Asyncritus' How Does Instinct Evolve

A Summary of Refutations of Evolution

2011-09-17T18:31:00.000-07:00

This article was written as a summary of a debate with some Christadelphians, notably one gentleman named Gilmore.

It presents a detailed summary of objections to the theory, which I raised in the course of the debate, and to which there has never been any refutation. Enjoy.

SUMMARY OF REFUTATIONS inc Rock lobster’s eye

I have presented a huge number of facts which are inexplicable on any theory of evolution.

The evolution team, with no answers at their disposal, have resorted to silly responses, have presented no facts that are contrary to the evidence I have presented, are incapable of doing so, and now have to fall back on other methods of upholding their straw hut.

Each point brought up by that armchair supporter Gilmore, who has no qualifications in evolutionary biology, palaeontology, genomics or any other relevant science such as he required me to have(and by implication others on my side), without which we are deemed to be uninformed, armchair critics, has now been refuted quite comprehensively.

The Endogenous Retroviruses

1 The endogenous retroviruses, whose genomes can be read both forward and backward, cannot, by virtue of that single fact, be the products of any chance construction. Therefore, for whatever reasons, they were divinely constructed and inserted, and provide no proof of common descent from anything.

The Chromosomal Similarities between Primates and Humans

2 The fact that the primates have 2 chromosomes more than humans cannot be explained on any grounds of common descent, similarities notwithstanding. As we all know from experience, a single chromosome added to the normal human complement produces the abnormality known as Down's syndrome. If common ancestor A had a smaller number of chromosomes than either primates or humans, then the addition of the chromosomes required to make up the number of 46 or 48 chromosomes would, as observation shows very clearly, have resulted in the decimation or entire destruction of both groups: humans and primates.

If A had more chromosomes than either primates or humans, then the necessary LOSS of chromosomes, would be no less destructive, and could not have produced viable groups.

That does not leave much room for manoeuvre.

Tiktaalik

3 Tiktaalik was described by its discoverers Ahlberg and Clack as having typical features of fish, most notably large gill arches, which showed that it was an aquatic animal, not a tetrapod in waiting.

In addition, there has never been any adequate accounting for the method by which a fish of any description could have emerged on to land and survived. Latimeria failed to save that plank from extinction. Further, tetrapod tracks have been found which predate Tiktaalik, which therefore could not be any sort of ancestral tetrapod, since its descendants were walking around in Australia before Tiktaalik existed.

There is the further fact that the pectoral fins of fish are the larger than the pelvic fins, and neither are attached to the axial skeleton. In a true tetrapod, the hind limbs are larger than the forelimbs in EVERY instance, AND ATTACHED to the axial skeleton very securely.

I was fascinated to see the diagrams, which perfectly illustrate Denton’s point that the missing parts of an organism, BOTH SOFT AND HARD, can make complete nonsense of a reconstruction. (Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis) And that the reconstruction depends entirely on the prejudices of the re-constructor! The amount of guesswork that has to go into this particular example (Tiktaalik) IS GREATER THAN 90% OF THE WHOLE ANIMAL!

In addition, I may also mention a previous article on Tiktaalik in this blog, where Nature announced tetrapod fossil footprints 18 million years OLDER than Tiktaalik.

There is also the curious fact that the pentadactyl forelimb is built on exactly the same plan as the pentadactyl hindlimb. Homology would require that the hind limb evolved from the forelimb or vice versa. But no such claim is ever made!

Speciation

4 Some speciation does occur, but never above genus level, and certainly not at or above family level. Such speciation is invariably the result of reproductive isolation for whatever reason. The other name for reproductive isolation is inbreeding to one extent or another, and inbreeding has curious effects to say the least, which may result in speciation to a limited extent.

This, however, is and has never been, a problem to creationism, because Adam named the 'kinds' - and those could not have been species since there are millions of those. Therefore, if we interpret 'families', superfamilies or orders as being the 'kinds' referred to in Genesis, then there has been, is, and will never be any 'evolution.' Variation aplenty - but only within very severe limits, as Luther Burbank and other authors such as Cuvier and Owen have pointed out.

Parasites and Hosts

5 The extremely close relationship existing between some parasites and hosts, is so close that if two birds are closely similar and might be the same species, then the only feature which can be called upon to distinguish between them is the species difference between the parasites.

This is a hallmark of creation, not evolution.

Those, I think were Gilmore's main points.

The Other Side

On the other side, there are innumerable, unrefuted and unaccounted-for phenomena, and I mention a few of the more serious ones:

Instinct

1 The biggest, and least explicable of them all, is the intangible phenomenon of instinct, which powers the behaviour of all living organisms. We have the basic, instinctive functions of life itself. Animals and plants eat, move, respond, reproduce and so on as a direct result of the possession of the instincts which power those behaviours. Without the instincts, the apparatus for any or all of those behaviours is entirely useless. Without the apparatus, the instincts are equally useless: and that leads to the inexorable conclusion that both instinct and apparatus were created simultaneously: and no amount of fudging will obscure that simple fact.

It is the spectacular example which most convincingly destroys any possibility of evolution having occurred. And we have many such to hand – not one of which can be explained by any theory of evolution and common descent, and which await any reasonable response.

I may remark on the equally spectacular and utter failure of talkorigins to even begin handling this subject.

Those spectacular and specific examples (of which many are already on this blog)include:

1 The yucca moth
2 The bucket orchid
3 The swallows of Capistrano
4 The migration of the red knot and arctic tern
5 The fungus growing ant (genus Atta)

Cellular Level

2 At cellular level, we await reasonable explanations of the origins of meiosis and mitosis

Molecular Level

3 We also, at molecular level, await any reasonable explanations of the origins of the endogenous retrovirus DNA sequences which can be read both forward and backward, and still make sense in the construction of the proteins for which they code.

On the same point, we also await explanations of the findings of the Oxford biochemical geneticists who discovered that a viral DNA sequence could be read starting at point A and producing a protein, and also be read starting at a different point B to produce a different and equally functional protein.

We may also remind readers of the Tool Kit Proteins, which having performed one function, break into two parts, each of which subserves another function and then in turn, break and repeat the procedure.

How could such ingenious devices have originated without Divine construction, and by methods of natural selection?

Anatomical Level

4 At anatomical level. we await explanation of the origin of the rock lobster’s eye: which to remind readers, is made up of SQUARE cross-sectioned cells,
a shape almost unheard of in nature, and which uses the principle of REFLECTION on to a retina (into whose origin we won’t inquire too closely at this stage), instead of the REFRACTION principle used in every other known animal eye apart from the scallop, whose eye is even MORE complex and reflection based than the rock lobster’s.

“The eye of the lobster shows a remarkable geometry not found elsewhere in nature – it has tiny facets which are perfectly square, so it looks like perfect graph paper”. Even more intriguing is that each of the sides of these square tubes are like mirrors that reflect the incoming light. This light is focused on the retina flawlessly. The sides of the tube are lodged at such perfect angles that they all focus on to a single point” http://www.scribd.com/doc/7800502/Harun-Ya...esign-in-Nature

Embryological Level

5 At embryological level we await any explanations of the origins of the vast differences between the amphibian and reptile egg. Denton is particularly cruel on the point:

“Every textbook of evolution asserts that reptiles evolved from amphibia but none explains how the major distinguishing adaptation of the reptiles, the amniotic egg, came about gradually as a result of a successive accumulation of small changes. The amniotic egg of the reptile is vastly more complex and utterly different to that of an amphibian. There are hardly two eggs in the whole animal kingdom which differ more fundamentally… The origin of the amniotic egg and the amphibian - reptile transition is just another of the major vertebrate divisions for which clearly worked out evolutionary schemes have never been provided. Trying to work out, for example, how the heart and aortic arches of an amphibian could have been gradually converted to the reptilian and mammalian condition raises absolutely horrendous problems.(Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, Adler and Adler, 1986, pp. 218-219)

The Birds Lung

6 We await any sort of convincing explanations of the origin of the one-way flow of the air in the lungs of all 10,000 species or so of birds, completely unparalleled in the animal kingdom, and therefore incapable of having originated by natural selection from anything else. The origin of flight itself, is also another evolutionary nightmare, occurring as it does in FOUR distinct and entirely unrelated groups of animals, viz. the birds, the bats, the insects and the pterosaurs.

Palaeontology

7 We await any explanations of the fact that the palaeontological record consists of series of spectacular bursts of creation of species, genera, up to phyla as in the Cambrian. We also wait for explanations of the phenomenal number of new species right up to phyla in the Cambrian layer, which is the oldest but one of the fossil bearing strata.

Non-speciation by Lenski

8 I may remind them of Lenski’s failure to produce a single new species from E. coli in 31,500 generations of the organism. At that rate of non-production of new species, we are entitled to question the likelihood of the vast number of Cambrian species evolving in the given time frame. After all, 0 new species in 25 years equates to 0 new species in 250 million years.

The Plant Kingdom

9 I may remark here that the limitation imposed upon the introduction of new material has prevented me from introducing these major causes of evolutionist insomnia which are presented in accounting for the origin of any of the major plant groups. I have in mind specifically, the origin of the angiosperms (about half of the plant kingdom), which Darwin called ‘that abominable mystery’. He had good reason to do so, since to this day, there is no adequate accounting for the origin of about half of the whole plant kingdom. The other half fares no better either.

I don’t know whether the evolution supporters know any of the relevant facts, but I do recommend that they perform some searches on the evolution of the angiosperms. Here is a good starting point: http://www.inhs.uiuc.edu/~karyla/angio where the author states:

“The flowering plants arose in the early Cretaceous (120-130 mya); however, no fossils showing a transition from gymnosperm to angiosperm have been discovered. This makes the origin of the angiosperms mysterious. From the fossil record we do know that the angiosperms underwent a rapid radiation and by the end of the Cretaceous (65-70 mya) most flowering plant families had evolved.”

