Jaques Monod, Nobel Prize Winner, had this to say about transcription mechanisms. He is an evolutionist, on your side, chaps. But what he says must surely make you take a respectful step back! I've broken it up into smaller paragraphs to make it a little more readable.
"The development of the metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have "learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular components, poses Herculean problems.
So also does the emergence of the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable cell.
But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its translation mechanism.
Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather to be called a riddle. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA:
the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation.
It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine."
(Monod, Jaques [Biochemist, Director of Pasteur Institute, Paris], "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", [1971], Penguin: London, 1997, reprint, p.143. Emphasis mine).
In the same vein, Professor Karl Popper, the famous and very well respected policeman of science, experimentation and the interpretation of results, had this to say about the very same matter. I've again broken the text up into more manageable chunks.
"What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code.
But, as Monod points out the machinery by which the cell (at least the nonprimitive cell which is the only one we know) translates the code `consists of a least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA' (Monod, 1970; 1971, 143).
Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a really baffling circle: a vicious circle, it seems for any attempt to form a model, or a theory, of the genesis of the genetic code."
(Popper, Karl R., [Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London], "Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science," in "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology," Macmillan: London, 1974, pp.259-284, p.270. Emphasis mine).
So these despised ERVs, 'junk' as they were called, are not useless remnants of a 'common ancestor'. They are extraordinarily useful elements in the cell transcription process, and seem common to all cells.
So bye, bye, common ancestor.
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Thursday 29 October 2009
ERVs Function Discovered
"Large Scale" Function for Endogenous Retroviruses: Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled While Another Darwinist Argument Bites the Dust
In his "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" on TalkOrigins, Douglas Theobald claims that "Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent." The presumption behind his argument is that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are functionless stretches of "junk" DNA that persist because they are "selfish"—but they have no function for the organism. If we find the same ERVs in the same genetic loci in different species of primates, Theobald concludes they document common ancestry.
But what if ERVs do perform important genetic functions? Even theistic evolutionist Francis Collins acknowledges that genetic similarity "alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor" because a designer could have "used successful design principles over and over again." (The Language of God, pg. 134.) The force of Theobald’s argument thus depends upon the premise that ERVs are selfish genetic "junk" that do not necessarily perform any useful function for their host.
In contrast, ID proponents would predict function for ERVs. This isn’t because ID has an inherent quarrel with common descent—it doesn’t. Rather, ID predicts function because the basis for ID’s predictions is observations of how intelligent agents design things, and intelligent agents tend to design objects that perform some kind of function. As William Dembski wrote in 1998, "If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function." It seems that the expectations of ID are turning out to be right.
A recent 2008 paper, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," in the journal Bioinformatics (Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008)) discusses the fact that "Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) elements have been shown to contribute promoter sequences that can initiate transcription of adjacent human genes. However, the extent to which retroviral sequences initiate transcription within the human genome is currently unknown." The article thus "analyzed genome sequence and high-throughput expression data to systematically evaluate the presence of retroviral promoters in the human genome."
The results were striking:
We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5' untranslated regions (UTRs).
[…]
Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome. These data suggest that ERVs may regulate human transcription on a large scale.
(Andrew B. Conley, Jittima Piriyapongsa and I. King Jordan, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," Bioinformatics, Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008).)
Darwinists who labeled ERVs as a form of "selfish" and "junk" DNA have been chasing explanations down a blind alley. It should be stated that the authors [of the article quoted above- Asy] do not deviate from the neo-Darwinian paradigm, putting the obligatory evolutionary spin on the data. They claim that it’s a possibility that some of the transcribed ERVs are "not functionally significant," exposing that even in the face of this compelling contrary data, it is difficult for many Darwinists to let go of their seductive but science-stopping "junk-DNA" paradigm.
It seems that Richard Sternberg was correct when he predicted 5 years ago that "the selfish DNA narrative and allied frameworks must join the other ‘icons’ of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that, despite their variance with empirical evidence, nevertheless persist in the literature." (Richard Sternberg, "On the Roles of Repetitive DNA Elements in the Context of a Unified Genomic–Epigenetic System," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 981: 154–88 (2002).)
Posted by Casey Luskin on August 21, 2008
With Acknowledgements to Evolution News and Views published by the Discovery Institute.
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In his "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" on TalkOrigins, Douglas Theobald claims that "Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent." The presumption behind his argument is that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are functionless stretches of "junk" DNA that persist because they are "selfish"—but they have no function for the organism. If we find the same ERVs in the same genetic loci in different species of primates, Theobald concludes they document common ancestry.
But what if ERVs do perform important genetic functions? Even theistic evolutionist Francis Collins acknowledges that genetic similarity "alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor" because a designer could have "used successful design principles over and over again." (The Language of God, pg. 134.) The force of Theobald’s argument thus depends upon the premise that ERVs are selfish genetic "junk" that do not necessarily perform any useful function for their host.
In contrast, ID proponents would predict function for ERVs. This isn’t because ID has an inherent quarrel with common descent—it doesn’t. Rather, ID predicts function because the basis for ID’s predictions is observations of how intelligent agents design things, and intelligent agents tend to design objects that perform some kind of function. As William Dembski wrote in 1998, "If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function." It seems that the expectations of ID are turning out to be right.
A recent 2008 paper, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," in the journal Bioinformatics (Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008)) discusses the fact that "Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) elements have been shown to contribute promoter sequences that can initiate transcription of adjacent human genes. However, the extent to which retroviral sequences initiate transcription within the human genome is currently unknown." The article thus "analyzed genome sequence and high-throughput expression data to systematically evaluate the presence of retroviral promoters in the human genome."
The results were striking:
We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5' untranslated regions (UTRs).
[…]
Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome. These data suggest that ERVs may regulate human transcription on a large scale.
(Andrew B. Conley, Jittima Piriyapongsa and I. King Jordan, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," Bioinformatics, Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008).)
Darwinists who labeled ERVs as a form of "selfish" and "junk" DNA have been chasing explanations down a blind alley. It should be stated that the authors [of the article quoted above- Asy] do not deviate from the neo-Darwinian paradigm, putting the obligatory evolutionary spin on the data. They claim that it’s a possibility that some of the transcribed ERVs are "not functionally significant," exposing that even in the face of this compelling contrary data, it is difficult for many Darwinists to let go of their seductive but science-stopping "junk-DNA" paradigm.
It seems that Richard Sternberg was correct when he predicted 5 years ago that "the selfish DNA narrative and allied frameworks must join the other ‘icons’ of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that, despite their variance with empirical evidence, nevertheless persist in the literature." (Richard Sternberg, "On the Roles of Repetitive DNA Elements in the Context of a Unified Genomic–Epigenetic System," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 981: 154–88 (2002).)
