Klaus Honal/Naturfoto Honal/CORBIS
The evolution of Archaeopteryx will be excluded from some South Korean high-school textbooks after a creationist campaign.
Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states1. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science.
A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx. The move has alarmed biologists, who say that they were not consulted. “The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.
The campaign was led by the Society for Textbook Revise (STR), which aims to delete the “error” of evolution from textbooks to “correct” students’ views of the world, according to the society’s website. The society says that its members include professors of biology and high-school science teachers.
The STR is also campaigning to remove content about “the evolution of humans” and “the adaptation of finch beaks based on habitat and mode of sustenance”, a reference to one of the most famous observations in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. To back its campaign, the group highlights recent discoveries that Archaeopteryx is one of many feathered dinosaurs, and not necessarily an ancestor of all birds2. Exploiting such debates over the lineage of species “is a typical strategy of creation scientists to attack the teaching of evolution itself”, says Joonghwan Jeon, an evolutionary psychologist at Kyung Hee University in Yongin.
The STR is an independent offshoot of the Korea Association for Creation Research (KACR), according to KACR spokesman Jungyeol Han. Thanks in part to the KACR’s efforts, creation science — which seeks to provide evidence in support of the creation myth described in the Book of Genesis — has had a growing influence in South Korea, although the STR itself has distanced itself from such doctrines. In early 2008, the KACR scored a hit with a successful exhibition at Seoul Land, one of the country’s leading amusement parks. According to the group, the exhibition attracted more than 116,000 visitors in three months, and the park is now in talks to create a year-long exhibition.
Even the nation’s leading science institute — the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology — has a creation science display on campus. “The exhibition was set up by scientists who believed in creation science back in 1993,” says Gab-duk Jang, a pastor of the campus church. The institute also has a thriving Research Association for Creation Science, run by professors and students, he adds.
Antipathy to evolution
In a 2009 survey conducted for the South Korean documentary The Era of God and Darwin, almost one-third of the respondents didn’t believe in evolution. Of those, 41% said that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support it; 39% said that it contradicted their religious beliefs; and 17% did not understand the theory. The numbers approach those in the United States, where a survey by the research firm Gallup has shown that around 40% of Americans do not believe that humans evolved from less advanced forms of life.
“The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge.”
The roots of the South Korean antipathy to evolution are unclear, although Jeon suggests that they are partly “due to strong Christianity in the country”. About half of South Korea’s citizens practice a religion, mostly split between Christianity and Buddhism.
However, a survey of trainee teachers in the country concluded that religious belief was not a strong determinant of their acceptance of evolution3. It also found that 40% of biology teachers agreed with the statement that “much of the scientific community doubts if evolution occurs”; and half disagreed that “modern humans are the product of evolutionary processes”.
Until now, says Dayk Jang, the scientific community has done little to combat the anti-evolution sentiment. “The biggest problem is that there are only 5–10 evolutionary scientists in the country who teach the theory of evolution in undergraduate and graduate schools,” he says. Having seen the fierce debates over evolution in the United States, he adds, some scientists also worry that engaging with creationists might give creationist views more credibility among the public.
Silence is not the answer, says Dayk Jang. He is now organizing a group of experts, including evolutionary scientists and theologians who believe in evolution, to counter the STR’s campaign by working to improve the teaching of evolution in the classroom, and in broader public life.
- Journal name:
- Nature
- Volume:
- 486,
- Pages:
- 14
- Date published:
- ()
- DOI:
- doi:10.1038/486014a
What it doesn't mention are cases where Evolutionists have called organs vestigial and been proved wrong. They used to claim the Appendix was a useless organ, and thus vestigial, but we then found it had a role in the immune system preventing disease. They have also claimed the tailbone is vestigial, except that it plays a role in human's ability to sit down, and causes issues when removed or damaged, and thus has a purpose. directory listings
Because bullying is only part of the problem when it comes to Korean youth. I taught in Korea for two years and it was heartbreaking. The amount of stress placed on Korean children by their sunrise till long after sunset school routine puts enormous stress on them while simultaneously denying them the chance to grow socially through non school activities. During national holidays, you'd ask the children what they did and the most common answer was I sleep teacher. I sleep. It was very good. The amount of pressure put on Korean children both fosters pressure outlets such as bullying, while eroding the self confidence and social support networks necessary to deal with its effects. Bullying in America is a problem too, but in different ways and for different reasons.
There has to be a balance evolution and religious beliefs. I think one cannot live without the other. Just living on evolution can lead to a life unfulfilled without purpose. Is there a creation from Big Bang theory or a creator called God or is it that we are following God's principles that are said to be scientific fact rather than God's world with Godly principles such as Newton's 3 laws of motion.
I truly believe schools should keep teaching evolution and creation. We need some purpose and direction in life and we don't have deep belief's as humans then we walking dead people.
Also, I believe scientists shouldn't criticize religious beliefs and vice-verse, people centered in the Lord shouldn't criticize scientists. I belief we should live a world of interdependence where we give value to the world and share our beliefs with each other to form a great community
References:
1. What is Science video
2. Who is God video
Thank you,
Mark
* Cure Arthritis In Dogs
I do think that conventional theory does not explain how so much fossilization could have occurred given slow depositional rates, just like it does not explain fossilized footprints and raindrop imprints in some of them.
Jarline,
chat room
Thomasdefler, if a theory is sound and believed as a fact shouldn't it have a cohesive concept and not a "one of many possible" explanations? Science is after all a factual discipline. Can't the theory of evolution be proven as fact? How did life begin and become the multitude we observe in this beautiful world we enjoy today is the answer we all probe.
From Ecuador Chile
I don't understand why we have to push everything from "I believe the Bible at 100%" to "I don't believe the Bible". We can all take resposabilities and think hard... think and fell deep inside us what to believe or not.
JCB from Hotel Corse
You know, I guess the thing is, I am a Creationist because I believe what the Bible says, not because I'm associated with the Creationist movement. I've never really followed too closely what Creationists said, which is why all of my points are so unique. where to sell a website
dualshine Most of STR’s arguments about the evolution chapters of high school textbooks are ridiculous. But they succeeded to spot some materials that were scientifically problematic. Even if those who point out what is wrong with the textbooks are creationists and the aim of those creationists is to destroy evolutionism, you must fix them if they are really wrong. And this is not a victory of creationism or a defeat of evolutionism. There are so many examples of evolution that were well studied. So you can write a good textbook without Archaeopteryx or horse.
dualshine Most of STR’s arguments about the evolution chapters of high school textbooks are ridiculous. But they succeeded to spot some materials that were scientifically problematic. Even if those who point out what is wrong with the textbooks are creationists and the aim of those creationists is to destroy evolutionism, you must fix them if they are really wrong. And this is not a victory of creationism or a defeat of evolutionism. There are so many examples of evolution that were well studied. So you can write a good textbook without Archaeopteryx or horse.
You know the farther you go back, the more apparent it becomes that many ancient species were similar to those we see today, often just larger versions. Again, this supports Microevolution, but not Macroevolution. Is Wholesale software provider a scam?
This is what should happen if Evolutionary theory is correct that life on earth is millions and billions of years old. And it would provide a convenient escape route for evolutionists in explaining why we can't see evidence of major macroevolution, a taxonomic family or genera becoming something entirely different. Breast forum
I didn't reply because Nature banned me for one of these comments, apparently.
South Korea didn’t surrender to creationist demands
The real problem is the poor quality of the evolution chapters of high school textbooks
In 「South Korea surrenders to creationist demands」 Soo Bin Park wrote:
“Mention creationism, and many scientists think of the United States, where efforts to limit the teaching of evolution have made headway in a couple of states. But the successes are modest compared with those in South Korea, where the anti-evolution sentiment seems to be winning its battle with mainstream science.
A petition to remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx.”^1^
This is a gross misrepresentation of what happened in South Korea.
The Society for Textbook Revise (STR) argued that there were many problems in high school textbooks regarding evolution.<sup>2</sup> Then some textbook publishers admitted that there were problems on the materials on <em>Archaeopteryx</em> and the evolution of the horse and promised to fix them by deleting, revising, or replacing with other example. STR’s agenda is clearly anti-evolutionist. The president of STR said in its webpage: “The ultimate goal of our activity is the removal of evolution from textbooks.”^3^ For a casual observer this may seem to be a victory of creationism and a defeat of evolutionism.
But if you look more closely, a very different picture emerges. I examined 19 authorized high school textbooks which dealt with evolution and found numerous passages and pictures which were downright wrong or dubious. I will list here only 10 instances:
1. “_Archaeopteryx_ that appeared in the middle period of the Mesozoic era is thought to be an organism of intermediate phase between birds and reptiles.”^4^ So students may think that Archaeopteryx was the direct ancestor of modern birds. But this is controversial.
2. In <Picture 55 Vicissitudes of horse fossils> the pictures of Eohippus, Mesohippus, Merychippus, Pliohippus, and Equus are connected by one arrow.<sup>5</sup> So the students will think that this picture is about straight-line evolution, that is, Pliohippus is the direct ancestor of Equus and Merychippus is the direct ancestor of Pliohippus, and so on. But it seems that the phylogeny of horse is more complicated.
3. â€鲺sed on that, Kimura published the neutral theory of evolution in 1968. He argued that â€঎volution occurs not by natural selection but by the accumulation of neutral mutations.’”^6^ But Kimura didn’t deny the importance of natural selection.
4. â€ৌhimpanzees maintained the forms of common ancestors intact and humans evolved repeatedly to be the forms of present.”^7^ But the chimpanzee lineage not only evolved but also speciated into two species.
