In the dense tropical rainforest of Borneo live species unknown to science. One new find is Ibycus rachelae, a slug that, like the mythological Cupid, shoots its mate with an arrow of love. The dart injects an amorous hormone into its reluctant partner to liven things up.And how does evolution explain this suave strategy? It would be something like this. First, the hormone happened to evolve and somehow served some purpose in the hapless slug. But the hormone also happened to work wonders when the lights were low. On those rare occasions when the slug was lucky, the hormone might somehow transfer to its partner when there was physical contact.
But this occurred rarely and so didn't help too much. That is, until the randomly designed slug happened to develop an arrow. The arrow worked wonders when it happened to fire at a prospective partner, and it happened to be armed with the hormone. That slug's wild success would proliferate into generations of gigolos.
That's how evolution works. Things that work luckily arise sometimes, and they are then selected.
This slug-turned-Cupid tale is typical of evolutionary storytelling. Stories such as these are told over and over. From textbooks to peer reviewed journals, just-so stories, as with the process of evolution, arise and persist.
But don't evolutionists ever tire of absurdity? Don't they ever think twice about their silliness? Or are they just winking at each other while taxpayers fund their imaginations? Either way, who needs Cupid, evolution is our new mythology.
you claim to live in belief yet in reality you live in denial. You can prattle on as much as you like with facile examples such as this but the reality is that the evidence for evolution swamps that of creationism like Noah's alleged flood swamped the lands.
ReplyDeleteTell me something, do you believe that germs cause illness and disease? Or are you one of those who believe it's because women dress 'ludely' or such?
@Leroy, I was going to write a nice rebuttal, actually I started, then I reread your last point. I realized that I would be wasting my time since you completely missed the point of his post. I doubly you can overcome your presuppositions to grasp the issue at hand.
ReplyDeleteactually Marinus, I did get the point of the post. That was has happened here is such a large and complex leap of adaption that to claim evolution is a joke. It must be creation.
ReplyDeleteOf course there is no mention of any scientific investigation or evidence which may expand upon the whole scenario, that wouldn't suit would it now.
What amazes me is that the same person who claims that this is too much to believe to be evolution, also believes in a concept with no evidence and that is based on a single book built on selective entries and over various lengths of elapsed time from the alleged events.
What about you Marinus, do you believe in germ caused diseases and illnesses, or are they caused by mans' 'misbehavior'?
Leroy. you point to natural evil as a attempt to say that God is ultimately not real. Thus you seem to admit that at least evil is real and yet If you admit evil is real then you must also admit good is real. But since you are, by default of rejecting God, a materialist/evolutionist, then you cannot hold that Good and evil are real in the first place since you must hold that they are merely illusions that "emerged" in the chemicals of our brain. So which is it? Are good and evil real so that you can try to make a firm philosophical argument against God, or are they merely illusions that "emerged", thus undermining you philosophical claim to properly judge good and evil in the first place? as a side note, if you do choose to maintain that Good and evil are real, so as to have a proper foundation on which to argue philosophically, then it should be pointed out that Christians never claimed we were in heaven in the first place. Christians have always maintained that we live in a fallen world, where we must contend with the "thorns" that were brought forth in the natural world as a result of our fall and separation from God. Thus your argument for perfect goodness not being present in this world, as to be evidence against a perfect God, will fall apart as well.
ReplyDeleteLet us not ignore the liver fluke and its amazing multi-faceted life cycle.
ReplyDeleteThe adult lives in the intestines of sheep.
Eggs are laid and passed to the ground in the feces. The eggs hatch small, ciliated larvae that can swim in water.
The lucky larvae find a pond snail for the next stage in their life cycle.
The larvae find their way into the lung of the snail. As the larvae grow, they lose their cilia and enter a stage called the sporocyst.
The sporocyst buds off germinal cells into the body cavity. These cells develop into a second type of larvae known as rediae, which eventually leave the sporocyst.
In the tissue of the snail, the rediae develop into another larval form called cercariae that somewhat resemble tadpoles.
These "tadpoles" eventually work their way out of the snail and end up on blades of grass. Here they shed their tails and encase themselves in a sheath.
