Evidence for the Evolution of a Complex Biological System

“Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books that describe how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred. There are assertions that such evolution occurred, but absolutely none are supported by pertinent experiments or calculations.”
Darwin’s Black Box, The Free Press, 1996.

Behe nailed it.
It was true in ’96 and it’s still true – and far more obvious.

There is not one single piece of empirical evidence showing the evolution of ANY real, complex biological system – nothing but truckloads of empty assertions that it “may have, could have, must have, we believe…”

In 40 + years of discussion and debate with evolutionists of every grade and level of education, never once have I ever received a demonstration, with empirical evidence of how any single organism evolved, over millions of years, into a new organism – i.e. a new taxonomic family. Not once. All I have ever seen is evasive maneuvers, much storytelling, hand-waving, empty assertions based on the standard Darwinian circular reasoning, and the very trivial being passed off as proof of the very great.

Darwinists are big on imagination, huge on storytelling, titanic on conjecture passed off as evidence, but minuscule of empirical evidence. And I have yet to meet just one who actually understands the problems of genetic information, genetic decay, cellular combinatorial dependencies, …

And evolutionary biology is literally devoid of any proper mathematical foundations – such as physicists MUST provide to support their theories.

“I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?”
– Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003

“It is an algorithm that lies at the humming heart of life, ferrying information from one set of symbols (the nucleic acids) to another (the proteins). An algorithm? How else to describe the intricacy of transcription, translation, and replication than by an appeal to an algorithm? For that matter, what else to call the quantity stored in the macromolecules than information? And if the macromolecules store information, they function in some sense as symbols.”
– David Berlinski

And guess what? Symbols do not exist in nature. Nature knows nothing of symbolism. Symbolic code systems do not and cannot arise without a founding, guiding intelligence – by definition.
Too bad evolutionists so stubbornly remain in darkness and denial of these facts.

“Steering is required to achieve sophisticated function of any kind. Much of the life-origin research community, however, continues to “live in denial” of this fact.”
– Biosemiotic Research Trends

And materialist evolutionists live in denial of any reality that contradicts their inane theory.

Businessman wearing a blindfold, Concepts: Confusion, Lost, Searching, Unsure plus many more.

Consensus Science?

I often have Darwinians tell me something like that “98% of all scientists believe in evolution” (the neo Darwinian or the modern synthesis). They think that this is somehow convincing and ought to settle the issue. It doesn’t. Not even remotely close. Indeed, these same people tell me whenever I quote from some scientist, including those in their own camp, that I’m using a fallacy known as “argument from authority” and then they dismiss the quoted statement as though it is meaningless.

What to do? Well, I am forever obliged to remind them that their own claim that “98% of all scientists accept the theory of evolution” is itself an appeal to authority. The blindness (or hypocrisy) is almost comical.  I ask them what authority they themselves are specifically appealing to in claiming that evolution, i.e. neo-Darwinism, has been “as proved as gravity”, as they love to parrot robotically. Invariably they have no good answer.

Occasionally I get a link to say, the Berkley U. page on evolution for laymen or the equivalent. That’s it. Nothing more substantial, specific or genuinely useful. Just the usual empty assertions, just-so stories, terrible logic and baseless leaps of faith Darwinists are so famous for. The reason for this is because almost none of them even know what to point to! Oh, but they are still adamantly sure that proof exists somewhere in science land!

I have noticed over the years that most Darwinian scientists believe that somewhere, some other scientist has proof of the theory. They never have any of their own so they imagine that it must exist in some other scientists’ lab somewhere. Here’s another clue for you all, it doesn’t.

Even the PhDs send me to some peer-reviewed article inevitably demonstrating some trivial, microevolutionary experiment. I have to constantly remind these folks that pointing me to a molehill does not lead me to deduce Mount Everest.  Ants building ant hills does not justify extrapolation to ants being the constructors of Everest and certainly not the architects of Mount Rushmore, no matter how many gazillions of years you like to add.

There is no leap of sane logic that can take one from say, antibiotic resistance, to “all ~8 million life forms on earth arose from some hypothetical, unobservable LUCA over billions of unobservable years”. If you didn’t recognize that, it is the Darwinian Evolution of the Gaps. Still the most common argument (fallacy) given us by Darwinists everywhere. We must take the leap of blind faith into the deep dark abyss of their fervid imaginations, jumping from the anthill to Everest, to accept the theory.

In decades of discussion and debate they have never given me anything better than trivial examples of microevolution – which all too often isn’t evolution at all but built-in, pre-programmed adaptation mechanisms coded in the species’ DNA – in their futile attempts to prove macroevolution. Macroevolution means major change crossing taxonomic Family boundaries. And don’t be fooled by their recent “moving the goal posts” redefinition of macro as meaning everything above the species level.  If that were true then more than 90% of all evolution is macroevolution and the distinction between macro and micro is virtually useless. Creationists do not even dispute microevolution!

And of course, they did this redefinition because there is not a grain of evidence for any such macroevolution ever occurring. Hence – redefine macro so that it squeezes in – make the data fit the theory rather than accept that the theory does not fit the data.

Note: I received an objection from a Darwinist on this post. Of course, he did not read it correctly since his objection was basically, “lol macroevolution is the same thing as micro over time”. My reaction was, as usual, being disgusted at how these people don’t even read fully and then push the same old baloney with the ubiquitous LOL included, to pretend to themselves that they “gotcha”.

Well, this is just so wrong. The ignorance these people display is stunning. Worse, he added a lame article by poor thinking, disgruntled atheist fanatic Jerry Coyne which is supposed to prove that micro and macro are the same thing, macro being extended micro. These guys have no clue. Coyne’s article is full of really bad logic. It’s like they cannot keep up with the science and perpetually revert to defunct, early Darwinian beliefs that have long since been disproved. One such belief is the myth that macroevolution is just an extrapolation of micro. I addressed this issue here.  So I’ll repeat some of it.

In short, even in 1940 Goldschmidt wrote, “Subspecies are actually, therefore, neither incipient species nor models for the origin of species. They are more or less diversified blind alleys within the species. The decisive step in evolution, the first step toward macroevolution, the step from one species to another, requires another evolutionary method than that of sheer accumulation of micromutations”.

Much more recently, the late evolutionary biology prof, William Provine, an avowed atheist and evolutionist stated,  that “[e]very assertion of the evolutionary synthesis below is false”:

1. Natural selection was the primary mechanism at every level of the evolutionary process. Natural selection caused genetic adaptation . . .
7. Macroevolution was a simple extension of microevolution.
8. Definition of “species” was clear[–]the biological species concept of Dobzhansky and Mayr.
9. Speciation was understood in principle.
10. Evolution is a process of sharing common ancestors back to the origin of life, or in other words, evolution produces a tree of life..”
– William Provine, Random Drift and the Evolutionary Synthesis, History of Science Society HSS Abstracts.

Notice point # 7 . Provine was correct. We cannot pretend that macro is simply an extension of micro without a scientific warrant – and there is none. Indeed, the evidence tells us it cannot work that way. The genome contains so many restraining factors, error detection & correction mechanisms and poly-constrained data that it always was and still is utter folly to pretend you can just make such gratuitous extrapolations. You can’t.

“The suggestion that the development in bacteria of resistance to antibiotics as a result of genetic mutations or DNA transposition somehow “proves” organic evolution is flawed. Macroevolution requires change across phylogenetic boundaries. In the case of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, that has not occurred.” – Bert Thompson, Ph.D., microbiology.

“Large-scale evolutionary phenomena cannot be understood solely on the basis of extrapolation from processes observed at the level of modern populations and species.
Andrew M. Simons, “The continuity of microevolution and macroevolution,”Journal of Evolutionary Biology 15 (2002): 688-701.

“A persistent debate in evolutionary biology is one over the continuity of microevolution and macroevolution — whether macroevolutionary trends are governed by the principles of microevolution.”

“The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution claims to be able to explain this type of evolution in terms of random mutations, Mendelian genetics, and natural selection. But even within the mechanistic framework of thought, it is by no means agreed that this type of small-scale or micro-evolution within a species can account for the origin of species themselves, or genera, families and higher taxonomic divisions. One school of thought holds that all large-scale or macro-evolution can be explained in terms of long-continued processes of micro-evolution; the other school denies this and postulates that major jumps occur suddenly in the course of evolution. But while opinions within mechanistic biology differ as to the relative importance of many small mutations or a few large ones in macroevolution, there is general agreement that these mutations are random, and that evolution can be explained by a combination of random mutation and natural selection. However, this theory can never be more than speculative.
The evidence for evolution, primarily provided by the Fossil Record, will always be open to a variety of interpretations. For example, opponents of the mechanistic theory can argue that evolutionary innovations are not entirely explicable in terms of chance events, but are due to the activity of a creative principle unrecognized by mechanistic science. Moreover, the selection pressures which arise from the behaviour and properties of living organisms themselves can be considered to depend on an inner organizing factor which is essentially non-mechanistic. Thus the problem of evolution
cannot be solved conclusively.” (Sheldrake R., “A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance,” [1981], Park Street Press: Rochester VT, 1995, reprint, p.24)

Do you know why evolutionists persist in claiming that micro extends into macro? Because they take it as an article of faith, since no evidence exists for it.

Pointing us to any given article, allegedly proving evolution, is itself an argument from authority. They appeal to their own chosen authority, they appeal to consensus – when it fits their prejudice – all while never even noticing that they are being wonderfully fallacious in their logic and doing what they accuse others of doing.

Worse, arguing from authority is NOT always a fallacy at all! Else the judicial courts would have abandoned doing it centuries ago. Lawyers are constantly making appeals to authority in virtually ever criminal case! The authority of the medical examiner, the forensics labs, the specialized scientist or professional. Appeal to authority is only fallacious when all you have is the word of some “expert” no matter the lack of empirical evidence.

It’s too bad PhDs in biology are not obligatorily required to follow some basic logical analysis and critical thinking courses. It could save us all a lot of wasted time, forever having to explain it to them.

“Historically, *the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled*. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.”
“Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
– Michael Crichton, PhD Harvard, postdoctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies

I wish evolutionists would finally wake up to their own spurious and irrational arguments. Science has NOTHING to do with consensus. “Consensus science” is an oxymoron.

 

God of the Gaps?

Well here we go ladies and gents.  Yet another piece of Darwinian/atheist bad thinking must be exposed for what it really is.

Will this kind of thing ever end? Not until atheists finally admit that their position – it’s not merely a “lack” of a position, as they foolishly pretend to themselves these days – is devoid of intelligence and in fact annihilates intelligence itself since atheism cannot have true rationality.

In atheism all rationality is the end product of completely non rational processes and of course is an “accident”.  Under atheism, rationality is just electrochemical movement in the brain – 3 lbs of meat.  As Francis Crick himself said,

The Astonishing Hypothesis is that “You,” your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased: “You’re nothing but a pack of neurons.” This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people today that it can truly be called astonishing.”  -(p. 3) -Francis Crick (1994) The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons

Atheism says that your rationality, your logic, your reasoning faculties; all together is “nothing but a pack of neurons.  Well, Sir Crick has passed on to the other realm that is much more solid than this one and has been obliged to give an account for his own life, including his denial of the Deity, so we can’t ask him the obvious question, “Why should we listen to what a pack of neurons is saying?”, or “How can a pack of neurons be true or false?”.

Other interesting questions like this could and should be posed to atheists as often as it takes to get the message, the logical conclusions and implications of their position, into their all too often stubborn minds.

In any case, we must take a quick and dirty look at one Darwinism’s chief complaints against both creationism and Intelligent Design (no, these are not the same).

Often when theists or even deists point out to Darwinists that their theory cannot account for the intricacies and functional complexities and semantic structures found in every living thing, they will tell you that you’re committing a logical fallacy.  Specifically they claim this type of statement is a “God of the gaps argument”.  This simply means that, because you can’t explain how something occurred, you simply invoke God as the answer.  God fills in the gap where the knowledge of how is missing.

God is used to explain what evolutionism can’t explain.  This is of course a form of “argument from ignorance”.  And believe me, Darwinians everywhere are quick to parrot their fave priests that have told them this, over and over and over.  Here I would love to start a nice discussion of how virtually every amateur and professional Darwinist in the world is little more than a parrot. They are always parroting what they were told in school, in their temples (universities), on their fave web sites, in books etc. Of course, everyone does this to some degree, citing authorities, but the atheist Darwinian crowd does little else.

They do not seem to think well or for themselves, so having been forced into the standard Darwinian mantra through the public education system, they simply parrot what they were told by their priests and gurus.  So, they have indoctrination and “counseling” from their priests to know what to believe.

So, on to the infamous parroted “God if the gaps” accusations.

First of all, arguments of the pattern:

“Evolution cannot explain this therefore God did it” arguments, are almost never used by any informed theist and never by any of the major Intelligent Design or creationist debaters, scientists etc. on this.

People like Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Douglas Marks, Jay Richards etc, do not use “gap” arguments at all.  What they really do is argue from a simplified form of “statistical mechanics” (for lack of a better term). This means that when an IDist says anything like, “no evolutionary evidence exist for this, no known evolutionary pathway exists to explain this, no known mechanism exists that can accomplish this”,  They are not saying “you can’t explain it, therefore God must have done it”.

That is simply and categorically false.

They are saying that 1) there is no evidence at all that evolution did this, but 2) there is great evidence that Darwinian evolution cannot do this, and there is irrefutable evidence that only intelligent agents can produce algorithmic, prescriptive information that is found everywhere in biological systems.  Therefore, the best explanation is not evolution but intelligent origin.

Very few creationists or IDists will simply say,  “God did it and that’s it that’s all, no need for further research”.  In recent years, I’ve never heard any of them say anything even remotely like that.  So, when misinformed and disingenuous Darwinian fanatics claim that this is what they’re saying, they are lying, or, incapable of thinking straight, seriously not listening, or all of the above.

In my personal experience it is always been the last 2 options. and sometimes the first as well.

Again, what are IDists saying? Based on the principles of statistical mechanics, they’re saying that we already know that such mechanical sophistication and algorithmic information cannot arise by chance no matter how much time is allotted.  The probability of such machinery and circuitry being constructed, with the plans for making the parts and the assembly instructions for putting them together with all this being algorithmically encoded in DNA, is so astronomically small that it may as well be considered impossible.  It is in fact, statistically impossible by any known random or stochastic process including mutations, plus selection.

So, this has nothing at all to do with “gap” arguments but is merely stating the obvious based on the laws of probability! Something Darwinian biologists tend to be uniquely against applying to their own theory. How many times have I read that “probabilities do not apply to living, reproductive organisms”? Too many!

Designists are not saying, “we can’t see how this happened therefore God id it” at all; on the contrary!  They are saying, “the laws of probability”, thermodynamics and physics do not allow any purposeless, unguided process to create this kind of integrated, specified functionality.

That is a very different thing from a mere gap argument.  So in fact, they are not arguing from ignorance but from well documented knowledge!  Knowledge of proven mathematics applied to the mechanics of biological machinery. That is NOT a gap or ignorance based argument at all.  It is a solid scientific empirical method being used to calculate whether nature can even do such things. When facing the odds of events that have estimated with between 1 in 10^20 to 1 in 10^130 to even less odds, the obvious answer is that blind evolution could not have done it, no matter how much time you allot.

Secondly, there is a humongous hypocrisy at work among the Darwinists when they foolishly choose to use this rebuttal. Notice that Darwinists have never, not even once, provided a viable mutation/selection pathway for the existence of even the smallest living things.  This means that the only way they can claim that any living thing evolved is through speculation and conjecture – most of the time just wishful thinking and vivid imaginations are all they have. Just-so stories fill the Darwinian literature.

For example, how does Darwinism explain the incredible integrated circuitry of vision, the eye? They invent, yes invent, out of thin air, a story!

If you’ve seen the perfectly naive, childishly simplistic explanations given by Darwinists for the origins of sight and eyes you know what I’m talking about it.  Even the scenarios given by so-called professional scientists.  There simply are no viable, serious Darwinian pathways for vision and eyes.  None.  Not even remotely close.

Their explanation is always the same – an imaginary pathway – less than 100 steps (rotfl) – that they think may have, could have, must have etc., been the real evolutionary one. So how about evidence for such naive suppositions – they’re always ridiculously naive – on how something may have happened by evolution? Nope. Don’t need any real empirical evidence.

Really? Why not?

Because they simply invoke evolution of the gaps. They do this everywhere, “evolution did it”. Oh, sorry, they use slightly different terms but the answer is always the same in meaning – evolution did it.

In other words, Darwinists are the worst offenders of “gap”, ignorance-based arguments!  They never have any viable mutational-selection pathways to explain anything but the very, very trivial!  So, without a grain of empirical evidence that really does explain how vision systems developed without a “seeing” intelligence, they simply claim -loudly and with much bombast and pompous dismissal of any other theory, “evolution did it!”

“Proof?”

“We don’t need proof!! We know evolution did it!”

“How do you know this, without proof?”

“Because no God exists!”

Yes, many of them really do say this in such terms.  Meaning that their real reason for supporting neo Darwiniism is religious, not scientific! There you have it.  The cat is out of the bag.  The whole system is 99% religion based. Metaphysical Naturalism. In other words. The religion of atheism.

Don’t believe this? Well then you’re being naive and demonstrating a profound ignorance. Just to help you out:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
– Richard Lewontin, 1997. Billions and billions of demons, The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997 (review of Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark).- Dr. Richard Lewontin, Geneticist, Harvard U.

And just look at this quote:
‘Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.’
– Lewontin, R.C., The Inferiority Complex, New York Review of Books, 22 October 1981, p. 13.

Wow, if that isn’t clear enough, nothing is.  And say what?! Scientists lie!? Oh my, who would have thought?!
So, neo Darwinists are, for the most part, in fact religious adepts of Naturalism (materialism), a very old heathen religion.
Religion? Yes. Therefore it should be illegal, in the USA, to teach Darwinism in public schools.  So why isn’t it?

St. Darwin’s Death or A Theory In Ruins

The Darwinian propaganda juggernaut is a lot like a T-Rex: huge, stupid, vicious and utterly intolerant of dissension.  But it’s slowing down.

Its engine is broken down to the point that it can no longer provide the force necessary to keep its velocity.  The engine runs on gas (hot air) and the hot air is the only thing keeping the machine from completely falling apart.


In my last article I talked about the implications of finding the abstract concept of zero  and the decimal point encoded in the genome. Those implications, by themselves, dismantle at least 90% of the Darwinian juggernaut -making it slowly devolve into a rusty old truck ready for the scrap heap of scientific blunders where it belongs.

Discoveries such as shCherback’s ruin Darwinian hopes for a badly needed religious revival of the metaphysical materialist underpinning of the whole schema.  Yes, Darwinism is a religion. It’s called Metaphysical Naturalism -a very old religion to boot. This is the religion of the atheists, or materialists if you will.  It origins myth is Darwinism (the modern synthesis or neo-Darwinism).  Michael Ruse, evolutionist science philosopher admitted,

“Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” – Ruse, M., How evolution became a religion: creationists correct? National Post, pp. B1,B3,B7 May 13, 2000

The drivers of this rusting old  junk heap of a machine are still at the wheel but they’re finding it harder and harder to steer, harder and harder to keep it on its course and harder to keep it moving.

Here’s a short list of reasons why Darwinism, like its master St. Charles, the prophet of materialism, is dead already:

*Genetic entropy

-shows that neutral and harmful mutations are far more numerous than beneficial ones and that therefore
-shows that genomes are devolving not evolving
-the mechanism that leads to mutational meltdown cannot be the same mechanism by which ~10 million life forms arose n earth
-all by itself Gentropy (new word if you please) should have eliminated Darwinism as a viable theory

*Information theory

-Nature has no mind and abstractions only exist in minds
-Information itself is metaphysical, not matter or energy as atheist Darwinism hold
-Specifically, encoded prescriptive or algorithmic information cannot arise by any natural means since codes are universally symbolic sign systems. Sign systems are universally abstract & arbitrary requiring a conceiver. Abstractions do not and cannot exist in nature as nature has no mind or ability to conceptualize.
-Since codes cannot arise by any stochastic process this means DNA was designed, as shCherbak stated, it must be artificial.  This too, all by itself and for obvious reasons, reduces Darwinism to dust & ashes

*Statistical mechanics

-By this I refer to probability & statistics applied to genomes and their structures
-The vast quantity of well structured, functional machines working in genomes -with purpose- requires instructions for the assembly of their component parts, DNA/RNA contain these instructions
-The parts of any compound components requiring precise assembly, must be precisely shaped, sized, fitted and implemented with materials capable of resisting environmental pressures such as sheer, compression, friction etc. inherent in any machine. To assume that blind unguided nature somehow stumbled up so many of such objects of the right shape, materials, properties and sizes by mutation, and that they accidentally happen to work together, is insanely ludicrous and defies everything we know of the laws of probability & mechanical engineering;
-Functional, useful, compound nano machines and the instructions necessary to assemble them cannot be symbolically encoded  by any random mutational process;  symbols do not exist in nature, they are conceptually determined (mind); no more than computer programs can write themselves by juggling millions of bits for all eternity could ever create an operating system
-Genomes are far far greater, and strictly regulated, than any human designed OS is and probably ever will be
-The combinatorial dependencies created by biological nano machines are a statisticians nightmare.  They are humongous in number, and this also rules out any chance of random mutations + selection creating any of these machines, their assembly instructions and the assembly machinery itself. Machine parts must be in correct position, size, shape, etc. with each other or you end up with a literal combinatorial “explosion” of the machine itself in the cell. Combinatorial explosions are exponential. This complicates things for Darwinian theory infinitely, to the point of no return.

*Inter cooperating nano machines

-Biological machines cannot ‘know’ what to do, where to go etc. yet are assembled for and function for clear precise purposes in genomes
-Hundreds if not thousands of such machines exist in the genomes of any complex species
-If the Darwinian mechanism of mutations + selection could create such machines we should see useless ones scattered everywhere in genomes; but we don’t. We always find perfectly functional machines and clear purpose
-The Darwinians respond to such facts with their usual mere denial. Denial of these being “real” machines -its just a metaphor they claim. But it is no analogy. As Yockey proved that the genetic is is mathematically identical to human devised codes and languages, this applies to biological nano machines as well. They are real machines as much as any automobile motor or space shuttle are real machines.

*The fossil record

-The fossil record is sorely lacking in genuine intermediate forms; such forms should number in the billions given the number of species and their vast differences from the so-called “last universal common ancestor”. Yet there are none that can be proved.
-Biological explosions such as the Cambrian or Avalonian reveal species showing up complete, fully adapted suddenly (in geochrono terms) with no know ancestors
-A very curious thing that Darwinists never seem to grasp is that when they claim something found in the fossil record is an ancestor or a link to some other newer species, they are already assuming the validity of Darwinism. In other words, in order to claim anything is an ancestor of any other thing, one has to assume Darwinism is true beforehand. This is not only a logical fallacy but a lack of thinking on their part
-In Darwinism every living and every dead thing is an intermediate. So why bother shouting so loudly, “Hey we have found an intermediate!”. Really? Well seeing that everything is, by default, an intermediate, the only response is, “So? Who cares? Everything and everyone is an intermediate. Everything is in transition from being to becoming”.
-Another fundamental problem with pretending anything is a link to something else, is that no fossil ever comes with its pedigree inscribed in it. Such pedigrees are only and always assigned by the Darwinian discoverer of the fossil. Based on what? It’s always based on his assumption that the theory is true. Hardly scientific. Thus, imagination is the closest thing to the reality of alleged intermediate forms.

“Fossils can tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else.” — Colin Patterson, paleontologist, 1978

*Laboratory experiments

–Lenski‘s experiments, if they reveal anything, tell us that you can only get E.coli out E.coli
-These experiments have produced over 50K generations of E.coli; this is equivalent to approximately 1 million years of human generations. But there’s a very serious flaw in this whole thing.  Consider: In the corresponding time it has taken humanity’s alleged last common ancestor to evolve into homo sapiens from some primitive primate, which is allegedly about 2.3 million years, E.coli has done nothing but trivial adaptation to one unique environmental stress. And that with information loss!

Think about that in reference to Darwinist devised time lines. Humans supposedly came about 2.3 million years ago? Wow, in all that time E.coli are still E.coli, but homo sapiens is endowed with such a vast number of traits, not found in its alleged ancestors that one is at a complete loss to explain how such vast changes could have all happened in such a ridiculously short geological time.  We’re talking millions of uninterrupted beneficial mutations to get from some ape-like ancestor to full fledged human. In just a bit less time than that, poor E. coli has managed only a couple of trivial mutations!

The real question here is, “Why do Darwinists continue to believe their own sorry hypothesis, when faced with such salient anomalies?  Well, the only real, honest answer to that is, “by faith”. Blind faith to boot. For, the very experiments designed to show us all Darwinian evolution in action, have shown us all almost nothing worth noting, very trivial evolutionary change.

Such gratuitous credulity is hardly based on the results of these experiments, or any others. Its based rather on religion, Metaphysical Naturalism, i.e. good old self contradictory atheism. Or, if you please, on wishful thinking.

Much more could be written here, but suffice it to say that neo Darwinism should have been buried years ago. However, seeing as how metaphysics underlies its whole raison d’être and that devout Darwinian adepts refuse to abandon it, it’s not surprising that this debunked theory still lingers on.  They won’t leave the materialist religion they rely on for their personal sense of psychological security in their worldview. Thus, we have seen no funeral.

What we are seeing today is a veritable “scientific community” version of “Weekend at Bernies”, where the cadaver is propped up and made to appear alive. This is exactly current Darwinism, the new corpse. Propped up by hype, propaganda and lots of story telling (should I mention “threatenings and slaughter”?) to divert the public attention away from Bernie’s true condition.

Of course, all this was very frustrating and confusing for Paulie, the mob hit man who, falling for the ruse, was still trying to kill poor dead Bernie.

Another Headache for Darwin

In 2008 Vladimir ShCherbak published information his book “The Codes of Life” with a chapter entitled “The Arithmetical Origin of the Genetic Code”.  (Biosemiotics Volume 1, 2008, pp 153-185 – http://www.springerlink.com/content/t85w0h771510j187)

The discoveries covered in this are yet another wonderful refutation of Darwinism.

Of course, we know beforehand that the Darwinians will deny these clear implications, as they always do when any discovery challenges their secular humanism-based theory.  That’s because Darwinism is materialism’s origins myth.

For example shCherbak writes,

“There seems to be but one conclusion: the genetic code is itself a unique structure of arithmetical syntax. The arithmetical syntax is separated from natural events by the unbridgeable gap between the fundamental laws of nature and the abstract codes of the human mind (Barbieri, 2005). Chemical evolution, no matter how long it took, could not possibly have stumbled on the arithmetical language and initialized the decimalization of the genetic code. Physics and chemistry can neither make such abstractions nor fit the genetic code out with them.”

“The zero is the supreme abstraction of arithmetic. Its use by any alphabet, including the genetic code, can be an indicator of artificiality.”

“First, a general and the most forcible argument: it has been found that the genetic code is governed directly by the arithmetical symbol of zero. This striking fact is verified simultaneously by several independent orderlinesses – logical, arithmetical, and semantical… Incidentally, such an acting zero alone might be sufficient to assume an artificial nature of the genetic code.”

Zero is indeed an abstraction, as is the decimal point.  Only minds can entertain abstractions. Nature, being mindless, cannot therefore create or use abstract data like this. Abstractions don’t exist in nature’s matter and energy.

Indeed, the very definition of the word abstract is as follows:

1. thought of apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances: an abstract idea.
2. expressing a quality or characteristic apart from any specific object or instance, as justice, poverty,  and speed.
3. theoretical; not applied or practical: abstract science.
4. difficult to understand; abstruse: abstract speculations.
…
8. an idea or term considered apart from some material basis or object.
9. an abstract work of art.

Note: removed unrelated definitions (related to arts)

Abstractions are only and always conceptual, requiring a mind.  Thus Nature, DNA and life as a whole, cannot know or understand abstract concepts like zero and the decimal point.  Matter and energy alone cannot abstract.

The obvious conclusion of the existence of abstraction being used in the genetic code is a proof – not mere evidence – that the genetic code was created by a mind, an intelligence.

ShCherbak states this very clearly in his statement- that I repeat for emphasis, “Incidentally, such an acting zero alone might be sufficient to assume an artificial nature of the genetic code.”

An “artificial origin” is the same as “intelligently designed”.

There is no other source for abstraction but mind and only mind can understand it.

Is this thus the end of Darwinism?

Well the truth is that Darwinism died many years ago with the discovery of the genetic code itself.  How so? Code is a symbol system.  Codes do not write themselves. Codes are conventions of symbols contrived to represent something other than themselves.  Algorithms cannot create themselves. No random process can create algorithmic symbol systems. Algorithms, being instructions and how to do something – like make a blueberry pie or build car –  require a mind.

As Dr. David Abel explains,

“Not even Descriptive semantic information is achievable by inanimate physicodynamics (Pattee, 1972, 1995, 2001). Measuring initial conditions in any experiment and plugging those measurements appropriately into equations (e.g., physical “laws”) is formal, not physical. Cybernetic programming choices and mathematical manipulations are also formal.

The specific term PI originated out of a need to qualify the kind of information being addressed in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Shannon measured only probabilistic combinatorial uncertainty. Uncertainty is not information. It is widely recognized that even reduced uncertainty (“R,” poorly termed “mutual entropy”) fails to adequately describe and measure intuitive information. Intuitive information entails syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Syntax deals with symbol sequence, various symbol associations, and related arbitrary rules of grouping. Semantics deals with the meanings represented within any symbol system. Pragmatics addresses the formal function of messages conveyed using that symbol system.” – http://www.scitopics.com/Prescriptive_Information_PI.html

More information and several articles one should read to grasp the concepts discussed can be found here.

Again Abel notes,

“No one has ever observed PI flow in reverse direction from inanimate physicodynamics to the formal side of the ravine—the land of bona fide formal pragmatic “control.” The GS Principle states that selection for potential function must occur at the molecular-genetic level of nucleotide selection and sequencing, prior to organismic existence (Abel, 2009b, d).

Differential survival/reproduction of already-programmed living organisms (natural selection) is not sufficient to explain molecular evolution or life-origin (Abel, 2009b). Life must be organized into existence and managed by prescriptive information found in both genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. The environment possesses no ability to program linear, digital folding instructions into the primary structure of biosequences and biomessages.

The environment also provides no ability to generate Hamming block codes (e.g. triplet codons that preclude noise pollution through a 3-to-1 symbol representation of each amino acid) (Abel and Trevors, 2006a, 2007). The environment cannot decode or translate from one arbitrary language into another. The codon table is arbitrary and physicodynamically indeterminate. No physicochemical connection exists between resortable nucleotides, groups of nucleotides, and the amino acid that each triplet codon represents. Although instantiated into a material symbol system, the prescriptive information of genetic and epigenetic control is fundamentally formal, not physical.”

What he is saying, for those not used to the terms of reference and concepts of the laws and nature of information, is that Darwinism cannot be true because matter + energy, random mutations + “selection” (a mere filter) cannot create abstractions like codes and symbol systems.  It just doesn’t happen. No more than your rose bush can do arithmetic.  Math is abstract in itself, nature knows nothing out it.

Therefore this arithmetical nature of the genetic code, with its zero and decimal, its algorithmic information, cannot be natural. This is a defeater for Darwinian evolution – period.

The current generation of elder Darwinian fundamentalists will probably never accept these obvious facts since it counters their whole worldview and makes them nervous and insecure.  That’s why the Darwinistas are so enraged, loud and adamantly resistant.  They are the new inquisition. It’s about religion for them, not science, whether they confess this “sin” or not.

This was revealed by one of their own, who at least was honest enough to admit it. Richard Lewontin,

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

‘Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.’ – Lewontin, R.C., The Inferiority Complex, New York Review of Books, 22 October 1981, p. 13.

Well we can take his word for it, right? Well um … if you can trust a scientist that tells you that he lies!   This is nevertheless a very strange statement. He says the materialism is absolute, and we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. But atheism has no absolutes. Curiouser and curiouser.

The Darwinists only logical response to this is to claim some version of panspermia, an extra-terrestrial origin for DNA.  But that only pushes the problem back one step, for then we need to ask, “How did they get here?” Now, supposing that the ETs themselves are DNA based will only leave us with the same question of the origin of life.

It will of course take a long time before these perfectly logical conclusions are accepted – perhaps the next generation of students of biology and other related domains will accept the truth. I fear that we’ll have to wait till this generation dies off.

😉

Atheism, Darwinism and denial of reality

Richard Dawkins wrote in his book “The Blind Watchmaker”,

“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”

The argument needs to be restated more honestly like, “It looks designed, but my metaphysics says it can’t be ’cause there’s no designer. Therefore, chance and necessity, evolution, must have done it”. Evolution of the gaps.

This kind of argumentation is everywhere to be found in the atheistic Darwinian literature.

So what do they do to sound “scientific” while actually promoting mere foolishness? Easy. They invent another just-so story style argument.  They accuse the IDists or creationists  of “arguing from ignorance” or arguing from incredulity.  But, accusing an opponent of a logical fallacy is not an argument in itself. So that gives no advance to them at all in supporting the stories with evidence.

This tactic usually sounds something like this, “We don’t really have a clue how this could possibly happen and certainly no god is needed therefore here’s a story… perhaps this and perhaps that and um, if you don’t swallow the story I just made up well you’re just being ignorant and incredulous” – intellectual, psychological extortion.  Then they will cite some evolutionary study that shows some minor piece of adaptation and claim its a major proof.

So is the IDist really arguing from ignorance or incredulity? Of course not. Whether he realizes it or not he is in fact arguing from physics and more precisely from a form of statistical mechanics.  See my short article here.

Back to Dawkins’ statement, a quick and simple analysis:

• How does Dawkins know this? A: He doesn’t. It’s fantasy passing as science.
• It’s pure metaphysical presumption. Dawkins assumes there is no designer and then, without any thought of actually proving it, makes a bold but empty declaration, a bare unfounded assertion.
• If anything object or system with a function looks like it was designed for a purpose, why should one assume it was not? That isn’t science, that is metaphysics [religion] and in Dawkins’ case, wishful thinking. And it’s bad science at that.
• Why is something that has a function that accomplishes a distinct AND useful result not to be assumed to have a purpose and therefore a design? There is no valid reason.  Indeed, neither do we ever see any offered.

Thus we see that Dawkins, while a master story teller, is a very poor logician or thinker. So what does he, and his many disciples, do when confronted with the facts of this? Well they all begin the “shake a rubber chicken” dance, while blindfolded, chanting, “I see no proof of God!”.

It gets worse believe it or not. From no less than DNA discovery Nobel laureate Francis Crick:

“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.” – Francis Crick

Gee, I wonder why biologists must keep this in mind. Isn’t it obvious that he would never have said this if the design was not so conspicuous that it intrinsically contradicts the biologist’s Darwinian indoctrination?  If anything is clear then that much is clear.

This is exactly the same “do not go where the evidence leads if it doesn’t support materialism” mentality of Dawkins’ “designoids”.

Indeed, why on earth invent “designoids” if the appearance of design is not so overwhelming?  The implications of his needing to invent designoids are obvious. Yet overwhelming as it may be, it cannot be real design because the metaphysics of these men requires it!  Their religion requires denial of it, else they must convert to something other than materialism; and heaven forbid the poor souls from having to man up and do that! My goodness, it would ruin their entire false sense of security in atheism. It would also ruin their careers as professional atheist evangelists.

That’s the real vain religion for ya. That’s blind faith. The great atheist god Nothing, is supreme in their minds.

Recommended reading

Here’s a short list of books I highly recommend for those seeking clarification and knowledge on the Design vs Darwinism and on the atheism vs theism subjects.  These are books that favor theism and Design inferences.

Genetic Entropy – John Sanford

The Edge of Evolution – Michael Behe

Signature in the Cell – Stephen Myer

Billions of Missing Links – Geoffery Simmons

The Probability of God – Stephen Unwin

Slaughter of the Dissidents – Jerry Bergman

From Darwin to Hitler – Richard Wiekart

Intelligent Design or Evolution – Stuart Pullen

God’s Undertaker – John Lennox

There is a no God – Anthony Flew

Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis

The Abolition of Man – C.S. Lewis

The Problem of Pain – C.S. Lewis

God in the D ock – C.S. Lewis

Evolution, a Theory in Crisis – Michael Denton

Nature’s Destiny – Michael Denton

… more to come …

Is Intelligent design based on religion?

In the debate over whether intelligent design is science or not we often hear  the complaint – rather an accusation – that ID is religion not science. Then typically, a whole host of accusations that science and religion are incompatible or that science does not allow any supernatural explanations, follows.

So is ID religion or based on religion?

Well, the real question is not just is ID religion but also is Darwinism religion? Curiously enough Darwinism under analysis turns out to be far more religious and religion based than ID! Darwin was a materialist seeking to rid science of God [see “The Darwin Myth”]. His Origin is full of speculations based on religious arguments, as is the greater part of the Darwinian literature. How so? Well, when you read any statement of the kind “God wouldn’t have done it like that” or “an intelligent being would never have made it like that”, that is religion not science.

But what is ID really? Science or religion. If one makes the ubiquitous Darwinian error of equivocating ID with creationism then of course one will necessarily think it is religion.  But once one removes the fuzzy, foggy errors of Darwinian attempts at confounding ID with creationism, the fog begins to clear. The fallacy of equivocation is removed and one can see more clearly.

Intelligent Design is based on empirical evidence garnered from observation coupled with common sense (good reasoning) and the laws of logic and evidence.

Simple comparison of the basic elements of ID theory with creationism reveals the facts:

• Creationism is based on a holy book – either the bible or the Qu’ran generally speaking
  ID does use any reference to any holy book at all
• Creationism claims a specific God is the designer
  ID does not claim any god or gods as the designer(s)
• Creationism seeks to coincide the holy book with science
  ID seeks to coincide the data with logical inferences based on abductive reasoning

Those differences alone create a significant disjunction between creationism and ID.

Furthermore, whether most, some or all IDists were also creationists is completely irrelevant. They may be Christians or Muslims or whatever, yet that in itself has no bearing on the evidence, the data and the logic involved.  No more so than a Darwinian scientists views ought to be confounded with atheism because the scientist happens to be such.

In other words, the particular state of the observers’ personal beliefs has nothing to do with whether his scientific claims are justified or not! This lesson Darwinists refuse to learn and for the sole reason that it allows them continue in their perpetual attempts to confound the public mind in order to save their materialism from disaster, thus upending their whole world view and deeply disturbing their sense of security.