5. â€৊nimals of primate order except human are called monkeys. Chimpanzees and orangutans are monkeys.”^8^ But Chimpanzees and orangutans are not monkeys. They are apes.
6. �use the evolution of life proceeds slowly across a long span of time, we cannot directly observe the process of evolution.”^9^ But we can directly observe the evolution of fruit fly whose life cycles are sufficiently short.
7. According to <Picture 3-34 Evolutionary process of human> the orangutan-chimpanzee-gorilla lineage split from the human lineage, then the orangutan lineage split from the chimpanzee-gorilla lineage, and then the chimpanzee lineage split from the gorilla lineage.<sup>10</sup> In that picture chimpanzee’s closest relative is not human but gorilla. But it was demonstrated by DNA analysis that chimpanzee’s closest relative is not gorilla but human.
8. “In Australia there are marsupials such as Kangaroos and Koalas that have not fully evolved placenta. They are lower mammals.”^11^ Is a Kangaroo a lower animal than a mouse? They are just differently evolved animals.
9. “When early humans appeared 15 million years ago, the climate of Africa became colder and drier. So, major parts of it transformed from forests to Savanna plains.”^12^ But nobody calls our ancestors who lived 15 million years ago â€鳪rly humans”.
10. “Galápagos Islands of Sound America are islands that never have been connected to the continent and were formed by volcano eruption 300~500 years ago.”^13^ But Galápagos Islands are not so young.
Most of STR’s arguments about the evolution chapters of high school textbooks are ridiculous. But they succeeded to spot some materials that were scientifically problematic. Even if those who point out what is wrong with the textbooks are creationists and the aim of those creationists is to destroy evolutionism, you must fix them if they are really wrong. And this is not a victory of creationism or a defeat of evolutionism. There are so many examples of evolution that were well studied. So you can write a good textbook without <em>Archaeopteryx</em> or horse.
As I showed above there are so many problems in high school textbooks regarding evolution. And it is a shame that until STR pointed out, no one in South Korea had bothered to deal with those problems. Unfortunately many people who love evolutionism in South Korea mainly focus on the deletions of <em>Archaeopteryx</em> and horse. In my opinion they should focus instead on the other passages which await scientifically correct revisions.
---------------------------------------------------------------
References
1. Park, S., South Korea surrenders to creationist demands: Publishers set to remove examples of evolution from high-school textbooks. <em>Nature</em> 486, p. 14
2. STR webpage, http://www.str.or.kr/bbs/zboard.php?id=lecture
3. STR webpage, http://www.str.or.kr/bow.htm
4. Jo, H. et al., <em>High School Science</em>, 2^nd^ ed., 2012, Chunjae education, Seoul, p. 150
5. Joen, D. et al., <em>High School Science</em>, 1^st^ ed., 2^nd^ printing, 2012, Mirae-N, Seoul, p. 166
6. Gwak, Y. et al., <em>High School Science</em>, 1^st^ ed., 2^nd^ printing, 2012, The Text, Seoul, p. 221
7. Jo, H. et al., p. 145
8. Sim, G. et al., <em>High School Life Science II</em>, 1^st^ ed., 2012, Visang education, Seoul, p. 235
9. Gwon, H. et al., <em>High School Life Science II</em>, 1^st^ ed., 2^nd^ printing, Kyohaksa, Seoul, p. 224
10. Yi, G. et al., <em>High School Biology II</em>, 5^th^ ed., 3^rd^ printing, 2012, Daihaks publishing company, Seoul, p. 184
11. Jo, H. et al., <em>High School Biology II</em>, 1^st^ ed., 10^th^ printing, 2012, Mirae-N, Seoul, p. 180
12. Jeong, W. et al., <em>High School Biology II</em>, 3^rd^ ed., 4^th^ printing, 2012, Kyohaksa, Seoul, p. 174
13. Ha, Y. et al., <em>High School Biology II</em>, 7^th^ ed., 2^nd^ printing, 2012, Hyungseul, Seoul, p. 145
The <em>Juramaia sinensis</em> case is very interesting in large part because comparative 'molecular clock' statistics pegged mammals as having an earlier divergence than the oldest candidate fossils we had. This isn't even the "cousins" case that can confuse origins by having a derived cousin, by virtue of being oldest and closest, pegged as ancestral just because there are very few candidate fossils.
It's also been the case with almost every "push back" on dates that I've seen that the older fossils actually do fill in gaps where researchers have wondered about how the divergence took place between the younger populations; it's not one species just stretching further back.
As soon as other fossils of the same genre were found, Archaeopteryx was bound to be, pardon the expression, knocked off its perch. High odds of finding cousins instead of ancestors when fossils are discovered combined with a low discovery rate made it ripe for correction. Doesn't look like <em>Protoavis</em> will really turn out to be one of those corrections – from a scrambled deposit like that, it's more likely Chatterjee's ego at work than anything :)
Just to discuss the Devonian, Cambrian, etc. in a creationist context, to have the creation order correspond to any layers means that these layers would be <em>exempted</em> from a Noachian flood, would they not? I've seen a handful of "flood plus" ideas come from creationist camps, like the idea that the Noachic flood produced Precambrian deposits and further layers are from other newer events, but nothing that can be followed through on.
The quote on the canyon looks incredibly flippant in its take on the geology – on further inspection, it looks like it's from Mehiert, not Woodmorappe, and his big schtick elsewhere seems to be that we don't find evidence of old valleys... except that we do (Great Lakes, Long Island, Platteville Limestone, etc. etc.) Also: no erosion? Those bottom rocks (Vishnu Basement) have eroded strata covered by the Tapeats Sandstone at a bare minimum.
The reference to Lystrosaurus on AiG is particularly worthy of bonking them on the head. <em>L. murrayi</em> was known in <em>1859</em> and is a <em>Permian-only specimen</em>; for them to pretend that it's used solely as a Triassic index fossil and then get "up in arms" about the new Permian specimens is... disingenuous.
There are certainly past submarine volcano events – they form pillow lava formations as can be seen on Nishiizu-cho (http://izugeopark.org/en/theme/subtheme2/), and submarine volcanic ash often ends up forming part of volcanic islands. There are fossils there as well, but the geology is distinct (volcanic clays) and they line up with the era in which the eruption happened. I don't think that can save hydrologic sorting, which has other issues... conglomerates between fine layers being just one that comes to mind. Develop the idea further and see where we get, though :)
Sorry for the days of delay – little one number three is more than 50% more work! Cheers, Joshua :)
Hi, Joshua :)
Some traits do float around – sizes and relative sizes included – though there are some characteristics that are diagnostic in distinguishing modern animals that are reflected in the fossil record – like the auxiliary incisors in lagomorphs or the articular/malleus difference in comparing mammals to other tetrapods.
Creatures look more similar on the inside than the outside even today (look up photos of mounted chinchilla and rabbit skeletons side by side, for example), so the details used to tell apart ancestors or cousins are going to be subtle in any common ancestry hypothesis. One of the problems is also going to be that for any creatures closely related by anatomy and genes in the modern day, characters by which we distinguish their skeletons today could have come to be at any point from antiquity to modern day – and there's absolutely nothing for it but to find more fossils*.
(*There are some recent techniques that can distinguish relative ages of gene divergence, but we're not at the stage yet where we can trace what the effects would have been without some expensive genetic engineering or if the gene's modern effect is well known)
(Also, apologies for the typo, it's Sinomylus with an 'n' as in the prefix for China, where all the fossils are coming from. It's still not all that well-indexed – it pops up in books and papers mostly – but it should be easier to find that way)
No, not referring to the "rat-squirrel", though that's an interesting case, just like <em>Latimera</em>. In part, it's interesting just because it shows that there are still <em>existing</em> species we have not studied, if indeed found in the first place. It's also interesting in that we don't have a fossil trail for it, though there is a "yet" possible in that last part.
Part of the issue is that we have hardly scratched the surface in terms of fossil excavation. To this day, finds can come from astute palaeontology or even geology students happening across a fortuitous roadcut. There are creatures that lived and died in ancient Liaoning Province that we would not have discovered elsewhere in the world (witness the proliferation to Chinese genus and species names of late). Given the limited ranges of creatures and plants even today – never mind how to get buried in the first place; where haven't we looked? (Cynically: because there are no resources to drill or mine for, or even more cynically, because they don't want palaeontologists screwing up their blasting operations)
There's nothing preventing something ancient from having an undiscovered lineage existing to the modern day; the only thing preventing that is statistical. That's what gives the cryptozoologists hope – they really could manage to be extremely lucky.
Some of the 2nd Korean Responses / ;texts are in Korean;
* http://joongang.joinsmsn.com/article/809/8501809.html
* ;http://blog.naver.com/metapsy/40161593639;
Continued:
Well, the Devonian, Silurian/Ordovician, and Cambrian periods all appear to comprise plants and marine life. So they'd correspond to those 3rd and 5th days of creation when plants and marine life/flying creatures were created. Flowers weren't mentioned at all in Genesis 1, just seed-bearing plants and fruit trees with seed in the fruit, so flowers wouldn't be that great a test.