Posted by Casey Luskin on August 21, 2008
With Acknowledgements to Evolution News and Views published by the Discovery Institute.
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Tuesday 27 October 2009
The Endogenous Retroviruses
I am taking the unusual step of placing this information before readers out of sequence, because the ERVs are one of the greatest props available for evolution. Now this one is on the way out, perhaps attention will focus once more on the absence of intermediate fossils.
I acknowledge the source of this article in: The Journal of Creation Research
http://creation.com/large-scale-function-for-endogenous-retroviruses#txtRef8
Large scale function for ‘endogenous retroviruses’
by Shaun Doyle
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are some of the most cited evidences for evolution. They are part of the suite of ‘junk DNA’ that supposedly comprised the vast majority of our DNA. ERVs are said to be parasitic retroviral DNA sequences that infected our genome long ago and have stayed there ever since. These short DNA strands are found throughout the human genome, and make up about 5% of the DNA,(1) or about 10% of the total amount of DNA that is classified as transposable elements (i.e. 50%).(2)
However, the term ‘endogenous retrovirus’ is a bit of a misnomer. There are numerous instances where small transposable elements thought to be endogenous retroviruses have been found to have functions, which invalidates the ‘random retrovirus insertion’ claim. For instance, studies of embryo development in mice suggest that transposable elements (of which ERVs are a subset) control embryo development. Transposable elements seem to be involved in controlling the sequence and level of gene expression during development, by moving to/from the sites of gene control.(3)
Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs. They act as promoters, starting transcription at alternative starting points, which enables different RNA transcripts to be formed from the same DNA sequence.
‘We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1,743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5’ untranslated regions (UTRs).’(4)
And,
‘Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome.’(5)
Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs.
So we’re not just talking about a small scale phenomenon. These ERVs aid transcription in over one fifth of the human genome! ‘These data illustrate the potential of retroviral sequences to regulate human transcription on a large scale consistent with a substantial effect of ERVs on the function and evolution of the human genome.’(3) This again debunks the idea that 98% of the human genome is junk, and it makes the inserted evolutionary spin look like a tacked-on nod to the evolutionary establishment. These results support the conclusions of the ENCODE project, which found that at least 93% of DNA was transcribed into RNA.
Evolutionists have used shared mistakes in ‘junk DNA’ as ‘proof’ that humans and chimps have a common ancestor. However, if the similar sequences are functional, which they are progressively proving to be, their argument evaporates.
It seems that evolutionist Dr John Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, was spot on in his assessment of the gravity of the ‘junk DNA’ error:
‘The failure to recognize the full implications of this—particularly the possibility that the intervening noncoding sequences may be transmitting parallel information … may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.’(6)
Both biblical creationists(7) and ID proponents (8) predicted that transposable elements, such as ‘endogenous retroviruses’, would have a function. In 2000, creationist molecular biologist Linda Walkup proposed that God could have created transposable elements to facilitate variation (adaptation) within biblical kinds.(7)
If the ‘junk DNA’ is not junk, then it puts a big spanner in the work of molecular taxonomists, who assumed that ‘junk DNA’ was free to mutate at random, unconstrained by the requirements of functionality. As Williams points out:
‘The molecular taxonomists, who have been drawing up evolutionary histories (“phylogenies”) for nearly every kind of life, are going to have to undo all their years of “junk DNA”-based historical reconstructions and wait for the full implications to emerge before they try again.’(9)
References
1. Conley, A.B., Piriyapongsa, J. and Jordan, I.K., Retroviral promoters in the human genome, Bioinformatics 24(14):1563–1567, 2008. Return to text.
2. Thornburg, B.G., Gotea V. and Makałowski W., Transposable elements as a significant source of transcription regulating signals, Gene 365:104–110, 2006. Return to text.
3. Batten, D., No joy for junkies, Journal of Creation (TJ) 19(1):3, 2006;. Return to text.
4. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1563. Return to text.
5. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1566. Return to text.
6. Mattick, J., cited in: Gibbs, W.W., The unseen genome: gems among the junk, Scientific American 289(5):26–33, November 2003; pp. 29–30. Return to text.
7. Walkup, L., ‘Junk’ DNA: evolutionary discards or God’s tools?, Journal of Creation (Technical Journal) 14(2):18–30, 2000;. Return to text.
8. Luskin, C., ‘Large Scale’ function for endogenous retroviruses: Intelligent Design prediction fulfilled while another Darwinist argument bites the dust, Discovery Institute, 21 August 2008,, accessed 12 September 2008. Return to text.
9. Williams, A., Astonishing DNA complexity demolishes neo-Darwinism, Journal of Creation 21(3):111–118, 2007; p. 113.
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“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
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The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
35,000 viewers of my articles can’t all be wrong. Check Google for this subject and see!
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100 pages of amazing facts and carefully reasoned arguments. Equip yourself! Give your children the knowledge to defend belief in Creation in class!
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I acknowledge the source of this article in: The Journal of Creation Research
http://creation.com/large-scale-function-for-endogenous-retroviruses#txtRef8
Large scale function for ‘endogenous retroviruses’
by Shaun Doyle
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are some of the most cited evidences for evolution. They are part of the suite of ‘junk DNA’ that supposedly comprised the vast majority of our DNA. ERVs are said to be parasitic retroviral DNA sequences that infected our genome long ago and have stayed there ever since. These short DNA strands are found throughout the human genome, and make up about 5% of the DNA,(1) or about 10% of the total amount of DNA that is classified as transposable elements (i.e. 50%).(2)
However, the term ‘endogenous retrovirus’ is a bit of a misnomer. There are numerous instances where small transposable elements thought to be endogenous retroviruses have been found to have functions, which invalidates the ‘random retrovirus insertion’ claim. For instance, studies of embryo development in mice suggest that transposable elements (of which ERVs are a subset) control embryo development. Transposable elements seem to be involved in controlling the sequence and level of gene expression during development, by moving to/from the sites of gene control.(3)
Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs. They act as promoters, starting transcription at alternative starting points, which enables different RNA transcripts to be formed from the same DNA sequence.
‘We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1,743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5’ untranslated regions (UTRs).’(4)
And,
‘Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome.’(5)
Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs.
So we’re not just talking about a small scale phenomenon. These ERVs aid transcription in over one fifth of the human genome! ‘These data illustrate the potential of retroviral sequences to regulate human transcription on a large scale consistent with a substantial effect of ERVs on the function and evolution of the human genome.’(3) This again debunks the idea that 98% of the human genome is junk, and it makes the inserted evolutionary spin look like a tacked-on nod to the evolutionary establishment. These results support the conclusions of the ENCODE project, which found that at least 93% of DNA was transcribed into RNA.
Evolutionists have used shared mistakes in ‘junk DNA’ as ‘proof’ that humans and chimps have a common ancestor. However, if the similar sequences are functional, which they are progressively proving to be, their argument evaporates.
