This Circadian Clock Protein is Finely-Tuned (and a Bunch of Other Things)

Making Evolution Even More Ridiculous

That new paper on the circadian clock protein is not only an example of how evolution lacks theoretical content and so anything can be explained (“Many genes exhibit little codon-usage bias, which is thought to reflect a lack of selection for messenger RNA translation. Alternatively, however, non-optimal codon usage may be of biological importance.”) or of fine-tuning in biology (“Living organisms’ inner clocks are like Swiss watches with precisely manufactured spring mechanisms”). Nor is the paper merely an example of yet another falsification of evolutionary predictions (“The team … was perplexed when it found a paradoxical result”) or even of bad writing (“And that’s essentially a discovery”).

In addition to all those usual contradictions, the paper is another good example of the many signals in protein sequences and how crucial and fine-tuned they are. Coding genes specify the amino acid sequence in the resulting protein that is synthesized when the gene is expressed. Only a relatively few of the possible DNA gene sequences could code for a typical native protein, and these magical sequences are statistically impossible for evolution to find by known mechanisms.

Background

But that is not all. Coding genes carry all kinds of signals, in addition to the information that specifies the amino acid sequence. For instance, the gene’s DNA sequence is also implicated in the control of transcription—the gene copying process. And the gene’s DNA sequence determines the important stability of the DNA copy—the so-called mRNA strand, and the mRNA interactions with proteins such as splicing machinery.

Of course the gene sequence also determines the protein’s three-dimensional protein structure, the stability of that structure, the function of the protein, interactions of the protein with other proteins, instructions for transport, and so forth.

But on top of that information, the gene also contains signals that help to control the speed at which the new protein is synthesized. These signals have been found to be quite sophisticated and the resulting speed changes can cause the protein to take on a different conformation and influence the protein’s function and regulation.

And it appears that the DNA sequence can make the expression level of the protein sensitive to different environmental conditions. For instance, perhaps some proteins should have lower priority than other proteins, in certain conditions. That could be coded for in their respective gene sequences.

Also it has been discovered that gene sequences are cleverly arranged to complement the cell’s error correction mechanisms and so minimize copying errors.

One interaction that must be avoided is the propensity of proteins to stick to each other and form fibrils in what is known as an amyloid. As one researcher explained, “The amyloid state is more like the default state of a protein, and in the absence of specific protective mechanisms, many of our proteins could fall into it.” So the DNA gene sequence must avoid this problem.

Also, some genes are overlapping with other genes. In other words, the stretch of DNA where a gene resides may be shared with another gene entirely. So the genetic information is now doubled. And even if this is not the case, researchers are increasingly finding that genes perform multiple tasks. In what is known as gene sharing, the protein product of a gene may carry out several separate and distinct functions. As one researcher concluded, “protein multifunctionality is more the rule than the exception.” In fact, “Perhaps all proteins perform many different functions by employing as many different mechanisms.”

One more thing

So a gene does not merely code for a protein. As difficult as it is for evolution to find a protein-coding gene sequence, it would be far more difficult to find a real gene because they carry so many more signals.

That brings us to the new paper on the circadian clock protein. For in addition to it demonstrating how evolution lacks theoretical content, fine-tuning in biology, yet another falsification of evolutionary predictions, and even of bad writing, the paper also shows just how important and sensitive are these layers of information.

In this case, the research found that speed at which the mRNA strand is translated into the protein amino acid sequence is finely-tuned. The DNA sequence contains signals to slow this process, and that is crucial. For otherwise the protein takes on a different conformation, is not properly regulated, and the circadian rhythms are lost.

It is not as though we find gradual pathways leading to ever more useful and fit designs. Instead, function is lost, even when relatively minor DNA sequence changes occur. The idea that such incredible designs spontaneously arose via evolution’s random chance events (no, selection doesn’t help, each event must be random with respect to need, multitudes of such events are needed, and we don’t generally find gradual pathways) continues to grow ever more unlikely.

Religion drives science and it matters.