Now, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence believed in ID. In fact he insisted that it was based on the plain evidence of nature, not religion.  In his letter to John Adams on April 11, 1823, he declared:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. (my bold )

Jefferson’s design inference was clearly based anything but religion. What was his basis then?

The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. (my bold)

Empirical data from nature itself thus provided the design  inference that Jefferson accepted.

Jefferson, as a man who was rather hostile toward traditional Christianity can hardly be accused of promoting fundamentalism of any kind nor of pleading for some religious basis for the design inference.

Today, many, following Jefferson’s method of logical inference, have come to the same or similar conclusions about “life the universe and everything” requiring an ultimate designer.
However in the Darwinian fundamentalist community no such suite is allowed, for as professor Lewontin stated without even blushing,

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
——–
And even worse:
“Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.”
-Lewontin, R.C., The Inferiority Complex, New York Review of Books, 22 October 1981, p. 13.”

Obviously we have here a salient declaration of religion. The religion of the materialist, the atheist.

So whose “science” is really religion? ID or Darwinism?

All scientific observations and conclusions may have metaphysical and thus religious implications. Implications are not the science itself. Darwinism has many metaphysical, religious implications.  So does ID. So does the Big Bang theory.

It amazes me to see how so many of the general public have been suckered into believing that scientists are somehow the real “saints” leading humanity to utopia, when in fact we have a confession of glaring dishonesty on the part on one world renown geneticist admitting that scientists lie!

This begs the question: So why should I trust a materialist scientists on anything at all? And the answer is of course, I shouldn’t. Not before examining the complete evidence as far as possible, seeking signs of motives and following the money trail. “Fortune and glory”, said Indiana Jones.

In all human history the great majority of mankind have logically made the design inference.

However, since the post-modern era of generalized claims that there is no God, no real good or evil, no absolute truth, many of the badly highly educated have deemed themselves in a position to simply deny reality, as atheists always do, and boldly claim that since there is no God Darwinism MUST be true.

Thankfully, once again, those who possess at least some degree of lucidity see that that itself is a religious argument not a scientific one!

Besides the fact that claiming, “there is no God”, is a logically unsupportable religious affirmation, the consequential Darwinian dogma that follows is also just another religious statement.

Darwinism is thus far more religious than any ID theory out there.

The spider and the wasp

The wasp known as hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is a parasitoid that uses the spider Plesiometa argyra as a host for its egg and larva.  This wasp somehow modifies the spider’s web building pattern to make a web specifically to support the wasp’s cocoon without breaking under rain and wind conditions.

As with other predator/host symbiotic or parasitic relationships in nature, the adult female wasp of this species paralyzes the spider and lays an egg on its abdomen.  The egg hatches into a larva which sucks the spider’s blood through small holes, while the spider goes on, apparently unconscious of its condition or the presence of an intruder.  The spider goes through its usual life building webs and catching insects for the next one to two weeks.

When the larva is ready to pupate, it injects a chemical into the spider.  This chemical somehow causes the spider to build a completely different web pattern.  Once constructed the spider  then sits motionless in the middle of this web.  The wasp larva then molts,  it kills the spider with a poison and then sucks its body empty. It then discards the carcass and builds a cocoon that hangs from the middle of the web the spider has just built.  After a while the larva pupates inside the cocoon and then emerges as a wasp to mate and begin this somewhat gruesome (to humans anyway) behavior cycle over again.

Thus the larva appears to be able to induce very specific behavioral responses in the spider.

This apparent “mind-control” is probably achieved with a chemical secreted by the larvae. What that chemical is or how it works is not yet known. It has also been shown that if larvae are removed on the last day,  just before the spider is killed, the spider will often recover after a few days of spinning the abnormal web.

Now the obvious question for Darwinists is, “How did this evolve in a step by step process of random mutations and selection?”

The answer? There is no answer. And there’s no answer because it is simply not possible.  There are far too many simultaneous and beneficial mutation/selection events necessary.

Here is just a very short sample of things that need consideration:
Both wasp and spider (or their ancestors) have to co-exist simultaneously
For the wasp to reproduce it must already possess the mechanisms related to its manipulation of the spider
The behavior of the wasp implies algorithmic information stored in its brain
The wasp has to evolve an injection system (secretory sys.)
The wasp larva has to evolve a literal behavioral program by which it is going to feed off the spider without killing it right off
The larva has to evolve the ability to manufacture the correct web spinning modifier chemical
The larva has to evolve a system capable of passing that chemical to its prey in the correct quantity
The larva has to have the most amazing bit of luck in the universe for that chemical to be able to modify the spiders genetic web construction program
…
There are so many intermediate steps required just for the above short list that it is mind bogglingly foolish to pretend that all this just came about as a mere unguided accident.

Indeed, the very facts that this wasp “knows” exactly what to do, that its larvae “know” when to feed or not, when and how to inject the web modifier, wait until the new web is built, then produce the correct venom to kill the host at the correct time etc etc. is uncanny in itself and inexplicable in Darwinian terms.

So how does Darwinism explain such creatures?  There are thousands of such symbiotic relationships among living things! So how do they explain such wonders of obvious design and intent?

The same way it explains everything else – with a just-so story!  But such stories only reveal the vivid imaginations Darwinists discover in themselves when they can’t really explain something under their own dogma.  Such stories are always incredibly naive, far too short (as to the number of steps required to evolve such mechanisms) and worst of all these stories are not founded on any clear empirical evidence at all – just pure invention. Sometimes they present a vague comparison to some other similar instance that itself is not explained either!

When reading through some of the just-so stories published in supposedly “serious” scientific journals, one is lead to wonder how such trash can pass peer review. However we already know how; the peers are also staunch Darwinists with either -like a fool- have very poor ability to reason logically or are just as duped by story telling as the author is.

I could just as easily present the case of  the emerald cockroach wasp, ampulex compressa, and its cockroach brain stinging that allows it to control the movement of the host. The female penetrates the exact point in a cockroach’s brain to disable its escape reflex!  The evolution of such by the Darwinian mechanism once again implies too many remarkable coincidences for it to be unplanned.

So how do Darwinists respond to this kind of evidence against their theory when trying to avoid another just-so story? They will say that this is an argument from incredulity. A very common response these days since there is more and more such evidence being weighed against Darwinism. Unfortunately for them this is not an incredulity argument. This is in fact an argument from statistical mechanics. The mechanics involved demonstrate such a high level of integration and are so improbable – based on mathematics not incredulity- that the probability of such relations and mechanisms arising by the dual gods of Darwinism “chance” and “necessity”, is near zero.

There are far too many examples of mutually dependent relations in nature to list them or demonstrate why such are such robust refuters of the Darwinian illusion. I suggest those interested look up the many available articles on the web.

Darwinism vs Facts

I was once challenged by a self-confessed atheist Darwinist in this way:

Are you holding back then?  Do you have some ground breaking evidence that shows that evolution is false?   I’m sure the the scientific community would love to hear about it.

Here is my initial response:

Definitions:
Information: For this entry we’re talking about biologically meaningful information, or semantic information or more specifically still biosemiotics. Shannon information is useful in biology as well but not at the level required for ID. That is, both descriptive info and prescriptive info.

Complexity: Here ID refers to specified complexity – and this is not an IDist invention – it was first used by Leslie Orgel. Complexity alone is insufficient. A long string of random letters for example is complex but not specified. A string of letters from a Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.

