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.

In fact, Darwin abandoned the scientific method and declared that his theory of evolution was based on speculation –

I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.

Darwin ascribed to the popular nineteenth century theory of blending genetics of inheritance in which the new generation was simply an averaging of the previous generations. Blending genetics was debunked by a contemporary of Darwin, an Austrian monk.

Just a few years after the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species, Gregor Mendel, now known as the father of modern genetics, using the scientific method published his landmark paper on genetic inheritance. Mendel in studying the genetics of the pea plant discovered that the theory blending inheritance was wrong.

Mendel’s findings were intensely criticized. It was not until the turn of the twentieth century that the significance of Mendel’s findings was appreciated. Mendel was the Vincent van Gogh of modern genetics.

Mendel’s laws of genetics eventually became the foundation of the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution developed during the twentieth century. The central dogma of the Modern Synthesis theory is based on an accumulation of genetic mutations passed on to the next generation through natural selection.

At the core of the theory was Darwin’s concept of “slight, successive” evolutionary changes. The Modern Synthesis was the central unifying theory for the evolution industry during the early twentieth century. The discovery of the DNA molecule structure by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953 sealed a place for the Modern Synthesis theory with a molecular mechanism for evolution.

DNA was discovered to be a double helix structure composed of a sequence of nucleic acids. The sequence was thought to be the information source driving the code of biological life and evolution.

While the technology was not available to study genetic mutational changes, at the time, the hunt was on to discover the evidence for “slight, successive” genetic mutation changes in the sequence of nucleic acids found in the DNA and RNA molecule as evidence for evolution.

This past week, an international team of scientists lead by David Brawand of the Center for Integrative Genomics at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland published their work in the journal Nature. In the paper, “The Evolution of Gene Expression Levels in Mammalian Organs”, reported “the sequencing of polyadenylated RNA from six organs across ten species that represent all major mammalian lineages (placentals, marsupials and monotremes) and birds (the evolutionary outgroup), with the goal of understanding the dynamics of mammalian transcriptome evolution.”

The underlying purpose was of Brawand’s investigation was to demonstrate Darwin’s “slight, successive” changes in gene expression across a mammalian lineages. Amazingly, however, the investigators failed to discover any evidence for the expected progressive “slight, successive” evolutionary changes in gene sequences between mammals.

While the team reported “that the rate of gene expression evolution varies among organs, lineages and chromosomes”, the glaring problem for evolution is the failure to discover a progression of “slight, successive” evolutionary changes in gene sequences between mammals. Genes varying at different rates fails is compatible with a mosaic pattern of life, a pattern indistinguishable from a design theory of life. The scientific evidence points to the fact that life is a mosaic, not a pattern of “slight, successive” evolutionary changes forming Darwin’s Tree of Life.

Reflecting on the deepening theory of evolution crisis, as early as 1998, the distinguished professor of evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, Douglas Futuyma opined: “Like most scientific theories, evolutionary theory is incomplete in several respects, most conspicuously in that… it lacks a sufficient body of principles for translating between genes and phenotypes.” In other words, the genetics alone cannot not differentiate between species−phenotypes.

In 2005, Sean B Carroll, Professor of Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Medical Genetics at the University of Wisconsin agrees with Futuyma:

The Modern Synthesis established much of the foundation for how evolutionary biology has been discussed and taught for the past sixty years. However, despite the monikers of ‘Modern’ and ‘Synthesis’, it is incomplete.

As scientific molecular evidence continues to accumulate, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution is emerging more as a mirage than a mechanism.  In facing the reality, Alan Love of the University of Minnesota concluded

My account also meshes with the recognition that a fully unified view of evolutionary processes may be out of reach.

While the theory of evolution was once in crisis, now the concept of evolution is in crisis without even a theory.

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.

“I hear your mom was asking about evolution,” Perry said. “That’s a theory that is out there — and it’s got some gaps in it.”

Writing in The Guardian, an original supported of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution starting in the nineteenth century, liberal commentator Paul Krugman in his column, The Observer, ran crazy with the comment in the article entitled “The Republicans are now the anti-science party, on climate change and evolution, the party’s presidential hopefuls are wilfully ignorant.”

“Mr Perry, the governor of Texas,” according to Krugman, “recently made headlines by dismissing evolution as just a theory’, one that has “got some gaps in it”, an observation that will come as news to the vast majority of biologists.” Really?

Apparently, Krugman is “wilfully ignorant” about the “majority of biologists”. The book, Evolution-the Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press explains in detail why the “gaps” in evolution theory still persist.

The Evolution-the Extended Synthesis was written by sixteen leading scientists from around the world that met in Altenberg, Austria during the summer of 2008. The purpose of the meeting was to develop a new unifying and comprehensive theory of evolution to eliminate the “gaps” as mentioned by Perry. This meeting has been since been popularly called the Altenberg-16 Summit.

What emerged from the summit meeting, ironically, were sixteen different theories rather than a one unifying and comprehensive theory. Today, amazingly there are more “gaps” in the theory  of evolution than at any time since the publication of The Origin of Species by Darwin in 1859.

Kruger, apparently, is not aware of the controversies with the evolution of theories over the past 150 years, including Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, and the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis. No theory, to date, has arisen as an adequate unifying candidate to account for presumed evolution. Today, the field of evolution not only has gaps”, evolution is simply a philosophy without a scientific theory.

Ann Coulter was quick to jump into the debate with the blog posted on Human Events. However, unlike Kruger, Coulter in the post entitled “Liberals’ View of Darwin Unable to Evolve” on August 31^st with substance rather than typical extinct rhetoric produced by the government financed evolution industry.

From the genetic evidence, Coulter points out that scientist now recognize that “the vast majority of mutations are deleterious to the organism.” Krugman, apparently, is “wilfully  ignorant” that mutations, the foundation of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis theory, have been abandoned as a theoretical mechanism for evolution.

Damaged genetic data cannot pave a road to progressively greater complexity as once anticipated by genetic evolutionists during the twentieth century.

As Coulter notes, not only do evolutionists have a problem with the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis theory, they have problem with the fossil record: “We also ought to find a colossal number of transitional organisms in the fossil record — for example, a squirrel on its way to becoming a bat, or a bear becoming a whale,” “But that’s not what the fossil record shows. We don’t have fossils for any intermediate creatures in the process of evolving into something better. This is why the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to the absence of transitional fossils as the ‘trade secret’ of paleontology.” Krugman, apparently, is “wilfully ignorant” that the fossil record is a problem, not a solution, for the evolution industry.

How did evolutionists end up with a problem rather than a viable theory? Coulter explains: “Darwinists start with a theory and then rearrange the evidence.” Krugman, apparently, is “wilfully ignorant” that starting with Darwin,
the evolution industry has long since abandoned the scientific method. After the sparring, the obvious fact emerges, Krugman, not the Republicans, represent news media “anti-science” journalism.

Never has a theory played such leverage in a national presidential election campaign. Perhaps, Coulter is wrong - the Krugman camp is evolving into extinction.

Go campaign 2012.

In his 1518-page “European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik reveals himself as a champion of modern biology and the scientific worldview, listing The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin as one of his most “important” books. (p. 1407)

“Social-darwinism was the norm before the 1950”, Breivik laments. “Back then, it was allowed to say what we feel. Now, however, we have to disguise our preferences to avoid the horrible consequences of being labeled as a genetical preferentialist.” (p. 1227)

According the Breivik, the “perfect Europe” includes the rule of Social Darwinism—the summation of “logic” and “rationalist thought.”

‘Logic’ and rationalist thought (a certain degree of national Darwinism) should be the fundament of our societies (p. 1386)

Brevivik aligns with Princeton University evolutionary biologist, Lee Silver, for a revival of eugenics, arguing that, “radical policies will have to be implemented” to reduce the human population by more than half, or 3.8 billion people. (p. 1202)

Using Darwin’s argument, “extinction and natural selection … go hand in hand”,  Breivik writes that if “second and third world countries” cannot curb their production of human offspring, “nature will correct their suicidal tendencies as they are unable to feed their populations.” (p. 1202)

Continuing the argument, Breivik argues that Western countries should not interfere in this natural process.

If starvation threatens the countries who have failed to follow our [population control] guidelines we should not support them by backing their corrupt leaders or send any form of aid.” (p. 1202) Indeed, “[f]ood aid to 3rd world countries must stop immediately as it is the primary cause of overpopulation.  (p. 1203)

While The New York Times was busy making the case that Breivik was a “Christian Extremist” on the front page, the informed world could see the hand writing on the wall: Breivik is a Darwinist—not a Christian.