A “Sulfur-For-Phosphorus” Strategy

Why Aristotle Won’t Go Away

When a cyanobacterium was found in the Sargasso Sea with predominantly sulfur, rather than the usual phosphorus, in its membrane, evolutionists naturally concluded that evolution had caused a switch from phospholipids to sulfolipids in that particular organism. And naturally evolutionists described their hypothesis with the usual Aristotelian teleological language, using words such as “adaptation” and “strategy,” to hide the absurdity:

This biochemical adaptation by Prochlorococcus must be a significant benefit to these organisms, which compete against phospholipid-rich heterotrophic bacteria for [phosphate]. Thus, evolution of this “sulfur-for-phosphorus” strategy set the stage for the success of picocyanobacteria in oligotrophic environments and may have been a major event in Earth’s early history when the relative availability of sulfate and [phosphate] were significantly different from today’s ocean.

To say that there was a biochemical adaptation by an organism and that a strategy evolved sounds much better than saying that a whole bunch of random mutations must somehow have constructed new structural and regulatory proteins that just happened to result in a sulfolipid biosynthesis pathway and use of said sulfolipid in the membrane.

For remember, in evolution there must be no final causes. So every move is random and not in the direction of any structure or process that actually works, much less that works in a way that is helpful. And so for evolution to cause a switch from phospholipids to sulfolipids is a rather tall order.

But that is only the beginning. Remember, while this must have evolved in Prochlorococcus where it was helpful, it could not have evolved because it was helpful. It evolved simply because it happened to evolve.

That means it was just as likely to have evolved in all the other organisms on Earth. And if it just so happened to evolve in the rare case where it was really needed, it must not be a very rare event. So over all of evolutionary history, evolution must have caused a switch from phospholipids to sulfolipids a great many times, in a great many organisms. It is just that in those many other instances, it was useless and so did not survive.

But there is more.

For this same logic applies equally well to every other element. In addition to a switch from phosphorus to sulfur, evolution must have also been testing out every other entry that it could in the periodic table.

But there is even more.

For this same logic applies equally well to every other biosynthesis pathway. And this same logic applies equally well to every other type of pathway in the cell. And this same logic also applies equally well to, well, everything else in biology.

So you can see this rapidly becomes rather silly and it is much better for evolutionists simply to say that there was a biochemical “adaptation” and that a “strategy” evolved, and leave it at that.

It sounds better but it is at the cost of reducing Darwinism (in whatever version is current) to Aristotelianism. In Aristotle’s physics objects had natural motions. Smoke moved upward, apples moved downward and stars moved sideways. Such objects were active. They were seeking their natural place within the natural order.

In evolution, Aristotle’s motion of objects is replaced with the design of species. Just as motion had a predetermined target in Aristotle’s physics, the designs of species have predetermined targets in Darwin’s evolution.

And what are these predetermined targets in evolution? They are improvements in fitness, whatever that is, or is imagined to be, for the different organisms in their different environments. Once such a fitness improvement is identified, or imagined, then for evolutionists the design simply naturally arises, in the same way that for Aristotelians smoke naturally moved upward.

Consider, for example, Jonathan Amos piece from Sunday’s BBC entitled “Artificial finger tests evolutionary origin of prints.” Amos discusses research work at Dartmouth College but, in spite of the headline, Amos says precisely nothing about how finger prints did or might have evolved.

Rather, the discussion is about how fingerprints might be helpful in different situations. That is, how fingerprints might improve fitness.

And if they improve fitness then they will naturally arise. Amos concludes that the findings “could say something quite deep about the evolution of primates.” It is all merely Aristotelianism by another name.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Guess the Source

Their Own Judge

Because when evolutionists point the finger, there is always another side to the story. See if you can guess who is Person X and who is Person Y:

Person X: “supernatural explanations always mean the end of inquiry”

Person Y: “So the appearance of species through time, as seen in fossils, is far from random. …  No theory of special creation, or any theory other than evolution, can explain these patterns.” [emphasis in original]

The answer is that Person X and Person Y are the same person. In this case the person is Jerry Coyne but it could be any one of the leading evolutionists because they commonly make these kinds of self-revealing pronouncements. The first statement delegitimizes supernatural explanations and the second statement is a supernatural explanation.

For when evolutionists blame others for being religiously-driven, introducing religion into science, abusing religion, abusing science, misrepresenting the science evidence, being anti-science, and promoting ideas that are science-stoppers, they are, in fact, judging themselves.

Religions drives science and it matters.