Eventually they are eaten by the sheep and find their way to the liver. There they mature, develop sex organs and find their way to the sheep's intestines to begin the next life cycle.
(Paraphrased from Evolution: A Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton)
This organism certainly presents a challenge to the theory of evolution.
This organism also presents a challenge to me as a design advocate. What would motivate a designer to come up with such a complicated life cycle that depends a lot on chance? As Walter ReMine might say, there's a message in there somewhere.
Is there a paper that goes with this?
ReplyDeleteMaybe this one:
Chase R, Blanchard KC (2006) The snail’s love-dart delivers mucus to increase paternity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 273:1471-1475.
At any rate, these 'darts' are super-old news in gastropods. They are calcium carbonate spears. Note that slug inner shells, or snail shells are calcium carbonate, so really this is just a 'spear' extension of a shell. No steel hypodermic dart gun here. And some are expelled quickly in mating, but they don't go flying through the air.
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Gastropod_reproductive_behavior#The_function_of_dart_shooting
Note also that many pulmonate gastropods are hermaphrodites. The Banana slug literature, for example, is rife with descriptions of hormones in the induction of male phase, and mating, for example. WPM Geraerts had whole chapters on these model organisms in General and Comparative Endocrinology, 1976.
And more here:
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Gastropod_reproductive_behavior
Generally, in these organisms there is sexual conflict-where there might be a preference to be male (more progeny with less investment). Also, they show sperm competition, and complex hermaphrodite to hermaphrodite mating. Some slug species break (or have to chew off) their penis upon mating, so to efficiently have progeny it helps to make the mate receptive to mating, taking in sperm, and ovulating.
In snails, the dart has a peptide that forces the mate hit with the dart to store sperm, and that enhances the female character. The shooters that hit their target sire more progeny than those that miss.
Ref:
Chase R, Blanchard KC (2006) The snail’s love-dart delivers mucus to increase paternity. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 273:1471-1475.
Dr. Hunter asks "First, the hormone happened to evolve and somehow served some purpose in the hapless slug."
The hormone might be the very same one the female stage or organs of the hermaphrodite might use to ovulate, and store sperm. In this case, it is now re-expressed in a male phase to enhance ones paternity by enhancing the store of sperm in the mate. Is this beyond the 'edge of evolution?'
And as I mentioned before, the 'arrows' are just evolutionary derivatives of shell expelled through the genital pore.
Kinda reasonable? Molecular data would help the story, and I'm sure this research is under way. But, when you include no detail, and do no research (literature or bench), you can make evolution sound pretty silly. Anything reduced to such trivial terms will.
There is a design hypothesis here: that the spear and peptide arose de-novo, and at the same time with no evolutionary precursors due to design.
Go for it.
By the way, who designed these mating systems? Hermaphroditism, sperm competition, forced reproduction by giant spears stuck into one's head. Giant penises that have to be chewed off? I'd rather hope these are products of evolution and contingency!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRobertC: "There is a design hypothesis here: that the spear and peptide arose de-novo, and at the same time with no evolutionary precursors due to design.
ReplyDeleteGo for it."
Based on the history of this blog to date, I'm skeptical that Dr. Hunter is going to go for it, or indeed go for anything.
He seems content to simply argue his case from incredulity and leave it at that. I'm not quite sure what he expects or what he wants us to do with this kind of information. As Robert discovered it's usually quite easy to find plenty of evolutionary-based explanations for this kind Are they all correct? Probably not - but it is in the process of "trying on" different hypotheses, different explanatory pathways that much is learned.
Presumably with this kind of post, and by attempting to throw doubt on accepted evolutionary explanations, I suppose Cornelius expects us to start doubting the very foundations of evolution. And then what? Without the presence of any positive evidence for the "supernatural cause" that Cornelius believes (see March 30th comments) played a part in evolution, it is all rather hollow and empty. Presumably evolution's failures are somehow ID/creationisms gains, despite the fact that in this particular blog entry not a single shred of design evidence is provided.
Cornelius is like the Republican party - he is the biologist of "no"...