John West, writing for the Evolution News and Views of Discovery Institute, in the article “The Professor and the Madman” details the re-emergence of the eugenics movement, now known as “reprogenetics”, as promoted by Breivik and Silver. Tragically, history will repeat itself, again, if the history of evolution is not known and exposed.

Charles Darwin never mentions hemoglobin even in the sixth and last edition of The Origin of Species in 1872, even though this oxygen-carrying protein hemoglobin was discovered much earlier by Friedrich Ludwig Hünefeld in 1840. Hünefeld explains: “I have occasionally seen in almost dried blood… rectangular crystalline structures which under the microscope had sharp edges and were bright red.”

In 1851, Otto Funke published a series of articles in which he described growing hemoglobin crystals by successively diluting red blood cells with a solvent such as pure water, alcohol, or ether, followed by slow evaporation of the solvent from the resulting protein solution. Hemoglobin’s reversible oxygenation was described a few years later by Felix Hoppe-Seyler.

Hemoglobin, also spelled haemoglobin and abbreviated Hb or Hgb, is the iron-containing oxygen-transport metalloprotein in the red blood cells of all vertebrates (except the fish family Channichthyidae) and the tissues of some invertebrates. Hemoglobin delivers oxygen removes and carbon dioxide—a biochemical necessity.

Early molecular evidence was compatible with the theory of evolution. Molecular biologist Michael Denton in Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, notes that the initial laboratory analysis demonstrated that differences in the hemoglobin molecule between man and dog only varied less than 20 percent, compared to more than 50 percent between man and fish. Since the dog is closer to man than to the fish, in evolutionary terms, the implications were that hemoglobin would serve as a powerful tool in tracing the pathways of evolution.

In 1963 John Buettner-Janusch of Yale University and Robert Hill of Duke University noted -

The study of the hemoglobins of the Primates should be an unbeatable combination for evolutionary studies.

The hemoglobin findings intensified the international research on finding Darwin’s “slight, successive” micro-evolutionary changes in constructing the elusive “Tree of Life.” Since then, however, scientists have discovered that the tree branches are actually not connected.

Molecular biologist Richard Dickerson and colleagues concluded as early as 1969 that the “slight, successive” amino acid changes in the presumed hemoglobin molecule Tree of Life simply do not exist. Referring to the evolution of hemoglobin, Dickerson admits that it “is hard to see a common line of descent snaking in so unsystematic a way through so many different phyla.”

Research into the evolution of hemoglobin continued to be active, however—the importance to evolution cannot be trivialized. Search the National Center for Biotechnology Information Web database, using the search terms “hemoglobin and evolution,” retrieves more than two thousand articles.

While new possible mechanisms or a new investigative approach or likely scenario have been suggested, the goal of constructing a Tree of Life from hemoglobin, one of life’s most important molecules, remains a mirage.

Not only are the amino acid “slight, successive” changes not observed, the micro-evolutionary genetic regulation of hemoglobin is not observed. In addressing the genetic regulation of the α-and β-globin segments of hemoglobin molecular biologist Ross Hardison of Pennsylvania State University in 1997 opined -

Currently, the coordinated regulation of α-and β-globin genes is more paradoxical than clear.

In 2007, Ron Milo of Harvard University concedes, “The contrasting mode of variation suggests that physiological changes in hemoglobin are connected to evolutionary changes in some nonrandom way that begs an explanation.” The failure to construct a Tree of Life from hemoglobin, the once golden darling, has been a stunning blow to the evolution industry.

With hemoglobin emerging as a problem for the evolution industry, evolutionary advocate, Jerry Coyne, in book entitled Why Evolution is True (2009), was forced to completely avoid any reference to the mass of scientific evidence on hemoglobin against evolution.

According to, “At a molecular level,” according to Denton, “there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal.”

For Dickerson, “The more one approaches the molecular level in the study of living things, the more similar they appear, and the less important the differences.” In other words, the essence of life is not determined by molecular and cellular processes.

No small wonder, then, why criticism of evolution has now even emerged from within the evolution industry. Alan Love of the University of Minnesota writes-

The proliferation and heterogeneity of life science disciples and methodologies following the advent of molecular biology has led to a centrifugal force within evolutionary research, making it difficult to recover a single big-picture or grand unified theory.

For Love, the evidence for a compressive theory of evolution has reached a tipping point: “My account also meshes with the recognition that a fully unified view of evolutionary processes may be out of reach.” The predictive value of any evolutionary theory, including Darwin’s theory of natural selection, is essentially closer to zero today than at any other time in the history of evolution.

The evidence from the hemoglobin, rather than being the “unbeatable combination for evolutionary studies”, much to the chagrin of Buettner-Janusch and Hill, has clearly undermined the basic tenets of evolution.

Like Coyne, Darwin was shrewd enough not to mention hemoglobin in The Origin of Species. Hemoglobin has emerged as an evolutionist’s worst nightmare.

In 1995, Edward B. Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, and Eric F. Wieschaus were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on HOX genes. During the 1950’s, geneticist Edward B Lewis discovered the Bithorax complex (BX-C) group of HOX genes in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

The BX-C HOX gene controls the embryonic development and differentiation of the basic body plan of the fruit fly. HOX is an acronym for homeobox gene, meaning the same or similar gene. The BX-C is now known as a HOX gene—a DNA sequence within genes that is typically about 180 base pairs long.

While Drosophila research was at the forefront of biology and genetics for the first half of the 20th century, not until later in the century following the advent of molecular biology was the role of the HOX gene better comprehended. “It was then that biologists began to come to grips with the incredible homology across species,” said Corey Goodman of the University of California, Berkeley.

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, a German, along with Eric F. Wieschaus, an American, emerged as leading HOX gene investigators while focusing on the embryogenesis of the fruit fly Drosophila. HOX genes exist throughout the animal kingdom; at least one HOX cluster exists in Animal Kingdom species.

Excitement at the turn of the century centered on the prospect that Darwin’s “slight, successive” changes might be demonstrated in the evolution of the HOX genes. HOX gene similarity can be stunning. The mouse eye HOX gene is so similar to the Drosophila HOX gene, the mouse and Drosophila HOX genes are interchangeable. The same is true for Hox clusters, HOXA, HOXB, HOXC, and HOXD found in the mouse and humans.

Since HOX genes are now known to act as switches during embryological development, the HOX gene discovery fueled the concept that Darwin’s evolutionary changes originated during embryological development. This concept was compatible with Ernst Haeckel’s “biogenetic law” of “ontology, recapitulates phylogeny” theory that was embraced by Darwin. The popular term is now known as the “evo-devo” theory.

“Developmental biologists have observed a small set of genes [HOX genes],” notes biologist Ramray Bhat, “coordinating organismal development, to be highly conserved across the multicellular kingdom. They call these genes the Development Genetic Toolkit.” In part, surprisingly, the HOX gene demonstrates conservation.

In the quest to validate the evo-devo theory, the central issue centers on the evidence for “slight, successive” evolutionary changes in the HOX genes. After four decades of research, however, the evidence continues to be even more evasive since the evidence favors HOX gene conservation, not Darwin’s “slight, successive” evolutionary changes.

According to Harvard evolutionary biologist, Richard Lewontin in an interview with Susan Mazur during 2008, “there’s no question that the development of an egg is not dependent solely on the genes [HOX genes] and nucleus, but on the structure of the eggs as laid down to some extent.” Development is influenced by epigenetic factors: factors beyond genetics and HOX genes.

The once widely popular evolutionary status of HOX genes has now slid into silence, along with once popular evo-devo hype. Since 2009, in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution published by Oxford Journals, the vanguard of molecular evolutionary biology, only six papers have been published on HOX gene research (see below).

At stake is whether the evidence from the HOX genes actually supports Darwin’s elusive “Tree of Life” theory. Amazingly, the recent discovery of large differences in HOX genes between closely related species by John F. Mulley and Peter W. H. Holland of Oxford University actually undermines Bhat vision of evolutionary conservation role in the HOX gene.

Richard Dickerson, director of molecular biology at the University of Minnesota points out that “the more one approaches the molecular level in the study of living things, the more similar they appear, and the less important the differences.”

Hox genes are like Perili tires. Even though the Focus and Ferrari can sport the same Pirelli tires, does not mean the cars were produced in the same factory—the Focus is not the ancestor of a Ferrari. The Focus and the Ferrari, while similar, are independent entities.

“Theories are cheap,” Richard Lewontin pines, “and people make a living by making theories.” In the words of Swedish cytogeneticist, Antonio Lima-de-Faria, “evolution is the opium of biologists.” Withdrawal is inevitable.

Within the evolution industry, the HOX genes are the latest “facts of evolution” to slid into silence.

