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Various theories of the code’s origin soon emerged. Perhaps the code was, to some extent a consequence of chemistry. The codons AAA and AAG, for example, would in this case code for the amino acid lysine because lysine was somehow stereochemically “related” to these two codons. Or perhaps the code evolved to reduce the impact of mutations. On the other hand, perhaps the codon-to-amino acid mapping was simply a matter of chance. These different theories and their variations and intermediates were considered.

... A common thread in evolutionary thinking, however, was that the code was not particularly unique or special.

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the code’s arrangement reduces the effects of mutations and reading errors.

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ORIGINAL: robto

Right at the outset I would like to point out that almost NONE of the "predictions" on the Darwin's Predictions website are actually Darwin's predictions. That is, the claims that are supposedly falsified, according to the website, are claims that Darwin himself never made. Rather, they are claims made by other scientists that use evolution as base theory.

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In particular, he never addresses the vast body of evidence in favor of evolution.

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He thinks that by poking a few holes in the predictions made by scientists on the basis of evolution he can knock down the base theory itself. Well, it just ain't so. Science doesn't work that way.

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ORIGINAL: robto

Section 2 of the website says "This section examines evolutionary predictions dealing with the DNA." DNA was discovered nearly 100 years after Darwin, so obviously nothing in this section is a prediction of Darwin. Still, DNA is a crucial part of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, so predictions about DNA are a valid part of the modern theory of evolution and so are fair targets for criticism. Let's look at the claims.

Section 2.1: "The DNA structure gave rise to first life"

This is NOT a prediction of the theory of evolution. The origin of life on earth is a separate issue than the evolution of life, once it was here. If it turned out that the first cell was planted on earth by intelligent aliens, or by God, that would not affect the theory of evolution.

It is true that scientists are working hard to come up with a theory of "molecular evolution" by which the first cell on earth could have arisen by natural processes. But there is as yet no generally accepted theory. So this "falsification" is completely irrelevant to Darwinian evolution.

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Section 2.2: The DNA code is not unique

This section is easy to debunk because we can see by Hunter's own words that his claimed "prediction" is not true. Hunter writes

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Various theories of the code’s origin soon emerged. Perhaps the code was, to some extent a consequence of chemistry. The codons AAA and AAG, for example, would in this case code for the amino acid lysine because lysine was somehow stereochemically “related” to these two codons. Or perhaps the code evolved to reduce the impact of mutations. On the other hand, perhaps the codon-to-amino acid mapping was simply a matter of chance. These different theories and their variations and intermediates were considered.

... A common thread in evolutionary thinking, however, was that the code was not particularly unique or special.

He then proceeds to "falsify" the "prediction" that the DNA code is not unique or special by listing ways in which the code is indeed optimal. For instance,

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the code’s arrangement reduces the effects of mutations and reading errors.

But evolving to reduce the effects of errors and mutations was one of the predictions of evolution, as listed by Hunter himself in the paragraph I quoted!

So the "falsification" here is just false.

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2.3 Fundamental molecular processes

Here Hunter notes that the assumption of a single common ancestor for all life implies that basic processes, like the DNA replication process, should be the same in all organisms. Then he points out that the DNA replication process of bacteria is quite different from that of archaea/eukaryotes. Thus, this prediction of evolution has been falsified.

Here we are talking about the very early history of life, when all organisms were microscopic and left no fossils. So it is unlikely we will ever know exactly how these early stages occurred. If life arose once by natural processes, it could have arisen twice, or five times, or twenty times, by natural processes. Perhaps the evidence will eventually point to separate origins of bacterial and eukaryotic life. Perhaps we will find a reasonable scenario in which all life comes from a common ancestor, yet bacteria and eukayotes end up with different replication mechanisms. This kind of research is very young, and little is established for sure.

Let us suppose that Hunter's view is correct, and we can rule out definitively a common origin for bacteria and eukaryotes. There is still nothing to prevent us from accepting an evolutionary origin of all the eukaryotes, including all the plants and animals and us.

In fact, the common replication mechanism for all eukaryotes is a strong point in favor of evolution - a prediction confirmed by the molecular evidence.

To sum up, this is a point where the theory of evolution may need to be modified. But the common replication mechanism of a vast array of living organisms is a strong point in favor of evolution, a point which Hunter completely fails to mention.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

Perhaps then you could elucidate what specific predictions Darwin did make, and when he made them?

