientific evidence opposing the theory, Leaky was known to attack the individual instead of the evidence. This is best exemplified by an event that transpired at an anthropological conference in Chicago in 1965. David Pilbeam was giving a presentation in which he was attempting to argue that Kenyapithecus africanus was actually a member of the previously identified Dryopithecus nyanzae species. This incident is recounted in Virgina Morell’s Ancestral Passions: the Leaky family and the quest for humankind’s beginnings (1996: 291):

At an anthropological conference in 1965, [Louis Leaky] jumped up and shouted at David Pilbeam, who was giving a presentation, to sit down and shut up… Terrified and appalled, Pilbeam looked around the room for someone to come to his defense. But no one – not even Pilbeam’s thesis advisor or the conference chairman– spoke up.

With chaos and contention abounding in the realms of paleontology, evolutionary scientist focused on evidence from biochemistry and genetics.

In the early 1960s, Morris Goodman, a pioneering biochemist at Wayne State University, caused even greater controversy after discovering that human blood proteins were more similar to chimpanzee and gorilla blood proteins than to apes, like Simons’ Ramapithecus or Leaky’s Kenyapithecus.

From this new biochemistry controversy, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn of Harvard University and Vincent Sarich, biochemist of the University of California, Berkley, suggested that the chimpanzee was evolutionary intermediate species leading to the origin of man, not Simons’ Ramapithecus nor Leaky’s Kenyapithecus.

The battle lines were drawn: Simons against Leaky, and Simon and Leaky against the ranks of Pilbeam, Goodman, Washburn, and Sarich.

The prospects of Ramapithecus as a transitional link to man were finally exhausted in 1982 following a systematic review by anthropologist Milford E. Wolpoff at the University of Michigan. While Simons conceded, Leaky died in 1972 without ever seeing the light.

Amazingly, the remenints of the Leaky saga are still at large, including physical anthropologist Jeffery Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh and president of the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS).

More than 150 years ago, Darwin was on target when he said “it is useless to speculate on this subject”. Since then, paleoanthropological perspectives on presumed evolutionary origin of humans has been laced with a legacy of contention fueled only by philosophy−not science.

This week a team of scientists from Australia and Spain lead by John R. Paterson, a paleontologist at the University of New England in Australia, extended even further Darwin’s dilemma.

The paper entitled “Acute vision in the giant Cambrian predator Anomalocaris and the origin of compound eyes” published in the December 8 edition of the journal Nature, a vanguard of evolution, amazingly unveiled the advanced and complex nature of the eyes in this arthropod. Unlike any other known counterpart, past or present, this underwater sea creature has bizarrely positioned eyes at the top of two stalks that extend bilaterally from the sides of the head. Anomalocaris, derived from the word anomaly, means abnormal or strange shrimp.

In a prepared statement, Paterson said that the “Anomalocaris is the stuff of nightmares”−a nightmare for the evolution industry. The problem is that the bizarre eyes appear in the Cambrian fossil record with no known ancestor−Darwin’s worst nightmare.

Not only is the position and shape of the stalk eyes an evolutionary enigma, so is the advanced nature of this large shrimp-like animal two pear-shaped eyes. According to Paterson’s report, each eye of this 3 to 6 foot long enigma contains at least 16,000 hexagonal lenses far exceeding the number of lenses in most modern groups with vision as keen as the sharpest insect alive today.

Contrary to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, there is no evidence for any simpler pre-Cambrian or Cambrian ancestor. Cambrian fossilized animals were highly complex and sophisticated. Evidence demonstrates that complex morphologies of the Anomalocaris appeared in Cambrian Explosion then disappeared suddenly.

The international team studied the fossil remains from a shale quarry discovered on Kangaroo Island, just off the southern coast of Australia. The shale formation, known as Emu Bay shale, is noted for stunning preservation of soft tissue, like the eyes, as well as skeletal remains. The first Anomalocaris was discovered by Charles Dolittle Watcott in 1909 in the famed Burgess Shale. Historically, the Anomalocaris had a cosmopolitan distribution in the Cambrian seas. Fossils of Anomalocaris have been discovered in Canada, China, and in Australia.

The discovery and analysis of Anomalocaris eyes “confirms that it had superb vision to support its predatory lifestyle”, according to Paterson. “Such lens-rich compound eyes suggest Anomalocaris was a highly visual hunter. Its prey didn’t stand a chance.”

Pete Spotts, staff writer for The Christian Science Monitor, noted in the article entitled “Jeepers, creepers, where did the Cambrian ocean’s top predator get those peepers?” the real evolutionary problem with the discovery:  “the presence of these eyes at this stage in the evolution of life on Earth indicates how quickly, in geologic time, novel features can emerge.” Stated nicely, this presents a serious theoretical conundrum for evolution.

“If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once,” according to Darwin, “the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection”. Clearly, the Anomalocaris is scientific evidence contradicting Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

In an interview, New Scientist quoted Paterson: “Very few modern animals, particularly arthropods, have eyes as sophisticated as this”. With at least 16,000 lenses on each eye, “This is a lot,” says Paterson. “The common housefly has only 3,200 and most ants have fewer than 1,000.”

Matt Kaplan, science writer for Nature News quoted Paterson commenting on the article in the Nature journal entitled “An eye-opening fossil. Ancient predators had vision sharper than modern insects” that while Dragonflies have up to 28,000 lenses in each eye they are “the freaks of the arthropods”.

Not only is the Anomalocaris a freak of arthropods, the Anomalocaris is a freak of evolution. Contrary to Darwin’s theory, the Anomalocaris suddenly appears then disappears in the Cambrian fossil record.  Rather than clarity, the resurrected Anomalocaris has delivered another insurrection within the disorganized ranks of the evolution industry.

Like the Archaeopteryx, the Anomalocaris highlights why evolution continues to be a theory in crisis. Today, theories of evolution continue only as a philosophy unsupported by scientific evidence. Robert Gaines, palaeobiologist at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who was not involved in the study understates the implications: “This could stir up a debate“.

The pristine condition of the Anomalocaris soft tissue, a freak of evolution, can best be explained by an act of creation that was instantaneously fossilized while still alive during the flood. The empirical scientific evidence from the Anomalocaris highlights even further why Darwin’s theory is increasingly irrelevant.

At the center of the raging theory of evolution debates, Margulis emerged as a strong critic of Darwin during the late twentieth century. In the words of Margulis, “Darwin’s claim of ‘descent with modification’ as caused by natural selection is a linguistic fallacy”.

In an interview with Australian journalist Suzan Mazur, Margulis poignantly explains her aversion to the Darwinian notion of evolution:

Darwin wrote about the Struggle for Life and attributed change to Natural Selection. He made it easy for his contemporaries to think and verbalize Mr. Big Omnipotent God in the Sky up there picking out those He wants to keep. He has been conceived as the The Natural Selector, He throws the others away.

Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, promoted the theory that natural selection was the driving force of evolution to advance the origin of new species. For Margulis, however, “natural selection is an elimination process”, not creative of life or new species.

Margulis was not even a friend of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution that developed in the early twentieth century based on the population genetic work of J.B.S. Haldane and R.A. Fisher, either:

The notion is that if we accumulate enough gene change, enough genetic mutations, we explain the passage from one species to another. This is depicted as two branches in a family tree that emerge from one common ancestor to the two descendants. An entire Anglophone academic tradition of purported evolutionary description was developed quantified, computerized based on what I think is a conceptual topological error.

In the words of Margulis, “neo-Darwinists are a… religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology… Speciation by accumulation of ‘random DNA mutations’ has never been adequately documented.”

