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Author Topic: Darwin  (Read 19488 times)

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AGelbert

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Darwin
« on: October 13, 2013, 01:39:11 am »
If Darwin was alive today, he would be arguing AGAINST the validity of the Theory of Evolution!  :o


The End of Irreducible Complexity?

 
by Dr. Georgia Purdom, AiG–U.S.on

October 6, 2009

The titles of two recent science news articles caught my attention, “More ‘Evidence’ of Intelligent Design Shot Down by Science” and “Intelligent Design ‘Evidence’ Unproven by Real Science.”1 The evidence in question is a molecular machine. Members of the Intelligent Design Movement and creation scientists have often stated that molecular machines are irreducibly complex and could not be formed by evolution. However, evolutionists now claim the mechanism of “pre-adaptation” is a way that these molecular machines could have evolved.

What Is a Molecular Machine and Why Is It Irreducibly Complex?

Molecular machines are complex structures located inside of cells or on the surface of cells. One popular example is the bacterial flagella. This whip-like structure is composed of many proteins, and its rotation propels bacteria through their environment. The molecular machine of interest in a recent PNAS article is a protein transport machine located in the mitochondria.2 This machine transports proteins across the membrane of mitochondria so they can perform the very important function of making energy.

Molecular machines are considered to be irreducibly complex. An irreducibly complex machine is made of a number of essential parts, and all these parts must be present for it to function properly. If even one of these parts is missing the machine is non-functional. Evolution, which supposedly works in a stepwise fashion over long periods of time, can’t form these complex machines. Evolution is not goal-oriented; it cannot work towards a specific outcome. If a part of the machine would happen to form by random chance mutation (which itself is not plausible, see Are mutations part of the “engine” of evolution?), but the other parts of the machine were not formed at the same time, then the organism containing that individual part (by itself non-functional) would not have a particular survival advantage and would not be selected for. Since the part offers no advantage to the organism, it would likely be lost from the population, and evolution would be back to square one in forming the parts for the machine. There is essentially no way to collect the parts over time because the individual parts do not have a function (without the other parts) and do not give the organism a survival advantage. Remember, all the necessary parts must be present for the machine to be functional and convey a survival advantage that could be selected for.

So How Can Evolution Account for Irreducibly Complex Molecular Machines?

The inability to find mechanisms that add information to the genome necessary to form parts for the molecular machines and the inability of Darwinian evolution to collect parts for the machines (no direction or goal) have led evolutionists to develop the idea of “pre-adaptation.” Simply stated, “pre-adaptation” is the formation of new parts for a new molecular machine (from currently existing parts that perform another function) before the machine is needed by the organism. Some quotes will help clarify.

Study authors Abigail Clements et al. state, “We proposed that simple “core” machines were established in the first eukaryotes by drawing on pre-existing bacterial proteins that had previously provided distinct functions.”3

Sebastian Poggio, co-author of the study, stated, “[The pieces] were involved in some other, different function. They were recruited and acquired a new function.”4

Wired Science writer, Brandon Keim, puts it this way: “[T]he necessary pieces for one particular cellular machine . . . were lying around long ago. It was simply a matter of time before they came together into a more complex entity.” He also states,

“The process by which parts accumulate until they’re ready to snap together is called preadaptation. It’s a form of “neutral evolution,” in which the buildup of parts provides no immediate advantage or disadvantage. Neutral evolution falls outside the descriptions of Charles Darwin. But once the pieces gather, mutation and natural selection can take care of the rest . . . .”5

These quotes conjure up images of Lego building blocks from my childhood days. The same blocks could be put together in many different ways to form different structures. The study authors suggest proteins that perform one function can be altered (via mutation6) and used for a different function. This eliminates the need to add new genetic information and requires only a modification of current information. Clements et al. state, “This model agrees with Jacob’s proposition of evolution as a “tinkerer,” building new machines from salvaged parts.”7

The problem with this concept is why would evolution “keep” parts that are intermediate between their old function and a new function? The parts or proteins are more or less stuck between a rock and a hard place. They likely don’t perform their old function because they have been altered by mutation, and they don’t perform their new function in a molecular machine because not all the parts are present yet.8 Studies have shown that bacteria tend to lose genetic information that is not needed in their current environment.

For example, the well known microbial ecologist Richard Lenski has shown that bacteria cultured in a lab setting for several years will lose information for making flagella from their genome.9 Bacteria are being supplied with nutrients and do not need flagella to move to find a food source. Bacteria are model organisms when it comes to economy and efficiency, and those bacteria that lose the information to make flagella are at an advantage over bacteria that are taking energy and nutrients to build structures that are not useful in the current environment. Thus, even if new parts for a new molecular machine could be made via mutation from parts or proteins used for another function, the process of natural selection would eliminate them. The parts or proteins no longer serve their old function, and they cannot serve their new function until all the parts for the machine are present.

In particular, notice the use of verbs in the quotes above, such as drawing on, recruited, came together, and snap together. These are all action verbs that invoke the image of someone or something putting the parts together. Going back to the Lego analogy, an intelligent designer (me!) is required to put the Lego blocks together to form different structures. Just leaving the blocks lying on the floor or shaking them up in their storage container doesn’t result in anything but a big mess of blocks! Although the powers to “tinker” and “snap together” are conferred on mutation and natural selection, they are incapable of designing and building molecular machines.

Conclusion

Pre-adaptation is another “just so” evolutionary story that attempts to avoid the problems of necessary information gain and the goal-less nature of evolution. It fails to answer how parts that are intermediate between their old and new functions would be selected for and accumulated to build a molecular machine.

Michael Gray, cell biologist at Dalhousie University, states, “You look at cellular machines and say, why on earth would biology do anything like this? It’s too bizarre. But when you think about it in a neutral evolutionary fashion, in which these machineries emerge before there’s a need for them, then it makes sense.”10 It only makes sense if you start with the presupposition that evolution is true and confer powers to mutation and natural selection that the evidence shows they do not have.

Clements et al. write, “There is no question that molecular machines are remarkable devices, with independent modules capable of protein substrate recognition, unfolding, threading, and translocation through membranes.”11

The evidence is clear, as Romans 1:20 states, that the Creator God can be known through His creation. Many people will stand in awe of the complexities of molecular machines and still deny they are the result of God’s handiwork. But that doesn’t change the truth of His Word that He is the Creator of all things.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v4/n1/end-of-irreducible-complexity


  ;D
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #1 on: October 13, 2013, 04:29:42 pm »


No transitional Fossils  ???


In his book, Origin of Species, Darwin himself admitted that at the time of writing, the fossils discovered made it look like a series of acts of creation between each main order of life. Although he urged people to look for links between them, he also admitted that if no such links were discovered, then his theory would be incorrect. It therefore makes no sense what-so-ever, that man should unearth thousands of fossils every year, representing highly ‘developed’ and sophisticated life forms, and yet mysteriously there are no intermediate, half-developed life forms discovered between layers. No matter how much digging around we do, there really is no back door away from this issue. In fact so much of evolution’s credibility depends on this starting issue, nothing in this belief system evens begins to carry any weight whilst this anomaly exists. A bit like needing to throw a six to start a game of ludo.

A recent article by Jonathan Sarfati  Ph.D., F.M. explains;

Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science discusses the fossil record in several places. Creationists and evolutionists, with their different assumptions, predict different things about the fossil record. If living things had really evolved from other kinds of creatures, then there would have been many intermediate or transitional forms, with halfway structures. However, if different kinds had been created separately, the fossil record should show creatures appearing abruptly and fully formed.

