Posted on 04/06/2009 11:48:57 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Zoogenesis—a theory of desperation
Austin H. Clark (1880–1954) was an American evolutionary zoologist who wrote 630 articles and books in six languages.1 Not many people have heard of him today, because he had a major problem with Darwinism, and to get around this he proposed a new theory, which challenged the evolutionary orthodoxy of his contemporaries.
In an extraordinary book, The New Evolution: Zoogenesis,2 Clark showed that there was no evidence that any major type of plant or animal had evolved from or into any other type. He wrote, ‘When we examine a series of fossils of any age we may pick out one and say with confidence “This is a crustacean”—or a starfish, or a brachiopod, or an annelid, or any other type of creature as the case may be.’ This is because all these fossils look so much like their living counterparts today. He pointed out that none of today’s definitions of the phyla or major groups of animals needs to be altered to include the fossils, and he said, ‘[I]t naturally follows that throughout the fossil record these major groups have remained essentially unchanged … the interrelationships between them likewise have remained unchanged.’3
He even said, ‘Thus so far as concerns the major groups of animals, the creationists seem to have the better of the argument. There is not the slightest evidence that any one of the major groups arose from any other.’4
His solution: a new theory...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
The problem is that evolutionary theory fails on both ends simultaneously. This is a problem for evolution, not the critics.
On the one hand, natural selection needs to be able to sift through a collection of good and bad mutations and synthesize the good mutations together into new populations of individuals that are significantly different than the original population. Evolutionary geneticists have studied this process for 70+ years and the basic genetic formulae are well established. The problem, known as Haldane's Dilemma, is that for something like a human population only 1600 mutations could be integrated over the last couple million years, far short of the empirical difference between humans and the nearest primates.
Haldane's work has been alternately ignored or downplayed by evolutionists; the creationist biologist Walter ReMine has recently clarified it and cleaned it up a bit to overcome some obfuscation regarding it. It is a real problem, and evolutionary geneticists know it.
On the flip side, the fact that beneficial mutations can only be integrated by natural selection at a glacial pace, does not interfere with the fact that the overall mutation rate is very large. Dr. Sanford, a Cornell biologist who made a fortune patenting the 'gene gun' used in genetic engineering, has documented the human mutation rate for each type of mutation.
Some estimates are still rough, but overall it is clear that at a minimum each cell, including human sperm and eggs, has hundreds of mutations. It was once thought that most genes were 'junk DNA' but this idea is rapidly fading into past history. And this means most mutations are impacting functional DNA.
We know empirically that the vast majority of such mutations foul up existing biochemical systems and structures, rather than enhancing them. (Sanford also explains why no mutation is perfectly 'neutral'.)
Imagine a village with a generation size of 1000 people. If every person in each generation has on average a hundred mutations, then how can the next generation be more fit (i.e., evolve) than the last generation? The answer is it can't. It doesn't matter how many children are born, and how ruthlessly natural selection acts on those children. If every child born has far more harmful mutations than beneficial ones then the inevitable result is genetic entropy - the population becomes less fit with every passing generation.
And that is just what we see in real life. While evolutionists fantasize about humans growing big foreheads, in the real world we deal with an increasing load of genetic defects causing everything from cancer to sickle-cell anemia to diabetes. Genetic degeneration, not evolution, is what modern science needs to focus on to be applicable to the real world.
Typical Evo, looks at a books cover and title, and determines the content without even reading it.
It is like if 1545 Wilson avenue got robbed at the same time in every city in the USA, England and Jamaica. It might just be a coincidence. But when the evidence shows that this has happened thousands of times where the exact same event happens in the exact same address in different cities and different nations; it starts to look like it couldn't possibly be coincidence.
I can tell you that if the very fist figure in an article about the scientific case for creationism starts to talk about Noah’s ark, the discussion is NOT scientific.
So other than personal attacks, are you going to present a SCIENTIFIC theory of creationism?
So which is it?
Is mutation not powerful enough to explain a 2% genetic and 6% genomic difference over six to seven million years?
Or is mutation so powerful that a species would go extinct from mutation over six to seven million years?
It cannot possibly be both.
preface:
"Part I is a brief summary, in outline form, of 131 categories of scientific evidence that support a sudden creation and oppose gradual evolution. As Figure 1 shows, categories 1–42 relate to the life sciences, 43–93 relate generally to the astronomical and physical sciences, and 94–131 relate to the earth sciences.
Quotations, references, and notes on pages 49–102 provide supporting details for specific conclusions. Usually, these details are based on research done by evolutionists who are experts in a relevant field. Choosing evolutionists rather than creationists will minimize charges of bias. (Besides, no testimony is more convincing than that from a “hostile witness.”) Most people find the quotations, highlighted in blue type, fascinating.
For many years, students, teachers, and professors have been unaware of most of this information, especially the broader conclusions that can be reached. Those conclusions are stated in Figure 1 and in large, bold headings on the following pages. The larger the heading, the broader the conclusion. There is one overall conclusion for the life sciences, one for the astronomical and physical sciences, and one for the earth sciences. Each has three supporting conclusions, for a total of nine. A typical supporting conclusion is based upon about a dozen categories of evidence. All 131 are summarized in the following pages. Figure 1 shows the relationships of these 3 + 9 broad conclusions and the 131 categories of evidence.
Scientific information cannot be suppressed for long, so it is not surprising to see a growing awareness and excitement concerning this information. Some evidence involves new discoveries. Other evidence, discovered long ago, has been poorly disseminated. If all this information were openly presented in science classrooms, better education would result. Regardless of your age or education, you can learn and help others learn this information about a subject that holds great interest for most people—the subject of origins.
Be you can't tell me anything truthful it appears.
Actually, we're pretty closely related to both. Which explains why both are useful in medical research. Kind of strange, isn't it? I mean, here we are, the unique, unusual, and singular pinnacle of creation, and yet we can look at rats and pigs to understand human pathologies. You'd almost think we had a common ancestor.
Of course it can be both, because we are talking about two different things. As a practical matter we will go extinct at observed mutation rates in far less than 6-7 Mya. But if for some reason we did not, then natural selection as a sifting mechanism would only fix 1600 or so new mutations in the population as a whole, far less than the 2% or 6% figure.
What you are not getting is that the much larger change that is causing the overall extinction due to loss of fitness is not becoming fixed (that is, the harmful mutations don't need to spread throughout the entire population), whereas for meaningful evolution to occur, fixation must occur. Or to put it another way - we are genetically changing, and much more quickly than standard evolutionary theory predicts, but it is not driven by natural selection and the drift is thus not coherent.
There was no theoretic scientific explanation offered, nor did the author say how his theory differed from the current theory, or what the testable implications of his theory would be.
For example, the theory that humans and chimps had a common ancestor more recently than either humans and gorillas or chimps and gorillas; and that all of them had a common ancestor more recently with each other than with a monkey has TESTABLE implications, which allow one to make PREDICTIONS.
For example based upon this theory of common descent of primates I can say that...
a) DNA similarity will be greatest between a human and a chimp with less DNA similarity found between a chimp and a gorilla or a human and a gorilla.
b) An ERV found only in some human populations will be less divergent from the “wild” viral sequence than an ERV found among all humans. An ERV found in all humans and gorillas will also be found in chimps. This ERV found in common between humans, chimps and gorillas will be more divergent from the “wild” viral sequence than those found only in humans and chimps and not in gorillas.
The title is FIGURE ONE. In FIGURE ONE of your “scientific theory of creationism” was a panel about Noah’s Ark.
Apparently you are not truthful as well as being ignorant of what the term “scientific” means.
Either mutation is not sufficient to accomplish a 2% genetic and 6% genomic change over six to seven million years; thus there would be much LESS than a 2% and 6% change in DNA over several million years.
OR.....
Mutation is so robust that over six to seven million years there would be much MORE than a 2% and 6% change in DNA, so much mutation in fact that no species could even SURVIVE that level of mutation.
Do you have any evidence of a species going extinct due to high mutation rates?
Bacteria have a gene for an “error prone” DNA polymerase that they turn on when the bacteria is undergoing stress. This deliberate increase in their mutation rate is an adaptive mechanism. Now why do you suppose a bacteria would intentionally increase its mutation rate while undergoing stress?