“I work in evolutionary biology,” Margulis opined, “but with cells and micro-organisms. Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Richard Lewontin, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould all come out of the zoological tradition, which suggests to me that, in the words of our colleague Simon Robson, they deal with a data set some three billion years out of date.”

Margulis highlighted the plague of the modern evolution industry: “Scientists, like anyone else, follow the money flow.”

Margulis proposed to replace the various versions of Darwinian evolution with a more friendly version of evolution based on symbiosis. Bruce Weber in the New York Times, explain: “Dr. Margulis argued that a more important mechanism was symbiosis; that is, evolution is a function of organisms that are mutually beneficial growing together to become one and reproducing.”

Margulis’ gentler theory of symbiosis is in sharp contrast to Darwin’s angry “survival of the fittest” theory later coined as “nature red in tooth and claw” by poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. They were born in the same year−1809.

In the Scientific American article, “R.I.P. Lynn Margulis, Biological Rebel”, John Horgan noted that “Lynn Margulis was among the most creative challengers of mainstream Darwinian thinking of the late 20^th century.”

Margulis was not alone. The evolution industry is now composed of a range of evolutionary scientists like Margulis.  Larry Moran, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, categorizes evolutionists based on three different points of view−the Standard View, the New View, and the Radical View.

In the Standard View, the likes of Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, Sean B. Carroll, and Ken Miller continue advocating the traditional basic tenets of Darwinism. The New View, as supported by Stephen Jay, Michael Lynch, and Eugene Koonin, only retains a basic notion of Darwinian natural selection. The Radical View, to which Moran categorizes Margulis, completely abandons Darwin’s theory of evolution. Marc Kirschner, John Gerhart, James Shapiro, Dorion Sagan, Massimo Pigliucci, and Gerd B. Müller are included in Moran’s Radical View category.

Reflecting on the life of Lynn Margulis provides the time evaluate the state of the evolution industry. Moran laments the fact that after 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, a unified theory of evolution still continues as only an elusive abstraction.

The problem: “People are always more loyal to their tribal group,” Margulis protested, “than to any other abstract notion of ‘truth’—scientists especially.” Out of fear, tribal theories of evolution reject the truth to maintain tribal loyalty.

With the technology available, the reach of science to discovering the origins and meaning of life has reached a scientific dead-end. The concept of evolution continues only as a philosophy, not as a science.

Evolution was once a theory in crisis, now the evolution industry is in crisis without even a theory. Margulis will be remembered.

Just two months before the release of the first edition of The Origin of Species in September 1859, Darwin wrote to Charles Lyell, “Embryology in Chapter VIII is one of my strongest points I think.”

Founded as a field of science by German biologist Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), embryology was just an emerging science in the nineteenth century. As the first to discover the mammalian ovum, Baer is now recognized as the founder of modern embryology.

With the available technologies of the nineteenth century, Baer formulated a set of laws now known as Baer’s Law. According to Baer, the general characteristic of a group to which an embryo belongs develops before special characteristics.  Embryonic changes were thought to be the driving force to produce the final form.

Extending the implications of Baer’s Law, German biologists Fritz Müller (1821–1897) and Ernest Haeckel (1834–1919) popularized the controversial “recapitulation theory.” Haeckel was the one who actively promoted that a species’ embryological development (ontogeny) retraces the species’ entire evolutionary development (phylogeny).

Haeckel coined this theory with the now-famous phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” In other words, the sequences of the embryo retrace the steps of evolution. Haeckel’s version of Baer’s Law was called the Biogenic Law. In theory, then, seeing the human embryo grow would be like watching a silent movie of our ancestral history and presumably evolution in action.

Darwin was not an embryologist, and instead relied on the work of others. In The Origin of Species, Darwin gave credit for the embryological model of evolution to Haeckel: “Professor Haeckel in his “Generelle Morphologie” and in [other] works has recently brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings. In drawing up the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological characters [to establish evolutionary sequences].”

Eventually, Haeckel’s concepts of embryology became “second to none in importance” to Darwin’s theory. “Thus, as it seems to me,” Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, “the leading facts in embryology,…  are second to none in importance.”

In the opening paragraph of the “Development and Embryology” section of The Origin of Species, Darwin explains that embryology “is one of the most important subjects in the whole round of natural history.”

With advances in technology, however, Haeckel’s theory eventually did not survive the twentieth century. In 1958, eminent British embryologist Gavin de Beer published three editions of a book on embryology attacking Haeckel’s “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” theory: “Recapitulation…. i.e., the pressing back of adult ancestral stages into early stages of development of descendants, does not take place.”

Pointing to a number of examples known at the time, de Beer was highly critical of the Haeckel’s theory. One of de Beer’s examples was the development of the eye in two closely related species of frog, Rana fusca and Rana esculents. (Pictured)

Since the lenses of these frog eyes appear to be structurally similar (homologous), the embryological development of these two species would be expected to be similar based on Haeckel’s theory. But, the evidence fails to support Haeckel’s theory. De Beer explains the common frog example:

It was a problem to know why the lens of the vertebrate eye, which develops from the epidermis overlying the optic cup, should develop exactly in the ‘right’ place, and fit into the optic cup so perfectly, until it was discovered that the optic cup is itself an organizer which induces the epidermis to differentiate into a tailor-made lens. At least, this is what it does in the common frog, Rana fusca, in the embryo of which, if the optic cup is cut out, no lens develops at all. But in the closely related edible frog, Rana esculent, the optic cup can be cut out from the embryo, and the lens develops all the same. It cannot be doubted that the lenses of these two species are homologous [similar], yet they differ completely in the mechanism [embryology] by which determines and differentiation are brought about.

Evidence from the common frog demonstrates that similar species do not have similar embryological development. De Beer concluded that the “enthusiasm of the German zoologist Ernst Haeckel, however, led to an erroneous and unfortunate exaggeration of the information.” Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton explains: “homologous [similar] structures are arrived at by different [embryological] routes.” Ontogeny does not recapitulate phylogeny.

Evidence from these two closely species of frog demonstrate that not only is the embryology completely different, the evidence undermines Haeckel’s proposed Biogenic Law upon which formulated the core of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

No wonder George Gaylord Simpson of the American Museum of Natural History was quick to the chase denouncing Haeckel’s Biogenic Law: it “is now established that ontology does not repeat phylogeny.”

German embryologist Erich Blechschmidt of the University of Guttingen regarded Haeckel’s “Great Biogenetic Law” as one of the most egregious errors in the history of biology. In his book The Beginnings of Human Life, no words were minced in repudiating Haeckel’s fraudulent forgeries: “The so-called basic law of biogenetics is wrong. No buts or ifs can mitigate this fact. It is not even a tiny bit correct or correct in a different form. It is totally wrong.”

Amazing, in 1909 Haeckel announced that his embryo drawings in support of evolution were mere fabrications−fraud.

Intuitively, Darwin knew something was wrong. Just two years after the release of the first edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin was absolutely right in stating, “I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish.”

Contrary to Darwin’s nineteenth century misguided enthusiasm, embryology now stands as one of the “strongest single class of facts” against any theory of evolution.

In February of 2009, research diver Jiro Sakaue, descending into a dark fringing reef cave in the Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau, discovered a small unusual eel-like fish. The species of the fish has since been named Protaguillae palau. Prot(o) means prototype, first, or original, guilla means eel (a shortened form of Anguilliformes - an order of fish) with palau referring to the discovery location.

