Posts Tagged ‘Jerry Coyne’

Leonid Moroz, professor of neuroscience, chemistry, and biology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, in a recent article published in The Scientist entitled “The Devolution of Evolution,” comments on Theodosius Dobzhansky assertion nearly 40 years ago that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

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?” Continue Reading

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

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

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

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.  Charles Darwin

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading

Why Evolution is True, one of the best-selling books in support of evolution written by Jerry Coyne and endorsed by Richard Dawkins, conveniently fails to address one minor evolutionary issue—the origin of life. Reason: the origin of life problem is undermining the evolution industry.

The Stanley-Miller origin of life model was once the most popular theory, starting with the publication of The Planets: Their Origin and Development in 1952. Written by Harold Urey, the book speculates that life originated in early Earth’s atmosphere composed of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen—a reducing atmosphere without oxygen.

Harold Urey was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for his work on isotopes. During World War II, Urey directed the Manhattan Project at Columbia University that lead to the development of the atomic bomb.

Urey’s model for the origin of life, however, was published without ever being tested. When challenged by his graduate student, Stanley Miller, they performed the now-famous Miller–Urey experiment.

After assembling a closed glass apparatus in Urey’s laboratory, Miller pumped out the air and replaced it with methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and water, creating a reducing atmosphere—without oxygen—a gas composition resembling the atmosphere of Jupiter. “By the end of the week,” Miller reported the water “was deep red and turbid.”

Just as Urey had predicted, chemical analysis of the resulting tar solution revealed several organic compounds, including glycine and alanine, the two simplest amino acids found in proteins—the building blocks of life. With amino acids spontaneously arising in early Earth’s atmosphere, the ensuing amino acid chance  interactions forming into proteins became recognized as the natural mechanism to explain for the origin of life.

Reference to the Miller–Urey experiment quickly found its way into almost every high school and college textbook starting in the mid-twentieth century as a natural explanation for the origin of life. According to Evolution 101, sponsored by the University of California, Berkley   

These experiments serve as ‘proofs of concept’ for hypotheses about steps in the origin of life — in other words, if a particular chemical reaction happens in a modern lab under conditions similar to those on early Earth, the same reaction could have happened on early Earth and could have played a role in the origin of life. The 1953 Miller-Urey experiment, for example, simulated early Earth’s atmosphere with nothing more than water, hydrogen, ammonia, and methane and an electrical charge standing in for lightning, and produced complex organic compounds like amino acids.

Since 1953, however, extensive investigations have demonstrated that the Earth’s atmosphere was not composed of ammonia, methane, and hydrogen. Rather than the anticipated reducing atmosphere, the Earth’s atmosphere was the opposite—oxidizing, containing oxygen.

Evolution 101, acknowledging atmosphere problems with the Miller-Urey experiment, adds - 

Now, scientists have learned more about the environmental and atmospheric conditions on early Earth and no longer think that the conditions used by Miller and Urey were quite right… These experiments yielded similar results – complex molecules could have formed in the conditions on early Earth.

While the formation of amino acids in the early atmosphere of the Earth is generally not considered a valid theory, what is the probability of complex molecules arising by chance?

 Evolution 101 uses the word “could” to explain the potential development of complex molecules developing on Earth. The fundamental question, however, is beyond “could.” The question centers on the “probability” of complex protein molecules forming by chance alone from amino acids. Any event “could” happen, but not all events are “probable”.  

Proteins consist of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Since amino acids have roughly a 50:50 chance of forming peptide bonds to another amino acid, the probability of 4 amino acids forming peptide bond together is ½ X ½ X ½ X ½ = 1/16, or (1/2)⁴.

Since a simple protein usually consists of a chain of 150 amino acids, then the probability of forming the chain is (1/2)¹⁵⁰, or roughly 1 chance in 10⁴⁵. That is the number 10 with 45 trailing zeros.

Given that each amino acid has a mirror image, there is one left-handed and right-handed version for each amino acid, the probability of forming one simple protein from 150 amino acids is 1 chance in 10⁹⁰.

One of the most important functional aspects of a protein is the sequence of the amino acids. Since there are 20 biologically active amino acids, the probability of amino acids occurring in a functional is (1/20)¹⁵⁰, or roughly 1 chance in 10¹⁹⁵.

Origin of life scientist, Stephen C Meyer, in Signature in the Cell, gives a perspective to the probability of finding one functional protein in the universe - 

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 finding a specified particle among all the particles in the universe.

