Friday, January 26, 2007

Evolution Redefined

Is it fair to blatantly state in textbooks that the world was created by God? I concede that it’s not “scientific” to make such a statement. But it is the people’s basic right to pursue knowledge without withholding crucial information from them.

From a purely educational point of view, 5 icons pop up when we touch on the topic of evolution: Stanley Miller. Darwin’s Tree Of Life. Haeckel’s embryos. The archaeopteryx. Java Man. What do these 5 icons really say about evolution? Are the complete facts presented in textbooks?



The concept behind Stanley Miller’s experiment to produce amino acids by artificial means to prove the origin of life has been abandoned by the mid-1970s. The wrong gas mixture had been used to simulate the primitive earth. Science magazine said in 1995 that “the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation.” If the experiment is replayed using the correct gases, you will get formaldehyde and cyanide. They are toxic compounds, not precursors to life. Any organic chemist knows this.



Darwin’s Tree Of Life is not supported by fossil records. Fossil evidence up to today shows a Cambrian explosion – a rapid appearance of phylum-level differences in a sudden period of time, instead of a long history of gradual divergence from a common ancestor. The Cambrian explosion has uprooted Darwin’s tree. An overwhelming collection of fossil records shows this.




Haeckel’s embryos are an academic equivalent of murder on 3 counts. Firstly, Haeckel cherry-picked his examples to support his idea. Secondly, Haeckel used the same woodcut to print embryos from different classes because he was so confident of his theory that he figured he didn’t need to draw them separately. He was already accused of fraud by his colleagues since the 1860s. Thirdly, embryos look alike during the mid-point stage of development, not during the early stage as Haeckel claimed. Any embryologist knows this.



The archaeopteryx is not a missing link. It is a bird, not a half-bird, half-reptile. A branch of evolutionary theorists tried to find bird-like reptiles in fossil records to prove that birds came from reptiles by descent. The fossils found were dated tens of millions of years after, not before the archaeopteryx! If the archaeopteryx indeed is the missing link, it should be the other way around. The missing link is still missing. The archaeopteryx is not an ancestor of modern birds. Rather, it’s a member of a totally extinct group of birds. Paleontologists know this.



Dubois’ 1892 excavation of Java Man too, is not a missing link. Java Man consisted from nothing more than a skullcap, a femur, three teeth, and a great deal of imagination. Dubois’ shoddy excavation would have disqualified the fossil according to today’s standards. The femur apparently did not belong with the skull cap. The skull cap was distinctly human and reflected a brain capacity well within the range of humans living today. A 342-page scientific report from a team of 19 fact-finding evolutionists has demolished Dubois’ claims.

I am not talking religion here. I am talking science. In educating people, all evidence should be presented properly. Students should be at liberty to decide on their personal views after they are properly informed. Not before.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a good article.

Enjoy it.

~SC~

Anonymous said...

Most of the information in the article is wrong! First, the earlier argument against the Miller-Urey experiment, that oxygen was present in early Earth's atmosphere and prevent the formation of organic molecules, has been proved wrong. Many similar experiments using different chemical compositions and physical conditions have yielded lots of organic molecules that are the precursors of life. And yes, cyanide was also produced but it can be reduced to amine or oxidised to carboxylic acid easily (any A-level chem students will know). As for Archaeopteryx, the fossil was dated to be 150 million years of age, which is in the middle of the dinosaur reign (230-65 million years ago). And recent analysis of the collagen sequence from Tyrannosaurus soft tissues has shown that it is more closely related to chicken than to reptiles like lizards and crocodiles.
You can find more detail in wikipedia or other encyclopedia. And I think you should study more about evolution if your belief in God is based on the proposition that "organisms are too complex to have evolved naturally and so there must be a creator or designer".

Anonymous said...

This is a very good argument. Is it taken from the "Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel? I am using it right now to teach a class and it poses the very same arguments. Good job all the same though.

Anonymous said...

Similarities between certain structures in animals, does not mean they all evolved from a common ancestor. If that were so, there would be an ABUNDANT of transitional forms and we do not see this.

Instead we find fully formed fossils of the same animals we see today. Extinct animals should not be subject to evolutionary labels either and fitted into their scenario of a transitional form. Since that too has been blown out of the water a few times when discovering a so called "missing link" (earlier ancestor) was still existing somewhere else today!

Now if you can find evidence that scales/skin turned into feathers, to show dinosaur to bird evolution, you're welcome to present it. Otherwise this is absolute imagination, based upon a preconceived belief system and totally unscientific.

One can also view the fossil museum online (google it), which shows many many fossils including birds, plain old birds, similar to the ones we see today, which are dated around the sametime as their supposed "missing link". So much for dinosaur to bird evolution.

Evolutionists are the ones that claim the order of evolution is in the fossil record, yet this is not so. The only "order" you'll find is manipulated chart scenarios in textbooks.

