Carbon Dioxide Sensors

Did you ever wonder how mosquitoes find you so quickly? Next time you might try not breathing because they are attracted to the carbon dioxide you exhale. And how do insects detect carbon dioxide? Studies have found two different neuron cell proteins (neural receptors) that seem to do the job. And they do the job exquisitely.

Blood-feeding insects, as one study explained, use highly specialized and sensitive olfactory systems to locate their hosts. The study identified two dedicated neural receptors in flies which together cause nerve signals to be sent when carbon dioxide is present. The experiments found that the presence of both receptors is required—either one alone failed to sense the carbon dioxide.

As one scientist explained, such molecular sensor systems are “exquisitely sensitive” to carbon dioxide levels we don’t even notice. They are, indeed, “wonders of natural engineering.”

Given such an exquisite design, and given that both receptors are required because a single receptor working alone is ineffective, one might think that evolutionists might struggle to explain this engineering marvel.

But evolutionists have no such problem for, as evolutionist Ken Miller has explained, god would never have created the mosquito. It must have evolved.

Religion drives science and it matters.

Why Some People Favor Common Descent

The scientific evidence does not favor evolution but that doesn't mean we know all the answers. In fact some people who agree evolution is unlikely, nonetheless argue for common descent. This can be confusing because common descent is so often presented as integral to Darwin's idea. But this need not be the case.

Evolutionary thought entertains a seemingly unbounded spectrum of hypotheses about how the species arose. It is by no means limited to natural selection, or even common descent. At the core of evolutionary thought is naturalism. The origin of species must be explained naturalistically. Beyond that, practically anything is allowed.

Common descent can also be an open-ended idea. Yes, it is usually considered to be within evolution's strictly naturalistic paradigm, but that is not a necessary constraint. For many people, it is clear that naturalistic explanations don't do a very good job, but nonetheless there is evidence for shared ancestry.

What all this means is that when one person argues against common descent and another for common descent, they may actually be not too far apart. Hopefully we all acknowledge the broad outlines of the evidence. And hopefully we all understand the important role of metaphysics in interpreting that evidence.

But such shared understandings do not narrow us to a single choice. Some may favor common descent while others may not. That does not mean the former denies the evidence against common descent, or that the latter denies the evidence for it. It simply means that our current level of knowledge leaves us with a substantially underdetermined origins problem. We simply do not have sufficient knowledge or evidence, evolutionists notwithstanding, to make heavy-handed declarations about what must be accepted as fact.

The knowledgeable person arguing for common descent views its evidential problems as reasons to reject marrying common descent to evolution, but not rejecting the concept of common descent altogether. But this person's view of common descent is different from the usual evolutionary view, which typically restricts common descent to be within the strictly naturalistic paradigm.

Clearly, it is crucial for people to establish unambiguous definitions for how they are viewing common descent. Most importantly, is their version restricted to naturalism, or not? For instance, those arguing against common descent may have the strict naturalism of evolution in view. In that case, they are not opposing those who, for instance, argue for common descent from an intelligent design perspective.

In my view, evolutionary thought has badly failed on today's science. And so with it the strictly naturalistic version of common descent likewise thus far fails. The only reason to think otherwise is if one carries a priori metaphysical prejudices, as evolutionists do, which color the interpretation of the evidence.

But given this correct understanding of today's science, the question of a broader version of common descent becomes, in my view, far more underdetermined and far more difficult to assess. Problems that are not amenable to methodological naturalism are above my paygrade.

Drosophila’s Altimeter: Evolution Does it Again

Aircraft typically use air pressure measurements to determine their altitude above sea level. They may also use radar to directly measure their altitude above ground. Needless to say each approach is immensely complex. Insects also need to determine their altitude. Many do so by measuring how fast the ground passes beneath them. But new research has found that flies use a different method.

It may seem strange that insects need to measure their altitude. Can they not just “tell” how high they are? If I am on an escalator it is immediately obvious to me that I am moving to higher altitudes. Do insects not have such a simple, built-in, sense?

Such built-in sensing capabilities that we have, such as sensing when we are moving upward, are actually not simple. They merely seem so because we are not aware of the sophisticated measurement and processing systems at work behind the scenes. They are seamlessly built-in to our thinking so it seems to us that we can just “tell” how high we are.

Many insects determine their altitude by measuring how fast the ground appears to be moving beneath them. Of course the ground speed does not vary with altitude. What varies with altitude is the angular rate of a vector from the insect to a fixed object on the ground.

This angular rate also depends on the airspeed of the insect, whether it is turning and the wind. So inferring the insect’s altitude is a complicated task involving several measurements and sophisticated processing.

But the fly uses a different method entirely. Experiments involving a virtual reality arena, in which the fly not only can be tracked but its environment can be controlled, reveal that Drosophila maintains its altitude by monitoring objects around it rather than looking down at the ground.

Once again, we find different, unique solutions in biology. With evolution we must believe that completely different solutions just happen to arise (No, natural selection did not create them—selection only kills off the useless designs. According to evolution, biological variation, such as caused by mutations, is not guided by need. These fantastic designs just happened to arise—every mutation involved was a lucky shot that knew nothing of how crucial it was.)

And of course these different solutions are phenomenally complex. Beyond sophmoric just-so stories evolutionists have no idea how insects were so lucky. And yet, in the face of such ignorance, evolutionists dogmatically insist their idea is a fact. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Evolution is a Fact and a Theory: An Example From Michael Lynch

Evolution cannot be said to be absolutely true, but just about. Evolution could be false, but only if most everything we thought we knew is cleverly misleading us. Short of a massive cosmic conspiracy, evolution must be true. Either Darwin was right, or this is one of those Bobby Ewing dreams. This is how certain evolutionists are of their idea that all life (and everything else by the way) just happened to come together. But how can evolutionists be so certain when there are so many problems with their idea?

There are substantial scientific problems with evolution. Consider Michael Lynch’s recent paper where he states that:

a general theory for the population-genetic mechanisms by which complex adaptations are acquired remains to be developed.

How can evolution be a fact if such a fundamental problem remains unsolved? The answer, evolutionists explain, is that there are many hypotheses for how complex adaptations arose, and that this question constitutes part of the theory of evolution. In other words, just because we know evolution is true doesn’t mean we understand all the details. You don’t doubt gravity just because you don’t know everything about how it works. You don’t doubt the Earth circles the Sun even though you cannot stand back and observe its trajectory.

This is how evolutionists handle scientific problems. Such problems are said to be research problems. They cannot threaten the fact of evolution, say evolutionists, any more than physics quandaries can threaten the fact of gravity or the heliocentric system.

If fundamental scientific problems have you questioning the fact of evolution, then you will be told you don’t understand how science works and that you are anti science. That’s how evolution works. It is a fact and a theory. Religion drives science and it matters.

Stephen Hawking’s The Grand Design: The Banality of Evolution, Part 3

In the twentieth century evolutionists resisted the idea of a “Big Bang” beginning of the universe. They wanted a universe that had no beginning but the evidence did not cooperate but rather increasingly pointed to the Big Bang model. Now cosmologists, such as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics Stephen Hawking, say the Big Bang is no longer a problem to understand. It turns out the universe “blasted itself into existence spontaneously,” as one science writer put it. Or as a leading physicist explained, a consequence of general relativity is that “universes are free! It costs precisely zero energy (and zero anything else) to make an entire universe. From that perspective, perhaps it's not surprising that the universe did come into existence.”

Hawking and co-author physicist Leonard Mlodinow write in their new book, The Grand Design:

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist … On the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of the matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy, and so there is no restriction on the creation of whole universes.

There you have it, the culmination of evolutionary thought: The universe can and will create itself from nothing—universes are free! Evolutionary thinking, going back centuries, has thoroughly compromised science. It is now its own reductio ad absurdum.

Cosmologists report speculative hypotheses with all the certainty of a child telling you about their imaginary friend. Others in the field commend the “findings” and journalists dutifully pass along the new truth. For whom should we have more pity, the cosmologists promoting their “truths,” or the journalists who must package the silliness?

Here is one example of how evolutionary thinking influences cosmology. Hawking and Mlodinow explain that the discovery of planets orbiting distant stars refutes Isaac Newton’s suspicion that planetary systems did not arise from the unguided play of natural laws.

But why is that so? Certainly distant planets, by themselves, do not reveal their origin. In fact, several of the distant planets have contradicted evolutionary theories.

So how do Hawking and Mlodinow conclude that these planets refute Newton? Their hidden premise is that god would not create such planets. He would only create the planets that orbit the Sun and no others. The finding of others, given that religious premise, proves that planetary systems can evolve (in spite of the empirical evidence). Religion drives science and it matters.

Dawkins Versus Darwin

Jonathan Jones has found a new role for Richard Dawkins—as a foil against which to prop up Charles Darwin. Dawkins is strident and clever where Darwin was thoughtful and straightforward:

[Darwin’s] masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, is a modest book. It begins with evidence – and down-to-earth, homely evidence at that … Darwin is the finest fruit of English empiricism. His modest presentation of evidence contrasts, I am sorry to say, with the rhetorical stridency of Richard Dawkins.

Darwin was “the finest fruit of English empiricism”? His book “begins with evidence”? Well there is evidence to be sure, but evolutionary thought is about as far from English empiricism as possible. Strangely, evolutionists confuse empiricism with rationalism (which admittedly is something like confusing black with white). Which brings us to how Darwin begins his book. His first major theme leads to this powerful conclusion:

In genera having more than the average number of species in any country, the species of these genera have more than the average number of varieties. In large genera the species are apt to be closely, but unequally, allied together, forming little clusters round other species. Species very closely allied to other species apparently have restricted ranges. In all these respects the species of large genera present a strong analogy with varieties. And we can clearly understand these analogies, if species once existed as varieties, and thus originated; whereas, these analogies are utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations.

And from which empirical finding did Darwin learn how species would look if independently created? Unfortunately that was just the beginning of Darwin’s metaphysical mandates.

Evolutionary thought, as exemplified in Darwin’s writings, is a subtle intertwining of obscure observations interpreted according to religious dogma. Darwin and the evolutionists that followed present a seemingly never ending stream of non obvious and profound evidences reduced to simplistic interpretations.

Jones continues:

[Darwin] let his astonishing, earth-shattering theory emerge from common-sense observations of nature.

If common-sense observations of nature point to evolution, then why didn’t Darwin write about them? Darwin could not let his theory emerge from common-sense observations of nature because there are very few such observations amongst a plethora of contradictory observations.

Jones continues:

[Dawkins] offers no intellectual history of how Darwin's big idea was born from centuries of natural science, how the religious Victorians created an intellectual atmosphere in which such a leap in the dark could be contemplated.

What the Victorians created was only the latest in a series of religious traditions leading to evolution. Such religious traditions, going back centuries, did not merely allow for the contemplation of a naturalistic origins narrative, they demanded it. From the wide spectrum of religious traditions, these evolutionary traditions penetrated the sciences in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and went viral. The fact that some evolutionists, from T.H. Huxley to Dawkins, are more vociferous does nothing to justify the movement.

Bug With Bifocals Baffles Biologists

Take a close look at this organism—a very close look. Now answer these questions: Are you an evolutionist? Was this bug created by random mutations? Is it a Lucretian concoction? For evolutionists the answer is yes, all organisms must be such concoctions, and in so saying they are their own accuser—this is not about science.

And the retorts of evolutionists make matters worse. This indictment, they exclaim, is nothing but an argument from incredulity. Evolutionists have so twisted science that in their minds anything goes so long as it adheres to their religious dictates, and skepticism of their bizarre dogma becomes the enemy.

And then there is the complaint that those mutations really aren’t random. So the mutations knew what to design? Of course not, but, but …

But what? Of course the mutations are random with respect to the design. And that is the issue at hand.

Or there is the retort that natural selection remedies all. Those mutations aren’t random at all, they have been selected by a reproductive differential. But of course this after the fact selection does not dictate which mutations should occur. All selection does is kill off the useless mutations. The fact that most mutations don’t work doesn’t help matters as evolutionists imagine, it just reduces the chances of evolution’s miracle stories. The mutations are still random, there are simply fewer (far fewer) of them to work with because most don’t survive.

There’s no magic here that is going to pull amazing designs, such as this insect, out of the Darwinian hat. But to try to convince themselves of their foolish ideas evolutionists tell each other that natural selection creates these biological marvels.

In this case, it is not only a phenomenally complex insect, it is a bug with bifocals:

University of Cincinnati researchers are reporting on the discovery of a bug with bifocals -- such an amazing finding that it initially had the researchers questioning whether they could believe their own eyes.

"To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of truly bifocal lenses in the extant animal kingdom," the researchers state …

But evolutionary theory was supposed to be the only legitimate way to do science. Didn’t all of biology just happen to arise on its own?

The article explains that using two retinas and two distinct focal planes that are substantially separated, the larvae can more efficiently use these bifocals, compared with the glasses that humans wear, to switch their vision from up-close to distance -- the better to see and catch their prey, with their favorite food being mosquito larvae.

"In addition, we think that within the principle eyes, separate images of the same object could be focused on each of the two retinas, allowing each eye to function as 'two eyes in one,'" the researchers reveal in the article. The tubular-shaped eyes with the bifocals allow them to efficiently focus onto their two retinas, says Annette Stowasser, a UC biology doctoral student and first author on the paper.

Two eyes in one, that is incredible. Natural selection surely must have amazing powers. In fact such a concept could lead to new imaging breakthroughs:

"We're hoping this discovery could hold implications for humans, pending possible future research in biomedical engineering," Buschbeck says. "The discovery could also have uses for any imaging technology," adds Stowasser.

But in fact evolutionary theory contributes little to such findings:

As the researchers zeroed in on how the multiple eyes of this insect worked, they did even more research to try to disprove what they saw. They first used a microscope to look through the lenses of the two eyes detailed in the research article. They saw how the lens could make a second image grow sharper -- something that could only happen with a bifocal. "It was my first research project, and I seriously thought I made a mistake, and then we did additional research to try to kill the hypothesis," says Stowasser. However, their findings were confirmed with more research in addition to observing the operation of the lens and the two focal planes via a microscope. They saw the bifocal again when they used a method to project a narrow light beam through the lens. "Our findings can only be explained by a truly bifocal lens," write the researchers.

Such stories abound in science. The life sciences are full of such design marvels. Yet evolutionary dogma is completely unaffected. Indeed, evolutionists insist that evolution must be true—a fact every bit as much as the fact that the earth is round, that the planets circle the sun, or even gravity. Yes, there must be no question about evolution. Religion drives science, and it matters.

MAVs and Fruit Flies: Unguided Evolution Smarter Than Top Scientists

Autonomous air vehicles are finding increasing use and the Air Force is interested in micro versions:

Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs) typically UAVs with wingspan on the order of 15cm or less are fast becoming commonplace for meeting a wide range of current and future military missions.

But there are tremendous technical challenges:

A typical sensor suite for a MAV consists of GPS, MEMs-based linear accelerometers, angular rate sensors, magnetometers, and barometric-altimeters. While this is adequate for waypoint navigation, the potential of MAVs to replicate the flight agility of natural fliers (e.g., birds, bats, insects) remains elusive, especially in complex terrain such as city streets or forests.

For hints at how to solve such problems designers are looking at nature’s solutions:

The desire to engineer the agility of natural fliers has led researchers to the study of flying organisms to learn how animals combine sensory input with control output to achieve flight maneuverability. Biologists are beginning to understand how visual information is integrated with mechanosensory information in biological systems for flight stabilization, landing, and prey/mate pursuit. Studies are also underway to discover how proprioceptive sensory feedback is used for fine-scale control the movement of wings, legs, etc. during aggressive maneuvers (e.g., obstacle or collision avoidance). These sensory modalities are combined with olfactory or auditory information for predator avoidance and prey/mate pursuit.

Fortunately evolution has created highly advanced flight systems:

The fact that animals such as fruit flies exhibit such remarkable flight agility with many sensory inputs and modest onboard processing suggests a particular kind of coupling between sensing, control and dynamics altogether qualitatively different from that of engineered systems. Advancements in flow control have made it possible to control the separation of flow around wings, either to inhibit separation for higher cruise lift-to-drag ratios or to promote it for large transients in aerodynamics loading for aggressive maneuvers. Natural flyers have anatomic features which probably act as flow control devices (e.g., covert flaps) and may act as aerodynamic sensors.

But understanding evolution’s marvels remains a research challenge:

Rigorous system modeling that can accurately capture the vehicle dynamics, sufficiently accounting for uncertainties in aerodynamic and structural models, remains primitive even for engineered vehicles, let alone for natural flyers. Uncertainty arises both in the veracity of particular models in describing a given flow or dynamics phenomenon, and in unknowns in the inputs, such as wind gusts and their time-dependent effect on the vehicle. While on-going research efforts are addressing some of the critical limitations in this area, significant uncertainties in the dynamics models of MAVs are unlikely to be completely eliminated.

How do random mutations produce such brilliant designs? Answering such questions is, of course, what science is all about. As Darwin explained, evolution opens up wide areas of scientific research. But now we know it also gives top scientists hints to their toughest problems.

The Gene Myth

Biological variation is, in part, transmitted from parent to progeny. Tall individuals tend to have tall offspring, fast individuals tend to have fast offspring, and so forth. This transmission process is key to the action of natural selection. Those trait variations that are successful in transmitting themselves to the next generation, by definition, survived while those that failed would disappear from the population. So long as traits are transmitted, evolutionists argue that natural selection is inevitable.

In other words, whatever it is that determines your traits is also transmitted to your offspring. Therefore, if you have evolutionarily successful traits then you will have more offspring, and they will receive your successful traits.

But how are the traits defined and transmitted? Darwin didn’t quite know how but in the twentieth century it seemed obvious—via the genes. According to the merger of modern genetics and evolution, it was all in the genes. They determined your traits and they were passed on to your offspring. This view fit evolutionary theory and was quickly accepted as an unquestionable scientific fact.

There is only one problem: it is false.

The fact that our genes are practically identical with the chimpanzees genes should have been a sign to evolutionists that their gene-centric view was problematic. How could the chimp and human be so different if their genes are so similar? Nonetheless, evolutionists proclaimed the great similarity as evidence that there must be an evolutionary relationship between humans and chimps.

In fact the biological evidence is clear: genes are only part of a far more complicated story than what evolution envisioned. As Stuart Newman explains:

Genes, which are composed of DNA, directly specify the sequences of RNA molecules and indirectly, the amino acid sequences of proteins. Before there were multicellular forms, single-celled organisms evolved for as much as two billion years driven, in part, by genetic change, as well as by establishment of persistent symbiotic relationships among simpler cells. During this entire period no cellular structure or function was specified exclusively by a cell’s genes. The protein and RNA molecules produced by cells associate with each other in a context-dependent fashion or, in many cases, catalyze chemical reactions (generating lipids, polysaccharides and other molecules), whose rates depend on the temperature and composition of the external environment. So the population of molecules inside the cell can vary extensively even if the genes do not.

It was long believed that a protein molecule’s three-dimensional shape, on which its function depends, is uniquely determined by its amino acid sequence. But we now know that this is not always true—the rate at which a protein is synthesized, which depends on factors internal and external to the cell, affects the order in which its different portions fold. So even with the same sequence a given protein can have different shapes and functions. Furthermore, many proteins have no intrinsic shape, taking on different roles in different molecular contexts. So even though genes specify protein sequences they have only a tenuous influence over their functions.

The deployment of information in the genes, moreover, is itself dependent on the presence of certain RNA and protein molecules in the cell. Since, as described above, the composition of the cell’s interior and the activity of many of its proteins depend on more than just the genes, the portion of the genes’ information content that is actually used by the cell is determined, in part, by non-genetic factors. So, to reiterate, the genes do not uniquely determine what is in the cell, but what is in the cell determines how the genes get used. Only if the pie were to rise up, take hold of the recipe book and rewrite the instructions for its own production, would this popular analogy for the role of genes be pertinent.

As Newman explains, the gene is nothing close to how evolution envisioned it. The gene myth is yet another example of evolution’s failed expectations. It seems that inevitably evolution’s interpretations turn out to be wrong as it has produced a steady stream of false predictions. Evolution is certainly the best counter indicator in the life sciences.

The Law of Compensation (Addendum)

Evolutionists make religious and metaphysical claims that mandate the truth of evolution. Fundamental predictions of their theory turn out to be false. And evolutionists use fallacious reasoning to argue for their theory. These are facts.

