Posted on 07/29/2002 6:35:04 PM PDT by Tribune7
Printer-friendly format July 26, 2002, 6:11PM
A bone to pick: Missing link is evolutionists' weakest By JEFF FARMER
It has been said that if anyone wants to see something badly enough, they can see anything, in anything. Such was the case recently, but unlike some ghostly visage of the Madonna in a coffee stain, this was a vision of our ancestral past in the form of one recently discovered prehistoric skull, dubbed Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
Papers across the globe heralded the news with great fanfare. With words like "scientists hailed" and "startling find" sprinkled into the news coverage, who couldn't help but think evolutionists had finally found their holy grail of missing links?
For those of us with more than a passing interest in such topics as, "Where did we come from? And how did we get here?," this recent discovery and its subsequent coverage fall far short of its lofty claims. A healthy criticism is in order.
Practically before the fossil's discoverer, the French paleoanthropologist Michel Brunet, could come out of the heat of a Chadian desert, a number of his evolutionary colleagues had questioned his conclusions.
In spite of the obvious national pride, Brigitte Senut of the Natural History of Paris sees Brunet's skull as probably that of an ancient female gorilla and not the head of man's earliest ancestor. While looking at the same evidence, such as the skull's flattened face and shorter canine teeth, she draws a completely different conclusion.
Of course, one might be inclined to ask why such critiques never seem to get the same front-page coverage? It's also important to point out that throughout history, various species, such as cats, have had varying lengths of canine teeth. That does not make them any closer to evolving into another species.
A Washington Post article goes on to describe this latest fossil as having human-like traits, such as tooth enamel thicker than a chimpanzee's. This apparently indicates that it did not dine exclusively on the fruit diet common to apes. But apes don't dine exclusively on fruit; rather, their diet is supplemented with insects, birds, lizards and even the flesh of monkeys. The article attempted to further link this fossil to humans by stating that it probably walked upright. Never mind the fact that no bones were found below the head! For all we know, it could have had the body of a centaur, but that would hardly stop an overzealous scientist (or reporter) from trying to add a little meat to these skimpy bones. Could it not simply be a primate similar to today's Bonobo? For those not keeping track of their primates, Bonobos (sp. Pan paniscus) are chimpanzee-like creatures found only in the rain forests of Zaire. Their frame is slighter than that of a chimpanzee's and their face does not protrude as much. They also walked upright about 5 percent of the time. Sound familiar?
Whether it is tooth enamel, length of canines or the ability to walk upright, none of these factors makes this recent discovery any more our ancestral candidate than it does a modern-day Bonobo.
So why does every new fossil discovery seem to get crammed into some evolutionary scenario? Isn't it possible to simply find new, yet extinct, species? The answer, of course, is yes; but there is great pressure to prove evolution.
That leads us to perhaps the most troubling and perplexing aspect of this latest evolutionary hoopla. While on one hand sighting the evolutionary importance of this latest discovery, a preponderance of these articles leave the notion that somehow missing links are not all that important any more.
According to Harvard anthropologist Dan Lieberman, missing links are pretty much myths. That might be a convenient conclusion for those who have been unable to prove evolution via the fossil record. Unfortunately for them, links are absolutely essential to evolution. It is impossible for anything to evolve into another without a linear progression of these such links.
The prevailing evolutionary view of minute changes, over millions of years, is wholly inadequate for the explanation of such a critical piece of basic locomotion as the ball-and-socket joint. Until such questions can be resolved, superficial similarities between various species are not going to prove anything. No matter how bad someone wants to see it.
Farmer is a professional artist living in Houston. He can can be contacted via his Web site, www.theglobalzoo.com
"Howdy, boys."
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Landing on Pitcairn Island in 1790, the mutineers and Tahitians remained invisible to the world for eighteen years. Despite the fledgling society's opportunity to invent itself from scratch, island culture more closely resembled Lord of the Flies than a Rousseauvian utopia. When an American whaler discovered the island in 1808, murder and suicide had left eight of the nine mutineers dead.Anniversary of Mutiny on the Bounty .
...some call him the gangster of love.
...some call him the gangster of love.
Some people call him Maurice....