Molecular Biology and Evolution papers published by Oxford Journals, 2009 – 2011

Jenny Widmark, Görel Sundström, Daniel Ocampo Daza, and Dan Larhammar. Differential Evolution of Voltage-Gated Sodium Channels in Tetrapods and Teleost Fishes. Mol Biol Evol (2011) 28(1): 859-871

Laura C. Ferguson, Jack Green, Alison Surridge, and Chris D. Jiggins. Evolution of the Insect Yellow Gene Family. Mol Biol Evol (2011) 28(1): 257-272

Silvan Oulion, Mélanie Debiais-Thibaud, Yves d’Aubenton-Carafa, Claude Thermes, Corinne Da Silva, Sylvie Bernard-Samain, Frédéric Gavory, Patrick Wincker, Sylvie Mazan, and Didier Casane. Evolution of Hox Gene Clusters in Gnathostomes: Insights from a Survey of a Shark (Scyliorhinus canicula) Transcriptome. Mol Biol Evol (2010) 27(12): 2829-2838

John F. Mulley and Peter W. H. Holland. Parallel Retention of Pdx2 Genes in Cartilaginous Fish and Coelacanths. Mol Biol Evol (2010) 27(10): 2386-2391

Peter W. Osborne and David E.K. Ferrier. Chordate Hox and ParaHox Gene Clusters Differ Dramatically in Their Repetitive Element Content. Mol Biol Evol (2010) 27(2): 217-220

Shigehiro Kuraku, Axel Meyer, and Shigeru Kuratani. Timing of Genome Duplications Relative to the Origin of the Vertebrates: Did Cyclostomes Diverge before or after? Mol Biol Evol (2009) 26(1): 47-59

If Dobzhansky’s assertion is true, “How is it, then”, Moroz asks, “that so few newly minted PhDs in the biological sciences have taken any formal graduate school courses in evolution or biodiversity?”

Ryan Gregory, a professor at the University of Guelph Department of Integrative Biology in Ontario, Canada, mirrors Moroz observations. In a 2009 survey of over 200 science graduate students, Gregory discovered that only 20 to 30 percent of the students could apply elementary basic principles of evolution—School House Chaos.

Gregory laments, “We’re looking at a subset of people who have spent at least four years, sometimes even six or seven years, in science and still don’t necessarily have a full working understanding of basic evolutionary principles or scientific terms like ‘theories.’”

“Indeed, it appears that evolutionary biology and biosystematics courses,” Moroz argues, “that which deal with the most fundamental concepts in biology, have quietly lost their place of eminence within the biomedical curriculum—‘outcompeted’ by escalating specialization and the increasingly technical nature of many biological sciences.”

Technology has indeed now outstripped Dobzhansky’s evolutionary tenet of biology: result—the devolution of evolution. Gregory points to the origin of the evolution problem, “Misconceptions about natural selection still exist, even at the most advanced level.”

The reason “misconceptions” stems from a lack of consensus on what the theory of evolution. Incredibly, even the National Science Teachers Association [NSTA] the vanguard of evolution in public education has now been forced to cautiously approach this now obvious reality -

There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place.

How can a curriculum on the mechanisms of evolution be developed for a theory in the absence of a consistent theory? Developing a consensus on the theory of evolution is now at the center of the evolution debate.

Current theoretical options available for the evolution industry for a mechanism for evolution include Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, Modern Synthesis theory, or the Third-Wave of evolution, one of the emerging extended Modern Synthesis theories highlighted by Massimo Pigliucci 2010 book entitled Evolution-The Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press following the Altenberg-16 Summit in the summer of 2008.

Jerry Coyne, evolutionary geneticist at the University of Chicago, has little time for “these notions [Extended Synthesis theories] haven’t forced us to change the neo-Darwinian paradigm.” The Altenberg-16 attendees clearly disagree, and accepted the invitational challenge -

[W]e are also grappling with the increasing feeling – for example as reflected by an almost comical proliferation of ‘-omics,’ that we just don’t have the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to make sense of the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms.

In other words, evidence observed at the highest intellectual levels within the evolution industry understands that advanced technologies have undermined the basic tenets of evolution promoted by Dobzhansky and Coyne. The Altenberg-16 includes – John Beatty of the University of British Columbia, Werner Callebaut of the University of Hasselt, Sergey Gavrilets of the University of Tennessee, Eva Jablonka of Tel Aviv University, David Jablonski of the University of Chicago, Marc Kirschner of Harvard University, Alan Love of the University of Minnesota, Gerd Műller of the University of Vienna, Stuart Newman of the New York Medical College, John Odling-Smee of Oxford University, Massimo Pigliucci of Stony Brook University, Michael Purugganan of New York University, Eors Szathmary of Collegium Budapest, Gunter Wagner of Yale University, David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, Greg Wray of Duke University

From the Alternberg-16, what consensus developed? The answer is none, except that neo-Darwinism and Modern Synthesis theories were not consistent with the scientific evidence. Albert Einstein captured the essence of evolution science problem –

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

The theory of evolution was once a theory in crisis, now the theory of evolution is without a theory. Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti, the chief editor of Rivista di Biologica the longest-running biology journal in the world, cuts to the chase –

Science has taken on the wager… and lost.

No wonder even graduate university science majors score poorly in evolution, as lamented by Moroz and Gregory, since no one knows what to teach, no less what to test. Modern day teachers and scientists should recognize that evolution is founded on a philosophy, not science –

I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science, Charles Darwin, 1957

Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin are similar up to the point of the great divide.

Although born nearly 200 years apart, Newton and Darwin were both Englishmen born into wealthy families, Newton was the son of a wealthy farmer, and Darwin was the son of a wealth physician.

Newton and Darwin were abandoned by their mother early in life: Newton’s mother went to live with her new husband at the age of three and Darwin’s mother died when he was just eight years old. Neither Newton nor Darwin gained respect from their fathers.

Newton and Darwin rejected careers promoted by their families: Newton was pushed to be a farmer, Darwin to be a physician.

Newton and Darwin were both graduates of Cambridge University: Newton from Trinity College, and Darwin from Christ’s College. Although both were trained to enter the clergy, neither did.

Newton and Darwin were members of the Royal Society: Newton served as President and Darwin was elected as a Fellow and awarded the Copley Medal.

Newton and Darwin published books changing the way the world is perceived: Newton is mostly noted for Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Latin for “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy”; usually called the Principia), and Darwin is most noted for On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Survival of the Species.

Late in life, Newton and Darwin experienced challenging health issues. Newton’s eccentric actions later in life thought to be due to the massive amounts of mercury discovered in his body. Shortly after returning from the HMS Beagle voyage, Darwin began to experience repeating episodes of incapacitating stomach pains, vomiting, severe boils, palpitations, trembling, particularly during times of stress such as attending meetings or making social visits. All attempts at treatment had little success. The cause of Darwin’s illness remains unknown.

Newton and Darwin received the highest English honor, burial in Westminster Abbey, London, the burial place of dignitaries, kings, and queens, adjacent to each other in the Scientist’s Corner.

The great divide between Newton and Darwin centers on the validity of the Bible. For Newton, nature is a declaration of God’s sovereignty and power –

This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.

While the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton’s best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said –

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.

During his lifetime, Newton was known for his exposé work on the books of Daniel and Revelations with his book Observations on Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John [Revelations].

To embrace evolution, however, Darwin was forced to abandon his newly founded “Christ College” biblical worldview. This generated the great Newton Darwin divide. While Newton embraced, Darwin rejected the validity of the Bible. Shortly after returning from the HMS Beagle voyage, writing in his Autobiography, Darwin explains -

I had gradually come by this time… to see the Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the world… to disbelieve in Christianity

Not only does Darwin reject the historical accuracy, Darwin declares that Christians are misguided idiots -

I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true…. This is a damnable doctrine.

This Newton Darwin divide has since delivered divergent societal effects. The laws of motion and gravity discovered by Newton allowed Neil Alden Armstrong, Michael Collins, Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr to walk on the Moon in 1969.

Darwin’s presumed law of natural selection, even though deemed “fatally flawed”, promoted the concept of “survival of the fittest” in the “struggle for life”—foundational concepts operationalized by Adolf Hitler in Germany, Joseph Stalin in Russia, and Mao Tse-tung in China.

Newton, not Darwin, remains the influential scientist of all time. In a 2005 survey of members of Britain’s Royal Society asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Albert Einstein, Newton won, Darwin was not even in the running.

The “Bible is an obstacle to scientific discovery” assertion is simply rooted in either ignorance or deception. The scientific evidence underscores the validity of Genesis account of creation—evidence the anti-God evolution industry is spending millions on to re-interpret as some sort of a random, yet, directed event. Theories are cheap, but, the sun will never rise in the West.

