Thursday, January 5, 2017

Evolutionist: Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought

Not

The fact that we can travel at speeds of hundreds and even thousands of miles per hour does not mean we can go faster than light. We can fly to the Moon in a matter of days, but the propulsion technology that allows us to do that is not scalable to travelling faster than 186,000 miles per second. A fundamentally different technology is required. The creators of Star Trek understood that, and so they created the concept of warp drive, a faster-than-light propulsion technology, fundamentally different from today’s technology. One would have to be very ignorant to confuse the two, but this is precisely what evolutionists do when they cast biological adaptation as confirmatory evidence of evolution. Adaptation and evolution are two very different things.

Biological adaptation relies on the preexistence of populations, organisms, genetics, DNA, genes, alleles, proteins, massive molecular machines, inheritance, cellular and molecular mechanisms such as horizontal gene transfer and epigenetics, directed mutations, and so forth.

Evolution, on the other hand, is a theory that attempts to explain the origin of all those things.

Observations of the former are not evidence of the latter. That is backwards. It also would also introduce enormous serendipity. For it would mean that evolution created the very structures and mechanisms required for, drumroll, evolution.

Evolution, in other words, created itself.

And even if we were to go along with this ridiculous idea, the resulting biological adaptation is not capable of generating evolutionary change. Adaptation does small things, evolution requires big things.

Even evolutionists, in their honest moments, have understood this. Macroevolution is more than repeated rounds of microevolution. As one evolutionist admitted, “the rate of random DNA sequence mutation turns out to be too slow to explain many of the changes observed.” His point, which is not new and has been known for a long time, is not that adaptation cannot occur, but that the idea of mutations (which can fuel adaptation) adding up to result in novel, large-scale evolutionary change doesn’t work.

Adaptation and evolution are fundamentally different “technologies.”

You can’t travel faster than the speed of light by combining liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and you can’t create novel, complex, biological structures via adaptation mechanisms.

This is why evolutionary biologist Menno Schilthuizen’s article from last year in the Sunday Review is of concern. The article is entitled: “Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought,” and it is all about various adaptations observed in city-dwelling species. Unfortunately, Schilthuizen presents those examples of adaptation as examples of evolution, and proof that, amazingly enough, evolution happens orders of magnitude faster than we once thought:

For a long time, biologists thought evolution was a very, very slow process, too tardy to be observed in a human lifetime. But recently, we have come to understand that evolution can happen very quickly

Evolution’s deep time requirement was particularly evident when William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin), only a few years after Darwin had published his book on evolution, argued that the earth could be no older than 100 million years. Thomson later revised that figure downward to as little as 20-40 million years.

This short time window was an enormous problem for evolution. As Darwin wrote, “Thomson’s views of the recent age of the world, have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.” As Darwin’s friend Thomas Huxley explained, “Biology takes its time from Geology.”

Lord Kelvin’s estimate was eventually dropped, but this example illustrates how important deep time was, both to nineteenth and twentieth century evolutionists. And therefore, the rapid evolution that is now commonly celebrated by evolutionists such as Schilthuizen represents an enormous falsification of a major, fundamental, prediction of evolutionary theory.

It also represents terribly flawed thinking. Adaptation is not evolution.

39 comments:

  1. Hi Cornelius
    Thanks for this analysis. Adaption clearly does not equal evolution and this is often conflated by evolutionists.

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  2. Bill Cole

    Adaption clearly does not equal evolution


    Why not? What are the mechanisms of adaption and how are they different from the mechanisms of evolution?

    In the recent paper Cornelius just mangled two populations of mice (in Arizona, New Mexico) each developed dark fur through a different mutational path not found in the other. Why is that not evolution?

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    1. For those who can read:

      The first problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that their genetic differences are not known to be the result of random mutations. For evolutionists there simply is no question that the genetic differences that are thought to cause the dark fur color arose from random mutations.

      Now that may be correct. But it may not be. We simply do not know.