It seems that evolutionist Dr John Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, was spot on in his assessment of the gravity of the ‘junk DNA’ error:
‘The failure to recognize the full implications of this—particularly the possibility that the intervening noncoding sequences may be transmitting parallel information … may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.’(6)
Both biblical creationists(7) and ID proponents (8) predicted that transposable elements, such as ‘endogenous retroviruses’, would have a function. In 2000, creationist molecular biologist Linda Walkup proposed that God could have created transposable elements to facilitate variation (adaptation) within biblical kinds.(7)
If the ‘junk DNA’ is not junk, then it puts a big spanner in the work of molecular taxonomists, who assumed that ‘junk DNA’ was free to mutate at random, unconstrained by the requirements of functionality. As Williams points out:
‘The molecular taxonomists, who have been drawing up evolutionary histories (“phylogenies”) for nearly every kind of life, are going to have to undo all their years of “junk DNA”-based historical reconstructions and wait for the full implications to emerge before they try again.’(9)
References
1. Conley, A.B., Piriyapongsa, J. and Jordan, I.K., Retroviral promoters in the human genome, Bioinformatics 24(14):1563–1567, 2008. Return to text.
2. Thornburg, B.G., Gotea V. and Makałowski W., Transposable elements as a significant source of transcription regulating signals, Gene 365:104–110, 2006. Return to text.
3. Batten, D., No joy for junkies, Journal of Creation (TJ) 19(1):3, 2006;
4. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1563. Return to text.
5. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1566. Return to text.
6. Mattick, J., cited in: Gibbs, W.W., The unseen genome: gems among the junk, Scientific American 289(5):26–33, November 2003; pp. 29–30. Return to text.
7. Walkup, L., ‘Junk’ DNA: evolutionary discards or God’s tools?, Journal of Creation (Technical Journal) 14(2):18–30, 2000;
8. Luskin, C., ‘Large Scale’ function for endogenous retroviruses: Intelligent Design prediction fulfilled while another Darwinist argument bites the dust, Discovery Institute, 21 August 2008,
9. Williams, A., Astonishing DNA complexity demolishes neo-Darwinism, Journal of Creation 21(3):111–118, 2007; p. 113.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
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by Asyncritus
AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
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http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?board=17.30
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Monday 26 October 2009
INSTINCTS OF THE HONEY BEE
Because honey is such an important substance in human nutrition (we’ll go into this in some detail later on), and bees have been cultivated for so many centuries because of that honey, there exists a considerable body of knowledge about their behaviour. It is quite impossible to do full justice to them in this short article.
That knowledge has accumulated from the experience of apiculturists, and from very many scientific experiments. The following account is drawn from several major authorities on bees.
Instincts
In this account, you will see just how remarkable a thing instinct is. At every step of this fascinating way, you need to ask the question:
How did an insect, with a brain not too much bigger than a pinhead, ever figure out how to do this?
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall01%20projects/sbeefig6.jpg
There, isn’t that marvellous? Looking at that diagram, you would be less than human if you failed to be impressed with the certainty it exhibits. The combination of large names, and the apparent exactness of the diagram, create a powerful impression of correctness.
Unfortunately, the facts are against the connecting lines, ESPECIALLY AT THE START OF THE DIAGRAM RIGHT AT THE TOP LEFT HAND CORNER.
THERE IS NO COMMON ANCESTOR KNOWN, as the fossil record shows very plainly.
Fossil Bees
The very first fossils of bees are identifiably bees. There is no question about this, and here is a picture of one of the first bee fossils.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15418131/
It is unquestionably a bee, and there is no question about it having evolved from anything else.
Of course there are silly suggestions about ‘evolution from wasps’, but they are quite necessarily vague about it, because the wasps show no sign of having evolved from anything else either. (See the article on the Eumenes Wasp in this series on this blog).
Here is
“The fossil record of bees is relatively poor. Alexander & Michener (1995) commented as follows: "the fossil record [of bees] is extraordinarily fragmentary and biased toward taxa that collect resin for nesting purposes, and thus occasionally are trapped in it and fossilized in amber." The vast majority of bee fossils are in amber, and virtually all are Eocene or later in age (Rasnitsyn & Michener 1991, Engel 2001b).
Among the most important fossil bees is the presumed oldest fossil bee, Cretotrigona prisca, (here’s an artist’s impression of how it looked) from New Jersey amber (Michener and Grimaldi 1988a,b; Engel 2000a).
[In the original paper, it is described as a worker bee, indicating that the social stratification of bees was already in existence].
While initially presumed to be 80 Ma in age (Michener & Grimaldi 1988a, b), it has since been estimated to be 70 Ma (Grimaldi 1999) and 65 Ma (Engel 2000a) in age. Furthermore, whether it is Cretaceous at all has been questioned by Rasnitsyn & Michener (1991). If this fossil is indeed from the late Cretaceous, it suggests that, far from being in their earliest stages of evolution, the bees had already undergone significant diversification by the end of the Cretaceous.
Overall, considering the bee and spheciform fossil record one is forced to the conclusion that the fossils currently available significantly underestimate the age of both these groups.”
The wasps, from the Lower Cretaceous, are also easily identifiable as wasps, and it is a useful exercise to look at this link, where you will see that every specimen, is as exactly and easily identifiable as those of today. http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm
So it is curious to hear the suggestion that bees evolved from wasps.
The differences are enormous:
1 Wasps do not make honey, bees do.
2 Wasps do not collect pollen and nectar. Bees do.
3 Wasps make nests out of paper. Bees make nests out of wax. The two chemicals are entirely distinct, require entirely different biochemical processes in their manufacture, and have nothing in common.
The wasp chews timber into a pulp and makes the paper that way. Bees have special glands under their abdomen which produce the wax.
4 Wasps chew food. Bees lap nectar
5 Wasps can sting more than once. Bees can only sting once and then die.
6 Wasps don't store food in their nests. Bees do
7 Wasps don't swarm. Bees do.
If you look at the fossil of the bee (above) you will note that it has wings. If you look here again http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm
you will notice that the wasps also had wings.
Now these are among the VERY EARLIEST BEES AND WASPS found. And that presents evolutionists with some dire problems.
Assuming they could fly (which seems reasonable, given their wings, similar as they are to today’s bees) then:
Flying is a tremendous skill to have, once you’ve got it. But how does a bee, with a brain, as we have said, about as big as a pinhead,
a. get its wings (remember, there are two pairs!) and
b. learn how to use them? and
c. figure out how to get that information into its genome?
There are no sensible answers to those questions. The physical equipment is difficult enough to account for in evolutionary terms, but the skills and the instincts? And getting the information into the genome?
Evolution cannot account for the origin of these very basic questions, and therefore fails, and should be rejected as a theory of origins.