The problem for the theory of evolution centers on the fact that this species has continued to exist even though it is recognized as a prototype – the first and most primitive form of the species. According to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, though, as the original species begin to evolve, extinction of the “less improved and intermediate forms of life” should follow. Darwin explains in The Origin of Species:

We have seen that it is the common, the widely diffused, and widely ranging species, belonging to the larger genera within each class, which vary most; and these tend to transmit to their modified off spring that superiority which now makes them dominant in their own countries. Natural selection, as has just been remarked, leads to divergence of character and to much extinction of the less improved and intermediate forms of life.

Darwin’s even infers this concept in the full title of The Origin of Species–The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of the Favoured Races in the Struggle of Life. Accordingly, the favored races are to be preserved while the “less improved and “intermediate forms of life” are not. Darwin explains:

The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new variety and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition; and the consequent extinction of less-favoured forms almost inevitably follows.

For Darwin, “extinction and natural selection go hand in hand” and one “must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration … until a better is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed.” Extinction is an integral aspect of natural selection.

If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true, then, the proto-eel should have become extinct, but it didn’t. The evidence for the continued existence of the ancient proto-eel clearly undermines Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

The scientific report of the finding, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society on-line in August headed by G. David Johnson of the Smithsonian Institute, was entitled A ‘living fossil’ eel (Anguilliformes: Protanguillidae, fam. nov.) from an undersea cave in Palau. The comparative morphology and genetic report notes the problem in the opening sentence:

We report the discovery of an enigmatic, small eel-like fish from a 35 m-deep fringing-reef cave in the western Pacific Ocean Republic of Palau that exhibits an unusual suite of morphological characters.

The discovery is certainly enigmatic for a number of reasons. Johnson notes that it is “even more primitive than the oldest known fossil eels”, yet still in existence. Since evolutionists estimate that the family of eels arrived over 200 million years ago, the proto-eel finding demonstrates evidence for stasis, not evolution.

John McCosker, chair of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Sciences, sums up the evolution enigma:

The analysis they have performed using morphology and genetics is brilliant and invites as many questions about eel evolution as it solves.

In other words, the eel discovery is a problem for the Darwin’s theory of natural selection. The scientific evidence from morphology and genetics has created an even greater insurmountable problem for the theory of evolution. What should have become part of the fossil record has been swimming around presumably unchanged for over 200 million years. In other words, Protaguillae palau spontaneously came out of the box functioning in perfection. That’s not evolution.

With evidence like this, professors Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini in the book What Darwin Got Wrong have been driven to conclude that “Darwin’s theory of natural selection is fatally flawed. Not only is flawed, even the concept of natural selection is simply an ‘intentional fallacy’.”

Michael Ruse agrees, “the truth is that there is virtually nothing today in evolutionary studies that corresponds to the facts of the Origin.” Even Jerry Coyne of Chicago University Evolution and Ecology Department has been driven to conclude:

We conclude—unexpectedly—that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak.

Reflecting on the significance of this ancient evolution defying eel, is reason to consider the wisdom of Mark Twain:

Loyalty to petrified opinion never once broke a chain or freed a human soul.

The use of the term Anti-Science today has evolved to mean anti-evolution and anti-climate change. How candidates manage the “evolution” question will likely leverage an effect on the final vote next year.” Question like “Do you believe in evolution” are now one of the most dreaded types of questions on the political campaign trail. But, what is Anti-Science? As we will see, the history of the Anti-Science is an amazing saga of irony.

At the core of the Anti-Science debate is the definition of Science. The Oxford English Dictionary says that science is “a method of procedures that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.”

The father of “method of procedures” is the Scientific Method founded by English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Use of Bacon’s method launched the Scientific Revolution in the late sixteenth century.

Often called the Baconian Method, or simply the Scientific Method, Bacon replaced deductive reasoning with strict adherence to inductive reasoning for the purpose of discovering natural laws, Bacon’s insistence on establishing a planned procedure marked a new turn for defining the essence of science.

Using Bacon’s method of investigation, the early Scientific Revolution period culminated in 1687with the publication of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. Darwin initially followed the footsteps of Newton. In the same way Newton discovered the natural laws of gravity and motion, Charles Darwin was intent on discovering the natural laws of evolution.

The Scientific Revolution was center stage in the eighteenth century. John Herschel’s book, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (1830), encapsulated the concepts of the scientific method. Darwin read Herschel’s Discourse while at Cambridge. William Whewell, a professor at the University of Cambridge, supported Herschel’s approach to the scientific method and later published The History of Inductive Sciences (1837) and The Philosophy of Inductive Sciences (1840).

In the prelude to The Origin of Species, Darwin quotes from William Whewell and Francis Bacon. Ironically, since even the fossil record failed to support his theory, Darwin was forced to abandon the Scientific Method.  Darwin was painfully aware that the Cambrian Explosion actually contradicted his theory.

In response to a letter from Asa Gray, professor of biology at Harvard University, Darwin declared: “I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.” Darwin was “anti-Science”.

When questioned further by Gray, Darwin confirmed Gray’s suspicions: “What you hint at generally is very, very true: that my work is grievously hypothetical, and large parts are by no means worthy of being called induction.”  Darwin had turned against the use of scientific principles in developing his theory of evolution.  The “Anti-Science” movement was popular in the nineteenth century, sponsored by the emerging influential members of the X Club.

Darwin was very concerned about the effect of the Anti-Science approach. Just two weeks before the lease of The Origin of Species, Erasmus Darwin, his brother, consoled him in a letter: “In fact, the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me that if the facts [evidence] won’t fit, why so much the worse for the facts, in my feeling.”

In the final chapter of The Origin of Species, Darwin actually only lends hedging confidence to his theory of evolution, noting that the “whole volume is one long argument.… We ought to be extremely cautious in saying that any organ or instinct, or any whole structure, could not have arrived at its present state by many graduated steps.”

Ironically, the use of the popular Anti-Science labeling in politics should be applied to Charles Darwin−the founder of modern evolutionary thought.

Paul Nurse, writing in the September 14 edition of the New Scientist in the article “Stamp out anti-science in US politics” said, “Get the science right first, then discuss the political implications.”

The fact is, the evidence for developing a comprehensive theory of evolution is more in a crisis now, than at any time since the turn of the twenty-first century. As the evidence continues to mount, scientists are now abandoning the once central unifying dogma of evolution established during the late twentieth century−the Modern Synthesis theory that had replaced Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The Altenberg Summit in Austria during the summer of 2008 was a turning point for the evolution industry. At the summit, leading evolutionary scientists declared the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution extinct. Genetic mutations acted on by natural selection are no longer recognized as the natural law for biological evolution.

In the wake of the summit, evolutionary scientists are feverishly in the process of exploring theoretical replacements. The MIT Press book, “Evolution, the Extended Synthesis” (2010) edited by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B Műller presents 16 potential theories from the summit. Yet, none of the potential replacement theories have emerged as a forerunner. Currently, a cohesive theory of evolution simply does not exist.

Political candidates on both sides of the isle should actually be asked the question: “What is the theory of evolution?”

As it stands, evolution is simply a philosophy and not a science based on any known natural law verified by “systematic observation, measurement, and experiment(s)”. Ironically, the theory of evolution in the twenty-first century, as Darwin plainly acknowledged during the nineteenth century, falls into the realm of Anti-Science, not Science.

Presidential candidate, Jon Huntsman, highlights the current conundrum. In an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News “Special Report”, Huntsman said “When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on wrong side of science and therefore in a losing position.”

Amazingly, notice that Huntsman had to turn to “climate scientist[s]” to garner a mirage of scientific support for the theory of evolution.  Even the National Science Teachers Association, the vanguard of evolution in public education, takes distance from any particular theory of evolution by concluding: “There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place.”