This Week’s Dispute Between Evolutionists Can’t Hide the Religion

Don’t Be Fooled

This week’s squabble between evolution professors might seem like great fun, but it is more likely to mislead than to inform. Austin Hughes at the University of South Carolina criticized the University of Chicago’s Jerry Coyne for linking evolution and atheism and Coyne, in turn, wondered aloud if Hughes is in cognitive dissonance and is up to snuff as a scientist. There is plenty there to criticize but it is all a sidetrack. Don’t pay too much attention to such infighting because where it counts, Hughes and Coyne agree.

Hughes and Coyne are probably an excellent case study of evolutionary thought. They hold to different politics and have different views on religious belief, but they are both evolutionists and that means where it matters, they share the same religion.

Even a Buddhist and Baptist can share common beliefs, and while evolutionists come from all religious backgrounds and beliefs, those differences are all irrelevant. What matters is their shared religious beliefs that mandate evolution. They can argue all they want about peripheral matters, but they share the same core commitments.

Consider, for example, Coyne’s rhetorical statement that biogeography refutes creation:

If animals were specially created, why would the creator produce on different continents fundamentally different animals that nevertheless look and act so much alike?

Or consider Coyne’s metaphysical claims about how organisms would be designed and why this proves evolution:

What I mean by "bad design" is the notion that if organisms were built from scratch by a designer—one who used the biological building blocks of nerves, muscles, bone, and so on—they would not have such imperfections. Perfect design would truly be the sign of a skilled and intelligent designer. Imperfect design is the mark of evolution. ... the particular bad designs that we see make sense only if they evolved

Or again, consider how Coyne’s religious convictions leads him to the certain conclusion that only evolution can explain the appearance of species through time because that pattern is “far from random” and “no theory of special creation, or any theory other than evolution, can explain these patterns.”

Coyne’s goes on and on with his religious proofs in his book Why Evolution is True and in his presentations. Biology, Coyne repeats over and over, “makes no sense under the idea of special creation.”

These are religious claims not scientific claims. And when Coyne made such points at his recent talk at the University of South Carolina Austin Hughes readily agreed:

Earlier this month, University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne presented the 2013 A.C. Moore lecture at USC on Evolution and Society, in which he defended the evidence for evolution by describing several well-chosen examples. Particularly effective was his examination of structures such as the vestigial hind limbs of whales, which would be hard to explain under any hypothesis other than the Darwinian theory of descent with modification.

Here Hughes affirms Coyne’s central point. Coyne and Hughes did not learn these truths from science. Such truths come from heartfelt religious beliefs.

We know evolution is a fact not from the science, but from our religion. From a purely scientific perspective evolution is a bust, but from our religious perspective evolution, in one form or another, is a necessary fact. Our theological truths require it.

And so what can we learn from this little spat? First, that the core theoretic of evolution is religious. Even evolutionists with otherwise widely differing religious viewpoints share these beliefs in common.

Second, that infighting amongst evolutionists over their other religious beliefs, such as atheism, is a sidebar. It is not relevant to evolution’s core theoretic.

And finally, that one should not be fooled by atheists who claim they have no religious beliefs. Atheism and religious beliefs are two different things. Coyne is an atheist, but he is quite literally a religious fundamentalist. Coyne does not believe in God, but Coyne holds a great many strong religious convictions about God.

Yes, there is a cognitive dissonance there (if there is no God then there is no basis for religious beliefs about Him) and Coyne’s criticism of Hughes is, as usual with evolutionists, a criticism of the man in the mirror.

And nor are the evolutionist’s religious arguments merely a dispassionate and objective testing of creationism and design ideas, to which otherwise the evolutionist does not hold.

This is the canard that evolutionists always use when confronted with their abuse of science. As Coyne put it:

the argument from imperfection — i.e., organisms show imperfections of “design” that constitute evidence for evolution — is not a theological argument, but a scientific one. The reason why the recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, makes a big detour around the aorta before attaching to the larynx is perfectly understandable by evolution (the nerve and artery used to line up, but the artery evolved backwards, constraining the nerve to move with it), but makes no sense under the idea of special creation — unless, that is, you believe that the creator designed things to make them look as if they evolved. No form of creationism/intelligent design can explain these imperfections, but they all, as Dobzhansky said, “make sense in the light of evolution.”

Here the evolutionist does us the favor of contradicting himself not in separate talks or papers, but in the very same paragraph. Should we laugh or cry?

According to Coyne the design “makes no sense under the idea of special creation" and this "is not a theological argument, but a scientific one.” Coyne’s misrepresentations and sophistry are astonishing.

There are, in general, two problems with the evolutionist’s canard that their religious fundamentalism is not really religious after all, but merely a test of creationism. First, it is not a test of creationism. Every religious proof they use to refute creation and mandate evolution does not come from biblical creationism, or any other tradition, aside from their own.

You can trace the evolutionist’s arguments about what God would and wouldn’t do back to earlier thinkers. Evolutionary thought is based on a set of religious beliefs, from earlier centuries, that are unique to evolutionary thought. Evolutionists use the bizarre argument that they are merely testing creationism when their religion is all their own.

The second problem with the evolutionist’s canard is that if they are merely testing creationism then they are not helping their cause, as they claim. If creationism is false, then that does not aid evolution. All that is established is that a particular religious theory is wrong. Evolution would still be a scientifically unlikely idea.

If, on the other hand, God would never have created this world, as evolutionists claim, then yes, evolution in one form or another is the obvious conclusion. And therein lies the religion.

You see evolutionists are not making claims about creationism, they are making claims about God.

Such religious beliefs are well documented. They laid the foundation for and motivated evolutionary thought. And they are represented today in evolutionists such as Hughes and Coyne.

So don’t be led astray by evolutionary squabbles. And don’t be led astray by those evolutionists who are atheists. It is all a side show for, where it counts, evolutionists are in strong religious agreement.

[Edited for clarity]

Evolutionist Professor Quotes Laplace

Getting Destroyed

The brilliant Isaac Newton could harmonize Aristotle’s super- and sub-lunar worlds, show that nature’s laws were universal and in the process explain how the solar system worked, but the Cambridge professor could not explain how the solar system arose or how it will end. Most troublesome was his finding that the planets circling about the Sun formed one giant accident waiting to happen. One day the planets were liable to careen about and the only solution seemed to be an occasional divine finger to adjust the errant machine. That sent Newton’s continental nemesis Gottfried Leibniz into his own instability, for the Lutheran co-founder of calculus could not envision God creating a less than optimal world. Certainly not a world so crude so as to be in need of occasional adjustment. Newton also said that his new physics was not capable of evolving the solar system in the first place. Like Adam’s naval, the planets had to get their start somehow other than their normal operation. Did God then also have to interfere with His creation to set the planets initially in their orbits and with the proper speeds?

Newton had left the world in a shambles and the cultural mandate was on. A respectable origins and end game were needed and a century later Pierre Laplace supplied both. His Nebular Hypothesis described a condensing cosmic cloud that evolved the solar system and the brilliant Frenchman solved Newton’s instability problem and showed the solar system to be stable after all. The planets would safely and steadily oscillate around their orbits until the end of time.

Theists could rest assured that God was, after all, the master designer, and skeptics such as Laplace could replace God with natural laws. When Napoleon wondered why the Creator was not mentioned Laplace could respond that he had no need of that hypothesis.

But while Laplace was one of the greatest mathematicians in the world, he wasn’t much of a metaphysician. Every freshman philosophy student knows that inserting natural laws doesn’t give one a theory of everything.

First there is that little problem that natural laws don’t actually explain what they’re supposed to explain (Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis was bloated with unfounded speculation and the solar system stability problem ended up being far more complex than Laplace ever imagined. The problem is so difficult that we speak of probabilities of instability). In fact what we do know today is the incredible level of fine-tuning design built into the solar system. For instance the Earth-Moon system (EM) has profound and subtle effects on the solar system stability. As one paper from 1998 explained:

Evidence from self-consistent solar system n-body simulations is presented to argue that the Earth- Moon system (EM) plays an important dynamical role in the inner solar system, stabilizing the orbits of Venus and Mercury by suppressing a strong secular resonance of period 8.1 Myr near Venus’s heliocentric distance. The EM thus appears to play a kind of “gravitational keystone” role in the terrestrial precinct, for without it, the orbits of Venus and Mercury become immediately destabilized. … First, we find that EM is performing an essential dynamical role by suppressing or “damping out” a secular resonance driven by the giant planets near the Venusian heliocentric distance. The source of the resonance is a libration of the Jovian longitude of perihelion with the Venusian perihelion longitude.

This is just one example of the fine-tuning of the solar system’s design.