Leroy: "but the reality is that the evidence for evolution swamps that of creationism like Noah's alleged flood swamped the lands"
ReplyDeleteROTFLMAO.
I love it when Daweeners come out with unrestrained faith phrases like this. Blind faith in what they don't even understand themselves.
Darwinists rarely understand evolution themselves because Darwinian theory is a humongous smörgåsbord of confusion, self-contradiction, gratuitous extrapolations, fairy tale like story telling and ill reasoned tripe.
Like we see every day here from people like you.
Every Darwinists imagines that there are "mountains of overwhelming evidence" in support of the theory.
But no single Darwinist has anything even close to anything but overwhelming evidence of their own incredible gullibility.
All Darwinian scientists strongly believe that some other Darwinian scientists possess this imaginary evidence.
They believe this because they are aware that they themselves do not have any.
In truth no one does.
Go through the Darweener literature - often cited here.
Once one sifts out the gratuitous stories, the circular reasonings, the assumptions and presumptions that are passed as facts and all the ill reasoned conclusions, one finds precious little support for anything at all but micro-evolutionary changes, some variations and adaptations i.e stuff that even a pure blood creationist accepts without any problem.
And this micro evol. is always occurring only within the taxonomic family and never able to cross the inherent genetic barriers now demonstrated in both lab and field.
First, I'll insert a plug for my own latest blog post, which is about an anti-evolution sex-slavery cult in Turkey that pushes anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial, evolution denial, videotaped sex used to blackmail rich people... you know, just the usual creationist issues.
ReplyDeleteThis story is 100% real: "Creationists Gone Wild! Oral Sex and Cocaine Cult Leads Fight Against Darwin!" You have to read it to believe it.
Dr. Cornelius' logic in this lousy post is the same as the very old, perhaps the oldest and hoariest of all creationist tropes: the argument from observing a single species that such-and-such complex structure it has OBVIOUSLY could not evolve, because the outlandish transitional states conjured up by creationists must be non-functional.
The ancient archetype of this YEC argument is the "woodpecker head" argument, which says: a woodpecker has a long beak, and shock-absorber head muscles, and the transitional states would all kill the woodpecker. Ken Ham says: If the beak evolves first, before the shock absorber, THWACK! It will bash out its brains and die!
There are many variants of this, including "Dr. Cornelius' love dart" (great name for a rock band, that). Let's call all such arguments "pecker head" logic. All "pecker head" arguments have the same flaw.
Darwin's theory is a comparative theory. If you are not comparing different structures/genes/species against each other, you are not doing--indeed, you are misrepresenting-- evolutionary analysis! The "woodpecker head" argument fails because the creationists look at the beak in just *one species of woodpecker* (and they don’t even describe that accurately!) That's not evolutionary analysis. They don't even look at the juvenile form of woodpeckers, or related species that have few shock-absorbing adaptations-- living examples of intermediate characteristics that creationists say are outlandish and impossible-- neglecting the fact that they are alive today.
Dr. Cornelius' love dart is another "pecker head" argument. He tells us there's a hormone on the love dart. Oh!? What kind of molecular biologist would tell us there's a hormone, and not tell us what it's homologous to!? Or even how many amino acids it has? There are probably thousands of peptides in the slug homologous to that love hormone.
Luckily, RobertC tells us the peptide or close homologs are used to enhance sperm storage in the female phase. So it is yet another example of co-option and bifunctionality (although Dembski claims only Intelligent Designers do co-option.)
Even if the peptide didn’t have sperm storage function, other invertebrates are known to co-opt toxins as "dating" enhancers. Knowing this, it is terrible for Dr. Cornelius to leave out all homology comparisons. Instead, he gives this cartoonish misrepresentation of how evolutionary theory works:
"First, the hormone happened to evolve and somehow served some purpose in the hapless slug."
Despicable and dishonest. Cornelius knows that is not how biologists do their jobs-- especially molecular biologists!
No wonder it's called "The Dishonesty Institute"!
The “pecker head” argument means you're not doing evolutionary analysis, but you direct the argument at less-educated lay people and trick them into thinking this crap is a scientific analysis relevant to evolution.