Show me some "mutated" humans that have "evolved" to higher species.
When humans get a defective gene, they get sicker, and unless that 'tribe introduces a stronger gene pool from another tribe and "breed out" that defect, that gene will become hereditary, and the entire tribe will get sicker, weaker, and eventually die out if nature is allowed to take it's course.
Diabetics for instance, if left to natures devices, die young, they don't reproduce. If it becomes hereditary within the entire tribe, it will die out. Other tribes will avoid it like the plague.
Don't attempt to claim adaptation as mutation. It isn't. Adaptation is part of the design, "dormant" genes are not "junk genes" as was previously thought. Living in a higher altitude for instance, future generations develop larger lungs because the genetic information for larger lungs is already present as a dormant gene.
Do you have any evidence of a species becoming improved due to mutations? Or do we only observe species becoming weaker due to mutation?
Should be easy to find one example if your claim that “mutation eventually leads to extinction” has ANY bearing upon reality.
Humans have evolved, and it is not “degenerative” or devolution. If it is, then the most advanced humans with the least “degenerative” genes are those with a fully functioning set of genes for skin melanin. Thus Black people are the least mutated and most perfect as God intended humans to be, and any change from that is because this is a “fallen” world where light skin results from the devolution of a full set of functioning skin melanin genes.
I have yet to hear a Creationist embrace this logical conclusion of their degenerative hypothesis of genetic change. Will you be the first?
And when has mutation eventually led to extinction? Did the dinosaurs mutate themselves out of existence according to your “scientific” creationist “theory”?
And yes we do see entire herds being wiped out due to a mutation.
Fortunately, the entire species doesn't get wiped out because the gene pool is very large.
Many species have gone extinct over the centuries it is claimed. Can you prove mutation DIDN'T wipe them out?
As far as a species being improved due to mutation, that is an easy one.
E.coli developing the ability to digest citrate.
Bacteria near nylon plants developing the ability to digest nylon from two mutations of a gene for an esterase enzyme on a plasmid.
Lactose persistence mutations in human populations that herd cattle.
The ability of a population to adapt to stress by utilization of mutation is a well studied field. Recently an experiment in evolving heat resistance showed that a bacteria mutated through every possible single nucleotide polymorphism before the one that eventually dominated the entire population was arrived at. The successful genetic variation was a gene that produced a more heat stable protein.
Not offhand. I don't think we've reached that point in general yet, because the earth is not nearly as old as evolutionism requires. In the few thousand years of life history we've not accumulated a large enough genetic load to make the genetic entropy problem critical, though the burden is constantly increasing. From reading between the lines, I think some of the old-earth reviewers of Sanford's work are awakening to the age-of-the-earth implications of genetic entropy. Life clearly cannot be millions of years old with observed mutation rates.
Bacteria have a gene for an “error prone” DNA polymerase that they turn on when the bacteria is undergoing stress. This deliberate increase in their mutation rate is an adaptive mechanism. Now why do you suppose a bacteria would intentionally increase its mutation rate while undergoing stress?
Mutation hotspots are a special case. There are specialized adaptation mechanisms (such as in the immune system) that cause rapid iterative mutations, either constantly or under environmental stress. The mutations occur within a constrained region of the genome so as not to wreak havoc on the genome generally. Within the constrained region the mutations can cause rapid variation in a pseudo-neutral manner, such as in the ongoing competition between disease pathogens and the immune system, or among starving bacteria seeking a new source of nutrients.
This is a bit like discovering a self-replicating combination lock that has a mechanism in it that causes the correct combination to change over time as the lock reproduces. If the mechanism affected the whole lock it would tend to wreck the overall function of the lock in short order, but so long as it only affects the working combination, any set of numbers is as good as another. Overall, though, the lock is more complex than a similar lock lacking such a variation mechanism, and thus the ultimate competence for the creator of the lock is greater, not less.
Whatr about bald eagles? They would be extinct if it weren't for human intervention. A genetic fault made their egg shells weak. There are living examples of endanged animals that have developed a genetic defect, and because of their small gene pool, there is no longer a source of a stronger one. So they are sickly and need to be bred in captivity.
Where are these entire herds being wiped out due to mutation? Provide an example please.
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