First a little bit of history on Evolution:
Evolution was a mystical belief system and a Creation story long before it could be claimed to be anything like a scientific theory.
Ancient Greek societies believed in all types of Evolution. They believed the universe arose spontaneously, that life spontaneously generated in the oceans, that the first life was small sea creatures which eventually crawled onto land and developed into more advanced forms.
Much later, influential men would come along and resurrect these belief systems. Before Charles Darwin was even born, his grandfather Erasmus was writing poetry about his mystical beliefs in all forms of Evolution.
Observe a few verses from Erasums Darwin's poems. We have the whole Evolution creation story in here. Spontaneous generation of the universe, spontaneous generation of life from non-life, and organic evolution.
Temple of Nature
Erasmus Darwin - 1803
Impress'd on Nature by the Great First Cause,
Say, Muse! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
.....
Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd
Rose the bright spheres, which form the circling world;
Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth;
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.
....
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.
....
"Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
As we can see, Evolution was a passionate origins belief system well before Charlie began dressing it up in a scientific garb... and the same goes for the "theories" of Big-Bang cosmology and Abiogenesis... Do you think it's just a coincidence that these creation ideas became established dogma decades or centuries after they has been devoutly expressed by those in an early position of power?
Erasmus Darwin, and his ideological successors like Thomas Huxley were part of "learned societies" (Lunar Society, X Club) that held a great deal of influence over the emerging scientific establishments of the 18th and 19th centuries. These societies were built on a commitment to "naturalism" or an Evolutionary worldview.
Put simply, the emergence of Evolutionary thought was not driven by scientific inquiry or scientific evidence. Evolution was going to become the official creation doctrine of the institutions of "science", no matter what.
Evolution has always been a theory of accommodation.
Evolution is like a fog that settles around the shifting landscape of data. It absorbs any shape. Evolution "theory" can be tweaked and adjusted innumerably to fit the evidence, while simultaneously remain well insulated from being tested itself.
Here are a few observations demonstrating why Evolution fails as a scientific theory.
The Fossil Order
Evolutionists always try and say Evolution is falsifiable because discovering something like a rabbit in the Cambrian would falsify it. The problem is that the lack of mammalian fossils in lower rock layers was known before such claims of potential falsifiability were made.
I've gone into more detail on this before, but put simply, a definite pattern of fossils began to be discovered centuries ago, and Evolutionists built their theory around this pattern. They did not predict it, they only accommodated it.
For example, nothing in Evolution says mammalian groups must wait to evolve till after an "age of reptiles". In recent centuries, if a fossil pattern had emerged where most mammals appear simultaneously or even before many reptilian/dinosaurian orders, then evolutionists could just have easily built their theory around this pattern. (mammals were once said to have evolved from amphibians) And the same could be said for numerous other fossil arrangements.
In these hypothetical scenarios, any of the more problematic fossil scenarios would be (as we see today) regarded as only Enigmas... mysteries to have light shed on in the future. Like how the Cambrian Explosion is dealt with today, or the origin of major body plans that do not have a trace of potential candidates for evolutionary precursors. (such as Bats or Icthyosaurs, etc.)... and also as we see today, any attempt at pointing out the significance of such enigmas is immediately met with derision.
Alleged fossil "transitions" do not have to be in order.
A more "derived" trait can be discovered many "millions of years" before a more "primitive" trait, and this can be blamed on the randomness of the fossilization process whereby ancestors did not fossilize till after the descendents. This means that any predictions about transitional sequences can fail spectacularly and Evolution is still protected. Such anachronisms have occurred in the fish-tetrapod sequence, and the dinosaur-bird sequence.
The comical thing about this is that when alleged "transitions" are seemingly in some kind of order, Evolutionists will claim it as evidence. But if other "transitions" are not in order, Evolutionists will also claim this as evidence. (albeit not advertised to the public)
Making even more room for evolutionary storytelling, when appraising fossil "transitions", any remaining traits on the organisms which contradict the "transitional" quality can be explained away as "reversals" or "convergence" or similar rescue devices.