Here I quote Dr David L. Abel; The Origin of Life Science Foundation:

Semantic (meaningful) information has two subsets: Descriptive and Prescriptive. Prescriptive Information (PI) instructs or directly produces nontrivial formal function (Abel, 2009a). Merely describing a computer chip does not prescribe or produce that chip. Thus mere description needs to be dichotomized from prescription. Computationally halting cybernetic programs and linguistic instructions are examples of Prescriptive Information. “Prescriptive Information (PI) either tells us what choices to make, or it is a recordation of wise choices already made.” (Abel, 2009a)

Not even Descriptive semantic information is achievable by inanimate physicodynamics (Pattee, 1972, 1995, 2001). Measuring initial conditions in any experiment and plugging those measurements appropriately into equations (e.g., physical “laws”) is formal, not physical. Cybernetic programming choices and mathematical manipulations are also formal.
…
DNA strings are formed through the selection of one of four nucleotides at each locus in a string. These programming choices at quaternary decision nodes in DNA sequences must be made prior to the existence of any selectable phenotypic fitness (The GS Principle, (Abel, 2009b). Natural selection cannot explain the programming of genetic PI that precedes and prescribes organismic existence.

No one has ever observed PI flow in reverse direction from inanimate physicodynamics to the formal side of the ravine—the land of bona fide formal pragmatic “control.” The GS Principle states that selection for potential function must occur at the molecular-genetic level of nucleotide selection and sequencing, prior to organismic existence (Abel, 2009b, d). Differential survival/reproduction of already-programmed living organisms (natural selection) is not sufficient to explain molecular evolution or life-origin (Abel, 2009b). Life must be organized into existence and managed by prescriptive information found in both genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. The environment possesses no ability to program linear digital folding instructions into the primary structure of biosequences and biomessages. The environment also provides no ability to generate Hamming block codes (e.g. triplet codons that preclude noise pollution through a 3-to-1 symbol representation of each amino acid) (Abel and Trevors, 2006a, 2007). The environment cannot decode or translate from one arbitrary language into another. The codon table is arbitrary and physicodynamically indeterminate. No physicochemical connection exists between resortable nucleotides, groups of nucleotides, and the amino acid that each triplet codon represents. Although instantiated into a material symbol system, the prescriptive information of genetic and epigenetic control is fundamentally formal, not physical.

If you understood that then you’ll realize that the above facts already by themselves refute Darwinism at the most fundamental level – encoded meaningful information.

Douglas Axe, for example, comments on the recent and controversial experiments by Durrett and Schmidt that supposedly contradict Behe’s Edge of Evolution:

By way of analogy, you might easily cause your favorite software to crash by changing a bit or two in the compiled executable file, but you can’t possibly convert it into something altogether different (and equally useful) by such a simple change, or even by a series of such changes with each version improving on the prior one. To get a substantially new piece of software, you would need to substantially re-engineer the original code knowing that your work wouldn’t pay off until it’s finished. Darwinism just doesn’t have the patience for this.

Furthermore, returning to the first question, it seems that even humble binding-site conversions are typically beyond the reach of Darwinian evolution. Durrett and Schmidt conclude that “this type of change would take >100 million years” in a human line [1], which is problematic in view of the fact that the entire history of primates is thought to be shorter than that [3].

Might the prospects be less bleak for more prolific species with shorter generation times? As it turns out, even there Darwinism appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse. Choosing fruit flies as a favorable organism, Durrett and Schmidt calculate that what is impossible in humans would take only “a few million years” in these insects. To get that figure, however, they had to assume that the damage caused buy the first mutation has a negligible effect on fitness. In other words, they had to leap from “the mutation need not be lethal” to (in effect) ‘the mutation causes no significant harm’. That’s a big leap.

What happens if we instead assume a small but significant cost—say, a 5% reduction in fitness? By their math it would then take around 400 million years for the binding-site switch to prove its benefit (if it had one) by becoming fully established in the fruit fly population. [4] By way of comparison, the whole insect class—the most diverse animal group on the planet—is thought to have come into existence well within that time frame. [5]

Do you see the problem? On the one hand we’re supposed to believe that the Darwinian mechanism converted a proto-insect into a stunning array of radically different life forms (termites, beetles, ants, wasps, bees, dragonflies, stick insects, aphids, fleas, flies, mantises, cockroaches, moths, butterflies, etc., each group with its own diversity) well within the space of 400 million years. But on the other hand, when we actually do the math we find that a single insignificant conversion of binding sites would reasonably be expected to consume all of that time.

The contrast could hardly be more stark: The Darwinian story hopes to explain all the remarkable transformations within 400 million years, but the math shows that it actually explains no remarkable transformation in that time.

If that doesn’t call for a serious rethink, it’s hard to imagine what would.

But it gets a lot worse.

Axe also, experimentally not theoretically (with site directed mutagenesis experiments on a 150-residue protein-folding domain within a B-lactamase enzyme) estimated that the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10^77!

If the universe is indeed some 13.7 billion years and since using the Plank length (smallest possible distance) which is 10^-33 centimeters, and the Plank time (number of possible events per sec.) which is 10^43 and then the number of elementary particles in the universe which is estimated to be 10^80 – calculating the number of possible events in the universe since the Big Bang gives ~10^139. That’s using Dembski’s very conservative calculation.

Other scientists have given much smaller results like University of Pittsburgh physicist Bret van der Sande’s estimate of the probabilistic resources available in the universe at 10^92 – a much less favorable number for the supposed evolutionary time frame than Dembski’s. Worse of course is that this is the number that applies since the beginning of the universe – not the beginning of Earth!

MIT computer scientist Seth Lloyd has calculated that the most bit operations the universe could have performed in its history (assuming the entire universe were given over to this single-minded task) is 10^120, meaning that a specific bit operation with an improbability significantly greater than 1 chance in 10^120 will likely never occur by chance. None of these probabilistic resources is sufficient to render the chance hypothesis plausible. Dembski’s calculation is the most conservative and gives chance its “best chance” to succeed. But even his calculation confirms the implausibility of the chance hypothesis, whether chance is invoked to explain the information necessary to build a single protein or the information necessary to build the suite of proteins needed to service a minimally complex cell.

The probability of producing a single 150-amino-acid functional protein by chance stands at about 1 in about 10^164 (when including P for the requirements for having only peptide bonds and only L-amino acids) – “L-amino acids” dominate on earth, etc. “If you mix up chirality, a protein’s properties change enormously. Life couldn’t operate with just random mixtures of stuff,” – Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University).
Chirality: The term chiral is used to describe an object that is non-superposable on its mirror image. The concept of handedness – right, left
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29 – section on biology

Thus, for each functional sequence of 150 amino acids, there are at least 10^164 other possible nonfunctional sequences of the same length. Therefore, to have a good (i.e., better than 50-50) chance of producing a single functional protein of this length by chance, a random process would have to generate (or sample) more than half of the 10^164 nonfunctional sequences corresponding to each functional sequence of that length. Unfortunately, that number vastly exceeds the most optimistic estimate of the probabilistic resources of the entire universe – that is the number of events that could have occurred since the beginning of its existence.

To see this, notice again that to have a better than 50-50 chance of generating a functional protein by chance, more than half of the 10^164 sequences would have to be produced. Now compare that number (0.5 x l0^164) to the maximum number of opportunities – 10^139 – for that event to occur in the history of the universe. Notice that the first number (.5 x 10^164) exceeds the second (10^139).

There is a better chance of pinpointing a single specific atom within the entire universe, entirely by luck, than the single functional 150 amino acid protein arriving by the same! And that’s a small protein.
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The above is partly from Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell
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Remember that the above numbers are estimates since no one knows the exact age age of the universe, the earth and probabilities are often subject to other unknown variables. But the above calculations only apply to getting a single functional protein! Not a fully functional cell! Not even DNA.

Even if the odds are much better than this, they are still so bad as to merit a verdict against Darwinism’s chance and selection hypothesis! In Darwinism everything is super easy for evolution! Even if the final numbers are orders of magnitude off, their implications are still so far beyond the realm of reasonable expectations as to warrant a complete abandon of the whole chemical origin of life scheme.

