Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists

Creationism News – June 2013创造论新闻– 2013年6月 Dedicated to David Coppedge who sacrificed his career as the Head Systems Administrator for the Cassini Spacecraft in JPL to honor the Creator of the Universe. He also spent literally thousands of hours to make his excellent websites. The contents of this presentation were taken from David Coppedge’s website http://crev.info. Pray for his fast recovery from cancer surgery. Pastor Chui http://ChristCenterGospel.org ckchui1@yahoo.com 1/1/2020 1

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • The dates of some human migrations could have been much more recent than genetic data indicates. What of even older dates? • In “Archaeological Genetics: It’s Not All as Old as It at First Seems,” Science Daily reported on work published in Investigative Genetics that indicated data on migrations in the Netherlands fits recent population movements just as well as “ancient” ones: • These results could be explained by invoking movement of ancient, Paleolithic-Neolithic humans, similar to that proposed to explain the genetic diversity across central entire Europe. However the data also fits a model involving movement of people within the last 70 generations of modern Dutch, for which there is a wealth of archaeological evidence. 1/1/2020 2

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Consequently, “patterns of genetic diversity which indicate population movement may not be as ancient as previously believed, but may be attributable to recent events.” The authors of the open-access paper cautioned colleagues “future human population genetic studies pay more attention to recent demographic history in interpreting genetic clines.” See press release from BioMed Central. 1/1/2020 3

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Interpretation Run Amok • It would seem, therefore, that if data from the most recent millennia can be misinterpreted, that the uncertainties would mount when interpreting older data. Yet paleoanthropologists routinely speak confidently about supposed events tens of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. If genetic data can be misinterpreted, the same pitfalls can occur with other data, such as artifacts. • For example, in “When Did Humans Begin Hurling Spears?” Science Now pointed out that the answer varies from 90,000 to 500,000 evolutionary years ago, depending on how one interprets markings on bones. 1/1/2020 4

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Nature News claims that “hominid footprints” 1.52 million years old, “probably” from Homo erectus or Paranthropus, show that the walkers were the same size as modern humans, based on inferences of “stature, body mass and walking speed” compared with those of modern Kenyan barefoot walkers. • Science News presented a new hypothesis about why apes descended from the trees that “challenges evolutionary theories behind the development of our earliest ancestors from tree dwelling quadrupeds to upright bipeds capable of walking and scrambling.” A paleoanthopologist published a novel theory that “challenges traditional hypotheses which suggest our early forebears were forced out of the trees and onto two feet when climate change reduced tree cover.” Instead, Dr. Isabelle Winder (U of York) thinks it was a response to geological changes: 1/1/2020 5

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • “The broken, disrupted terrain offered benefits for hominins in terms of security and food, but it also proved a motivation to improve their locomotor skills by climbing, balancing, scrambling and moving swiftly over broken ground — types of movement encouraging a more upright gait.” • The research suggests that the hands and arms of upright hominins were then left free to develop increased manual dexterity and tool use, supporting a further key stage in the evolutionary story. • Aside from sounding Lamarckian, this theory begs the question of why all the other animals in the terrain did not develop upright posture and tool use. 1/1/2020 6

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Another example borders on the ridiculous. Rob Brooks, in an article posted by Medical Xpress, used Arnold Schwarzenegger’s biceps as support for the notion of a “link between male upper-body strength and assertion of economic self-interest.” (See 5/18/03 story and comments). Brooks unwittingly committed his own show of brute force by referring to Creation-Evolution Headlines as “nutbaggery” while trying to simultaneously backpeddle from the idea that evolutionary forces dictate our politics. “The value of this paper is in showing how our evolved biology and our contemporary politics can interlink in interesting ways, creating nuanced individual differences,” he explained. Very interesting, indeed. Any predictions from this notion? Any way to falsify it? 1/1/2020 7

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Always Room for Doubt • A few paleoanthropologists are aware of the problems of interpreting data. For instance, Nature recently questioned whether Australopithecus sediba has anything to do with the emergence of the genus Homo. In “Hesitation on Human History,” William H. Kimbel wrote, “I do not think that they provide compelling evidence that this species is anything other than an unusual australopith [ape] from a Pliocene–Pleistocene time period that is already populated by a fair number of them.” • Evolutionists Simon E. Fisher and Matt Ridley in Science Magazine (“Culture, Genes and the Human Revolution”) first praised the techniques available for genetic research before cautioning about interpretation: 1/1/2020 8

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • State-of-the-art DNA sequencing is providing ever more detailed insights into the genomes of humans, extant apes, and even extinct hominins, offering unprecedented opportunities to uncover the molecular variants that make us human. A common assumption is that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans after 200,000 years ago required—and followed—a specific biological change triggered by one or more genetic mutations. For example, Klein has argued that the dawn of human culture stemmed from a single genetic change that “fostered the uniquely modern ability to adapt to a remarkable range of natural and social circumstance”. But are evolutionary changes in our genome a cause or a consequence of cultural innovation…? • Many nuanced accounts of human evolution implicitly assume that biological changes must precede cultural changes.… 1/1/2020 9

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • This prevailing logic in the field may put the cart before the horse. The discovery of any genetic mutation that coincided with the “human revolution” must take care to distinguish cause from effect. Supposedly momentous changes in our genome may sometimes be a consequence of cultural innovation. They may be products of culture-driven gene evolution. 1/1/2020 10

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Fisher and Ridley give the example of lactose intolerance as a likely genetic consequence of lifestyle choices by early farmers. They also dispute the relevance of the FOXP2 genetic change that some paleoanthropologists have suggested drove the development of human language. “If, for instance, humanized FOXP2 confers more sophisticated control of vocal sequences, this would most benefit an animal already capable of speech,” they said. “Alternatively, the spread of the relevant changes may have had nothing to do with emergence of spoken language, but may have conferred selective advantages in another domain.” Either way, the interpretation does not jump out of the data. To think science (“prevailing logic”) can be conducted free of human subjectivity would, indeed, put Descartes before the Horace. 1/1/2020 11

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Anyone thinking the evolutionary story just leaps out of the data from its own accord needs to study philosophy of science. Data to evolutionists are like colorful pebbles and bits of glass they use to create a mosaic whose image was predetermined by their materialistic world view. Curious, is it not, that to complete their project they have to use intelligent design. Why don’t they just shake the bits on a table and see what “emerges” since emergence (the Stuff Happens Law, 9/15/08) is the theme of their whole story? 1/1/2020 12

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Rob Brooks is having a good time at our expense flexing his muscle on his blog against “nutbaggers” instead of answering legitimate questions. Come now, Rob, tell us: does truth evolve? We left that checkmate challenge hanging but he just wants to overturn the table and call it a stupid game. It’s more than a game. It’s a challenge to his credibility. Maybe he should recognize that tens of thousands of people read this website. Our well-educated and sophisticated audience would love to watch if he can wield the sword of logic better than the mudballs of ridicule. 1/1/2020 13

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • As for bicep politics, maybe Mr. Brooks would like to explain the anti-redistributionism of Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and all the other conservatives not particularly known for their upper-body strength. Or how about Nick Vujicic, who has no biceps? Maybe Brooks could entertain the idea that it’s fat, not muscle, that allows men to throw their weight around. Does that explain Rush Limbaugh’s politics? Oh, but we see; Brooks has an escape. Evolution just adds “nuance” to these tendencies. Any exception to his law of nature can just be nuanced away. Well, then, if there’s no law of nature, why call the storytelling science? Notions belong in fabric stores, not the lab (10/14/08). 1/1/2020 14

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists 遗传年龄可以欺骗科学家 • Brooks laughs at his Yoda Complex. Well, fine. We can all laugh with him. We all know, at the end of the day, it’s just for show. He’s an entertainer, not a philosopher. After his daily storytelling work on the Darwin Light & Magic soundstage, he takes off his latex Yoda costume and behaves like a normal human being, living as if his mental choices matter—ignoring the mutations that the Start Warts script says make him what he is. The fantasy is all CGI, where even truth can evolve. If he insists on manipulating the dork side of the farce (the self-refuting side of illogic), may the farce bewitch him. 1/1/2020 15

Gloria Deo 愿荣耀归上帝 1/1/2020 16

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • The more we learn about a vital molecular machine in the nucleus, the spliceosome, the more complex and important it seems. • The spliceosome is a large “slicer and dicer” that takes DNA transcripts (messenger RNA) and prepares them for export out of the nucleus, where they will be translated into proteins. Science Daily described what molecular biologists have learned about this amazing multi-function machine: 1/1/2020 17

