Evolutionists Lose Again: “There's Not Even a Consensus on How to Approach the Problem”

Remember when evolution was a fact? Remember when your high school biology teacher explained the origin of life from a muddy pond (or maybe ocean vent) was beyond any doubt? Remember when the National Academy of Science declared that “For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells”? [1] Remember when Carl Zimmer wrote that scientists “have found compelling evidence that life could have evolved into a DNA-based microbe in a series of steps.”

Well, err, that was all wrong. Truth be told, there never was any such compelling evidence. There never was any proof that life arose spontaneously—from a warm little pond, ocean vent, or anywhere else for that matter.

In fact, as one evolutionist admitted, “there's not even a consensus on how to approach the problem.” That doesn’t exactly qualify as a fact.


1. National Academy of Sciences, Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences, 2d ed. (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999) 6.

An Animated Tour of the Cell: Revealing the Majestic Beauty of Biology

As reported at Evolution News and Views: It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words. An animation speaks at least 10,000.



This animation illustrates a few of the amazing operations that take place in living organisms. Wise men from ages past could only dream of such things but now that we know it evolutionists preach that it is meaningless. They are blind guides who, while professing to be wise, have become fools.

The Awesome Power Behind Evolution: It Is Unfathomable That a Loving Higher Intelligence Created the Species

In his book Inside the Human Genome Evolution professor and National Academy of Science member John Avise continues with the usual evolutionary religious claims that the evil and inefficiency of biological designs—at the molecular level in this case—necessitate evolution, for such designs would never have been designed or created by a loving higher intelligence:

Approximately 0.1% of humans who survive to birth carry a duplicon-related disability, meaning that several million people worldwide currently are afflicted by this particular subcategory of inborn metabolic errors. Many more afflicted individuals probably die in utero before their conditions are diagnosed. Clearly, humanity bears a substantial health burden from duplicon-mediated genomic malfunctions. This inescapable empirical truth is as understandable in the light of mechanistic genetic operations as it is unfathomable as the act of a loving higher intelligence. [112]

There you have it. Evil exists and a loving higher intelligence wouldn’t have done it that way. It is a powerful argument for evolution, but its power comes from religion, not science. And that is the story of evolution. From the pre Darwin Enlightenment years to today, these metaphysical arguments have mandated an evolutionary narrative. But the science reveals monumental problems. What Darwin and the evolutionists have done is to manipulate the science to fit our religious requirements. Theology is, and always has been, the queen of the sciences.

Religious Hypocrisy: Denial of Our Own Beliefs

The religious beliefs of evolutionists mandate that evolution, in one form or another, must be true. The details of how it happened don’t matter, but their religion demands that the world arose on its own. These beliefs have been clearly stated and proclaimed for centuries. And these beliefs have been proclaimed by a wide variety of believers, including Anglicans, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Jews, agnostics and atheists. Evolution is, if anything, a religious theory and there is nothing wrong with that. But evolutionists deny any such religious influence and criticize others for undue religious biases. That reveals the hypocrisy of evolutionary thought and a monumental internal contradiction.

As a general rule, those who are convinced they are free of metaphysics are those who are most beholden to metaphysics. P.Z. Myers, for example, wrote in the LA Times that he is “pretty certain that if there were an all-powerful being pulling the strings and shaping history for the benefit of human beings, the universe would look rather different than it does.”

That is a religious claim.

But when I pointed this out an evolution professor accused me of deception and asserted that Myers made no such religious claim:

see what the charlatan has done here: Myers said "IF there were an all-powerful being..."

But the confidence man's trick was to turn that conditional into a non-conditional statement. Keep you eyes out: It's his chief modus operandi.

No metaphysics committed here by Myers, once you peek behind the curtain.

The hypocrisy just keeps on coming. Evolutionists make religious arguments that mandate evolution, they accuse others of what they do, and when you point it out they just bring more empty accusations and denials. In this case, the evolution professor attempts to hide the religion with the fallacious argument that Myers argument is not a religious claim because it is a conditional. Of course that makes it no less of a religious claim. Religion drives science, and it matters.