The transitional fossils problem

Charles Darwin was worried that the fossil record did not show what his theory predicted:


Why is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.1

Is it any different today?

The late Dr Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book, Evolution. In reply to a questioner who asked why he had not included any pictures of transitional forms, he wrote:

I fully agree with your comments about the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them … . I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.2


The renowned evolutionist (and Marxist) Stephen Jay Gould wrote:

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.3

And:

I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.4


As Sunderland points out:

It of course would be no puzzle at all if he [Gould] had not decided before he examined the evidence that common-ancestry evolution was a fact, ‘like apples falling from a tree,’ and that we can only permit ourselves to discuss possible mechanisms to explain that assumed fact.5


The gaps are huge

Teaching about Evolution avoids discussing the vast gulf between non-living matter and the first living cell, single-celled and multicelled creatures, and invertebrates and vertebrates. The gaps between these groups should be enough to show that molecules-to-man evolution is without foundation.

There are many other examples of different organisms appearing abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record. For example, the first bats, pterosaurs, and birds were fully fledged flyers.  

Turtles are a well designed and specialized group of reptiles, with a distinctive shell protecting the body’s vital organs. However, evolutionists admit ‘Intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs, the primitive reptiles from which [evolutionists believe] turtles probably sprang, are entirely lacking.’ They can’t plead an incomplete fossil record because ‘turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates.’6 The ‘oldest known sea turtle’ was a fully formed turtle, not at all transitional.   It had a fully developed system for excreting salt, without which a marine reptile would quickly dehydrate. This is shown by skull cavities which would have held large salt-excreting glands around the eyes.7

All 32 mammal orders appear abruptly and fully formed in the fossil record. The evolutionist paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in 1944:


The earliest and most primitive members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous series from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed.8


There is little to overturn that today.9

Excuses

Like most evolutionary propaganda, Teaching about Evolution makes assertions that there are many transitional forms, and gives a few ‘examples.’ An article in Refuting Evolution contains the gleeful article by the evolutionist (and atheist) E.O. Wilson, ‘Discovery of a Missing Link.’ He claimed to have studied ‘nearly exact intermediates between solitary wasps and the highly social modern ants.’ But another atheistic evolutionist, W.B. Provine, says that Wilson’s ‘assertions are explicitly denied by the text … . Wilson’s comments are misleading at best.’10

Teaching about Evolution emphasizes Archaeopteryx and an alleged land mammal-to-whale transition series, so they are covered in chapters 4 and 5 of Refuting Evolution. Teaching about Evolution also makes the following excuse on page 57:

Some changes in populations might occur too rapidly to leave many transitional fossils. 
 
Also, many organisms were very unlikely to leave fossils because of their habitats or because they had no body parts that could easily be fossilized. 


Darwin also excused the lack of transitional fossils by ‘the extreme imperfection of the fossil record.’ But as we have seen, even organisms that leave excellent fossils, like turtles, are lacking in intermediates. Michael Denton points out that 97.7 percent of living orders of land vertebrates are represented as fossils and 79.1 percent of living families of land vertebrates—87.8 percent if birds are excluded, as they are less likely to become fossilized.11

It’s true that fossilization requires specific conditions. Normally, when a fish dies, it floats to the top and rots and is eaten by scavengers. Even if some parts reach the bottom, the scavengers take care of them. Scuba divers don’t find the sea floor covered with dead animals being slowly fossilized. The same applies to land animals. Millions of buffaloes (bison) were killed in North America last century, but there are very few fossils.

In nature, a well-preserved fossil generally requires rapid burial (so scavengers don’t obliterate the carcass), and cementing agents to harden the fossil quickly. Teaching about Evolution has some good photos of a fossil fish with well-preserved features (p. 3) and a jellyfish (p. 36). Such fossils certainly could not have formed gradually—how long do dead jellyfish normally retain their features? If you wanted to form such fossils, the best way might be to dump a load of concrete on top of the creature! Only catastrophic conditions can explain most fossils—for example, a global flood and its aftermath of widespread regional catastrophism. (see topic: Evidence for a Global Flood )

Teaching about Evolution goes on to assert after the previous quote:

However, in many cases, such as between primitive fish and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, reptiles and mammals, and reptiles and birds, there are excellent transitional fossils.


But Teaching about Evolution provides no evidence for this! We can briefly examine some of the usual evolutionary claims below (for reptile-to-bird, see the next chapter on birds):

Fish to amphibian: Some evolutionists believe that amphibians evolved from a Rhipidistian fish, something like the coelacanth. It was believed that they used their fleshy, lobed fins for walking on the sea-floor before emerging on the land. This speculation seemed impossible to disprove, since according to evolutionary/long-age interpretations of the fossil record, the last coelacanth lived about 70 million years ago. But a living coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) was discovered in 1938. And it was found that the fins were not used for walking but for deft maneuvering when swimming. Its soft parts were also totally fish-like, not transitional. It also has some unique features—it gives birth to live young after about a year’s gestation, it has a small second tail to help its swimming, and a gland that detects electrical signals.12 The earliest amphibian, Ichthyostega (mentioned on p. 39 of Teaching about Evolution), is hardly transitional, but has fully formed legs and shoulder and pelvic girdles, while there is no trace of these in the Rhipidistians.


Amphibian to reptile: Seymouria is a commonly touted intermediate between amphibians and reptiles. But this creature is dated (by evolutionary dating methods) at 280 million years ago, about 30 million years younger than the ‘earliest’ true reptiles Hylonomus and Paleothyris. That is, reptiles are allegedly millions of years older than their alleged ancestors! Also, there is no good reason for thinking it was not completely amphibian in its reproduction. The jump from amphibian to reptile eggs requires the development of a number of new structures and a change in biochemistry—see the section below on soft part changes.


Reptile to mammal: The ‘mammal-like reptiles’ are commonly asserted to be transitional. But according to a specialist on these creatures:


Each species of mammal-like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in the fossil record and is not preceded by the species that is directly ancestral to it. It disappears some time later, equally abruptly, without leaving a directly descended species.13

Evolutionists believe that the earbones of mammals evolved from some jawbones of reptiles. But Patterson recognized that there was no clear-cut connection between the jawbones of ‘mammal-like reptiles’ and the earbones of mammals. In fact, evolutionists have argued about which bones relate to which.14


The function of possible intermediates

The inability to imagine functional intermediates is a real problem. If a bat or bird evolved from a land animal, the transitional forms would have forelimbs that were neither good legs nor good wings. So how would such things be selected? The fragile long limbs of hypothetical halfway stages of bats and pterosaurs would seem more like a hindrance than a help.

Soft part changes

Of course, the soft parts of many creatures would also have needed to change drastically, and there is little chance of preserving them in the fossil record. For example, the development of the amniotic egg would have required many different innovations, including:

The shell.


The two new membranes—the amnion and allantois.


Excretion of water-insoluble uric acid rather than urea (urea would poison the embryo).


Albumen together with a special acid to yield its water.


Yolk for food.


A change in the genital system allowing the fertilization of the egg before the shell hardens.15


Another example is the mammals—they have many soft-part differences from reptiles, for example:

Mammals have a different circulatory system, including red blood cells without nuclei, a heart with four chambers instead of three and one aorta instead of two, and a fundamentally different system of blood supply to the eye.


Mammals produce milk, to feed their young.


Mammalian skin has two extra layers, hair and sweat glands.


Mammals have a diaphragm, a fibrous, muscular partition between the thorax and abdomen, which is vital for breathing. Reptiles breathe in a different way.


Mammals keep their body temperature constant (warm-bloodedness), requiring a complex temperature control mechanism.


The mammalian ear has the complex organ of Corti, absent from all reptile ears.16


Mammalian kidneys have a ‘very high ultrafiltration rate of the blood.’ This means the heart must be able to produce the required high blood pressure. Mammalian kidneys excrete urea instead of uric acid, which requires different chemistry. They are also finely regulated to maintain constant levels of substances in the blood, which requires a complex endocrine system.19


by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., F.M.

First published in Refuting Evolution
Chapter 3
1.C.R. Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edition, 1872 (London: John Murray, 1902), p. 413. 
2.C. Patterson, letter to Luther D. Sunderland, 10 April 1979, as published in Darwin’s Enigma (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 4th ed. 1988), p. 89. Patterson later tried to backtrack somewhat from this clear statement, apparently alarmed that creationists would utilize this truth. 
3.S.J. Gould, in Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin, ed. John Maynard Smith, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1982), p. 140. Teaching about Evolution pages 56–57 publishes a complaint by Gould about creationists quoting him about the rarity of transitional forms. He accuses creationists of representing him as denying evolution itself. This complaint is unjustified. Creationists make it very clear that he is a staunch evolutionist the whole point is that he is a ‘hostile witness.’ 
4.S.J. Gould, The Ediacaran Experiment, Natural History 93(2):14–23, Feb. 1984. 
5.L. Sunderland, ref. 2, p. 47–48. 
6.Reptiles, Encyclopedia Britannica 26:704–705, 15th ed., 1992. 
7.Ren Hirayama, Oldest Known Sea Turtle, Nature 392(6678):705–708, 16 April 1998; comment by Henry Gee, p. 651, same issue. 
8.
9.G.G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode in Evolution (NY: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 105–106. 
10.A useful book on the fossil record is D.T. Gish, Evolution: The Fossils STILL Say NO! (El Cahon, CA: Institute for Creation Research, 1995). 
11.Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, A Review by Dr Will B. Provine. Available from , 18 February 1999. 
12.M. Denton, Evolution, a Theory in Crisis (Chevy Chase, MD: Adler & Adler, 1985), p. 190. 
13.M. Denton, footnote 13, p. 157, 178–180; see also W. Roush, ‘Living Fossil’ Is Dethroned, Science 277(5331):1436, 5 September 1997, and No Stinking Fish in My Tail, Discover, March 1985, p. 40. 
14.T.S. Kemp, The Reptiles that Became Mammals, New Scientist 92:583, 4 March 1982. 
15.C. Patterson, Morphological Characters and Homology; in K.A. Joysey and A.E. Friday (eds.), Problems of Phylogenetic Reconstruction, Proceedings of an International Symposium held in Cambridge, The Systematics Association Special Volume 21 (Academic Press, 1982), 21–74. 
16.M. Denton, footnote 13, p. 218–219. 
17.D. Dewar, The Transformist Illusion, 2nd edition, (Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis et Universalis, 1995), p. 223–232. 
18.T.S. Kemp, Mammal-like Reptiles and the Origin of Mammals (New York: Academic Press, 1982), p. 309–310.

http://www.thematrix.co.uk/texttopic.asp?ID=22
« Last Edit: October 13, 2013, 05:10:30 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2013, 09:27:23 pm »

But Dawkins cannot accept that the most obvious reason for said "planting" is creation.






                                                           
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2013, 10:04:32 pm »

Fossil Record problems for the Theory of Evolution



Fatal flaw in Theory of Evolution envisioned by Darwin  :o

Over 140 years later, it is an established scientific fact that numerous species belonging to the same genera or families DID start all at once but those clinging to the "evolution" straw have "modified" the tenets of natural selection to include an even less likely probability: CO-evolution.

This requires that symbiotic life forms like bees and flower pollen, termites and the bacteria in their gut that enables them to digest cellulose, leaf cutter ants and the fungus they raise to digest the leaves into starches AND the bacterial coat in the fungus farming specialist ants that keep the fungus from getting out of control through very specific antibiotics happen randomly. This is where it gets ridiculous because symbiotic mechanisms (just to name a few of uncountable symbiotic relationships among widely divergent species with no possible evolutionary ancestor) MUST occur within a single life of the target species or the "evolutionary advantage" is of no use.

Why is this a big deal? Because CO-evolution is mathematically impossible from the standard evolutionist view that positive mutations take millions of years to come about. his MUST occur in a few years or whatever a single life cycle of the target species is.

But they won't discard the discredited Theory of Evolution because they will be forced to go the intelligent design route and believe our biosphere was put here by ET scientists doing a science experiment or, horror of horrors, the God of all creation.

Evolutionist in the face of proven Creation ->


The Theory of Evolution needs a name change. I propose the Theory of the River in Egypt (De Nile).
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2013, 05:13:41 am »
Fascinating thread, AG.

Not a scientist, and not sure what to make of it, but the facts as presented make for a compelling argument.

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #5 on: October 16, 2013, 04:06:19 pm »
Eddie said,
Quote
The problem we have here, this "fight" between science and religion ( not just over evolution...evolution is just one battle in a broader war)  comes from a failure on the part of some religious people to understand that the great religious books of the past are full of magical explanations for things. Not because the writers wanted to make **** up, but because they just lacked clear knowledge. And since many religious folks feel that whatever version of their Bible or other Holy Book is the literal, infallible, final, Word of God, they can't reconcile new data with the magical explanations of the past.

They are constantly having to struggle to fit new data into an old story line that doesn't seem to be compatible with what science is finding out...and since science has progressed very rapidly over recent generations, it's getting harder to do, and requires an increasing level of imagination, with the alternative being a rejection of science, because...well, it's easier and cleaner and requires No Thinking.

Well said!  :emthup:

That said, the Procrustean bed many fundies have made for themselves applies to the evolutionary true believing fundamentalists that view any questioning of Darwin's flawed theory as sacrilege worthy of scorn and ridicule. IOW, these "scientists" are rejecting the scientific method when new scientific discoveries in
1. cell machinery,
2. multiple symbiotic relationships in widely divergent species with no "evolutionary: common ancestor,
3. fossil record showing no transitional life forms (unless the definition of "transitional" becomes rather pliant in its magical thinking story telling imagination - speculation without evidence is not science - calling "evidence" an interpretation of fossils as transitional life forms is an opinion, not evidence),
4. sudden appearance of related species genera of the same family in the fossil record
5. dating assumptions in rock strata despite several issues with dating methods (one dating method showing radically different age than others yet the one producing the more "acceptable" (tens to hundreds millions of years older REQUIRED for ACCEPTABLE  natural selection) age being the one given "scientific" credibility, etc.

What I'm saying is that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Darwin himself and famous evolutionist scientists like Dawkins admit the following:


Darwin's worry



Dawkins on the  Cambrian "sudden planting" of many COMPLETE life forms



Fossil Record Scientific Reality without Storytelling and Magical Thinking




Fatal flaw in Theory of Evolution envisioned by Darwin


And what is the modern response to all the above by the alleged hard boiled scientists that allegedly are not tied to religious superstition and fairy tails with flights of imaginative fancy about this, that and the other came to be?

They come up with even more improbable scenarios that boggle the mind of any mathematician performing probability and statistics; I.E. "CO-evolution to produce symbiotic mechanisms IN A SINGLE life cycle of a species!" (Millions of years don't apply because, according to evolutionary theory, if an "evolutionary advantage" mutation expresses itself in a species (In Zoology I was taught that having two penises was an evolutionary advantage for the crocodile. I suppose they figured one of them could be used as a fish lure or he still could procreate if another crock ate his in a fight - that sure sounds like opinion and story telling rather that scientific evidence to me. ;) it is necessary for that beneficial mutation to begin to be used or it will be "selected out". Do you see the problem here? The other side of the symbiosis HAS to connect up in an extremely short period of time or one side gets lost.

This is a scientific Procrustean bed they are trying to stuff the Theory of Evolution in by calling on the CO-evolution magical thinking. Why is it magical and unscientific? Because CO-evolution without intelligent design requires several times more time than the universe age. Yes. I know, some will say that then maybe he universe IS 100 billion years or so old. They'll say ANYTHING to avoid giving the "GOD DID IT" hypothesis and scientific credibility whatsoever.

Your statements apply correctly to the Goose (the fundies). This is how they ALSO apply to the Gander (evolution true believers).


In regard the Evolutionists:"they can't reconcile new data with the magical explanations of the past (see Darwin's worries above).

They are constantly having to struggle to fit new data into an old story line that doesn't seem to be compatible with what science is finding out...and since science has progressed very rapidly over recent generations, it's getting harder to do, (see 1 through 5 above) and requires an increasing level of imagination, (see CO-evolutionary symbiosis and dual crocodile penises) with the alternative being a rejection of science, because...well...

they will be forced to go the intelligent design route and believe our biosphere was put here by ET scientists doing a science experiment or, horror of horrors, the God of all creation.

Evolutionist in the face of proven Creation:

I'm a sort of fundy but I agree with you that there is a lot of non-scientific imagination in the Bible that does NOTHING to reduce the veracity of the message from God to us about how to behave if we want to reach our full potential. I basically could care less if God did it through evolution, mud puddles with Darwinian and Einsteinian brain cells thrown in one day when God had nothing better to do or if the ETs God made long before he made us are running a science experiment.  :icon_mrgreen:

But if people who claim to have the scientific method enshrined right up there with the tablets Moses was given are going to tell me they will ONLY support evidence based on the scientific method, they should **** can the Theory of Evolution and be ready to **** can anything else that doesn't "fit" into the Procrustean Bed called the Theory of Evolution. Otherwise, they are as guilty of turf protecting, non-thinking, BULLSHIT as the overly zealous fundies.

I will not EVER accept science fiction as science fact. It's time to move on to something more credible than "the mud puddle PLUS a few billion years equals the biosphere". 


He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #7 on: October 17, 2013, 07:04:03 pm »
Radiometric dating gives many surprises.

Basalts from Hualalai in Hawaii, observed to have erupted in 1800–01, gave potassium-argon (K-Ar) ages ranging from 160 million years to 3,300 million years. 1

A lava dome on Mt St Helens in USA, observed to form since the 1980 eruption, gave K-Ar ages between 350,000 and 2,800,000 years. 2

Lava erupted from Mt Ngauruhoe, New Zealand, between 1949 and 1975, gave K-Ar ages up to 3,500,000 years. 3


http://creation.com/a-giant-cause
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #8 on: October 17, 2013, 08:04:04 pm »
"There is no way to determine the age of eggs when examining fossilized
remains. "  :o


Is it Possible to Tell how Old Eggs Are?

The age of an egg is typically unable to be definitively determined, unlike the ago of the majority of other fossilized animal remains. The study and classification of eggs is a science known as oology. If eggs are left with their inner contents untouched, they will usually eventually rot, which may make it more difficult to figure out egg age.

Eggs can be preserved by poking tiny holes into the shells and extracting the insides, and in some cases the eggs will fossilize. Even if fossilized eggs are found, it is difficult for scientists to study their insides closely enough to determine age. CAT scans or soaking the fossils in mild acid may be used to view the insides, but generally age is only hypothesized by comparing eggs to other remains found near them.

Agelbert Note: Unfortunately the accompanying remains used to date the eggs which can't be dated are "dated" by the hypothesized age of the rock strata (which is another giant bag of multi million year dating variation differences depending on the method used. I will list the various dating methods and their "scientifically accepted" error margins in another post.  :P



More about eggs:

•Collecting wild eggs was first officially made illegal in the United States in 1918, followed by the United Kingdom in 1954, and is generally not permitted throughout the world.

•Bird eggs are more likely to be speckled if they were laid on the ground, as opposed to a nest in a tree.

•Papaya extract is often injected into eggs to dissolve the inner contents, which can take up to three weeks.  ::)
 
http://www.wisegeek.com/is-it-possible-to-tell-how-old-eggs-are.htm



You just never know when you may need some Papaya extract...  ;D



He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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The Dating Game
« Reply #9 on: October 17, 2013, 09:38:18 pm »
Dating methods 1

Carbon-14 dates are determined from the measured ratio of radioactive carbon-14 to normal carbon-12 (14C/12C). Used on samples which were once alive, such as wood or bone, the measured 14C/12C ratio is compared with the ratio in living things today. The date is calculated by assuming the change of 14C in the sample is due entirely to radioactive decay. It is also assumed that carbon has been in equilibrium on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years.

 Wrong dates are usually caused by assuming a wrong initial 14C/12C ratio, contamination or leaching. Samples from before the Flood, or from the early post-Flood period, give ages that are too old by tens of thousands of years. This is because the Flood buried lots of 12C-rich plants and animals. This would result in a lower 14C/12C ratio, which is wrongly interpreted as great age.

Thermoluminescence (TL)
dates are obtained from individual grains of common minerals such as quartz. When such grains are heated, they emit light, and this is related to the radiation ‘stored’ in the crystal structure. It is assumed that the radiation was slowly absorbed from the environment, building up from zero at a certain time in the past (perhaps when the grain was last exposed to sunlight). A date is calculated by measuring the light emitted from the mineral grain when it is heated, and measuring the radiation in the environment where the grain was found.

 Unfortunately, there are many unknowns and many assumptions need to be made, including the amount of radiation ‘stored’ in the mineral at a certain time in the past, that the change in radiation has only been affected by the radiation in the environment, that the radiation in the environment has remained constant, and that the sensitivity of the crystal to radiation has not changed. All these factors can be affected by water, heat, sunlight, the accumulation or leaching of minerals in the environment, and many other causes.

Optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates are based on exactly the same principle as TL. But instead of heating the grain, it is exposed to light to make it emit its ‘stored’ radiation. The calculated date is based on the same assumptions, and affected by the same uncertainties, as for TL.
Electron-spin resonance (ESR) dates are based on the same principles as TL and OSL. However, the ‘stored’ radiation in the sample is measured by exposing it to gamma radiation and measuring the radiation emitted. The measuring technique does not destroy the ‘stored’ radiation (as does TL and OSL), so the measurement can be repeated on the same sample. The calculated date is based on the same assumptions, and affected by the same uncertainties, as for TL and OSL.

Thorium-uranium (Th/U) dates are based on measuring the isotopes of uranium and thorium in a sample. It is known that uranium-238 decays radioactively to form thorium-230 (through a number of steps, including through uranium-234). The dating calculation assumes that the thorium and uranium in the sample are related to each other by radioactive decay. Furthermore, before a date can be calculated, the initial ratios of 230Th/238U and 234U/238U need to be assumed, and it is also assumed that there has been no gain or loss of uranium or thorium to/from the environment—i.e., that the system is ‘closed’. However, the bone and soil must have been ‘open’ to allow these elements to enter and accumulate. 

Protactinium-uranium (Pa/U) dates are based on similar principles as Th/U dating, but use uranium-235 and protactinium-231 instead. The isotope 235U decays radioactively to form 231Pa. Again, it is assumed that the isotopes in the sample are related to each other by radioactive decay. Also, the initial ratio of 231Pa/235U has to be assumed, and it is assumed that there has been no gain or loss of uranium or protactinium to/from the environment—i.e., that the system is ‘closed’. Again, any bone sample containing uranium must have been ‘open’ to allow it to accumulate in the first place. 

Reference
1.Details about dating methods may be obtained from such sources as: Smart, P.L. and Frances, P.D. (Eds.), Quaternary Dating Methods—A User’s Guide, Quaternary Research Association, Technical Guide No. 4, Cambridge, 1991, or Faure, G., Principles of Isotope Geology, 2nd edition, John Wiley & Sons, New York, USA, 1986.



The Dating Game


Lake Mungo National Park

In western New South Wales, Australia, part of a semi-arid desert has been set aside as a World Heritage area.1 This may seem curious for such an inhospitable region. But there is a good reason. Evolutionists believe that the site represents an outstanding example of the major stages in man’s evolutionary history.

It all centres on the discovery of human remains in sand dunes surrounding ancient Lake Mungo—now a dry, flat plain, vegetated by scraggly salt-tolerant bushes and grasses.



The first major find, in 1969, was of crushed and burnt skeletal fragments, interpreted to be of a female called Lake Mungo 1, or more affectionately Mungo Woman.2,3 What made the find significant was the assigned date. Carbon-14 dating (see Dating methods) on bone apatite (the hard bone material) yielded an age of 19,000 years and on collagen (soft tissue) gave 24,700 years.3 This excited the archaeologists, because that date made their find the oldest human burial in Australia.

But carbon-14 dating on nearby charcoal produced an ‘age’ up to 26,500 years. This meant that the skeleton, buried slightly lower than the charcoal, must have been older. Not surprisingly, the older charcoal age was considered to be the ‘most reliable’ estimate3 and launched Mungo Woman to national and international fame. Jane Balme, of the Centre for Archaeology at the University of Western Australia, put it succinctly, ‘There’s a general perception that there is a competition to get the oldest date and there’s kudos in it.’4

Certainly, there was kudos in this date. At 26,000 years, Mungo Woman was nearly twice as old as the previous oldest date for Aboriginal settlement of Australia, and possibly the earliest human cremation in the world.

Then, in 1974, Bowler and Thorne found a skeleton sprinkled with powdered red ochre in a grave only 450 metres away.5 This one was well preserved and similar to the skeletons of modern Aborigines. Because the new skeleton, Lake Mungo 3, was found in the same sand bed (technically the same stratigraphic horizon), ‘he’ was assigned the same age as Mungo Woman. Thus Mungo Man became famous too—one of the world’s earliest ritual burials (even though the sex of the individual is still in dispute6).


Lake Mungo Man

The situation became even more exciting when a different dating method (thermoluminescence, see Dating methods) was used. In 1998, Bowler reported that sand from the Mungo 3 site gave an age of some 42,000 years.5,7 Being older than the carbon-14 dates, Mungo Man acquired a new stature on the world evolution scene. So, the earlier ‘reliable’ carbon-14 ages were abandoned in favour of the thermoluminescence ones.  ;)
 

Then, in 1999, Thorne (not to be outdone) and other scientists from the Australian National University published a new comprehensive study on the age of Mungo Man. They used different samples of bone and sand and different dating methods—electron-spin resonance (ESR), optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL), thorium-uranium (Th/U) and protactinium-uranium (Pa/U). (Don’t worry about the big names. See  Dating methods).

And the results from all the different methods agreed closely. Their conclusion? Mungo Man was 62,000 years old! Bowler and Magee described this 20,000-year stretch as ‘commendable in intent.’8

There was just one small problem. The new date meant that the history of Australian occupation would have to be rewritten and it also affected the ideas of human evolution in other parts of the world. And Australian archaeologists were still embarrassed by the Jinmium rock shelter fiasco, where a claimed age of 116,000 years was later reduced to 5,000 years.9

So, Bowler stubbornly refused to accept the new dates. In his protest to Journal of Human Evolution, he said ‘For this complex, laboratory-based dating to be successful, the data must be compatible with the external field evidence.’8 In other words, you don’t just accept a laboratory date without question. It’s not the last word on the age of something. You only accept the date if it agrees with what you already think it should be.   ???

And that is what we have been saying all along.10 That is why we won’t accept any date that contradicts the eyewitness evidence of human history recorded in the Bible. 
Such contradictory dates can’t be right.

In short, the dates are wrong because they are based on wrong assumptions. For example, the carbon-14 method does not account for the disruption of the carbon balance during the Flood some 4,500 years ago.11 The uranium methods do not make the correct assumptions about the initial conditions of the samples or about the effects of changing environmental conditions through time. The luminescence dates have the same problem.

So, who are Mungo Man and Mungo Woman? Like us, they descended from Noah and his family (Genesis 10). After the Flood, and after the confusion of languages at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), their ancestors migrated to Australia. As the populations grew, they spread out over the continent. During the Ice Age, when rainfall was higher, Lake Mungo would have been a lush area to live in, teeming with wildlife.

Quote
Evolution and the first Australians1

Darwin considered the Australian Aborigines as primitive and not much evolved from the ‘anthropoid apes’. He anticipated that the ‘wilder races’ would become extinct because survival of the fittest meant they would be superseded by the evolutionarily-advanced ‘civilised’ races.2 An evolutionary view of human origins underlies the World Heritage listing of the Lake Mungo site. Such a view was not good for the first Australians. Many atrocities were perpetrated on Aboriginal communities because of these evolutionary beliefs.

Incredibly, in the 1800s, it was not uncommon for Aboriginal people to be hunted and shot as specimens for science.3 Their remains were sent to Europe to illustrate evolution displays in museums. Only now are these remains being returned to their communities.4

But the Bible records our true human history. The first Aboriginal settlers to Australia were descended from people as intelligent and inventive as any other culture at that time. Like everyone else, they were descended from Noah, who built and managed the Ark, and from a people who developed an advanced civilization around the Tower of Babel.5

The Aborigines of Australia lost some of their technological know-how—it can happen in a generation if parents do not pass it on to their children. (Perhaps it was because of isolation and the pressure to cope with a worsening climate as the continent dried out after the Ice Age.) They, like other peoples, are made ‘in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:26).

References and notes

1.For more information, see One Human Family.

2.Darwin, C., The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed., John Murray, London, p. 188, 1887.

3.Wieland, C., Darwin’s bodysnatchers: new horrors, Creation 14(2):16–18, 1992.

4.Aboriginal remains returned to Coorong tribe, ABC Canberra News, www.abc.net.au/canberra/news/metact-5may2003-2.htm, 5 May 2003.

5.For more information, see: McKeever, S. and Sarfati, J., Was Adam from Australia? The mystery of Mungo Man, 17 January 2001, updated 20 February 2003.

http://creation.com/the-dating-game
« Last Edit: October 18, 2013, 12:31:15 am by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #10 on: October 17, 2013, 09:51:00 pm »

I jumped you to the meat of the matter. As a Christian I can handle the prior stuff but you might not.  ;D
Also, if you get bored, jump to the 40 minute mark for Carbon 14 science facts.
The bottom line with Carbon 14 is that it is a short term dating method. According to modern science only living things ingest Carbon 14 as a percentage of the Carbon they ingest. When they die, they start losing Carbon 14 at an allegedly fixed rate. Why "allegedly"? Because an assumption is made that the percentage of carbon 14 in the atmosphere has always been exactly the same. Scientists admit that if it wasn't, the dating would be somewhat off. But even more importantly, ANY TIME you find ANYTHING that has carbon 14 in it, whatever that life form the matter came from, said life form CANNOT be more than about 30,000 years old. Why? Because, according to modern science, anything that dies TODAY will, if the matter is preserved in stone or sediment free from contamination, lose ALL the Carbon 14 in about 30,000 years. Said sample will contain only Carbon 12 (the common form of Carbon).

But it gets even better! They have found coal and ancient wood (both of these types of matter are from former living plants) inside a strata dated, by other methods, as being over 3.5 million years old that CONTAINED CARBON 14!  :o 

Now, unless the Carbon 14 dating is really wacky (and I think it may be hundreds but certainly NOT millions of years off),  the strata IS NOT 3.5 million years old but MUST BE less than 30,000 years old.

This drives evolutionists up a tree because they HAVE TO HAVE those millions of years to justify the so-called positive mutations involved in natural selection. But really, it is TOTALLY unscientific to reject a carbon 14 dated sample (which dates in a much narrower and more precise range than the multi million year methods). It represents scientific proof that coal can form in 30,000 years or less. But yet they refuse to accept it with NO RATIONAL EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER!

At present, science knows of no way for life forms to ingest Carbon 14 unless they are alive.

That said, towards the end of the above video they discuss a sample of dead plant tissue that dates 3,000 years INTO THE FUTURE! WTF?  ??? It seems that scientists need to go back to the drawing board with the radio-carbon clocks. This sample somehow accumulated too much carbon 14 while alive. Imagine what that means for so many hundreds of thousands of human, animal and plant remains that have been radio carbon 14 dated in the last 100 years or so?  ;D

For what it is worth I don't believe the earth is only 6,000 years old but I DO believe Homo sapiens hasn't existed on earth for more than 40 or 50 thousand years.

I admit I have no proof.  But the new Carbon 14 data supports my hypothesis, even if it is Faith based. There has NEVER, EVER been found ANY former living matter without some Carbon 14 in it. How does that grab you? Do you realize that is scientific, empirical, radio-carbon 14 test evidence that the biosphere is about 30,000 years old?  You don't? Why not?

The dinosaur bones are mostly totally petrified (no carbon 14 or carbon 12 to set up a date from the ratio). But I will bet you there IS a dinosaur bone out there with carbon 14 and SOMEBODY has made real sure that scientifically embarrassing fact doesn't get out because it will destroy the Darwinian edifice of natural history Atheists 'R' US bedtime stories.

Are you a scientist or are you a true blue believer of Darwinian mud puddle life evolution? You say it's not about faith? Where's your evidence? Why don't you admit we have been brain washed from the time we were knee high to a grasshopper? Can't you handle it if you have to face the fact that we were created as a package deal around 30,000 years ago as the radio Carbon 14 test data seems to PROVE scientifically?

Will you now go back to the church of evolutionary zealots and have all the credentialed worthies come up with an even more implausible 'short time frame rapid' co-evolution fairy tale? Probably.

People can be quite stubborn when faced with facts that don't fit their world view. The irony of all this is that the evolutionist true believers accuse those of us with REAL EVIDENCE against the Theory of Evolution as being stubborn, irrational and fairy tale believers. Pot, meet the kettle!

That honest admission of lack of proof is LACKING from evolutionists even though they have none. 

As a Christian, I CAN operate on faith. but professionals with the respect of the population BECAUSE they are scientists are not allowed to operate on faith. They are NOT allowed to reach any conclusion without empirical evidence gained by the use of the scientific method.

BUT, when you study the Theory of Evolution and its tenets, you find that it is an evidence free narrative purporting to explain how life originated and became complex on this planet. If they will admit they are practicing a form of religion, I'll accept their decision to operate on faith in Darwin's theory. Of course they refuse to do that because they would lose the aura of scientific credibility.

There is no way, despite their incessant claims to the contrary, that  they can claim they have reached their conclusions through the scientific method. I don't care if the just HAVE to have some pet theory to build an institution and a stack of libraries filled with books about this, that and the other with.

They are OBLIGATED as scientists to throw the Theory of Evolution out if because after 140 years of looking high and low for proof of it, they have NO empirical evidence to back the theory up! Their behavior is irrationally religious. They won't admit that what they are REALLY doing is defending the "GOD DID NOT DO IT" atheist turf, not the scientific method, period.

http://creation.com/creation-magazine-live-episode-14
« Last Edit: October 18, 2013, 12:19:30 am by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

Surly1

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #11 on: October 18, 2013, 04:54:17 am »
I am all about going wherever the evidence takes you. And I am willing to believe that our measurement tools are as flawed as were celestial maps based on the Ptolemaic world view.

But created 50,000 years ago? No **** way. Too much evidence is in place for an earlier start, including written and fossil records. The mDNA work is pretty compelling too, up to a point.

No matter how we got here, I don't believe homo could have dispersed and left the variability in the fossil record, all aroun d the globe, in such a short time frame.

http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo2/mod_homo_4.htm


Surly1

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #12 on: October 18, 2013, 05:37:39 am »
Let's muddle the matter further--

Skull of Homo erectus throws story of human evolution into disarray
A haul of fossils found in Georgia suggests that half a dozen species of early human ancestor were actually all Homo erectus
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/17/skull-homo-erectus-human-evolution

Ian Sample, science correspondent
theguardian.com, Thursday 17 October 2013 14.00 EDT

[embed=425,349]http://www.theguardian.com/science/video/2013/oct/17/fossil-skull-human-evolution-homo-erectus-video[/embed]
The spectacular fossilised skull of an ancient human ancestor that died nearly two million years ago in central Asia has forced scientists to rethink the story of early human evolution.

Anthropologists unearthed the skull at a site in Dmanisi, a small town in southern Georgia, where other remains of human ancestors, simple stone tools and long-extinct animals have been dated to 1.8m years old.

Experts believe the skull is one of the most important fossil finds to date, but it has proved as controversial as it is stunning. Analysis of the skull and other remains at Dmanisi suggests that scientists have been too ready to name separate species of human ancestors in Africa. Many of those species may now have to be wiped from the textbooks.

The latest fossil is the only intact skull ever found of a human ancestor that lived in the early Pleistocene, when our predecessors first walked out of Africa. The skull adds to a haul of bones recovered from Dmanisi that belong to five individuals, most likely an elderly male, two other adult males, a young female and a juvenile of unknown sex.



The five H erectus skulls found in Dmanisi, Georgia. Photograph: Ponce de León, Zollikofe/University of Zurich



The site was a busy watering hole that human ancestors shared with giant extinct cheetahs, sabre-toothed cats and other beasts. The remains of the individuals were found in collapsed dens where carnivores had apparently dragged the carcasses to eat. They are thought to have died within a few hundred years of one another.

"Nobody has ever seen such a well-preserved skull from this period," said Christoph Zollikofer, a professor at Zurich University's Anthropological Institute, who worked on the remains. "This is the first complete skull of an adult early Homo. They simply did not exist before," he said. Homo is the genus of great apes that emerged around 2.4m years ago and includes modern humans.