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • The process of splicing is carried out by a highly complex molecular machine termed the spliceosome. Human spliceosomes are built up from protein and RNA molecules. They contain some 170 different proteins and five RNA molecules termed “small nuclear RNAs” (snRNAs). It is currently believed that certain snRNAs represent the tools with which the spliceosome carries out the cutting and joining of RNA sections, turning the messenger RNA’s precursor (“pre‑mRNA”) into mature messenger RNA. The proteins of the spliceosome are needed to bring these tools to the right place at the right time, and to set them into operation. 1/1/2020 18

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • Splicing processes in higher organisms are very highly regulated. In fact, differing patterns of excision and joining of a given pre‑mRNA molecule can lead to any one of a selection of different mature mRNA molecules — all from the same gene. This ability to select the mRNA product according to need is termed “alternative splicing,” and it is thought to be the most important means by which human cells manage to produce a vast spectrum of different proteins from a relatively restricted number of protein-encoding genes. 1/1/2020 19

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • So far, we’ve seen precision tools that arrive at precision times to do precision jobs. We’ve seen that this multi-part, complex machine, aided by multiple other proteins and small RNA molecules, is capable of turning a transcribed gene into a vast array of protein templates by means of alternative splicing. Years ago, it seemed a mystery why genes contained many apparently useless regions of code, dubbed introns, that had to be cut out of the messenger RNA (see 9/03/2003). The spliceosome’s magic of alternative splicing is providing clues. 1/1/2020 20

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • The article, based on a press release from the Free University of Berlin, used some pithy analogies to help readers understand the process. One of the tools was likened to a knife in a sheath, that safely moves to the cutting site, waits for a “start signal,” then unsheathes itself and goes to work. The start signal is given by another machine with a “remarkable molecular architecture” that enables the knife. But that start-signal machine is held on a short leash by another machine, preventing it from giving the start signal. That machine acts like a “plug in a stopper,” the researchers said, making sure the start signal is only given at the right time. 1/1/2020 21

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • But then, the researchers found another machine that works in tandem with the “plug,” regulating the “start signal” independently. “The existence of two or more different mechanisms to regulate the same cellular process underlines the importance of the exact timing of this process for the overall process of RNA splicing,” one of the researchers said. • This information is not just academic. “In humans, errors in this control mechanism can lead to blindness.” Could this machine have evolved by chance? The article does not mention evolution. It did say, though, that the spliceosome has some 170 different proteins. Could chance build just one protein? 1/1/2020 22

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • We in this century are so privileged to get glimpses into the inner workings of life at its most basic level. What would Aristotle or Galen, Leeuwenhoek or Darwin, thought if they knew that machinery—cutting tools, stoppers, regulators and other moving parts—so tiny as to be invisible without highly sophisticated human machinery—were keeping us alive? Every second, every minute we are being upheld by trillions of machines like this that nobody even suspected were possible till the age of molecular biology. 1/1/2020 23

Wonders of the Spliceosome Coming to Light剪接体的奇迹显露 • Had Darwin known this, he might never have dared to write a story that blind, unguided processes could explain life. There’s an interesting novella on that theme that was recently presented on ID the Future in audio format, 5 episodes. “I, Charles Darwin” transports the bearded buddha into the 21st century, where he learns about these wonders and responds to them. To encourage you to listen, we won’t spoil the end of the story. 1/1/2020 24

Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution两个化石挑战进化 • One living fossil and one dead fossil strain the credibility of evolutionary dates and mechanisms. • Cuttlefish melanin: PhysOrg reported on intact melanin from the ink sac of a Jurassic-era cuttlefish (see also 8/20/02, 5/21/12) . The spectrum of the melanin matches that from a living specimen. The article did not question why an organic substance would be expected to survive for 160 million years. It just assumed that it did, and launched into a speculation: “Because melanin survives so long, an analysis of the melanin from old cancerous tissue samples could give researchers a useful tool for predicting the spread of melanoma skin cancer in humans.” 1/1/2020 26

Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution两个化石挑战进化 • Israeli frog: The Hula painted frog (no, it does not use a Hula-Hoop), feared extinct 60 years ago, has been rediscovered in Israel, reported the BBC News and National Geographic. Thought to be a casualty of the draining of wetlands in the Hula Valley in northern Israel, this strange-looking brown amphibian with white spots on its belly caused a stir of excitement when a frog, a kind of “idol of Israel” was found alive two years ago. Thirteen more have since been seen, leading to estimates of a couple of hundred remaining alive. 1/1/2020 27

Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution两个化石挑战进化 • That’s good news, but not the only point of interest: it’s also a “living fossil.” According to the evolutionary timeline, members of the Latonia group of frogs didn’t learn to keep evolving. National Geographic commented, “the Hula painted frog is considered a rare example of a so-called living fossil, an organism that has retained the same form over millions of years and that has few or no living relatives.” The BBC article said, “These frogs were once widespread throughout Europe for millions of years, but all apart from the Hula painted frog died out about 15,000 years ago.” That would appear to make this frog a member of “Lazarus taxa,” groups thought extinct long ago only to be found alive and well today. 1/1/2020 28

Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution两个化石挑战进化 • National Geographic erred by claiming that “Only about a dozen other ‘living fossils’ are known, the most famous of which may be the coelacanth, an ancient fish that can trace its ancestry back to the days of the dinosaurs.” As explained on CMI, Dr. Carl Werner has documented hundreds of them. Not only that, Dr. Werner has documented 432 mammal fossils (100 of them complete skeletons) in Cretaceous strata—almost as many species as dinosaurs. He has also found representatives of modern plants, crustaceans and insects in dinosaur rocks, as his video explains. Yet in 60 museums he visited, not a single one displayed a complete Cretaceous mammal fossil, or any modern animal or plant displayed with the dinosaurs. 1/1/2020 29

Two More Fossils Challenge Evolution两个化石挑战进化 • We agree with what Dr. Werner said in the CMI article: • For example, if a scientist believes in evolution and sees fossils that look like modern organisms at the dinosaur digs, he/she might invent an hypothesis to ‘explain’ living fossils this way: ‘Yes I believe that animals have changed greatly over time (evolution), but some animals and plants were so well adapted to the environment that they did not need to change. So I am not bothered at all by living fossils.’ This added hypothesis says that some animals did not evolve. But if a theory can be so flexible, adding hypotheses that predict the opposite of your main theory, one could never disprove the theory. The theory then becomes unsinkable, and an unsinkable theory is not science. 1/1/2020 30

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Evolutionists routinely try to construct parts of Darwin’s grand “tree of life” from fossils and genes. Do the parts come together as expected? • Camels & mammals: The genome of a Bactrian (two-humped) camel named Mozart was deciphered. According to Science Daily, “The DNA code also represents a rich resource for addressing questions on phylogenetic relationships between animals.” So far, though, all the geneticists found was 85% similarity to the one-humped dromedary camel. They hope it will clarify relationships with llamas and alpacas, too, but that work remains to be done. 1/1/2020 32

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Zebrafish & mermaids: Alongside a photo of a lovely lady swimming underwater, Michael Gross wrote in Current Biology, “While we humans tend to have grandiose ideas about our special position in the tree of life, more than 70% of our genes have an obvious orthologue in zebrafish.” Other than telling sweeping stories of evolutionary transitions, Gross only mentioned the coelacanth genome and the zebrafish genome as data, noting that “zebrafish has the largest number of unique genes (3,634) not shared with any of the others” (chicken, mouse, and human). And despite the major changes involved in moving from sea to land, he wrote, “Arthropods must have made the transition at least five times, as researchers have concluded from phylogenetic trees.” 1/1/2020 33

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Tree of life is fishy: In “Somethings’s fishy in the tree of life,” Science Daily reported on the largest comparison of fish genes to date, providing data that “dramatically increase understanding of fish evolution and their relationships.” Some assembly required, after disassembling previous assumptions and “proposing” relationships nobody would have expected: • While some of the findings provide new support for previously understood fish relationships, others significantly change existing ideas. Many different groupings are proposed in this new tree. For example, tunas and marlins are both fast-swimming marine fishes with large, streamlined bodies, yet they appear on very different branches of the tree. Tunas appear to be more closely related to the small, sedentary seahorses, whereas marlins are close relatives of flatfishes, which are bottom-dwelling and have distinctive asymmetric heads. 1/1/2020 34

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Fish & Hips: A short article on Science Daily tries to explain the “fishy origin of our hips.” We’re related to salamanders, by implication: it only took a “few evolutionary steps” to convert fins to hips. Even though humans are thought to be very distant on Darwin’s tree, “the differences between us and them are not as great as they appear — most of the key elements necessary for the transformation to human hips were actually already present in our fish ancestors,” the article alleges. And that’s because “Many of the muscles thought to be ‘new’ in tetrapods evolved from muscles already present in lungfish,” a Monash University evolutionist said. “We also found evidence of a new, more simple path by which skeletal structures would have evolved.” A picture of an axolotl adorns the article—but that’s a salamander, not a fish. 1/1/2020 35