However, I will propose one. Biblically, fowl and marine life were supposed to be created at the same time. So if birds and insects, flying creatures, start being found in the Devonian, that would be a strong evidence for Creationism. Birds especially I'm sure would be very difficult to explain. Protoavis if it stands would push back the origins of birds 80 million years for evolutionary thoeries, but even it does not stretch to the Devonian. Confuciusornis is not nearly that old either.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/birdfr.html
Xioatingia zhengi recently threw a wrench into conventional evolutionary theory regarding birds and Archaeopteryx.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110727/full/news.2011.443.html
http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jan-feb/30
We did however find winged flight existed into the Devonian via insects, if not birds, older than previously believed under conventional theory, per Rhyniognatha hirsti. Still, more ancient bird life would be a particularly strong evidence for Creationism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3478915.stm
http://www.livescience.com/2947-oldest-insect-fossil-impression.html
As far as Creationist approaches to fossil layering, I tried looking into Woodmorappe's approach. These articles were interesting for the following quotes:
"I made a close inspection of the Canyon in 1983, and after examining the strata layout and consulting the detailed maps and charts at the information center, I found no difficulty in coming to the conclusion that here indeed is a classic example of Flood geology. The only erosion is that which occurred after the obviously rapid deposition of several thousand feet of sediments. If the column seen so clearly in the Canyon took several hundreds of millions of years to be laid down, then why is not erosion visible in those in-between strata? The whole area looked to me as if it had split open like a rotten watermelon, followed by a large-scale scouring out by a body of water far larger than the present Colorado, and this rapid erosion of still-soft sediments cut right through to even the "ancient" bottom rocks. The park ranger/geologist admitted privately to me that there was no known orthodox explanation for this, nor for the missing Silurian and Ordovician deposits."
http://www.creationmoments.com/content/difficulties-geologic-column
"Whenever a fossil is listed as having a long stratigraphic range (say, Cambrian to Devonian), this range may conceal a contradictory stratigraphic occurrence of the fossil from one part of the world to another. Thus, the fossil in question may occur in only Cambrian rock on one continent, only in Ordovician rock on another continent, only in Silurian on another, and only in Devonian on still another continent."
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v14/n1/fossil#fnMark_1_11_1
Just thinking logically about it, I think some of the points made on occasion in both articles are logical. The 2nd point if shown accurate would be especially powerful since a fossil occurring in entirely different geologic periods by continent would very much suggest instantaneous deposition by a flood and deposition in different areas for some reason, rather than gradual occurrence over millions and billions of years.
But here is what I think. I think volcanic activity was probably involved underwater as well. You would see aquatic life fossilized lower. And on land, heavier creatures would sink to the bottom. It could be something as simple as weight determining what sediment layer/geologic period a fossil ended up in. Ultimately, the stasis and unusual early complexity, as well as its abrupt appearance in the fossil record, is just not explained by conventional theory.
Ritchie Annand, likewise, it's always a pleasure to talk with someone genuinely interested in learning about interesting topics like this. I encounter quite a few evolutionists myself who just have a set of talking points and nothing else.
I notice Gomphos might support rabbits being related to rodents, per this article. Apparently, the ancient rabbit had "surprisingly modern" rabbit-like feet, but because it had a longer tail and different jaw/molars, they apparently decided it's a mix between rodents and rabbits. To me though, this seems somewhat interpretive. I say that because those differences don't really exist, especially the longer tail, in the modern Viscacha. In fact, the confusion in determining how to classify species within the scientific community is evident in the Viscacha's taxonomical designation as a rodent, even though in many ways it appears more similar to a rabbit. So if it exists today, how can something like the Gomphos virtually identical to it be said to be transitional?
http://www.amnh.org/science/papers/rabbit.php
I couldn't find anything on Simomylus zhaii. Concerning Eurymylids, isn't it true that "The evolutionary origin of rodents is obscured by the group's sudden and highly transformed first appearance in the fossil record in the latest Paleocene"?
http://www.gerbils.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/gerbils/origin.htm
As for Eurymylids, you are not referring to the infamous "Rat-Squirrel" are you? Because that turned out to not be extinct at all, but the Laotian Rock Rat. I read about it in 2006 on LiveScience. LiveScience took down many of their articles on it when it was found to still be alive and reclassified from being a missing link. I always thought the Laotian Rock Rat a pretty good example of bias in naming, because when they thought it extinct 11 million years and a transitional form they called it the "rat squirrel" but when found alive it becomes the "Laotian Rock Rat" and is reclassified.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2006-03-09-rat-squirrel-survivor_x.htm
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-205_162-1388896.html
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2105239_2105240_2105237,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13328579/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/living-fossil-rat-caught-tape/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187357,00.html
If referring to Juramaia sinensis, the rodent was complex and early enough that it it required tacking on another 35 million years to conventional evolutionary theory regarding mammals. I've observed a growing pattern where tens of millions of years are just tacked on in this fashion when early complexity is discovered, e.g. octopi (tens of millions), bilaterians (40 million), and dinosaurs (10 million). It starts to look kind of arbitrary when they can just revise their theories by tacking on another 10-40 million years whenever they feel like.
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/juramaia_sinensis_160millionyearold_fossil_pushes_back_mammal_evolution-81971
http://www.livescience.com/3408-rare-fossil-octopuses.html
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/10/first-complex-animals/
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124361785
Lots of heat, and less light, indicative of presuppositional clashes.
Can someone please help guide me as to why myoglobin and alpha haemoglobin chains have almost identical similar tertiary structures when their primary a a sequence is almost completely different?
What about problems with beneficial mutations – how many significantly advantageous ones have been documented (apart from Lenski's rather dubious citrate example)? How likely is incorporation in a whole population's genes, even when it does occurs? What about rates of genetic decay? Seems to me, there are serious problems with evolution as an even barely adequate explanation of the bewildering diversity and complexity, quite apart from the problem of the need to posit an 'illusion' of the aesthetic.
This disgrace is the ultimate insult against Korea and Korean values about education:
http://seoulvillage.blogspot.com/2012/06/state-condoned-creationism-in-korea.html
Thanks, Joshua. I appreciate your forthrightness as well; I encounter the 'talking point set' far too often :)
I always take the "surprisingly similar to modern X" with a grain of salt. There's a lot of focus on the Paelocene and Eocene when it comes to the origin of lagomorphs. Gomphos clears up an area where there are cousin fossils like Simomylus zhaii and the Eurymylids, so many out of China in just the past 12 years.
Those Precambrian fossils are pretty interesting. There has been a fight as to what they are - "just bacteria" or something else. The fact that they imaged nuclei is the most interesting – that counts out bacteria from the get-go – but not much in the way of differentiation, so just a cousin to the metazoans at best. That said, now that they've seen what scanning can do, they can be on the lookout for other interesting specimens.
If 'rabbits in the Precambrian' is too far-fetched due to the lack of big metazoans, then 'rabbits in the Devonian' ought to work, as would 'flowers in the Devonian'.
There are only a few creationist approaches I've seen to fossil layering. One is to come up with any number of sorting schemes: hydrologic, by speed, by intelligence... there's Woodmorappe's "tectonically-associated biological provinces where, from the looks of it, all these layers were forms by down-warping in sequence (!) - imaginative, but might as well be hydrologic to come up with the order it does. Then there's the "created in place" (by God or the devil). The only other approach I've seen is Agassiz, which is essentially continuous creation.
Do any of these approaches satisfy you?
Give BLAST searches a shot, though maybe give me some of your preliminary thoughts on what you might find. Have you seen any signs that creationists might think the data is faked or fudged and if so, how they might try to do their own sequencing to verify or vilify?
Carbon-14 is probably the most variable case in radiometric dating there is – the radioactivity is produced in the atmosphere by radiation and the incorporation is based on biological processes and carbon reservoirs. Other techniques are more "physical", e.g. K-Ar establishes a minimum age based on a phase change of the decay product.
I would note in this case that since it was an annual change and not a trend that it likely doesn't affect anything outside of that year.
Fair enough admission on starlight, though the Genesis model seems rather mythical; I don't see anything to recommend it over other stories like the creation of the world by Ahura Mazda or the Earth-diver myths. Humphreys' paper on the earth starting as a sphere of water was beyond bizarre. They just don't seem to presage very much of what we know now that we did not know then (claims of presaging are particularly common if you ever discuss Mohammed's credentials in Islam)
I wouldn't expect to see 'macroevolution' give way to interbreeding between far-apart species, given that the production of multiple species in the first place comes from partial-to-full intersterility. A 'tigonkey' would set the scientific world completely on its ear. What I don't quite understand is why a deity wouldn't show off once or twice – make a clear cross-Suborder chimera or make a bird out of beetle genes or what have you.
Thanks – she came out wonderfully but won't let us sleep, just like her brothers – and thanks for the discussion! (I may come across gruff, but I'm enjoying it, and I hope you are, too :) )
In this respect, changing the definition of life. Life – an active model of the observed situation in the structuring lipid membrane of cell, equipped with a polypeptide-nucleic technology. (By the way, so called my report, which did at a conference of creationists in Kiev, and so called Article, which is due out in the proceedings of the conference). Interestingly, Nature has a similar article in a publication?
Yes, it's very clever, to declare that the idea of evolution – the only possible scientific alternative to religion and to implement this stuff in science and education! Science can provide another alternative.
Here's an example. First abiogenically on natural bilipid-membrane originated and developed a natural intelligence, which later created a highly efficient polypeptide-nucleicoacid technology and have equipped it! In this case, the presence in biological super-advanced nano-molecular polypeptide-nucleic technology seems more logical. Interestingly, this alternative does not conflict with religion – they have no real points of intersection!
In other words, at first appears a computer mouse, then this thinking develops into a computer, then from the computer somehow appears the user, who would later become the developer of the computer.
***
MM, yes. Still, coelacanth, ihtiostega and the stegocephalus – this stage of ontogeny of one species or a different species? But then the larva of the frog, the frog boy with the front paws and fins, and then adult frog – is also a different species! Interestingly, evolutionists-paleontologists have lied to us that the small species of stegocephalus were larvae of stegocephalus large species. But then the mouse – is the larva of elephant!
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection – this is not evolution. Evolution, according to the logic of current evolutionists – is origin of primitive primary replicator, the development of a sophisticated and highly efficient molecular technology, and then the emergence of this technology, intelligence, and improving it to the level of the mind.