Jerry Coyne and Richard Dawkins discretely circumvent the origin of life issue since the event probability was not by chance. Meyer concludes, 

For this reason, it would be vastly more probable than not that a protein functional would not have arisen by chance.

The evidence contradicts the central tenet of the theory of evolution—life by chance. Meyer’s logical conclusion concurs with Albert Einstein’s famous dictum:

God does not play dice with the universe.

Of all the facts in The Origin of Species, embryology was the most important in support of the theory. 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.

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

Darwin was fascinated by embryology. Writing in his autobiography, Darwin recalls: “Hardly any point gave me so much satisfaction when I was at work on the Origin, as the explanation of the wide difference in many classes between the embryo and the adult animal.”

To the point, Darwin writes – “We have seen in the first chapter that the homological [similar] structure of man, his embryological development and the rudiments which he still retains, all declare in the plainest manner that he is descended from some lower form.”

Darwin along with Fritz Müller (1821–1897) and Ernest Haeckel (1834–1919) were following in the footstep of Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876). Baer promoted the concept that a species’ embryological development (ontogeny) retraces the species’ entire evolutionary development (phylogeny).

In the case of man, then, the human embryo begins as a single cell and is progressively transformed into a tadpole, then to a fish, to an amphibian, to a monkey, and finally to man. In other words, at the different stages of development, the embryo is actually a series of ancestor species. The sequences of the embryo retrace the steps of evolution. Haeckel coined this process with the now-famous phrase “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

In the case of the appendix, then, the rise and fall of the appendix should be seen in the human embryo to demonstrate our presumed evolutionary human ancestry—from a functional to a non-functional organ. The question is does the evidence match the theory? The answer is – NO.

The reasons why the answer is NO, include  

• The appendix is not consistently found throughout the animal kingdom, occurring in only a few diverse mammals
• Not until the fifth fetal week does the appendix begin to develop
• Only after the fifth fetal month does the proximal end start differentiate into the true caecum
• Maximum growth of the appendix does not occur until after birth when the neonate takes on essential bacteria to reside in its colon
• Lymphoid follicles do not appear in the appendix until two weeks after birth at the same time that colonization of the large bowel with bacteria.

Contrary to the theory, at no point in the development of the appendix in the human embryo does arise and decline into a vestige organ. Rebecca E. Fisher, Ph.D., Postdoctoral Fellow from the Center for Functional Anatomy & Evolution Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in a review article entitled “The primate appendix: A reassessment” concludes that “the evolutionary history of the appendix has also proven difficult to trace.”  

The evidence on the development of the appendix now clearly stands to demonstrate the utter fallacy of the long-standing “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” theory of evolution.

Jerry Coyne’s (2009) contention in Why Evolution is True that, “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use” is another clear example of deception used in the promotion evolution. The evidence is clear: the appendix is not an evolutionary leftover.

The “vestige” status of the appendix originated with Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man (1871). In Chapter 1, Darwin writes -

“With respect to the alimentary canal I have met with an account of only a single rudiment [vestige], namely the vermiform appendage of the caecum… It appears as if, in consequence of changed diet or habits [disuse], the caecum had become much shortened in various animals, the vermiform appendage being left as a rudiment of the shortened part… Not only is it useless, but it is sometimes the cause of death”

Darwin’s concept of the appendix continued unchallenged until late in the twenteth century when clinical research began to demonstrate that not only does the appendix function to balance the bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract, the appendix plays an important immunological function. 

Loren G. Martin, professor of physiology at Oklahoma State University, stated in Scientific America -

“Among adult humans, the appendix is now thought to be involved primarily in immune functions. Lymphoid tissue begins to accumulate in the appendix shortly after birth and reaches a peak between the second and third decades of life, decreasing rapidly thereafter and practically disappearing after the age of 60. During the early years of development, however, the appendix has been shown to function as a lymphoid organ, assisting with the maturation of B lymphocytes (one variety of white blood cell) and in the production of the class of antibodies known as immunoglobulin A (IgA) antibodies. Researchers have also shown that the appendix is involved in the production of molecules that help to direct the movement of lymphocytes to various other locations in the body.”

Martin continues noting, “the function of the appendix appears to be to expose white blood cells to the wide variety of antigens, or foreign substances, present in the gastrointestinal tract. Thus, the appendix probably helps to suppress potentially destructive humoral (blood- and lymph-borne) antibody responses while promoting local immunity. The appendix–like the tiny structures called Peyer’s patches in other areas of the gastrointestinal tract–takes up antigens from the contents of the intestines and reacts to these contents. This local immune system plays a vital role in the physiological immune response and in the control of food, drug, microbial or viral antigens.”

Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writes in his new book, Why Evolution is True that, “We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most popular is the appendix.” Coyne claims that: “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use.”

Classifying the appendix as “no real value” exemplifies how evolution adherents persist to be woodwinked by ideology. Mounting scientific evidence continues to demonstrate why evolution is NOT true.

Long denigrated as vestigial or useless structure, the human appendix is now known to have a number of specific functions. The most widely recognized function is as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.” There are approximately 500 species of bacteria in the gut alone—the continued presence of beneficial bacteria is essential for good health.

ScienceDaily in an article entitled “Appendix Isn’t Useless At All: It’s A Safe House For Good Bacteria,” October 8, 2007, William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of experimental surgery along with R. Randal Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University professor emeritus noted—”Our studies have indicated that the immune system protects and nourishes the colonies of microbes living in the biofilm. By protecting these good microbes, the harmful microbes have no place to locate. We have also shown that biofilms are most pronounced in the appendix and their prevalence decreases moving away from it.” One of the functions of the appendix is to serve as a microbe storehouse.

According to their study published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, the bacteria in the human gut functions to digest food and produce vitamins, like Vitamin K—essential to coagulation. In the event that bacteria in the intestines become unbalanced, or taken over by opportunistic organisms such as cholera or amoebic dysentery, the appendix functions to reboot the bacterial flora. Parker explains the mechanism: “Once the bowel contents have left the body, the good bacteria hidden away in the appendix can emerge and repopulate the lining of the intestine before more harmful bacteria can take up residence.”

“Darwin simply didn’t have access to the information we have,” explains Parker. “If Darwin had been aware of the species that have an appendix attached to a large cecum… he probably would not have thought of the appendix as a vestige of evolution.”

When Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writing in his book, Why Evolution is True that “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use,” excluded known evidence. Continued adherence to the vestige status of the appendix by evolutionists requires rejection of the scientific method.

“Maybe it’s time to correct the textbooks,” says William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgical sciences at Duke and the senior author of the study. “Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a ‘vestigial organ.’”  

Jerry A. Coyne, one of the leading evolutionists at the University of Chicago, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True (2009) writes “much confusion and misunderstanding surrounds evolution” even though “the modern theory is easy to grasp.” The question is how can a theory be “easy to grasp” and still be surrounded by “much confusion”?

But what could the confusion be over? Here are some examples.  Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species - “There is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection”. Coyne contradicts Darwin by stating – “natural selection does not yield perfection”. Over a trivial issue, confusion reigns over whether natural selection can or cannot produce perfection in nature.

Presumably, to show how easy the theory of evolution is to understand, Coyne features what he calls the six basics of evolution: “evolution, gradualism, speciation, common ancestry, natural selection, and nonselective mechanisms”. For Coyne, natural selection is not the exclusive driving force of evolution.

Niles Eldredge, evolutionary biologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, disagrees. Niles Eldredge, architect  and designer of the museum’s currently touring Darwin exhibit in the companion book Darwin, Discovering the Tree of Life (2005), credits Darwin with discovering the actions of natural selection—the essence of evolution: “When [Darwin] formulated the principle of natural selection, he had discovered the central process of evolution.”

Unlike Coyne, Eldredge envisions evolution acting exclusively through the process of natural selection: “A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.” Unlike Coynes six basics of evolution, Eldredge uses a VISTA acronym for natural selection that stands for Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation.

Differences in approach even between Coyne and Eldredge, exemplify why evolution theory continues to be confusing—even on the basics. The teaching of evolution is in chaos. Coyne pines “most of my university students who supposedly learned evolution in high school, come to my courses know almost nothing about this central organizing theory of biology.” Could it be because a unified theory of evolution simply does not exist?

Even university science major graduates seem to be no better. T. Ryan Gregory and Cameron A. J. Ellis, in their paper entitled “Conceptions of Evolution Among Science Graduate Students” published in BioScience 59(9):792-799 (2009), surprizingly found that less than 30% of students pursuing advanced science degrees could correctly identify even the basic principles of evolution.

The reason is—a comprehensive theory of evolution simply does not exist. Even with the convening of the most respected evolutionary scientists at the Altenberg Summit in 2008, no consensus was reached on a comprehensive theory of evolution.

Given the flood of available evidence, in the wake of Crick’s Central Dogma collapse, evolution is a theory that remains in chaos—now more than ever.