The Religious Fundamentalism Among Us

As a general rule, those who are convinced they are free of metaphysics are those who are most beholden to metaphysics. Evolution professor and atheist P.Z. Myers once explained in an LA Times piece that he is “pretty certain that if there were an all-powerful being pulling the strings and shaping history for the benefit of human beings, the universe would look rather different than it does.” Pretty certain God wouldn’t have made this world? Myers is known for his strident views and he probably has never stopped for a moment to ponder the rather awkward question of how he knows of that certainty. For while Myers criticizes others for their religious beliefs, Myers’ notion of how the universe would and would not look if such an all-powerful being created it is, itself, a religious belief. Perhaps Myers’ certainty is at the 99% level. How did he arrive at such a value? You see whether Myer’s certainty is 99%, 98%, 90%, or whatever, does not matter. For in any case, it is a religious claim. There is no scientific experiment or evidence to back up Myers’ belief. There is no logic or rationale to which Myers could appeal. In fact not only is Myers’ criticism of religious beliefs hypocritical, but Myers own position is fallacious as it entails a massive internal contradiction. To wit, Myers concludes with atheism, but his very atheism undermines his religious claim. If atheism were true, then no religious claims could be known to be true. Simply put, religious claims would be meaningless. One could claim there is a 99% chance God would or would not do this or that, but such a claim would be worthless. Hypocrisy and irrationality are signs of the worst side of religion. He was brought up a Lutheran but Myers is now a religious fundamentalist.

And so it is something of a stretch for Myers to claim his high claims for evolution are objective, scientific conclusions. After all, if one is an atheist then evolution is pretty much the only alternative.

In fact Myers irrationality was on further display this week when he wrote that he is certain of evolution because it “occurred” and after all, it hasn’t been falsified:

I am certain that evolution occurred. The evidence is in; the process occurred and is occurring, there are no known barriers to natural processes producing modern life from proto-life/chemistry over the course of 3.8 billion years, and all the evidence we do have shows modern forms being incrementally modified versions of earlier forms. We don’t know all the details, of course, and just maybe someone somewhere could discover a real hurdle that could not have been overcome without intelligent aid, but I know for a fact that no creationist has ever come up with a defensible objection, and that nearly all the creationists who pontificate so ponderously on the impossibility of biology, Plantinga among them, always turn out to be profoundly ignorant of the science. There’s a good inverse correlation between knowledge of biology and certainty that evolution can’t work.

Notice the irrational leap evolutionists always take. In science theories are not true simply because they have not been disproven, but Darwin changed all that. These days Myers and evolutionists operate from a very low burden. Evolution is a fact unless it is falsified to their satisfaction.

So while evolution fails one prediction after another, and while evolutionists are continually surprised by the evidence, and while evolutionists cannot even come close to explaining how evolution occurred, Myers nonetheless is convinced. After all, the process occurred and no creationist has ever falsified it.

Myers is a beholden to his metaphysics. He is a religious fundamentalist and his fundamentalism has led to him to the age-old sophistry that everything must have arisen from nothing, and that’s a fact.

Drat! Evolutionists Get Away Again

Evolution Professor Jerry Coyne, who believes all of biology spontaneously arose by itself, has done it again. Coyne insists evolution is a fact, and like all evolutionists he has plenty of religious reasons for his confidence which he gives after blaming creationists for religious reasoning. And like all evolutionists he misrepresents science, such as when he claims that “All vertebrates begin development looking like embryonic fish because we all descended from a fishlike ancestor with a fishlike embryo. We see strange contortions and disappearances of organs, blood vessels, and gill slits because descendants still carry the genes and developmental programs of ancestors.” Of course that isn’t true, but Coyne has once again gotten away with it, this time with the help of a fancy new blog from an NCSE member.

The NCSE member says it’s perfectly fine to misrepresent science and say mammalian embryos have gill slits because, after all, evolutionists have been doing this all along and even before Darwin, natural theologians noted the strong similarities between mammalian and fish embryos. So when the field was in its infancy naturalists noted such similarities so now, two centuries later, it’s OK to say mammalian embryos have gill slits even though they don’t.

Whatever. Coyne escapes again with a fast one, and certainly is happy about it. He calls it a “wonderful new post” which takes those creationist rascals “completely apart” and it is “really educational.”

Not surprisingly, of course, this “wonderful” new post has all the usual misrepresentations (embryology “remains one of most compelling subsets of evidence for evolution”) and fallacious similiarity-implies-evolution reasoning (“We can, informally, call pharyngeal clefts ‘gill slits’ in the same way we call kiwi ‘wings’, wings, or cetacean  ‘limb buds’, limb buds, because despite the fact they no longer develop into functioning wings, limbs, or gills, in the organisms that bear them, because they are clearly homologous to those characters in organisms where they do retain those functions.”) so familiar to Coyne.

Most important though are the non scientific, religious mandates that underwrite evolution. You can see some of Coyne’s examples here, here, here, here and here. Misrepresentations and fallacies hardly matter when your religion tells you evolution must be true.

In this “wonderful” new post there is the venerable argument from dysteleology and its poster child example, the giraffe recurrent laryngeal nerve which is “of comic proportions” and makes “no obvious sense.” And there is the obligatory argument from the intellectual necessity of evolution. After all, “what is their [creationists] explanation for this pattern of embryological similarities amongst vertebrates that develop into very different adults?” And saying such similarities are a consequence of design is no better:

In reality their use of the term “common design” does nothing but relabel our ignorance. Worse it creates whole new sets of unanswerable questions. Designed by whom? Was it one designer or many (as in car companies)? How did he/she/it/they implement their design? Why did they design things the way they did? Why did they implement their designs in the timetable that they did? And on and on.

It gets worse if the “designer” is transcendent and omnipotent. This makes the concept completely untestable (and therefore unscientific) as such a creator could create anything, in any way, for reasons known only to itself.

Without evolution, there simply is “no coherent, testable, alternative explanation.”

So there you have it. Once again the evolutionist gets away and evolution wins the day. Evolution must be true, we may have no idea how such heroics occurred, but we certainly know that they did occur. Our religion demands it.

H/T: Schenck

You Won’t Believe This One: Evolutionists Say Their “Unpublished Data” Prove Evolution

You’ve seen evolutionists falsify the science and you’ve seen their religious mandates, but as the contradictions mount now they are simply referencing their unpublished data. In a study dealing with genetic regulation, the evolutionists discovered even more incredible complexity at the messenger RNA level. Here is how one writer summarized the results:

A team of molecular biologists from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has now discovered that mRNAs can be targeted for destruction by several modes and molecules, highlighting a previously unanticipated complexity in the control and regulation of the cell's genetic messages.

As with the previously known genetic regulation mechanisms, evolutionists can offer nothing more than vague speculation about how such incredible complexity could have arisen spontaneously. One of the proteins involved in some aspects of this regulation is called Ago and the evolutionists make the rather heroic claim that this protein, as found in mammals, evolved from an earlier version that was in ancient vertebrates. As a reference for this jaw-dropping, unscientific, claim, they unbelievably cite their “unpublished data”:

The four mammalian Ago homologs evolved from a common ancestor early in the vertebrate lineage (our unpublished data).

Imagine a physicist claiming to have proven perpetual motion and citing his unpublished data. This isn’t even wrong. Nor do terms such as absurd or ludicrous do justice to such inanity. Nothing in biology makes sense in the light of evolution.

NAS Authority: It Makes No (Theo)logical Sense and it Defies Notions of a Supreme Intelligence

In his book Inside the Human Genome Evolution professor John Avise makes the usual evolutionary truth claims that biological designs make “no (theo)logical sense” and “defy notions of a supreme intelligence.” The biological designs, in this case, are those involved in the mitochondria’s cellular energy production. Avise writes:

Considering the critical role of cellular energy production in human health and metabolic operations, why in the world would an intelligent designer have entrusted so much of the production process to a mitochondrion, given the outrageous molecular features this organelle possesses?. Why would a wise designer have imbued mtDNA with some but not all of the genes necessary to carry out its metabolic role (and then put the remaining genes in the mucleus instead)? Why would a wise engineer have put any crucial genes in a caustic cytoplasmic environment where they are exposed routinely to high concentrations of mutagenic oxygen radicals? And why would He have dictated that the mitochondrial genetic code must differ from the nuclear genetic code, thereby precluding cross-translation between two genomes for which effective communication would seem to be highly desirable?
The puzzlement for explanations involving ID goes even further. Why would an intelligent designer have engineered mtDNA structures (such as a closed-circular genome, no introns, no junk DNA, lack of binding histones) and mtDNA operations (such as little or no genetic recombination, the production of a polygenic transcript, a limited ability to mend itself, and no self-sufficiency in transcription or translation) to differ so fundamentally from their counterpart features in the nuclear genome? In a nutshell, the underlying design of the whole mitochondrial operation seems to make no (theo)logical sense. Not only is the overall design of mtDNA suboptimal—it is downright ludicrous. [103-4]

However, as discussed in chapter 1, in this book we are not particularly concerned with genomic features that suggest good workmanship because such features are philosophically consistent with either natural selection or intelligent causation. Our focus instead is on genomic features that defy notions of a supreme intelligence underlying biological design. Genomic flaws should in principle provide a more decisive test of whether unconscious evolutionary processes or cognitive agents have shaped our genes. [108]

Evolutionists have been making these arguments for centuries but what many observers, including historians and philosophers of science, fail to realize is that these arguments are metaphysical. One reason for this failure is that these evolutionary claims are rather charged and polarizing. People tend to agree or disagree with them, and hence the debate rapidly focuses on whether or not evolutionary claims are true.

While certainly that is an interesting question and worthy of discussion at some point, it misses the more fundamental point which is that evolutionary thinking is metaphysical. It may be true, it may be false, but it is metaphysical.

The claim that evolution is overwhelmingly a fact is underwritten not by the science (on which evolution is problematic), but by the metaphysics. For instance, set the debate aside for a moment and take the evolutionary position. Assume, for a moment, that you believe what evolutionists believe. Pretend that you, rather than the evolutionist, wrote the above passages. Now ask yourself, is evolution a fact?

Of course it is. It must be. Once you understand evolutionary thinking, then you will understand why they say evolution is a fact. Evolutionists claim the high ground of science and accuse others of religious bias. But it is all a hypocritical lie.

And when confronted with this evolutionists equivocate on their claims. They say the “fact” of evolution refers merely to change over time. That equivocation is easily exposed and it reveals how twisted is evolutionary thinking. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

NAS Authority Speaks: That Would Be Blasphemous! Religion Provides the “Acid Test” As Evolution Goes Viral

We have seen that an evolution professor and member of the National Academy of Sciences, John Avise, argued that the evolution of the species is not by chance and that the evolution of complexity is not a problem because high fitness, point mutations are fixed in populations of bacteria in a test tube. You might think that such erroneous claims must be one-time blunders—mistakes that would be quickly retracted when pointed out. But this is not the case. These are standard evolutionary arguments. Avise’s book was endorsed by several evolutionists, and when I pointed out these enormous blunders other evolutionists rushed to his defense. Fallacious thinking is fundamental to evolutionary thought. But why? After all, evolutionists such as Avise are certainly not intellectually lacking. Evolutionists are smart, well educated and informed. So why the blatantly erroneous claims? The answer, as usual, comes down to religion.

In his book Inside the Human Genome, John Avise discusses at length the evils and inefficiencies of the world, and in particular in the genome. He explains repeatedly that this cannot be reconciled with a good god. For example, Avise introduces the reader to this problem on the third page of the book:

This is the persistent dilemma of theology. Why does suffering exist in a world governed by a loving deity? Put more simply, why do bad things happen to good (as well as bad) people? … Why for example must countless people endure sometimes lifelong pain and suffering from inherited physical disabilities? And why must the persecutions extend even to those who surely must be innocent in God’s eyes, such as the untold numbers of human embryos and fetuses who spontaneously abort in utero? Indeed, in a world run by a loving Creator God, why are senescence and death the unavoidable fates of anyone fortunate enough to have survived all of life’s earlier challenges? … But what about the evil visited upon people in situations where free will is irrelevant? The victim of a tornado or earthquake presumably had no control over such natural catastrophes, nor did an aborted embryo have control over the inherited disabilities that may have caused its premature death. [Inside the Human Genome, Oxford, 2010, p. 3-5]

This sentiment continues as Avise rehearses, later in the chapter, the standard evolutionary metaphysics that it is not the good designs that rebuke creationism so much as the harmful ones:

At least at a superficial explanatory level, evolutionary and creationist scenarios both seem plausible, in principle, for complex traits that perform their functions well. A more acid test comes from complex traits that are harmful to their bearers. As we will see in later chapters, many complex generic traits (such as pseudogenes and mobile elements) that often are functionless or even detrimental to the organisms that house them are rampant in the genomes of vertebrate animals, humans included. Did a Creator God repeat these apparent errors of genomic construction time and time again? Or are such genomic flaws merely the footprints of phylogenetic history? [28-9]

It is these harmful and inefficient designs, particularly in the genome, that Avise will elaborate on in the remainder of the book. For instance consider harmful mutations. Avise believes it would be blasphemous to ascribe them to God:

Few people would blame a loving and all-powerful God for purposefully inventing deleterious mutations; that would be blasphemous. [65]

For as Avise points out these mutations can be devastating:

most de novo mutations range from neutral to highly deleterious for human health, and collectively they leave in their wake countless shattered bodies and destroyed lives (including those of untold numbers of early human embryos). These are probably not the kinds of biological outcomes that one would wish to attribute to the direct hand of an all-powerful and loving God. [72]

It’s all about religion. It did not begin with Darwin, and ever since Darwin the religious control of science has become even stronger. Of course evolution must be a fact—our religion demands it. For otherwise we commit blasphemy. Never mind that it makes no sense scientifically. Like a Trojan Horse, religion has infected science, and it has gone viral.

Evolutionists Just Invented a New Euphemism For Today’s Evolutionary Tree Failure

Now they’re calling it “displacement.” An ubiquitous and fundamental DNA binding protein is missing from a heat-loving single cell organism. Instead, there is a novel protein in its place:

The crystal structure of Ttx1576 reveals a unique fold and a mechanism for ssDNA binding, consisting of an extended cleft lined with hydrophobic phenylalanine residues and flanked by basic amino acids. Two ssDNA-binding domains are linked by a coiled-coil leucine zipper. 