Timco & Robby :
ReplyDeleteYour posts are incredibly full of ignorance, evidence of your gullibility and good old simple foolishness.
Its amazing that you 2 can come here almost every day, read CH's posts and still not understand a word he says.
One more time:
"Older folk in the know told me that selection didn't operate to make complicated things out of complicated things, only to make complex things out of simple ones. I couldn't understand how anything of the sort could be true, because, unlikely as it was, it would surely be less difficult to make a rabbit out of a potato than to make a rabbit out of sludge, which is what people said had happened, people with line after line of letters after their names who should have known what they were talking about, but obviously didn't." (Hoyle, F., Mathematics of Evolution)
"Because the old believers said that God came out of the sky, thereby connecting the Earth with events outside it, the new believers were obliged to say the opposite and to do so, as always, with intense conviction. Although the new believers had not a particle of evidence to support their statements on the matter, they asserted that the rabbit producing sludge (called soup to make it sound more palatable) was terrestrially located and that all chemical and biochemical transmogrifications of the sludge were terrestrially inspired. Because there was not a particle of evidence to support this view, new believers had to swallow it as an article of faith, otherwise they could not pass their examinations or secure a job or avoid the ridicule of their colleagues. So it came about from 1860 onward that new believers became in a sense mentally ill, or, more precisely, either you became mentally ill or you quitted the subject of biology, as I had done in my early teens. The trouble for young biologists was that, with everyone around them ill, it became impossible for them to think they were well unless they were ill, which again is a situation you can read all about in the columns of Nature [magazine]." (Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," 1987).
Mentally ill indeed.
Hoyle pegged you justly, but I'm convinced after all the denial of all the ever mounting overwhelming evidence against Darwinism that neither of you will ever get it.
You're like flat earthers of old - dependent on consensus and believing the lies you tell yourselves all while thinking yourselves wise.
"Considering and vaunting themselves to be wise, they became fools" -comes to mind.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDiogenes :
ReplyDeleteSir Hoyle's comments (above) apply to you very well too.
Your so-called "creationist" story is incredible in many ways.
Most conspicuous is its inane drone assertions, misconceptions and the saliently foolish conclusions it seeks to push.
The rest fairs little better.
You understand precisely nothing of what CH is saying here, nor of the logical implications.
Indeed, "implications" yet another word Darwinists do not know exists.
Why don't you crawl back into the slimy little intellectual black hole you live in?
Hitch, your post was totally science-free. You were citing Hoyle's authority in describing the personalities of scientists. Personality-accusation is not science.
ReplyDeleteRobertC's comment had scientific facts in it. Dr. Cornelius' had almost no science, and you abandoned science altogether for personality-based assessments that are wrong anyway, as I know personally.
So, it's the pot calling the kettle black for you to accuse scientists of not being concerned with scientific evidence.
You're quoting Hoyle anyway, an astrophysicist so bigoted that he didn't accept Big Bang theory even after seeing the 3K CMBR. THIS GUY is your authority on non-bigotry!? What next Hitch, Hitler on racial tolerance?
BTW, I know lots of scientists. They all know examples of evolutionary analyses working out in their particular sub-fields. You're wrong, your theory still has NO confirmed testable predictions 17 years after "Pandas and People", and you're still 98.4% chimpanzee DNA.
Again, I shamelessly plug my blog post on a creationist sex-slavery and Holocaust denial cult.
Hitch: "Hoyle pegged you justly, but I'm convinced after all the denial of all the ever mounting overwhelming evidence against Darwinism that neither of you will ever get it"
ReplyDeleteHow do you think we'll get it Hitch? Perhaps if we are born-again or something?
Yeah Bitch, how about some Kuyperian "that's your presupposition" theology? Maybe that will persuade us. Who needs scientific facts, when you can break our will by making us feel guilty because we masturbated in high school so we deserve to go to hell?
ReplyDeleteYou've sure got no science to bring to the table. If you can't be right, at least be interesting.