Other researchers said the fossil was an extraordinary discovery. "The significance is difficult to overstate. It is stunning in its completeness. This is going to be one of the real classics in paleoanthropology," said Tim White, an expert on human evolution at the University of California, Berkeley.

But while the skull itself is spectacular, it is the implications of the discovery that have caused scientists in the field to draw breath. Over decades excavating sites in Africa, researchers have named half a dozen different species of early human ancestor, but most, if not all, are now on shaky ground.


The most recently unearthed individual had a long face and big teeth, but the smallest braincase of all five H erectus skulls found at the site. Photograph: Georgian National Museum


The remains at Dmanisi are thought to be early forms of Homo erectus, the first of our relatives to have body proportions like a modern human. The species arose in Africa around 1.8m years ago and may have been the first to harness fire and cook food. The Dmanisi fossils show that H erectus migrated as far as Asia soon after arising in Africa.

The latest skull discovered in Dmanisi belonged to an adult male and was the largest of the haul. It had a long face and big, chunky teeth. But at just under 550 cubic centimetres, it also had the smallest braincase of all the individuals found at the site. The dimensions were so strange that one scientist at the site joked that they should leave it in the ground.

The odd dimensions of the fossil prompted the team to look at normal skull variation, both in modern humans and chimps, to see how they compared. They found that while the Dmanisi skulls looked different to one another, the variations were no greater than those seen among modern people and among chimps.

The scientists went on to compare the Dmanisi remains with those of supposedly different species of human ancestor that lived in Africa at the time. They concluded that the variation among them was no greater than that seen at Dmanisi. Rather than being separate species, the human ancestors found in Africa from the same period may simply be normal variants of H erectus.

"Everything that lived at the time of the Dmanisi was probably just Homo erectus," said Prof Zollikofer. "We are not saying that palaeoanthropologists did things wrong in Africa, but they didn't have the reference we have. Part of the community will like it, but for another part it will be shocking news."


Reconstruction of the early human ancestor Homo erectus from the latest skull found at Dmanisi in Georgia. Illustration: J H Matternes


David Lordkipanidze at the Georgian National Museum, who leads the Dmanisi excavations, said: "If you found the Dmanisi skulls at isolated sites in Africa, some people would give them different species names. But one population can have all this variation. We are using five or six names, but they could all be from one lineage."

If the scientists are right, it would trim the base of the human evolutionary tree and spell the end for names such as H rudolfensis, H gautengensis, H ergaster and possibly H habilis.

The fossil is described in the latest issue of Science.

"Some palaeontologists see minor differences in fossils and give them labels, and that has resulted in the family tree accumulating a lot of branches," said White. "The Dmanisi fossils give us a new yardstick, and when you apply that yardstick to the African fossils, a lot of that extra wood in the tree is dead wood. It's arm-waving."

"I think they will be proved right that some of those early African fossils can reasonably join a variable Homo erectus species," said Chris Stringer, head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London. "But Africa is a huge continent with a deep record of the earliest stages of human evolution, and there certainly seems to have been species-level diversity there prior to two million years ago. So I still doubt that all of the 'early Homo' fossils can reasonably be lumped into an evolving Homo erectus lineage. We need similarly complete African fossils from two to 2.5m years ago to test that idea properly."

The analysis by Lordkipanidze also casts doubt on claims that a creature called Australopithecus sediba that lived in what is now South Africa around 1.9m years ago was a direct ancestor of modern humans. The species was discovered by Lee Berger at the University of Witwatersrand. He argued that it was premature to dismiss his finding and criticised the authors for failing to compare their fossils with the remains of A sediba.

"This is a fantastic and important discovery, but I don't think the evidence they have lives up to this broad claim they are making. They say this falsifies that Australopithecus sediba is the ancestor of Homo. The very simple response is, no it doesn't."

"What all this screams out for is more and better specimens. We need skeletons, more complete material, so we can look at them from head to toe," he added. "Any time a scientist says 'we've got this figured out' they are probably wrong. It's not the end of the story."

AGelbert

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Re: Darwin
« Reply #13 on: October 18, 2013, 11:53:43 pm »
Surly,
I hear you. I have felt exactly the same for most of my life. Only in the last year have I started to dig hard using the scientific method to test the theory of Evolution and I have come up with a fairy tale of great imagination but no proof.

I remember the arguments I had with my biology profs (none of them were atheists, by the way) where I agreed that evolution had taken place but the alleged proofs they were presenting on multi-celled algae and plants, cell formation and mitochondria migration were theories without proof.

I argued that 98% of mutations are harmful and that the DNA code forcefully rejects change, rather than easily accepts even a positive mutation.

I argued that the so-called "junk" DNA that comprises more than 70% of human DNA (practically ALL life forms have "junk" DNA) is THERE to be triggered by an adaptation. No new data is necessary (that was in 1989 - science has scince discovered that the "junk" DNA is not junk at all but a series of codes for genes to be turned on under certain conditions. I was right about that one!).

Each life form is distinct. Claiming we came from this or that just because you can make a bacterium produce insulin by inserting a DNA plasmid into it so it codes for insulin points at a creator, not random chance because WE are INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNING a bacterium that has NEVER produced insulin by chance. And Bacteria have had a LOT of TIME, according to evolutionists, to produce everything from antibiotics to sunscreen.  ;D Yet E. Coli bacteria, in all those millions and millions and maybe billions of years hadn't evolved insulin manufacturing ability (an EXTREMLY useful substance in a wide variety of life forms that would have given said bacterium and evolutionary advantage) until we engineered them to!

Many of my profs agreed that God started the ball rolling but he did it through evolution. I said, fine, but what you are showing me is ADAPTATION from a DNA package not  evolution through random mutation. When you can show me some random positive mutation that "evolved" one type of life form to another, then I'll agree we have proof.

Even those finches with all the different beak lengths and shapes that Darwin claimed were examples of evolution were NOT. It has since been proven that ALL the finch "different species" he drew were IN FACT, all of a single species. Their DNA PACKAGE enabled them to ADAPT to different conditions through different beak lengths.

They DID NOT MUTATE. They DID NOT EVOLVE. They could, and still can, procreate one with another, despite the different beak lengths.

So, all that said, let's go to the article you posted.

First, the reconstruction is an artists conception and a cruel joke. They don't have a clue whether this skull had that hair pattern or looked (as is the obvious intent here) as a missing link of some kind. It is NOT POSSIBLE to tell from a skull what a NOSE looks like. Now tell me, does that nose not look like a something between and ape and a negro? Can you say, agenda?

Second, if that skull is in a "2 million year old strata", they are NOT using carbon 14 dating. They are using the old, "it's in this type of rock strata so it MUST be X million years old because ALL of this type of strata has been DETERMINED (INTERPRETATION through the I.E. Rock strata column age hypothesis, not a fixed radio isotope dating method. WHY? Because they get embarrassingly widely varying data by 10s to 100s of millions of years of the SAME strata in different parts of the world) to be to be 2 million years old". IOW it's 2 million years old because THEY SAID SO (see the mungo man article above with a similar dating difficulty controversy).

Now suppose they find some Carbon 14 in that skull? What does that do to their "2 million year old rock strata" assumption.

The entire story is just that. When we can PROVE something is 2 million years old or more, then we can start talking about evolution. They have volcanic rock formed less than 50 years ago that DATES to over 3 million years old! So whether they are making geographic column strata assumptions or doing some type of radioisotope dating, they are guessing at the dates, not providing scientific proof of them.