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The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
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Get your copy here. Only $19.97 as pdf.
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Friday 23 October 2009
The Bell Spider
Male and female spiders from wiki
THE
Here is a pretty conundrum for the evolutionists.
Spiders areALL land animals. This spider is the ONLY spider to live underwater. How did it learn how to do so? http://www.spiderzrule.com/spider1.htm
The spider, an arachnid, builds a platform between the stalks of underwater plants. It attaches the platform to the stalks by silk threads, and then produces long threads which float in the water, apparently to guide the animal back to its nest. Clever, that. The threads also warn it of the approach of prey.
What now?
The hairs on the spider’s abdomen are specially designed to trap air bubbles. So it goes to the surface, air gets trapped in the hairs, and it submerges again, goes to the nest, and ‘scrapes’ the bubbles off the hairs. The bubbles are trapped by the platform, and forced up by the negative buoyancy of the air trapped in it, and forms a bell shape.
GO here for pictures of this process;
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/incredible-aqualung-diving-bell-spider/13855The spider lives in the bubble and waits in there for its prey to go past.
This extraordinary behaviour, in this the ONLY species to exhibit this behaviour pattern, is nothing short of a death-blow to ANY evolutionary explanations of its origin.
There is no way that this creature, with a brain the size of a pinhead, if that, could have worked out
1 How to make its silk
2 How to construct its underwater platform
3 How to trap air in its hairs
4 How to scrape it off underwater
5 That its prey would come swimming or floating by
6 How to catch it underwater
And why should it have gone underwater in the first place?
The female lays its eggs in the bell, and the juveniles trap some air from the bubbles, dart up to the surface, collect more, and set off to establish their new homes. How did they learn to do this? Instinct, you see!
Evolutionists are renowned for their fertile imaginations, but it is, as I say, impossible even to imagine a way for this to happen.
The theory has been falsified again: it cannot explain ANOTHER observation.
The evolution of spiders is yet ANOTHER example of evolutionary hopelessness. The very earliest fossils show no difference to today's.spiders.
Here is the wikipedia article on the subject, and you will see the pictures and comments there to this exact effect.
Wiki;
You note, they knew how to spin silk, make webs, catch insects and feed. They knew how to lay eggs, how to mate.
In addition to preserving spiders' anatomy in very fine detail, pieces of amber show spiders mating, killing prey, producing silk and possibly caring for their young. In a few cases amber has preserved spiders' egg sacs and webs, occasionally with prey attached; the oldest fossil web found so far is 100 million years old.
Every one of those items represents a full grown, perfectly developed INSTINCT, implanted in these little creatures in a state of perfection and completeness. they did not evolve, they could not evolve, and they have not evolved.
So, no change, no evolution, no origin. The first discovered spiders are exactly like their descendants.
We will return to the topic of spiders later, because they also present evolution with absolutely HUGE problems - like everything else in the living world.
Just as a dying tree begins to wither at the very tips, the smallest parts of the plant, just so these apparently insignificant items are really major indicators that the theory of evolution is really dead.
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Further details about the Bats
THE MIRACLE OF THE BAT ttp://tolweb.org/Chiroptera
Excellent article, pretty comprehensive: http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/u/mairas/pubs/echolocation_in_bats.pdf
Echo-location and flying Mammals
Introduction
We’ve all seen bats flitting about in the night sky, or pouring in massive swarms out of a cave. Two remarkable things are:
1 They miss one another
2 They feed on insects which they can a. detect and b. intercept and c. catch.
But let’s say a few words about this incredible phenomenon.
How do they do it?
‘This sonar [of the bat] is a marvellous discriminator: in a bat–swarm, in cave or night air, a bat can know its own sound among thousands of mobile neighbours, detecting its own signals even if they are 2000 times fainter than background noises. It can “see” prey, such as a fruitfly, up to 100 feet away by echo location and catch four or five in a second. And this whole auditory system weighs a fraction of a gram! Ounce for ounce, watt for watt, it is millions of times more efficient and more sensitive than the radars and sonars contrived by man.”
That excellent description clearly shows the standard features of Design
1 Complexity: the structure of the echo-locating system is miniaturised to fit inside the small skull of a bat, whose brain probably weighs only a few grams (about 15g in many cases). Flight is another complex achievement. NO OTHER MAMMALS CAN FLY.
2 Specificity: the echolocating device is amazingly good at locating insects, obstacles and doubtless predators. The flight mechanism is specifically functional.
3 Information: Highly advanced information is employed as the following shows.
Evolution of the Bat
There is none evidenced.
The skeleton of the Eocene bat, 54 million years ago, shows no important differences to those of today’s bats. But remarkably, they show that development which indicates that the sonar apparatus was already in existence.
"Unfortunately, the fossils available only complicate matters. They do not represent transitional morphology between quadrupedal (four-footed) animals and flying bats, and they represent animals nearly as specialized as their modern relatives"
Thewissen, J. G. M., and S. K. Babcock (1992). The Origin of Flight in Bats, BioScience, May, v. 42 n. 5, pp. 340-345.
John Hill says almost the same thing:
"...all fossil bats, even the oldest, are clearly fully-developed bats and so they shed little light on the transition from their terrestrial ancestor"
Hill, John E., and James D. Smith (1984). Bats: A Natural History, University of Texas Press, Austin.
Complexity, specificity and excellence
“We now know that bats have a method of doing synthetic aperture sonar while flying that not only determines the distance and direction of all the objects in a scene, but also reconstructs one specific object's shape. What's really incredible is that they can do both simultaneously."
I might add, at quite some speed too.
"ONR [The Office of Naval Research] would like to get naval sonars, both in listening and in processing the return information, a bit more, well, bat-like," notes ONR's Harold Hawkins.
"We would like to emulate this capability for the quick, accurate detection and classification of buried mines," said Harold Hawkins, a program manager with the biosonar program at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia.
Excellence
In experiments, bats separately perceived and processed overlapping echo delays arriving as little as two microseconds - two millionths of a second - apart, an ability roughly three times keener than scientists had believed was possible in the mammals.
This fine-tuned capability, based in the bat's nervous system, allowed the animals to resolve echo-reflecting points on an object as close together as three-tenths of a millimeter, about the width of a pen line on paper. Such image resolution is significantly better than any man-made sonar, say the study authors.
"Using the same sounds as the bat, the best man-made sonar equipment can only process echo delays arriving five to 10 microseconds apart," said study leader James Simmons, professor of neuroscience in the Brown University School of Medicine. "The experiments showed that a bat's sonar resolved echoes that arrived two microseconds apart as easily and routinely as if there were 10 microseconds between them."
Use of Advanced Information
Knowledge of the laws governing sound travelling in air are clearly in evidence here. A bat emits a sound, which hits an object and is bounced back to the originator.