      This is not merely a technical objection—in spite of evolutionary theory which called for random mutations to be the source of change, in recent decades directed mutations have been found to be at work in an ever increasing number of cases. For many years evolutionists have ignored and even resisted these findings. Too often I have debated evolutionists who, when I point to this evidence, simply deny it.

      So while the genetic differences in those dark mice may well be the result of random mutations, evolutionists do not even give this a second thought. They simply assume from the start, and inform their audience in no uncertain terms, that random mutations are the cause.

      This is an example of what philosophers refer to as a “theory-laden observation.” Science can get into trouble when the measurements and observations themselves, rather than being theory-neutral and independent of the theories which explain them, are in fact intertwined with those theories.

      This can become circular very quickly, and this desert mouse case is a good example of that. Evolutionists assume the genetic differences arose from random mutations, and then claim the evidence as a powerful confirmation of evolution.

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    2. The second problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that the dark coloration may be the result of multiple genetic changes. In one case, four mutations are identified, all of which perhaps are required to bring about the coloration change.

      It very well could be that only a lone, single mutation is required. But that is not known.

      And if multiple genetic changes are required, then this quickly transitions from an example of what random mutations can do to an example of what random mutations cannot do. If four mutations are required, then we’ve just found yet another hard failure of evolution. But again, the evolutionists give no hint of this interesting question. If everyone had their “burning curiosity,” (as Clarence Darrow put it) then science would have long since come to an end.

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    3. The third problem in casting the dark colored mice as an example of evolution is that the coloration is too precise. The dark colored fur appears on the top of the mice, but not their underbelly. This makes sense since the topside is mainly what is exposed to predators. But in the evolution narrative, there is no fitness advantage to such precision. Darkening the entire mouse would, apparently, work just as well.

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    4. But there is one big known we haven’t yet mentioned. It is that none of this amounts to evolution in the first place. It would be a deceptive equivocation to label fur coloration change via a few mutations as “evolution” when, in fact, this is nothing more than small scale adaptation.

      In their “honest moments,” as Stephen J. Gould once put it, even evolutionists admit that random mutation isn’t enough, and that adaptation mechanisms are not enough, to explain the kind of large scale change evolution requires.

      Mice changing fur color does not demonstrate how metabolism, the central nervous system, bones, red blood cells, or any other biological wonder could have arisen by evolution’s random mutations coupled with natural selection.

      This is an old myth evolutionists have exploited ever since Darwin. Demonstrate biological change, any biological change no matter how trivial, and claim victory. Evolutionist Steve Jones once claimed that the changes observed in viruses contain Darwin’s “entire argument.” That is a gross equivocation and misrepresentation of the science, designed to mislead audiences.

      It is a pathetic canard which evolutionists continue to rely on. In the above video, Sean Carroll states that thanks to these mice, “science has an example of evolution, crystal clear, in every detail.” [6:42-48]

      It would be difficult to imagine a more absurd misrepresentation. Mice changing color is not a crystal clear “example of evolution … in every detail.” Not even close. Carroll should be ashamed of himself.

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    5. LOL! Are you serious?

      As to your first and second "gotcha" points, the different specific mutations to the Mc1r genes of the Arizona and New Mexico mice were identified and listed in the Hoekstra/Nachman paper. It's true science hasn't proven the mutation weren't POOFED by the Mouse Fairy Godmother but there is zero evidence they weren't random mutations.

      Your third "gotcha" is the funniest! It should be apparent to even you that since the ancestral species tan mouse and both the extant tan and dark mice have white undercoats the genetic pathways for undercoat color and dorsal color are different. Mutations to produce the melanism of the dorsal surface wouldn’t have affected the belly color. There may well have been both tan and dark mice with the occasional mutations for a dark undercoat but since that provided no advantage it wasn’t selected for like the dorsal effect was. This basic blunder by you ranks right up there with your backwards thylacine fiasco. :D

      BTW with all your posturing you forgot to explain the difference in the mechanisms for adaption and evolution. Oops!

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    6. Mice changing fur color does not demonstrate how metabolism, the central nervous system, bones, red blood cells, or any other biological wonder could have arisen by evolution’s random mutations coupled with natural selection.

      Who ever said it did??