Ritchie Annand, continuation of an earlier post:
5. I suppose it might well be sensationalized. I've been paying special attention to microevolutionary rates that are faster than believed under conventional theory though, so I would not be surprised if this discovery holds up, and bacterial evolution continues to show more rapidity than expected. Such continual discoveries the rates are so rapid to my mind shows that inferences based on radiometric dating have been wrong, and that Gradualism is too simplistic in assuming outside factors did not affect the processes involved.
6. Still, would it need to generate a new order? If microevolution occurs but not macro, then you'd have created kinds designed without evolving between the higher taxonomic ranks (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, and Order). As shown here, Bears, Cats, Dogs, and Wolves are all classified as follows: Kingdom – Animalia, Phylum – Chordata, Class – Mammalia, Order – Carnivora.
http://biology.about.com/od/evolution/a/aa092304a.htm
Not until the family level do you start seeing the concept of Created Kinds shown in Genesis 1 and Leviticus 16. Basically you'd have core kinds created at roughly the Family level which then microevolved into the Genus and Species varieties we see today. But such rapid microevolution rates should not be creating new species at the Order rank at all if Creationism is correct.
7. Yeah – I really need to acquaint myself with these BLAST searches. I don't like not having explored such major evidence.
8. I suppose. Still, these discoveries result in a bunch of untied-up loose ends that are materializing within just the past decade. And it raises the question of how all these side branches managed to die off mysteriously and vanish out of the fossil record, one after the other. Why is Homo sapiens the only one left standing? There's a good chart showing how messy things are getting at the American Museum of Natural History:
http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/hhoguide/family-tree.html
The chart is actually more neat than suggested by Encyclopaedia Britannica, which says that Ar. kaddaba and Ar. ramidus coexisted; A. afarensis, K. platyops, A. bahrelgazali, and A. africanus all coexisted; P. aethiopicus, A. africanus, A. garhi, H. habilis, and H. rudolfensis all coexisted; and A. sediba, P. boisei, H. rudolfensis, and H. habilis all coexisted as well.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/44115/Australopithecus
The chart showed Ramidus evolving from Kaddaba even though they coexisted. It shows Afarensis evolving into Africanus even though they coexisted. And it doesn't even show how Boisei, Rudolfensis, Sediba, and the Denisovans are supposed to fit in. So it should actually have a lot more dead ends than it shows.
Change, and the study of change
The earth has experienced ~4.6 billion years of geological change. For example, from Bryce Canyon to lower level of Grand Canyon in Arizona, about 2 billion years of geological change is revealed in the various strata (levels). Found in such ancient strata, are various fossils of species that no longer exist, like dinosaurs. So there appears to be evidence of biological change over long periods of time.
Sadly, this does not surprise me. Korea is slowly being overtaken by radial Christian sects and you will find evidence of their influence in everyday culture. Even in my close circle of friends :-(
Ritchie Annand, thanks. I always enjoy learning and hearing what the other side believes – you and Rodrigo both know quite a bit on these subjects, and I appreciate you challenging my thought processes.
Concerning "rabbits in the Precambrian", we actually did find the oldest fossil rabbit in 2005. It was surprisingly similar to modern rabbits – that so many ancient species were similar to today's is in itself a strong evidence for core created kinds to me.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4274129.stm
What's more, new research in 2011 showed what had been considered early lifeforms in the Precambrian are not actually bacteria. What exactly they are is uncertain.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/12/precambrian-fossils-once-thought-to-be-embryos-reinterpreted-as-somethign-else/
Ironically, these were proudly presented in this 2000 article by J. William Schopf claiming there is now clear evidence of life in the Precambrian showing Darwin was correct. The article reveals how fervently the scientific community has been seeking such proof to validate Darwin's claims.
http://www.pnas.org/content/97/13/6947.full
My point though is that it's questionable whether much life at all was around in the Precambrian, especially given this latest discovery. If the Precambrian were before the Genesis creation point of animal life, then not only would rabbits not yet be expected, neither would other animal life. And the 2nd link above shows yet another example of the scientific community jumping the gun in declaring life in the Precambrian prematurely.
I will have to look into that concerning falsification of genetic analysis. Much of my focus until now has been primarily on paleontology. I'm curious what a BLAST search might turn up since I suspect such analysis has not yet actually been performed.
Concerning Uniformity, I actually did find some recent evidence of just such a spike as you refer to, and posted on the article's comments just yesterday. This is brand new news posted less than a week ago:
http://www.nature.com/news/mysterious-radiation-burst-recorded-in-tree-rings-1.10768
So we now know that high-intensity radiation caused a severe spike in Carbon-14 levels about 1,200 years ago. So the question is, will they more seriously reconsider radiometric dating's assumptions of uniform decay rates now, or just try to pass this off as a need for more 'calibration'?
The starlight I'm not going to try and contradict. I've looked into that in the past and it seems pretty much irrefutable. It's just basic triangulation based on the speed of light that can't really be denied, and claims the universe was created with an appearance of age just don't make much sense. However, while the Bible says life on earth is young, it gets a bit more iffy with those first few days. Since the sun, moon, and stars weren't created until the 4th day, anything before (or perhaps during) might not have been a solar 24-hour day necessarily, although for the 4th one must then explain how the plants created the 3rd day could've survived if not a 24-hour day. And Genesis 1:2 says the earth was empty and void, so whether the Earth or other planetary bodies existed originally is questionable given the Hebrew words used there.
Anyway though, that's definitely one of the few riddles I'm not sure Creationism has a good answer for right now. I once thought Rhiemannian Light Speed might be a possible alternative explanation, with light traveling faster due to less refraction, but that appears resolved now. So I really don't know what the answer might be for such an issue.
Concerning why mules and hinneys are possible, I would think it's because they are members of an original horse created kind. Therefore, horses and donkeys are able to breed, along with zebras – they are members of the original core created kind. However, tigers appear something else entirely, of an original feline created kind. If Macroevolution is true, I would expect to see possible interbreeding between clearly different kinds resulting in such things as "tigonkeys" but this I do not see. We can see different kinds of bears, such as Grizzlies and Polar Bears interbreed because they are obviously members of the same core kind. I expect sterility is a way of further maintaining specific varieties of the kinds that God wants preserved, simply an additional boundary that can be surpassed. However, the mechanism appears to be that interbreeding is entirely impossible apart from the core kinds, and sterility is used to define varieties within a given kind for further definition.
Congratulations on your child by the way!
Rodrigo Fernandez-Vasque, I did take a quick look at the following paper by Milliman and Syvitski (thanks for the citations), which does appear to show sediment in rivers was previously underestimated:
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/jmjaeger/GLY5558/Milliman%26Syvitski_1992.pdf
I noticed another interesting mention by G. Brent Dalrymple in "The Age of the Earth" on pg. 68 (I'd read some of it before – still need to finish it though – and thought I recalled a section on sedimentary dating attempts, so re-read it):
"Probably the most serious flaw in the method, however, was the one about which Reade had no qualms: the assumption of uniform rates of erosion and deposition. These factors are now known to vary so much, because of the high degree of variation in the conditions on which they depend, that it is simply impossible to determine an accurate average rate for virtually any period of geologic time. Calculations based on such rates, therefore, are little more than educated guesses – better than nothing perhaps, but subject to a high degree of uncertainty. Moreover, the Precambrian, for which the record is both highly incomplete and nearly intractable to detailed stratigraphic analysis, constitutes the bulk of geologic time. Thus, ages based on sedimentation are, at the very most, useful in dealing primarily with the Phanerozoic, or only the last 10-15% of the history of the Earth. Sediment accumulation as a method of determining the age of the Earth was no better than the other contemporary methods. But in the end, it didn't matter, for waiting in the wings was a family of methods [radiometric dating] that would eventually stretch geologic time to its true proportions and yield an answer beyond the imagination of most nineteenth-century scientists."
http://books.google.com/books?id=a7S3zaLBrkgC&printsec=frontcover
So in short, I'll agree with you that sediment deposition does appear to potentially be faster and more unpredictable than a strict 24 thousands of an inch per year. I suppose depending upon the area there might feasibly be enough sediment to fossilize something. Still, some instances of mass fossilization like the Eocene Green River beds or the trilobites still strongly indicate very rapid fossilization indicative of a catastrophe and instantaneous fossilization. Otherwise, you wouldn't (A) see so many similar creatures fossilized at once, and (B) see them fossilized in life position indicating they died no ordinary deaths.
The so-called "theory of evolution from the primary replicators to Homo-sapiens-sapiens-super-sapiens" - is, in fact, not science, but religion, tells the story of the miraculous origin of the new evil god – the super-sapiens man. Evil, because each successive generation, the logic of this religion is intended to destroy - to oust the previous generation. This religion imposed on Science and Education of the imperial policies of different countries and colors to create conflict confrontations based on derivatives of this religion – racism and Nazism. Science, however, does not leave these questions unanswered. In the interests of science, it needs to evolve, so all this crap to her imperial – ignored. Here, for example, a different point of view: http://spacenoology.agro.name/ (site Spacenoology). I personally made ​​a presentation at a conference of creationists in Kiev April 6 this year, which showed that the so-called "theory of evolution from the primary replicators ..." is by no means the only alternative to creationism. The article should go in the proceedings of the conference.
Joshua -> You're asking some pretty good questions here; thanks.
There are definite "preferences" when it comes to where fossils are found. Basically, any anoxic (oxygen-deprived) environments that stay relatively undisturbed, with an influx of fine material, a hardening material and/or a burial event.
Shales are the best; they come from silt/mudslides. Tar sands are relatively rare, but there's the famous La Brea (lit. "the tar") and some fossils being found in the Canadian oil sands.
Varves are pretty good as well – they come in large part from meltwater sediment and the lack of characteristic lake bed churning often indicates the other ideal: an anoxic environment. That's the situation with those two main fossil beds in the Eocene Green River.
I understand how "the fossil record is incomplete" sounds like something that could be used to cover all tracks, but even with incomplete sets, evolutionary theory <em>is</em> limited in taxonomic ways. Haldane's "rabbit in the Precambrian" quip might sound flippant, but it's representative. Mammals that aren't Synapsida or Eutheriodontia using anatomical criteria only a paleontologist would love (what care we layfolk for temporal fenestrae or sagittal crests?) would put serious dents in the edifice.
Genetic analysis in modern times would have some similar falsifications. If whales shared genetic "modules" with teleost fish that it <em>didn't</em> share with, say, other members of Artiodactyla, that would be a red flag.
Uniformity is a working hypothesis. If we noticed that rocks started indicating higher and higher temperatures of formation – say that even exposed old-formation sandstone was instead quartzite – or any number of similar things, including but not limited to a modern inexplicable decrease in decay rates, then we would be looking at higher decay rates in the past as a better explanation.
I understand that creationism has to limit radiometric dating to either being faster in the past or "created with an appearance of age". The same bifurcation is applied to distant starlight: either the speed of light was insanely fast 10,000 years ago or it was created in-flight with an appearance of age. So there is going to be a fight against uniformity to pin down that 6,000 or 10,000 year old date. It has been pretty poor pickings, though, and hasn't improved since Woodmorappe.
I would have posited that all creations being equal, why have mules and hinneys instead of tigonkeys? Why would the species barrier be any closer in "closer-looking" creatures? I would note that some baraminologists use the "evolution alternative" word holobaramin (instead of clade) to group all felids or equines together to get around the hybrid and trait issues.
Will reply later when time permits – off to the hospital to welcome child number three to the world.
Cheers!
* Please hava a look at : 'The first Korean responses'
	( http://blog.naver.com/metapsy/40160831824 )
		(text : Korean and English mixed)
Nature 지의 ‘창조론에 í•œêµì‚¬íšŒ 굴복’ 기사 관련 자료들
--------------------------------------------------------------
<sup>1</sup>. Nature reports (News)
저명한 과학지 ‘Nature'지 인터넷판 기사에 지난 2012년 6월 5일에 다음의 기사가 실렸다. 곧 이 Nature 지 하드카버 판에도 같은 기사가 실린다고 한다.
“South Korea surrenders to creationist demands:
Publishers set to remove examples of evolution from high-school textbooks.“
* by Soo Bin Park
-05 June 2012
http://www.nature.com/news/south-korea-surrenders-to-creationist-demands-1.10773
--------------------------------------------------------------
<sup>2</sup>. êµë‚´ 매스컴의 1차적 반응 (1st resonses of Korean Newspapers)
- / (text in Korean)
ㄱ. 한겨레신문 인터넷판 기사
제목: 네이처 “한êµ, 창조론자들 요구에 í•ë³µâ€
등록 : 2012.06.06 21:37
(http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/society/society_general/536529.html)
일부 교과서 ‘진화론 증거 ì‚제’ ì²ì› 받아들여…기사 게재
* 이근영 선임기자 kylee@hani.co.kr
---------------------
ㄴ. 조선일보 인터넷 판의 1차적 반응
네이처 "韓, 창조론에 í•ë³µ" 기사에 美 네티즌 조롱 이어져
* 최연진 기자 - 기사100자평(134)
- 입력 : 2012.06.07 16:55 | 수정 : 2012.06.07 17:41
(http://news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/06/07/2012060702035.html)
------------------------
<sup>3</sup> í•œêµ ê³¼í•™ê³„ì˜ 1차적 반응 (the 1st responses of the Korean Science community) / (text in Korean)
- 고교 과학 교과서 관련하여 이러한 상황과 보수 교진추의 활동에 대하여 최근에 알게 된 과학계는 과학과 종교 관련 학회, 생물교육 관련 학회 등을 중심으로 하여 이에 대한 이성적, 과학기반적 대책을 5월부터 강구하고 있었다. 다른 과학 조직들도 점차 가담하는 것 같다.
.........................
<sup>4</sup>. 이정모의 생각 첨언 (Comments by Jung-Mo Lee; a Korean cognitive psychologist) (text in Korean)
보수 주의자들의 반진화론적 강한 주장과 , 상대방에 대한 매도는,
노벨경제학상 수상자 다니엘 Kahneman 이 이미 80년대에 경험과학적 자료를 근거로 최근에 지적한 바인,
‘인간은 주먹구구식으로 생각한다’, ‘인간의 이성적 사고라는 것은 편향된(biased) 휴리스틱스적 사고가 그 기본이다’, ‘인간은 자신이 편향적으로 직관적으로 믿는 것을 논리적-이성적으로도 타당하다 - 맞는다고 생각한다’, ‘인지적 착각(Cognitive Illusions)’, ‘인간의 사고 시스템에는 Fast시스템과, Slow 시스템이 있는데, 사람들은 직관적이며 주먹구구식으로 생각한 것을 Slow 시스템에 의하여 그 논리적 타당성을 점검하지도 않은 채, 자기자신이 논리적으로 이성적으로 사고하고 있다고 믿는다.’
등의 언급에서 자유ë¡ì§€ 않다
(이러한 인간의 착각적 사고에 대하여는 노벨상수상자 카너만의 최근 저서. [생각에 관한 생각] -김영사, 2012 -이나, 고려대 심리학과 허태균 교수의 [가끔은 제정신: 우리는 늘 착각 속에 산다.] <del>샘앤파커스, 2012</del> 등의 책에 잘 드러나 있다.)
-인간은 자기가 (직관적으로, 감정적으로) 믿는 바를 그져 옳다고 생각하면서, 자신이 논리적으로 타당한, 아주 이성적으로 생각하고 있다고 믿는 ‘인지적 착각’ 속에서에 사는 숙명적인 편향(이것이 í•œêµì  정치, 종교 상í•ì—ë„ 그대로 적용된다)의 ‘불쌍한(가련한) 존재’들이다. (이런 생각은 불교적 깨달음과도 연결된다.)
-종교와 과학을 연결지어 탐구하는 많은 저명한 ì™¸êµ ì‹ í•™ëŒ€ìžë“¤, 신학대학들은, 창조론에 입각한 ‘반진화론자’들의 논지가 이러한 인간 본래의 ‘인지적 착각’에 사로 잡혀 있음을 이미 알고 있다.
- 인간의 마음은 각종 이야기를 만들어 내는 공장이기에, 자신이 옳다고 생각하는 바가, 편향되고, 오류와, 주먹구구식 생각에 가득찬 것이고 인간은 ‘착각’ 속에 살다 가는 존재임을 망각한다.
- 평생동안, 나의 이성적, 논리적 생각이 오류와 편향으로부터 자유로울 수 없는 숙명을(업보를) 우리 인간 모두가 타고난 그런 존재임을 망각하고 사는 것이다.
* 이미 (http://blog.naver.com/metapsy/40153510910) 에서 거론한 바와 같이 우리 인간은 75개의 편향, 21개의 사회적 편향, 49개의 기억오류의 도합 145개 의 사고오류 속에서 살면서 자신의 생각만이 옳다고 생각한다.
- 반진화론을 강변하는 사람들의 논변을 보면 곳곳에 이러한 사고 오류가 곳곳에 나타난다. 그리고 그들은 자신들만이 옳고 상대방은 틀리다고 확신한다.
‘인지적 착각’ 속에 살다 가는 그 사람들 .. ...,
불쌍하다는 생각이 들며 연민에 잠긴다.
‘산은 산이요, 물은 물이요’
아니라니 ...
평생토록 아전인수격으로 모든 것을 해석하여 재구성하여 이야기를 지어내는 ‘마음’
그런 짐을 지고 평생 살아 가야 하는 나,
그리고 우리들 (그들 포함).
... 연민 ...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
by Jung-Mo Lee (Dr. in Cognitive Psychologist) ; (https://www.facebook.com/metapsy)
Well Joshua, unfortunately I don't have much time right now but...respect to sedimentation rates and other matters, Darwin was a remarkable scientist but we have advanced in the understanding of sedimentary and fossilization processes quite a lot over the last 100 years. Data on the frequency, magnitude, and sediment yields associated with flooding events exists (refer, for instance, to Milliman, Syvitski and Mulder papers). During high flux events, the sediment load can increase several times even orders of magnitude. In this way you have more than enough sediment in river valleys, deltas and flood plains to bury remains of living organisms or their traces. In other environments the process works differently. Small shells are buried by mud transported along continental shelves, deeper in oceans turbidites do the work, in fjords high accumulation rates associated to glaciers sediment outflux do the same etc...If you observe nature with a sense of how these processes work at different environments and different timescales it won't be difficult to understand that it occurs. Go to places where deposition is occurring and check....ok, I have to go back to work...
1. Yes, the varves are mentioned by McDowell and Stewart in "Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity, pages 214-215 here:
http://joshmcdowellmedia.org/FreeBooks/ReasonsSkepticsShouldConsiderChristianity.pdf
As noted there, "Several features of the Green River tend to contradict the usual interpretation of slow deposition at the rate of one band per year. First, the fossil fish are pressed flat between the bands. Second, one can see the outline of the entire fish, not just the bones. That means the flesh hadn't rotted at the time the fish was buried. Finallly, the thickness of each band is such that it would be difficult to be preserved. The average thickness of a band is about five thousandths of an inch.... What do these facts mean? Well, it is practically impossible for the dead fish to have been preserved if it had been covered by only one millimeter of mud. If one places a dead fish on the bottom of an aquarium and covers him with one millimeter of mud, the fish will rot and float to the surface. Very little decay is seen in the fossil fish of the Green River beds. Secondly, one millimeter of mud would not provide enough weight to press the fish as flat as they are seen. Thus the only logical explanation for the appearance of the Green River beds is that the entire weight of the formation was laid down rapidly. Only in this fashion could the fish be buried deeply enough to preserve them while also flattening them.