...Cause he speaks of the Pompatus of love
Let's look more closely at the article you linked to here :
While around 50 genes are involved in the construction and regulation of the canonical eubacterial only around 18-20 form the actual motor-switch/shaft/propellor complex.
First he cuts off more than half the problem.
the details of the evolution of the FliG,M,N torque generating sytem are lacking, as we know little about how these systems generate torque.
Well, that is the point of the flagellum is it not?
But view it as a secretory structure, it is NOT IC, remove the filament and it still works, remove the hook and it still works, remove the motor and it still works, not as well as with the motor, but it still works.
One can view it as originating as a secretory structure and it continues to serve that function. However, without the motor there will not be movement. You also need the rotor and the system to regulate movement. All of them necessary for the system to work. This is not explained and it is left hanging by the author. So, no, it has not been shown to have arisen by stepwise evolution.
Also a question needs to be answered for the other steps - if the functions of other proteins were adopted by this system, what happened to the other functions? This is a deep problem with the gradual evolution model. If it is achieved by the adoption of already useful functions, what is performing those functions after they were adopted?
Completely untrue. If evolution were true then by looking at the differences in any gene for different species would give the same replica of the 'evolutionary tree'. However this is not so and what is most damaging to evolution is that the evolutionists doing this work know very well that it is not true. This one (PDF file) from Mammalian Genome presents a quite interesting example of evolution "science". First evolutionists tried to use mitochondrial DNA to show the relationships between the monotremes (platypus), the placentals (kangaroos) and the eutherians (all other mammals). The mtDNA did not give them the desired results "The value and accuracy of decades of morphological study have been discounted recently by mytochondrial DNA evidence". So of course the evos could not let that happen, so they had to try again. They then tried DNA hybridization. However, under this method also Darwinian theory was refuted "It is significant that apomorphies of the theran ancestors, such as the braincase, cranial nerve architecture, and reproductive physiology" had to be reclassified as convergences under these two tests. So of course they had to pick another test to get the results they wished - a totally new one called MP6/IG2FR!
Such is the way proofs of evolution are constructed - keep trying until you find a way. Different genetic tests give different results. That different tests give different evolutionary trees is a clear disproof of evolution. If all species descended from earlier species and each species in the different parts of the tree descended from another, then there needs to be in all genes the same order of descent and thus all the members of a family, an order, a taxa or whatever, need to have the same divergence in those genes as all other members of the family, order, taxa or whatever. That this is not true and that evolutionists need to "shop" the genes to use to prove their theory shows quite well that evolution is false. That they publicly announce this fraudulent method and that they are not thrown out for such unprofessional conduct shows quite well how totally bankrupt are those who work on evolution.
It is not the names, it is the stupidity of their statements that is laughable. In fact the whole concept of the article shows the total imbecility of evolutionism. It claimed that the reason for the intervening fossils was reproduction between species which of course is impossible by definition. I am sure you did not catch that because it takes a thinking being to notice such things.
Always there to take my words out of context. All that was given was the names of articles. That is not proof of anything. The poster I addressed understood it, and I am sure you did too but since you are too lame to refute my arguments honestly you try to defame me dishonestly.
Well good effort at creating confusion by these folk from the but they are very wrong. In the first place, these samples were from sites which were only about 30,000 years old, so there was not much time for the mutational changes described:
The resulting sequence was compared with 986 distinct sequences from living humans. The sequence differed from these in an average of 25.6 positions. Living humans differ in this region in an average of 8 positions, but the maximum difference is 24 positions. But the pattern of mutations in the Neanderthal sequence was different than in modern humans. For comparison, in this region, there are 55 differences between humans and chimpanzees.
From: Neanderthal DNA .
Since monkeys and humans separated millions of years ago and the samples were only some 30,000 years old, there is absolutely no way such a large difference could have arisen in such a short time or that it could have continued if there had been mixing of men with Neanderthals. That we have three samples from such recent time and that Neanderthal and man were so far apart in all shows quite definitely that they were separate species and that man did not descend from Neanderthal.
Someone, please, start a new one.
I love this topic, but when it gets over 500 replies, it kinda gets difficult to keep up with the discussions.
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