Phylogenetics (or the study of different molecular and morphological traits to determine evolutionary relationships) is claimed to be one of the main backbones of evidence supporting Evolution.
The field of Phylogenetics (otherwise known as Cladistics or Evolutionary Systematics) is favored by evolutionists because it produces impressive looking diagrams with lots of numbers, and the methodology is generally too complex for the average person to wade through.
The illusion is successfully maintained that if Evolution were false than phylogenetic research would somehow come apart at the seams. This is quite false, as evolutionary phylogenetics is built in with all sorts of ad-hoc rescue devices and subjective reasoning to protect it from breaking down.
There is no objective scientific method for determining if similarity is due to relatedness(homology) or independent convergence.
It is well known that similar anatomy has been explained as "convergent evolution". Here we see that even similar genetic pathways can be labeled the same.
Genomic basis for the convergent evolution of electric organs
Little is known about the genetic basis of convergent traits that originate repeatedly over broad taxonomic scales. The myogenic electric organ has evolved six times in fishes to produce electric fields used in communication, navigation, predation, or defense. We have examined the genomic basis of the convergent anatomical and physiological origins of these organs by assembling the genome of the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) and sequencing electric organ and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from three lineages that have independently evolved electric organs. Our results indicate that, despite millions of years of evolution and large differences in the morphology of electric organ cells, independent lineages have leveraged similar transcription factors and developmental and cellular pathways in the evolution of electric organs.
The problem here is that (If we assume Evolution is true) than an objective examination of these electric organ traits reveals a signal of homology (or relatedness) Similar developmental pathways and similar function. Yet because this would contradict the phylogeny based on many other traits deemed to be homologous, the electric organ traits can be arbitrarily labeled as convergent evolution.
An evolutionist I showed this to attempted to defend the methodology by claiming the discrepancies were limited to a relatively small number of traits so this justified identifying it as independent convergence.
However:
Convergent evolution: New fins evolve repeatedly in teleost fishes
A new study analyzing the origins of the adipose fin, thought by some to be vestigial, finds that these fins arose repeatedly and independently in multiple species -- a striking example of convergent evolution. Adipose fins also appear to have repeatedly and independently evolved skeleton, offering a glimpse into the evolution of vertebrate appendages.... Though present in more than 6,000 living species of fish, the adipose fin, a small appendage that lies between the dorsal fin and tail, has no clear function and is thought to be vestigial. However, a new study analyzing their origins finds that these fins arose repeatedly and independently in multiple species. In addition, adipose fins appear to have repeatedly and independently evolved a skeleton, offering a glimpse into how new tissue types and structural complexity evolve in vertebrate appendages.
Here the "convergent" trait is widespread throughout fish taxonomy. So much so that this fin trait was believed to be shared via inheritance from a common fin. (homology) But, when it lead to better harmonizing Evolution, the trait was flipped to become an independent convergence. Any structural differences in the different fins that were once interpreted as being uniquely derived from the ancestral fin, can now be interpreted as evidence of unique convergences.
This same rationalization can be found throughout the world of phylogenetics. (cladistics /evolutionary systematics)
There is no objective scientific method for identifying "homologous" traits at all (or traits in different animal groups thought to be derived from a common ancestor)
The evidence of these "homologies" are supposed to be in a pattern of similarity, yet the genetic or developmental pathways of the trait in one organism can contradict that of the same trait in another organism, and the difference will be interpreted as something evolution did.
For example, two different Dipteran insect genera, the fruit-fly and house-fly have different genetic pathways for determining whether or not they will be male or female. Therefore while the male/female anatomy of both insects would be argued as a "homology" (similarities shared by a common ancestor), at the molecular level they do not carry the same signal.
Structure, function and evolution of sex-determining systems in Dipteran insects.
The evolutionary rationalization is that, despite how 'closely related' these insects are, the fact that sex-determination is controlled by different genes, just means those genes "evolve faster than others".
This explanation could be extended to explain practically any discrepancy in supposed homologies, which shows just how much playing room evolutionists have to make the data fit into their over-arching creation story.