An article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on bat echolocation states:
Theory developed from acoustics and sonar engineering permits a strong predictive basis for understanding echolocation performance. Call features, such as frequency, bandwidth, duration and pulse interval are all related to ecological niche.'
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/c7555003jn246l27/
We note firstly, that the bat knows that the sound IS going to be bounced back.
Secondly, the bat therefore has receptors which can receive the returning signals.
Thirdly, the bat has an onboard computer which calculates instantaneously how far away the object is,
Fourthly, the bat can calculate exceedingly accurately how far it will have moved itself by the time the signal returns. It can also calculate how far its prey will have moved, and its direction of movement. It can then compute a course to intercept the insect, and does so at the rate of 4/5 insects per minute.
Fifthly, it is navigating and flying at the same time. So the onboard computer has numerous functions to carry out simultaneously and additionally, including respiration, heartbeat, and other standard physiological duties.
Such calculations rival those in warplanes today, and just as those warplanes exhibit design, so does the bat. The bat, however can reproduce itself, and in this respect far supersedes any man-made contrivance.
The quotations below are further impressive technical features of bats' echo-location apparatus..
Further comments on Bat evolution
The bat is a warm-blooded animal, bearing fur, and suckling its young on milk,[i]and flying[/i].
So in order to ‘explain’ their evolution, we have to suppose innumerable small steps, where we see the bat’s supposed ancestors busy climbing trees or rock faces, leaping from the tops, holding their fingers wide apart in the effort to fly while their superb echo-locating apparatus warns them of the swiftly and fatally approaching ground below. It’s no wonder there are so many fossils. They all broke their necks jumping off trees trying to fly.
I said ‘fingers’ – because a bat’s wing is supported between digits, unlike other winged animals. If you look at the skeleton of a pterodactyl, you will see the difference plainly – but the pterodactyl was a reptile. I repeat the impossibility: a bat is a flying mammal.
Such acoustic and aerodynamic engineering capability is far beyond the capacity of chance to generate.
So to summarise, Complexity, Specificity and use of very Advanced Information in the construction of a bat, conclusively show that it cannot have been produced by chance, but by A Designer.
Instinct
We again note that instinct plays an enormous part in every aspect of the bat's natural history.
1 First, getting wings is an impossibility by any known evolutionary method.
2 Second, allowing that a pre-bat somehow DID evolve wings, then what would it do with them, since it didn't have a clue what they were about.
In fact, the bat would be at a very severe disadvantage - because IT HAD COMPLETELY LOST THE USE OF ITS FINGERS which had turned into wings.
3 But that's not all that was new. Suddenly, it had this sonar thing in its head. What to do with it, one wonders. Put an untrained ground crewman in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft which is equipped with the best echolocation apparatus ever invented, and send him out to shoot fast-flying hostiles.
He wouldn't get into the air, in the first place, and in the second wouldn't know how to use his fantastic new equipment.
Given a brain the size of a walnut or smaller in the microchiropteran bats, and given no training in flight or in the use of this unbelievably complex new equipment, I suggest that the new bat wouldn't last long.
The best equipment is useless without the instincts that power its use, and the best instincts are useless without the equipment to use.
BOTH HAD TO APPEAR AT THE SAME TIME - instantaneously, and perfectly functioning - there is absolutely NO WAY that 'gradual evolution' could have occurred.
But immensely advanced technology doesn't just happen. It is created by highly intelligent designers, with major amounts of equipment and materials at their disposal.
So how comes it that a bat 'developed', 'evolved' these fantastic designs which fill aeronautical engineers, acoustical engineers, and the military with such awe that they are even now trying to copy those designs.
And remember, the hardware is one thing - the software is another entirely. Those instincts represent the software - and no-one would dare say that the Windows program happened because there was an explosion in one of Bill Gates' factories.
No, it is obvious, even to someone as blind as a bat, that it was DESIGNED.
And design requires A DESIGNER.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
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The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
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Excellent article, pretty comprehensive: http://www.acoustics.hut.fi/u/mairas/pubs/echolocation_in_bats.pdf
Echo-location and flying Mammals
Introduction
We’ve all seen bats flitting about in the night sky, or pouring in massive swarms out of a cave. Two remarkable things are:
1 They miss one another
2 They feed on insects which they can a. detect and b. intercept and c. catch.
But let’s say a few words about this incredible phenomenon.
How do they do it?
‘This sonar [of the bat] is a marvellous discriminator: in a bat–swarm, in cave or night air, a bat can know its own sound among thousands of mobile neighbours, detecting its own signals even if they are 2000 times fainter than background noises. It can “see” prey, such as a fruitfly, up to 100 feet away by echo location and catch four or five in a second. And this whole auditory system weighs a fraction of a gram! Ounce for ounce, watt for watt, it is millions of times more efficient and more sensitive than the radars and sonars contrived by man.”
That excellent description clearly shows the standard features of Design
1 Complexity: the structure of the echo-locating system is miniaturised to fit inside the small skull of a bat, whose brain probably weighs only a few grams (about 15g in many cases). Flight is another complex achievement. NO OTHER MAMMALS CAN FLY.
2 Specificity: the echolocating device is amazingly good at locating insects, obstacles and doubtless predators. The flight mechanism is specifically functional.
3 Information: Highly advanced information is employed as the following shows.
Evolution of the Bat
There is none evidenced.
The skeleton of the Eocene bat, 54 million years ago, shows no important differences to those of today’s bats. But remarkably, they show that development which indicates that the sonar apparatus was already in existence.
"Unfortunately, the fossils available only complicate matters. They do not represent transitional morphology between quadrupedal (four-footed) animals and flying bats, and they represent animals nearly as specialized as their modern relatives"
Thewissen, J. G. M., and S. K. Babcock (1992). The Origin of Flight in Bats, BioScience, May, v. 42 n. 5, pp. 340-345.
John Hill says almost the same thing:
"...all fossil bats, even the oldest, are clearly fully-developed bats and so they shed little light on the transition from their terrestrial ancestor"
Hill, John E., and James D. Smith (1984). Bats: A Natural History, University of Texas Press, Austin.
Complexity, specificity and excellence
“We now know that bats have a method of doing synthetic aperture sonar while flying that not only determines the distance and direction of all the objects in a scene, but also reconstructs one specific object's shape. What's really incredible is that they can do both simultaneously."
I might add, at quite some speed too.
"ONR [The Office of Naval Research] would like to get naval sonars, both in listening and in processing the return information, a bit more, well, bat-like," notes ONR's Harold Hawkins.
"We would like to emulate this capability for the quick, accurate detection and classification of buried mines," said Harold Hawkins, a program manager with the biosonar program at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Virginia.