Summary

That is but a sprinkling of the available material. Any claims that these points have been “answered” must include intelligently selected quotations from the relevant ‘answers’, and not merely fraudulent and strident claims that ‘they have been answered here.’ Some critical faculties should be exercised before the word ‘answered’ may be applied, and some assessment of the quality of the ‘answers’ given.

Given the inability of the theory to account for so many huge facts – and these are but a selection - I submit that supporters of the view should seriously review their position in the light of these intractable FACTS, and abandon this ‘science falsely so-called.’

HO DAWKINS! HO RUSE! HO THEOBALD! HO HO HO!

2011-02-16T00:09:00.000-08:00

HIDING FROM A HIDING I SEE!

I'm glad to see a few crawling out from their hidey holes to attack the thesis I am presenting. Welcome! And good luck - you'll need it!

Unfortunately, none seems able to address the question being asked on this humble blog!

So I again challenge any R-E-A-L-L-Y S-E-N-I-O-R evolutionists to come forth and debate this vital topic.

Ho Dawkins of Oxford! Ho Ruse! Ho Theobald of Talk Origins!
Ho Anybody! Ho ho ho!

This is the internet - you MUST have seen, and be seeing this challenge.

So where are you guys?

Come forth and defend your miserable theory! Let the Sword of Instinct slice your hopeless defence into little pieces and serve them up for breakfast.

After you get your faces out of the cornflakes, that is.

Then perhaps you can explain to your poor, misled and misguided undergraduate and postgraduate students why you couldn't answer a few simple but very serious questions.

Go to the naked scientist forum for a taster of the questions you have to answer - then put my book on your required reading booklists. If the universities don't apply the boot to your tender spots, that is!

Isn't Biology pathetic! Can't face a few nasty questions!

Here's the forum link:
(http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16535)

Hey! I just noticed - there have been over 54 THOUSAND VIEWS of my thread!

Heck, I must have made those organisers a real packet if they get paid on clicks! They threw me off because they couldn't answer the points I raised.

What a surprise! (Hey you organisers of naked scientists - if I am misrepresenting you, then either come over here and argue the toss, or let me back on to carry on ruining evolution theory for you!)

Some amazing facts about Velvet worms

2010-07-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

Velvet worms

Source: Vishesh Jain, Wonders of Evolution, on www.harkerbio.com

Readers please note that Vishesh Jain is a believer in evolution, and in no way does he support the opinion I express on this blog.

While spiders shoot silk, velvet worms shoot stringy goo.
Admittedly, velvet worm slime is far from silk molecularly, and spider silk departs from spinnarets on their abdomen while velvet worms use oral tubes.

Nevertheless, the slime is amazing.

Without congealing within the worm's own body, the slime is still a quick-hardening, sticky substance that sprays from two oral tubes, intertwining and lacing over its prey. This substance does not adhere to the water-repellent skin of the velvet worm, which can therefore safely approach its victim, bite a hole in its skin, and suck out its vital systems after digesting them with powerful saliva....

If you're still curious about that "weird sex," velvet worms use spermatophores, or packets of sperm, to transfer the male gametes to the female. Now this is weird enough, but there are several arthropods that do it too.

What really begs explanation is that the spermatophores are transferred from spikes on the the head of the male to the back or sides of the female. Enzymes in the female's body then break down both the spermatophore casing and the female's own skin, allowing the sperm to flow through this self-inflicted wound to her reproductive organs.

For one reason or another, the wound usually escapes infection, and velvet worms have apparently been successful enough to survive hundreds of millions of years without modification.

Velvet worms give birth in a variety of forms, ranging from oviparous(egg-laying) to ovoviviparous(egg-hatching within the body and then live-bearing) to viviparous(live-bearing). Weird.

by Vishesh Jain

An interesting 'how does instinct evolve' fact about orchids

2010-06-25T03:16:00.000-07:00

Here is a quote from the Naked Scientists Forum (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/latest-questions/question/2605/) - beautifully written till we get to the last idiotic sentence. But you must judge for yourself. I've broken it up into smaller paragraphs for easier reading.

There was a wonderful paper written by a lady called Jennifer Brodmann, who is a researcher at the University of Ulm, and she was on the Chinese island of Hainan looking at an orchid called Dendrobium sinense.

Now, this is a really interesting orchid because no one knew what pollinated it. It makes these beautiful flowers. It's a white flower with a red centre, but it's rewardless.

In other words, the flower doesn't give anybody anything if they come and visit it. So she decided to do a stakeout and she watched this flower , 121 hours of footage to see what came by. And 35 insects paid a visit of which the majority - over 30 - were a kind of hornet.

And she thought, "That's interesting." At closer inspection, revealed that these hornets didn't come in and spend much time loitering there. They flew in and pounced on the flower and then abruptly left.

But when they looked more closely, they saw that as the hornet was doing the pouncing, it was actually depositing a bit of pollen on the orchid, fertilizing it and also picking up some pollen to take to another flower.