Evolutionary dissociations between homologous genes and homologous structures.
Wray GA. 1999
..... Data from a variety of organisms are beginning to provide intriguing glimpses of the complex evolutionary relationship between genotype and phenotype. Much attention has been devoted to remarkably conserved relationships between homologous genes and structures. However, there is increasing evidence that several kinds of evolutionary dissociations can evolve between genotype and phenotype, some of which are quite unexpected. The existence of these dissocations limits the degree to which it is possible make inferences about the homology of structures based solely on the expression of homologous genes.
This is known as the "Problem of Homology", and has been kept will hidden from the public for decades.
We see that when a supposed "homology" is supported by the data, it is claimed as evidence for evolution. When a "homology" is NOT supported by the data, it can still be accommodated. This pattern of accommodation of contradictory data is found across the entire spectrum of Evolutionary "science". Does that sound like science to you?
Why are these traits identified as "homologies" in the first place? How do evolutionists know they are not reading false signals of homology within similarities all over the kingdom of life? They don't know. They have no scientific criteria for determining such a thing.
Again, there appears to be no objective method for locating evolutionary relationships in phylogenetic studies. It is all based around subjective interpretation of the data in way that will best harmonize with the belief in Evolution.
Endogenous Retroviruses / Transposable Elements
ERV's and other transposable elements can be found out of place of an expected phylogeny and still be rescued by saying the specific genes were not confined into distinct lineages and still mixing back in forth between 'speciating' populations. (incomplete lineage sorting) This same explanation can be used for any other genetic marker. (For example it used to explain why over 20% of the human genome is more similar to a gorilla than a chimpanzee)
This explanation was invoked with transposable elements when it was found that they would have had to follow a pattern severely contradictory from any single phylogeny of placental mammals.
Observe the pliability.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC2675975/
(continued in next post)
Evolution was a mystical belief system and a Creation story long before it could be claimed to be anything like a scientific theory.
Ancient Greek societies believed in all types of Evolution. They believed the universe arose spontaneously, that life spontaneously generated in the oceans, that the first life was small sea creatures which eventually crawled onto land and developed into more advanced forms.
Much later, influential men would come along and resurrect these belief systems. Before Charles Darwin was even born, his grandfather Erasmus was writing poetry about his mystical beliefs in all forms of Evolution.
Observe a few verses from Erasums Darwin's poems. We have the whole Evolution creation story in here. Spontaneous generation of the universe, spontaneous generation of life from non-life, and organic evolution.
Temple of Nature
Erasmus Darwin - 1803
Impress'd on Nature by the Great First Cause,
Say, Muse! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
.....
Ere Time began, from flaming Chaos hurl'd
Rose the bright spheres, which form the circling world;
Earths from each sun with quick explosions burst,
And second planets issued from the first.
Then, whilst the sea at their coeval birth,
Surge over surge, involv'd the shoreless earth;
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves.
....
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.
....
"Organic Life beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
As we can see, Evolution was a passionate origins belief system well before Charlie began dressing it up in a scientific garb... and the same goes for the "theories" of Big-Bang cosmology and Abiogenesis... Do you think it's just a coincidence that these creation ideas became established dogma decades or centuries after they has been devoutly expressed by those in an early position of power?
Erasmus Darwin, and his ideological successors like Thomas Huxley were part of "learned societies" (Lunar Society, X Club) that held a great deal of influence over the emerging scientific establishments of the 18th and 19th centuries. These societies were built on a commitment to "naturalism" or an Evolutionary worldview.
Put simply, the emergence of Evolutionary thought was not driven by scientific inquiry or scientific evidence. Evolution was going to become the official creation doctrine of the institutions of "science", no matter what.
Evolution has always been a theory of accommodation.
Evolution is like a fog that settles around the shifting landscape of data. It absorbs any shape. Evolution "theory" can be tweaked and adjusted innumerably to fit the evidence, while simultaneously remain well insulated from being tested itself.
Here are a few observations demonstrating why Evolution fails as a scientific theory.