Today, evolution is only alive as a philosophy but not as a science. Contrary to Huntsman’s contention, to claim biological evolution as a scientifically proven fact plays into the realm of Anti-Science.

No wonder, Alan Love of the University of Minnesota and one of the Altenberg Summit members concluded that “a fully unified view of evolutionary processes may be out of reach.”

Ironically, the Anti-Science label applies to the sponsors of evolution. By Oxford English Dictionary standards, the Science label only applies to the “Teach the Controversy” sponsors.

Since steroid hormones are known to perform sophisticated regulatory functions in microbes to man, the path of steroid evolution has entered center stage in the realm of investigative molecular biology.

Steroids hormones were first discovered in the mid-twentieth century by American chemist Edward Calvin Kendall while working at the Mayo Clinic. In 1950, Kendall and colleague Philip Hench, along with Swiss chemist Tadeus Reichstein were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “their discoveries relating to the hormones of the adrenal cortex, their structure and biological effects.”

The action of steroids occurs by attaching to specific receptor sites. Steroids act like a socket wrench on a bolt−a wrench that is only useful when aligned on the right sized bolt.

Corticosteroids are a class of steroids found in vertebrates.  One of the corticosteroid classes are the glucocorticoids. Glucocorticoids (glucose + cortex + steroid) are essential for life, acting to regulate and support a range of important cardiovascular, metabolic, immunologic, and homeostatic functions.

This past June, evolutionary biologist Sean Carroll and colleagues in the journal PLoS Genetics published a paper entitled “Mechanisms for the Evolution of a Derived Function in the Ancestral Glucocorticoid Receptor”.

Using site-directed mutagenesis, X-ray crystallography, and computational analyses of protein stability to recapitulate and determine the effects of historical mutations, Carroll investigated a range of potential pathways for the evolution of ancestral steroid receptors by genetic mutations to the glucocorticoid receptor in vertebrates.

Carroll suggests that the evolution of the vertebrate glucocorticoid receptor from an ancestral receptor type likely required three specific genetic mutations. Surprisingly, two of the mutations, while maintaining function individually, actually inactivates the receptor. The third mutation simply neutralizes the inactivation effect of the two previous mutations.

“The combined effect of these mutations is so strong that a third mutation, apparently neutral in the ancestral background,” Carroll explains, “evolved to buffer their degenerative effects.”

Assuming these two dysfunctional mutation followed by a neutralizing genetic mutation did occur, what is the probability that this series of events occurred by chance alone?

In “The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design”, evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins contends that evolution proceeds blindly without direction−evolution is like a blind watchmaker. Dawkins wagers on chance.  Darwin disagrees: “Mere chance, as we may call it, might cause one variety to differ in some character from its parents …, but this alone would never account for so habitual and large a degree of difference as that between the species of the same genus.”

The evidence, however, favors Darwin’s contention−not Dawkins.  Doug Axe, Director of the Biologic Institute, and molecular geneticist Ann Gauger in the paper “The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzymes Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway” demonstrated that for the conversion of one functional molecule to another requires a minimum of seven genetic mutations.  Based on a realistic population genetics model, Axe and Gauger demonstrated that each mutation would require 10²⁷ years. That’s a ten followed by 27 zeros.

The question is what is the chance of converting one functional molecule to another? Assuming that the estimated age of the universe is 13 billion years−that’s 13,000,000,000 (13 followed by 9 zeros), the time required to convert Carroll’s ancestral receptor to a vertebrate glucocorticoid receptor exceeds the time limits of the universe. Carroll, of course, did not consider time limitations. The probable role of chance, contrary to Dawkin’s earlier presumption, far exceeds the time limits of the universe.

These time constraints on evolution by genetic mutations are just one of the reasons why evolutionary scientists have largely abandoned the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution originally developed during the twentieth century following the discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA.

The 2008 Altenberg Summit hosted by Massimo Pigliucci of Stony Brook University and Gerd B Műller of University of Vienna. The sixteen evolutionary attendees of the summit, while dismissing the Modern Synthesis, proposed a series of new theoretical frameworks for evolution.

While Carroll’s approach to solving theoretical evolutionary problems was noble, evolution through genetic mutations is no longer the leading theory of evolution. Currently, the problem in evolution circles today is that disbanded Modern Synthesis theory of evolution has not been replaced by another unifying theory of evolution. Evolution, the Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press discusses alternatives to the Modern Synthesis.

Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti succinctly summed up the problem with evolution: “There never really has been a scientific theory of evolution.”

Currently, a cohesive theory of evolution does not exist. Carroll’s recent experiments further highlights why genetic mutations are no longer considered a viable mechanism for biological evolution.

In fact, the discovery was a problem since the Neanderthal skulls are larger than human skulls. Darwin had argued that the advancement of evolution proceeded through “slight, successive changes”.

The Neanderthal fossils created a dilemma for Darwin, how could a larger brain precede a smaller brain? Darwin cautiously noted, that “it must be admitted that some skulls of very high antiquity, such as the famous one of Neanderthal, are well developed and capacious [large]”. For Darwin, the Neanderthal skulls were too large to have preceded humans.

As the fossil evidence for the Neanderthals continued to be discovered throughout Europe, the evidence seemed to point to the Neanderthals as a big game hunter transitional species leading to humans. With the goal of discovering our human evolutionary ancestors, the possibility that the Neanderthals represented a previously unknown ethnic group of humans was marginalized within the evolution industry.

During the twentieth century, at stake is whether the Neanderthals are a transitional species different from modern humans, or simply a human ethnic group.

Darwin, as we know now, was right to be cautious. Technology is answering the question. Just last year, a team lead by Svante Pääbo of the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany eroded the genetic difference between the Neanderthals and modern humans after publishing the full Neanderthal genome.

Commenting on the findings, John Hawks, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, told BBC News that “They’re us. We’re them.”

“[T]he really surprising thing for many of us,” noted Professor Chris Stringer, research leader in human origins at London’s Natural History Museum, “is the implication that there has been some interbreeding between Neanderthals and modern humans in the past.” Since different species cannot interbreed, the Neanderthals can no longer be considered a transitional species.

Gregory Hannon of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Laurel Hollow in New York concluded that the “publication of the full Neanderthal genome is a watershed event, a major historical achievement.” Genetic evidence is clear−the Neanderthals are not genetically distinct from modern humans.

This past week, Bruce L. Hardy of Kenyon College in Ohio and Marie-Hélène Moncel of the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris has further eroded the differences between the Neanderthals and modern Humans using anthropological evidence.

In the journal PLoS ONE this past week, Hardy and Moncel in the article “Neanderthal Use of Fish, Mammals, Birds, Starchy Plants and Wood 125-250,000 Years Ago”, further dispels anthropological differences between the Neanderthals and Humans.

Hardy and Moncel dispels the Neanderthal big game hunter myth: the “Neanderthals are most often portrayed as big game hunters who derived the vast majority of their diet from large terrestrial herbivores while birds, fish and plants are seen as relatively unimportant or beyond the capabilities of Neanderthals.”

At the fossil site in Payre, France, after evaluating 182 Neanderthal plant, fish and bird processing tools based in the wear and adhering biological residues on the tools, Hardy and Moncel  concluded that contrary to the once popular big game hunted paradigm, the Neanderthal diet “was quite diverse, including plants, large and small animals, fish, and possibly birds.”

“Neanderthals practiced what has been considered exclusively modern human behavior”,  Hardy and Moncel concluded. In other words, the diet of the Neanderthal is not different from modern Human.

These discoveries using previously unknown technologies continue to erode the differences rather than supporting the concept that the Neanderthals are an ancestral transitional link to human. The evolution industry is now tasked with discovering a better potential ancestral transitional link to humans.

To address and justify the “serious objection,” Darwin reasoned that “only a small portion of the surface of the Earth has been geologically explored.” However, in the wake of 150 years of unprecedented paleontological research since the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, the gaps are even more glaring.

As Evan Lerner, the Science News Officer at the University of Pennsylvania explains, the “Cataloging the diversity of life on Earth is challenging enough, but when scientists attempt to draw a phylogeny — the branching family tree of a group of species over their evolutionary history — the challenge goes from merely difficult to potentially impossible.”

The significance of the problem cannot be overlooked since the fossil record is the only direct evidence scientists have about the history of life. In lieu of direct evidence, scientists during the twentieth century increasingly turned to investigating indirect evidence for evolution.

Of the types of indirect evidence, “slight, successive” molecular changes between species emerged as a leading candidate to stand-in for the fossil record gaps. Molecular changes from species to species were expected to parallel evolutionary changes in the fossil record.

This past week, a research team at the University of Pennsylvania announced that their molecular results will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the paper entitled “Reconciling Molecular Phylogenies with the Fossil Record.”

“We’ve put contemporary molecular approaches on equal footing with classical paleontological approaches,” says University of Pennsylvania researcher, Joshua B. Plotkin, an associate professor of biology in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Plotkin conducted the research along with postdoctoral fellows Helene Morlon and Todd Parsons.

Plotkin and his team developed a new technique for re-tracing the history of species using DNA in cetaceans, a group of species that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. This DNA reconstructive technique once held prominence in the field of theoretical evolution.

When checked against a group of species that do have a good fossil record, Plotkin’s research team will be reporting that new glaring problems have emerged−DNA evidence cannot account for extinctions. Plotkin explains the problem: “This molecular inference is problematic because it’s known to be false. The fossil record clearly shows extinctions and long periods of diversity loss.”

The disconnection between Darwin’s theory of “slight, successive” evolutionary changes and corresponding genetic changes are now well recognized even within the evolution industry. The once prominent gene-centric theory of evolution, known as the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution rapidly started dissolving earlier in the twenty-first century as a consequence of advances in genomics.

In 2008, evolutionary scientists, Massimo Pigliucci of Stony Brook University and Gerd B Műller of the University of Vienna hosted the convening of the sixteen greatest minds in evolution for the purpose of constructing a non-gene-centric theory for evolution in Altenberg, Austria. The meeting has since been called the Altenberg Summit−the Woodstock of Evolution.

According to Pigliucci, “several of these tenets [Modern Synthesis] are being challenged as either inaccurate or incomplete… “All of these molecular processes clearly demolish the alleged central dogma.”

“The Modern Synthesis was a great intellectual accomplishment in an important era for evolutionary biology. Viewed today it is neither modern nor much of a synthesis,” according to Marc Kirschner of Harvard University and John C Gerhart of the University of California, Berkley.

Evidence from DNA will fail to address the fossil record gaps. Genetics is no longer considered a driving force in evolutionary.

No small wonder why Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti recognizes that “there never really has been a scientific theory of evolution”−a fact re-discovered by Plotkin.

Using state-of-the-art radiological technologies, the papers focused on the comparing the shape and size of the cranium, pelvis, hand, and ankle & foot of Karabo to humans. The fifth paper estimated the date of the fossils mains using advanced Uranium-lead dating technologies.

Within a week of publication, however, problems with the alleged fossil record gap resolution began to emerge. On top of the new problem list is the estimated dating of Karabo. Donald Johanson paleoanthropologist at Arizona State University and founder of the Institute of Human Origins at the University of California, Berkley, noted in The New York Times that the dating “places the origins of Homo firmly in eastern Africa… prior to the dating of A. sediba.” If the dating is correct, then, this means that humans-like species came before Karabo, therefore, humans could not have descended from Karabo. That is a major hurdle for the fossil record gap problem.

Surprisingly, Amina Khan of the Los Angeles Times picked up on the huddle: “But the age of the fossils presents a problem. The researchers’ isotopic and magnetic dating showed the fossils were 1.977 million years old, about 300,000 years younger than a Homo habilis fossil that should have been their junior.”

Paleoanthropologist Fred Spoor of University College London and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany also pointed out that “could not themselves have given rise to Homo [human-like species]” according to Ann Gibbons in an article in Science entitled “Skeletons Present an Exquisite Paleo-Puzzle.”

The gaps in the fossil record continue to be a problem for developing a comprehensive theory of human evolution.  Last year, Science noted Johanson’s concern in the article entitle”Candidate Human Ancestor From South Africa Sparks Praise and Debate.” Johanson said that the “The oldest Homo specimens are scrappy and enigmatic, leaving researchers unsure about the evolutionary steps between the australopithecines and Homo. … The transition to Homo continues to be almost totally confusing.”

Science pined that while “Our genus Homo is thought to have evolved… there are few fossils that provide detailed information on this transition.”

A recent ABC News article agrees, noting that “Scientists have long talked about a ‘missing link’ between very old fossils… There is a gap in the fossil record, so far unexplained. Does Australopithecus sediba help fill the gap? Not on its own, say most researchers…”

“The team says the new species may be the best candidate yet for the immediate ancestor of our genus, Homo,” wrote Michael Balter of the Science staff in an overview piece. However, “That last claim is a big one, and few scientists are ready to believe it themselves just yet.”

Writing in Science in 2010, paleoanthropologist and Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Tim White, pointed out that “Given its late age and Australopithecus-grade anatomy, it contributes little to the understanding of the origin of genus Homo.” Picking up on the story, Time simply reported that “Tim White … believes A. Sediba bears no relationship to modern humans.”

After reviewing the most recent papers in Science, Professor of Human Origins at George Washington University, Bernard Wood, concluded that the reports are “a watershed in our understanding of human evolution, even if only to demonstrate that things are pretty complex”. Rather than clarifying human origins, Karabo complicates any presumed line of ancestral descent.

Ian Tattersall, paleoanthropologist and a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, resigned to the fact that the fossil evidence will never show the “leap to humans” because it happened “very suddenly”.

After 150 years since the publication of The Origin of Species, the evidence continues to contradict rather than support Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution−a problem Darwin was keenly aware of. As Steven Gould noted in The Panda’s Thumb, “The fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy.”

Even while leading paleoanthropologists, including Bernard Wood, Donald Johanson, Fred Spoor, Ian Tattersal, and Tim White, are clearly convinced that Karabo is not a human ancestor the media continues to twist the evidence to support the evolution industry.  The handling of Karabo highlights, again, the anti-science rhetoric of the popular media to support of the evolution industry.

National Public Radio (NPR) ran an article entitled “Examining Ancient Fossils for Clues to Human Origins”. The Wall Street Journal chimed in with “Fossil Trove Sheds Light on a Stage of Evolution”. The Boston Globe speculated with the title “Skeleton could be human relative”; TIME with “Rethinking Human Origins: Fossils Reveal a New Ancestor on the Family Tree”.

The Los Angeles Times hinted of an issue with the discovery with the title “Hominid fossils may shake up the human family tree”. Even the National Geographic response was guarded, weighing in with “Human Ancestor May Put Twist in Origin Story, New Studies Say”.

Ironically, the discovery is raising more evolutionary questions than answers. In fact, despite the media hype, the report in Science points out that only a “Few other researchers are convinced that A. sediba was a direct ancestor of humans.” In other words, contrary to the contention that A. sediba is a human ancestor.