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Speaking of salamanders, an article on PhysOrg alleges that the “repeated evolution of high foraging rates in spotted salamanders” shows the “invisible finger of evolution” at work. Quote from the evolutionary spokesman from U of Connecticut: “Finding that adaptive evolution may disguise strong ecological effects means that a range of ecological predictions are likely to be unreliable if we ignore how evolution affects biological communities” — i.e., evolution and ecology are so “inexorably intertwined,” one can mask the other. 1/1/2020 36

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Snakes alive, and hopeful lizards: A researcher with his team at George Washington U has built a new evolutionary tree of all lizards and snakes around the globe, 4,161 species in all. “While there are gaps on some branches of the tree,” the lead acknowledged, “the structure of the tree goes a long way toward fully mapping every genus and species group.” He thinks he knows what will fill the gaps, even though the project is preliminary: “this estimate of the squamate tree of life shows us what we do know, and more importantly, what we don’t know, and will hopefully spur even more research on the amazing diversity of lizards and snakes.” 1/1/2020 37

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Speaking of lizards, here’s a big one. While listening to music from The Doors, Jason Head (U of Nebraska) found a six-footer he named after Jim Morrison (leader of the rock band, who apparently committed suicide). Thought to have lived 40 million years ago, Barbaturex morrisoni was larger than many of the mammals it munched on. Head attributed today’s paucity of large lizards to climate change. Apparently global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were much higher back then, even with human smokestacks and automobiles around. “We think the warm climate during that period of time allowed the evolution of a large body size and the ability of plant-eating lizards to successfully compete in mammal faunas,” he said (PhysOrg). Is he proposing reptile size as a function of temperature? Why, then, were there large dinosaurs in the arctic circle? Why are lizards smaller today, to first approximation, in hot as well as cold climates? 1/1/2020 38

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Ant what they used to be: How’s the ant branch coming along? Science Daily reported on a new ant family tree that supposedly “Confirms Date of Evolutionary Origin” and “Underscores Importance of Neotropics” in their emergence. Data from genes and fossils were used to build the largest ancestry diagram for ants. According to the phylogenists, “the rainforests of the Neotropics are both a museum, protecting many of the oldest ant groups, and also a cradle that continues to generate new species.” In other words, some evolve and some don’t. “This ant tree-of-life confirmed an earlier surprising finding that two groups of pale, eyeless, subterranean ants, which are unlike most typical ants, are the earliest living ancestors of the modern ants.” It would seem easier to lose eyes than to gain them. 1/1/2020 39

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Planting trees in the fast lane: “Biologists have known for a long time that some creatures evolve more quickly than others,” begins an article on PhysOrg. “Exactly why isn’t well understood, particularly for plants.” A new notion is that short plants grow in the “evolutionary fast lane” compared to tall plants. At the U.S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, researchers estimated the average height of 140 families of plants, then plotted them against their assumed date of emergence in the fossil record to conclude (to their surprise) that “shorter plants evolved as much as five times faster than taller ones.” Why would that be? They surmised that the tips of small plants generate more mistakes: 1/1/2020 40

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • What puts short plants in the evolutionary fast lane? The researchers suspect the difference may be driven by genetic changes that accumulate in the actively-dividing cells in the tip of the plant shoot as it grows. Cells don’t copy their DNA perfectly each time they divide. In animals, most DNA copy mistakes that occur in the cells of the animal’s body can’t be inherited—they’re evolutionary dead ends. But this isn’t the case for plants, where genetic changes in any part of the plant could potentially get passed on if those cells eventually form flowers or other reproductive organs. • For the notion to work, “the rate of cell division and genome copying in taller plants eventually slows down, and changes in DNA—the raw material for evolution—accumulates less quickly.” Sounds like a hypothesis in need of observation. 1/1/2020 41

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Does Darwin need his tree? As reported here May 15, the “tree of life” is a tangled bramble bush, according to an article on Science Daily. Astrobiology Magazine went further to debunk the notion of a “tree of life” with a last universal common ancestor (LUCA). But their idea of “digging down below the tree of life” threatens to uproot it: • A family tree unites a diverse group of individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from a single common ancestor at the base of the tree. But this organizational structure falls apart if genetic information is a communal resource as opposed to a family possession. 1/1/2020 42