Take a good look at reality, instead of buying into animations, charts, wishful thinking scenarios and you'll find the world around you does a better job at defying evolution than anything or anybody else.

I thank the person that wrote this, becuase they are totally correct. Every fossil we see, has shown to be fully formed and never "on its way" to being anything, or anything else. Again, showing abrupt appearance of fully formed creatures all over the world. There is indeed a museum all around us that continues to support the creation of all life.

Anonymous said...

I am a biology student currently in an upper division biology class and it would seem by the assumptions that this article makes that the author has not studied biology professionally.

First of all, a good scientist should never include un falsifiable concepts such as GOD in their work, that stated the scientists who this article is critisizing were not tring to dispel the idea of God or the possibility of a larger meaning or presence in the universe.

Secondly the facts that were used to support these assertions are plain wrong. The Miller experiment was indeed full of issues but the line of research that was begun by those experiments have given us great understanding about life on this planet and possibly other planets as well.

Third, Darwin was the first (but don't forget the major contributions to his work by Wallace) person to openly present and publish ideas of common descent and natural selection as a mechanism for evolution. He however was completely correct as any evolutionary biologist would say. Since him genetics and a deeper understanding of ecology has changed many of the details in his work. Malthus a reverend who wrote the famous piece "Essay on the Principle of Population" was the inspiration for Darwin's theory of natural selection. You should do your homework.

Fourth the cambrian explosion, as well as the various explosions and extinctions that have occurred on our planet is infact supported by the fossil record. Uniformitariansim states that the forces that are working today can account for past alterations and or patterns. This concept illustrates that all the changes on our earth (or our universe) are based on gradual changes through time. If you can imagine the human race in one million years we (meaning humans today) would be a transitional species (missing link) to them, it's all how you look at it. Archaeopteryx is not a regular bird, that is just plain wrong and there are many structural similarities with dinosaur lines (not all of them) and this subject is one that starts fights in a room full of biologists. Yes the dates don't make sense if we claim that birds are the direct descendents of dinosaurs but maybe they diverged much earlier than we think, maybe archaeopteryx is just a mutation, there are many explanations that don't falsify one of the most studied theories of human kind, evolution.

I could go on but I wont. Read, go take a class, learn it for real and then make these assumptions.

Anonymous said...

Some caveats:

I am a Biology major.
I believed fully in evolution, then was unconvinced by the actual solid evidence, but now am more open to be convinced if the evidence grows more solid (the DNA link between dinosaurs and birds helps).

First: good scientist should never include unfalsifiable concepts in their work. Yet, modern 'science' often relies on processes that cannot or can no longer be observed - for example, what once-upon-a-time-but-not-existent-today processes prevented the seas from having a much higher percentage of salt than at present(if the Earth really is billions of years old), or what processes stopped the claimed positive-feedback loop of higher CO2 leads to higher temperatures leads to higher CO2 in global warming theory.

Second, the Miller experiment was valuable. But if it is indeed flawed, it should no longer be used as an 'example of how life formed from nonliving chemicals'.

Back to my introduction... Apart from the oft claimed general fossil evidence, can you personally cite specific examples of evidence of evolution? It would be good to dig in deeper and know, for sure, what evidence one can base evolutionary theory on.

Once upon a time, I assumed it was all there. Then I found out that it wasn't. And recently I've been intrigued by the DNA line of evidence which seems much more solid than basing entire evolutionary trees on a single bone per specimen.

Not all scientific fact is indeed, FACT.

Anonymous said...

Some very interesting comments I must say. I myself am a Biology teacher and yet I by no means am about to stand up and angerly point my finger at another and shout "you are wrong!" simply because I study Biology.
I think the thing about evolution verses whatever that bothers me is that overall,only one origin of life has been chosen to be represented in our textbooks. To me that defies what science is all about. The very idea of examining every possible avenue and digging deaper. We have become a society who reads something or takes the media as the truth and simply sit back and accept it as gospel without daring to debate it, tear it apart and discover for ourselves.
Evolution itself is skeptal to me and even more hard to swallow than an intelligent designer.
My question to those "biology" majors that are so adamant that other's are wrong, is have you searched every corner, every crevice to compare? Or have you studied only what has been taught in class and what you want the answer to be? I tell no one what to beleive. That is your choice and your's alone. But as a science teacher who thoroughly enjoys science and learning all I can, I challenge you to be a true scientist and never take anything at it's word but discover for yourself.
If you truly believe evolution is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then go out to disprove that and visa versa, if you believe an intelligent designer is the whole truth and nothing but the truth then dig into that as well. But go directly to the source of the Bible and not just what folks say about it. Again don't believe someone elses take on the matter. Do the research yourself! It is so important that you know WHY we believe what we believe. And not just because so-and-so said.

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