And second, even if there was a convincing naturalistic narrative, it wouldn’t mean one has “no need of God.” Rid yourself of God if you like, but don’t fool yourself that you have established some intellectual basis for your metaphysical priors.

This is an elementary mistake by those who desire materialism and reminds us of the cartoon showing two tiny insects on the back of a dog. As they walk through the forest of hairs the one insect says to the other, “Sometimes I wonder if there really is a dog.”

Unfortunately this reflects the level of thought not only with Laplace but in today’s atheism as well. In fact Laplace’s retort to Napoleon is one of their favorite slogans, as we were reminded this week when atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne wrote this gem in his naïve response to a challenger:

I have always argued that most scientists, including myself, take the absence of God as a provisional working hypothesis based on the history of science, for, like Laplace, we have never needed the assumption of God. I am, and have always been, willing to entertain evidence for the presence of a divine being. I just haven’t seen any.

There you have it. More cogent insights from the evolutionary camp. Their ignorance is exceeded only by volume level at which they proclaim it. As Paul warned Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Oops, Evolution Forgot About the Eukaryotes

Still a Fact Though

In their honest moments evolutionists say all kinds of interesting things. How about this 1998 paper in which the evolutionists admit that “One of the most important omissions in recent evolutionary theory concerns how eukaryotes could emerge and evolve.” Evolution omitted how eukaryotes could emerge and evolve? That would be like physics omitting gravity, politics omitting elections or baseball omitting homeruns. Yet this paper came more than a century after evolutionists began insisting that it is beyond all reasonable doubt that the species, and that would be all the species, arose spontaneously.

How could the spontaneous origin of all the species be beyond all reasonable doubt if the theory had omitted the eukaryotes which, as you learned in biology class, are the more complicated cells with a nucleus and make up the, err, plants and animals?

We don’t know how the plants and animals evolved, but we know that they did evolve?

Well, yes. For the origin of eukaryotes, and everything else for that matter, is merely a research problem, not to be confused with the fact of evolution. You see there is the fact of evolution and the theory of evolution. The fact of evolution assures us that the species arose spontaneously, but it doesn’t tell us how. That’s for the theory of evolution to figure out.

This all makes sense to evolutionists because the fact of evolution does not come from science.

Presenting Anomalocaris: Look What Those Primitive Bacteria Turned Into

Life Blossomed

Here is an excellent animation well worth watching even if only for the animation itself. It also highlights how evolutionists take for granted, and think nothing of, their heroic narrative.

How to Obtain a Fair Result

The Warfare Thesis is Not Going Away

Historians We Need You

Julian Savulescu’s recent comments suggesting that parents have a “moral obligation to select ethically better children” were more than just another move in the on-going eugenics revival. The Oxford professor’s misrepresentation of the science, and castigation of opponents, was another entry in the growing list of uses of evolution’s Warfare Thesis which is at the heart of today’s culture wars.

In the nineteenth century evolutionists such as Darwin confidant Thomas Huxley, chemistry professor John Draper and Cornell University cofounder Andrew White constructed a false history, casting evolutionists as the latest in a long history of heroic truth seekers who faced religious intolerance and opposition at every turn.

History, as they say, is told by the winners. This is nowhere more true than in evolution’s contrived war between religion and science where evolutionists wrap themselves in virtue. Historians have long since recognized the Warfare Thesis as flawed, but that is for the halls of academia. In the real world the Warfare Thesis rhetoric has proven to be far too powerful to reign in.

And that is the problem here. Ever since its foundation was laid in the nineteenth century, the Warfare Thesis has found increasing application. It can be recognized by its two basic components: an attack on science and an attack on scientists.

The science is manipulated and misrepresented and said to make evolution a fact beyond all reasonable doubt. And scientists who do harbor reasonable doubts that the world spontaneously arose are cast as the antagonists. The codeword here is “denier,” as in Holocaust denier. It conjures up images of willful ignorance of the obvious scientific facts to advance an ulterior motive. Ironically this is, in fact, an accurate description of the evolutionists themselves.

The most prominent application of the Warfare Thesis is in the play and movie, Inherit the Wind, which evolutionists use to falsely frame the origins debate. You can read more about this here, here, here, here and here. Ironically the script was originally intended to combat the anti intellectualism of the McCarthy era. It now advances the anti intellectualism of evolutionary thought, complete with blackballing of scientists.