The flurry can be traced back to August 15, 2008 when South African paleoanthropologist Lee Berger’s nine-year-old son, Matthew, stumbled upon a fossilized bone while exploring the hills north of Johannesburg on the Malapa Nature Reserve.

“Sticking out of the back of the rock was a mandible with a tooth, a canine, sticking out. And I almost died”, Matthew later recalling the 2008 event. The fossil belonged to a 4 foot 2 inch male, the skull of which was discovered later in March 2009 by Berger’s team.

In 2010 the skull along with more skeletal reamins were initially described in two papers in the journal Science by Lee R. Berger and colleagues. Sediba means “natural spring”−presuming to be the spring from which humans evolved. According to Berger, “They do represent a model that could lead to the genus Homo”. In total, 220 bones belonging to five individuals have now been recovered in South Africa, an area touted as the “Cradle of Humankind”, conforming to the still controversial “out of Africa” theory of evolution.

A. sediba has since been affectionately re-named as Karabo. The name was selected over 15,000 other South African entry submissions during a naming competition sponsored by Standard Bank and the Palaeontological Scientific (PAST) in association with Wits University. In Setswana, Karabo means “answer”.

At issue, though, what “answer” does A. sediba bring to the table? For researcher Kristian Carlson at the University of Witwatersrand,  “Whether or not it’s on the same lineage as leading to Homo, I think there are interesting questions and implications.” ”Questions” and “implications”, however, are not to be confused with “answers”. For Philip Rightmire of  Harvard University, “Evolution is [now] more convoluted than we thought.” Ironically, Matthew’s finding, rather than having an “answer” to the question of human evolution, applies an even greater centrifugal forces on the current models of human evolution.

Paleontologists Timothy White of the University of California, Berkley, and Ronald Clarke of the University of the Witwatersrand’s Institute for Human Evolution in Germany in an accompanying news article published in Science refutes Berger’s claim that A. sediba represents a transitional species on the way up.

In the wake of the article this week in Science, anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University noted, “Just because it shares a bit of anatomical morphology with Homo does not mean it is Homo or ancestral to Homo.”

Writing in The Telegraph (UK), science writer Tom Chivers entitled his article “Australopithecus sediba: can we stop calling it a ‘missing link?” concluding “What it is not, however, is a ‘missing link’.”

 A. sediba was soon recognized as a new species and classified with the australopithecines. The most famous member of this group is Australopithecus afarensis, better known as Lucy discovered in Ethiopia in November 1974 by Tom Gray and Donald Johanson.

In analyzing the skeletal features of Lucy, Charles E. Oxnard concluded in 1984 in his book The Order of Man that it “is now being recognized widely that the australopithecines are not structurally … similar to humans.”

In the journal publication Natural History, Stephen Gould, in 1986, took the same stand as Oxford against the human ancestry of A. afarensis: “In short, he [Oxnard] sees Australopithecines as uniquely different from apes and humans, not as imperfect people on the way up.” Later in 1987 in Natural History, Stephen Gould acknowledged that problems with the fossil evidence for human evolution overwhelm any cohesive theory since “we do not know which branch on the copious bush of apes budded off the twig that led to our lineage … no fossil evidence exists at all.”

Ann Gibbons published in the journal Science in 1996 how convoluted the evidence for human evolution has become: “The story of human evolution has lately become as complicated as a Tolstoy novel.”

“They’re going to have to make a stronger case,” said paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson of Arizona State University, who discovered Lucy. Johanson, a friend of Berger’s who has seen the fossils, said the only solution would be to look for more evidence. “I know this is a terrible thing to say,” he said. “But we’d all like to [understand] the shape of the [human family] tree and the positions on the tree — and we really do need more fossils.”
In the 1976 Presidential Address at the Geological Association, D. V. Ager dismayed of the fossil record, and went on the record to say, “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student … have now been ‘debunked.’”

The fossil record problem continues to be a question mark−not an answer, not a Karabo. In The Panda’s Thumb, evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Gould, feeling the agony noted that in reality, the “fossil record had caused Darwin more grief than joy.”

Last week’s spinning the Australopithecus sediba saga underscores the desperation of the evolution industry to use even Matthew Berger’s inconclusive A. sediba fossil evidence to prove evolution as “a fact”, especially since the topic of evolution has entered center stage in the 2012 Presidential campaign. The fact is, the emperor indeed has no clothes.

Little did Matthew Berger know how his excitement would re-ignite evolution’s primary problem−the lack of fossil record evidence.

Since the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species in November 1859, attempts over the past 150 years to avoid fulfilling Darwin’s own prediction have largely been a failure, according to an article in The New York Times —at least in the classroom.

In the Times article “On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan,” free-lance writer Nicholas Bakalar notes “that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology.”

While only 28 percent of the teachers consistently follow the recommendations, Bakalar was even more dismayed that researchers discovered that “13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.”

Bakalar’s article was based on a research paper by political science professors, Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer at Penn State, Pennsylvania, entitled “Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, But Not in the Classroom” published in the January 2011 issue of Science.

In an interview with ScienceDaily and published in an article entitled “High School Biology Teachers in U.S. Reluctant to Endorse Evolution in Class, Study Finds,” Berkman and Plutzer noted in dismay that “Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America’s classrooms.”

To solve this apparent schoolroom “breathtaking inanity,” Berkman and Plutzer propose the following solution: “Combined with continued successes in courtrooms and the halls of state government, this approach offers our best chance of increasing the scientific literacy of future generations.” Really?

Perhaps rather than spending time in “courtrooms and the halls of state government,” Berkman and Plutzer should consider exploring the range of known scientific problems with evolution. Berkman and Plutzer would undoubtedly be surprised to discover that evolution is a theory in crisis—not a scientific fact.

Even the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the vanguard of promoting the teaching of evolution in the public classroom, will not even lend support to any of the currently popular theories of evolution, only noting, “There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place.”

The fact is public science teachers appear far more aware of the debate over evolution than Berkman and Plutzer. Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B Műller in Evolution the Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press, spells out the now blatant dilemma: “Although it [Modern Synthesis] is still regarded as the standard theoretical paradigm of evolutionary biology, for several years now dissenters from diverse fields of biology have been questioning aspects of the Modern Synthesis.”

Since Nobel Prize winner Jacque Monod endorsement of the gene centric Modern Synthesis Theory declaration, “a mechanism for Darwinism is at last securely founded” in the mid-twentieth century, new scientific discoveries employing technological advances in the following decades has delivered a crushing blow to the Modern Synthesis Theory.

According to Marc Kirschner of Harvard University and John C Gerhart of the University of California, Berkley, “The Modern Synthesis was a great intellectual accomplishment in an important era for evolutionary biology. Viewed today it is neither modern nor much of a synthesis.”

Sean B. Carroll of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute agrees: “The Modern Synthesis established much of the foundation for how evolutionary biology has been discussed and taught in the past sixty years. However, despite the monikers of ‘Modern’ and ‘Synthesis’, it is incomplete.”

Pigliucci, Műller, Kirschner, Gerhart, and Carroll are just five of the sixteen evolutionary scientists that convened for Altenberg Summit during the summer of 2008 in Altenberg, Austria. The goal of the summit was to develop a new consensus on a new theory for evolution following the complete demise of the Modern Synthesis.

In their own “breathtaking inanity,” Berkman and Plutzer appear to be completely oblivious to the fact that a consensus for a theory of evolution does not exist. While Stuart Newman, professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College agrees that “No natural law may suffice to describe the full evolution of the biosphere, human economy, and the human culture,” French geneticist Jerome Lejeune, cuts to the chase —“There is no theory of evolution.”