So they thought, "There must be something which is attracting this hornet to this flower." So they made extracts of all the chemicals that come out of the flower and they found one really interesting one.

It's eicosen-1-ol. And this particular molecule is a pheromone made by bees. And, in fact, it's an alarm pheromone that bees make when they want to tell other bees about something exciting going on.

And what they realized is that this hornet species eats bees and it feeds the bees to its young hornet larvae.

So what the orchid is doing is making itself smell like a bee to attract a hornet, to get itself fertilised. And it's doing it by making the same chemicals that the bees would and, thereby, fooling the hornet, so a wonderful example of sexual kind of subversion going on.

The point is that the plant has evolved to have the same genetic pathway or the same synthetic pathway that can produce these chemicals because this is the way in which it gets itself pollinated, and very effectively too by the look of it.

If you want to read it, it was actually published in Current Biology, last year, Jennifer Brodmann, a wonderful bit of science.

Here's the evolutionary madness in full swing!

The plant somehow 'evolved/ figured out' how to perform this miraculous piece of biochemical wizardry!

BEFORE it did so, it wasn't pollinated at all. Remember what Brodmann found from her stakeout:

"And 35 insects paid a visit of which the majority - over 30 - were a kind of hornet."

Only hornets/wasps did the job.

Therefore, in the time BEFORE any wasps/hornets appeared on the scene, the plant was unable to be pollinated! And therefore couldn't exist!

But it did somehow (heh heh!), and then, miracle of miracles, it performed this miraculous biochemical feat, producing this wonderful chemical which attracted the wasps/ hornets and conned them into fertilising its flowers.

Do you see the role that instinct plays in all this?

The wasps MUST HAVE HAD the instincts in them which caused them to be attracted to the chemical - whether produced by the flower or not. How did they get that instinct? And how did it enter their genome?

The plant MUST HAVE HAD THE INSTINCTS and biochemical mechanisms IMPLANTED completely in ONE GO - or it would have perished! No instinct, no chemical. No chemical, no fertilisation. No fertilisation, extinction followeth immediately.

So dear evolutionary friends, explain to us how this happened.

It is a huge pity that this utterly brilliant piece of research, which deals with the wonders of the natural world, and not with test tube Biology, should be made to serve such an idiotic theory.

Just to remind you of the stupidity:

"So what the orchid is doing is making itself smell like a bee to attract a hornet, to get itself fertilised.

Heh heh heh! It knows what a bee smells like, you see, and has figured out that if it makes itself smell like one - how to do that, one wonders! - then it'll get pollinated!!!

And it's doing it by making the same chemicals that the bees would and, thereby, fooling the hornet, so a wonderful example of sexual kind of subversion going on.

Heh heh heh! It figured out how to make the chemicals, guys! I bet there are millions of graduate chemistry students who couldn't figure that one out! And look! It knows about 'subversion'! Quite a brain in that little plant!

The point is that the plant has evolved to have the same genetic pathway or the same synthetic pathway that can produce these chemicals because this is the way in which it gets itself pollinated, and very effectively too by the look of it.

Oooooh! Just look! The plant 'evolved' to have the same 'genetic pathway' or the 'same synthetic pathway' to get itself pollinated!!!!!

Somebody - allegedly intelligent - wrote that nonsense! Should get a PhD in fairy tale writing.

Come on BenV, how can you remain attached to such nonsense?

The Herring Gull Chick and its Mother's Red Spot

2010-06-15T01:32:00.000-07:00

by Wilfred Alleyne

How Well-Researched Modern Science
Helps You to See That

DARWIN DIDN’T KNOW THE ANSWER TO

The Most Completely Overlooked and Fatal Question
Evolution Has Ever Had to Face!

A Herring Gull Chick Taps the Red Spot on Its Mother’s Beak. The Mother Then Regurgitates Fish She Has Caught – So the Chick Can Eat and Survive.

But How Does the Chick Know about Tapping Her Beak? And How Does the Mother Know About Regurgitating?

INSTINCT!

( A BBC video showing this is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007xvj5)

But How Did this Instinct Start? And How did it get into the Bird?

The instinct was there in the very first Herring Gull – however many millions of years ago that may be. And it was there complete and fully formed: or there would be no Herring Gulls today.

If the chick didn’t tap, it would have starved. If the mother didn’t regurgitate, again the chick would have starved. BOTH BEHAVIOURS had to appear at exactly the same time.

How did this happen?

THIS MAY BE THE MOST STARTLING AND DEVASTATING COLLECTION OF SCIENTIFIC FACTS YOU HAVE EVER READ, DEAR FRIEND...

After all...

Whoever heard of a new-born baby making a 3000+ mile journey home – on its own? Underwater, at that!

That is exactly what young eels do. Their parents migrate from rivers in Europe 3000+ miles south and southwest, down the west coast of Africa, then turn right and swim to the Sargasso Sea. They spawn there, THEN THEY ALL DIE, AND NEVER RETURN to Europe.

