Peak Fallacy: The Evolutionists False Alarms and Missed Alarms

In statistical testing there are Type I and Type II errors where the null hypothesis is erroneously rejected and erroneously accepted, respectively. In simple terms we might call these false alarms and missed alarms. Likewise as evolutionists rack up their false conclusions they commit both of these two types of errors. On the one hand, they erroneously conclude the evidence supports evolution. On the other hand, they just as commonly fail to see the many failures of their theory. A good example of this is in a paper published in the leading journal Nature on protein evolution which I discussed in my previous post.

Type I errors

The paper uses a somewhat circuitous method to conclude not only that protein evolution is continuing but that their analysis provides yet more “novel evidence of the common ancestry of life.”

But evolutionary assumptions slip into their analysis at several entry points. The evolutionists beg the question when they conclude their results are evidence for evolution and common descent. In fact their findings support no such conclusion. It is a Type I error typical of the evolution genre.

Type II errors

What is perhaps more interesting are the many Type II errors which one must read between the lines to see. For instance, if proteins ever were actually to evolve it would require a long time (far longer than the age of the universe, for example). The paper does nothing to remedy this problem, and in fact agrees that protein evolution is not a hasty affair.

But the evolutionist’s research takes as its starting point a vast population of proteins, which they suppose to be present in the early earth environment, a good three and a half billion years ago.

But from where did all these complex and advanced proteins come and how did they arise so rapidly so as to be ready and waiting for evolution to use them? This is, of course, absurd. It is a monumental Type II error which evolutionists conveniently ignore.

Another major problem for protein evolution, which the paper amplifies, is that proteins are hard to find. As stated above, their evolution would require a long time. This is because the fitness landscape between them is rugged, and there generally is no gradually increasing slope leading to nature’s thousands of different proteins.

Again, the paper does nothing to remedy this situation. And in fact, by way of rationalizing its results, the paper further aggravates the problem. Because the paper finds that the supposed evolution of proteins must have been rather slow, the evolutionist’s imagine that a process known as epistasis retarded the process. The idea is that mutations, and the resulting changes to the protein’s amino acid sequence, impact the other amino acids in the sequence. So whereas a particular amino acid might have been useful or not useful before a mutation occurs, all that may change after the mutation. The upshot is that the protein evolves by following a circuitous, maze-like path through evolutionary history.

What is important, and unspoken, about this idea is that it calls for the mother of all serendipities. Consider this. Certain types of amino acid changes must occur for a protein to evolve into another protein. At the start, these amino acid changes cannot occur because they are harmful. It appears that protein evolution just isn’t going to happen.

But, as evolutionists argue, the few amino acid changes that are allowed at the beginning act to change the usefulness of other key amino acids, so they can evolve in the right way. Those changes then, in turn, act on yet a few other amino acids to change in the right way. The process continues and so the dominoes fall in just the right way, luckily ending at a new, useful, protein that otherwise was impossible for evolution to find.

It is yet another ludicrous appeal to the astronomical serendipity that silently undergirds much of evolutionary theory. And it is another Type II error.

These are not the only Type II errors in the paper. Evolutionary theory routinely must turn a blind eye to the plethora of contradictions in the data. Religion drives science, and it matters.