A bone to pick: Missing link is evolutionists' weakest

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

Good News For The Day

‘And who is my neighbor?.’ (Luke 10:29)

Jesus had just finished telling his parable of the good Samaritan. In the story, a desperately wounded man was left by religious leaders to perish. He was saved by someone another man, who happened to be a religious outcast.
The lawyer who asked the question, "Who is my neighbor," understood well why the priest and Levite would not help the wounded man. To do so would have meant defilement for them. It was their religion, that prevented them from being compassionate.

As for the Samaritan, he was one of a breed of people whom Jews in the southern part of the country, counted impure. They were considered unclean, in the same way that the priest and Levite saw the blood stained man as unclean. For the most part, Samaritans were not thought of as neighbors.
It is all too easy for any of us, to make love for a neighbor less arduous, by classifying large tracts of the human race, as non-neighbors. Jesus refused answer the question: "Who is my neighbor?" Instead, showed that it was a wrong question.

The person who asks that question only wants to know what the limits of his duty are? He wants his maximum obligation spelt out so he can leave off being neighborly as soon as possible. Rather than ask, "Who is my neighbor?" Jesus would have us ask, "Am I a genuine neighbor?"
May God help me to be a neighbor.

Breathtaking hypocrisy, yes.

No what we see is blatant dishonesty and blatant shameless lying by yourself and your evo partners. Here's the proof that again that RWN keeps asking the same garbage that has been refuted previously. Enyoy:

To: RightWingNilla

and adaptation for the worse: -me-

The mutants are the only survivors in the lactose environment. Only an complete idiot would call this ?adaptation for the worse?.

Asked and answered more than once already. You seem to have the dishonest habit of repeating the same stuff that has been refuted a few hundred posts before as if it had been completely ignored. Here's the answer which you are not refuting in any way and are completely ignoring:

To: RightWingNilla

The bacteria survived far BETTER in the new environment. How they survive under previous conditions is irrelevant.

Of course it is relevant. You are claiming this is a favorable mutation, so it must be compared to how the bacteria functioned previously.

BTW - this is similar to the case of the nylon bacteria. -me-

Yes this is evolution. The selection of mutations which give rise to novel traits. You must be a closet Darwinist.

No, this is not evolution, this is adaptation - and adaptation for the worse:

I refer you again to the word COULD in the article. Further, the article did not show anywhere that there was any gene duplication. All it showed was that two DNA base pairs were altered. NO NEW INFORMATION WAS ADDED. In addition (and I am sure you forgot about it) one of the summaries you cited (see post#1213) said the following:

The specificities for the biologically selected substrates generally increased by at least an order of magnitude via increased Vmax and decreased Km for the substrate. These changes were very specific for the selected substrate, often being accompanied by decreased specificities for other related substrates. The single, double, or triple substitutions in the enzymes did not detectably alter the thermal stability of ebg enzyme. Post# 1213 .

So what we have here is another example of a mutation which decreased the functioning of the system except in the one specific circumstance, and which did not add any new genetic information to the organism, and does not show, in any way the expression of any new mutated genes.

As it is obvious to anyone, you cannot have evolution without the addition of additional genetic information. A single celled organism has some 600 genes and some one million base pairs of DNA, a human has some 30,000 genes and some 3 billion base pairs of DNA. You cannot get from a bacteria to a man without adding new genetic information and you (and evolutionists) are still unable to show it ever happening. And again I refer everyone to post#1271 where it can be clearly seen why this cannot happen by random means as evolution claims. It would require the co-evolution of an entirely new system to support the expression of the gene as well as an entirely new system of relating the new gene to the rest of the organism, as well as a complete rearrangement and addition to the developmental program of the organism to enable this new gene to work. In other words, utterly impossible.
1301 posted on 7/23/02 9:05 PM Pacific by gore3000

Your example does not show:
1. greater complexity.
2. greater genetic information.
3. the duplication of and expression of a new gene.
4. better functioning under normal conditions.
In short it does not show anything necessary for evolution to be true. What it does show is adaptation to the environment. One last thing, it is even doubtful that this can be called a mutation. The specificity of the change, suggests (but does not prove) that it may have been due to deliberate adaptation by transposons. As I said at the start of this discussion 4 - 2 does not equal 6. You need additional expressed genes for evolution to be true and such has never been shown.

1311 posted on 7/24/02 5:56 AM Pacific by gore3000

932 posted on 8/7/02 6:15 PM Pacific by gore3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 897 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

1094 posted on 8/10/02 10:04 PM Pacific by gore3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1025 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

To: RightWingNilla

The ebgA is a cryptic enzyme. There is nothing here saying the mutants did not survive just as well in the original conditions (It was probably never assayed since it is totally irrelevant to the study). The ebgA mutations were unquestionably favorable in that now they survive in the lactose only growth medium.

It would be nice if you would read the stuff you yourself post (or rather which I posted because you refused to post what was in your links yourself):

These changes were very specific for the selected substrate, often being accompanied by decreased specificities for other related substrates.
PMID: 6793063 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE] - (in full here )

Of course your problem is that this was an experiment and the lactose is not the normal nutrient for these bacteria. So again under normal circumstances the EBG mutation was deleterious to the functioning of the organism in question.

BTW - this is the 3rd thread I refute this very same nonsense on, don't you have any shame?

1100 posted on 8/10/02 10:29 PM Pacific by gore3000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1025 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.