The young eels then swim home to Europe, which is 3000+ miles away. With no guides, no adults to lead them home.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8273000/8273877.stm)

How can they possibly manage such a navigational feat? INSTINCT is the only answer that can be given.

But how did the instinct start? And how did it get into the fish in the first place?
And it had to be there perfectly right from the word ‘go’ – or eels would be extinct too.

They HAVE to get to freshwater – there’s none in the Atlantic Ocean - or they would never reach sexual maturity, and the species would perish. So if the navigational instinct misdirected them, they would swim till they died in salt water, in the Falklands, the Azores, the Arctic Ocean or some other unsuitable place.

‘Extinct’ is probably not too strong a description.

Those are just two of the many startling illustrations of instinct in action found in this book. They are beautiful, bizarre, unbelievably complex examples – and evolution cannot account for the origin of a single one of them.

In every case as you will see, if the instinct is absent, or imperfect, species extinction would immediately follow.

HOWEVER, AND THIS IS THE ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY MADE AND DETAILED IN THIS REMARKABLE BOOK:

WITHOUT INSTINCT, LIFE ITSELF WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE.

Not only these virtuoso displays of startling behaviour like those above, but EVERY SINGLE FUNCTION, of EVERY SINGLE LIVING CELL, in EVERY LIVING ORGANISM depends absolutely on instinct for its survival.

Evolution argues about how legs, wings, lungs and every other organ could have evolved. Did birds’ wings evolve from reptile forelimbs? Did feathers evolve from scales? Did fish develop legs and walk on land?

All the scientific papers written to prove any of the above cases, and many others, are now irrelevant in the light of this discovery. Imagine that! A single discovery uprooting a major scientific theory!

This happens from time to time. A very recent discovery (published in the January 2010 issue of Nature journal – one of the most prestigious scientific journals on the planet) showed that a major plank of the evolution of four-limbed animals (called Tiktaalik) was totally mistaken. Hailed as the first species of fish to walk on land, and one possible ancestor of all tetrapods, imagine the absolute horror all round when tetrapod tracks, some 18 or more million years older than Tiktaalik were found!

The Law of Asynctropy, first formally stated in this book, at a single blow destroys all such arguments and makes them totally irrelevant to the facts of every case ever presented as support for the theory of evolution...

It is the most powerful and destructive single piece of evidence ever raised against evolution, which is helpless in the face of the Law.

Take Respiration as the most important example possible.

Today, we can possibly mix all of the chemicals found in the respiratory cycle in a test tube. But respiration will not take place. The powering instinct is absent, the driving force is missing.

This simple fact has huge spin-off consequences for the existence of life itself, and for the inadequacy of evolution theory, which are drawn out in full in the text.

Instinct crosses the barrier of death, somehow.

As in the case of the eels above, there are innumerable examples where the parents die, and the offspring do the same marvellous things that the parents did, WITHOUT EVER SEEING THEM! The young of the Yucca moth (Pronuba spp) does just that.

Just as remarkably, a wasp (Eumenes spp) somehow knows the gender of its young before it collects food for it to eat when it hatches! And provides an escape route for it if the prey gets too frisky in the mud igloo the mother somehow knows how to build!

And just to add more fuel to the fire, the mother anaesthetises the grubs it catches for the young – why? So the young wasp can have fresh, non-putrefying food to eat.

She then dies. The young wasp never sees its parents – but goes on to do exactly the same things the parents did.

The naturalist who first made these observations was stunned at the ingenuity displayed – but this is not intelligence, but instinct in action.

And we’re back to the original problem. How did the instinct originate? And in some ways even worse, how did it ever enter the genome? (Assuming, of course, that it is located there. If it isn’t then the problems for evolution become even more horrendous than they are already).

Again notice – if the instinct was absent or incomplete in any way, then the species would have perished immediately it first appeared on the planet. If the young couldn’t feed, then a single generation was all that could ever have existed.

If it only had putrefying food, it would perish – and without training in anaesthesiology – the mother is able to inject a non-lethal, paralysing dose of venom into the grubs which are going to be eaten by the young wasp.

And all of that so far, is meaningless without the ‘igloo’ she builds. The young would have to forage for itself, the food grubs would scatter to the four winds, and the species would be extinct.

The full development of this concept is given in the text.

SO FAR, WE HAVE ONLY MENTIONED EXAMPLES FROM THE ANIMAL WORLD. THE PLANT KINGDOM PRESENTS NO SMALLER PROBLEMS.

One of the very biggest problems for evolution, is that plants ‘act’ with purpose. This is most obvious in the reproduction of plants (and animals, as shown in the Section on ‘Reproduction’ in the text).

That wonderful, and extremely common species called Vallisneria is a pest because of its reproductive success. But the way it reproduces is simply mind-blowing. The female flower - UNDERWATER! – produces a stigma which grows up to the surface of the water, and there is produces a substance which creates a small depression in the water round it. The male flower .... well, you’ll just have to read the book, as that would be giving the wonderful game away!