      This phenomenon is another great example of how natural selection can act on genetic variations and evolve changes in a population such that survival chances are increased. Grandstand and wave your hands all you want but you can't change that simple fact. All of science sees it, all of the public who observe can see it. Denying simple reality just makes you look silly.

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    7. "in spite of evolutionary theory which called for random mutations to be the source of change,..."

      I commented on this claim earlier, but it must have gotten lost because I can't imagine that Cornelius would block it.

      Evolutionary theory has never claimed that random mutations were the source of change. Simply that, ultimately, they were the source of variation. It is the action of selection processes that result in change.

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    8. "If four mutations are required, then we’ve just found yet another hard failure of evolution.."

      How so?

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    9. " But in the evolution narrative, there is no fitness advantage to such precision. Darkening the entire mouse would, apparently, work just as well."

      Says who? Countershading is common in many species.

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    10. "It would be a deceptive equivocation to label fur coloration change via a few mutations as “evolution” when, in fact, this is nothing more than small scale adaptation."

      The latest ID canard. Call a change an adaptation and claim that it can't be evolution because the word "adaptation" is a verb that implies purpose. Antibiotic resistance is an "adaptation" that even Behe admits is caused by random mutations.

      ID proponents just get more desperate every day.

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    11. LOL! Are you serious? ...

      Which is precisely why I said: "For those who can read:", which automatically precludes trolls.

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    12. William the way you equivocate and remain willfully ignorant of your opponents' position proves that you and GR are the desperate trolls here.

      BTW antibiotic resistance comes about via a loss of function. Evolution by breaking things isn't exactly what your position needs.

      If 4 mutations are required then you will run out of time- see "waiting for two mutations"

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    13. Cornelius Hunter

      Which is precisely why I said: "For those who can read:", which automatically precludes trolls.


      Apparently someone did't read the papers he's butchering. Ready to retract that silly claim no.3 about how mutations couldn't change just the mouse dorsal coloring? Why do the tan mice have white underbellies?

      Still no ID-Creationist explanation of the difference between the mechanisms of adaption and evolution I see. What a surprise

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    14. Joke: "BTW antibiotic resistance comes about via a loss of function."

      Are you saying that antibiotic resistance isn't functional? It seems to function quite well for those bacteria and protozoans that have it.

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    15. Tim/ GR- You have reading comprehension issues- Dr Hunter never made the claim how mutations couldn't change just the mouse dorsal coloring?

      Also Dr Hunter explained the difference between adaptation and evolution. Adaptation is built-in variation being honed- the tuning of pre-existing genetic information that allows for specific effects.

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    16. Joke: "Also Dr Hunter explained the difference between adaptation and evolution."

      Adaptation is one aspect of evolution.

      "Adaptation is built-in variation being honed- the tuning of pre-existing genetic information that allows for specific effects."

      No, adaptations are the result selection pressures acting on existing variation in a population. The ultimate source of the variation is mutations, enhanced by other processes (e.g., translocation, gene duplication, insertions, inversions, etc.).

      How does the theory evolution not explain this?

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    17. Joke

      Also Dr Hunter explained the difference between adaptation and evolution. Adaptation is built-in variation being honed- the tuning of pre-existing genetic information that allows for specific effects.


      If that's the definition then the mouse melanism was definitely evolution. Both dark colored variations had different mutations for the color change, and neither of the mutations was found in the tan colored mice.

      Own goal Joke scores again. :)

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    18. Please link to this theory of evolution so we can see what it says.

      You do realize that for gene duplication to work it is going to require many specific mutations. And that flies in the face of evolutionism which says all mutations are accidents, errors and mistakes. There isn't enough time for gene duplication followed by function changing mutations.

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  3. WS
    "No, adaptations are the result selection pressures acting on existing variation in a population. The ultimate source of the variation is mutations, enhanced by other processes (e.g., translocation, gene duplication, insertions, inversions, etc.)."

    Can you support the claim that adaption is primarily due to variation in populations?

    If you are adapting to a pathogen that has entered your body is the adaption due to population variation?

    The thesis is that adaption does not equal evolution seems well supported.