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
First: Darwin himself predicted (isn't that what the article is about?) that organic molecules were the beginning of life. According to him, they were protein compounds

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I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

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Second: the most obvious organic molecule, the one common molecule for everything that can arguably be called "life" is DNA or RNA. Third: It is unlikely that DNA or RNA could be formed through natural processes. Fourth: it is unlikely that the proteins necessary to form DNA or RNA could have formed through natural processes. Why is it so hard to just answer the objection?

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I really don't see how you can read this section and come up with so simplistic a response. Are you familiar with how complicated DNA is? Do you know what the author meant when he said that DNA evolved early on and froze in time? The point of the section is that this code is not arbitrary, but full of fully capable of supporting the apex of life's compound interacting systems early on in life's origin.

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Darwin himself advocated a 400 million year or more age for the earth, which he considered to be required for the new species to evolve. This requirement became particularly evident when William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) contradicted the trend toward longer time periods. Only a few years after Darwin had published his book on evolution, Thomson argued that the earth could be no older than 100 million years. Thomson later revised that figure downward to as little as 20-40 million years.

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It is now known that evolution has nowhere near the eons of time predicted and required by Darwin. Indeed, the time windows available are even less than those allowed by William Thomson, which themselves were unacceptable to the evolutionists. This falsification of evolution’s prediction does not derive from the age of the earth, but rather from the fossil record. We now know that, even with billions of years of earth history, the major events in the fossil record take place in time windows that are no longer than a few tens of millions of years or even less.

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ORIGINAL: robto

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ORIGINAL: DanJames
First: Darwin himself predicted (isn't that what the article is about?) that organic molecules were the beginning of life. According to him, they were protein compounds

Um, no... he didn't. The only thing he wrote about the very beginning of life in Origin of the Species is this:

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I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.

(In the second edition, he added "by the Creator" then removed it from the third edition.)

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Second: the most obvious organic molecule, the one common molecule for everything that can arguably be called "life" is DNA or RNA. Third: It is unlikely that DNA or RNA could be formed through natural processes. Fourth: it is unlikely that the proteins necessary to form DNA or RNA could have formed through natural processes. Why is it so hard to just answer the objection?

This thread is about the web page Darwin's Predictions. I am not going to attempt to justify all of evolution, much less the origin of life research.

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I really don't see how you can read this section and come up with so simplistic a response. Are you familiar with how complicated DNA is? Do you know what the author meant when he said that DNA evolved early on and froze in time? The point of the section is that this code is not arbitrary, but full of fully capable of supporting the apex of life's compound interacting systems early on in life's origin.

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ORIGINAL: robto


Right at the outset I would like to point out that almost NONE of the "predictions" on the Darwin's Predictions website are actually Darwin's predictions. That is, the claims that are supposedly falsified, according to the website, are claims that Darwin himself never made. Rather, they are claims made by other scientists that use evolution as base theory.

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So, while failed predictions are indeed important in science, they are not necessarily deadly to a theory.

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...the vast body of evidence in favor of evolution.

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ORIGINAL: robto

Later, radiometric dating methods showed that the actual age of the earth was more like 4 billion years, more than enough for Darwin's time frame.

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This is a small masterpiece of "fog displacement." The original discussion was about the total time required for the whole process of evolution. Hunter spins on a dime an changes the topic: to "the major events in the fossil record." ...

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Section 3.2: Eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes
None of this has anything to do with the question of whether humans evolved from apes, whether birds evolved from dinosaurs, whether mammals evolved from reptiles, etc. What we see here is a common tactic among pseudo-scientists: Attack a theory at the points that are still controversial while ignoring the parts where the evidence is rich and the conclusions are well-established.

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You need to remember that no organism living today is the same as one of the organisms supposed by evolution to have had an "intermediate" eye.

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Every organism living today has been evolving for the past 500 million years.

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Begging the question. This is the very thing to be proven and has not been.

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(By the way, some on these boards have ridiculed the evolutionist's assumption "suppose an animal has a sun-sensitive patch of skin..." Try this: stand by a sunny window, close your eyes, and move your hand from the shade into the sun. What do you feel?)

Now that's both very childish and false.

The truth is that "light sensitive spots" on skin are usually symptoms of disease. Google it.
Moving your hand in and out of shade is not light sensitivity at all but heat sensitivity. Are you sure you're a physicist? I have serious doubts.

Do you have any idea at all at how complex a real light sensitive organ is? Or how incredibly improbable it is that a mere light sensitive 'spot' (whatever that is) evolve into anything useful at all before getting selected out as a tumor?!!

Did you even ever stop to think that such 'spots' must be correctly connected to the brain and that both must be precisely programmed to interact before anything but tumor-like behavior will ever happen!?

I don't believe you ever really think about these things at all in any concrete way.

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"The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. ...To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking." -W. R. Thompson, PhD

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ORIGINAL: robto

Hunter writes:

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Darwin himself advocated a 400 million year or more age for the earth, which he considered to be required for the new species to evolve. This requirement became particularly evident when William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) contradicted the trend toward longer time periods. Only a few years after Darwin had published his book on evolution, Thomson argued that the earth could be no older than 100 million years. Thomson later revised that figure downward to as little as 20-40 million years.

Thomson's estimate was based on the rate of cooling of the earth. He assumed that there was no internal source of energy to heat the earth. Then in 1896 radioactivity was discovered. Radioactive minerals in the earth provide a source of heat energy, so Thomson's assumption, and therefore his age estimate, was incorrect.

Later, radiometric dating methods showed that the actual age of the earth was more like 4 billion years, more than enough for Darwin's time frame. Complex life has been on earth for at least 600 million years. Darwin's prediction of a greater age for the earth was a successful one.

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ORIGINAL: DanJames

Letter from Darwin in 1871 to botanist Joseph Hooker
“It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.”

Yeah, so there ya go. Organic molecules were the beginning of life. According to him, they were protein compounds. Careful though he may have been in his first publication, he became more candid later in life, dropping all care about the opinion of the church in The Decent of Man.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

Well that sounds like caviling over the use of words to me. I think it's quite obvious from his first paragraphs that he's dealing with the predictions generally allotted to to Darwins theory : "many predictions made by Darwin’s theory of evolution have been found to be false" He should have named his site Darwinian predictions or something like that.

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I've been debating this for over 30 years now and have debated with hundreds, and thus far I've conversed with no one that actually knows what the vast body is or where it resides?!! Pretty amazing!!
Have you seen it? Has anyone?

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All I've seen are ... lined up skulls (anyone can do that)...

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Obviously what is really going on here is that every Darwinian scientist thinks that some other Darwinian scientists have vast stores of evidence.

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Now that's one heck of a statement. Can you demonstrate that 4by is sufficient for evolution of 50 million species or so?

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uite incorrect. Where do you get this total time vs major events time from? Indeed, what is the real difference? There is no reason to even make a distinction since by making one you are inventing some form of evolution for which there is no evidence at all. You're presuming evolution outside the fossil record! Least it seems to me that's what you're doing.

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ORIGINAL: robto

Here's a starting point.

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All I've seen are ... lined up skulls (anyone can do that)...

I can't believe you're still using this line, Hitch. Surely you realize that you can't line up skulls if they don't exist! And you don't have to "line them up" - they are already "lined up" according to age by radiometric dating.

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“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information‚ what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appear to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection.”
David Raup, “Conflicts between Darwin and Paleontology”, Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin Jan. 1979, Vol. 50 No. 1 p. 22-29

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"No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It never seems to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change–over millions of years, at a rate too slow to account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the fossils did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on somewhere else. Yet that’s how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution."

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Robert E. Ricklefs in an article in Science entitled “Paleontologists confronting macroevolution,” states: “The punctuated equilibrium model has been widely accepted, not because it has a compelling theoretical basis but because it appears to resolve a dilemma. … apart from its intrinsic circularity (one could argue that speciation can occur only when phyletic change is rapid, not vice versa), the model is more ad hoc explanation than theory, and it rests on shaky ground.” (Science, Vol. 199:58-60, Jan. 6, 1978.)

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Obviously what is really going on here is that every Darwinian scientist thinks that some other Darwinian scientists have vast stores of evidence.

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Right, thousands of paleontologists have just failed to notice the fact.

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"We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports the story of gradual adoptive change, all the while knowing that it has not."

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I don't have to. I'm only saying that 400 million years is what Darwin predicted and we now know there's at least that much time. Successful prediction - end of story.

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"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."

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The scientists could have spared themselves the effort of saving Darwin, for the effort to preserve a purely mechanistic universe ultimately breaks down in any event over the origin of life itself. Cambridge astronomer Fred Hoyle has described the chances of fashioning a living organism by accident from the pre-biotic soup as roughly equivalent to that of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and fashioning a Boeing 747. Even the simplest one-cell bacterial cell makes a spaceship seem low-tech by comparison.

Hoyle also discovered that the carbon, the basis of all organic life, could only have been created in the original solar pressure cooker because of the perfect nuclear resonance between two sets of simpler elements. His conclusion: "A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature." - Jonathan Rosenblum

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Sometime in 1955, when I was taking Honor Moderations in Science (Botany, Chemistry and Geology) at Oxford University, the O. U. Biology Club announced a lecture against the theory of Evolution. The largest auditorium in the Biology Labs was filled to capacity. When the speaker was introduced (I regret I do not remember his name), it turned out he was an octogenarian with a Ph.D. in biology from Cambridge, obtained in the 19th century.

He spoke fervently against the theory of Evolution, defending what was for us an obviously indefensible position. He did not convince anybody with his antique arguments; he did not understand the questions that were fired at him; he rejected science as we knew it. We all had a good laugh hearing this dinosaur. He fought for his convictions against a sophisticated scientific environment, deaf to any opinions inspired by religious beliefs. Today his views are being vindicated by new evidence from natural sciences. May his soul rest in peace.

In 1955, like all in my generation, I was fully convinced that Evolution was an established biological fact. The evidence was primarily paleontological. We were taught how to identify geological strata with the help of fossils, specific for a given epoch. The rocks were dated by the fossils, the fossils by the strata. A lecturer in stratigraphy, when asked during a field trip how the strata were dated, explained that we know the rate of current sedimentation, the depths of strata and thus the age of rocks. In any case, there are new isotopic techniques that confirm all this. This sounded very scientific and convincing.

In my studies I went on to a B.A. and M.A. in forestry, a Ph.D. in plant physiology and finally a D.Sc. in genetics. For a long time I was not bothered by geology, Evolution or any suspicious thoughts. I had my own field of research in population genetics of forest trees, with no immediate relevance to the controversy over Evolution.

Gradually, as my children got to the stage of learning biology in school and discussing their problems with Dad, I realized that the evidence for Evolution had shifted from paleontology and embryology to population genetics. But population genetics is my subject! I knew it was used to explain how Evolution progressed, but I was not aware it is used to prove it. Without my noticing it, my special field had become the supplier of the most pertinent evidence supporting the theory.

If Evolution were proved in some field I was not familiar with, I understood the need to accommodate my field to this fact, to suggest explanations how it occurred in terms of genetics. But to claim that these attempted explanations are the primary evidence for the theory was quite unacceptable to me. I started reading the current literature on the topic of Evolution. Until then I was not aware how shaky the evidence for Evolution was, how much of what was “evidence” had to be discarded, how little new evidence had been accumulated over the years, and how very much ideas dominate facts. These ideas have become dogma, yet they have no footing in natural sciences. They stem from materialistic philosophies.

My primary objection as a geneticist was to the claim that the formation of races, or microevolution, as it is often referred to, is a small scale example of macroevolution - the origin of species. Race formation is, of course, very well documented. All it requires is isolation of a part of a population. After a few generations, due to natural selection and genetic drift, the isolated population will irreversibly lose some genes, and thus, as long as the isolation continues, in some features it will be different from the population it arose from. In fact, we do this ourselves all the time when breeding, substituting natural with artificial selection and creating artificial barriers to generative mixing outside the domesticated conditions.

The important thing to remember here is that a race is genetically impoverished relative to the whole population. It has fewer alleles (forms of genes). Some of them are arranged into special, interesting, rare combinations. This is particularly achieved by guided recombination of selected forms in breeding work. But these selected forms are less variable (less polymorphic). Thus what is referred to as micro-evolution represents natural or artificial reduction of the gene pool. You will not get Evolution that way. Evolution means construction of new genes. It means increase in the amount of genetic information, and not reduction of it.

The evolutionary value of new races or selected forms should be demonstrable by natural selection. However, if allowed to mix with the general breeding population, new races will disappear. The genes in select combinations will disperse again; the domesticated forms will go wild. Thus there is no evidence for Evolution here.

Mutations figure prominently in the Evolution story. When in the early ’60s I was starting breeding work on forest trees, everyone was very excited about the potential of artificial mutations. In many places around the world, special “cobalt bomb” centers were established to stimulate rates of mutations. What wonderful things were expected from increased variability by induced mutations. All of this work has long since been abandoned. It led nowhere. All that was obtained were deformed freaks, absolutely useless in forestry.

Maybe occasionally some oddity could be of ornamental value, but never able to live on its own in natural conditions. A glance through literature on mutations outside forestry quickly convinced me that the pattern is similar everywhere. Mutations are either neutral or detrimental. Positive ones, if they do occur, are too rare to be noticeable. Stability in nature is the rule. We have no proofs for Evolution from mutation research.

It is sometimes claimed that strains of diseases resistant to antibiotics, or weeds resistant to herbicides, are evidence for positive mutations. This is not so. Most of the time, the acquired resistance is due to genetic recombination and not due to mutations. Where mutations have been shown to be involved, their role depends on deforming part of the genetic code, which results in a deformed, usually less effective protein that is no longer suitable for attachment by the harmful chemical.

Herbicides are “custom made” for attachability to a vital protein specific for the weed species, and they kill the plant by depriving the protein of its function when attached to it. A mutation that cancels attachability to the herbicide and does not totally deprive the protein of its function is in this case beneficial, since it protects the functionality of the protein. However this is at a price, since in fact the change is somewhat detrimental to normal life processes. At best it is neutral. There are many ways in which living systems protect functionality. This is one of them. Others include healing or eliminating deformed parts or organisms. Natural selection belongs here. So does the immunological adaptation to an invader. Of course such protective adaptations do not create new species, new kinds, new organs or biological systems. They protect what already exists, usually at a cost. Defects accumulate along the way.

Within the genome of a species, that is, in the molecular structure of its DNA, we find many recurrent specific nucleotide sequences, known as “repeats.” Different ones occur in different species. If this variation (neutral as far as we know) arose from random mutations, it should be random. How then did the “repeats” come to be? If mutations are the answer, they could not have been random. In this context “genetic drive” is postulated, as distinct from “genetic drift.” But Who or what does the driving? The empirical science of genetics knows only random mutations.

Currently there are new suggestions that molecular genetics provides evidence for Evolution. Analyses of DNA sequences in various species should show similarities between related ones and big differences between systematically far-removed species. They do exactly that. Molecular genetics generally confirms the accuracy of taxonomy. But at the same time, it does not confirm postulated evolutionary sequences. There are no progressive changes, say from fishes to amphibians, to reptiles to mammals. Molecular genetics confirms systematics, not phylogeny; Linnaeus, not Darwin.

No. Genetics has no proofs for Evolution. It has trouble explaining it. The closer one looks at the evidence for Evolution, the less one finds of substance. In fact, the theory keeps on postulating evidence and failing to find it, and moves on to other postulates (fossil missing links, natural selection of improved forms, positive mutations, molecular phylogenetic sequences, etc.). This is not science.

A whole age of scientific endeavor was wasted searching for a phantom. It is time we stopped and looked at the facts! Natural sciences failed to supply any evidence for Evolution. Christian philosophy tried to accommodate this unproved postulate of materialist philosophies. Much time and intellectual effort went in vain, leading only to negative moral consequences. It is time those working in the humanities were told the truth.

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Because similar species are thought to share a relatively recent common ancestor, they are assumed to have not had much time to evolve differences between them. That explains why they are similar, and it also predicts that such species do not have significant differences. Their genome differences should be minor.

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There certainly are many genetic similarities between allied species, but we now know of dramatic differences and the list is growing.

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Evolution predicts that more distant species should have greater differences in their genomes.

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The corollary to this prediction is that similar DNA sequences found in distant species must be functionally constrained.

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Is biological variation really something that just naturally arises? A common idea in Darwin’s day was that such variation arose via the blending of parental traits. A tall individual crossed with a short individual would likely produce a medium height individual, for instance. But this notion did not fit the facts. It came more from intuition than from empirical observation.

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This is sometimes called the existence problem. Evolution relies on the preexistence of biological variation without understanding from where it came. We now know how variation comes about but not how the machine behind it came about. The shortcoming is particularly awkward because evolution proposes to tell us not only how variation is used but how all the species came about—and its answer is by unguided natural forces. But when we come to the Mendelian machine of variation we must ask how was it that evolution produced such a fine-tuned machine which is, in turn, supposed to be the engine for evolution itself?

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Rapid Evolution:

One hint that biology would not cooperate with Darwin’s theory came from the many examples of rapidly adapting populations. What evolutionists thought would require thousands or millions of years has been observed in laboratories and in the field, in an evolutionary blink of an eye.