Consider, for example, Darwin's circular reasoning in his "Compensation and Economy of Growth" section in Chapter 5 of Origins. In my previous post I explained that Darwin begged the question. Darwin argued that natural selection could bring about change which he presupposed had evolved. Here is his argument broken out into the four points Darwin made:

1. when a cirripede is parasitic within another cirripede and is thus protected, it loses more or less completely its own shell or carapace. This is the case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner with the Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists of the three highly-important anterior segments of the head enormously developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the prehensile antennae.

2. Now the saving of a large and complex structure, when rendered superfluous, would be a decided advantage to each successive individual of the species; for in the struggle for life to which every animal is exposed, each would have a better chance of supporting itself, by less nutriment being wasted.

3. Thus, I believe, natural selection will tend in the long run to reduce any part of the organisation, as soon as it becomes, through changed habits, superfluous, without by any means causing some other part to be largely developed in a corresponding degree.

4. And, conversely, that natural selection may perfectly well succeed in largely developing an organ without requiring as a necessary compensation the reduction of some adjoining part.

Or, simply put:

1. Many species have undergone significant loss of components.

2. Such loss can be advantageous, and so increase fitness.

3. Therefore natural selection will select such loss.

4. In the same way, natural selection develops new components. That is, natural selection can add components as well as remove components.

Notice that in Step 1, Darwin takes as his premise that the male Ibla and Proteolepas have undergone evolutionary change. That is, he assumes that they have lost their carapace. His conclusion, that natural selection brings about such change, is presupposed in his premise.

Furthermore, notice that in Step 4, Darwin equates loss of components with addition of components. But there is no basis for this assumption.

This reasoning is fallacious, and therefore not scientific (science requires logical reasoning). Yet every time evolutionists are presented with their own fallacies, they deny there is any such problem.

The Law of Compensation

Are there constraints to how species can vary? A generation before Darwin the German polymath Johann Goethe and French naturalist Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire formulated their teleological law of compensation in which biological variation occurred according to functional needs. Darwin argued that the law did not apply to organisms in their natural environments. “With species in a state of nature,” Darwin argued that the law of compensation was true to a certain extent for domestic productions, “it can hardly be maintained that the law [of compensation] is of universal application,” even though “many good observers” believed it to be true.

Darwin then cited two particular species which he claimed supported his position. Most readers were probably impressed with the wealth of biological details that Darwin presented in his argument, but his logic was circular.

Darwin argued that the unique features of these two species show that the law of compensation does not hold in the wild because, after all, such unique features must have evolved. Darwin presupposed the truth of evolution in order to find evidence for evolution.

Let’s have a look at Darwin’s argument. Cirripedia, a class in the crustacea phylum, are sessile and highly unique barnacles upon which Darwin had completed a major systematic study. Over against Goethe and Geoffroy, Darwin argued that natural selection, rather than any internal law of biology, could bring about changes he argued were evident in two species named Ibla and Proteolepas:

If under changed conditions of life a structure, before useful, becomes less useful, its diminution will be favoured, for it will profit the individual not to have its nutriment wasted in building up a useless structure. I can thus only understand a fact with which I was much struck when examining cirripedes, and of which many analogous instances could be given: namely, that when a cirripede is parasitic within another cirripede and is thus protected, it loses more or less completely its own shell or carapace. This is the case with the male Ibla, and in a truly extraordinary manner with the Proteolepas: for the carapace in all other cirripedes consists of the three highly-important anterior segments of the head enormously developed, and furnished with great nerves and muscles; but in the parasitic and protected Proteolepas, the whole anterior part of the head is reduced to the merest rudiment attached to the bases of the prehensile antennae. Now the saving of a large and complex structure, when rendered superfluous, would be a decided advantage to each successive individual of the species; for in the struggle for life to which every animal is exposed, each would have a better chance of supporting itself, by less nutriment being wasted.

Thus, I believe, natural selection will tend in the long run to reduce any part of the organisation, as soon as it becomes, through changed habits, superfluous, without by any means causing some other part to be largely developed in a corresponding degree. And, conversely, that natural selection may perfectly well succeed in largely developing an organ without requiring as a necessary compensation the reduction of some adjoining part. [Origins, 6th Ed]

Darwin was not simply applying his theory to a set of observations. He was not illustrating how evolution might have formed these species. Rather, Darwin was building an argument for natural selection. But in constructing his argument, he presupposed that the species had evolved.

Darwin was unquestionably an expert on barnacles, and he could present a detailed example of highly-modified species that most people have never even heard of. But Darwin begs the question when he says that the unique structures of the Ibla and Proteolepas evolved and therefore natural selection can effect such changes.

Science's Blind Spot

A friend of mine likes to invest in stocks. He understands computer companies so he trades only those stocks. This limitation makes for a simple and straightforward investing strategy. Evolutionists also limit themselves. They investigate only those phenomena that are the result of strictly natural causes. This limitation makes for a simple and straightforward research strategy, though it does create a blind spot.

An investor who buys only computer company stocks can easily identify those companies. He can find companies that build computers, computer components, computer software, and so forth. But how can evolutionists know whether the causes of a past event are strictly natural? How can evolutionists decide which phenomena fall into their research program?

The answer is they can't. Evolutionists have no test for naturalism. They have no way of knowing whether a phenomenon is the result of strictly natural causes.