For Charles Darwin, natural selection was the key natural law driving evolution, as reflected in the title, On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection. Natural selection was envisioned as the mechanism for the origin of species—evolution.

Darwin declared – “I do believe that natural selection will generally act very slowly, only over long periods of time…. natural selection acts slowly by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations.” In essence, natural selection was simply founded on a belief.

Darwin was very clear; natural selection was developed as an extension of a philosophical belief in evolution, not the result of scientific analysis of the evidence. Natural selection was not based on scientific observations since Darwin knew that even the fossil record evidence actually contradicted his theory –

Why, then, is not every geological formation 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 gravest objection which can be argued against my theory.

Natural selection, amazingly, was simply developed from fabricated evidence. Darwin explains how this worked –

In order to make it clear how, as I believe, natural selection acts, I must beg permission to give one or two imaginary illustrations.

Darwin was forced to abandon the Scientific Method to propose natural selection as a natural law of evolution even though the Scientific Method had been established in academic circles for more than 200 years by Francis Bacon. Use of “imaginary illustrations” is only suitable for science fiction, not for scientific analysis.

Since the laws of nature are autonomous from human reasoning, the underlying tenet of the Scientific Method in the discovery of natural laws is inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning. But, Darwin abandoned inductive reasoning. In a letter to Asa Gray at Harvard University, Darwin honestly set his record straight -

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.

While Darwin was concerned about his hypothetical deductive approach, he garnered widespread support, anyway. Even his older brother, Erasmus, just a week before the publication of The Origin of Species, consoled Darwin in a letter –

In fact, the a priori reasoning is so entirely satisfactory to me / that if the facts won’t fit, why so much the worse for the facts, in my feeling.

The Origin of Species was certainly not a scientific work based on scientific principles; amazingly, even Darwin makes this point very clear –

I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.

As a consequence, during the 20 years while working on The Origin of Species, Darwin developed a litany of contradictions and highlighted in Darwin, Then and Now. In the final analysis, even Darwin recognized fundamental problems with natural selection as a mechanism for evolution -

Natural selection… is by far the most serious special difficulty which my theory has encountered.

Even Charles Lyell, Darwin’s good friend and originator of old earth uniformitarianism with the book Principles of Geology, never endorsed natural selection, much to the distain of Thomas Huxley, Darwin’s 19^th century bulldog. Darwin and Lyell were not alone, 20^th century scientists agree. Conrad H Waddington, a renowned evolutionary paleontologist, spells it out -

There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others; and it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that.

Natural selection is the big Black Box of evolution. No one knows what it is, where it came from, or how it even works. Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti agrees with Waddington -

Natural selection could perhaps be invoked as a mechanism accounting for the survival of the species. But the claim that natural selection is creative of life… can only leave one dumbstruck.

In the 2010 book entitled What Darwin Got Wrong, even “card-carrying” atheists, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Palmarini, came to the very same conclusion –

We have both spent effort and ink… to show that Darwin’s theory of natural selection is fatally flawed.

In the book, The Altenberg 16: An Expose of the Evolution Industry, Suzan Mazar explores the mechanism of natural selection with “esteemed Harvard evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin in a phone conversation what role natural selection plays in evolution, he [only] said, ‘Natural selection occurs.’”

During the interview with Mazar, Lewontin only described the mechanism of natural selection by means of the following capitalism analogy -

Well, that where Darwin got the idea from, that’s for sure… He read the stock market every day… How do you think he made a living?

Mazar, in an interview with Anthony Lima-de-Faria, the award winning Swedish cytogeneticist, posed the question – “You’ve called natural selection ‘the opium of the biologist for over 100 years.’ … So why are most biologists and textbooks and scientific academies still embracing natural selection?”

Lima-de-Faria answered -  “Selection is a political not a scientific concept. At the time of Darwin it fitted perfectly the expanding colonialism of Victorian England.”

Bruce Runnegar, paleontologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, cuts to the chase -

Natural selection is not a mechanism.

Natural selection was then, as it is now, irrelevant to the origin on species and, more importantly, the origin of life.

At the time of the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859, the topic of evolution was “in the air”, according to Charles Darwin, all 1,250 printed copies of the book were sold on the first day. The Origin of Species delivered a state of evolution critique on other popular theories.

In the nineteenth century, critiques on theories of evolution raged all the way into the chambers of the British Parliament. To resolve the debate the Parliament commissioned of the HMS Challenger, the largest international expedition ever convened, with the task of finding Darwin’s theoretical “innumerable” transitional links.

Ironically, Darwin was even a critic of his own theory. Based on the known fossil record evidence, in The Origin of Species Darwin argued: “The distinctiveness of specific forms and their not being blended together in innumerable transitional links is a very obvious difficulty”.

Embracing the debate, the British Parliament commissioned the HMS Challenger expedition, even though Darwin had ironically argued that the transitional links did not even exist in the known fossil record,

Why, then, is not every geological formation 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 gravest objection which can be argued against my theory.

Arguments are honorable hallmarks, representative of the pursuit of truth. The Darwin legacy continued into the twenty-first century. During the summer of 2008, Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd Müller convened 16 leading evolutionary scientists at the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria to critique and “extended evolutionary synthesis”—an event now known as the Altenberg-16 Summit.

For Darwin, arguments against his theory were expected and accepted . “I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced,” Darwin noted in the Introduction to the 6^th Edition of The Origin of Species, “often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived.”

Stuart Newman, one of the Alternberg-16 and open critic of Darwinism, in an interview with Suzan Mazur notes, notes that debate is essential: “Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is a risk of being sacrificed to the benefit of a dying theory.”

In the final analysis Newman concedes, “No natural law may suffice to describe the full evolution of the biosphere, human economy, and the human culture.” Newman advocates self-organization to explain the evolution of new species.

Newman’s theory is debatable, and the role of self-organization in evolution has not been widely accepted. Massimo Paittelli-Palmarini of the University of Arizona and co-author of the book What Darwin Got Wrong disagrees with Newman:

Self-organization is of course important component, but not much has been discovered beyond generalities. The immense amount of intricate detail that geneticists and developmentalists have been discovering over the years dwarfs general metaphors like autoevolution and even self-organization.

The point is: debate continues a healthy Darwinian legacy. What are the mechanisms of evolution? No one knows. In the book Evolution-The Extended Synthesis published by MIT Press that summarizes the Altenberg discussions, Massimo Pigliucci highlights the current debate between competing theories of evolution.

While Darwin’s original theory of evolution died at the end of the 19^th century, the Darwin legacy of critique has continued, except within the extreme elements of the evolution industry.

In fact, extreme elements in the evolution industry are actively seeking to silence any challenge to Darwinian evolution. The latest is the firing of David Coppedge, system administrator at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, for challenging Darwinian evolution. Intolerance raises the red flag of McCarthyism.

While the actions of NASA over the firing of David Coppedge are still under review, contact Charles Bolden, NASA’s administrator, to express your outrage over the firing of Coppedge at 202-358-1010 or send an email to charles.bolden@nasa.gov.

Intolerance of arguments by the extreme elements in the evolution industry are clearly anti-Darwinian and anti-science.

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin describes the process of evolution: “I do believe that natural selection will generally act very slowly, only over long periods of time…. natural selection acts slowly by accumulating slight, successive, favorable variations.”

Australian paleontologist, John A. Long article entitled “Dawn of the Deed”, published in the January 2011 issue of Scientific America, highlights his recent fossil fish findings in the grassy paddocks of the Gogo Station, a vast cattle ranch located in the heart of northwestern Australia.

Surprisingly, Long’s new findings, rather than demonstrating “slight, successive” changes, however, only stands to symbolize fossil record problem, a problem painfully known by Darwin, “The distinctiveness of specific forms and their not being blended together in innumerable transitional links is a very obvious difficulty”.

Long discovered that the armored fish, known as placoderms (plated skin), reproduced through internal fertilization, not spawning. Long explains, “The case was clear: we had found… an expectant mother fish and the oldest vertebrate embryo on record. We named the new fish Materpiscis attenboroughi.”

The fish presents an evolutionary problem, how could Darwin’s “slight, successive” changes give rise to internal fertilization and live births in the fish? The front-cover of Scientific America claims to have the answer—“How internal fertilization changed the course of evolution, the real sexual revolution.”

This front-cover statement set up for the article to describe how the “real sexual revolution” actually happened—but doesn’t. For Long, “[t]hese findings are casting new light on the origin of our own reproductive organs and other body parts.”

The “casting new light” phrase is a typical euphemistic tactic in the evolution industry when the scientific evidence contradicts the current theory of evolution. “It is hard not feel astonished,” Long explains, “when some major trait turns out to have evolved much earlier than was thought.” Long was “astonished” because the fossil fish finding contradicts Darwin’s theory.