The Fossil Order
Evolutionists always try and say Evolution is falsifiable because discovering something like a rabbit in the Cambrian would falsify it. The problem is that the lack of mammalian fossils in lower rock layers was known before such claims of potential falsifiability were made.
I've gone into more detail on this before, but put simply, a definite pattern of fossils began to be discovered centuries ago, and Evolutionists built their theory around this pattern. They did not predict it, they only accommodated it.
For example, nothing in Evolution says mammalian groups must wait to evolve till after an "age of reptiles". In recent centuries, if a fossil pattern had emerged where most mammals appear simultaneously or even before many reptilian/dinosaurian orders, then evolutionists could just have easily built their theory around this pattern. (mammals were once said to have evolved from amphibians) And the same could be said for numerous other fossil arrangements.
In these hypothetical scenarios, any of the more problematic fossil scenarios would be (as we see today) regarded as only Enigmas... mysteries to have light shed on in the future. Like how the Cambrian Explosion is dealt with today, or the origin of major body plans that do not have a trace of potential candidates for evolutionary precursors. (such as Bats or Icthyosaurs, etc.)... and also as we see today, any attempt at pointing out the significance of such enigmas is immediately met with derision.
Alleged fossil "transitions" do not have to be in order.
A more "derived" trait can be discovered many "millions of years" before a more "primitive" trait, and this can be blamed on the randomness of the fossilization process whereby ancestors did not fossilize till after the descendents. This means that any predictions about transitional sequences can fail spectacularly and Evolution is still protected. Such anachronisms have occurred in the fish-tetrapod sequence, and the dinosaur-bird sequence.
The comical thing about this is that when alleged "transitions" are seemingly in some kind of order, Evolutionists will claim it as evidence. But if other "transitions" are not in order, Evolutionists will also claim this as evidence. (albeit not advertised to the public)
Making even more room for evolutionary storytelling, when appraising fossil "transitions", any remaining traits on the organisms which contradict the "transitional" quality can be explained away as "reversals" or "convergence" or similar rescue devices.
Phylogenetics (or the study of different molecular and morphological traits to determine evolutionary relationships) is claimed to be one of the main backbones of evidence supporting Evolution.
The field of Phylogenetics (otherwise known as Cladistics or Evolutionary Systematics) is favored by evolutionists because it produces impressive looking diagrams with lots of numbers, and the methodology is generally too complex for the average person to wade through.
The illusion is successfully maintained that if Evolution were false than phylogenetic research would somehow come apart at the seams. This is quite false, as evolutionary phylogenetics is built in with all sorts of ad-hoc rescue devices and subjective reasoning to protect it from breaking down.
There is no objective scientific method for determining if similarity is due to relatedness(homology) or independent convergence.
It is well known that similar anatomy has been explained as "convergent evolution". Here we see that even similar genetic pathways can be labeled the same.
Genomic basis for the convergent evolution of electric organs
Little is known about the genetic basis of convergent traits that originate repeatedly over broad taxonomic scales. The myogenic electric organ has evolved six times in fishes to produce electric fields used in communication, navigation, predation, or defense. We have examined the genomic basis of the convergent anatomical and physiological origins of these organs by assembling the genome of the electric eel (Electrophorus electricus) and sequencing electric organ and skeletal muscle transcriptomes from three lineages that have independently evolved electric organs. Our results indicate that, despite millions of years of evolution and large differences in the morphology of electric organ cells, independent lineages have leveraged similar transcription factors and developmental and cellular pathways in the evolution of electric organs.
The problem here is that (If we assume Evolution is true) than an objective examination of these electric organ traits reveals a signal of homology (or relatedness) Similar developmental pathways and similar function. Yet because this would contradict the phylogeny based on many other traits deemed to be homologous, the electric organ traits can be arbitrarily labeled as convergent evolution.
An evolutionist I showed this to attempted to defend the methodology by claiming the discrepancies were limited to a relatively small number of traits so this justified identifying it as independent convergence.