In the words of Italian geneticist and editor of the longest running biology journal in the world, Giuseppe Sermonti, “There never really has been a scientific theory of evolution.”

Before drawing reigning judgment on teacher performance in the classroom and drawing up legal entanglements in the courts, perhaps Berkman and Plutzer evaluate the weight of scientific evidence now known to be against evolution. Berkman and Plutzer should spend more time on the laboratory bench rather than the not in the courthouse. The presentation of evolution in the classroom should be a matter of science, not law.

Public school teachers seem to understand the following principle of teaching better than Berkman and Plutzer – that which is unknown should not be taught as fact—even when mandated by the court.

Natural selection, the proposed natural law driving the progress of evolution, was envisioned by Darwin, on the one hand, with powers like that of a deity: It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity; but who objects to an author speaking of the attraction of gravity as ruling the movements of the planets?

Natural selection was the power “insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers”. Natural selection is not limited by space or time, acting “daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations.”

This deity guiding the unlimited power of evolution was envisioned to select the good and “reject the bad” -

What limit can be put to this [natural selection] power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of each creature, favouring the good and rejecting the bad? I can see no limit to this power, in slowly and beautifully adapting each form to the most complex relations of life.

Darwin continues to envision “that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration … until a better is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed.” Natural selection has the power to select the good and destroy the bad.

Then, Darwin hoodwinks natural selection with powerlessness, on the other hand –

Natural selection will be powerless in certain beneficial directions.

Darwin explains that “natural selection … [has] no power to check deviations in structure.” Limiting the power of natural selection further, Darwin envisions that once an organ becomes useless, even though it was originally formed by natural selection, the variations of the organ “can no longer even be checked by natural selection.”

The hoodwinking on the power of natural selection underscores why The Origin of Species can never used as a scientific text—anywhere. While evolution is a bonafide philosophy, Darwin’s theory remains simply just a philosophy—not a scientific fact. Eminent evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts echoes the now obvious consensus -

Neo-Darwinists are a… religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo-Saxon Biology.

Central to the origin of life issue is the question, what is life? The journal Astrobiology in December 2010 featured a collection of essays on the topic “What is Life?” organized by David Deamer of the University of California, Santa Cruz, by asking the question, “Can life be defined?”

An international team from France and Mexico, Stephane Tirard, Michel Morange, Antonio Lazcano answered the call with “The Definition of Life: A Brief History of an Elusive Scientific Endeavor”, with the reply, no:

Life is an empirical concept; and, as suggested by the many unsuccessful efforts to define it, this task is likely to remain, at best, a work in progress.” Noting that “between the non-living and the living… it may be meaningless to draw a strict line between them.

Mark A. Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, agrees with Tirard, Moranage, and Lazcano:

This problem is controversial, and there is nothing approaching a consensus about what life is.

From Yale University, Steven A. Benner currently with the Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution notes,

Any definition is intricately connected to a theory that gives it meaning.

In other words, the theory of life determines the definition of life—circular reasoning, a tautology at its best. In the context of evolution, “Darwinian evolution might itself be forced to change as supra-Darwinian species emerge… in our exploration of the Cosmos.”

To conclude the collection, Deamer includes an essay entitled “A Theory of Circular Organization and Negative Feedback” published in the journal Astrobiology by the late Sergey Tsokolo, molecular biology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

Because life could not exist in their absence, [biochemical] feedback loops should be included in definitions of life.

According to these astrobiologists, life is definable only in the terms of molecular functions. Italian geneticist and editor of the longest running biology journal in the world, Giuseppe Sermonti in the book “Why a Fly is Not a Horse” disagrees: “biochemical complexity has little to offer in explaining evolution”, and hence the definition of life.

No wonder Sermonti has been driven to conclude –

Evolution is really more of a paradigm or methodology than a theory.

Sermonti notes further,

Molecular biology has cultivated a passion for abstract ‘life’.

Life is simply indefinable in the context of an evolutionary theory. No wonder, evolutionary Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, Jerry Fodor, has been driven to conclude -

Astrobiology doesn’t exist.

Robert Hazen, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington explains in an interview with Suzan Mazur why astrobiology continues to exist

Astrobiology is growing tremendously because there is a stable source of funding. Let’s face it. Science is a social endeavor. If people can get jobs, they’re going to go into the field. Right now NASA and other government agencies and also non-government agencies are putting money into this.

NASA established the Astrobiology Program in 1996. Now, the study of astrobiology is the primary reason for the existence of NASA. In their own words,

Astrobiology is a cross-cutting theme in all of NASA’s space science endeavors, knitting together research in astrophysics, earth science, and heliophysics as well as planetary science.

The evolution industry captures a major fraction of government funded science programs. After more than a decade, however, even NASA has failed in answering Deamer’s basic question, “What is Life?”

“Biologists have been unable to agree on a definition of the complex phenomenon known as ‘life’,” according to Mary Ann Liebert, writing for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. Liebert’s article was featured in ScienceDaily, January 13, 2011.

Amazingly, Darwin faired better. In facing the essence of life issue, starting with the second edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin included the following phrase in the final paragraph all the subsequent editions -

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator.

With certainty, Louis Pasteur’s principle Omne vivum ex vivo, all life comes from life, is the essence of life, as illustrated by Michelangelo—not as a mindless product of cosmic chaos over eons of time.

The U.S. government should stop funding the insane notions, like finding the essence of life through astrobiology. The essence of life originated beyond the realm of natural laws.

References available upon request.

Bernard Kettlewell in the early 1950’s was the first to design an experiment to test Darwin’s “excellent example of natural selection” in two types of wooded areas in England—polluted and nonpolluted. Kettlewood demonstrated light colored peppered moths survived better than darker colored moths in areas where the tree trucks were of lighter color, and conversely— darker colored moths survived better than lighter colored moths in areas where the tree trucks were of darker color.

This phenomenon became known as industrial melanism. Kettlewell announced the experiment as “the most striking evolutionary change ever actually witnessed in any organism.” Kettlewell later published an article in Scientific American in 1959 entitled “Darwin’s Missing Evidence.”

By the early 1960’s, pictures of Kettlewell’s peppered moths on tree trunks emerged as the hottest ticket in biology textbooks to demonstrate the scientific evidence for evolution through natural selection.

Kettlewood repeated the same experiment in the wooded areas surrounding Dorset while being filmed by Niko Tinbergen who won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. In 1975, British geneticist Philip. M. Sheppard called the phenomenon “the most spectacular evolutionary change ever witnessed and recorded by man.”

The first red flag over Kettlewell’s experiment was raised in 1975 by D. R. Lees and E. R. Creed when they repeated the experiment. After performing the experiment, Lee and Creed were drawn to conclude, “Either the predation experiments and tests of conspicuousness to humans are misleading, or some factor or factors in addition to selective predation are responsible for maintaining the high melanic frequencies.”

In 1984, Finnish zoologist Kauri Mikkola, discrediting textbook pictures of moths on tree trucks, stated in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society that normally the Peppered Moth rests on “horizontal branches”… “high up in the canopies” and not on tree trunks as “studied” by Kettlewell.

In the same year, Italian biologists Giuseppe Sermonti and Paola Catastini criticized Kettlewood’s daytime releases, declaring, “the evidence Darwin lacked, Kettlewood also lacked.”