What happened to Darwin’s “slight, successive” changes? Long explains, “Looking at the bigger evolutionary picture, my colleagues and I could not help but notice that the new timing for the origin of copulation dovetailed with the explosion of diversity in the arthrodire fishes—the first big species radiation of any jawed animal in the fossil record.”

In place of Darwinian “slight, successive” evolutionary changes, Long’s evidence points to an “explosion of diversity”—like a Cambrian explosion. Darwin recognized the Cambrian explosion only as a problem: “it is indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited… several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks.”

Evolutionary issues with the fossil record evidence as observed by Darwin, continue unchanged today, more than 150 years later. Critical of his own theory, Darwin writes -

Why, then, is not every geological formation 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 gravest objection which can be argued against my theory.

Long’s fish fossil evidence, rather than supporting, contradicts and undermines the essential tenets of Darwinian evolution.

The “how internal fertilization changed the course of evolution, the real sexual revolution” front-cover set up is only answered by more questions. Long explains:

Many questions about the origin and evolution of internal fertilization in vertebrates remain

Scientists still do not know exactly how placoderms made the transition from spawning to internal fertilization.

Simply stated, Long’s article does not explain the “hows” of evolution as implied on the front-cover. Clearly, Scientific America is rooted in deceptive science tabloid journalism—like the Archaeoraptor saga in National Geographic. The history of evolution is a legacy of fraud.

The evolution industry only continues to exist on smoking-mirror scientific evidence. The problem is the theory of evolution. Small wonder why Swedish cytogeneticist Antonio Lima-de-Faria came to the following conclusion -

There has never been a theory of evolution.

The “Dawn of the Deed” is “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”—not a theory.

Stressing the importance of the fossil record to the theory of evolution Charles Darwin wrote – “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ exists which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Evidence for these “numerous, successive, slight modifications” in the fossil record remains a cornerstone to establish scientifically the theory of evolution. Darwin recognized, however, that the fossil record, “not being blended together by innumerable transitional links is a very obvious difficulty.”

Since 1859, the unsuccessful search through the fossil record for the expected intermediate or transitional links has produced a legacy of fraud.

In the journal Science (December 24, 2010), in the article entitled “Altering the Past: China’s Faked Fossils Problem”, Richard Stone highlights the current state of fossil fraud in China: “Specialists and collectors around the world have long decried the flood of sham fossils pouring out of China. But Science has learned that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums. One paleontologist estimates that more than 80% of marine reptile specimens now on display in Chinese museums have been ‘altered or artificially combined to varying degrees.’”

Over the past century, the Darwinian theory of evolution has played a significant role in China. While China was largely isolated when The Origin of Species was published in 1859, forty years later, however, a man by the name of Yan Fu introduced Darwinian evolution into China.

Fu was convinced that China must become acquainted with the philosophy of Darwinism in order that the country might survive by its own power, not relying on uncontrollable events or “destiny”. Fu extended Darwin’s biological theory of evolution to include social evolution, a logical application—Social Darwinism.

Educated in England, Yen Fu eventually became the most famous Social Darwinist in China. His message was well received by the Chinese. The 1890’s were a period of reform for China, a time of scrutinizing philosophies. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, an influential spokesperson for the reform movement, began to promote Darwinian evolution.

Liang Ch’i-ch’ao fled China when the Manchu Empress Dowager attempted to subdue the reform movement; however, he continued to publish writings that were secretly imported to the people of China. Along with the philosophy of Karl Marx, the Chinese eventually revolted against the Manchu and the result was a constant warring of powers over the next 50 years—“survival of the fittest”.

Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson captured the essence of “survival of the fittest” in the now famous phrase—“Nature red in tooth and claw.”

The now infamous “Archaeoraptor” finding, published in the National Geographic Magazine, November 1999, was a product of China. The amazing fossil discovery, “Archaeoraptor”, a new species that appeared to be part dinosaur, part bird, was claimed to be the long sought after missing link between the two.

Philip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, Canada, and one of the scientists involved in the examination of Archaeoraptor for National Geographic, boasted:  “We’re looking at the first dinosaur that was capable of flying.”

Several months later in the March 2000 issue of National Geographic, the magazine published a letter to the editor from Xu Xing, one of the scientists who had first examined and discussed the fossil discovery. The letter stated, “After observing a new, feathered dromaeosaur specimen … [t]hough I do not want to believe it, Archaeoraptor appears to be composed of a dromaeosaur tail and a bird body.”

Tragically, copies of the National Geographic November 1999 issue in libraries worldwide do not have the warning alert.

The “Archaeoraptor” illustrates the problem when the theory dominates a scientific investigation. Darwin touted this same approach in a letter to John Scott in 1863: “I would suggest to you the advantage … let the theory guide your observations.”

Since then, Darwinism has continued, as recommended by Darwin – let the theory guide the interpretation of the facts—an approach incompatible with the Scientific Method.

“Altering the Past: China’s Faked Fossils Problem” by Richard Stone serves as reminder: China, along with the evolution industry, starting with the Piltdown man, has developed a profitable business of re-inventing and selling the “scientific” evidence they “discovered.”

The fossil record has been as a problem for evolution, then and now

Critical of his own work, in a letter to Hugh Falconer in October 1862, Charles Darwin wrote, “I look at it as absolutely certain that very much in the Origin will be proved to be rubbish; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand.”

For Darwin, the origin of life was the result of spontaneous generation. The twenty-first century version is now more popularly referred to as abiogenesis, or self-organization.

In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1871, Charles Darwin speculating on the concept of spontaneous generation of life, wrote that life may have begun in a “warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, so that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes”. The underlying framework of the origin of life for Darwin was self-organization.

This self-organization concept can be traced to the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). For Aristotle, material can be transformed by the ‘spontaneous action of Nature’ into living animals.

The concept had had a long life. In the 18^th century, French evolutionist and elite member of The French Academy of Sciences, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, continued to espouse Aristotle’s theory of spontaneous generation.

Spontaneous generation was popular even in the 19^th century even though theory had been challenged by Italian scientists, Francesco Redi and Lazzaro Spallanzani. Thomas Huxley, best known as Darwin’s Bulldog, wrote “… if it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time… I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living protoplasm from non-living matter.”

In 1859, Louis Pasteur entered a contest sponsored by The French Academy of Sciences to examine the now hotly contested spontaneous generation controversy, the same year as the publication of The Origin of Species. In the contest, Pasteur decisively undermined the concept of spontaneous generation.

Inspired by Louis Pasteur‘s new “germ theory” findings, to combat surgical infections, Joseph Lister in 1867 published in the paper entitled Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, introduced the principles of the modern antiseptic surgical method—the foundation of modern surgery.

Contrary to the scientific evidence, while the concept of “spontaneous generation” acquired some new names, self-organization and abiogenesis, spontaneous generation continues to be a foundational theory in the evolution industry. The Stanley Miller experiment in 1953 underscores the importance of Darwin’s self-organization framework.

Chrisantha Fernando and Eör Szathmáry, of the Altenberg-16 group, in the book entitled Evolution The Extended Synthesis (2010) edited by Massimo Pigliucci continues Darwin’s self-organization mantra: “Biology has its roots in chemistry”—chemistry gives rise to life.

While self-organization is certainly theoretical possibility, the question is whether self-organization can be considered a scientifically probable event. During the late 20^th century, scientists began to estimate the probability of self-organization based on the requirements of the simplest forms of life.

Since the simplest cell requires biologically active proteins made from amino-acid building blocks. Evidence from molecular biology during the late 20^th century has demonstrated that amino-acids must be arranged in specific sequences for the protein to be biologically functional.

Knowing that the known 20 biologically essential amino-acids must be in a specific sequence, the probability of amino-acids self-organizing into a biologically functional protein can be calculated.

Starting with the basics, we know that there are four ways to combine amino-acids A and B to make two-amino acid combinations (AB, BA, AA, and BB) and there are eight ways to make three-amino-acid combinations (AAA, AAB, ABB, ABA, BAA, BBA, BAB, BBB), and sixteen ways to make four-amino-acid combinations. The number of combinations grows geometrically, 2², 2³, 2⁴, and so on. The longer the string of amino acids the greater is the number of possible combinations.

Since 20 different types of amino-acid are typically incorporated into a protein molecule, there are 20², or 400 ways to make a two-amino-acid combination. Similarly, there are 20³, or 8,000, way to make a three-amino acid sequence, and 20⁴, or 160,000, ways to make a sequence four-amino-acids long protein, and so on. Since simple proteins typically have at least 150 amino acids, the number of ways to arrange a simple protein exponentially increases.