Imagine an evolutionist using natural laws and processes to describe a phenomenon that does not follow such laws and processes. By searching and searching, he may find a partial fit. So he may have some success, but there are always unexplained observables—data anomalies for which the naturalistic explanation cannot account. Naturalistic explanations will always be problematic. More data will be collected, further analysis will be done, and theories will be modified or replaced altogether. All good scientific research and—in this hypothetical example of a non natural phenomenon—wrong.

When problems are encountered there is no way to tell whether the correct naturalistic solution has simply not yet been found, or whether the phenomenon itself is non natural. Non natural phenomenon can be confused with natural ones, and science has no tools for detecting this, for there is no mechanism within science to detect non natural phenomenon.

Consider the following example. What if it were found that a code existed in all living species and that, within each organism, complicated machinery was used to read vast amounts of stored information via the code? The machinery was so complicated that it automatically (i) read the information, (ii) used the code to interpret the information, and (iii) acted on the instructions.

And what if, after decades of research, no naturalistic explanation could be found for how the code and machinery arose? Even in this example, scientists could not know if naturalistic explanations have been exhausted. There are many problems with naturalistic explanations for the existence of the code and associated machinery. The problem seems to defy naturalistic explanation. But there could be a plausible explanation for how the code arose which has not yet been discovered. And how could anyone prove otherwise? To prove that a plausible explanation does not exist is far more difficult than simply continuing the search for such explanations. For to prove that no explanation exists requires knowledge about all possible explanations.

And what if there were hundreds of other such problems for which naturalistic explanations offered little more than speculation and were consistently falsified?

The answer is, of course, "so what?" Evolutionists cannot consider the possibility that there is no naturalistic explanation. This is science's blind spot. If a theory of natural history has problems—and many of them have their share—the problems are always viewed as research problems and never as paradigm problems.

Evolutionists continue to search for naturalistic explanations for hard problems because they must. Like Sisyphus forever pushing the stone up the hill, they must pursue naturalistic explanations no matter how unlikely. Imagine if they did not. What if, at some point, they were to give up? If they did, then they might miss an undiscovered solution. They might have been on the cusp of a stunning new discovery. One cannot stop trying because the problem seems too difficult—this would be stopping science in its tracks.

Consider the problem of the planet Uranus. After its discovery Uranus did not seem to orbit the sun correctly. Could there be an unknown force perturbing the planet? Uranus's orbit could be explained by the presence of yet another planet. This was one idea to explain the strange orbit of Uranus, and it led to the discovery of the next planet, Neptune.

Imagine if astronomers had considered that Uranus's anomalous path was due to non naturalistic causes. Perhaps an invisible giant was blowing on the planet. Then the prediction and subsequent discovery of Neptune would not have occurred. Deciding on non naturalistic causes can be a science stopper.

How can we decide when a scientific problem is not a research problem, but a paradigm problem? Naturalism has no criteria, no set of rules by which to make such a judgment. And no one wants to turn science's attention away from the future discoveries. In fact, phenomena that are more daunting for naturalism are also more tantalizing, for their explanations will be more surprising and dramatic. Not only does science have a blind spot, not knowing if it has stumbled upon an unsolvable problem, but there is a certain allure of such problems. No one knows what will be science's next "Neptune."

This helps to explain the hesitancy of scientists to admit that non natural phenomena might exist. In science we follow Descartes' prescription and approach everything using naturalistic explanations. It also helps to explain the tolerance for improbable theories. Historical theories, no matter how erroneous they may seem, could be just a "Neptune" away from falling into place.

All of this helps to explain how such an implausible theory as evolution persists. It is underwritten not only by theological conviction that natural causes must suffice, but by a philosophy of science that cannot abide any other possibility, no matter how implausible evolution becomes.

Back to School, Part 4

We continue to examine the work of authors George Johnson and Jonathan Losos in their biology textbook, The Living World ((Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008). In their chapter on evolution and natural selection, these accomplished evolutionists begin by (1) misrepresenting the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution and biological variation here, (2) making a non scientific, metaphysical, truth claim that mandates the truth of evolution here, (3) making the false statement that the fossils themselves are a factual observation that macroevolution has occurred here and here, and (4) making a series of misrepresentations by carefully selecting the evidence to provide to the student and protecting it with circular reasoning here.

Johnson and Losos’ next move is to distort the molecular evidence. They write:

A series of evolutionary changes thus implies a continual accumulation of genetic changes in the DNA. From this you can see that evolutionary theory makes a clear prediction: organisms that are more distantly related should have accumulated a greater number of evolutionary differences than two species that are more closely related.

But how are species judged to be “distantly related”? By what measure are species compared? The answer, of course, is by the similarities and differences in their visible anatomy. So what exactly is this powerful evolutionary prediction? It is that genetic differences between species are proportional to the differences in their visible anatomy. If two species look alike, then their genomes should be similar. If they look very different, then their genomes should be very different. This is by no means a heroic prediction.

There is, however, another problem with this prediction. Aside from not being heroic, it is false. By now the authors have established a trend of misrepresentation and distortion, and predictably the trend continues:

This prediction is now subject to direct test. Recent DNA research, referred to in section 15.3, allows us to directly compare the genomes of different organisms. The result is clear: for a broad array of vertebrates, the more distantly related two organisms are, the greater their genomic difference.