However:
Convergent evolution: New fins evolve repeatedly in teleost fishes
A new study analyzing the origins of the adipose fin, thought by some to be vestigial, finds that these fins arose repeatedly and independently in multiple species -- a striking example of convergent evolution. Adipose fins also appear to have repeatedly and independently evolved skeleton, offering a glimpse into the evolution of vertebrate appendages.... Though present in more than 6,000 living species of fish, the adipose fin, a small appendage that lies between the dorsal fin and tail, has no clear function and is thought to be vestigial. However, a new study analyzing their origins finds that these fins arose repeatedly and independently in multiple species. In addition, adipose fins appear to have repeatedly and independently evolved a skeleton, offering a glimpse into how new tissue types and structural complexity evolve in vertebrate appendages.
Here the "convergent" trait is widespread throughout fish taxonomy. So much so that this fin trait was believed to be shared via inheritance from a common fin. (homology) But, when it lead to better harmonizing Evolution, the trait was flipped to become an independent convergence. Any structural differences in the different fins that were once interpreted as being uniquely derived from the ancestral fin, can now be interpreted as evidence of unique convergences.
This same rationalization can be found throughout the world of phylogenetics. (cladistics /evolutionary systematics)
There is no objective scientific method for identifying "homologous" traits at all (or traits in different animal groups thought to be derived from a common ancestor)
The evidence of these "homologies" are supposed to be in a pattern of similarity, yet the genetic or developmental pathways of the trait in one organism can contradict that of the same trait in another organism, and the difference will be interpreted as something evolution did.
For example, two different Dipteran insect genera, the fruit-fly and house-fly have different genetic pathways for determining whether or not they will be male or female. Therefore while the male/female anatomy of both insects would be argued as a "homology" (similarities shared by a common ancestor), at the molecular level they do not carry the same signal.
Structure, function and evolution of sex-determining systems in Dipteran insects.
The evolutionary rationalization is that, despite how 'closely related' these insects are, the fact that sex-determination is controlled by different genes, just means those genes "evolve faster than others".
This explanation could be extended to explain practically any discrepancy in supposed homologies, which shows just how much playing room evolutionists have to make the data fit into their over-arching creation story.
Evolutionary dissociations between homologous genes and homologous structures.
Wray GA. 1999
..... Data from a variety of organisms are beginning to provide intriguing glimpses of the complex evolutionary relationship between genotype and phenotype. Much attention has been devoted to remarkably conserved relationships between homologous genes and structures. However, there is increasing evidence that several kinds of evolutionary dissociations can evolve between genotype and phenotype, some of which are quite unexpected. The existence of these dissocations limits the degree to which it is possible make inferences about the homology of structures based solely on the expression of homologous genes.
This is known as the "Problem of Homology", and has been kept will hidden from the public for decades.
We see that when a supposed "homology" is supported by the data, it is claimed as evidence for evolution. When a "homology" is NOT supported by the data, it can still be accommodated. This pattern of accommodation of contradictory data is found across the entire spectrum of Evolutionary "science". Does that sound like science to you?
Why are these traits identified as "homologies" in the first place? How do evolutionists know they are not reading false signals of homology within similarities all over the kingdom of life? They don't know. They have no scientific criteria for determining such a thing.
Again, there appears to be no objective method for locating evolutionary relationships in phylogenetic studies. It is all based around subjective interpretation of the data in way that will best harmonize with the belief in Evolution.
Endogenous Retroviruses / Transposable Elements
ERV's and other transposable elements can be found out of place of an expected phylogeny and still be rescued by saying the specific genes were not confined into distinct lineages and still mixing back in forth between 'speciating' populations. (incomplete lineage sorting) This same explanation can be used for any other genetic marker. (For example it used to explain why over 20% of the human genome is more similar to a gorilla than a chimpanzee)
This explanation was invoked with transposable elements when it was found that they would have had to follow a pattern severely contradictory from any single phylogeny of placental mammals.
Observe the pliability.
http://www.ncbi.nlm....les/PMC2675975/
(continued in next post)