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The problem is that evolutionary mechanisms are not supposed to work this fast. Clearly these adaptations were induced by environmental change, and the changes appear to be addressing the need rather than independent of the need. If the changes were random with respect to the environmental pressure, then a much longer time period would be needed to evolve such adaptations.

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ORIGINAL: robto

"Evolution relies on the preexistence of biological variation without understanding from where it came." This is correct: evolution requires variation within a species and requires a mechanism to pass on characteristics from one generation to the next, but it doesn't specify how that variation should come about, or how it is to passed on. Thus, the discovery of DNA as a means of producing variation within a species (via the various alleles of a gene) and also as a means of passing on those variations to the next generation (by passing on half your DNA to your offspring) is, once again, a tremendous success for the theory of evolution.

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In Darwin's view, neither of these things can happen. What happens instead is that the deer that already have longer necks will be more able to survive, and therefore the next generation will have a greater proportion of long-necked deer.

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It is clear, though, that these modifications make the "natural selection" part even stronger. If acquired characteristics can be passed along, then the next generation will have a greater advantage in the battle for survival.

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Far from undermining the "big picture" of evolution, these discoveries make it more understandable how some evolutionary transitions can take place rapidly - so rapidly that it is very hard to catch them in action in the fossil record.

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There is nothing in Darwin's theory that requires a uniform rate of genetic change.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

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ORIGINAL: robto

"Evolution relies on the preexistence of biological variation without understanding from where it came." This is correct: evolution requires variation within a species and requires a mechanism to pass on characteristics from one generation to the next, but it doesn't specify how that variation should come about, or how it is to passed on. Thus, the discovery of DNA as a means of producing variation within a species (via the various alleles of a gene) and also as a means of passing on those variations to the next generation (by passing on half your DNA to your offspring) is, once again, a tremendous success for the theory of evolution.

Let's set the record straight here; this is a success of the theory of evolution as you state but ONLY if by 'evolution' you mean descent with modification over time.

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And this, btw, was something known long before Darwin so it's questionable to call it a success of his theory - he was merely stating known, observed facts.

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The controversial part is in his additions to descent with modification being capable of producing all life forms.

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I know of no YEC who'd disagree with that definition. So if that's all there is to evolution then we're all evolutionists.

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In Darwin's view, neither of these things can happen. What happens instead is that the deer that already have longer necks will be more able to survive, and therefore the next generation will have a greater proportion of long-necked deer.

Well that isn't Darwins proprietary view anyway. That's a simple observation that again any YEC can see and agree with; and it has little to do with what Darwinism really is - not just change in allele frequencies over time - but in completely new types and body plans from bacteria to whale - and all coming from mere mutations + selection! A huge difference.

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Far from undermining the "big picture" of evolution, these discoveries make it more understandable how some evolutionary transitions can take place rapidly - so rapidly that it is very hard to catch them in action in the fossil record.

This is what is known as pulling a rabbit out of one's hat - and a very big rabbit it is! You have just told a story that covers and explains the glaring absence of transitionals in the wink of an eye without having to explain how any such radical rapid changes could come about. Indeed we already know that this isn't possible.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

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You need to remember that no organism living today is the same as one of the organisms supposed by evolution to have had an "intermediate" eye.

Pure speculation. There is no intermediate eye and never has been. And that for obvious reasons.

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Every organism living today has been evolving for the past 500 million years.

Begging the question. This is the very thing to be proven and has not been.

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(By the way, some on these boards have ridiculed the evolutionist's assumption "suppose an animal has a sun-sensitive patch of skin..." Try this: stand by a sunny window, close your eyes, and move your hand from the shade into the sun. What do you feel?)

Now that's both very childish and false.

The truth is that "light sensitive spots" on skin are usually symptoms of disease. Google it.
Moving your hand in and out of shade is not light sensitivity at all but heat sensitivity. Are you sure you're a physicist? I have serious doubts.

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Do you have any idea at all at how complex a real light sensitive organ is? Or how incredibly improbable it is that a mere light sensitive 'spot' (whatever that is) evolve into anything useful at all before getting selected out as a tumor?!!

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Did you even ever stop to think that such 'spots' must be correctly connected to the brain and that both must be precisely programmed to interact before anything but tumor-like behavior will ever happen!?

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I don't believe you ever really think about these things at all in any concrete way.

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ORIGINAL: robto

I have already mentioned some points where I think Hunter's criticisms of evolution are (at least partly) correct. Are there any claims that you would agree are incorrect?