There are other huge problems too. The second biggest, is the fact that the land plants we see everywhere are supposed to have evolved from the algae (like the seaweeds). How did they get on to land and survive? The process as one evolutionist says ‘ must have been very difficult’!

Plants produce roots, which normally grow downwards into the soil and shoots which grow upwards. They could have done the exact oposite – and perished.

What makes them do this? Instinct. And how did that originate and enter the genome?

The flowering plants appear with extraordinary abruptness in the fossil record. Darwin rightly called their appearance ‘that abominable mystery’. That mystery still remains, and the instinctive behaviour of plants is an embarrassment to the evolutionary botanists. Why do they produce flowers, with pollen and ovaries?

Instinctively, in order to reproduce – because they do not learn how to do so – it is inbuilt into them, and that is a definition of instinct. But where does it come from, and how did it enter the genome?

We could go on, drawing wonderful example after wonderful example from the text, and from nature. But you owe it to yourself to read it.

Read it, and ask your evolutionary friends, teachers and professors for comment and explanation of these facts. Make sure they get a complimentary copy (it’s cheap enough for the time being), and let their cup overflow.

Are you tired of the failure of conventional biology to explain how evolution could have occurred?

Do you need examples to confound the evolutionary establishment?

Why not buy a copy today, and equip your armoury with these armour-piercing shells and bombs that can blow evolution sky-high?

Share the facts and concepts with your children. If you believe in evolution, then forewarn them of the coming deluge.

If you don’t, then here is your battle-axe with well-sharpened blade. Teach them about these facts, and let them go fearlessly into the world of evolution theory and demonstrate its inability to provide explanations for these fatal facts.

It is probably not overstating the case to say that just as Darwin’s Origin of Species overturned the existing scientific world opinion, just so this book will destroy Darwinism and everything that goes with it.

As a special introductory price, this will only cost you £4.97. Go here to order.

Hey Dawkins, Ruse, whoever supports evolution come forth and debate!

2010-06-12T03:37:00.000-07:00

Hey you evolutionists - stop slithering around, and come out and fight like men!

I have an increasingly interesting track record.

I regard these as Medals of Honor, won in the heat of battle! I have now been thrown off

1 The Richard Dawkins forum. not surprising, where I challenged him or his supporters to emerge from hiding and debate like a man. I repeat the challenge.

Dawkins, Dawkins, Dawkins, if you ever read this, stop skulking in the undergrowth and come forth and fight for your pestilential theory. You might like to read my new book here: www.howdoesinstinctevolve.com and scare yourself silly. It's only £4.97, and I'm sure professorial salaries can run to that.

If any reader is interested in reading high quality abuse and vilification then go here:
http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=109119

These guys are really foul-mouthed. Understandable: when you've nothing to say, abuse is the next best thing.

They really can't stand any informed opposition and intelligent questioning of their theory. Poking the sacred cow with a sharp stick in the behind is not the done thing, obviously.

2 I have been thrown off Physics Forum. Trolling, they say. No answers either! Well, what's new?

3 I have been thrown off the Naked Scientists forum (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16535.0)where they couldn't stand the facts either. But give them their due, they took the blows for a few months before becoming punch drunk.

(Hey, BenV, this is your old friend, Asyncritus again. I should have the democratic right of reply to all these comments that are being made by the readers, as a few of them are at my expense. I've now got your forum nearly 45,000 views of my thread.

Interest is obviously very high - higher than in any other topic or even section of the board - and you've shut me up! Now act like a man. Show some guts and get me back on there so I can lay about me with the sword of instinct!)

4 I engaged in a debate on the Bible Truth Discussion Forum, with Bible-believing Christadelphians, believe it or not, but the debate got shut down just when I'd got the opposition sweating profusely.

5 The saga continues.

But anyone really wishing to read the arguments which I present about instinct, and which are not on this blog, should get a copy of the book here:
www.howdoesinstinctevolve.com

It is truly the finish of the theory. It proves that every living function is based on instinct, and since instinct is immaterial it cannot be subject to the usual alleged evolutionary processes.

Therefore evolution is incapable of explaining something which is a universal feature of all life - it's even more essential than DNA, which only functions when the instincts are present.

Worth looking at.

A fish walking on land!

2010-06-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

Let's discuss this business of a fish coming on to land.

Have you ever seen a fish on land after a fisherman has caught it? I have. I've caught many, dropped them on the bank - and they died. You know the expression - 'like a fish out of water'.

Now what makes you think there's any survival advantage in dying when the fish has dried out?

Look at it the other way. How long would you survive if you tried to live underwater? Not very long at all, unless you had diving equipment of some sort. Do you think, for example, that if somebody held your head underwater for 1 minute today, 2 minutes tomorrow, 3 mins the day after that, and so on, after a year like that you'd be able to live underwater? I very much doubt it, because you'd drown somewhere around 7 minutes.

Why do you think things would be different for a fish?