The evolutionary tree failed yet again so evolutionists just invented another just-so story. That ubiquitous and fundamental protein was “displaced”:

ThermoDBP appears to have displaced the canonical SSB during the diversification of the Thermoproteales, a highly unusual example of the loss of a “ubiquitous” protein during evolution.

I guess anything can happen “during evolution.” As one of the evolutionists explained:

All cells, whether they are microbial or human, have some things in common. These are the fundamental components or building blocks which were present in the first cells and have been passed on over 3.5 billion years. However, we have discovered that a gene normally thought to be absolutely essential and conserved throughout every form of life, is in fact lost in one group of volcanic bugs, and replaced by a completely novel gene we have christened ThermoDBP.

As one writer explained, “The discovery has ramifications for understanding about how life has evolved on earth.” That would be an understatement. What the new discovery and associated just-so story reveal, yet again, is that pretty much anything goes “during evolution.” This is not a theory, it is a tautology. It doesn’t explain nature, it is explained by nature. Whatever evolutionists find, it must have evolved. Of course there is no scientific explanation for how novel proteins could arise. In fact even the best just-so story is a ridiculous 27 orders of magnitude short of reality. Evolutionists have no idea how it could have happened, but they are absolutely sure that it did happen: “Evolution is a fact, don’t confuse me with the facts.”

A Member of the National Academy of Sciences Made an Argument For Evolution That Isn’t Even Wrong

An obvious problem with evolution is its claim that complex designs arose spontaneously. Imagine some spark plugs, valves and other assorted mechanical parts coming together to form an engine. It’s unlikely no matter how many years you have. What evolutionists would need to show is that there is a long, long sequence of simpler, intermediate designs which gradually lead from a lifeless warm little pond to the incredible species in today’s world. Of course they have shown no such thing—not even close. So instead evolutionists use sophistry—explanations that are so flawed and illogical they cannot even be said to be wrong. For example, professor and National Academy of Sciences member John Avise makes this argument:

Another ID sentiment is that the emergence of biotic complexity via natural processes (unlike under intelligent auspices) is highly improbable, a notion that proponents of ID sometimes claim to document statistically. An undisputed law of statistics states that the probability of the joint occurrence of two or more independent events is calculated by multiplying together the separate probabilities of those events. For example, suppose that independent events A and B occur with random probabilities of 1 in 10 million (i.e., 10^-7) and 1 in 100 million (10^-8), respectively. The probability that both events occur together, by chance, is thus minuscule: one in a quadrillion (i.e., 10^-7 x 10^-8 = 10^-15). Mutations are examples of such rare and independent events, each typically occurring at a rate of about 10^-7 or 10^-8 per gene per generation. Suppose that a complex adaptation (such as a metabolic resistance to two different categories of otherwise lethal drugs) requires the joint presence in an organism of two mechanistically independent mutations. A proponent of ID might conclude that this adaptation is effectively unachievable by natural forces because its random probability is so very low. Divine intervention then becomes the default explanation.

But this is a gross misapplication of statistics, as the following example will illustrate. Consider a small colony of a billion bacterial cells, housed in a test tube, that lacks the genetic capacity to survive the antibiotics penicillin and streptomycin. New mutations for penicillin resistance (p+) and streptomycin resistance (s+) are known to arise randomly in bacteria, at low frequency. If the mutation rate to p+ is a plausible 10^-7, then a culture of 10^9 bacteria should by chance contain about 100 cells with penicillin resistance. When penicillin is added to the culture, all bacteria die except for those lucky 100 cells which then quickly divide and multiply to bring their number back up to a billion cells (all now carrying the p+ mutation). In this new colony, about 10 cells should by chance be resistant to streptomycin, assuming that the mutation rate to s+ is a plausible 10^-8. If streptomycin is then added to the culture, all of the bacteria die except for these 10 cells, which again divide and multiply to repopulate the test tube with a billion descendants (all of which are now p+ and s+ jointly). By this stepwise process, the unconscious operation of selection has made virtually inevitable what might otherwise have been deemed impossible—the evolution of a complex adaptation. [Inside the Human Genome, Oxford, 2010, p. 33-5]

The logic here is astonishing. In the hands of the evolutionist a failure of his theory is transformed into a victory with what can only be described as sheer absurdity. The underlying, unspoken, premise is that the stepwise fixation of single, high fitness, point mutations is no different than the evolution of all biological complexities. In fact there are precisely zero such designs that are known to be constructable via such a sequence. Indeed, quite the opposite, science points us in the opposite direction. Even the evolution a single protein falls 27 orders of magnitude short of reality, and that is according to evolutionist’s own, outrageously optimistic assumptions.