Excellence
In experiments, bats separately perceived and processed overlapping echo delays arriving as little as two microseconds - two millionths of a second - apart, an ability roughly three times keener than scientists had believed was possible in the mammals.
This fine-tuned capability, based in the bat's nervous system, allowed the animals to resolve echo-reflecting points on an object as close together as three-tenths of a millimeter, about the width of a pen line on paper. Such image resolution is significantly better than any man-made sonar, say the study authors.
"Using the same sounds as the bat, the best man-made sonar equipment can only process echo delays arriving five to 10 microseconds apart," said study leader James Simmons, professor of neuroscience in the Brown University School of Medicine. "The experiments showed that a bat's sonar resolved echoes that arrived two microseconds apart as easily and routinely as if there were 10 microseconds between them."
Use of Advanced Information
Knowledge of the laws governing sound travelling in air are clearly in evidence here. A bat emits a sound, which hits an object and is bounced back to the originator.
An article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on bat echolocation states:
Theory developed from acoustics and sonar engineering permits a strong predictive basis for understanding echolocation performance. Call features, such as frequency, bandwidth, duration and pulse interval are all related to ecological niche.'
http://www.journals.royalsoc.ac.uk/content/c7555003jn246l27/
We note firstly, that the bat knows that the sound IS going to be bounced back.
Secondly, the bat therefore has receptors which can receive the returning signals.
Thirdly, the bat has an onboard computer which calculates instantaneously how far away the object is,
Fourthly, the bat can calculate exceedingly accurately how far it will have moved itself by the time the signal returns. It can also calculate how far its prey will have moved, and its direction of movement. It can then compute a course to intercept the insect, and does so at the rate of 4/5 insects per minute.
Fifthly, it is navigating and flying at the same time. So the onboard computer has numerous functions to carry out simultaneously and additionally, including respiration, heartbeat, and other standard physiological duties.
Such calculations rival those in warplanes today, and just as those warplanes exhibit design, so does the bat. The bat, however can reproduce itself, and in this respect far supersedes any man-made contrivance.
The quotations below are further impressive technical features of bats' echo-location apparatus..
[One wonders how a bat ever found out about Doppler shifts, and then figured out how to use it, and then constructed the apparatus to use the information, and then fit all that into the genome, and into the walnut-sized brain that it has!]
'Quantitative measures were obtained from the vocal signals produced by echolocating bats (Eptesicus fuscus) that were trained to perform in two distinct perceptual tasks, echo delay and Doppler-shift discriminations. (!!!!!)
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040108&ct=1
In both perceptual tasks, the bats learned to discriminate electronically manipulated playback signals of their own echolocation sounds, which simulated echoes from sonar targets. Both tasks utilized a single-channel electronic target simulator and tested the bat's in a two-alternative forced choice procedure. The results of this study demonstrate changes in the features of the FM bats' sonar sounds with echolocation task demands, lending support to the notion that this animal actively controls the echo information that guides its behavior.' ©2000 Acoustical Society of America.
'We used high speed stereo infra-red videography to study the three dimensional flight paths of the big brown bat, Eptesicus fuscus, as it chased erratically moving insects in a dark laboratory flight room. We quantified the bat's complex pursuit trajectories using a simple delay differential equation.
Our analysis of the pursuit trajectories suggests that bats use a constant absolute target direction strategy during pursuit. We show mathematically that, unlike CB [constant bearing], this approach minimizes the time it takes for a pursuer to intercept an unpredictably moving target.
Interestingly, the bat's behavior is similar to the interception strategy implemented in some guided missiles.'
Further comments on Bat evolution
The bat is a warm-blooded animal, bearing fur, and suckling its young on milk,[i]and flying[/i].
So in order to ‘explain’ their evolution, we have to suppose innumerable small steps, where we see the bat’s supposed ancestors busy climbing trees or rock faces, leaping from the tops, holding their fingers wide apart in the effort to fly while their superb echo-locating apparatus warns them of the swiftly and fatally approaching ground below. It’s no wonder there are so many fossils. They all broke their necks jumping off trees trying to fly.
I said ‘fingers’ – because a bat’s wing is supported between digits, unlike other winged animals. If you look at the skeleton of a pterodactyl, you will see the difference plainly – but the pterodactyl was a reptile. I repeat the impossibility: a bat is a flying mammal.
Such acoustic and aerodynamic engineering capability is far beyond the capacity of chance to generate.
So to summarise, Complexity, Specificity and use of very Advanced Information in the construction of a bat, conclusively show that it cannot have been produced by chance, but by A Designer.
Instinct
We again note that instinct plays an enormous part in every aspect of the bat's natural history.
1 First, getting wings is an impossibility by any known evolutionary method.
2 Second, allowing that a pre-bat somehow DID evolve wings, then what would it do with them, since it didn't have a clue what they were about.
In fact, the bat would be at a very severe disadvantage - because IT HAD COMPLETELY LOST THE USE OF ITS FINGERS which had turned into wings.
3 But that's not all that was new. Suddenly, it had this sonar thing in its head. What to do with it, one wonders. Put an untrained ground crewman in the cockpit of a fighter aircraft which is equipped with the best echolocation apparatus ever invented, and send him out to shoot fast-flying hostiles.
He wouldn't get into the air, in the first place, and in the second wouldn't know how to use his fantastic new equipment.
Given a brain the size of a walnut or smaller in the microchiropteran bats, and given no training in flight or in the use of this unbelievably complex new equipment, I suggest that the new bat wouldn't last long.
The best equipment is useless without the instincts that power its use, and the best instincts are useless without the equipment to use.
BOTH HAD TO APPEAR AT THE SAME TIME - instantaneously, and perfectly functioning - there is absolutely NO WAY that 'gradual evolution' could have occurred.
But immensely advanced technology doesn't just happen. It is created by highly intelligent designers, with major amounts of equipment and materials at their disposal.
So how comes it that a bat 'developed', 'evolved' these fantastic designs which fill aeronautical engineers, acoustical engineers, and the military with such awe that they are even now trying to copy those designs.
And remember, the hardware is one thing - the software is another entirely. Those instincts represent the software - and no-one would dare say that the Windows program happened because there was an explosion in one of Bill Gates' factories.
No, it is obvious, even to someone as blind as a bat, that it was DESIGNED.
And design requires A DESIGNER.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
OR
Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus
AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
35,000 viewers of my articles can’t all be wrong. Check Google for this subject and see!
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?board=17.30
100 pages of amazing facts and carefully reasoned arguments. Equip yourself! Give your children the knowledge to defend belief in Creation in class!
Get your copy here. Only $19.97 as pdf.
$27 plus $5 p&p in CDR format.
MIRACULOUS LIFE CYCLES
The Butterfly
The Life Cycle of all insects presents insuperable problems for the theory of evolution.