Well, IDologues do make *SOME* predictions:
"Here's a prediction. Universal CD [Common Descent] will be gasping for breath in two or three years, if not sooner." Paul Nelson, 2002.
It's 2010. BTW, how'd that "scientists will never understand evolution of the V(D)J recombination system" work out for you in Dover? I forgot. Remind me, you bitches with your fused chromosome 2's.
More shameless plug for new blog post about sex slavery and creationism!
Anyone have a science-based critique of what I've posted? Anyone have the evidence for ID in this system?
ReplyDelete...right....
Ad hominem, mentally ill...bleh bleh bleh....
Robert:
ReplyDeleteAs long as it works for the slugs, why is it a bad design? And maybe the slugs like it.
Robert C. - thanks for the elucidation, denialists will use selective information and ignorance to support their propaganda.
ReplyDeleteHitch - 'a humongous smorgasbord of confusion, self-contradiction, gratuitous extrapolations, fairy tale like story telling and ill reasoned tripe.' - that would be a belief in god and the bible then?
'I love it when Daweeners come out with unrestrained faith phrases like this. Blind faith in what they don't even understand themselves.' - so you missed both the qualifier 'alleged' and the irony?
I note that no-one has had the intestinal fortitude to answer my question re germs and disease.
And again the ID folk squeal like little piglets when confronted with their lack of evidence and their misrepresentations of the truth.
Diogenes-
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I particularly think the fawning coverage the ID gave this creep Harun Yahya is telling. Strange bedfellows.
RobertC:
ReplyDelete===
There is a design hypothesis here: that the spear and peptide arose de-novo, and at the same time with no evolutionary precursors due to design.
Go for it.
By the way, who designed these mating systems? Hermaphroditism, sperm competition, forced reproduction by giant spears stuck into one's head. Giant penises that have to be chewed off? I'd rather hope these are products of evolution and contingency!
===
More contrastive reasoning.
"More contrastive reasoning."
ReplyDeleteI don't recall contrastive reasoning being fallacious, on face value. Maybe we don't agree on the definition.
I've provided references to potential evolutionary origins, and the reproductive fitness imparted by this system.
I did you favor, and even presented an ID hypothesis.
And yeah, I took a shot at the 'design' of this system. Couldn't help myself. That was just for laughs.
So what is it I'm unfairly contrasting? Science and non-science? Am I not allowed to think of ID in a way that contrasts it with evolutionary biology? Or is it the last word--reasoning--that you object to?
RobertC:
ReplyDelete===
So what is it I'm unfairly contrasting? Science and non-science? Am I not allowed to think of ID in a way that contrasts it with evolutionary biology?
===
I'm just having difficulty understanding why you misrepresent science, regarding evolution.
at the risk of offending RobertC by pre-empting him; no, you are not allowed to think of ID in a way that contrasts it with evolutionary biology.
ReplyDeleteOne is scientific fact, the other is a fairytale.
You are guilty of misrepresenting science if you attempt to bring ID into it.
"You are guilty of misrepresenting science if you attempt to bring ID into it."
ReplyDeleteNo, I'm not arguing ID is a science, per se. A supernatural designer is not a falsifiable hypothesis.
I was trying to get a discussion going about whether ANY ID based hypothesis is testable by positing one. It might be infinitely regressive. If you prove the system has evolutionary precedents, one could argue they, too are designed to look evolved, or even designed to evolve.
So yeah. I suppose that isn't really a hypothesis in any meaningful, falsifiable way.
At any rate, no one took the bait. Seems as though they aren't really interested.
you're right RobertC.
ReplyDeleteThe aricles posted and their responses are selective in content, particularly in regard to evidence; misrepresentative of facts, by moving evidence form one point to another; and generally dishonest in making claims which require rebuttals which are advanced and complex enough to be too hard for their adherents to grasp.
Why is it that otherwise intelligent and rational people suddenly become all glassy-eyed and intellectually incoherent once their faith impacts on the subject at hand?
Doublee,
ReplyDeleteWe may want to look into the possible benefits this liver fluke "parasite" may have for its hosts. Many organisms that appear harmful in one aspect turn out to be very beneficial. Nature, while harsh, is at the same time more cooperative than "red in tooth and claw" as I believe Darwin put it.