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    1. BC: "If you are adapting to a pathogen that has entered your body is the adaption due to population variation?"

      You have a very strange idea of what adaptation means with respect to evolution. Your individual immune system reacting to a pathogen is not adaptation as it is being discussed here. However, if a very nasty pathogen went through a population, the variation in immune systems in the population could result in the variants that are more resistant becoming dominant in the population due to more successful reproduction. This would be an adaptation.

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  4. If that's the definition then the mouse melanism was definitely evolution. Both dark colored variations had different mutations for the color change, and neither of the mutations was found in the tan colored mice.


    LoL! And how did blind and mindless processes produce those genes such that said variation was built-in? Are you seriously asking people to believe that blind and mindless processes can produce tunable genes that will aid in the survival of the organism? Really?

    And Timmy equates design with magic. (shrug, sigh)

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    1. Joke

      And how did blind and mindless processes produce those genes such that said variation was built-in?


      It wasn't built in Joke. The melanism genes in the dark populations evolved through mutations and selection. That's what the genetic analysis showed. As usual the science was so far over your head it left contrails.

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    2. GR: "As usual the science was so far over your head it left contrails."

      I knew that science (and evolution, specifically) was a vast global conspiracy. Those "contrails" are actually mind altering aerosols, designed to make people believe in evolution.

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    3. The evidence says that you don't know what science is

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    4. Joke: "The evidence says that you don't know what science is."

      That would come as news to my employers over the last thirty plus years.

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    5. No one cares about your bluffing, willie.

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  5. The melanism genes in the dark populations evolved through mutations and selection.

    Too bad you say-so isn't science.

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  6. All bluff and still no answer:

    LoL! And how did blind and mindless processes produce those genes such that said variation was built-in? Are you seriously asking people to believe that blind and mindless processes can produce tunable genes that will aid in the survival of the organism? Really?

    And Timmy equates design with magic. (shrug, sigh)

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    1. Same answer as before Joke. It wasn't built in. The melanism genes in the dark populations evolved through mutations and selection. That's what the genetic analysis showed.

      Hey Joke, when does your suspension at Biologos end? How long before your flapping potty mouth gets you banned there permanently like it has so many other places?

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    2. Yes, Timmy, I am sure that you believe that. However natural selection is a process of elimination so you terminology is that of a deceitful loser.

      And no, the genetic analysis did not show that blind and mindless processes produced a tunable gene.

      It's as if you are oblivious to reality. And you are definitely ignorant of science

      Hey Timmy, why are you banned from just about every site on the internet? How long before your frothing gets you booted from here, too?

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    3. Joke: "Hey Timmy, why are you banned from just about every site on the internet?"

      This made me laugh. Being banned from UD is not being banned from just about every sight. Anyone who points out a mistake that Barry or Mullings or Cunningham make is summarily banned.

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    4. No one but desperate evos and Dr Hunter allow Timmy to post. And Dr Hunter does so to let everyone see how desperate and ignorant evos are

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    5. The melanism genes in the dark populations evolved through mutations and selection. That's what the genetic analysis showed.

      Not.

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    6. Cornelius Hunter

      GR: "The melanism genes in the dark populations evolved through mutations and selection. That's what the genetic analysis showed."

      Not.


      Now there's a well thought out Creationist rebuttal to the published research. :D

      Any chance you can tell us why the two populations of dark mice in Arizona and new Mexico had different mutations to produce the change in dorsal color?

      Didn't think so.

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    7. Now there's a well thought out Creationist rebuttal to the published research

      The research did not show that the gene responsible arose via NS and drift. You are conflating the mutations that changed the color pattern with the gene itself.

      Learn how to read

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    8. Are you seriously asking people to believe that blind and mindless processes can produce tunable genes that will aid in the survival of the organism? Really?

      And Timmy equates design with magic. (shrug, sigh)


      It figures tim-tim doesn't understand the ridiculousness of the claim

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    9. Didn't think so.

      The gift that keeps on giving. Evolutionists are very predictable, and yet entertaining nonetheless. How do they do it?

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