This is quite separate from the issue of how insect flight could possibly have evolved. The earliest flying insects were nearly identical to those of today, and they’ve found butterfly fossils in the Cretaceous.
Here is a vastly simplified account for you evolutionists to chew on.
The fertilised female lays her eggs on an appropriate leaf: for instance, the cabbage white butterfly lays her eggs on cabbage plants as the name suggests.
Let me draw out a few of the inexplicables.
First, the phenomenon of meiosis took place in male and female butterflies, in the gonads. As if they knew that the number of chromosomes in the little fertilised ovum had to be the same as in each of the pair, and that half plus half makes one.
Second, the sexual organs of male and female are complementary – meaning that there is a penis and a semen-receptacle in the female.
Third, the antennae are also useful for smell. Female butterflies release pheromones (like a perfume) into the air. The male butterflies of many species can detect the pheromones from as far away as 2 kilometers (over a mile). Depending on the concentration of the pheromones, the male will be able to find the female to mate with her. It's worth noting that some species of moths are sensitive to the presence of the females' pheromones up to five kilometers (about three miles) distant. http://centralamerica.com/cr/butterfly/
Fourth, the eggs are equipped with some kind of glue, which causes them to adhere to the leaf.
The eggs hatch out into larvae or grubs or caterpillars, which as we all know, are about as un-butterfly-looking creatures as elephants. These eat enormous quantities of leafy material, using their specially designed jaws, and then their cellulose-digesting alimentary canals. (Leaf material is tough, but the grubs handle it, despite the fact that the adult can only feed on juices like nectar.)They grow at a prodigious rate.
Then, because they are growing so fast, they molt: i.e. shed their skin, like a snake. Some do this about 4 times.
Then, they wrap themselves in a cocoon, and enter the pupal stage, which in some ways is the most extraordinary of all.
Inside the cocoon, the grub’s stomach produces quantities of digestive juices, which entirely dissolve the grub’s structure. Entirely. There is absolutely nothing left of the grub. Some authorities claim that even the cells themselves dissolve.
Then the wonderful reconstitution takes place, and inside the darkness of the pupa, eyes which have never seen the light, form to function in the light. Wings, which have never flown, or even know of the existence of air, form to take to the air. Reproductive organs, which have never mated, form in order to mate. The wonderful design patterns of the wings, form to give us pleasure; but the butterfly knows not that we exist. A coiled, long proboscis – able to enter into the heart of flowers the developing butterfly knows nothing about - forms, to suck the nectar the insect has never tasted. Antennae form, which can detect pheromones miles (literally) away, not knowing of the existence of such things.
And a butterfly emerges into the world to live for a few days: fluttering brightly, beautifully and erratically in search of flowers for food, and a mate to reproduce.
There is no conceivable way that this life cycle could have evolved. From what? And how?
No. This was designed by the Great Designer.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
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Evolution's Soft Underbelly
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AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
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http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?board=17.30
100 pages of amazing facts and carefully reasoned arguments. Equip yourself! Give your children the knowledge to defend belief in Creation in class!
Get your copy here. Only $19.97 as pdf.
$27 plus $5 p&p in CDR format.
The Evolution of snakes' poison apparatus
THE SNAKE'S POISON APPARATUS
Alan Hayward said that : Professor G A Kerkut of
Kerkut took a very hard look at the theory in his book, and one point that stands out was his recognition that gradual evolution could not explain the origin of the poison apparatus of snakes. If we look at the requirements of the poison apparatus, we can soon see why he took the point of view that he did.
All or nothing
AS we’ve shown on several occasions this blog, there is a very serious number of all or nothing mechanisms. The yucca moth is extraordinary; the eumenes wasp is nearly so; the
The poison apparatus of snakes is no less amazing than these.
As we all know, venomous snakes bite and poison their prey by injecting venom through their fangs. Each one of that short list has serious physical, and biochemical implications which are inexplicable on any but the creationist model.
Whatever else we may think of the mechanics of poisoning its prey, a snake has to possess the necessary instincts required BEFORE any such apparatus is of any use. It somehow has to know that it must identify, kill or stun its prey; it must know how to get near; it must know how to hide, how to camouflage itself etc etc.
Without all these things, the best apparatus would be useless. So since poisonous snakes represent a successful group, the inevitable question arises: where did it get these instincts from, and how did the information enter the genes? And just as important, WHY did they arise when there was no poison apparatus for the animal to use?
The Poison and the Poison Glands
Let’s begin with the poison itself.
Somehow, the poison which is going to be used, is extracted by the poison glands themselves from the blood. This alone represents an enormous biochemical feat. To become a poisoner, one needs to know how to obtain the poison. It is impossible for a snake to learn this deadly skill from its non-poisonous parents or from anywhere else.
It has to take the constituent substances from its own blood, and biochemically manufacture them safely in the poison glands which must be expressly designed for this purpose. The glands are sealed, so that the venom cannot re-enter the blood of the snake once it has been manufactured, which would be really too bad. This is an all or nothing, life or death mechanism – literally.
Not only that, but the glands are surrounded by a double capsule whose outermost and strongest layer is muscular, and is used to contract, and squeeze the gland, and express the venom once the fangs are sunk in the prey’s tissue. Without this layer, the venom would remain in the gland, and useless to the snake. Some snakes eat toads, and amazingly enough take the poisonous substances from the toads, and store them for their own use if this article is to be believed: news.mongabay.com/2007/0129-snake.html
So this process is absolutely fraught with danger to the reptile, and it is a wonder they survive – but survive they do, and successfully. To postulate that such a remarkably ingenious mechanism could possibly arise by chance mutations etc etc is to be absurd.
The Fangs
Not only are the poison glands remarkable – but the fangs are too. There are two sorts, the erectile fangs, which only become bared and upright when the snake is ready to bite, and the permanently erect type which is always upright.
The fangs are hollow, and connected to the poison glands by a tube. Wouldn’t it have been pointless (ho ho!) if the fangs and the glands were not connected? The snake would have starved. And if the fangs were not pointed and capable of entering the prey’s tissues, all the snake would manage to do would be to give it a good lick. But they are pointed AND hollow AND connected to the poison factory. Three mighty statistical impossibilities.
But this isn’t the only problem the original poisonous snake had to solve. Once it had killed the prey, it had to avoid poisoning itself with its own poison that was IN the prey. How did it manage this by chance mutations, one wonders.
The eyes and musculature
The spitting cobra is a most remarkable animal. We have seen on TV series just how far it can spit its venom. The presenters wore sunglasses to prevent the venom getting into their eyes, and the snakes rarely missed.
How did that ability evolve – and from what? Then, of course, there is the question of the snake’s eyesight. It must be able to measure distances to the prey accurately, by sight. A single eyed animal couldn’t do this – so they have 2 eyes. Perfectly functioning, as people who have been bitten will testify only too sadly.