As the number of ways increases, the probability decreases. Stephen C Meyer in the book entitled Signature in the Cell (2009) estimates the probability for the self-organization of just one 150 amino-acid long protein molecule from the 20 essential amino-acids -

On the assumption that each site in a protein chain requires a particular amino acid, the probability of attaining a particular protein 150 amino acids long would be (1/20)¹⁵⁰, or roughly 1 chance in 10¹⁹⁵.

Meyers explains: “Another way to say that is the probability of finding a functional protein by chance alone is a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times smaller than the odds of finding a single specified particle [protein] among all the particles in the universe.”

Since there are only 10⁸⁰ protons, neutrons, and electrons in the observable universe, the chance of self-organizing one protein with 150 amino acids far exceeds the resources in the universe. Dean Kenyon, biophysicist from Stanford University, places this observation into context –

If the association of amino acids were a completely random event… there would not be enough mass in the entire earth, assuming it was composed exclusively of amino acids, to make even one molecule of every possible sequence of… a low-molecular-weight protein.

Since self-organization of a protein exceeds the scientific probability of 10⁸⁰ of the universe,  Darwin’s framework of self-organization will continue as a hot topic, but only as philosophical imperative of the evolution industry—not a scientific probability

B-rex is actually a Tyrannosaurus rex, otherwise known as T-rex, found in Montana and the fossil was re-named after Bob Harmon, the chief preparator of paleontology Museum of the Rockies in Montana. The primary interest in B-rex centered on the discovery soft-tissue and blood vessels in the estimated 68-million-year-old dinosaur.

Since this medullary tissue in the bone marrow is similar to birds, speculations on the evolution of dinosaur to bird once again emerged in the prime time media. The original report was published in the March 25, 2005, issue of the journal Science was entitled “Gender-Specific Reproductive Tissue in Ratites and Tyrannosaurus rex”.

Surprisingly, along with the interest in the dinosaur-bird connection, more importantly, in the B-rex fossil fragments were found cells and tissues that have remained intact with flexibility and elasticity—a characteristic not thought to be possible after lying in the ground 68 million years.

The evidence is shaking up the paleontology world. “I am quite aware that according to conventional wisdom and models of fossilization, these structures aren’t supposed to be there, but there they are,” said Schweitzer in a newswise interview in 2005. “I was pretty shocked.”

Horner, expanding on Schweitzer’s comments said, “I see this as a really important discovery that will change our methods of collecting and study. We can truly begin asking biomolecular questions. The discovery also means that our preconceived ideas about preservation were wrong.”

Scientists are now facing the challenge that either fossil preservation of cells, also known as soft-tissue, for millions years is possible, or B-rex is only thousands of years old—not millions of years.

Since the medullary tissue in the bone marrow of B-rex is similar to birds, after interviewing Horner, Schweitzer and Carroll, Lesley Stahl declared that the “dinosaur-bird connection is largely settled now”—in other words, birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Charles Darwin addressed the dinosaur-bird evolution theory in The Origin of Species: “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 Archaeopteryx.”

At the time, the newly discovered Archaeopteryx fossil in Germany fueled Darwin’s origin of bird speculation. The dinosaur-bird theory of evolution has been the center of research since the fourth edition of The Origin of Species in 1866,

In the book Historical Geology, Carl Dunbar wrote in 1961 that it would be difficult to find a more perfect link or “cogent proof” of the reptilian ancestry of the birds. To paleontologist Pat Shipman, the Archaeopteryx is “more than the world’s most beautiful fossil … [it is] an icon—a holy relic of the past that has become a powerful symbol of the evolutionary process itself. It is the First Bird.”

As the scientific evidence continued to mount later in the twentieth century, however, the dinosaur-bird theory of evolution had faded into an evolutionary fable.

At the center of the missing link, status of the Archaeopteryx was feather. According to Darwin, natural selection acts only by “successive, slight modification.” The question is how did the reptile scale change by “slight, successive” changes into a feather?

By the early 1970s, paleontologists began to seriously question the “transitional link” status of the Archaeopteryx scale-feather. In the words of Barbara Stahl in Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution (1974): “How [birds] arose initially, presumably from reptile scales, defies analysis.”

Alan Feduccia and colleagues, 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 Archaeopteryx feather was “essentially like those of modern birds” and not a transitional form of the feather.

From the International Archaeopteryx Conference in 1985, Peter Dodson 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-bird.

Since a dinosaur-bird paleontology, molecular biology, or genetic transitional link does not exist beyond the speculations of Horner, Schweitzer, and Carroll, had Lesley Stahl known the larger debate, the more logical declaration would have been, the “dinosaur-bird evolutionary theory continues to be largely disconnected from the evidence.”

The evolution industry continues scrambling to retrofit evidence into the ever elusive evolution paradigm—a philosophical imperative for the 60 Minute intellectual elite.

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin envisioned that “natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable variations; it can produce no great or sudden modifications.”

Since 1859, the search for Darwin’s “slight, successive” accumulated actions of natural selection has become a driving scientific and societal phenomenon. In 1872, the British Parliament commissioned the HMS Challenger for first international exploration to discover the “missing links” resulting from natural selection.

Like the HMS Challenger experience, evidence for “slight, successive” evolutionary changes continues to be an elusive pursuit—in the fossil record and now in molecular biology. Darwin’s dilemma deepens with the latest evidence from the Denisova caves in Russia.

In 2008, Russian archeologists working at the site of Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia uncovered a small bone fragment from the fifth finger of a juvenile hominin, initially dubbed as the “X-woman”. A tooth had been previously unearthed in the same cave area.

Interest in the project began to develop momentum. In March of this year, Kate Wong in Scientific America published an article entitled “No Bones about It: Ancient DNA from Siberia Hints at Previously Unknown Human Relative”—hinting at an ancestral evolutionary relationship to humans. Early this year, expectations were running high that the pinky and tooth was eventually going to demonstrate a human evolution link simply by DNA analysis.

To demonstrate the molecular “slight, successive” link to humans, a team of scientists led by David Reich, Richard Green, Johannes Krause along with Swedish biologist Svante Pääbo from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany sequenced mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) extracted from the fragment.

The investigators were startled by the findings. Contrary to initial expectations, the report published in the December 23 issue of the journal Nature found that fossilized finger “was not involved in the putative gene flow from Neanderthals into Eurasians” and that the tooth was “distinct from Neanderthals and modern humans”.

“We thought it was a mistake when we first saw it,” Reich wrote. “But it’s real.”

Richard Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz noted: “The story [human evolution] now gets a bit more complicated.”

Evidence from the Denisova finger mtDNA, rather than pointing to “slight, successive” changes in human evolution, highlights a deeper evolutionary dilemma—there are no known “slight, successive” molecular changes accounting for human evolution.

At a news conference, Krause said that the lab, sequencing mtDNA from several samples, was startled to discover the unexpected. “The sequence was similar to humans, but very distinct from humans,” he said. After performing many tests to ensure the results were not an artifact, “I called Svante on his mobile [phone] and told him to sit down.”

Pääbo, who was in the U.S. at the time, said, “It was absolutely amazing. At first, I didn’t believe him. I thought he was pulling my leg…. This was some new creature that has not been on our radar screens so far.”

Professor Chris Stringer, human origins researcher at London‘s Natural History Museum and one of the leading proponents of the recent single-origin hypothesis, remarked: “This new DNA work provides an entirely new way of looking at the still poorly understood evolution of humans in central and eastern Asia.”

Twenty-eight coauthors worked on the paper, including researchers from Germany, Spain, China, Russia, Canada, and the United States. This research was supported by the Max Planck Society, the Krekeler Foundation, the U.S. National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

This highly financed international evolution industry initiative, following in the legend of the HMS Challenger, once again only found new species—not “missing links”. The fossil, now known as Denisova hominin, is “very distinct from humans” and certainly not one of the “slight, successive” human ancestors as envisioned by Darwin.

Evolution once a theory in crisis, is now in crisis without a theory.

Of all the alleged facts in The Origin of Species, for Charles Darwin embryology stands out as the most important “fact”. In a letter to Asa Gray in September 1860, Darwin wrote – “embryology is to me by far the strongest single class of facts in favor” of the theory.

Darwin was influenced by German embryologist Ernst Haeckel, who coined the now-famous phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. In other words, in the embryo the ontology (development) of the new offspring retraces (recapitulates) all stages representing its alleged evolutionary ancestors (phylogeny) from the microbe to man. Haeckel called the theory the “biogenetic law”.

In The Origin of Species, Darwin gave credit for this theory 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].”

According to Haeckel, in the embryo is a silent movie of our alleged ancestral history—evolution in action. Through his polished and widely publicized drawings, Haeckel attempted to show that all embryos are identical in the earliest stages followed by progressive “slight, successive” changes of increasing differential complexity—the alleged retracing of evolution.