Here's a great example. NOBODY had checked diamonds ( the hardest form of carbon and the hardest substance known) for Carbon 14 because they were ASSUMED to be milliions to billions of years old. Well, they have found Carbon 14 in diamonds. That means that unbelievable pressures somehow made these diamonds within the last 30,000 years. Crazy, right?

But let's drop the strata and fossils for a second and discuss living evolutionary mechanisms like our human biochemistry. We are supposed to be complex, VERY evolved critters, right? We are supposed to be higher life forms far more evolved than plants, right?

Well, they have now found that a few very primitive creatures like sea squirts and certain plants share with humans the production of biochemicals that have just recently been discovered (over the last 2 decades) to be vital to our immune system, neurotransmittion and pain signaling. These chemicals are called cannabinoids.

What's the big deal? They seem to have "defied" evolution! It doesn't make modern scientific sense for us to produce the same stuff that cannabis and sea squirts do if "evolution" constantly, over millions of years acts on all subsystems of life forms. I mean, evolutionists claim we went from single celled life forms to multicellular myriad life forms that populate the rocks, the land, the sea, the air and even sulphur vents on the bottom of the ocean. We late comers are EVOLVED, right? Are you going to tell me that our immune systems and pain signaling and inflammatory response was FIXED from the start and HASEN'T "evolved"? That's heresy!

But here it is. and they don't know quite what to make of it.


Dr Roger Pertwee: Department of Biomedical Sciences, Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Foresterhill, Aberdeen AB25 2ZD, Scotland, UK

"I am excited about cannabinoids because they reveal that we have these marvelous systems in our bodies," he said "Where do they come from? Why are they there? The endogenous cannabinoid system, with its vast network of receptors and chemical messengers, deals with pain, muscle, motor function, thought, and mood. It's been detected in very primitive organisms, and yet it has survived evolution from very early on and therefore it must be quite an important system for us to have. It's a wonderful system to study."

The International Cannabinoid Research Society (ICRS), a group founded in 1991. The ICRS has hundreds of member-researchers studying "cannabinoids," which are marijuana's most interesting ingredients.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/1530.html

It simply has not occurred (because it is UNTHINKABLE) that, if we did not evolve but were created and plugged in to the package deal biosphere, his question answers itself. 
« Last Edit: October 19, 2013, 12:35:42 am by AGelbert »
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AGelbert

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A "46 million year" unpleasant Bag Of Worms for the Evolutionists

Why? Because they have found a non-fossilized blood meal in a mosquito gut that is in strata allegedly 46 million years old.

So what? This is Jurassic Park like exciting stuff, right?

NOPE! The scientists KNOW that IF that mosquito, which clearly has organic compounds (i.e. carbon 12 to carbon 14 ratio in its tissues) has ANY carbon 14 in it, it HAS TO BE LESS THAN 30,000 years old!  :o

And that is why the article says absolutely NOTHING about Carbon dating and throws out that huge 46 million year old age with no explanation of the dating methodology. They are setting the stage for IGNORING Carbon tests because "obviously" LOL! if the mosquito is in 46 million year old strata, it MUST have lost all its Carbon 14. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I'll be watching what develops on this and report back here. Here's the "scientific" article asking the wrong questions as to how something could be preserved for such a long time. The question about the possibility of the 46 million year dating of the strata being WAY OFF is NOT ASKED. They are SCIENTISTS, after all, not a bunch of superstitious, rigid fools that refuse to question the data if new evidence demands it... ;D

Here's my FAVORITE bit OF pseudo Scientific clever half truth pushing BS in the article,
Quote
The paper is “powerful” evidence that certain molecules in blood persist longer than scientists might expect... 

Fossilized Mosquito Blood Meal

Researchers have discovered a 46-million-year-old female mosquito containing the remnants of the insect’s final blood meal.

By Abby Olena | October 14, 2013

Researchers from the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, DC, have discovered the first ever fossilized blood meal, according to a paper published today (October 14) in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Large and labile molecules like DNA cannot be detected in fossils this old with current technology, but the 46-million-year-old mosquito holds clues about when blood-feeding behavior originated in insects and about the survival of other biomolecules like heme, which the researchers identified in the fossil.

“[The paper] shows that details of a blood sucking mosquito can be nicely preserved in a medium other than amber,”  ;D paleontologist George Poinar of Oregon State University, who was not involved in this research, wrote in an e-mail to The Scientist. “The paper also establishes that blood-filled mosquitoes were already active at that time, suggesting that they were around much earlier” than previously realized, he added.

The paper is “powerful” :P  evidence that certain molecules in blood persist longer than scientists might expect, said Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University who was also not involved in the work.

The chances of finding a fossilized mosquito with evidence of a recent blood meal are infinitesimal.
 Paleobiologist Dale Greenwalt and his wife vacation in Glacier National Park each summer. When Greenwalt began volunteering for the NMNH’s paleobiology department several years ago, he learned about a site in Montana called the Kishenehn Formation, near the Flathead River on the western border of the park, that he said “may be one of the best sites for fossilized insects in the world.” For reasons that are still unclear  ;D, this site contains fossils of unrivaled quality, revealing ancient insects in great detail, including well-preserved scales, hairs, and structure-based color. Greenwalt collects roughly a thousand pieces of shale there every summer and adds them to the fossil collection at the NMNH. He then spends his winters in the NMNH’s lab cataloging and analyzing the fossils.

“When I’m going through all these fossils, there are some of them that are obviously of scientific value,” Greenwalt said. The mosquito’s darkened and enlarged abdomen and the morphology of the mosquito’s mouthparts immediately stood out to Greenwalt. “No one has ever found the fossil of a blood engorged mosquito,” he said.

The NMNH researchers measured the elemental content of the mosquito and found that its abdomen contained much more iron than its thorax and than the thorax and abdomen of a fossilized male mosquito from the same site—indicating it contained blood. The researchers also analyzed the fossil using mass spectrometry to show that the female mosquito abdomen, and not any of their controls, contained heme. “Everyone was jumping up and down, and we were all very excited,” said Greenwalt.

Schweitzer said the evidence of heme in the fossil was convincing, but added that looking for specific magnetic properties of heme-derived iron could further confirm the findings, as could the use of heme specific antibodies to verify heme’s presence in the abdomen. “I think this is a great first step,” she said, “but more can always be done.”

Going forward, Greenwalt hopes to investigate how this mosquito, other insects in the Kishenehn Formation, and the heme are so well preserved. The scientists are also intrigued by what the mosquito fed on. “We have no idea who the host was for the mosquito,” said Greenwalt. He added that living members of the same genus as the fossilized mosquito feed on birds and said that “we can conjecture that this was bird blood, but we have no way of proving it.”

D. Greenwalt et al., “Hemoglobin-derived porphyrins preserved in a Middle Eocene blood-engorged mosquito,” PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.1310885110, 2013.

Agelbert NOTE: IF a FOSSIL has heme blood group blood, it is NOT a FOSSIL. In a FOSSIL, all the organic matter has been replaced by petrified rock of some type. That means this mosquito (it's amazing how those dad burned mosquitoes just refuse to evolve, isn't it?) has organic matter in it.

Here is a Heme group. The iron (Fe) is surrounded by a lot of CARBON ATOMS (C). There is also hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen present. This mosquito has CARBON. There WILL be Carbon 12 and there had BETTER NOT BE any Carbon 14 or the bug is less than 30,000 years old. Then what are they going to do? Like I said, stay tuned for a giant bag of worms with this
.






 
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/37874/title/Fossilized-Mosquito-Blood-Meal/
« Last Edit: October 20, 2013, 10:13:56 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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