2. Still, doesn't Punctuated Equilibrium go against this concept of Uniformitarianism and "the present is the key to the past" that is used to assume radiometric decay was constant? If you say, in other words, that one can suddenly accelerate over a short period, why the insistence that radiometric decay cannot – especially during the massive catastrophes destroying life we now recognize occurred (e.g. Pre-Cambrian Mass Extinction). The trouble is the transitional forms we've discovered for humans don't fit into a nice neat picture of evolution, especially S. tchadensis, O. tugenensis, and A. ramidus. They show early complexity and bipedality at the very beginning in those 3, rather than a gradual transition to human-like forms. What they were supposed to evolve into was less similar to modern humans than they are! As for Pakicetus, the interpretation it was related to whales appears very questionable, with recent debate over whether it had any marine characteristics at all:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v413/n6853/full/413277a0.html
3. Yes, chapter 8 is pretty interesting. However, it's frustrating that the subject of animal interspeciary breeding was less addressed than hybridism in plants. Yet Genesis 1:12 gives just 2 or 3 core species of plants, so that hybridism should be easier to perform in them. Hybridism in animals is what should prove most controversial. Today, we continue to see sterility occur when cross-breeding animals like donkeys and horses or lions and tigers. If core created species were designed originally per the book of Genesis, we would expect to see boundaries between these core species that prevent their inter-crossing, and sterility to my mind might be such an evidence.
4. Alright, good point. The terms can vary given who's using them. Another term seems to be somewhat arbitrary as well, 'species'. As Darwin noted, "It is all-important to remember that naturalists have no golden rule by which to distinguish species and varieties; they grant some little variability to each species, but when they meet with a somewhat greater amount of difference between any two forms, they rank both as species, unless they are enabled to connect them together by close intermediate gradations. And this from the reasons just assigned we can seldom hope to effect in any one geological section. Supposing B and C to be two species, and a third, A, to be found in an underlying bed; even if A were strictly intermediate between B and C, it would simply be ranked as a third and distinct species, unless at the same time it could be most closely connected with either one or both forms by intermediate varieties." (pp. 297-298)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=315
This is one of my concerns, that transitions are in themselves somewhat speculative, concerning not only vestigial organs but transitional forms, because taxonomy lacks the "golden rule" Darwin referred to, and is rather arbitrary and interpretive. Recently we discovered a South American creature that is the spitting image of a giant earthworm, for example, yet it was classified as something else entirely. The classification itself can in my mind be used to base a framework that attempts to support evolution based on personal interpretation.
Will reply to others when I have more time.
Rodrigo Fernandez-Vazquez, still though, even if one year were to vary drastically in sediment accumulation from the 24 thousands of an inch estimated by J.B. Birdsell (Human Evolution, 1971, pg. 141), with extreme highs and lows, would that still be sufficient to effectively fossilize anything? There would be some possibilities I suppose, animals in caves might be more easily fossilized, or those falling into tar pits, but otherwise? You just don't have sediment levels rapid enough to fossilize anything – certainly not to fossilize fish with the flesh outlines still intact, or trilobites in the acts of mating and migrating. Or to fossilize footprints with raindrop imprints in them. You'd have to cover something instantaneously to preserve those kinds of details.
Darwin himself made this point in "On the Origin of Species" I just noticed:
"I believe we are continually taking a most erroneous view, when we tacitly admit to ourselves that sediment is being deposited over nearly the whole bed of the sea, at a rate sufficiently quick to embed and preserve fossil remains... We may, I think, safely conclude that sediment must be accumulated in extremely thick, solid, or extensive masses, in order to withstand the incessant action of the waves, when first upraised and during subsequent oscillations of level. Such thick and extensive accumulations of sediment may be formed in two ways; either, in profound depths of the sea, in which case, judging from the researches of E. Forbes, we may conclude that the bottom will be inhabited by extremely few animals, and the mass when upraised will give a most imperfect record of the forms of life which then existed; or, sediment may be accumulated to any thickness and extent over a shallow bottom, if it continue slowly to subside. In this latter case, as long as the rate of subsidence and supply of sediment nearly balance each other, the sea will remain shallow and favourable for life, and thus a fossiliferous formation thick enough, when upraised, to resist any amount of degradation, may be formed." (pp. 288)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=306
Still, such rapid sediment deposition is something you see after a flood – an effect that might explain mass fossilization, whereas slow sinking down into swamps or gradual deposition will not.
I understand the claim the fossil record is incomplete. But at the same time though, how then can one consider the theory of Evolution falsifiable, if this excuse can be used whenever the fossil record suggests microevolution occurred and macro did not? Darwin used this claim that the fossil record didn't support evolution because of its incompleteness a full century ago:
"Lastly, looking not to any one time, but to all time, if my theory be true, numberless intermediate varieties, linking most closely all the species of the same group together, must assuredly have existed; but the very process of natural selection constantly tends, as has been so often remarked, to exterminate the parent forms and the intermediate links. Consequently evidence of their former existence could be found only amongst fossil remains, which are preserved, as we shall in a future chapter attempt to show, in an extremely imperfect and intermittent record." (pg. 179)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=197
He still found it extremely puzzling why the fossil record did not support gradual macroevolution (see pages 293-302 for his thoughts on why this occurred, which appear to include migration of species and consistency of fossilization):
"From the foregoing considerations it cannot be doubted that the geological record, viewed as a whole, is extremely imperfect but if we confine our attention to any one formation, it becomes more difficult to understand, why we do not therein find closely graduated varieties between the allied species which lived at its commencement and at its close." (pg. 293)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=311
Darwinian Macroevolution, to be claimed as science, must be falsifiable. Darwin gave one example of falsifiability at the time, the fossil record during the Silurian stratum:
"Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer... But the difficulty of understanding the absence of vast piles of fossiliferous strata, which on my theory no doubt were somewhere accumulated before the Silurian epoch, is very great... The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. " (pg. 307-308)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=side&itemID=F373&pageseq=325
Still, we've accumulated enough evidence of what the fossil record is like to recognize that while it often shows microevolutionary stasis, species evolving minimally for long periods largely unchanged, and then sudden appearance of complexity, it does not show major transitions between species. And this led to the proposal of Punctuated Equilibrium by Gould and Eldredge.
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/classictexts/eldredge.asp
1. The Eocene Green River beds are not uniformly bedecked with fossils; there are two varved lime muds for which they are famous. You may also note if you see pictures or buy fossils around Wyoming or Banff that they are flattened out – that's part of the deposition and lithification process
2. Positing punctuated equilibrium was borne out by modern studies of fixating mutations versus population size, c.f. Kimura. As to transitional fossils, we keep discovering them – the older bipeds you note, Tiktaalik, Xiaotingia, what have you. They're more interesting when they push back times-of-splits, but we haven't pulled out anything truly surprising out of the ground. What's the creationist explanation for the fact that we haven't pulled a whale fossil – or a Pakicetus – out of Cambrian rocks?
3. At least you didn't leave off the "but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory." part, but you are quoting Darwin's setup before the explanation. Chapter 8 is pretty interesting, anyhow – at the time, hybridizing was mostly plant-based when experimenting, but even for animals, the correlation between first cross difficulty and the sterility of the hybrids was noted, sterility varies even by individual, and ranking as species generally but not always indicates the hybrids will be sterile.
4. For the same reason some people will say evolution "just means change over time" - it's okay to a first approximation. Vestigal means that it has none-to-little of the function of a homolog. Finding lymphatic tissue in the appendix does not means that we can ferment cellulose in the caecum, for example.
5. They stressed the antibiotic-resistant alpha-proteobacteria into producing the GTAs, purified the GTAs, then mixed them with a bag of water from the sea to find 47% of the survivors had incorporated the GTAs. But... GTAs are only produced under that stress. So, very interesting, but sensationalized.
6. Caecal modifications are fairly common – witness their function changes amongst the primates. As for cane toads, that's a primary example of selection criteria changing; it's not the sort of thing that's going to generate a new Order in 6,000 years.
7. BLAST searches can be fun, especially with some of the links and tables they put out these days. Searches will often bring up lists of discovered mutations and what they do – or don't do. You can go for the encoded proteins or the genes, and you can line those up between creatures to see what's different. 'Correlation vs causation' aside, this data stood a chance of completely upending the theory, but this is strong enough that we wouldn't have needed fossils. You can disagree, but if you spelunk, you might at least be able to see why folks think common ancestry is the most parsimonious explanation. (The article you list is very interesting and might help with the DNA->RNA->protein map, but it doesn't affect the DNA or protein sequencing that we've done. Maybe the SSU and LSU RNA databases...?)
8. Sure, so we keep digging. It's a bit annoying for paleontology that we didn't cover the plains like some other creatures did, but we've found quite a bit since the Leakeys. H. floresiensis lasted until about 12,000 years ago when it looks like a volcano took them out. The Neanderthal die-out corresponds to some degree with the H. sapiens population squeeze, but there are other hypotheses. It would have been neat if they survived to modern day... though we'd probably have proceeded to kill them all :)
Joshua and others, I am going to refer to point 1) which is within my field of expertise and that has implications for some of the other points.