What is even more alarming, however, is the growing use of the Warfare Thesis even outside of evolutionary circles. Savulescu’s new eugenics is not based on solid science (sorry, but there is scant evidence that genetic tinkering can lead to ethically better children). Nonetheless, we should offer genetic selection because “To do otherwise is to consign those who come after us to the ball and chain of our squeamishness and irrationality.” In other words, if you disagree it is not out of concern for the rather obvious bioethics issues, but out of cowardice and irrationality.

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is another theory that has been cast in the Warfare Thesis template. The science is certainly better than evolution’s, but AGW is nowhere near as certain as its proponents declare. And scientists who do not sign on are routinely disparaged. Recently President Obama lent his voice to the Warfare Thesis:

We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

There, in one rhetorically-charged phrase, is the Warfare Thesis: “Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science.” It would be difficult to conjure up a more succinct summation of the Warfare Thesis template.

AWG may well be true, it may be false, or it may be somewhere in between. But there is no such “overwhelming judgment of science.” That is an abuse of science.

And so once again, it is not the theory that is the problem, but the Warfare Thesis template into which it is cast. One might hope that, with all the good historical scholarship, we would be moving beyond such sophomoric rhetoric. But even President Obama, who once encouraged us so when he called for more understanding and dialog in our heated public debates, is resorting to the Warfare Thesis. Unfortunately, rather than moving toward more understanding and dialog, the Warfare Thesis seems to be just warming up.

New Study Indicates Geomagnetic Imprinting in Salmon

The Battle Continues

Salmon swim thousands of miles out into the open ocean only later to return to the precise fresh water stream where they were born and a new study suggests that this navigational miracle, in part, is due to geomagnetic imprinting. That is, the salmon sense, remember, and later use a map of the Earth’s magnetic field in and around their home river inlet.

These findings add yet more wonder to the salmon story. For when these fish transition between fresh water to sea water they must make substantial physiological adjustments, including new gill tissues that enable the salmon to maintain the correct salt balance. As one researcher explained, it is a metamorphosis that is almost as dramatic as a caterpillar morphing into a butterfly.

Evolutionists insist all of this arose by chance (no natural selection doesn’t help, it cannot induce new designs but rather only kills off bad designs). Every mutation leading to the incredible salmon would have had to occur by chance, without reference to any final design. That means there would have to be gradual pathways leading to geomagnetic imprinting, gill replacement capability, and all the rest.

Of course there is no scientific evidence for any such thing. Once again it is metaphysical certainty versus the empirical evidence as evolution continues to wage its battle against science.

The Exosome: RNA Degradation and Evolution

Major Problems

When the cell makes a copy of a segment of DNA the result is called RNA. This long, thin molecule has many roles, including transmitting information, regulating the cell’s activities and helping molecular machines perform various tasks. But when its job is done, an RNA molecule must be broken apart. The job of destroying RNA is crucial for without it the cell’s RNA would rapidly build up and kill the cell. So cells are equipped with an intricate machine that chops up RNA molecules when they no longer are needed. This RNA degradation machine is called the exosome and it is comprised of ten finely-tuned proteins, nine of which form a cylinder through which the spent RNA is threaded. The tenth protein then chops up the RNA molecule. New research is now elucidating just how the exosome works, and the results pose yet more profound problems for evolution.

Different versions of the exosome are found across biology’s different types of life, but the exosome’s basic mechanisms for degrading RNA are conserved. For evolutionists this means that the exosome must have been present very early in evolutionary history, in the common ancestor of all life. This unlikely juxtaposition of high complexity in early life is a common theme in evolutionary thought. Repeatedly the patterns of life force evolutionists to suppose that evolution, somehow, struck upon profound designs early on.

Of course it makes sense that the exosome would be present from nearly the beginning, given its crucial role. But how could it have evolved? For instance, the mere presence of those different proteins is an immediate problem for evolution. After all, beyond speculation evolutionists cannot even explain how a single such protein could have evolved.

And even if those proteins could somehow have evolved, how would the cell know how to assemble them together to form the exosome?

And how would the exosome know where to position itself within the cell? And how would the cell know which RNA molecules to send its way?

But that’s not all. Not only does the exosome have incredible proteins, but it requires all of them in order to function. Remove any one of them and all you have is a useless hulk of molecules. As one researcher explained:

Cells lacking any of the ten proteins do not survive and this shows that not only the catalytic subunit but also the entire barrel is critical for the function of the exosome.

