placemarker
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
"Then you might not want to help me," Slim said. "I'm looking for LBB's integrity. It would have been a small thing -- probably not noticable by most people, but someone's who hung around him enough might spot it regularly.
"And besides, there's a C-spot in it for you if you can lead me to it."
The fungus shifted uneasily in its seat.
"Integrity ... " he oozed, "is not something with which my people have much experience. Are you sure LBB ever had any to lose? It could be that LBB is putting in a false claim."
Slim paused to consider what the mushroom had said. "Actually, he didn't hire me himself. It's a group that I represent. They are trying to have a dialogue with LBB, but his lack of integrity keeps getting in the way. So I came here ..." he made a sweeping gesture to take in the whole saloon. "All lost things eventually show up here ..."
"Yes," agreed the fungoid, "if LBB ever had any integrity to lose in the first place."
Join Palaeontology discussion group in the Yahoo groups conversation site. They argue this stuff constantly from both sides. Also they post articles like this one and comment on it.
Essentially to get a new working gene, just one, you need what amounts to a miracle.You need:
1. a mutation which produces a duplicate gene.
2. that the duplicate gene does not hurt a vital part of the genome.
3. that the duplicate gene gets spread through the species at chances of 50% survival at each generation (note no selective advantage since the gene is just a duplicate at this point).
4. that the new gene acquires a mutation and then goes through 3 above to spread itself throughout the species again (again no selective advantage yet).
5. that it hits upon the correct helpful mutation by pure chance while going through 3 above after each try.(Now the above alone should be enough to dissuade a reasonable person, one not blinded by faith in materialistic evolution, to say such a thing is impossible. The above is where we were some 50 years ago when DNA was discovered. Now we know more and the problem is worse.)
6. After all the above though, we still do not have a working gene! Now we need another miracle, we need the gene to:
a) be expressed in the cells where the new function, ability or whatever should go. Since there are some 3 billion cells in the human body finding which ones it should be expressed in is quite a task.
b. be connected to other processes in the organism that will tell it when to do its thing and when to stop doing it.
c. become part of the developmental program of the organism which tells the organism in what sequence each of the cell divisions is to take place. (we start with one cell and the program at each division has to determine what kind of cells to produce until we get a fully formed human being, the program does not stop there though, it continues running and telling the cells what to do until death).
If they had a refutation, you bet the evos would be trying to destroy it. They know the truth of it so they insult and write nonsense so people will not see it or bother with the thread.
Science since 1859 has totally destroyed the 'how' of evolution. All the evolutionists have is a bunch bones which they have carefully manipulated into a seemingly ordered series. What they do not say is how controversial every single one of them is and how subjective all the classifications are. They construct entire species, and genera out of a few teeth or at most a lower jaw. They combine finds from different digs and call them a single species. What they can never do is find the relations between living species where all the information is available and verifiable. If evolution were true such would be possible since there are examples alive of just about every major classification of living things except dinosaurs.
Yup, I know what phenotype means:
Main Entry: phe·no·type
Pronunciation: 'fE-n&-"tIp
Function: noun
Etymology: German Phänotypus, from Greek phainein to show + typos type
Date: circa 1911
: the visible properties of an organism that are produced by the interaction of the genotype and the environment.
It is the moron of evolution which calls himself RWN that does not know what it means. It is never used for what is not visibly reflected in the organism. It is an old word from way before DNA was ever discovered and has nothing to do with the internal processes of the gene. Biologists call those processes by their proper names, they do not loosely misappropriate vague terms to cover up their total misunderstanding of experimental evidence like you do.
Really? I ignored it? Let's see, on post# 1754 of that thread I showed how scientists call the process by which an organism like man develops from one single cell to some 100 trillion cells a program. You went through some 700 posts trying to evade answering how you change a program by random evolutionary means. If you totally demolished my argument as you claim you did I am sure you would be able to cut and paste here your brilliant refutation to the question. You will not because you are lying.
placemarker
There are known instances in which duplications are harmful. Many are neutral and many have been shown positive. Here's one example. Here's another. Gore has been shown all this repeatedly to no effect, so I mostly ignore his repostings.
3. that the duplicate gene gets spread through the species at chances of 50% survival at each generation (note no selective advantage since the gene is just a duplicate at this point).
He is not modeling this correctly, as jennyp once spent several dozen posts trying to hammer home.
1) The duplication may be helpful right off the bat.a) be expressed in the cells where the new function, ability or whatever should go. Since there are some 3 billion cells in the human body finding which ones it should be expressed in is quite a task. . . .(Etc. etc. He goes on like this for a bit.)
2) Parents in sexual species very frequently have more than one child. Mine did. If a lizard has 40 offspring in one litter, maybe 20 of them carry a given parental gene.
3) Now that you have two copies of the gene, one can change. Yes, some mutations, perhaps most, are harmful but that's what natural selection weeds out.
Creationists seem to think it's proof of creation, and a disproof of transitional fossils, etc, that nothing is misshapen, a monster, obviously unfit. Everything seems to be "integrated and fully functional" and that's proof enough that each little species must have been created separately.
Evolution postulates that a population changes over time, but it stays integrated and fully functional even as it drifts or else it will die out. At no particular point does your whole population become unfit. Individuals who gets bad mutations die and don't pass them on. That's how evolution says it works. You also may have noticed RightWingNilla all over gore on this particular set of points and gore grasping at the shrubbery to keep from being dragged to an understanding.
A short while later found Slim racing through hyperspace in his stock YoYoDyne Model TXH-1138 runabout. As a personalizing touch, Slim had added a "Darwin fish" to the aft vertical stabilizer; otherwise the vessel was completely nondescript.
The meeting with the fungoid had paid off. Slim's wallet was a C-spot thinner, but he now had a lead. LBB's integrity was last seen in the company of a known felon -- Morton's Demon. The demon had been cutting a wide swath through the otherwise intelligent population of this spiral arm. His trail should be easy to pick up.
Slim pondered this dilemma for a moment. There might be another way. He perused his star chart for a moment. Yes, there it was -- Vaticanus IV. For centuries its population had been under the sway of the demon. Within the last few years, though, the demon's influence had lessened. There should be any number of people who could help him in his quest. Slim punched in the planet's coordinates and hit the activate button.
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.