There is a most unusual feature of their eyes, which alone separates them from any supposed ancestor. Here's wikipedia on the point:
"Most snakes focus by moving the lens back and forth in relation to the retina, while in the other amniote groups, the lens is stretched."
In our eyes, when we focus on a near object, the muscles surrounding it (the ciliary muscles) contract, and the lens becomes thicker. When we look at a distant object, the lens becomes thinner. http://www.med.harvard.edu/publications/On...er3/Myopia.html
In the snake's eye, instead of becoming thicker or thinner, the lens is moved forward or backward to adjust the focus on the object.
It is so totally different that Gordon Walls wrote: http://www.jstor.org/pss/1439015
"It has long seemed strange that the eyes of snakes should differ so much from those of lizards considering the closeness of the relationship of the two groups. Indeed, the ophidian (meaning snake) eye exhibits not one solitary structural feature which would enable a comparative ophtalmologist, handed a microscopic preparation of it, to place its owner in the Sauropsidia at all."
Here is a heavy blow in the eye for common descent. Many of the optimistic lineages or alleged connections between the snakes and other groups founder on this single extraordinary fact, which doesn't come from some molecular biochemist's test tube, but from field and anatomical observations. There is no satisfactory evolutionary explanation of this fact available.
The nervous system
There is the question too, of the nervous system of the snake: it has to synchronise, co-ordinate and oversee the whole process: from poison manufacture to getting the snake’s body into the correct position to strike, to injecting the venom, to swallowing the prey whole, and so on.
An enormously complex, and perfectly synchronised operation.
The snake’s jaw
Let me remind readers that the jaw of a snake is doubly hinged, so that the gape is much larger than would be expected from the head size of the animal. It is larger so the serpent can swallow the prey whole. Think of a python swallowing a calf, for example. http://www.biomechanics.bio.uci.edu/_html/...blind/blind.htm
http://rcreptiles.com/blog/index.php/2006/..._to_swallow_suc
It is tempting to try and imagine how many snakes with perfectly functioning poison apparatus starved to death before their jaws opened wide enough!
As we all know, the snake uncoils itself amazingly fast – ‘as fast as a striking snake’ has come into the language. The musculature required to do this must be present. The snake erects itself, the extreme of this being seen in the cobras, most notably the spitting cobras. How could such musculature evolve, and from what?
As usual, nobody knows. “The discovery of a new fossil snake may shed light on the poorly known evolution and ancestry of snakes, paleontologists announced April 16, 1997.” www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/03/000317051940.htm
“
If this finding is confirmed, it means that we have to completely re-think our view of how snakes evolved. It appears that the snakes underwent a rapid radiation in their initial burst of evolution, with a number of different lifestyles appearing at once and then developing independently and in parallel afterwards. Much work remains to be done on the evolution of snakes.” http://arachnophiliac.info/burrow/evolution_of_snakes.htm
They don’t seem to learn, do they.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
OR
Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus
AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
35,000 viewers of my articles can’t all be wrong. Check Google for this subject and see!
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The Migration of the green turtle
The Migration of the Green Turtle
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?
"Green turtles, Chelonia mydas, make lengthy, regular migrations from Brazil to their nesting grounds on Ascension Island, 1400 miles away. The navigational systems used by Chelonia are unknown [heh heh heh!]; but recent measurements of visual acuity in green turtles suggest that they cannot use stars for guidance[heh heh!]. In this paper, we evaluate the possibility that orientation is based, in part, on the detection of some chemical substance originating at Ascension Island."
[What nonsense! Some chemical from Ascension Island, being identified by green turtles, at a distance of 1,400 miles! Must be a pretty powerful pong! And sufficiently powerful to guide a green turtle over a distance of ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED MILES, in water yet!]
Here is the phenomenon of instinct in full flower.
Let's assume that there IS some chemical emitted by Ascension Island, which reaches the turtle in Brazil. Improbable, but let's assume.
That chemical must trigger some instinctive response in the turtle, which causes it to set off, on this incredibly long journey. Where did that instinct come from? How did it become implanted in the animal's genome?
Then we have the navigational problem.
Suppose you are scuba diving, could withstand any amount of soaking, and had the necessary supplies etc to swim 1,400 miles.
You dive into the water and set off. In which direction are you going to go? Where IS Ascension Island anyway? And how are you going to find it?
I submit that you would probably be dead a long time before you ever found the island, and then faced the return journey.
So how does this turtle do it? And why?
That instinct must have been implanted there, full blown, complete, and functioning. It simply could not have evolved by any method known to man.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
OR
Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus
AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
35,000 viewers of my articles can’t all be wrong. Check Google for this subject and see!
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?board=17.30
100 pages of amazing facts and carefully reasoned arguments. Equip yourself! Give your children the knowledge to defend belief in Creation in class!
Get your copy here. Only $19.97 as pdf.
$27 plus $5 p&p in CDR format.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?
"Green turtles, Chelonia mydas, make lengthy, regular migrations from Brazil to their nesting grounds on Ascension Island, 1400 miles away. The navigational systems used by Chelonia are unknown [heh heh heh!]; but recent measurements of visual acuity in green turtles suggest that they cannot use stars for guidance[heh heh!]. In this paper, we evaluate the possibility that orientation is based, in part, on the detection of some chemical substance originating at Ascension Island."
[What nonsense! Some chemical from Ascension Island, being identified by green turtles, at a distance of 1,400 miles! Must be a pretty powerful pong! And sufficiently powerful to guide a green turtle over a distance of ONE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED MILES, in water yet!]
Here is the phenomenon of instinct in full flower.
Let's assume that there IS some chemical emitted by Ascension Island, which reaches the turtle in Brazil. Improbable, but let's assume.
That chemical must trigger some instinctive response in the turtle, which causes it to set off, on this incredibly long journey. Where did that instinct come from? How did it become implanted in the animal's genome?
Then we have the navigational problem.
Suppose you are scuba diving, could withstand any amount of soaking, and had the necessary supplies etc to swim 1,400 miles.
You dive into the water and set off. In which direction are you going to go? Where IS Ascension Island anyway? And how are you going to find it?
I submit that you would probably be dead a long time before you ever found the island, and then faced the return journey.
So how does this turtle do it? And why?
That instinct must have been implanted there, full blown, complete, and functioning. It simply could not have evolved by any method known to man.
NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!
“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”
OR
Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus
AT LAST!
The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is
NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!
35,000 viewers of my articles can’t all be wrong. Check Google for this subject and see!
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?board=17.30
100 pages of amazing facts and carefully reasoned arguments. Equip yourself! Give your children the knowledge to defend belief in Creation in class!
Get your copy here. Only $19.97 as pdf.
$27 plus $5 p&p in CDR format.
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