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • The article stressed the significance of horizontal gene transfer, Nigel Goldenfield (U of Chicago) stated it this way: “Our perspective is that life emerged from a collective state, and so it is not at all obvious that there is one single organism which was ancestral.” Although this refers to the trunk of the tree, the impact of the new idea flows upward. “In his work,[Peter] Gogarten [U of Connecticut] has shown that horizontal gene transfer turns the tree of life into a thick bush of branches that interweave with each other.” (see also 2/01/07). The new ideas of Carl Woese (1/28/10), Goldenfield and Gogarten are examples of “the evolution of evolution,” the article suggests (see 12/19/07). • The group is particularly interested in the question of how the ability to evolve originally developed. The “evolution of evolution” sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem — especially if you think, as Goldenfeld does, that life is by definition something capable of evolving. 1/1/2020 43

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • However, evolution can utilize different mechanisms to achieve the same goal. Goldenfeld’s team will try to recover some of life’s former evolutionary phases by stressing cells and then seeing how their genomes rearrange in response. • It appears, then, that to salvage evolutionary theory, astrobiologists must personify evolution (“evolution can utilize different mechanisms”) and dispense with Darwin’s core concept of unguided natural selection (“to achieve the same goal”). 1/1/2020 44

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • Goldenfield, a physicist, tries to see evolution in thermodynamics terms in order to come up with rules of “universal biology.” However it is viewed, it’s clear that evolutionists have a long way to go. He said, “We would like to have a better understanding of why life exists at all.” • Why does life exist at all? Because it was created. It didn’t just happen. We can say that confidently after showcasing once again the utter bankruptcy of evolutionary theory (10/19/10). Did you catch that the zebrafish has 3,634 unique genes? What’s the probability of those arising without design? 1/1/2020 45

Do Confusing Branches Add up to a Darwin Tree?添加混淆树枝成为达尔文树嗎？ • After 154 years of Darwin, evolutionists are not even sure there is a tree of life. Creationists have the certainty of a life-giving, created tree of life: in the beginning and at the end. Don’t be fooled by the mystical divination of modern-day shamans who use mumbo-jumbo like “the evolution of evolution” or “the invisible finger of evolution” to keep their fake tree fable going (2/01/07 commentary), who refuse to acknowledge the clear evidence for design, and who keep promising understanding that never comes. 1/1/2020 46

Evolutionists Strategize to Fight Creation进化论者战略抗击创造 • If evolution were a matter of obvious biological facts, why would it be necessary to list strategies to teach it without exposing it to critical thinking? • Nature’s editorial for May 15, “Science in schools,” took aim at creationists, and the Discovery Institute (not a creationist organization, an intelligent design organization) in particular, on the occasion of Eugenie Scott’s retirement (5/09/13) from the National Center for Science Education or NCSE (not an education organization, but an anti-creationist organization). Beyond the usual talking points (e.g., evolution is science, creation is religion; Kitzmiller; the bandwagon argument all scientists accept evolution), the editors suggested three things scientists could do to keep up Eugenie’s fight against Darwin skeptics. 1/1/2020 48

Evolutionists Strategize to Fight Creation进化论者战略抗击创造 • 1. Make evolution appear non-atheist. The editors applauded Eugenie Scott’s tactical coup in removing the words “impersonal” and “unsupervised” when the US National Association of Biology Teachers described natural selection that way in a statement. It’s not that Scott believed the converse (that natural selection is supervised or personal); she just didn’t want to make evolution a lightning rod for those who would use such a statement as evidence that Darwinists are atheists. So she argued that there’s a “false dichotomy” between religious people, some of whom believe evolution, and scientists, some of whom might actually believe in some “higher power.” Scott (an atheist herself) argued that “science could not address such questions.” 1/1/2020 49

Evolutionists Strategize to Fight Creation进化论者战略抗击创造 • 2. Build coalitions. This strategy is vague enough to allow Darwinists to appear conciliatory while insisting their view is uncontested. They can have their say, as long as they all say the right things: • Another strategy is to put together coalitions of people from diverse backgrounds to provide multiple perspectives. Faith-based communities can express concerns about one religious view being favoured over another. Parents can argue for their children’s clear thinking and academic futures. Scientists can talk about the scientific process and why accuracy in schools matters, but should also participate, where applicable, as parents, community members or people of faith. 1/1/2020 50

Genetic Dating Can Fool Scientists