Here the distortion is mainly one of omission. Like saying that geocentrism’s prediction that the planets should travel across the sky is true without mentioning retrograde motion, Johnson and Losos fail to mention important deviations from this pattern that have even evolutionists acknowledging the evolutionary expectation has failed.

Yes, there is a broad pattern of correlation between visible anatomy and molecular sequences, but there are inescapable and significant deviations which are far outside evolution’s “noise” level. If evolution predicts that “organisms that are more distantly related should have accumulated a greater number of evolutionary differences than two species that are more closely related” then evolution is false, end of story.

The authors next discuss the protein evidence, and in like manner continue their distortion:

This same pattern of divergence can be clearly seen at the protein level. Comparing the hemoglobin amino acid sequence of different species with the human sequence in figure 17.7, you can see that species more closely related to humans have fewer differences in the amino acid structure of their hemoglobin. … Again, the prediction of evolutionary theory is strongly confirmed.

Again, this prediction is not only not “strongly confirmed,” it is in fact false. Yes, hemoglobin and many other proteins fall into the non heroic pattern, but other proteins do not. These are well known to scientists, but evolution has unfortunately compromised science.

Johnson and Losos end this misleading section on the molecular evidence for evolution with yet another fallacious icon of evolution, the molecular clock.

In science theory evaluation is a critical skill. It is crucial to take a neutral, unbiased perspective and be willing to acknowledge both pros and cons of even one’s cherished theories. Unfortunately evolutionists don’t follow this scientific dictum. Yes there is plenty of evidence for evolution, but there are problems as well. But one would never know it from reading the evolution genre. Don’t count on evolutionists to give a scientifically accurate evaluation of their theory. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Fossil Find: Fungus Controlled Ant Just Like Today

The fossil record cannot usually tell us about the soft body parts or the behavior of its specimens. For these, we look to the extant species. But now a clever finding reveals an odd behavior in carpenter ants from the distant past.

Nature is full of designs and behaviors not easily preserved in the fossils. Consider the bat, certain types of which map out objects around it as small as a mosquito by sensing the echoes of its own squeaks—a system known as echolocation. The bat emits a high-pitch squeak, well beyond the range of human hearing, up to 2,000 times per second. Next it determines both range and direction to the tiny mosquito by sensing the echo while filtering out echoes from the squeaks of nearby bats. Or consider fish that use underwater electric fields either passively or actively to sense objects around them, including other fish.

It is difficult to determine such details from the fossil record, but they reveal how unlikely is the theory of evolution. Anyone familiar with today’s sonar or radar systems knows the immense complexity involved with such systems: the problems of sensing the echo in the presence of the transmitted signal which can be billions of times stronger, of filtering out spurious signals such as echoes of older transmissions, of combining the echo information with knowledge of your own motion, and so forth. Yet the bat’s detection abilities are superior to those of the best electronic sonar equipment.

It is also difficult to determine complex behaviors from the fossil record. Consider certain Hydra species, a small underwater creature, that develop nematocysts—stinging cells which eject a tiny poisoned hair. A planarian worm known as the Microstomum, consumes Hydra but passes the nematocysts through its digestive system and positions them on its surface. The Hydra meal serves to arm the Microstomum, and when fully equipped the Microstomum omits the Hydra from its diet, resuming again after discharging its ill-gotten arsenal.

For evolution to have formed this system, certain Microstomum must have happened to have selectively digested the Hydra, leaving the nematocysts untouched. Then they also happened to have vectored the nematocysts to the surface and positioned it there. Then certain Microstomum happened to have a feedback loop installed to regulate its diet.

Or consider a sheep parasite known as the brainworm:

The brain worm that reproduces in sheep uses ants to get back into a sheep. The worms get into ants by infecting snails that eat sheep feces. The snails expel tiny worm larvae in a mucus that ants enjoy, and some dozens of worms take up residence in an ant. But this would do them no good if the ant behaved normally; too few ants would be eaten by sheep. Consequently, while most of the worms make themselves at home in an ant’s abdomen, one finds its way to the ants brain and causes the ant to climb up a grass stem and wait to be eaten by a sheep. Ironically, the worm that programs the ant is cheated of happiness in the sheep’s intestine; it becomes encysted and dies.

The whole procedure seems unnecessary. Why do the worm eggs defecated by the sheep not simply hatch and climb up the grass stem to await being eaten by a sheep instead of making the hazardous trip through snail and ant? How could they become adapted to being carried by the ant unless the ant were already programmed to make itself available to be eaten by a sheep?

The list, of course, goes on and on. There is the decoy-fish with its detachable dorsal fin that mimics a smaller fish complete with a dark spot resembling an eye and notch resembling a mouth. The decoy-fish becomes motionless except for the decoy which moves from side to side, causing the “mouth” to open and close. And there is the owl with ears tuned to different frequencies, to better track its prey, and the rattlesnake with heat-sensitive (infrared) sensors to image its prey at night.

Now, a new fossil finding shows just how persistent nature's odd behaviors can be. A carpenter ant (Camponotus leonardi) can be infected by the fungus Ophiocordyceps. Sensitive to the forest temperature and humidity, the fungus must be up off the ground but lower than the forest canopy. It arrives at the desired height by taking over the ant it infects:

The fungus cannot grow high up in the canopy or on the forest floor, but infected ants often die on leaves midway between the two, where the humidity and temperature suit the fungus. Once an ant has died, the fungus sprouts from its head and produces a pod of spores, which are fired at night on to the forest floor, where they can infect other ants.

Scientists led by Hughes noticed that ants infected with the fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, bit into leaves with so much force they left a lasting mark. The holes created by their mandibles either side of the leaf vein are bordered by scar tissue, producing an unmistakable dumb-bell shape.

It is another fascinating parasitic action that, it would seem, could never be found in the fossil record. But a team of intrepid researchers found a way:

Writing in the journal, Biology Letters, the team describes how they trawled a database of images that document leaf damage by insects, fungi and other organisms. They found one image of a 48m-year-old leaf from the Messel pit that showed the distinctive "death grip" markings of an infected ant. At the time, the Messel area was thick with subtropical forests.

"We now present it as the first example of behavioural manipulation and probably the only one which can be found. In most cases, this kind of control is spectacular but ephemeral and doesn't leave any permanent trace," Hughes said.

And how did evolution design such a Rube Goldberg device? Who knows:

"The question now is, what are the triggers that push a parasite not just to kill its host, but to take over its brain and muscles and then kill it."

He added: "Of all the parasitic organisms, only a few have evolved this trick of manipulating their host's behaviour.

Evolution is truly amazing. It creates in ways we cannot even figure out.

Religion drives science and it matters.

Back to School, Part 3

We continue to examine the work of authors George Johnson and Jonathan Losos in their biology textbook, The Living World ((Fifth Edition, McGraw Hill, 2008). In their chapter on evolution and natural selection, these accomplished evolutionists begin by (1) misrepresenting the relationship between microevolution and macroevolution and biological variation here, (2) making a non scientific, metaphysical, truth claim that just happens to mandate the truth of evolution here, and (3) making the grossly false statement that the fossils themselves are a factual observation that macroevolution has occurred here and here.

With this as their start, Johnson and Losos next make a series of misrepresentations of the evidence. First, in an inset story on whale evolution, they show the student a highly selective graphic of the fossil sequence leading to the modern whale. In typical fashion the abundant fossil species that reveal how complicated is the evolutionary hypothesis are omitted. It is as though half a dozen fossils which unambiguously lead to the whale were discovered and nothing else.

Next the authors discuss vertebrate embryos with a graphic showing a reptile, bird and human embryo. They point out that all vertebrate embryos have pharyngeal pouches and a long bony tail. Also, the human embryos "even develops a coat of find fur!" They then inform the student that:

These relict developmental forms strongly suggest that all vertebrates share a basic set of developmental instructions.

But there are significant differences between the embryonic stages of the different vertebrates which the authors fail to mention. If similarities suggest common developmental instructions, then surely the many differences reveal developmental instructions that are not in common. And in any case, why is it that a common set of instructions, to whatever extent they do exist, are evidence for evolution? The authors reveal only selective evidence to the student and make an unjustified claim.

Johnson and Losos next make the circular argument that vertebrates have the same bones:

As vertebrates have evolved, the same bones are sometimes still there but put to different uses, their presence betraying their evolutionary past.

Here Johnson and Losos transition from presenting evidence for evolution to asserting evolution and interpreting the evidence according to the theory. Their phrase "As vertebrates have evolved," marks this unspoken move in the indoctrination. The student is no longer fed evidence for the theory, but instead the truth of the theory has become a given.

Hence the bones in different vertebrates are "the same." After all, they arose from a common ancestor. And since they are "the same," they betray "their evolutionary past." It all makes perfect sense to evolutionists.

And what about those similarities that could not have arisen from a common ancestor? Conveniently, those too are somehow evidence for evolution:

Similarly, in the lower portion of the figure, the marsupial mammals of Australia evolved in isolation from placental mammals, but similar selective pressures have generated very similar kinds of animals.

So similar structures in related vertebrates count as evidence because, after all, they arose from a common ancestor. And similar structures in distant vertebrates count as evidence because, after all, they arose independently from similar selective pressures. Got it (except that selective "pressures" don't generate anything, but don't tell the students that).

Next Johnson and Losos present those structures that have "no use at all!" Back to their whale example, they continue the theme of circular reasoning:

In living whales, which evolved from hoofed mammals, the bones of the pelvis that formerly anchored the two hind limbs are all that remain of the rear legs, unattached to any other bones and serving no apparent purpose.

That, of course, is not an empirical finding but a conclusion based on the assumption that evolution is true. In fact the whale pelvis probably helps in copulation. But so what? After all, whales "evolved from hoofed mammals."

Their next circular example is that vestigial organ, the human appendix. In the great apes it helps with digestion but "The human appendix is a vestigial version of this structure that now serves no function in digestion." So the appendix is evidence for evolution because it is vestigial, and we know it is vestigial because evolutionists say it is.

Unfortunately most students will not be aware of the indoctrination they are receiving. Not will they be aware of the substantial scientific omissions and errors that the text is riddled with. Regarding the appendix, the evolutionary expectation once again failed. As one researcher commented:

Maybe it's time to correct the textbooks. Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a 'vestigial organ.'

Indeed, many biology texts do because the science has been compromised by evolution. Religion drives science and it matters.