There are several misconceptions regarding the sedimentary record and how to interpret it. First of all let clarify a couple of concepts. Accumulation rates is not the same as deposition rates. Accumulation rates refers to the thickness of sediments preserved in a sedimentary section and representing certain interval of time. During that time there was deposition, non-deposition and erosion, resulting in an incomplete record of time. It has been observed and theorized that the longer the timescale (or time interval we are looking at) the longer is the time not represented in the sedimentary section, i.e. hiatus, something some of us like to call "Saddler effect", in reference to a couple of papers by Saddler where this is better explained. This means that in most cases sedimentation is punctuated by period of high rates, low rates and no sedimentation. This imply that taking an average "accumulation rate" to make inferences about past "deposition rates" is plain wrong. Deposition rates are in general difficult to estimate and modern observation is the best way to figure out their magnitude, which is more often than not, often orders of magnitude higher than average accumulation rates.
This has many implications in the interpretation of the fossil record. This is in essence incomplete and that is why for many environments we won't find a "continuous" record of transitional species as the creationist normally ask for when trying to debunk evolutionary theories...well, unless someday we invent a time machine and film a millions of years long documentary on the evolution of earth.
Continued from my previous post:
5. Well, your 1999 article is a bit dated. A 2010 study actually found the reverse, that bacterial evolution can occur faster than anticipated. "In the ocean, genes can hop between bacteria with unexpected ease, thanks to strange virus-like particles that shuttle genes from one species to another. These particles, called gene-transfer agents (GTAs), insert DNA into bacterial genomes so frequently that gene transfer in the ocean may occur 1,000 to 100 million times more often than previously thought. This suggests that GTAs have had a powerful role in evolution."
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100930/full/news.2010.507.html
By looking into this further, I am discovering yet another possibility for my "rapid microevolutionary rates" section, bacterial evolution. Apparently scientists are reluctant to admit the rates they see today were always this rapid, and are thus considering whether they might be speeding up.
http://www.science20.com/anthrophysis/are_anthropogenic_pressures_increasing_speed_bacterial_evolution-90422
I also found an interesting article on rapid finch microevolution that I'm strongly considering for inclusion in the CreationWiki section on rapid microevolutionary rates:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/19/7866.full?sid=619b215b-37da-495c-997f-4aa437e1c6f0
6. I don't actually pay attention to Baraminology and what Creationists hypothesize about Created Kinds. I have a discussion comment on CreationWiki about Created Kinds and Baraminology as follows:
"Okay, thanks. I guess the thing is, I am a Creationist because I believe what the Bible says, not because I'm associated with the Creationist movement. I've never really followed too closely what Creationists said, which is why all of my points are so unique. I defend what the Bible says and the concept of core created species and young life on earth, but if there are technical terms for this I am not familiar with them, that's all. I don't know what typical Creationist theory is on this, and have kind of done my own research rather than looking at what other Creationists were doing."
http://creationwiki.org/Talk:Created_kind#Deletions
So I don't know what time scales they are using for their Baraminology constructs. Nonetheless, we are talking about sweeping evolutionary rates that are, to quote David Skelly of Yale University, "on the scale of decades and tens of meters." The exact quote is, "Ecology is being transformed by the recognition that ecological and evolutionary timescales are not easily differentiated. A 1999 review of evolutionary rates by Andrew Hendry and Mike Kinnison provided the striking conclusion that rates of contemporary evolution are much faster than generally appreciated... Our work reveals that a number of traits including critical thermal maximum, embryonic development rate, and thermal preference behavior all show variation consistent with local adaptation that occurs on the scale of decades and tens of meters. These findings offer a startlingly different picture of interactions between organisms and their environment prompting us to rethink, in larger sense, how we should conceive of ecological assemblages."
http://environment.yale.edu/skelly/RapidEvol.html
The examples I cited for CreationWiki include the Australian Toxic Toad, which evolved longer legs and heat tolerance within decades, and overran the continent, and the Italian Wall Lizard, which evolved cecal valves, a larger gut, and a harder bite within a few decades. When whole new organs and body structures can be changed within decades in adaptation to environmental changes, then I would say that's more compatible with theories proposing a young age to life on earth, than those proposing millions and billions of years at work.
7. No – I had not run a BLAST search before – thank you for recommending this! I will have to work on figuring out how to search this. I don't understand why you think such data will in any way validate Evolution, however, since correlation does not imply causation. Furthermore, I also question whether the genomes have been double-checked, given the recent discovery that RNA systematically alters itself. If so, is it possible the genomes could have been improperly compiled?
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110525/full/473432a.html
8. Still, the discoveries over the past decade that major parts of the proposed human-ape chain coexisted, like A. ramidus and A. afarensis (2001) and H. habilis and H. erectus (2007) not only makes the conventional linear charts shown to students in the past much weaker, but also creates more questions – where are the ancestors these offshoots had, came from? The more offshoots or cousins that are acknowledged, the more necessity for explaining their lineages as well. Finding new offshoots lived until recent times with modern humans like Neanderthals, Homo floresiensis, and the Denisovans, also requires explaining what their lineages were. And for some like Sharon Begley of Newsweek, a yet more pressing question remains: "Which leads to perhaps the greatest puzzle of all. Throughout human evolution, several species of ancestors lived at the same time. The most recent, of course, were Neanderthals, which made their last stand in the Iberian peninsula about 35,000 years ago. Then why is Homo sapiens the one and only species of human on the planet today?"
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2007/08/07/the-human-family-shrub.html
To fwefweafew gafeawefaewwef:
Now I am Sa Tan. Are you a Mok Sa?
"Even the nation’s leading science institute — the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology — has a creation science display on campus. “The exhibition was set up by scientists who believed in creation science back in 1993,” says Gab-duk Jang, a pastor of the campus church. The institute also has a thriving Research Association for Creation Science, run by professors and students, he adds."
this is entirely not true. if you read the article carefully, that statement is from "a pastor" not from "a official of the institute". the exhibition is not official exhibition by the institute, but a private exhibition run by the campus church. They pretend as if it is an official exhibition of the institute to deceive people that "Even the nation’s leading science institute endorses creation science". the truth is, however, none of the academic research on creation science is conducted by professors or graduate students (of course. because it is not science). as far as I know, none of the professors in the biological sciences is involved in the exhibition.
I do understand church's advertising what they believe, called creationism, and amateur's setting up an exhibition, which are entirely matter of their right of the freedom of speech. But I do not accept their deceiving people by falsely using the name of the nation's leading science institute on purpose. That is a bloody liar, exactly opposite from teachings of Jesus.
Ritchie Annand, on the contrary, brand new points that aren't made elsewhere. I've compiled sources from the past 12 years and am making points not made elsewhere. In response:
1. The mere act of fossilization itself is unusual given conventional theory on depositional rates, as noted by McDowell and Stewart in their 1981 book, 'Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity', ch. 3. Depositional rates of .024 inches a year are far too minimal to fossilize anything effectively, to cover it from bacteria/scavengers and naturally erosive forces quickly enough to prevent decay. In some cases like the Eocene Green River beds fish were preserved en masse with the flesh outline still visible. Starfish were fossilized in the act of devouring clams. We've even found trilobites buried in life position. Clearly, fossilization in at least some instances had to occur very rapidly, per the mass catastrophes we now know occurred, and could not have occurred gradually over millions of years. Conventional theory does not explain how so much fossilization could have occurred given slow depositional rates, just like it does not explain fossilized footprints and raindrop imprints in some of them, which must have required instantaneous fossilization to be preserved – especially in substances like sand/sandstone.
http://creationwiki.org/Reasons_skeptics_should_consider_Christianity#Depositional_Rates
http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=13304
2. Darwin's explanation was that the fossil record was incomplete and would be borne out by further research within a few decades. Clearly that has not happened. Stasis and lack of transitional forms has continued to be so problematic that Punctuated Equilibrium was proposed to try and reconcile Darwinistic Evolution with the fossil record.
3. Darwin twice stated that four chapters would be devoted to addressing Evolution's most serious weaknesses in "On the Origin of Species" and said interspeciary breeding's sterility was one of these: "LONG before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory. These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:— Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance, the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some animal with wholly different habits? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, organs of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, organs of such wonderful structure, as the eye, of which we hardly as yet fully understand the inimitable perfection? Thirdly, can instincts be acquired and modified through natural selection? What shall we say to so marvellous an instinct as that which leads the bee to make cells, which have practically anticipated the discoveries of profound mathematicians? Fourthly, how can we account for species, when crossed, being sterile and producing sterile offspring, whereas, when varieties are crossed, their fertility is unimpaired?" (pp. 171-172)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=189
All of chapter 8, Hybridism, was devoted to tackling this difficult issue.
4. If vestigial doesn't mean useless, then why does the University of California, Berkeley's website say otherwise? "So what’s not an adaptation? The answer: a lot of things. One example is vestigial structures. A vestigial structure is a feature that was an adaptation for the organism’s ancestor, but that evolved to be non-functional because the organism’s environment changed."
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IIIE5Adaptation.shtml
Will reply to others when I have more time.
Invalid modes of argument:
1. A scientist notes a mystery; declare victory
2. Ask a question, presume nobody has investigated it, or don't care if they did; declare victory
Thanks, fwe. Also, I'm having a tough time pronouncing your name :)
Well said, Ritchie.
Ugh, Joshua, same old creationist talking points?
