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
You're objecting to this phrase. An organism with a mutated gene breeds. What are the odds of this gene being passed to a single offspring?
Granted, if the creature has more than one offspring the the gene's suvival become probable. I see nothing inherently dishonest, however, in G3K's statement. I see nothing wrong with you qualifying it either, which, actually, I just did.
Especially if they have social security, in which case it would be a financial disaster.
Just ask the Japanese, who are too busy groping each other on trains to reproduce, and hence their economy's in the toilet...
I took it to mean per offspring when I first read it, rather than per generation, so I'm unsympathetic to your point.
I missed the earlier argument, however.
Anyway, following this thinking would lead to an argument over semantics rather than a discussion of the liklihood of the mutation causing a new family of creatures.
There is no 50 percent chance of reproduction per generation per gene. I
You are absolutely, positively dishonest. As I mentioned in Post#683 which was posted to you and which you did not even reply to, let alone refute:
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.
Refute the above before calling people names.
IOW, gore is openly, brazenly, after countless corrections, lying to the lurkers. You have the choice of correcting him on thread after thread or just letting him snare who he can.
Then there's the matter that he's never wrong about any anything on which an evo is right. Even if the planets have to be in wildly elliptical orbits and the DNA evidence has to show that hippos are utterly unrelated to whales and 1720 has to mean something other than 1. OK, he confessed on that last one, or hinted in that direction a little bit, after maybe a week.
It has always been a disproof of evolution. It is an evolutionarily impossible chimera - a combination of the features of many very divergent creatures. That is why Darwin did not dare mention it in the Origins or the Descent because no amount of charlatanism could talk it away.
It just came to me. (Snicker!) The earlier argument is here.
No, the astonishing thing is that
And, of course, if you're looking a petri dish, why don't all descendents inherit the mutation?
While evolutionists have great faith that genetic diversity is due to mutations, real scientists do not as the following shows quite well:
"SCIENTISTS AT THE NATIONAL ZOO DISCOVERED IN THE EARLY 80s THAT CHEETAHS WERE UNIQUE AMONGST WILD ANIMALS. THEY HAD THE LOWEST LEVEL OF GENETIC DIVERSITY OF ANY ANIMAL THAT'S BEEN MEASURED. THEY ARE SO SIMILAR THAT, IN FACT, SKIN GRAFTS FROM TWO DIFFERENT CHEETAHS CAN BE INTERCHANGEABLE AND THAT'S THE KIND OF RESPONSE YOU'D EXPECT TO FIND IN IDENTICAL TWINS. THE PROBLEM THAT WE HAVE THEN, WITH CHEETAHS, IS BECAUSE OF THAT LOW DEGREE OF GENETIC DIVERSITY, THEY REALLY HAVE A VULNERABILITY TO DISEASE."
The genetic diversity of all animal populations is of great concern to scientists. As a species' numbers declines, it becomes increasingly important for us to know the genetic makeup of both the wild and zoo populations. With this knowledge, scientists can help prevent inbreeding, increase the population and be sure the animals are healthy. You will see many examples of this concern for genetic diversity here at the National Zoo.
From: National Zoo .
Now the cheetah has been around a long time, probably longer than man, such completely identical genomes are utterly impossible if mutations were occurring and spreading as evolutionists claim.
The above also shows quite well the problems with small population genetics which is the way evolutionists often claim new species are created.
There is no death in your model. 5 generations to go from 999 to 1,000,000 with only the minimum 10 offspring/parent.
That should be one hint. There's an overall death rate, but it's uneven for reasons of geography and simple luck. Even a perfectly neutral mutation has a fifty percent chance of being luckier than average over a given period.
The tiny species is hit with a big flood in generation one. Half are wiped out, the half that was in the bottom of the home valley. Those higher up are left.
Was the "neutral" mutation in the bottom of the valley? If so, it's gone. If not, now in generation two it's five mutants and 495 non-mutants.
What happens if, a generation or two down the road, two mutants mate? All their offspring carry the mutation. Your model doesn't do that. None of the mutants in your model ever mate with mutants even when there are 125 of them and they presumably have no way to avoid each other.
IOW, another naive creationist strawman model designed to fail. More realistic computer models show that neutral mutations do tend to slowly die out over time. But then new ones are always being made, so there's always a swarm of them passing around in the population.
The original mutant, wow! What was his name?
The above is a bunch of gibberish. Yes, genetic traits are traceable. Even mutations are traceable, we can often look at family trees and see that the illness is recurring in the family. However, the causes of mutations are many and the ones that have spread and have been traced have been due to environmental conditions, not naturally occurring ones.
Let's see you back up your statement with real evidence.
No it is not because a new neutral gene has only a 50% chance of survival at each generation. See post#749. It will gradually dissappear from the population. It has little more chance of surviving and taking over a population than having a dozen true coin flips coming up heads.
I'm sure it has been observed but I don't have any examples right at hand now but I think a websearch should turn up some examples.
Asking opponents to do your work for you!
Why not? You have to keep in mind that this is a parallel and not a serial process.
If your above two statements were true, and evolution had indeed proceeded that way, the examples would be readily available to everyone and you should know them. Clearly the examples are non-existent. It is not a serial process however. You cannot 'add' mutations from one gene to another as would be necessary for it to be a serial process. Each mutated gene has to be re-mutated individually till the right 'combination' is found. Of course since most of the 'combinations' in fact the large majority of them are detrimental, it would result in massive deaths in the species (including the deaths of those carrying the gene). Also to add to the problem you need to realize that while a single mutation may kill an individual, a second one together with the first one might be beneficial but you will never get there because the first one killed off everyone possessing the 'first step'.
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