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Great - here's something we agree on already: this is a successful prediction of evolution!

Indeed, but also a successful and in fact necessary prediction of creationism.

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Now here's the crucial point: in science, we NEVER have sufficient conditions that prove a theory!

I hear that quite often - and from both sides of any debate. Yet it is patently false. Science has proven and disproven many things.

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But note that evolution doesn't predict big changes in body plans - EVERYTHING happens through the accumulation of small changes.

And it is precisely there that it breaks down! Can small accumulations of mutations - which are notoriously deleterious - really transform one species into a completely different species over time? The answer is no. Accumulations of mutations always end up with negative and not positive effects.
This Kimura showed. Look up his mutation/selection distribution graph. It's obvious from a simple glance that nothing like macro evolution is ever going to happen through that mechanism.

There is literally nothing on the beneficial mutations side of the graph. Everything is to the left of center axis where deleterious mutations are graphed. Worse, the more near neutral mutations are, the less they are even visible to selection. Thus, it doesn't take a genius to realize that, given that situation, Darwinism cannot be true. Genetic entropy works against it. Genetic loads lead to the probability of eventual mutational meltdown being extremely high. Not mutational functional complexity building.

Behe gives empirical evidence for this in his "Edge of Evolution"! He does not present speculations or conjecture, he presents empirical evidence. That's why no one has offered anything that even remotely rebuts his work described in that book.

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...We're not talking big changes of body plans; we're talking about the kind of transitions that you already said you accept as fact.

Well, the whole discussion is not about species level transitions but family level. Otherwise, why discuss at all?

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The big changes in body plan are a different matter. Here we have abundant evidence in the fossil record.

No, what we have is claims of transitionals based upon assumptions. Are saying that someone has empirically proven that some fossil really is a transitional between major forms?
Like I keep repeating, it's a question of underlying assumptions and interpretation. You cannot take 3 different species and claim the one in the middle is a transitional just because it looks like it. You have to demonstrate the actually link. And to do that you need all the other intermediates in between. Nicely lined up. Do we see this? No. Few and far between is what we're offered.

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Examples are the reptile-to-mammal transition, the evolution of the horse from a small, dog-like animal, and the evolution of modern humans from Lucy and her kin.

You are way out of date and rather gullible if you believe that.
First, there never was a reptile to mammal transition - neither is there the least scrap of evidence to support it. It's all had waving and just so stories.

Second and far worse, Lucy was publicly debunked as any kind of human ancestor many years ago. Shame the West is still largely ignorant of the fact and so the Darwinists here are playing Ostrich as usual. They're going around pretending nothing has happened to little Lucy. The secular humanist controlled media is also to blame.

The French science magazine Science et Vie, in the may issue (no. 980) of 1999 published the whole story. The title was "Adieu Lucy" (goodbye Lucy). I find it sad and even enraging to see just how often the West has been shielded (lied to) on matters like this. How is that Lucy is still being presented as a human ancestor when a major Science mag published all of the scientific research necessary to dismantle Lucy as anything like a human ancestor. Yet you're not aware of this 10 years later!?! Don't feel bad, you're not alone - I encounter the obsolete Lucy thing everywhere I go on the net. Pretty amazing that 10 years later she's still being used to prop up failing Darwinism.

Australopithecus afarensis and all the others go down the tubes almost as quickly as Darwinists find them and make their bombastic claims about them.

You can check out more on lucy's troubles here

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"The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity. ...To establish the continuity required by the theory, historical arguments are invoked even though historical evidence is lacking." -W. R. Thompson, PhD

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ORIGINAL: robto

It is pure speculation, I agree. Soft structures like eyes rarely leave any fossil evidence. That's why we look to living organisms to provide models for what the ancestral organisms might have been like, IF evolution is correct.

BTW, what are the "obvious reasons" that "there never has been" an intermediate eye? I seem to be missing the obvious.

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When light strikes the retina a photon is absorbed by an organic molecule called 11-cis-retinal, causing it to rearrange within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in shape of retinal forces a corresponding change in shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which it is tightly bound. As a consequence of the protein's metamorphosis, the behavior of the protein changes in a very specific way. The altered protein can now interact with another protein called transducin. Before associating with rhodopsin, transducin is tightly bound to a small organic molecule called GDP, but when it binds to rhodopsin the GDP dissociates itself from transducin and a molecule called GTP, which is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP, binds to transducin.