1. I wouldn't expect anoxic mud burials like those that lead to famous shales on a continuous basis, nor does mere "microevolution" explain the time-ordered taxonomic diversity in those strata. Note the spectacular lack of mammals in Ordovician layers
2. Naughty quote-miner. We already know that if an "objection to evolution" by Darwin is quoted by a creationist, that they've just gone and snipped out the bit before Charlie launches into an explanation
3. Inter-species sterility as evidence against evolution, really? Pray tell what "On The Origin Of Species" refers to?
4. How many times does it need to be said that vestigal does not mean useless?
5. Bacteria are largely asexual, reined in tighter on their DNA (vs eukaryotes) and non-migratory – rates are lower than you might expect, c.f. http://www.pnas.org/content/96/22/12638.full
6. Not nearly as fast as would be required for many creationist baramin constructions or the genetic front-loading for which there is no evidence – and human rates have been run for older and newer substitutions (ibid. 104/52/20753.full.pdf)
7. You ever run a BLAST search on the proteomic or genomic data we have? It's available to the public, you know, and proteins and genes match taxonomic trees rather well – just throw in Cytochrome C or Hemoglobin Alpha Chain for fun
8. Most fossils are cousins, not ancestors – we infer ancestral traits until we find plausibly closer cousins
Not to mention that if creationism were true, we should not have found all the things that we have. They don't make any sense in that context unless patterns are handwaved away, evidence is ignored and known scientific exceptions are held onto like a pit bull on a T-bone.
Going to throw 2LOT or carbon dating failures on marine invertebrates just to be thorough? :)
Something to keep in mind for all those who support missionary activity by so-called «Christian» churches in non-European cultures ; they would do well to ask themselves just which versions of «Christianity» they are promoting and what are the forces behind this activity. It's sad – but hardly surprising – to see South Korea emulating Texas....
Henri
I´m spiritualist, and i believe in evolution. Is a fact that exist nature laws. The universe is organized, because there are constant rules that govern it.
Science is the conception of approximated theoretical models of the nature laws that can describe well the reality, between particular limits of the model variables.
So, God is the author of nature laws. God is the Supreme Intelligence, Primary Cause of all things. The universe evolution is the evolution predicted by science, but the universe(s) began by God´s will, that defined previously the laws that conducted the evolution process, and became the nature laws discovered by science, and most others still unknown of scientists.
The nature laws includes the material world laws and the spiritual world laws, that produce the named spiritual phenomena, like mediumship, NDE, and so on.
I believe that man is an immortal and individual spirit, provisionally associated with a flesh mortal body. Science knows a lot about flesh, and some day in future, will know about spirit, when the investors find motivation to research about that matter.
Unbelievable how such ideas can actually take hold in the education system
South Korea has become an economic powerhouse over the past half century, and a formidable competitor. This piece of silliness might be a signal that this remarkable nation is willing to dull its edge, and should be encouraging to nations that must duke it out with South Korea in the global marketplace.
Gregory Lewis, your article, 'Was Darwin Wrong?', doesn't address some basic concerns about Evolution, namely:
(1) On pg. 5, it says that paleontology shows closely-allied fossils layered above one another. What it doesn't address is that the fossil record does not show them becoming entirely different species, rather, it shows stasis, where they remain largely congruent within their types, without apparent major transitions, and then suddenly you see a burst of sudden complexity and new types. This led to the theory of Pucntuated Equilibrium by Gould and Eldredge proposing that evolution goes very rapidly during periods of time too short to show up in the fossil record. But basically, the fossil record itself is a strong evidence against Macroevolution, and only supports Microevolution.
(2) On pg. 5, the article claims that living creatures can be easily sorted into a hierarchy of categories. However, this is to large degree the result of interpretation and speculation, which is why there's so much debate over what defines a species, and how to categorize species. Furthermore, the farther you go back, the more apparent it becomes that many ancient species were similar to those we see today, often just larger versions. Again, this supports Microevolution, but not Macroevolution. There were giant sloths, giant elephants, giant insects. Indeed, if all species had a common ancestor, one would expect to see more transitions between species. Darwin himself puzzled over why all nature is not in chaos, stating on pg. 462, "As on the theory of natural selection an interminable number of intermediate forms must have existed, linking together all the species in each group by gradations as fine as our present varieties, it may be asked, Why do we not see these linking forms all around us? Why are not all organic beings blended together in an inextricable chaos?... Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? We meet with no such evidence, and this is the most obvious and forcible of the many objections which may be urged against my theory. Why, again, do whole groups of allied species appear, though certainly they often falsely appear, to have come in suddenly on the several geological stages? Why do we not find great piles of strata beneath the Silurian system, stored with the remains of the progenitors of the Silurian groups of fossils? For certainly on my theory such strata must somewhere have been deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs in the world's history." (Source below)
http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=F373&pageseq=21
(3) The article mentions four categories of evidence applied by Darwin, but not the four weaknesses he acknowledged in his theory. Darwin recognized four weaknesses in his theory, two of which form the modern Intelligent Design movement, unusual complexity in life, and instinct suggestive of design. The other two are the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record (which contributed to the origination of Punctuated Equilibrium) and sterility in interspeciary breeding. This last is the least addressed of all four after nearly a century. Why do we see sterility when attempting to breed between species if all had a common ancestor? We breed donkeys with horses and get sterile mules. We breed lions and tigers to get sterile Ligers. This element of sterility proves difficult to explain as it suggests a Creator keeping core species from breeding outside designed boundaries.
(4) On pg. 6 the article calls to attention what it terms vestigial characteristics. What it doesn't mention are cases where Evolutionists have called organs vestigial and been proved wrong. They used to claim the Appendix was a useless organ, and thus vestigial, but we then found it had a role in the immune system preventing disease. They have also claimed the tailbone is vestigial, except that it plays a role in human's ability to sit down, and causes issues when removed or damaged, and thus has a purpose. Cases such as these illustrate how interpretive vestigial organs are, and that they are simply an argument from ignorance – if there is no known use for an organ, Evolutionists speculate that it is evidence of a past ancestor. They speculate human tails are vestigial, yet they do not do so of humans being born with extra limbs. Why is one suggestive of a genetic abnormality or pesticides/chemicals affecting humans, and the other vestigial? This appears to be a case of arbitrary speculation rather than definitive evidence; circumstantial evidence, which is open to interpretation.
(5) On pg. 8, the article mentions bacterial evolution. The trouble is as has been noted by The Brothers Winn: "They also like to point at bacterial mutation as evidence of evolution, but I have an issue with that, too. We’ve been watching those little guys since the invention of the microscope over 300 years ago, and while they’ve changed genetically and adapted as bacteria, they’ve never evolved into a new, higher form of life. Think about this: if a bacterial generation is 20 minutes, and a human generation is 20 years, then they should be evolving 525,000 times faster than we are. And if it took 3.2 million years for Lucy, the alleged missing linke, to become modern man, we should expect to see similar evolutionary advancements in bacteria in a period of just six years. [Whistles]. Wow. And I’m talking about real evolution. Not just slight alterations to DNA, or building up immunities to this or that, but transforming, actually evolving into something more complex – a brand new form of life. A higher form of life." (Source Below) While we see bacteria building up immunities and adapting, microevolving, they have never stopped being bacteria. Thus, we continue to see no evidence of the major transformation necessary to prove macroevolution.
http://www.whatyououghttoknow.com/show/2008/05/01/darwins-intelligent-design/
(6) On pg. 9, the article claims that "Among most forms of living creatures, evolution proceeds slowly—too slowly to be observed by a single scientist within a research lifetime." This is what indeed should happen if Evolutionary theory is correct that life on earth is millions and billions of years old. And it would provide a convenient escape route for evolutionists in explaining why we can't see evidence of major macroevolution, a taxonomic family or genera becoming something entirely different. The trouble is that microevolution goes much faster, far faster than it should if radiometric dating results are correct, and the assumptions of Uniformitarianism prove true about constant Gradualism. I've provided detail and sourcing for 6 major evidences of microevolutionary rates being far faster than is commonly accepted, contrary to conventional theory, at CreationWiki (Source below).
http://creationwiki.org/Biological_evolution#Rapid_Microevolutionary_rates
(7) On pg. 9, the article claims Evolution can be witnessed and observed. The trouble is that all those instances are of Micro, not Macro, evolution. While finches adapt to their environments, they remain finches. While moths change colors, they remain moths. Much as fruit flies adapt given their rapid lifespans, they remain fruit flies. Despite all of science's tinkering with life, they haven't been able to get species outside their core designed boundaries. All of this is evidence for the Microevolution and Natural Selection, adaptation to the environment, that we can witness and acknowledge as undeniable fact. None of it proves in any way the still un-evidenced claim that species had a common ancestor. Can we really see the macroevolution that the University of California speaks of, "evolution above the species level... evolution on a grand scale — what we see when we look at the over-arching history of life: stability, change, lineages arising, and extinction"? (Source below)
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_47
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_48
(8) On pg. 11, the article refers to a whale discovery, concluding "This is how science is supposed to work." The trouble is that over the past decade, the vast majority of discoveries have not been working the way science, at least to the minds of Evolutionists, is 'supposed to work'. Instead, the discoveries of Orrorin tugenensis, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and Ardipithecus ramidus have shown unusual complexity and bipedality in the oldest hominins we have, forcing a rethink of species half their ages which scientists had been claiming showed the ape-human lineage. Scientists got caught with their pants down, so to speak – they'd been claiming humans were just becoming bipedal around 3 million years per the famous Lucy, only to find three hominins dated 5.5-7 million years which showed clear evidence of bipedalism and early complexity – including human-like faces. Furthermore, numerous finds have proved problematic for evolutionary theory since the year 2000; some showing major 'links' like Erectus and Habilis or Afarensis and Ramidus coexisted and couldn't have been evolved from one another. I've documented 15 controversies here on CreationWiki, providing numerous sources:
http://creationwiki.org/Transitional_form#Recent_controversies