Here's the problem stated very nicely:

"In trying to decipher the evolution of tetrapods from fish, scientists face formidable problems. The transition from water to land occurred long ago, and various family trees suggested by the fossil record are so tangled that scientists acknowledge they may never be able to sort them out definitively".

For a fish to come out on to dry land - which is what we're talking about - it has to have breathing apparatus, like lungs. No fish has lungs - not even the lungfish. Their lungs are totally different to our lungs, and bear no relationship to them.

You ever heard about the coelacanth?

Well. once upon a time, in this sea far away, there lived a fish called Latimeria. Scientists thought that it was a very special fish which could walk out on to land and somehow breathe air! Hoo boy! This great fish was the ancestor of all the land animals or something. It got out and walked in swamps and such places.

And then you'll never guess what happened.

Evolutionists needed evidence to back up the supposed transition of vertebrates from the sea to dry land. For that reason, they took the fossil coelacanth, whose anatomy they believed was ideally suited to this scenario, and began using it for propaganda purposes. They interpreted the creature's fins as "feet about to walk," and a fossilized fat-filled swimbladder in its body as "a primitive lung." The coelacanth was literally a savior for evolutionists bedeviled by such a lack of evidence. Evolutionists had at last laid hands on "one" of the countless missing links that should have numbered in the millions.

Heh heh!

And then.... ta daaaa!

This evolutionist excitement was short-lived,when a living coelacanth specimen was captured by fishermen in 1938. This inflicted a terrible disappointment on evolutionists.

James Leonard Brierley Smith, an instructor in the Rhodes University Chemistry Department and also honorary director of various fish museums on the South Coast of England, expressed his astonishment in the face of this captured coelacanth:

"Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if striken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was true Coelacanth."

The discovery of this imaginary missing link, once believed to have close links to man's alleged ancestors, in the form of a living fossil, was a most significant disaster for Darwinist circles.

The coelacanth, the greatest supposed proof of the theory of evolution, had suddenly been demolished.

The most important potential candidate in the fictitious transition from the sea to dry land turned out to be an exceedingly complex life form still alive in deep waters and bearing no intermediate-form characteristics at all. This living specimen dealt a heavy blow to Darwin's theory of evolution.

So back to the old drawing board and some more idiotic inventions.

Don't you see how stupid this whole thing is? You take any goldfish and drop him on the floor, then let me know what happens. If he gets up and walks off into the distance, you are the greatest scientific discoverer of all time, and you'll get 25 Nobel prizes for your discovery.

But I think you'll have a big pile of dead stinking goldfish on your floor before that happens. Try it, and see. Let me know how long he can survive out of water. grin

Here's another nice creationist site for you to laugh at: http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_05.php

The Non-Evolution of the Angiosperms

2010-06-02T04:44:00.000-07:00

THE NON-EVOLUTION OF THE ANGIOSPERMS

For those who may not know, the biggest and most fatal difference between an angiosperm (like an apple) and a gymnosperm (like a fir) is the fact that the 'carpels' (the parts that become the seed/s) are INSIDE the 'sporophylls' in the angiosperms, and OUTSIDE the sporophylls in the gymnosperms.
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/graphics/bio106/angio%20cycle.jpg that's an angiosperm

http://dbs.umt.edu/courses/sci226/gifs/images/lab4/img8.gif shows the differences nicely.

How did the change take place? Nobody has a clue.

The difference is like holding a marble in the palm of your hand, and having a tumour growing INSIDE the palm of your hand. The marble simply cannot enter the tissues and become the tumour.

I was interested to hear the comment that the fossil record is the weakest proof of evolution.

Darwin knew this, and not a great deal has changed since his time, except that the gaps have become wider and deeper. Increasing biochemical knowledge has showed that there is nothing 'simple' in nature, and the folly of supposing that some unicell somehow formed itself in a nice warm soup somewhere and evolved into whales, sequoias and man has been heavily underscored by the biochemists at least.

Yet, this is the cornerstone of all evolutionary theory. It is a clear impossibility as we know: because of the protein formation riddle at least.

Such 'transitional fossils' as have been found answer none of the really serious questions such as the origin of life itself, the origins of animals , plants, the protista, the monera and the fungi.

These mighty groups arrive unceremoniously and abruptly in the fossil records as we all know. Attempts to find pre-cambrian fossils are producing some results - but only serve to push the problem one layer down.

As usual, clad in long words, ignorance lies deeply concealed.

For this thread I'd like to present some more facts about plant evolution which the uncommitted readers may not know, and perhaps the committed may not either.

PROKARYOTES AND EUKARYOTES

Plants are eukaryotes ie they have their DNA enclosed in a nuclear membrane. (Bacteria are prokaryotes, whose DNA is NOT enclosed in a nuclear membrane.) That doesn’t sound like much – until you realise that the apparent ‘simplicity’ of the bacterial cell is very deceptive indeed.

Mycoplasma genitalium , which has the smallest genome of any free-living organism, has a genome of 580,000 base pairs (wikipedia). This is an astonishingly large number for such a ‘simple’ organism. Needless to say, the larger prokaryotes are even more complex.

