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

Many are neutral and many have been shown positive. Here's one example. Here's another.

There are many examples of supposedly duplicate genes. However, none have been experimentally shown to add anything to the species. Specifically a new gene needs to be expressed, controlled and called on to act by the rest of the organism, it needs to be expressed. That there are so many apparent duplicates and yet no one seems to be able to experimentally get a new duplicate to work is clear proof against evolution. In fact, real scientists are loath to say that a duplicate does indeed work. The two citations, one from your buddy Lindsay who is an absolute joke and says anything is a fact without substantiation and the other from a magazine do not contradict my statements.

1) The duplication may be helpful right off the bat.
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.

1. extremely doubtful due to what I said above. In addition, even if it gave a somewhat better survival ability it would have to more than double it to get above the 100% chance of replication needed for it to in any way become fixed in a species. (see below).
2. Number of children does not matter because it is a question of population genetics. You know quite well that I have totally demolished that argument since I have posted it more than once. Here it is again:

As I have been pointing out, family size does not matter so long as it is the same as the average family size of the species. You can use any number you like and you will see that the new trait will dissappear. Since you like big numbers we shall use ten children each generation in a rather small species of only 1000 individuals:

Generation 1: 1 mutant and 999 non-mutants
Generation 2: 5 mutants and 9995 non-mutants
Generation 3: 25 mutants and 99975 non-mutants
Generation 4: 125 mutants and 999875 non-mutants
Generation 5: 625 mutants and 9999375 non-mutants

We started with mutants as .1% of the population, we ended with mutants as .0625% of the population. So obviously the mutation is losing ground, not gaining it as evolution would require.

And in addition to the above you can look at Andrew's Post#1641 Where using the craddle of evolutionism, the most biased site on the internet for evolution, TalkOrigins, he shows that even those folk refute your statement.

3. See my paragraph above.

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.

What evolutionary theory postulates is proof of nothing. It is the truth of those postulates which is what these threads are about, so your statement above is meaningless. Science and logic argue against that postulate. That a whole species would coevolve gradually through a bunch of mutations without becoming separate is itself a logical argument against evolution. The scientific arguments against it are presented in my post #347 and still stand unrefuted.

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