Avise’s argument is simply jaw-dropping. It is a complete misrepresentation of what we know from science.

A Member of the National Academy of Sciences Repeated This Huge Evolution Blunder

The whole point of evolution—that the species arose all by themselves—is also the whole problem. Evolutionists wax eloquently about how there is no goal, plan or purpose to the world. Biology arose by chance events, such as random mutations, which did not have the species in mind. But how could the species possibly arise by chance? Such a proposition is highly unlikely, to put it kindly. How do evolutionists explain this probability dilemma? How do they explain away something that is astronomically unlikely? Simple. Evolutionists say the question has got it all wrong, for the evolution of the species is not, in fact, by chance at all. Yes, there are random events involved, such as mutations, but they must pass the test of natural selection which very much is not random. But this is yet another evolutionary blunder. Not only is it a misrepresentation of evolutionary theory, it fails to resolve the probability dilemma.

The University of California Museum of Paleontology’s website about evolution, funded by your tax dollars, claims that it is a misconception that evolution means that the species arose by chance. Here is how the website explains this supposed misconception:

Chance is certainly a factor in evolution, but there are also non-random evolutionary mechanisms. Random mutation is the ultimate source of genetic variation, however natural selection, the process by which some variants survive and others do not, is not random.

In other words, yes mutations are random, but natural selection is not. This blunder is elaborated by University of California professor and National Academy of Sciences member, John Avise. Avise repeats the argument that natural selection is not random, but he also argues that the biological variation, which is subject to selection, is also, ultimately, not random:

Advocates of Intelligent Design contend that complex biological features cannot arise by chance, the implication being that chance equates to natural evolutionary processes and anti-chance equates to sentient forces. From a scientific vantage, however, the driving force of adaptive evolution—natural selection—is itself the antithesis of chance. …

Natural selection can sift only among the genetic variants available for its scrutiny, and two of the three primary sources of genetic variability—de novo mutations and recombination—occur essentially at random with respect to forging adaptations. … In this important sense, the genetic fodder upon which natural selection acts can indeed be characterized as stochastic or chancy in origin.

The third source of population genetic variation entails a mixture of “chance and necessity.” Apart from de novo mutations and recombinant genotypes, the genetic variety available for natural selection in any generation is also a function of historical circumstance, that is, of idiosyncratic genealogical outcomes that have been affected by both stochastic and directive evolutionary processes across all prior generations. Evolution going forward can work only with the biological substrates provided by evolution foregone. These biological substrates—“ghosts of evolution past”—are not supernatural legacies, but instead they are real genetic lineages and real species that have been subjected for eons to the full panoply of evolutionary processes including natural selection (the directive agent of adaptive evolution) as well as idiosyncratic mutation, recombination, and genetic drift (stochastic forces in the sense described above). [Inside the Human Genome, Oxford, 2010, p. 27-8]

Avise’s mental gymnastics are painful to watch. This blunder is consistent amongst evolutionists, but no less astonishing. First let’s consider the claim that natural selection means the origin of species wasn’t by chance. Imagine a friend wins a one-in-a-million jackpot at roulette, but he claims it wasn’t by chance because he also had some losing bets. On his losing bets he collected nothing, but on his winning bets collected his winnings. Isn’t that the very antithesis of chance?

Of course not. This is a monumental blunder in thinking. Yes he doesn’t collect on his losing bets, and he does collect on his winning bets. But that does not change the fact that roulette is a game of chance. And it doesn’t change the fact that his beating the casino was unlikely.

According to evolution biological variation is random with respect to need or purpose. Natural selection doesn’t change this. It kills off the bad designs, but winning designs are nonetheless constructed by random variation—they are by chance. Every mutation and recombination event leading to whales, cherry trees and humans was, according to evolution, random. Likewise every losing design is also by chance.

In other words, some designs win and some designs lose. The process continues and the species evolve. But it is entirely by chance. The fact that some win and some lose doesn’t change this.

Avise’s second argument is that chance is also removed from the process because it is on-going, producing new species which become the basis for further evolution. This argument is equally fallacious.

A chance process that continues for awhile is still a chance process.

The evolutionary process is still by chance. If a frog evolved from an earlier amphibian—such that the evolution of frogs was limited in its possibilities—that doesn’t change the fact that the process was, from the beginning, by chance.

Every biological variation that occurs is random. Yes natural selection kills off the bad designs. And yes the process proceeds down certain pathways, producing certain species. But every species is produced by a series of random biological variations.

The origin of species by chance is unlikely. It would require a long, long series of random mutations that just happens to construct an incredible biological design. And this would have to occur repeatedly, for all of biology’s amazing designs. And in each of these long series of random mutations, there would need to be a great many—mostly undiscovered and unknown—intermediate designs. And these intermediate designs would have to be helpful to the organism.