Much has happened since 1859, however. This week, ScienceDaily featured an article entitled “Similarities in the Embryonic Development of Various Animal Species Are Also Found at Molecular Level”. The article was referring two research papers published in the journal Nature, December. 9, 2010 by the Max Planck Institute that challenge the basic tenets of Haeckel’s theory of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.

In these two studies headed by the Max Planck Institute scientists Alex T. Kalinka and Tomislav Domazet,  did not find progressive “slight, successive” changes of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” as proposed by Haeckel. Rather, at mid-point in development in a range of species studied, the embryos develop to be similar—not progressively different.

Jennifer Viegas at Discovery News ran the coverage of the two papers as “Embryos Show All Animals Share Ancient Genes” noting “embryos for humans and other animals often look alike at certain developmental stages” slamming, once again, Haeckel’s concept of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.

These two groups of scientists, including researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Genetics in Dresden and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, discovered similar morphological appearance and gene expression—rather than “slight, successive” evolutionary changes in the embryo.

In the range of different species studied, the researchers found that the same genes were expressed during the middle phase, known as the “phylotypic period,” producing a classic “hour-glass model” appearance in all the species investigated.

Haeckels’ theory of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” has always been a rocky road. As early as 1894,  embryologist Adam Sedgwick recognized that Haeckel’s theory was “not in accordance with the facts of development.” Sedgwick explained in 1909 – “The recapitulation theory originated as a deduction from the evolutionary theory and as a deduction it still remains.” In other words, in the world of evolution, the importance of the theory supersedes the evidence.

By 1909, with the handwriting on the wall, Haeckel made the following confession published as a letter in the Munchener Allegemeine Zeitung, an international weekly publication for the sciences and arts –

After this compromising confession of ‘forgery’ I should be obliged to consider.… The great majority of all the diagrams in the best biological textbooks, treatises, and journals would incur in the same degree – the charge of ‘forgery,’ for all of them are inexact, and are more or less doctored, schematised, and constructed.

For Haeckel, Darwin and the emerging evolution industry, the theory of evolution dominated the intereptation of the evidence—a fundamental violation of the Scientific Method. Eminent evolutionist Stephen Gould in the March 2000 issue of Natural History declared Haeckel’s drawings as “outright falsification”. Writing for Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True” blog, even Matthew Cobb professor at the University of Manchester even agrees.

The Max Planck Institute discovery slams the theroretical evolutionary concept of “slight, successive” changes—the evidence contradicts the theory. Evidence for evolution is not found in morphology or molecules. “At a molecular level,” Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton, explains, “there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal.”

“The more one approaches the molecular level in the study of living things,” Richard Dickerson, as director of molecular biology at the University of Minnesota pointed out, “the more similar they appear, and the less important the differences.”

As technological advances continue, the evolution industry is finding the relevance of the neo-Darwinian classic “slight, successive” genetic changes as an evolutionary mechanism pushed ever closer to the edge of extinction. A theoretical mechanism for evolution is more elusive in the twenty-first century than in the nineteenth century.

The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution by “slight, successive” changes occuring through mutation and natural selection is no longer sufficient. Incredibly, even the National Science Teachers Association [NSTA], the vanguard of evolution in public education, has now been forced to cautiously approach the now obvious reality –

There is considerable debate about how evolution has taken place.

Pushing the popular neo-Darwinian theory of evolution off the edge, cytogeneticist Antonio Lima-de-Faria, decorated by the Swedish king as “Knight of the Order of the North Star” for his discoveries on the molecular organization of the chromosome, declared -

There has never been a theory of evolution.

Haeckel is slammed, once again, this time by the Max Planck Institute. Evolution, once a theory in crisis, is now in crisis without a theory. Evolution continues only a “fact” in the realm of philosophy.

Charles Darwin in a letter Joseph D. Hooker in February 1871 speculated that life might have originated in “some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, &c., present, that a proteine compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes”. The search for the origin of life continues.

Felisa Wolfe-Simon (shown on the left), supported by NASA’s Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology (Exo/Evo) Program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute, is a researcher working with programs to determining the evolution of genes, metabolic pathways, and microbial species on Earth in order to understand the potential for life on other worlds.

Wolfe-Simon’s pending announcement of a recent discovery was touted as the first time in the history of biology that an organism has been found to use a different element to build one of its most basic structures.

The announcement seized immediate media attention. The NASA media advisory on November 29 stated: “NASA will hold a news conference at 2 p.m. EST on Thursday, Dec. 2, to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution and future of life in the universe.”

The media expected an announcement for the discovery of extraterrestrial life—a decades long NASA goal. MSNBC primetime news claimed that scientists that have discovered “life as we do not know it”. The paper appeared in the December 2nd issue of “Science Express” and is slated for publication in the journal Science.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “[s]o great was the media stampede that even the White House and members of Congress were calling on NASA to clarify. Even a Nature news article suggests “you can potentially cross phosphorus off the list of elements required for life.”

As it turned out, however, NASA was only talking about a study at Mono Lake, California, showing evidence for a microbe using arsenic in the DNA or RNA rather than phosphorus. Crazy enough, the news was not news. A 2004 paper published in Microbiology Ecology entitled, “The Microbial Arsenic Cycle in Mono Lake, California” by Ronald S. Oremland, et. al., had already detailed how microbes use arsenic and phosphorus.

At first, the controversy over NASA’s arsenic-loving bugs centered on whether the space agency had found astrobiological evidence for aliens. Since then, the debate has ping-ponged the other way, with scientists questioning whether the bacteria even love arsenic at all.

A sampling of opinions -

Premature - Scientific American‘s Alla Katsnelson says the findings NASA released last week were incomplete and at times contradictory. Dubious to begin with, the results of the study were “communicated to non-specialists” in a slapdash manner that suggested a “new chemistry of life” had been discovered, a claim that was “at best premature.” Katsnelson notes the study fails to identify any compounds containing arsenic, a glaring oversight considering “the team could have directly confirmed or disproved the presence of arsenic in the DNA or RNA using targeted mass spectrometry.” The researchers also ignore indications in their own data that, rather than building biomolecules, the bacteria is “simply absorbing and isolating arsenate while making use of the trace phosphates in its environments.”

Very Flawed – Carl Zimmer at Slate blames the researchers for failing to take “basic precautions to avoid misleading results … when the NASA scientists took the DNA out of the bacteria, for example, they ought to have taken extra steps to wash away any other kinds of molecules. Without these precautions, arsenic could have simply glommed to the DNA, like gum on a shoe.” The title of Zimmers article was “This Paper Should Not Have Been Published“.

Nonsense – University of British Columbia microbiology professor Rosie Redfield eviscerates the paper in a detailed review posted to her research blog. “Basically,” she writes, “[the paper] doesn’t present ANY convincing evidence that arsenic has been incorporated into DNA (or any other biological molecule).” What it does offer is “lots of flim-flam … if this data was presented by a PhD student at their committee meeting, I’d send them back.”

Nothing New – Paul Davies of NASA and Arizona State University admits the bacterium is not a new life form: “It can grow with either phosphorous or arsenic. That makes it very peculiar, though it falls short of being some form of truly ‘alien’ life belonging to a different tree of life with a separate origin.” to the bench to do more cleanup and controls.”

Media’s Fault – Discover‘s Jennifer Welsh blames the press for misrepresenting the nature of the study featuring the “incredibly misleading article” published on The Huffington Post entitled – “NASA Announcement LIVE: New Life Form Discovered (VIDEO)”.  

Plenty of Blame – The Guardian‘s Martin Robbins suggests, to treat the whole thing as a cautionary tale, “a story of everything that’s wrong about the relationship between science, peer review, the world of publishing, and the mainstream and independent branches of the media in 2010.”

The government supported evolution industry, driven by a dying paradigm in the disparate pursuit to find Darwin’s “little pond” for the origins of life, is found pressured into “shooting itself in the foot”, once again. NASA hallucinations on arsenic are reminiscent of England’s infamous Piltdown man fiasco circulated nearly 100 years ago.

Often called the most important scientific book ever, Charles Lyell‘s Principles of Geology published in three volumes from 1830-33, shook prevailing views of how Earth had been formed.

Lyle challenged the premise that the history of the Earth has experienced supernatural and catastrophes events, including Noah’s flood as documented in Genesis. Ironically, Lyell was a graduate of Exeter College, a Catholic institution.

The frontispiece image illustrates the main point of the book: that evidence of the forces of geological change that have been shaping Earth for millennia is observable today—”the present is the key to the past”. The temple columns, with their high-water marks were the evidence Lyell used to propose that the sea levels had changed gradually several times.

