And for their next act, the evolutionists will proceed to demonstrate how the cow evolved from the pine tree.
For those of you who'd like to play at home, here's a model of a cow, which when printed, will be made from the byproducts of a tree :)
And for their next act, the evolutionists will proceed to demonstrate how the cow evolved from the pine tree.
For those of you who'd like to play at home, here's a model of a cow, which when printed, will be made from the byproducts of a tree :)
BAAAA-HA-HA-HA-hA...
You can easily see the similarities in the earlier "proto" form. While scientists are still looking for the actual mechanism that caused the mutation to occur, Stephen Jay Gould conjectured that it is probably one of these three...
The mutation to remove many of the legs is a simple and common mutation. The first time it happened, it resulted in a lame shrimp, which died off. But it happened quite often, and eventually, it happened to a shrimsect (shrimp in the process of evolving into an insect, that's NOT a scientific term!).
At some point along the shrimsect's evolutionary path, having only six legs--having this common mutation--was more beneficial than having a lot of legs, so the shrimsects with the mutation survived more than those without the mutation. In other words, not every mutation to occur along the path from shrimp to insect was a highly improbable one (although many must have been), some were more common, which makes evolution that much less statistically improbable.
In a Discovery Institute press release dated Feb. 6, Jonathan Wells accuses three developmental biologists of making "exaggerated claims" in a recent paper in Nature (advance online publication, Feb. 6, 2002). But it is Wells, in his zeal to criticize any research supporting evolution, whose claims are "exaggerated."
One wonders whether he actually read the paper. For example, the press release states: "William McGinnis at the University of California at San Diego just reported discovering a DNA mutation that produces shrimp without hind legs." He did? If Wells has indeed read the paper, currently published at this site, then he should know that no shrimp were mutated in the production of the research. Further, no mutant shrimp were mentioned in a UCSD press release announcing the Nature paper, which is what Wells apparently relied upon for his critique. Wells appears obsessed by illusory shrimp when he asserts: "The mutation does not transform the embryo into anything like an insect, but only into a disabled shrimp."
As plainly explained in the Nature paper, the research involved inserting the crustacean Ubx gene into a fruit fly, and observing that it did not function as a limb inhibitor (as the fruit fly Ubx gene does). Further, the researchers experimented on the crustacean Ubx gene and specifically isolated the mutations that cause the Ubx gene to become a limb inhibitor. This is exciting research because crustaceans have many pairs of limbs, while insects have just three pairs, and it is the Ubx gene that controls limb development in both. The authors conclude that this shows that specific micromutations can cause large-scale phenotypic effects, thus helping us better to understand the processes that may have been involved in the evolution of the insect body plan and by extension those of other animals as well. Wells's hostility toward the biological fact that genes govern the evolution of new body plans seems to have blinded him to the obvious: There were no mutant shrimp.
Wells wastes a press release on thinly disguised creationist pontifications about research that he apparently could not be bothered to read. Intelligent Design proponents in general have been repeatedly told that if they want to be taken seriously, they must produce scientific research of their own rather than uninformed and irresponsible criticism of the work of real scientists. They claim that Intelligent Design is not just antievolutionism, but Wells's press release is no more than that. We keep waiting for real scientific research to emanate from proponents of Intelligent Design but if Wells's latest effort is any indication, then -- to paraphrase a Russian proverb -- we may be waiting until shrimp begin to whistle.
Contact: Alan D. Gishlick, Post-Doctoral Scholar
February 7, 2002
Wells points out, however, that the mutation ... occurs midway through development, after the embryo is already a shrimp. "The mutation does not transform the embryo into anything like an insect, but only into a disabled shrimp. Whatever produced the first insect would have had to transform the embryo from the very beginning."
Huuuhhh??? Lots of traits that are genetically programmed only show up in later development of the organism - like a brain for instance.
Wells adds that critics of Darwinism have never claimed that major mutations result in dead animals, but only in animals that are less fit, and thus likely to be eliminated by natural selection. According to Wells, "this report does nothing to refute that criticism."
The creationists constantly shift the grounds of debate and what is to be demonstrated - and always away from the point that has just been demonstrated to some other point that was not, in the paper at hand an issue. Furthermore this is question begging of the worst kind - the assumption that mutations can only result in animals being less fit - not more fit. But this is patent nonsense. Mutations can produce say, an animal that is more hairy from one that is less hairy as well as as well one that is less hairy rather than more hairy. There is no standard as to whether the animal is less fit, or more fit except to the extent that it must survive in a climate that is warmer or colder than that preferred by its progenitor. The animal that has to survive the artic with the thicker coat will be the happier for it despite the taunts and jeers of the creationists about his unfit deviancy from his god-ordained perfectionist state.
I did not evolve I was created by God. I have all the evidence I need.