The exchange of GTP for GDP in the transducinrhodopsin complex alters its behavior. GTP-transducinrhodopsin binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When bound by rhodopsin and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the ability to chemically cleave a molecule called cGMP. Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the action of the phosphodiesterase lowers the concentration of cGMP. Activating the phosphodiesterase can be likened to pulling the plug in a bathtub, lowering the level of water.

A second membrane protein which binds cGMP, called an ion channel, can be thought of as a special gateway regulating the number of sodium ions in the cell. The ion channel normally allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump proteins keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the concentration of cGMP is reduced from its normal value through cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, many channels close, resulting in a reduced cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions. This causes an imbalance of charges across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain: the result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

If the biochemistry of vision were limited to the reactions listed above, the cell would quickly deplete its supply of 11-cis-retinal and cGMP while also becoming depleted of sodium ions. Thus a system is required to limit the signal that is generated and restore the cell to its original state; there are several mechanisms which do this. Normally, in the dark, the ion channel, in addition to sodium ions, also allows calcium ions to enter the cell; calcium is pumped back out by a different protein in order to maintain a constant intracellular calcium concentration. However, when cGMP levels fall, shutting down the ion channel and decreasing the sodium ion concentration, calcium ion concentration is also decreased. The phosphodiesterase enzyme, which destroys cGMP, is greatly slowed down at lower calcium concentration. Additionally, a protein called guanylate cyclase begins to resynthesize cGMP when calcium levels start to fall. Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, metarhodopsin II is chemically modified by an enzyme called rhodopsin kinase, which places a phosphate group on its substrate. The modified rhodopsin is then bound by a protein dubbed arrestin, which prevents the rhodopsin from further activating transducin. Thus the cell contains mechanisms to limit the amplified signal started by a single photon.

Trans-retinal eventually falls off of the rhodopsin molecule and must be reconverted to 11-cis-retinal and again bound by opsin to regenerate rhodopsin for another visual cycle. To accomplish this trans-retinal is first chemically modified by an enzyme to transretinol, a form containing two more hydrogen atoms. A second enzyme then isomerizes the molecule to 11-cis-retinol. Finally, a third enzyme removes the previouslyadded hydrogen atoms to form 11-cis-retinal, and the cycle is complete.

• A light-sensitive "spot" means nothing at all in the usual jargon - what is it?
  
• What would cause a light-sensitive spot in the 1st place? What mutations?
  
• A light-sensitive spot, by itself, is useless. And useless mutations lying on the organisms skin, or where ever, would be treated by the body as a tumor than a fitness advantage
  
• A light-sensitive "spot" is in fact a highly complex piece of bio-electric circuitry
  
• The formation of a lens out of the spot is the next assumptive step but why would this happen? How? And all while retaining a fitness advantage?
  
• Without a brain no possible survival or advantage could be gained by such
  
• If no advantage is achieved, the spot or more likely spots remain useless and cumbersome structures - selection would eliminate them!
  
• Why not multiple such spots?
  
• Why are there always just 2 of them in most living creatures except insects?
  
• How would such spots manage to form a functional link with the brain?
  
• How could the information received by the spots be stored, coded and become useful for spatial interpretation?
  
• Visual spatial, color, textural etc. interpretation requires extremely complex math (as any 3D graphics programmer will tell you) - where would this come from?
  
• How could the transfer of information be established between spots and brain?
  
• How would the brain "know" what to do with said informtion?

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Sometimes I get the feeling you're not really trying to understand my posts, you're just grazing for sentences you can object to.

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Well, the truth is I AM a physicist and I know that it is not "heat sensitivity" when you put your hand into a sunbeam. You are detecting the infra-red part of the sun's electromagnetic spectrum. This is sometimes called "radiant heat", but it is actually electromagnetic waves just like light, only with a slightly longer wavelength.

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What we have here is the "argument from personal incredulity." That is, "It seems ridiculous to me, therefore it's false."

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My skin already has nerve cells that are "correctly connected to the brain and ... precisely programmed to interact." That's enough of a start for evolution to work on.

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ORIGINAL: GHitch

The obvious reasons are found in statistical mechanics. The probability of an organ as complex and functional as the eye evolving without guidance or purpose is so astronomically small as to be impossible. "He that made the eye does he not see?" See? Blind nature has no mind, no goals, no purpose. Unless one assumes from the start a goal of vision, the probability of going from a collection of molecules to a complex vision system is zero.