In revisiting the issue in 1999, Japanese biologist Atuhiro Sibatani likewise concluded in the European journal Rivista di Biologia that the “story of industrial melanism must be shelved at least for the time being, as a paradigm of neo-Darwinian evolution.” American biologist Theodore Sargent and colleagues in 1998 contended in Evolutionary Biology “that there is little persuasive evidence, in the form of rigorous and replicated observations, to support this explanation at the present time.” The evidence is clear. Kettlewell had fraudulently engineered his study original study.

Commenting on Kettlewell’s moth example of natural selection at work, University of Chicago evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, in 1998, wrote in Nature, “From time to time, evolutionists re-examine a classical experimental study and find, to their horror, that it is flawed or downright wrong.”

Coyne concluded that Kettlewood’s “prize horse of evolution in our stable of examples” of evolution “is in bad shape, and while not yet ready for the glue factory, needs serious attention.” Coyne painted a bigger picture: “We must stop pretending we understand the course of natural selection.”

In 2005, Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti encapsulated Kettlewell’s experiment in the book Why a Fly is not a Horse and took the stance that the “fairy tale of the peppered moth is plausible, but untrue.”

Kettlewell’s moths, along with Haeckel’s embryos, British Museum’s Piltdown man, and National Geographic’s Archaeoraptor, stands as textbook example of fraud used as evidence to promote the theory of evolution as a fact.

During his lifetime, Kettlewell was appointed Senior Research Officer at the University of Oxford in 1954, lead the 1958 Expedition to Brazil marking the centennial of Darwin’s Origin of Species, awarded the Darwin Medal (USSR) in 1959 and the Mendel Medal (Czechoslovakia) in 1965, and nominated as an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University. Kettlewell died of a drug overdose in 1979.

No wonder, natural selection has critics. Swedish geneticist Antonio Lima-de-Faria views “Selection [as] a political not a scientific concept. At the time of Darwin it fitted perfectly the expanding colonialism of Victorian England.”

For geneticist Scott Gilbert at Swarthmore College, “natural selection alone cannot explain how butterflies got their wings. How the turtle got its shell.”

Carl Sagan’s wife and a member of the National Academy of Science since 1983, Lynn Margulis concludes, “Natural selection occurs all the time. But natural selection is an elimination process.”

Stuart Newman, professor at the New York Medical College and Altenberg Summit participant sees that “No natural law may suffice to describe the full evolution of the biosphere, human economy, and the human culture.”

Following decades of investigation on natural selection, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini have been driven to conclude in What Darwin Got Wrong, “Darwin’s theory of natural selection is fatally flawed”. Not only is flawed, even the concept of natural selection is simply an “intensional fallacy”.

Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti has declared, “Science has taken on the wager… and lost.” Kettlewell’s peppered moths are yet another textbook example of fraud by the evolution industry in a disparate attempt to provide evidence for evolution.

While evolution in the twentieth century was considered a theory in crisis, now the theory of evolution is in crisis without evidence—the emperor without cloths.

References available upon request

While not specifically address origin of life issues in The Origin of Species, Darwin clearly wrestled with the issue. At the time, concepts of spontaneous generation, the animate arising from the inanimate, dominated the evolution movement.

The origin of spontaneous generation concepts can be traced back to the Greek philosophers from Anaximander to Aristotle—“Creatures are spontaneously generated”. Even Saint Augustine, along with his geocentric theory, discussed spontaneous generation in The City of God.

The synthesis of the organic compound urea by German chemist Friedrich Woehler in 1828 using inorganic chemical reactions further fueled the possibility of producing life from non-life, setting the stage for Darwin’s “warm little pond” speculation—the protein “ready to undergo still more complex changes”.

Spontaneous generation concepts continued into the twentieth century. Russian biochemist Aleksandr Oparin proposed that there is no fundamental difference between a living organism and lifeless matter, and that early Earth was composed of a reducing stellar atmosphere—an atmosphere with no oxygen.

British geneticist John B.S. Haldane envisioned that the early Earth pre-biotic oceans were “hot dilute soup” coining the term “Primordial soup”. The concept even gained traction in Hollywood. In the opening scenes of the 1940 Walt Disney movie “Fantasia”, the primordial Earth depiction, underscored with Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, declared “… a coldly accurate reproduction of what science thinks went on in the first few billion years of this planet’s existence.”

Riding the popular wave of possibility, in the 1950’s physical chemist Harold C Urey promoted the “Cosmochemistry” theory—life on Earth arose from stellar gases in the absence of oxygen. Stanley Miller, Urey’s graduate student, performed in the laboratory the infamous Miller-Urey experiment producing proteins in the absence of oxygen in 1953.

The absence of oxygen is a critical factor in the generation of proteins from stellar gases. The absence of oxygen produces a reducing atmosphere while the presence of oxygen produces an oxidizing atmosphere. An oxidizing atmosphere prevents the production of proteins from stellar gases dominated by methane and ammonia.

Until later in the 1950’s, little evidence was available to document the atmospheric conditions of early Earth. The Miller-Urey experiment opened a new field for geological investigation. The quest to discover the early atmospheric conditions of the Earth before the advent of life in geological formations was on.

One of the first to find a wrench in the no-oxygen theory was geologist Harrison Brown of the University of Chicago in the 1960s, noting that stellar atmosphere vanished or never existed on Earth.

By the 1970s, Philip Abelson of the Carnegie Institution gave a simple Q&A: “What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on Earth? The answer is that there is no evidence for it, but much against it.”

Later in the 1970s, Canadian geologists Erich Dimroth and Michael Kimberly issued the following finding: “In general, we find no evidence in the sedimentary distributions of carbon, sulfur, uranium, or iron, that an oxygen-free atmosphere has existed at any time during the span of geological history recorded in well-preserved sedimentary rocks.”

Belgium Biochemist, Marcel Florkin, joined Dimroth and Kimberly in 1975 noting that “the concept of a reducing primitive atmosphere has been abandoned,” and the Miller–Urey experiment is “not now considered geologically adequate.”

Even molecular biologists, Sidney Fox and Klaus Dose, joined the discussion in 1977 declaring, “The inference that Miller’s synthesis does not have a geological relevance has become increasingly widespread.”

In 1982, British geologists Harry Clemmey and Nick Badham after examining the evidence from the rocks proclaimed, “From the time of the earliest dated rocks at 3.7 billion years, Earth had an oxygenic atmosphere.”

By 1995, Jon Cohen, senior editor for Science, the flagship journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced, “The early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller–Urey simulation.”

With the evidence became too massive to ignore any longer, in 1998 Richard Monastersky, writing for the National Geographic finally broadcast, “Many scientists now suspect that the early atmosphere was very different from what Miller first supposed.”

Oxygen was clearly in the early Earth picture and now is throwing a wrench into the gears of the evolution industry machine. The evolution industry is failing to answer the most basic question of life—how did life begin?

Perhaps it was intuition that drove Darwin away from speculating on the origin of life in The Origin of Species—it had more than enough unresolved problems.

With a tsunami of evidence against Urey’s theory, since the 1970s NASA has continues to fund the descendant of cosmochemistry, astrobiology, even though scientists like Jerry Fodor of the University of Arizona have noted, “Astrobiology doesn’t exist.”

The drive to support astrobiology is money. Robert Hazen, research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Geophysical Laboratory and Clarence Robinson Professor of Earth, opined, “Astrobiology is growing tremendously because there is a stable source of funding. Let’s face it. Science is a social endeavor. If people can get jobs, they’re going to go into the field.”

Oxygen, a wrench in the gears of evolution theory, paints the clear picture: the evolution industry is driven by a societal philosophy, not science. Evolution is simply a philosophy.

References available upon request