Evolutionists Celebrated This Prediction But When it Later Failed They Didn’t Care

Fifty years ago the revolution in molecular biology began to produce vast amounts of new data which evolutionists expected to be consistent with their already established evolutionary tree of life. And when they found such consistencies they claimed them as powerful evidence for their claim that the world just happened to arise somehow on its own is. As Niles Eldredge explained:

The basic notion that life has evolved passes its severest test with flying colors: the underlying chemical uniformity of life, and the myriad patterns of special similarities shared by smaller groups of more closely related organisms, all point to a grand pattern of descent with modification.

Likewise, Christian de Duve triumphantly declared:

All [organisms] are descendants of a single ancestral form of life. This fact is now established thanks to the comparative sequencing of proteins and nucleic acids.

And even the keen-minded philosopher Michael Ruse was certain of this interpretation:

The essential macromolecules of life speak no less eloquently about the [evolutionary] past than does any other level of the biological world.

But as more details emerged the picture became more complicated. In fact those macromolecules did not reveal such a grand pattern of descent with modification after all. They did not speak so eloquently about an evolutionary past. In some cases, for example, similar genes showed up in not so similar species, or not so similar genes showed up in similar species.

But evolutionists continued with their triumphant claims that the evidence confirmed their expectations. They explained the discrepancies with a range of special-purpose explanations. Sometimes these explanations called for mechanisms which had never been observed.

One of their popular explanations is that genes transferred between species, not via common descent but via extremely complex molecular mechanisms that export and import genes. Sometimes their use of this lateral or horizontal gene transfer mechanism is a real stretch. And in any case, their story calls for evolution to have created this incredible mechanism which then was so important for adaptation and the supposed subsequent evolution. In other words, evolution created evolution.

But none of this has stopped the evolutionists. Today they commonly use horizontal gene transfer to explain contradictory patterns, as evidenced by this sampling of paper titles:

Ancient gene transfer as a tool in phylogenetic reconstruction.

Convergent evolution: gene sharing by eukaryotic plant pathogens.

Evolution of patchily distributed proteins shared between eukaryotes and prokaryotes: Dictyostelium as a case study.

Evolution of four gene families with patchy phylogenetic distributions: influx of genes into protist genomes.

Evolutionary origins of the eukaryotic shikimate pathway: gene fusions, horizontal gene transfer, and endosymbiotic replacements.

Evolution of glutamate dehydrogenase genes: evidence for lateral gene transfer within and between prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Evolutionary analyses of the small subunit of glutamate synthase: gene order conservation, gene fusions, and prokaryote-to-eukaryote lateral gene transfers.

Evolution of filamentous plant pathogens: gene exchange across eukaryotic kingdoms.

Evolution of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases--analysis of unique domain architectures and phylogenetic trees reveals a complex history of horizontal gene transfer events.

Gene transfers from nanoarchaeota to an ancestor of diplomonads and parabasalids.

Horizontal gene transfer facilitated the evolution of plant parasitic mechanisms in the oomycetes.

Horizontal gene transfer between microbial eukaryotes.

Horizontal gene transfer in nematodes: a catalyst for plant parasitism?

Horizontal gene transfer in eukaryotic evolution.

Insertion of horizontally transferred genes within conserved syntenic regions of yeast genomes.

Interkingdom gene transfer of a hybrid NPS/PKS from bacteria to filamentous Ascomycota.

Lateral gene transfer in eukaryotes.

Lateral gene transfers and the evolution of eukaryotes: theories and data.

Lateral transfer of tetrahymanol-synthesizing genes has allowed multiple diverse eukaryote lineages to independently adapt to environments without oxygen.

Multiple lateral gene transfers and duplications have promoted plant parasitism ability in nematodes.

Phylogenomic analysis demonstrates a pattern of rare and ancient horizontal gene transfer between plants and fungi.

Phylogenetic analyses of diplomonad genes reveal frequent lateral gene transfers affecting eukaryotes.

In some cases evolutionists have no idea, beyond pure speculation, about how it could have happened. As they admit in one paper:

An alternative and more plausible possibility is that the STC gene has been laterally transferred among phylogenetically diverged eukaryotes through an unknown mechanism.

The fact of the matter is, once again evolutionists claimed a prediction, and it turned out to be wrong.

Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution.