You Won’t Believe What Evolutionists Are Saying Now: Evolution Created “A Risk Management Strategy”

The Epicureans called them “veering atoms” and evolutionists updated it to “random mutations.” One way or another, man must have an evolutionary narrative. But it makes no sense on the science and so, to match the mythology with the evidence, evolution must become the master craftsman. Its latest wizardry is a “risk management strategy,” as a new paper explains. Furthermore, mutation rates have been “evolutionarily optimized.” Unbelievable. The evolutionist’s just-so stories continue to become even more ridiculous. Evolution is now so brilliant that we are supposed to believe that it created the means not only to control mutation rates, but to optimize the mutation rates as well.

First, if evolution is true, we must believe that the basic mutation rate varies by more than an order of magnitude in different bacteria:

Upon comparing 34 Escherichia coli genomes, we observe that the neutral mutation rate varies by more than an order of magnitude across 2,659 genes, with mutational hot and cold spots spanning several kilobases. 

The next result is that, under evolution, the variation between different mutation rates must not be random, but rather must follow a rational pattern:

Importantly, the variation is not random: we detect a lower rate in highly expressed genes and in those undergoing stronger purifying selection.

And so, given evolution, we must conclude that evolution has optimized the mutation rate:

Our observations suggest that the mutation rate has been evolutionarily optimized to reduce the risk of deleterious mutations.

Of course there is no known mechanism that could do this:

Current knowledge of factors influencing the mutation rate—including transcription-coupled repair and context-dependent mutagenesis—do not explain these observations, indicating that additional mechanisms must be involved. 

But evolutionists will think of something, no matter how speculative.

The findings have important implications for our understanding of evolution and the control of mutations.

In other words, results that rebuke a fundamental concept of evolution, and that cannot even be explained by evolutionists (who are notorious for being able to explain anything with their just-so stories), are presented by evolutionists as important findings for understanding how evolution works. It is all about those veering atoms.

Here’s That Paper on Cell Membranes That Went Viral and Evolutionists Are Trying to Clean Up

As we saw in the previous post the cell membrane has been found to be increasingly sophisticated. Not only is the protein-punctuated sandwich structure incredibly complicated, but organisms actively fine-tune its design as conditions change. For instance, the number and location of carbon-carbon double bonds, in the phospholipid tails in the lipid bilayer, are astonishingly modified in real-time to deal with temperature changes. A recent paper agreed that “the membrane is a biological device of a staggering complexity”:

A topologically closed membrane is a ubiquitous feature of all cellular life forms. This membrane is not a simple lipid bilayer enclosing the innards of the cell: far from that, even in the simplest cells, the membrane is a biological device of a staggering complexity that carries diverse protein complexes mediating energy-dependent – and tightly regulated - import and export of metabolites and polymers.

And how could it have evolved? The paper agrees that “the origin(s) of the membrane(s) and membrane proteins remain enigmatic”

Studies of the past several decades have provided major insights into the structural organization of biological membranes and mechanisms of many membrane molecular machines. However, the origin(s) of the membrane(s) and membrane proteins remain enigmatic.

Indeed, such evolution is downright obscure:

Despite the growing understanding of the structural organization of membranes and molecular mechanisms of many membrane proteins, the origin(s) of biological membranes remain obscure.

And this is only the beginning. The paper is loaded with preposterous just-so stories, many of them contradictory, of how evolutionists believe the membrane evolved. Calling all of this raw speculation would be kind. The evolution of the cell membrane is downright ridiculous but evolutionists, as usual, remain ever dogmatic. They may not know of evolution occurred, but they’re sure it did. What’s worse, they insist it is a fact that is beyond any reasonable doubt. It would be perverse, as they often say, even to consider the possibility it may be wrong. All one needs to do is listen to evolutionists to understand what it is all about, and it isn’t science.

Complex Patterns Have Been Discovered in the Cell Membrane

The membrane that surrounds and encapsulates living cells is truly amazing. This lipid bilayer-protein mixture, which is only a few nanometers thick, has complex chemical, structural and electrical properties which are finely-tuned and crucial for the cell’s operation. And the various proteins perform a great diversity of tasks, ranging from transmitting information to transporting molecules, across the membrane. As usual the inexorable march of science continues to reveal the sophistication and elegance of the membrane design. A recent study, for instance, revealed that the membrane proteins are arranged in complex patterns, ranging from what has been described as “patches” to “networks.” Furthermore, the all-important lipid composition of the membrane strongly influences these patterns as well as the protein sequences themselves. This work reveals far greater structure and organization in the cell membrane than was previously understood. And it continues to reveal how unlikely it is that such designs spontaneously arose. For more interesting details on the cell membrane design, here is a post from a year ago on the fine-tuning of the membrane’s fluidity:

You learned about DNA and proteins in your high school biology class, but you may not remember much about the cell’s membrane which is based on a dynamic, fluctuating sandwich structure. This cellular envelope controls what chemicals enter and exit the cell, partly due to molecular machines such as channels and pumps in the membrane, and partly due to the sandwich structure itself. This sandwich structure is a barrier to certain types of chemicals. But the membrane permeability and the operation of the molecular machines depend on the details of the sandwich structure. And as recent research has been finding, contra evolutionary expectations, organisms actively maintain and fine-tune the sandwich structure in response to environmental challenges.

The cell membrane’s sandwich structure consists of two layers facing away from each other. Each layer is made up of an array of phospholipid molecules lined up next to each other. Phospholipid molecules consist of a water-loving (or hydrophilic) head, a phosphate group, and two oily (or hydrophobic) hydrocarbon tails.

The two layers face away from each other in a tail-to-tail arrangement. This creates a very oily, low dielectric, interior of the sandwich. While small oily molecules are able to pass through this membrane structure, it is difficult for any water-loving molecule, including water itself, to pass through the barrier. So when this sandwich structure forms a closed sphere surrounding the cell, the inside compartment is separated and protected from the outer aqueous environment. But the sandwich structure is not a simple, rigid, structure. It fluctuates, and this influences the membrane performance.

At lower temperatures the sandwich structure has a more rigid, gel, phase and at higher temperatures it has a less rigid, fluid phase. As with the freezing and melting of water there is a distinct phase change, between the gel and fluid phases of the sandwich structure, which occurs over a rather narrow temperature range. This melting point temperature is strongly influenced by the degree of attraction between the adjacent phospholipid tails. Depending on the temperature and this degree of attraction, the sandwich structure may be like a gel or like a fluid, and this is important because the phase influences the membrane permeability and the membrane’s molecular machines.

Within the membrane sandwich structure, the phospholipid tails are attracted to each other via the weakest chemical force, van der Waals interactions. Unlike the stronger chemical bonds, van der Waals interactions do not arise from the trading or sharing of electrons. So how do these interactions work?

Consider two neighboring atoms. As the electrons quickly move about, uneven charge distributions can occur across the atom. One side of an atom may temporarily be positively charged, and the other side negatively charged. Such charges influence the neighboring atom. For instance, a negative charge will tend to repel the electrons of the neighboring atom causing an attractive, uneven charge distribution in that atom. The two atoms can then continue with synchronized, fluctuating charge distributions. But all of this depends greatly on the distance between the two neighboring atoms. If they are too far apart (or too close together), the entire interaction, weak as it is, becomes insignificant.

The distance between adjacent phospholipid tails depends on their shape. If the tails have two hydrogen atoms for each carbon atom, then there are no double bonds. Such saturated chains have a consistent, linear, shape and they pack tightly together at the van der Waals preferred distance.

Unsaturated chains, on the other hand, have double bonds which cause structural kinks, loose packing and therefore weaker van der Waals interactions. And the particular location of the double bond is important, as some locations disrupt the van der Waals interactions more than others.

So all of this means that the number and location of hydrogen atoms in the phospholipid tails is an important tuning parameter (there are other tuning strategies as well), determining the phase of the sandwich structure and, in turn, the cell’s membrane performance. This is particularly important for organisms that are subject to greater temperature variations, such as poikilotherms. Such temperature variations can cause unwelcome phase changes in the membrane’s sandwich structure.

Physiological response to temperature change

Years ago it was thought that the various protein machines in the cell’s membrane were more or less randomly distributed. It is yet another example of the influence of evolutionary thinking on biology. If the biological world is a fluke, then aren’t biological designs, such as the cell’s membrane architecture, random?

Now we know better. The cell membrane architecture is anything but random. In fact, the attention to detail is enormous. This includes the phase of the sandwich structure and its tuning mechanisms, such as the degree to which the phospholipid tails are saturated. Here are quotes from representative research papers discussing how organisms monitor and control their membrane fluidity, particularly in response to temperature variations:

E. coli incorporates increasing proportions of saturated and long-chain fatty acids into phospholipids as growth temperature is increased. It was found that this compositional variation results in the biosynthesis of phospholipids that have identical viscosities at the temperature of growth of the cells. [link to paper]

Numerous studies have shown that fluidity is an important factor in the function of biological membranes. Changes in fluidity affect the activity of membrane-bound enzymes and the activity of transporters, as well as the permeability of membranes to nonelectrolytes, water, and cations. Given that temperature has profound effects on membrane fluidity, it is not surprising that poikilotherms adjust the composition of their membranes in ways that defend fluidity in the face of changes in body temperature. …

Although the ways in which membrane composition is altered in response to temperature are not always consistent among species, tissues, cells, or even organelles, a few important trends have emerged. One prominent response to a decrease in the body temperature of poikilotherms is an increase in the percentage of unsaturated fatty acids that make up the phospholipids. … Phospholipids with saturated fatty acids pack readily into bilayers, whereas phospholipids with unsaturated (and therefore, kinked) acyl chains tend to disrupt hydrophobic interactions among acyl chains of adjacent phospholipids. An increase in the proportion of unsaturated fatty acids thus results in an increase in membrane disorder and fluidity, which tends to oppose the ordering effect of a drop in temperature. [link to paper]

The phospholipid composition of plasma membranes from the kidney of rainbow trout, Salmo gairdneri, was determined over a period of 21 days as fish were acclimating between temperatures of 5 and 20 degrees C. Proportions of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) were significantly higher (29.03 vs. 23.26%) in membranes of 5 degrees C- than 20 degrees C-acclimated trout [link to paper]

Our observations suggest that a physical parallel to the changes of lipid composition is the maintenance of an optimal lipid order in the hydrophobic core of the cytoplasmic membranes. It can be interpreted as a tendency of Bacillus subtilis to keep the lateral pressure in its membranes at an optimal value, independent of the temperature of cultivation. [link to paper]

Not only is the cell membrane intricate and complex (and certainly not random), but it has tuning parameters such as the degree to which the phospholipid tails are saturated. It is another example of a sophisticated biological design about which evolutionists can only speculate. Random mutations must have luckily assembled molecular mechanisms which sense environmental challenges and respond to them by altering the phospholipid population in the membrane in just the right way. Such designs are tremendously helpful so of course they would have been preserved by natural selection. It is yet another example of how silly evolutionary theory is in light of scientific facts.

Venus Transit This Tuesday

Venus transited the Sun in June 2004 and will again next week. Venus transits occur in pairs separated by eight years. The last pair occurred in December of 1874 and 1882 and the next pair will occur in December 2117 and 2125. So next week this rarest of predictable astronomical events will occur for the last time in our lifetimes.

When I Pointed Out the Evolutionary Tree Has Failed Two Professors Gave Me Pushback

Evolutionists proclaim that evolution is a fact as much as the fact that the Earth is round rather than flat, or that the planets circle the Sun rather than the Earth. Their favorite comparison is with gravity. As Joseph Le Conte explained a hundred and twenty years ago, evolution is not merely as certain as gravity, “Nay, it is far more certain.” Such claims have only escalated and today evolutionists are as certain as ever. But these claims go against everything we know from science. Indeed, evolution has failed every major test. Evolutionists do not have a scientific explanation for how life could have arisen from non life. They cannot even explain how a single protein could have first evolved. And we observe populations adapting to the environment rapidly via directed change, rather than the slow incorporation of random changes via natural selection. Furthermore the fossil record reveals bursts of diversity followed by extinctions. This hardly makes for an evolutionary tree and, indeed, when we compare the species they don’t fall into the expected tree-like pattern. Minor deviations might be expected, but the contradictions we observe are far more significant and are not explained by evolutionary mechanisms. It is precisely in situations like this, when a theory incurs repeated, independent, significant failures that scientists doubt its validity. Perhaps evolution is somehow true, or perhaps parts of the idea are true. And if not true, the theory nonetheless might be a useful model in certain problems. But when a theory incurs so many problems scientists certainly do not hold it to be a fact on par with gravity. And yet this is what evolutionists do. When I pointed this out two professors gave me pushback.

One professor argued that the problems with evolution are not so significant. Most theories have failures here and there, or at least have limited application. So what if evolution has some unanswered questions, should we therefore throw it out? Of course not:

So when Hunter points to the latest understanding of evolution, notes the failure of the tree of life, and then wants to declare that the entire theory of evolution should be declared a failure, he just looks desperate. His audience, which consists mostly of YECs, is willing to believe his nonsense. But face it, Cornelius, you aren't even trying to win any converts, you're just preaching to the choir. If you try to flaunt your stuff at a professional biology conference, people will shrug you off as a crackpot. And they will be right.

Evolutionists often use this argument. They claim evolution is a fact, and when you point out that it has significant problems and comes nowhere close to being a fact, they shift the burden of proof to you. You must demonstrate evolution to be false. Otherwise you are desperate and a crackpot.

The other professor repeated much the same argument, saying that common descent has not been falsified:

Basically, creationists who are desperate to avoid admitting common descent like to point to exceptions to a strict tree. Those exceptions are nevertheless other sorts of genealogy connecting the species. This they are at pains not to mention. Then they say that a (perfect) tree has been invalidated. That leaves their audience thinking that it has been shown that there is no common descent. Which it hasn't been. They are being disingenuous.

The professor then made the fallacious argument that common descent is demonstrated by non random relationships between the proteins species. You can read more about that here.

If you are new to the evolution debate you might wonder why evolutionists do not simply acknowledge the painfully obvious fact that evolution is not a fact. It is not as sure gravity and in fact there are significant questions and problems with evolution. Why don’t evolutionists admit to the truth of how the science bears on their theory?

The answer is that evolution is not about the science. At issue here is not merely the status of another scientific theory. Evolutionists won’t be swayed by the evidence because doing so—and confessing that evolution is not overwhelmingly supported by the evidence—would immediately expose evolutionists to all kinds of possibilities which they simply cannot accept. An evolutionist can no more change his mind than could a cultist. Evolution is underwritten by a religious worldview—it is a metaphysical theory, not at scientific theory. As such it may lose every battle, but it cannot lose the war.

These New Studies Demonstrating Acquired Inheritance Don’t Even Give the Secret Handshake

Another day, another refutation of evolutionary thought, this time in the form of acquired inheritance. Yes, that’s right, the same acquired inheritance spoken of by Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck (otherwise known as Lamarck) and ridiculed by twentieth century evolutionists. Now, two centuries after Lamarck, acquired inheritance is well established in biology, no thanks to evolutionists. Even the usual, once obligatory, bow to evolution is gone. Traditionally, before presenting the scientific evidence, research papers must begin with submissive nod to evolution. A sentence or two about how evolution created the incredible findings about to be discussed usually suffices. Then, having dispensed with the secret handshake, authors are free to show their completely contradictory results. But now even that is gone. Evolution does not explain the findings. Evolution did not inspire or motivate the research. Evolution’s predictions are falsified by the evidence. And evolution ridiculed and resisted the entire idea. It therefore is only fitting that the fanciful evolutionary just-so stories, and yes even the secret handshake, should be expunged (see here, here and here).

The Evolutionary Tree Failed But Evolutionists Still Insist Evolution is a Fact

The fundamental thesis of evolution is that the species evolved according to the evolutionary tree. Students learn about the evolutionary tree in biology class and biologists use the evolutionary tree in their research. But in fact the evolutionary tree is based on a limited, and carefully selected, set of observations. Ever since Darwin, science has continued to document exceptions and anomalies—species that don’t fit neatly into the evolutionary pattern. These biological contradictions come in various forms and are found throughout the tree. For instance, species that in many regards appear to be quite similar, which evolutionists have placed on neighboring twigs of the evolutionary tree, are routinely found to have profound differences. On the other hand, species that are obviously quite different, which evolutionists have placed on distant limbs of the evolutionary tree, are often found to have profound similarities. And these various differences and similarities are found in every imaginable aspect of the species designs, ranging from the visible features of the adult form to the developing embryonic form to the underlying cellular and molecular structures. At this point, such cases are no longer exceptions and anomalies. For years evolutionists attempted to explain this growing list of contradictions using their evolutionary tree model. But it is obvious that this was an exercise in forcing the evidence to fit the theory rather than the other way around. The inexorable march of science has taken its toll and in recent years evolutionists have finally begun to deemphasize their iconic evolutionary tree model. What this does not change, however, is their insistence that evolution is a fact.

While the failure of the evolutionary tree model can be seen in data even as far back as the nineteenth century, such contradictions were generally discussed only in the highly technical scientific journals. Textbooks held to evolutionary orthodoxy and journalists dutifully reported that evolution was a scientific fact. Even today students are taught that the species fall into the expected tree pattern. But some venturesome writers are beginning to mention this unmentionable. A few years ago, for instance, the Telegraph reported that “Charles Darwin's tree of life is ‘wrong and misleading’, claim scientists.” The article reported:

They believe the concept misleads us because his [Darwin’s] theory limits and even obscures the study of organisms and their ancestries. …

Researchers say although for much of the past 150 years biology has largely concerned itself with filling in the details of the tree it is now obsolete and needs to be discarded. …

“For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life. We have no evidence at all that the tree of life is a reality.” …

More fundamentally recent research suggests the evolution of animals and plants isn't exactly tree-like either. …

Dr Rose said: "The tree of life is being politely buried – we all know that. What's less accepted is our whole fundamental view of biology needs to change." He says biology is vastly more complex than we thought and facing up to this complexity will be as scary as the conceptual upheavals physicists had to take on board in the early 20th century.

All of this was important not because it was reporting on any new scientific findings, but rather that a fundamental failure of evolutionary theory was being reported, period. Contrary evidence was being openly discussed.

But of course none of this was allowed to cast any doubt on evolutionary theory itself. As the article reported:

"If you don't have a tree of life what does it mean for evolutionary biology. At first it's very scary – but in the past couple of years people have begun to free their minds." Both he and co-researcher Dr Ford Doolittle stressed that downgrading the tree of life doesn't mean the theory of evolution is wrong just that evolution is not as tidy as we would like to believe.

It is yet another example of how well protected evolution is from the scientific evidence. The tree of life is just one of many failures of evolutionary theory. Over and over the theory fails to elucidate the science, but rather must be repeatedly modified and augmented to try to fit the data. At some point the theory becomes little more than a tautology. Whatever we discover in biology, evolution must have created it, no matter how contradictory and unlikely. The real story here is not that another prediction of evolution has failed, the real story is that evolution is protected from such failures.

Evolutionists Are Up in Arms Over Real Time Epigenetics

Epigenetics has gone real-time and evolutionists are insisting it has no impact on the fact of evolution. Recall that epigenetics provided one of the many falsifications of evolution’s claim that biological variation knows nothing of need. According to evolution, if the environment shifts, presenting a new challenge to a population, then the population responds via the selection of random changes, such as mutations, which are not in response to the new challenge. In short, biological variation must not be directed. Any such intelligent response to the environment smacks too much of teleology, which evolutionary thought fundamentally rejects. So under evolution, populations adapt by chance. Mutations that just happen to address the challenge are selected.

But epigenetics falsified all of that. Science tells us that populations rapidly and intelligently adapt to environmental challenges. Such responses, for example, may be accomplished via modifications to the DNA sequence or via modifications to how genes are expressed. For instance small chemicals, such as methyl groups or hydroxyl groups (or one on top of the other!), may be attached to the DNA or to the histone proteins about which the DNA is wrapped. And such modifications can be passed on to subsequent generations.

This makes no sense on evolution. We would have to imagine that evolution’s random mutations and the like created this fantastic directed adaptation machine, ready to respond to a range of future environmental challenges.

And now epigenetics has been found to occur in real-time, providing profound falsifications of evolutionary expectations. These “real-time” epigenetic mechanisms are applied not to DNA, but to its temporary transcript, mRNA, which supplies the information used to synthesize a protein.

So now evolution must not only have created another fantastic directed adaptation machine, ready to respond to a range of future environmental challenges, but this machine must have been capable and ready to operate, immediately at sometime in the future, on the transitory mRNA molecule.

The absurdity of evolution has just become that much more absurd.

Not surprisingly evolutionists are struggling to provide any sort of coherent explanation for all this. Their mandate that evolution must be a fact has been long since known to be little more than dogma, and the continuing onslaught of scientific findings is not helping.

Evolutionists had no scientific explanation for the fantastic mechanisms behind epigenetics. I once debated an evolution professor who simply denied that cells had any such capability. Needless to say, meaningful debate is not possible when evolutionists deny known facts of science.

Such denial is continuing with the new findings of real-time epigenetics. Evolutionists are not seriously reckoning with the science. One evolutionist, for instance, attempted to defend the evolution of real-time epigenetics by conflating it with the general operation of gene regulation:

I'm absolutely astonished by this series of yours on methylation, Cornelius. You seem to think it's new. How on earth do you think that biologists think that cells even differentiate in multicellular organisms, let alone function, without control of gene expression? Do you think that biologists until recently thought that all genes were switched on all the time? Have you never heard of cell signalling? And what do you imagine that "regulatory genes" actually do if not, um, regulate genes? i.e. switch them on and off?

This argument that the evolution of complex mechanisms is obvious because, after all, we’ve known about it all along, may seem bizarre to newcomers. But for evolutionists this sort of argument is typical. Point out that diversity appears abruptly in the fossil record and evolutionists will tell you that they’ve explained all that with “punctuated equilibrium.” Point out that the origin of life is unlikely, and they’ll tell you that they’ve long since synthesized amino acids in a test tube.

Such problems are not really problems, evolutionists will tell you, because they’ve been known for a long time, and about them evolutionists have produced plenty of speculation.

Evolution has no scientific explanation, beyond speculation, for gene regulation in general. And they don’t have one for real-time epigenetics in particular.

Nonetheless, this evolutionist continued with the same sort of argument, this time recruiting the study of development and how it relates to evolution:

And far from being problematic for evolutionary theory, "evo-devo" answers a huge number of problems for evolutionary theory as it stood, namely how very small incremental DNA variation can make considerable, but viable, changes to the phenotype.

Aside from the fact that the so-called “evo-devo” research fell short of expectations and that development has contradicted evolutionary expections, it has nothing to do with the evolution of real-time epigenetics.

Again, newcomers will be surprised by the level of argumentation produced by evolutionists. But such nonsensical logic does provide a teachable moment. It is another sign of the closing of the evolutionary mind.

Evolutionists Are Now Saying Their Thinking is Flawed (But Evolution is Still a Fact)

Morality, as Kant pointed out, hinges neither on success nor on failure. The moral law transcends the material world. The evolutionist’s sophomoric response is that morality evolved and so therefore is not absolute, but rather is relative. That’s like saying water is not wet. And while they’re at it, evolutionists, at least those in the atheist wing, not only deny values, they also deny truth. That’s right, evolutionists—who are constantly making religious truth claims and casting judgments on those who don’t go along with their mandate that evolution is a fact—deny the existence any real morality and truth. You can see the obvious dilemma they have constructed. If there is no morality or truth, then how can evolution be known to be a fact, and how can doubters of this modern mythology be such bad people?

All of this is painfully obvious at the New Scientist which today explains that evolution has bequeathed us with a clouded, flawed thinking process. And just why did we evolve such an apparently flawed instrument? The article explains:

An elegant explanation may have arrived. Hugo Mercier at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and Dan Sperber at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, believe that human reasoning evolved to help us to argue. An ability to argue convincingly would have been in our ancestors' interest as they evolved more advanced forms of communication, the researchers propose.

Yes, we know, evolutionists telling just-so stories are not “researchers.” But the point here is that these “researchers” are making an assertion (human reasoning evolved and is flawed) which undermines their very argument. If human reasoning evolved and is flawed, then how can we know that evolution is a fact, much less any particular details of said evolutionary process that they think they understand via their “research”?

The article continues:

Mercier and Sperber are by no means the first to suggest that the human mind evolved to help us manage a complex social life. It has long been recognised that group living is fraught with mental challenges that could drive the evolution of the brain.

But if these particular mental challenges drove the evolution of the brain, then what guarantee do we have that anything we conclude has any truth value? Why do molecules bouncing around in our head correspond to anything true about the world? How can we be sure that what “has long been recognized” by evolutionists has any useful meaning?

The article also notes how the evolution of language would have been an important influence on how our thinking evolved:

The evolution of language a few hundred thousand years ago would have changed the rules of the game.

But again, why should the force of language on the evolutionary process encourage us that, therefore, our thinking has any ultimate validity?

Indeed, evolutionists conclude that fallacies such as confirmation bias corrupt our conclusions:

Consider the confirmation bias. It is surprisingly pervasive, playing a large part in the way we consider the behaviour of different politicians, for instance, so that we will rack up evidence in favour of our chosen candidate while ignoring their competitor's virtues. Yet people rarely have any awareness that they are not being objective. Such a bias looks like a definite bug if we evolved to solve problems: you are not going to get the best solution by considering evidence in such a partisan way.

If evolutionists believe there is such a “definite bug” in our epistemology, then how can they be so sure evolution is a fact? Is that “definite bug” only a problem for people who don’t insist that everything came from nothing? Our confidence is not helped by the evolutionist’s selective use of evidence and, yes, confirmation bias.

But if we evolved to be argumentative apes, then the confirmation bias takes on a much more functional role. "You won't waste time searching out evidence that doesn't support your case, and you'll home in on evidence that does," says Mercier.

Sound familiar? The article which reveals evolution’s circular logic finally comes around to a precise description of evolutionary thought: “You won’t waste time searching out evidence that doesn't support your case, and you'll home in on evidence that does.”

In their value-laden world where they deny the existence of values, evolutionists insist they know the truth which is that, ultimately, we cannot know the truth.

Of Turtles and the Closing of the Evolutionary Mind

The evolutionary hypothesis that the species arose according to a combination of random events and natural law—chance and necessity—is more than just the dominant paradigm of the life sciences. For about a century now evolution has been nothing less than biology’s over arching dogma—a fact to be accepted by all. Life scientists think in lock-step and no skepticism or doubt is allowed. This narrowing of view is not just an after effect, it is a powerful constraint and influence on the science, for all findings are interpreted according to the dogma. That recent study on the evolutionary origin of turtles is a typical example.

The evolution of turtles has always been a problem. First, there is no scientific explanation for how these fascinating creatures could have arisen via spontaneous events such as random mutations. And second, even if we make the heroic assumption that such an unlikely event occurred, somehow, there remains their rather awkward fit in the supposed evolutionary tree. It’s not an uncommon problem in evolutionary studies, and in the case of the turtle the paleontological, morphological and genetic data make for various contradictory results. As one writer explained:

Paleontological and morphological studies place turtles as either evolving from the ancestor of all reptiles or as evolving from the ancestor of snakes, lizards, and tuataras. Conflictingly, genetic studies place turtles as evolving from the ancestor of crocodilians and birds.

The new study purports to resolve the dilemma (they say the evidence is overwhelming that turtles evolved from a common ancestor of birds and crocodilians). And how did they solve the problem? They used the so-called UCEs (ultra conserved elements) and their flanking regions. But there is one problem: UCEs falsify evolution.

That is, at least, what one evolutionist told me years ago, before UCEs were discovered. Identical or nearly identical functionally unconstrained DNA sequences, conserved broadly across different species, would undoubtedly falsify evolution. That falsifier was discovered in the form of UCEs.

Indeed, another evolutionist exclaimed “I about fell off my chair” when seeing the UCE comparisons. Surely these absurdly conserved sequences must be utterly essential. But hundreds of tests failed to reveal their importance. In fact many of the sequences could be removed altogether with little effect.

But of course, as usual, that was Darwinian Doublespeak as we were told to move along yet again. No one so much as whispered a word of doubt about evolution and the scene returned to normal, just as in the Star Wars bar scene. Evolution is still a fact, UCEs or no UCEs.

So now, years later, UCEs not only are no longer a problem for the evolutionary mind, they may freely be used as evidence for evolution. The fact of evolution is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Evidence, no matter how contradictory, is interpreted according to evolution, and then recruited as yet more proof texts for evolution.

The turtle story is not merely another tale of contradictory data that make little sense on evolution. It is another example of the closing of the evolutionary mind.

Who Was Alfred Russel Wallace?

Go here to find out who Alfred Russel Wallace was. Or better yet, buy the book. For Michael Flannery’s biography is the most important new book I have read in years. The immense attention focused on Charles Darwin by evolution historians has unfortunately overshadowed Wallace, whose life was arguably more fascinating and insightful. Unfortunately views that are offered on Wallace today are often from Darwinist perspectives. Flannery remedies this imbalance with his story of Alfred Wallace that brings an entirely new light to the theory of evolution. In this corrective against the familiar but erroneous casting of Wallace as a miniature Darwin, Flannery artfully brings out the stark contrast—even down to their final works—between the evolution co-founders.

But Flannery’s biography is not merely a look back. Like any good history, Flannery’s tells us something about where we are, and how we got here. From their early years onward, Wallace and Darwin existed in different worlds. Their paths intersected at evolution, but they approached and departed that intersection with many different perspectives. Flannery provides a broader context than is usually found in such histories and in convincing detail demonstrates the influences and connections to today’s discussion. Neither idolizing Wallace nor minimizing Darwin, Flannery provides a much needed balanced view that leaves us with a richer understanding of our ideas on origins.

It Didn’t End With the Sophists: Richard Leakey Explains the Fact of Evolution Will Someday Be Supported By the Evidence and, In Any Case, the World Wasn’t Created

Plato’s destruction of the sophists unfortunately didn’t take and you can almost hear John Lennon’s Imagine as you read today’s AP piece on legendary evolutionist Richard Leakey promoting the usual man-is-the-measure-of-all-things fallacies evolutionists adore, all encapsulated in 900 words. In their value-laden world where they deny the existence of values, Leakey and the evolutionists warn that catastrophes are looming due to man-made climate change (“We may be on the cusp of some very real disasters that have nothing to do with whether the elephant survives, or a cheetah survives, but if we survive”), equate evolution with all that is good (“If you get to the stage where you can persuade people on the evidence, that it's solid, that we are all African, that color is superficial, that stages of development of culture are all interactive. Then I think we have a chance of a world that will respond better to global challenges.”), deny the possibility of science without evolution (“how do you combat new pathogens, how do you combat new strains of disease that are evolving in the environment?”) and claim that the fact of evolution will someday actually be a fact (Sometime in the next 15 to 30 years, the Kenyan-born paleoanthropologist expects scientific discoveries will have accelerated to the point that “even the skeptics can accept it.”). This is all standard evolutionary red-meat that the world embraces (“Earlier this month, Paul Simon performed at a benefit dinner for the Turkana Basin Institute. IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond and his wife, Peggy Bonapace Gelfond, and billionaire hedge fund investor Jim Simons and his wife, Marilyn, were among those attending the exclusive show in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.”). Most importantly though is the religion that underwrites Lennon’s religion-free religious utopia:

You can lay out all the fossils that have been collected and establish lineages that even a fool could work up. So the question is why, how does this happen? It’s not covered by Genesis. There’s no explanation for this change going back 500 million years in any book I’ve read from the lips of any God.

That’s a powerful proof for evolution but it is not from science. Our religion tells us God did not create the world so we supply our own myth that the species and the world arose spontaneously—that something came from nothing. It contradicts what we know from science but no matter, theology remains the queen of the sciences. And that theology, like the creation myth, is man-made:

If you tell me, well, people really need a faith ... I understand that. I see no reason why you shouldn’t go through your life thinking if you’re a good citizen, you’ll get a better future in the afterlife.

A good citizen? Compare Leakey’s man-made theology with God’s Word:

The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men,
To see if there are any who understand, who seek God.
They have all turned aside,
They have together become corrupt;
There is none who does good,
No, not one.

No not one? Compared with evolutionary theology that sounds rather hopeless and impossible. But as Jesus Christ explained, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” He should know, He did the saving.

Epigenetics in Real Time: Samie Jaffrey "Goes There" and Evolution is Getting Trashed

You won’t believe what Samie Jaffrey’s group at Cornell is confirming and elucidating about epigenetics, the fantastic adaptation capability cells have to adjust to environmental shifts. Epigenetics is a broad term for a range of adaptation capabilities achieved via the regulation of gene expression. Gene expression can be regulated, for example, by attaching small chemical markers such as methyl groups, like bar codes, to DNA or to the histone proteins about which the DNA is wrapped. Such chemical modifications have been known to be used also on the DNA copy—the messenger RNA—used to synthesize proteins. What Jaffrey’s group has found is that mRNA methylation is ubiquitous. Something like 20% of the transitory mRNA molecules are methylated in human cells. This truly is epigenetics in real time as the cell must be detecting the need and transferring the methyl groups to the right mRNA location at astonishing rates. It is evolution’s reductio ad absurdum on steroids.

Here is how Jaffrey summarized the findings:

We know that DNA and proteins are routinely modified by chemical switches that have profound effects on their function in both health and disease. But biologists believed mRNA was simply an intermediate between DNA and protein. Now we know mRNA is much more complex, and defects in RNA methylation can lead to disease.

Whereas the cytosine nucleotide is the common target of methylation in DNA, in mRNA it is adenosine. And whereas with cytosine the methyl group is added to the 5 carbon, with adenosine it is added to the amine group attached to the 6 carbon. And of course the mRNA methylation must be done at lightning fast rates. It is yet another amazing mechanism of genetic regulation and you can read more here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Of course none of this changes anything regarding evolution. The religiously-driven theory has long since been known to be scientifically preposterous. Even something as contrary as real time epigenetics can hardly make matters worse for evolution. At this point such findings are just expected as evolution has become the best contrary indicator in science.

These findings do, however, leave evolutionists even more so without excuse. Nothing in biology makes sense in light of evolution.

Just Because I’m Metaphysical Doesn’t Mean I’m Wrong

The ancient Greeks believed that the planets and stars, like musical notes, were separated by harmonic intervals. This notion suggested that the cosmic cycles produced harmonious music, an idea that persisted into medieval astronomy as well as the early years of modern science. Johannes Kepler held such idealism and found intriguing correspondences between the elliptical orbits of the planets and musical scales. Obviously such idealism goes well with the idea that God designed and created the world. But nature was not always so pleasing. Was not the world full of “errors and bungles,” as the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and later the great botanist John Ray pointed out? Cudworth and Ray argued for a “Plastic Nature” which, simply put, was a way to insert natural laws between God and the world. Nicolas Malebranche and Thomas Burnet were other seventeenth century thinkers who produced their own versions of creation by natural law. These various ideas had their differences but the common theme was that God would not have intended for the less pleasing aspects of this world so it must have arisen via some simpler, indirect creation mechanisms. Leibniz, Kant, Hume and Darwin are just a few influential thinkers who followed with their own powerful arguments for why the world must have arisen according to the constraints of simple laws, not divine intent. These metaphysical mandates continue to drive science to this day and are most obvious in the writings of evolutionists. And so in one sense nothing has really changed—theology is still queen of the sciences. But in another sense things have changed dramatically simply because there is so much more scientific knowledge. One of these metaphysical mandates, the so-called greater god theology, has held up rather well and it is worth revisiting its origins and current status. Recent scientific findings have tended to confirm greater god theology, but in new and surprising ways.

Early in the eighteenth century, in the last few years of his life, the great philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz exchanged a series of letters with Isaac Newton supporter Samuel Clarke in which they debated a range of topics. One topic was, for lack of a better term, error correction in the natural world. The brilliant Newton had discovered that the solar system was unstable. Newton trusted his findings and concluded that perhaps the solar system is occasionally adjusted by special divine action. That is, a divine finger intervened to nudge a planet in its orbit and avoid an incipient instability.

For Leibniz this was practically heresy. As with Burnet, the idea that God would not design a world capable of self-sustained, perpetual operation was terrible theology. As Burnet made an analogy with a clockmaker. Clearly, the greater clockmaker is the one who makes a clock that is not in need of adjustment. We don’t admire the clockmaker who must nudge the hands of the clock occasionally to set things right, or otherwise makes a clock that doesn’t work:

We think him a better Artist that makes a Clock that strikes regularly at every hour from the Springs and Wheels which he puts in the work, than he that hath so made his Clock that he must put his finger to it every hour to make it strike; And if one should contrive a piece of clock-work so that it should beat all the hours and make all its motions regularly for such a time, and that time being come, upon a signal given, or a Spring toucht, it should of its own accord fall all to pieces; would not this be look’d upon as a piece of greater Art, than if the Workman came to that time prefixt, and with a great hammer beat it into pieces?

Is it not the same for the Creator? The greater god designs a world that has no need of adjustment. So for evolutionary thinkers such as Burnet and Leibniz, there was a need for a naturalistic explanation for why the solar system had not disintegrated. And just such an explanation was provided. It came later in the eighteenth century from the great French mathematician and scientist Pierre Laplace who solved the stability problem when he figured out that Newton’s bothersome instabilities would iron themselves out over the long run. Leibniz’s prophecy seemed confirmed as the solar system was inherently stable after all, with no need of divine adjustment.

This story is a classic example in the history of science of an apparent success of greater god theology (interestingly today’s science guarantees no such stability but suggests a remote chance that the solar system could become unstable).

In recent years, however, a plethora of new scientific evidence, from the burgeoning field of molecular and cellular biology, has been discovered that bears directly on this issue of error correction in nature and greater god theology. Even this week new papers are continue to elucidate this issue.

Consider, for example, DNA repair. The delicate double helix macromolecule can be compromised for a number of reasons and for this problem the cell has an astonishing built-in repair capability. Worst of all is the so-called double-stranded break where both threads of the DNA double helix are broken. But even here the cell is able to mend the damage. As one researcher put it, “it’s almost as if cells have something akin to a computer program that becomes activated by DNA damage, and that program enables the cells to respond very quickly.”

One such cause of DNA damage is the accidental insertion of ribonucleotides (RNA) into the DNA molecule. These errant ribonucleotides can accumulate by the millions in a single cell and, as a new paper explains, are edited out in mice, for example, by a crucial enzyme.

The presence of ribonucleotides in DNA can also cause copying errors when the DNA is replicated, as part of the cell division process. And as with DNA damage, DNA replication also has an amazing error correction process. Amazingly, the copied DNA is checked for accuracy and corrected to dramatically reduce the error rate.

Not surprisingly DNA copying is more error prone when there is DNA damage. When such damage is detected the normal copying machines are paused and a special “sloppier copier” is ushered in to do the job. This backup copying machine is able to replicate a damaged section of DNA by not reading it so precisely. This means that there are more copying errors, but a copy with more errors is better than no copy at all.

In fact the cell division process involves various mechanisms that are, as the author of another new paper put it, “very complex.” For instance, in the more advanced eukaryotic cells the DNA is arranged in chromosomes. The chromosomes are replicated in the cell division process, and these chromosome pairs are attached in something like an “X” pattern. The two copies are later separated and destined for the respective daughter cells produced by the cell division.

This process too can incur many problems and again the cell has incredible error correction mechanisms to make things right. Here is how one report explained new findings on this process:

During cell division, the cell's DNA is consolidated into X-shaped chromosome pairs that align along the middle of the cell. Where the arms of the X cross, each chromosome has two kinetochores--protein complexes that facilitate microtubule attachment to the chromosome. As cell division progresses, these microtubules pull the right or left half of each chromosome towards the spindle poles to separate them to opposite ends of the cell.

Problems can frequently arise during this process. As a microtubule extends from a spindle pole, it may attach incorrectly to a kinetochore. When this happens, the cell needs a way to detect the mistake, detach the problematic microtubule, and reattach it correctly. If the issue is not addressed and cell division proceeds, the chromosomes typically fail to divide evenly, resulting in cells with the wrong number of chromosomes. This aberrant distribution of chromosomes can lead to cancer or premature cell death.

To correct attachment problems, cells rely on a system of phosphorylation -- the addition of a phosphate group to certain proteins -- to control whether or not microtubules stay bound to the kinetochore.

According to the Molecular Cell paper, the enzyme Aurora B resides within the inner kinetochore and adds phosphates to a key player in the kinetochore, called the KMN network, that attaches to the microtubule. […]

"This is a very sensitive system that allows the cell to dynamically respond to different attachment problems," says Julie Welburn, first author of the Molecular Cell paper and a postdoctoral researcher in the Cheeseman lab.

DNA repair, DNA replication and chromosome dynamics are just a few examples where we find incredible error correction mechanisms in the cell. These various molecular correction mechanisms are, of course, extremely improbable given evolution. We would have to believe that evolution constructed fundamental cellular processes which were literally disastrous. Stable populations would not have been possible. But then, somehow, evolution rapidly rectified the calamity with astonishing error correction mechanisms. This narrative is simply untenable from a scientific perspective.

Equally unlikely would be the notion that the error correction mechanisms were already available, more or less in place and ready for use when the newly constructed, error-prone, processes originated.

But this is not merely a story of yet another evolutionary failure. What is interesting here is how these new findings reflect on the age-old greater god theology. To be sure, the operations of the cell are fantastic and should please the most idealistic observer. See this animation, as just one example of the splendor. Is it not like harmonious music?

But as we have seen above, clearly the world of molecular biology is error prone. This, it may seem, would present an immediate problem for the traditional idealistic view of creation. It hardly seems aesthetically pleasing for key cellular processes to be regularly producing errors at a high rate. Would the ancient Greeks not have been troubled by such findings?