But how could evolution construct such a marvel which is useless until the final brick is in place? If the machine doesn’t work without all its parts, that means there is no gradual evolutionary path leading up to it.

To avoid this problem evolutionists must say that the different proteins each evolved for some other reasons. They did other jobs in the cell, and then once all were constructed, they happened to fit together to form the exosome.

But that story is unlikely for it would require a substantial dose of serendipity. Evolution would have gotten lucky yet once again.

The problem here is that once again evolutionists have set themselves against the science. Once again they put themselves in the position of having to demonstrate what clearly goes against the facts.

But it’s even worse yet. Not only do evolutionists go against the empirical grain, but they repeatedly insist that theirs is the only answer. Evolution, they cry, is the obvious and the only acceptable explanation. They contrive false histories of science, accuse others of abusing science, and blackball those who don’t go along.

As you can see this just doesn’t add up. I’m more than willing to consider evolution. But the science isn’t there while evolutionists misrepresent the facts, make undefendable truth claims, and mistreat people. This isn’t a pretty picture.

Whitney Tilson Reaps What He Sows

Dumb Money

Whitney Tilson, who is certain that those who question evolution are “extremists” and “anti-intellectuals,” has made several investment mistakes in funds that he manages which have lagged badly in recent years. Now he is formulating new strategies and looking forward to better days. Perhaps he could begin by dropping the invective against those who don’t automatically agree with the non scientific mandate that the biological world spontaneously arose.

Plant Growth and Evolution

Clueless

You probably never wondered how plants know which direction to grow. In the soil the roots grow downward and above ground the plant grows upward. This vertical motion seems as natural as Aristotle’s physics. Doesn’t it just happen? But as one researcher explained, while such growth may appear to be a simple plant response, the biological processes that control it are “rather complex.” That would be something of an understatement. For plants only grow in the right direction by the coordinated activity of different cell and tissue types. If one part doesn’t work, the whole thing doesn’t work. And for evolutionists, that means that each part had to evolve for some other reason and then just luckily they all worked together. It’s yet another evolutionary just-so story that isn’t motivated by the evidence, but by belief in the theory.

Tonight’s Feature Presentation: Epigenetics, The Next Evolutionary Cliff

Another Darwinian Wavefunction Collapse

We’ve discussed epigenetics, those incredible genetic regulation mechanisms such as molecular barcodes stamped onto DNA, histones, those incredible DNA packaging proteins that also have their own barcodes, the different kinds of barcodes, and how these marvels have falsified so many evolutionary predictions. If it all went by too fast then maybe tonight’s Feature Presentation will help tell a thousand words. You may need to view it a few times to follow the details, but the underlying plot should be clear.

Just keep this one thing in mind as you watch. For everything you see in this animation, evolutionists have no scientific explanation how it evolved. But yet they insist that it did evolve. Get it?

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Evolutionist: “Evolutionary Processes Not Fully Understood”

Teleology to the Rescue

Frauke Gräter’s latest paper on how the speed of protein folding evolved begins by stating that the disparity in protein folding times (from microseconds to hours) is the result of roughly 3.8 billion years of evolution during which new protein structures were created and optimized. No citation is given because no citation is available. As usual, evolutionists begin their work with non scientific premises. As if sensing a problem the paper next offers a partial concession: “The evolutionary processes driving the discovery and optimization of protein topologies is complex and remains to be fully understood.” In fact not only do these evolutionary processes remain to be “fully understood,” they remain to be understood at all. Not to worry though, because evolutionists can always switch to a teleological tone whenever they have dug themselves into a hole, as the paper next explains: “Nature probably uncovers new topologies in order to fulfill new functions, and optimizes existing topologies to increase their performance.” Such design language masks, at least temporarily, the obvious problems with evolution’s creation-by-chance narrative. Biology’s incredible structures arose to fill a need. That certainly sounds better than explaining that a whole bunch of random mutations just happened find an astronomically unlikely design for no reason.

Oops, Friedman Goes There: Altruism is nth+1 Contradiction

Ball Don’t Lie

Because when William Friedman admits that “Altruism only evolves if the benefactor is a close relative of the beneficiary,” then its game over and evolutionists everywhere may as well hang it up. Or at least don’t tell Mother Teresa.