From single proteins to cellular processes to whole organisms, the science gives little reason to think such a process is likely. Indeed the science repeatedly indicates such a process is likely to be very unlikely.

And the evolutionist’s appeal to natural selection changes none of this. Their claim that the killing off of bad designs means that the origin of species was not by chance, and that this resolves the probability dilemma, is not only false, it demonstrates an important failure in evolutionary thinking.

Here’s the Tip of the Iceberg on Cellular Regulation and it Has Evolutionists Drinking Alone Again

A recent study of how phosphate groups regulate proteins uncovered a complex network of interactions. Kinases are proteins that add a phosphate group to a molecule, such as another protein, and phosphatases are proteins that remove the phosphate group. A protein is phosphorylated when a phosphate group is attached to a hydroxyl group in the side chain of a specific and particular amino acid out of the hundreds in the protein. Such phosphorylation controls the protein’s activity, for instance by altering the protein’s shape or attracting another molecule to bind to the protein. Furthermore, the kinase and phosphatase proteins themselves are regulated. It’s just a small bit, as the study helped demonstrate, of the cell’s immensely complex regulation network. Of course this complexity was a surprise to evolutionists who expected the usual “just-add-water” version of biology. As one of the authors explained: “Our studies have revealed an intricate network of proteins within cells that is much more complex than we previously thought.” Or as one writer explained:

Scientists studying interactions between cell proteins -- which enable the cells in our bodies to function -- have shown that proteins communicate not by a series of simple one-to-one communications, but by a complex network of chemical messages. …

Researchers, including scientists from the University of Edinburgh, used advanced technology to identify hundreds of different proteins, and then used statistical analysis to identify the more important links between them, mapping almost 2000 connections in all.

Scientists expected to find simple links between individual proteins but were surprised to find that proteins were inter-connected in a complex web.

A complex web? And how did evolution create such a complex web of regulation where  proteins control other proteins by adding or removing small chemical tags such as phosphate groups?

Well first there is the problem of how random change could create a protein of any kind, let alone one that performs a needed function. Then there is the problem of how evolution could stumble upon the incredibly fine-tuned functionality of adding phosphate groups to the right hydroxyl group on the right side chain of the right amino acid in the right protein. Oh and there had to be just luckily some spare phosphate groups floating around and available.

And of course after having achieved such a miracle evolution would only have progressed a tiny step in a million mile journey. For this incredible phosphorylation capability would accomplish precisely nothing. In fact without the ability to remove the phosphate group, from the right hydroxyl group on the right side chain of the right amino acid in the right protein at the right time, the phosphorylation could be disastrous. And if not disastrous it would be an incredible stroke of luck if it accomplished anything useful. It would be a miracle if it were done at the right time, and even if it was, who knows what effect it would have on whatever function the target protein just happened to have bequeathed to it by the random actions of evolution.

You see this is all a joke. A very, very, very bad joke. And we couldn’t help but be reminded of a certain letter that touched on the topic of such bad jokes:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.”

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

It’s not too late.

Evolutionists Self-Destructing: Now They Are Saying Evolution Created a Fine-Tuned Electro Magnetic Communications System Which We Can’t Even Detect

It has long since been known that the cells of organisms give off light but exactly how and why they do this has not been well understood. Evidence has suggested that this electromagnetic energy is more than merely a random by-product of metabolic processes but rather contains information which is transmitted and received by different cells. One recent study, for example, confirmed that some sort of non chemical information is transmitted between cells, in this case of the unicellular organism Paramecium caudatum. Different populations of the organism, separated by glass or quartz barriers which allow only certain frequencies of light, showed correlated activity. It appeared that one population can influence cell division and metabolic activities in neighboring populations. The barriers prevented any chemical influences and so information-bearing photons, rather than molecules, seem to the mechanism at work. If so, then at least two different frequencies are used in a fine-tuned electromagnetic communication system. As the paper concluded:

In the present study, three major experiments confirmed that separated populations of the ciliate Paramecium caudatum interact with each other through glass under conditions of complete darkness. A careful control showed that the interactions are due to conspecific cells and not to the medium containing bacteria. The mutual influence between the ciliates was found for cell division, growth correlation and energy uptake (vacuole formation).

Comparing these results with corresponding studies on onion roots, yeast cells, tissue cells and zygote-germination a major common feature appears: organisms (or isolated cells) can transmit information without the use of a molecular information carrier. The observed induction on growth, furthermore, hints at a universal property of growth regulation.

If the effects on cell division (growth) found in this and other studies reveal a common feature, we are obliged to accept that cells are not only a world of effective molecules but also a world of effective light.