Perhaps not. Recall that Leibniz’s concern was with an intervening Creator who adjusted and fixed His creation. The clockmaker should not “put his finger to [his clock] every hour to make it strike” as Burnet explained. What if the clock came with fantastic, built-in, devices to perform every correction and adjustment automatically?

It is not that the clock itself works on its own, but it does with these additional devices. Leibniz probably would have been delighted with this narrative. After all, elsewhere the German polymath argued that creation cannot be perfect but rather necessarily must entail evils and inefficiencies, for otherwise it could not be distinguished from the perfect Creator.

And so our new knowledge of nature provides profound insights far beyond the mere materialistic molecular actions. We now know things that wise men and sages from ages past could only have dreamed of. And these things reveal fundamental aspects of the creation. We leave such contemplations to the reader, but two messages are obvious.

First, the evolutionary view, that the world is a byproduct of a combination of chance events and the necessary action of law, is obviously challenged.

Second, the idealistic view, that the world is always a symmetric, harmonious, beautiful arrangement, according to our sentiment, is also challenged.

Yes creation does operate according to natural law, and it is certainly harmonious and incredible in many instances. But these two views do not extrapolate well.

The greater god theology, however, has held up rather well. It seems to derive from the idealistic view, and it motivated the evolutionary view, but taken in isolation from its lineage, the notion that God would not create a world in need of sporadic divine intervention continues to be serviceable.

Here's a New Technique For Mapping DNA Information Which Exposes Yet More Evolutionary Foolishness

A new method has been developed for mapping the precise locations at which DNA has been marked with a hydroxyl group. The hydrogen-oxygen molecule, like the methyl group to which it is attached, influences gene expression and so helps organisms adapt. The adaptation of species to environmental pressures would seem like obvious evidence for evolution. But in recent years we have begun to understand the enormous complexity of adaptation. It is not a story of natural selection acting on undirected biological variations (that is, variations that are blind to environmental pressures). This sort of undirected process has been the evolutionary dogma for the past century. In what was known as the Modern Synthesis, biological adaptation was described as resulting from blind variations resulting, for instance, from genetic rearrangements or unguided mutations. No thanks to evolution we are now beginning to understand the real version of biological adaptation. What we are seeing is an incredibly complex adaptation machine that tweaks the designs of organisms in response to environmental pressures.

It is not a simple story as there are a variety of different ways such adaptations can occur. These mechanisms, broadly labeled as epigenetic inheritance, can regulate the expression of genes as well as redesign the genes. The bottom line is that the adaptations are not unguided, they benefit the organism, and they are extremely complex. The evolutionary story is completely wrong. As one evolutionist admitted, the Modern Synthesis:

states that variations are blind, are genetic (nucleic acid-based), and that saltational events do not significantly contribute to evolutionary change. The epigenetic perspective challenges all these assumptions, and it seems that a new extended theory, informed by developmental studies and epigenetic inheritance, and incorporating Darwinian, Lamarckian, and saltational frameworks, is going to replace the Modern Synthesis version of evolution.

A new extended theory? This should be interesting, for it would have to explain how evolution creates mechanisms which, themselves, cause evolution (in the form of adaptation). In fact, evolutionists are already explaining this without losing a step. For instance (from the same paper):

Epigenetic inheritance should be favored in fluctuating environmental conditions that last for more than one generation (but not for very long) and may be particularly important in the type of environments experienced by many microorganisms. In such fluctuating environments, efficient epigenetic inheritance is likely to evolve (i) if the parental environment carries reliable information about the offspring’s environment, (ii) when the response to induction is lengthy and incurs a very high cost, and (iii) when recall is not an option or incurs too high a cost.

That was easy. Evolution just happens. So long as there is an advantage to a new design, then it will appear. That's how evolution works.

One of the best known epigenetic mechanisms is DNA methylation in which a methyl group is added to cytosine, one of the four DNA chemical letters. The methyl group is a sort of marker that can help to regulate the expression of genes. DNA methylation is accomplished via the action of a complicated molecular machine (DNA methyltransferase) that adds the methyl group at precisely the right location in the DNA strand.

So evolution configured DNA methyltransferase and the associated molecular information that tells it where to add the methyl group, so that later the organism and its offspring could benefit when certain environmental pressures arose. That's good planning.

And to further complicate matters, this molecular marker can, itself, be modified. That is, the mark can be marked, thus adding another layer of information to the epigenetic mechanism. In this case, the methyl group is hydroxylated. And of course a different complicated molecular machine is required for the task, and the information of when and where to go to work is needed.

Evolution must have created all these processes and molecular machines so evolution could occur. But that’s not all. Researchers found differing methylation patterns amongst mice from the same litter, reared in the same environment. As was reported:

[Researchers] found regions in the animal's genetic makeup with strikingly different patterns. Moreover, these regions occurred among genes responsible for determining anatomy during early development.

In other words, variably methylated regions of DNA have been discovered, and such variability could lead to increased trait variability. Evolutionists speculate that this could help the population survive:

We're proposing that certain gene variants contribute to heterogeneity in populations. In a fluctuating environment, this gives generations more opportunity to survive.

And perhaps this new capability could help answer long-standing questions about how it is that evolution could work so well. As the article explains:

For more than 100 years, mainstream science has embraced the basic tenets of Darwin's view that characteristics that increase an organism's ability to survive and reproduce will be passed from generation to generation. … Characteristics that affect an organism's ability to adapt and survive in times of environmental change have been thought to arise by chance through random mutations in an organism's DNA. However, this view could not explain how such mutations, which arise only rarely, help organisms of every size and variety adapt quickly enough through time.

So evolution created genes, chromosomes and alleles, horizontal gene transfer, introns, DNA methylation, and its additional hydroxyl signal just to name a few structures and processes. Of course there is a dizzying array of molecular machines choreographing this drama at just the right moments. All this so more evolution could occur.

And we can add another miracle to the list: variably methylated regions of DNA so future generations could survive when some unforeseen environmental challenge arises. It would be difficult to imagine a more foolish theory. The levels of absurdity to which evolutionists will go is truly remarkable.