Lyell argued that the formation of Earth’s crust took place through countless “sligh, successive” changes occurring over vast periods of time. His “uniformitarian” proposal was that the forces molding the planet today have operated continuously throughout its history. For example, a river valley is explained by the river gradually wearing through the rocks.

Written with clarity and intellectual passion, the book was an instant rage capturing the imagination of contemporaries such as Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Tennyson, and George Eliot. Lyell’s book became the compelling precursor to Darwinism.

In 1831 just before setting sail, Lyell asked Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, to search for erratic boulders on the survey voyage of the Beagle, and gave FitzRoy a copy of Volume 1.  

Robert FitzRoy, captain of the HMS Beagle, convinced “that he would find scientific proof that Genesis was literally true” wanting a like-minded naturalist on board the Beagle to find the evidence.

At the time, Darwin had just graduated from Christ’s College, Cambridge University and studied William Paley’s book on nature entitled Evidences of Christianity. Paley argued: “The marks of design are too strong to be got over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is GOD.”

Darwin later recalled in his autobiography, “I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of the Evidences with perfect correctness… The logic of this book as I may add of his Natural Theology gave me as much delight as did Euclid.” Darwin seemed to be the perfect candidate for FitzRoy.

On board, FitzRoy and Darwin started to read Lyell’s Principles. When the Beagle made its first stop ashore at St Jago, Darwin found rock formations which seen “through Lyell’s eyes” gave him a revolutionary insight into the geological history of the island, an insight he applied throughout his travels. By later in October 1832, while in Montevideo, Uruguay, Darwin received a copy of Volume II.

At Bahia Blanca, Darwin discovered a very large and complete fossil. The geological location of the fossil find was problematic – below a layer of white seashells, similar to the layer he found on the island of Santiago. This puzzled Darwin. How could the large fossil be located below an ocean deposit, not above? The evidence contradicted Lyell’s theory of “uniformitarianism”.

Just prior to arriving in Valdivia, Chile, in February 20, 1835, a massive earthquake followed by a tsunami had devastated the town. The damage was extensive. Darwin wrote, “The island itself plainly showed the overwhelming power of the earthquake, as the beach did that of the consequent great wave…. Shortly after the shock, a great wave was seen from the distance of three or four miles, approaching in the middle of the bay with a smooth outline; but along the shore it tore up cottages and trees, as it swept onwards with irresistible force.” Darwin continues: “In my opinion, we have scarcely beheld, since leaving England, any sight so deeply interesting.”

Movements from the earthquake seemed to Darwin to support the concept that South America was very slowly moving and rising above the ocean. This phenomenon seemed to support Lyell’s geological theory that the Earth had been changing incrementally over long periods of time. This was a revolutionary concept.

To investigate South American geology further, Darwin journeyed into the Andes in the spring of 1835. But rather than slow and incremental movements, Darwin wrote in April 1835 that the mountains were the result of violent massive movements acting as “tossed about like the crust of a broken pie”—not the result of gradual changes over long periods of time.

In retrospect, it is amazing that the Darwin even considered Lyell’s “uniformitarian” theory over longer periods of time since Darwin had argued in The Origin of Species that the transitional links did not even exist in the known fossil record: “Why, then, is not every geological formation 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 gravest objection which can be argued against my theory.”

Tragically, despite the lack of any evidence and driven by the philosophy of evolution, drawings of imaginary geological columns, began appearing in textbooks, with the simple species, layered over by the presumed more complex.

These imaginary drawings, however, have even been soundly rejected by evolutionary paleontologists, including Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge writing, “Indeed, it is the chief frustration of the fossil record that we do not have empirical evidence for sustained trends”

The fact is Darwin’s “slight, successive” evolutionary changes are not found anywhere in the fossil record, Gould continues, “The fossil record doesn’t show gradual change and every paleontologist has known that.”   

World-renowned American biologist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, Douglas Futuyma agrees, “The supposition that evolution proceeds very slowly and gradually, and so should leave thousands of fossil intermediates of any species in its wake, has not been part of evolutionary theory for more than thirty years.”    

Gould gives the fossil record the best evolution spin possible, stating, “Stepping way back and looking at too broad a scale, one might discern some sort of progress in life’s history… But, the pattern dissolves upon close inspection.”

Contrary to the popular opinion proposed by the evolution industry, the fossil record does not support Charles Lyell’s the ”uniformitarian” theory over long periods of time described in the Principles of Geology.

Critical of The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin 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; but I expect and hope that the framework will stand.” 

Darwin’s conceptual framework of “slight, successive” changes over time had remained intact for 150 years, until the evidence from the human genome project delivered the decisive destruction of the original “framework”.   

J. Craig Venter, the microbiologist turned entrepreneur that mapped the human genome and re-produced what he calls “the first synthetic species”, concluded during a 60-Minute CBS interview with Steve Kroft on Sunday, November 21 that the human genome project has been a “bust”.

In the aired TV segment entitled “J. Craig Venter: Designing Life”, CBS touted that Venter’s new synthetic species “gets its genetic instructions from a synthetic chromosome made by man, not nature”. What the CBS investigative report failed to perceive through the California coastal fog was that the “new synthetic species” was just a copy from nature, not man.  

According to molecular biologist Jim Collins of Boston University writing in the journal Nature, “Its [Venter’s] genome is a stitched-together copy of the DNA of an organism that exists in nature, with a few small tweaks thrown in.”

Mark Bedauv of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, also writing in the Nature commentary called Venter’s new species “a normal bacterium with a prosthetic genome.”

Molecular geneticist Georgia Purdom noted that Venter’s kind of genetic engineering is “like taking the hard drive of computer #1 and putting it into computer #2 that has had its own hard drive removed. So effectively computer #2 becomes computer #1.” Even Venter, when questioned directly, agrees, we “didn’t create life from scratch.”

Aside from the foggy CBS misrepresentation of the “new synthetic species”, more to the point, in the un-aired 60-Minute segment and posted as a trailer entitled “Extra: The Human Genome & Disappointment”, Venter explains to Kroft in the following interview why “he is disappointed not many research breakthroughs have happened since the human genome was mapped nearly ten years ago” -

Steve Kroft: You have mentioned the human genome and all the things it was supposed to do. Actually, a lot of people have been disappointed.

J. Craig Venter: They should be.

Steve Kroft: Because great things were promised and it hasn’t really happened.

J. Craig Venter: Ya

Steve Kroft: Yet?

J. Craig Venter: Well, it is early when you think of new drugs coming out. The cycle of a drug is 15 years from early discovery to getting one out on the market. We are only 10 years into the human genome. But it was definitely over sold in part to get the billions of dollars from congress for the program. I mean there were scientists saying within a decade all human diseases would be cured. Now that we are a decade out, not too many of them have been done.

Steve Kroft: You said that it was over-sold and there was a lot of hype. Some would say you were part of that.

J. Craig Venter: I’ve been optimistic about the future, about what it will do. I remain optimistic, but I have never said that it would cure diseases. I thought we would get to preventive medicine. Actually, I have thought we would get there faster than we have. I’ve been actually amazed at the lack of human genome research in this past decade.

Steve Kroft: Why has it been a bust?

J. Craig Venter: Well, there wasn’t a lot of funding for it. The funding all switched to zoo biology. NIH [National Institute of Health] sequenced all kinds of animals -all kinds of mammals, lizards, alligators, and horses. Thinking that if we have all these other genomes they would tell us how to interpret our own genome. Turns out it was not all that useful once you get past the mouse, all mammals share pretty much the same set of genes.

The human genome project has been an evolutionary “bust”. The NIH was looking to sequence the simpler “slight, successive” changes in animal genomes so that they “would tell us how to interpret our own genomes”. Stunningly, Venter points out that the “slight, successive” genetic differences between species do not exist—in fact, “all mammals share pretty much the same set of genes”.

Without question, the evidence in genetics to support Darwin’s framework of “slight, successive” changes from the simple to the more complex simply does not exist.

As Australian molecular biologist, Michael Denton explains – “At a molecular level there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal.”

Richard Dickerson, director of molecular biology at the UCLA points out – “The more one approaches the molecular level in the study of living things, the more similar they appear, and the less important the differences.”                     

Evidence, even stemming from the human genome project, has been a “bust” for evolution. The scientific evidence clearly undermines and contradicts the neo-Darwinian paradigm of evolution—gradual genetic changes through mutation and natural selection. Darwin’s framework of evolution through “slight, successive” changes has been irreparably destroyed.

No wonder the evolution industry is desperately searching for epigenetic factors—factors other than genetics. Evolution was once a theory in crisis, now evolution is in crisis without a theory. As leading Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti notes, “Science has taken on the wager… and lost.”