A microbiologist friend of mine is exploring the benefits of cholera and found two in scientific literature so far (maybe more by now). The harmful, sometimes lethal, effect it has on humans actually allows some aquatic species to move from fresh water to salt water. Cholera also breaks down chitin, a sugar that makes up the exoskeletons of insects and many marine groups like crabs. My friend suspects the plague that killed millions in Europe plays a vital role in carbon cycling when in the appropriate environment.
Back to the point of this post! As I said before, nobody's doing a real evolutionary analysis if you're only looking at one structure in one species. Evolutionary theory is *comparative*. If you are not comparing stuff to related stuff, you're using a "pecker head argument", exactly the same as the creationist argument against the evolution of the woodpecker's long beak.
ReplyDeleteDr. Cornelius has not bothered to compare his love dart to anything else. He has not even attempted an evolutionary analysis.
As for the hormone in the love dart, we'd like to know its homologs. The scholarpedia article that RobertC linked to says that the peptide hasn't been identified yet. Ugh, we've all been through this before. Once the molecule is sequenced, we'll find that its a homolog of some reproductive hormone, a couple of point mutations away from another hormone with a related function.
Dr. Cornelius does claim, however, that an ID hypothesis would be that the hormone appeared de novo with no precursor.
OK, so when the peptide gets sequenced, and we find its homologs, will Dr. Cornelius then agree his ID hypothesis was disproven?
Nah, he'll just move on to another "pecker head argument", maybe the incredible complexity of the supermarket banana. Like Ray Comfort and Boy Kirk. It's just the right size to fit the mouth.
Wikipedia has a good article on the love dart. Note that some gastropod species have vestigial/nonfunctional dart sacs. If you like "bad design" arguments, there you go, more Incompetent Design.
Also this: "Marine gastropods...collectively known as the toxoglossans... use a poison dart or harpoon, which is a modified radula tooth, primarily made of chitin. These snails are carnivorous hunters: the harpoon is used in predation." Classic example of evolution by co-option of previously existing structure, though Dembksi still says co-option can only be made by an Intelligent Designer.
I would be curious to know if the death dart organ is homologous to the love dart organ-- probably not.
Doublee--
ReplyDeleteDarwin did not say "Nature, red in tooth and claw". That was Alfred, Lord Tennyson, writing in 1844 before the Origin of Species. Neither Tennyson nor Darwin were the first to realize animals eat each other. Cavemen figured that out.
Errata- my previous post re: Tennyson quote, should be addressed to Brian, not Doublee.
ReplyDeleteDiogenes,
ReplyDeleteThank you for that correction. I prefaced "Darwin put it" with "as I believe". I wasn't sure.
No problemo. The line is commonly associated with natural selection, e.g. (misquoted) in Ken Ham's Creation Museum (which of course is pro-natural selection but anti-"macro" evolution.)
ReplyDeleteRobertC-
Glad you enjoyed the post. I too found Uncommon Descent's fawning coverage of that rapist to be insufferable... part of the reason why I wrote the post.
When did Darwin believers become procurers of free thought considering they are a member of a religion by definition and practice. Modern Atheism has rejected reason and evidence and replaced it with fanciful myths and cute drawings.
ReplyDeleteI heard that Dawkins is expecting an UFO to bring back Haeckel and they were going to take off together in their spaceship and drink kool-aid and sing the famous intellectual ballad, "If I only had a brain". Yea Haeckel was once mainstream and so were various theories relating to ambiogenisis but reason prevailed against the cult leaders of the day. Hold on but Science today FINALLY has it together and has abandoned these weaker theories right? Unfortunately some who claim "science" lie.
The problem is that if the definition of science can "evolve" than a theory can never be falsified or verified. This is precisely how many of the brainwashed evolutionists have argued any argument countering their mythology. I also find it rather funny that despite all of the fancy name calling above not one shred of evidence that supports evolution has been presented. The most common evidence cited by evolutionists is that it is "consensus" and you are a moron if you dare to challenge scientific authority.