And this electromagnetic communication system is so sophisticated we can’t even figure it out. We don’t know how the information is generated or how the photons are transmitted or received. Even just detecting the tiny energy fluctuations is incredibly difficult.

But rest assured, evolution created all of this. Which is to say, all of this just happened to arise by itself. That’s what evolutionist insist is a fact.

What science shows, on the other hand, is that evolution is a myth. Of course that was obvious all along. Let’s be perfectly clear. We can argue over many scientific details, but what is a fact is that evolutionists dogmatically make truth claims about things they don’t even understand and cannot explain. That’s called superstition.

An Electric Face: A Rendering Worth a Thousand Falsifications

[Ed: An oldie but goodie. Make sure you watch the videos below]

From electron microscopes to earth-orbiting observatories, scientists use a variety of instruments to study nature by measuring, observing and yes, rendering. Measurements are graphed and fitted with mathematical models. Renderings, on the other hand, are not so easily quantified. This can make them less useful for the business of building quantitative models and making predictions. But renderings can, in an instant, convey a powerful message. A picture, as they say, is worth a thousand words.

Consider, for instance, ribonuclease A, an enzyme that voraciously chops up RNA molecules. In the mid twentieth century scientists figured out how to determine the structure of such proteins using X-rays, and then later using other techniques as well. A protein sample is carefully crystallized and then exposed to an X-ray beam. The X-rays diffract as they pass through the sample and create a complex pattern which indicates the positions of the various atoms in the protein. Here is what the 124 amino acid ribonuclease A protein structure looks like when its many atoms are rendered in a three-dimensional graph:

As you can see, a graph of a protein’s individual atoms doesn’t tell you very much. It looks like, well, a bunch of atoms. But if we step back and consider the protein’s amino acids we see something very different. In a protein, the amino acids are sometimes wound tightly in a helix. Or they can be stretched out into a strand. These two patterns can be detected from the atomic locations and graphed. Here is the ribonuclease A structure again, but this time with these amino acid patterns rendered and their individual atoms left off the graph:

Suddenly a coherent structure is apparent.

Because ribonuclease A is such a voracious eater it sometimes needs to be turned off. Enter the ribonuclease inhibitor. Here are some different renderings of this beautiful horse-shoe shaped protein:

The ribonuclease inhibitor is shaped to dock with ribonuclease A and bring it to a halt. Here are renderings of the two proteins docked together:

Such renderings provide an immediate peek at the phenomena at work. They provide higher level information than do mere measurements. And it is interesting that these renderings were made with graphing tools that know nothing of ribonuclease A or ribonuclease inhibitors, in particular. Computer scientists have developed these powerful rendering tools based on general principles of protein structure. But these tools do nothing without the structural data provided by measurement techniques, such as X-ray diffraction.

So as with electron microscopes and astronomical observatories, these molecular tools create impressive, beautiful and meaningful renderings that are completely dependent on the measurements. The computer scientist creates the tool, but has no idea what rendering might emerge after the raw data are input.

A recent example of the power of rendering, and the importance of stepping back and choosing the right perspective, is the frog embryo’s electric face. If that sounds strange read on, for as one researcher said, “electric face” is the perfect description.

The body electric

Electricity is not just for engineers, it is crucial in biology as well. For instance, a cell contains various ionic compounds which give the cell interior a net charge. And the difference between the intracellular charge and that of the the external environment causes a voltage across the cell membrane. This membrane voltage is crucial in cellular biology. For instance, a wide variety of membrane proteins, such as channels that allow chemical in and out of the cell, are controlled by the membrane voltage. Change the voltage and you suddenly change the state of those proteins and their various actions.

Yes electricity is important in biology, but when Dany Adams left her digital camera and microscope apparatus running overnight, she had no idea what stunning electrical patterns would emerge on the frog embryo she was studying. Watch this video to learn more:

Here is a shorter video of just the embryo:

The video suggests that bioelectric signals presage the morphological development of the face. It also, in an instant, gives a peak at the phenomenal processes at work in biology. As the lead researcher said, “It’s a jaw dropper.”

The frog’s electric face is one of those renderings worth a thousand words. We could make detailed protein measurements showing that evolution cannot even explain how a single protein could have arisen. In fact there are 27 orders of magnitude between evolution’s expectations and reality. And that is going by the evolutionist’s own reckoning (in reality it is 100+ orders of magnitude). Or we could make detailed measurements of mutations and show that unicellular organisms are not likely to evolve spontaneously into elephants.

But the frog’s electric face, in an instant, reminds one of the utter absurdity of evolution. Religion drives science, and it matters.

* Hat tip to bornagain77