Furthermore, if the origin of life is physically impossible by chance and necessity then what are the chances that the same processes could cause the evolution of some ancient ‘self-replicator’ into more than 10 million highly specified, well adapted life forms? The answer is that the chances for that are not much better at all!

Add genetic entropy to the problem and you’ll understand why neo Darwinism is a waste of time and a real science stopper.
The facts, yes facts, about genetic entropy are devastating to NDE.  If the primary mechanism of mutations + selection is shown to be inadequate then the whole NDE is undone.  And this has already been shown to a degree requiring a negative verdict!  Mutations, the prime source of genetic variation, are largely near neutral (very slightly deleterious), many are deleterious (some fatal) and some, but very rare are beneficial.

Atheist Sir F. Hoyle commented on this problem:

“I am convinced it is this almost trivial simplicity that explains why the Darwinian theory is so widely accepted, why it has penetrated through the educational system so completely. As one student text puts it, `The theory is a two-step process. First variation must exist in a population. Second, the fittest members of the population have a selective advantage and are more likely to transmit their genes to the next generation.’ But what if individuals with a good gene A carry a bad gene B. having the larger value of |s|. Does the bad gene not carry the good one down to disaster? What of the situation that bad mutations must enormously exceed good ones in number? … The essential problem for the Darwinian theory in its twentieth century form is how to cope with this continuing flood of adverse mutations, a far cry indeed from the trite problem of only the single mutation in (1.1). Supposing a favourable mutation to occur among the avalanche of unfavourable ones, how is the favourable mutation to advance against the downward pressure of the others?” (Hoyle, F., “Mathematics of Evolution,” [1987]

and  again…

“Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to work, even in the limited degree to be discussed …. This presents an insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like the fidelity of present-day systems …. With only poor copying fidelity, a primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with crossover beggars the imagination.” (Hoyle, F., “Mathematics of Evolution,” [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999

Renown geneticist Dr. John Sandford’s recent work in this area is also highly revealing.  Here  is what he said on the endeavor itself (my bold):

Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom [neo Darwinism]. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.    Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this, but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory, in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!

To question the Primary Axiom required me to re-examine virtually everything I thought I knew about genetics. This was probably the most difficult intellectual endeavor of my life. Deeply entrenched thought pattern only change very slowly (and I must add — painfully). What I eventually experienced was a complete overthrow of my previous understandings. Several years of personal struggle resulted in a new understanding, and a very strong conviction that the Primary Axiom was most definitely wrong. More importantly, I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows. In doing this, I realized I would earn for myself the most intense disdain of most of my colleagues in academia not to mention very intense opposition and anger from other high places.

In his book, which I will not attempt to quote extensively, he notes:

One of the most astounding recent findings in the world of genetics is that the human mutation rate (just within our reproductive cells) is at least 100 nucleotide substitutions (misspellings) per person per generation (Kondrashov, 2002). Other geneticists would place this number at 175 (Nachman and Crowell, 2000). These high numbers are now widely accepted within the genetics community. Furthermore, Dr. Kondrashov, the author of the most definitive publication, has indicated to me that 100 was only his lower estimate — he believes the actual rate of point mutations (misspellings) per person may be as high as 300 (personal communication). Even the lower estimate, 100, is an amazing number, with profound implications. When an earlier study revealed that the human mutation rate might be as high as 30, the highly distinguished author of that study, concluded that such a number would have profound implications for evolutionary theory (Neel et al. 1986).

Moreover, there are strong theoretical reasons for believing there is no truly neutral nucleotide position. By its very existence, a nucleotide position takes up space, affects spacing between other sites, and affects such things as regional nucleotide composition, DNA folding and nucleosome binding. If a nucleotide carries absolutely zero information, it is then by definition slightly deleterious – as it slows cell replication and wastes energy. Just as there are really no truly beneficial neutral letters in a encyclopedia, there are probably no truly neutral nucleotide sites in the genome. Therefore there is no way to change any given site, without some biological effect – no matter how subtle. Therefore, while most sites are probably “nearly neutral”, very few, if any, should be absolutely neutral.   – Dr. John Sanford, Cornell geneticist, Genetic Entropy The most recent paper on mutation rates is this : http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html – which basically confirms the 100-200 figure.

And so much for “junk DNA”:

The ENCODE consortium’s major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active.

Also – You still must account for semantic information in biological systems. And it is that information, along with the complex algorithms that process it, that makes Darwinism unfeasible.
Materialism, by very definition, cannot account for the existence of semantic information in living things. That kind of information absolutely requires intelligence – no exceptions exist.

I have repeated this next fact over and over again and never gotten any refutation other than mere denial!  – Code, by definition, implies intelligence and the genetic code is real code, mathematically identical to that of language, computer codes etc. all of which can only arise by intelligent convention of symbologies.

The fact that the genetic code is real code and not merely analogous to code is another devastating fact against NDE.
Moreover the genome contains meta information and there is now evidence of meta-programming as well.
Meta info is information on information and we now know the genome contains such structures. But meta information cannot arise without knowledge of the original information.

Meta programming is even more solid evidence of intelligence at work.

We now know that in yeast DNA alone there are more than 300 nano machines at work performing various tasks in the cell, many of which are performed concurrently. Yet concurrency in info processing systems cannot arise without pre-knowledge of tasks requiring coordinated action!

Stuart Pullen in his book Intelligent Design or Evolution (available for reading on line, rightly calls this information “molecular knowledge”.
Read his book to see why a chance and necessity OOL hypothesis is utterly impossible.  It is also viewable here.
His mathematical analysis of the chance – necessity scenario is utterly devastating to any chance OOL hypothesis and thus could be equally devastating to the Darwinian evolution of life hypothesis merely by applying the sample principles to complex bio machines.

In short the nature of cellular information systems in the genome literally rules out chance and necessity for any viable origin theory. An intelligence HAD to be intimately involved in its formation and function.

Worse still for NDE, we now know that the genome contains many poly-poly0functional and thus constrained sequences. But this poly-functionality really stretches the credibility of any chance + necessity hypothesis of ever having any chance at all of success!
In any poly-functional-constrained system, undoing – by random mutation – any one function necessarily undoes the whole.

As Sanford states,

This “complex interwoven (poly-fuctional) network” throughout the entire DNA code makes the human genome severely poly-constrained to random mutations (Sanford; Genetic Entropy, 2005; page 141). This means the DNA code is now much more severely limited in its chance of ever having a hypothetical beneficial mutation since almost the entire DNA code is now proven to be intimately connected to many other parts of the DNA code. Thus even though a random mutation to DNA may be able to change one part of an organism for the better, it is now proven much more likely to harm many other parts of the organism that depend on that one particular part being as it originally was. Since evolution was forced, by the established proof of Mendelian genetics, to no longer view the whole organism as to what natural selection works upon, but to view the whole organism as a multiple independent collection of genes that can be selected or discarded as natural selection sees fit, this “complex interwoven network” finding is extremely bad news, if not absolutely crushing, for the “Junk DNA” population genetics scenario of evolution (modern neo-Darwinian synthesis) developed by Haldane, Fisher and Wright (page 52 and 53: Genetic Entropy: Sanford 2005

One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century was Kurt Godel.

The formation within geological time of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation] -Kurt Gödel

We could also add the implications of self correction mechanisms within the genome as further evidence of design since no correction can be made to any complex system without knowledge of its correct system state and thus no such mechanism can arise randomly.
I won’t get into apoptosis and the rest here but you can read my post on Programmed Cell Death.

ID is a necessity in OOL (origin of life) and OOS (origin of species) explanations. The only thing we can reliably say of Darwinian mechanisms is that adaptation and variation occur – but only in a limited way – within the “kind”.
Now, since evolutionists are always asking what taxonomic category the biblical kind is here is my own answer: The “kind” probably corresponds best with the taxonomic ‘family’.
I.E. – No lizard to dog, frog to prince, bacteria to banana, banana to monkey, Darwinist to squid, etc. is even possible given the above humongous improbabilities.