The simplest plants cells ie those containing chlorophyll, present insuperable difficulties for any gradualist theory (the only contender in the field since the Punctuated Equilibrium model was punctured by the gradualist opposition).

What did they evolve from? The answer is ‘nowhere.’ They appear in the fossil record as plant cells ie

1 whose cell walls are made of cellulose, unlike the polysaccharide and PROTEIN walls of the bacteria. How did such an enormous chemical transition take place if eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes? And in any case, how did the prokaryote ever figure out how to manufacture PROTEIN of all things?

2 The molecular level biological structures are also very different. The DNA in the bacterium lies free in the cytoplasm. The DNA in the plant cell is not free, but is enclosed in a double membrane. Darnell points out that: The differences in the biochemistry of messenger RNA formation in eukaryotes compared to prokaryotes are so profound as to suggest that sequential prokaryotic to eukaryotic cell evolution seems unlikely.
Darnell, "Implications of RNA-RNA Splicing in Evolution of Eukaryotic Cells," Science, vol. 202, 1978, p. 1257.

3 There are other very large differences. The genes in a bacterial cell carry the information needed for its life and reproduction only. The genes in plant cells carry the information for a gigantic number of living processes – all crammed into a microscopic space. Where did the information come from? And how did it get into the genes at all?

Some bacteria actually photosynthesise. This means that they have the information needed to construct chlorophyll, and use it, improbable as that sounds. Where did such information come from? And how did it get into the genome? In the bacterium there are no chloroplasts to contain the chlorophyll, but in the plant cell, there are these structures which are by no means simple.
See http://www.sparknotes.com/testprep/books/sat2/biology/chapter9section2.rhtml

Hoe could such things have come into being?

4 Algae are plants. They are just as complex now as they were when they were first found:

Both blue-green algae and bacteria fossils dating back 3.4 billion years have been found in rocks from S. Africa. Even more intriguing, the pleurocapsalean algae turned out to be almost identical to modern pleurocapsalean algae at the family and possibly even at the generic level.

The oldest fossils so far discovered are objects fossilized in minerals which belong to blue green algae, more than 3 billion years old. No matter how primitive they are, they still represent rather complicated and expertly organized forms of life.

Not only are they the oldest photosynthesisers, but:

Even today, they are the most highly efficient photosynthesizers on the planet, utilizing light energy, carbon dioxide from the air, and hydrogen and oxygen from the water to synthesize a high energy combination of proteins, carbohydrates (starches and sugars), lipids (fats), nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), vitamins, chlorophyll and other pigments.

So we have the remarkable situation that the most ‘primitive’ algae contain the most amazing substances in the universe (eg chlorophyll), which are STILL the top, most efficient photosynthesisers on the planet! All the ‘evolution’ that has taken place since then, has produced nothing better.

This, I may point out, is precisely what we would expect if the Divine Creator produced the design. It simply cannot be improved.

TO TURN TO THE ANGIOSPERMS AGAIN

“Despite these new findings, plenty of mysteries remain. None of the analyses reveals when the first flowering plant appeared on Earth. Amborella is not the first one but, rather, a representative of the first branch from that unknown ancestor.”

You note, the question is ‘when’. The bigger question is not asked: it would be too damaging to the appearance of knowledge. ‘HOW’ is that question. Shtumm.

“Sometime before 140 million years ago, flowering plants, known as angiosperms, diverged from nonflowering seed plants known as gymnosperms. [My comment: Note the assurance of ignorance! They did diverge – but we haven’t a clue how, but we know…] Biologists imagine a tree of life with different groups of animals or plants as branches. Flowering plants branched off from within the branch of seed plants.[Assurance of ignorance again]. The first branch within flowering plants separated Amborella from all the rest.”
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/12.16/angiosperms.html

Imagine! What a splendid recommendation for a scientific theory. But what else is there if you reject the Creation hypothesis.

"This is probably how the carpel looked in the distant ancestors of flowering plants," Donoghue says. "It’s a neat observation that increases our understanding of how flowering plants originated and what the first ones looked like."

What a pathetic piece of disinformation! ‘Increase our understanding’ indeed! We don’t know anything about how they originated.

WHERE DID THE HIGHER PLANTS COME FROM?

Here’s an article about how the algae ‘waded out’ of the water and became all the plants we see today. Read and have a good laugh. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/06/0604_wirealgae.html

“The first tentative moves that got life out of the water and onto the land eons ago were apparently made by slimy green algae, scientists say, [b]and coming ashore wasn't easy.[/b]” (!!!!!) Ho ho ho!

“The ancient history of land plants is becoming evident because of recent advances in techniques for genetic analysis. It's now possible to look at individual genes in algal cells and higher plants and calculate their similarity.”

I said it before, and I’ll say it again. These ‘molecular biologists’ evidently live with their test tubes stuck over their heads or worse. They haven’t a clue about practical biology.

If they had, could they possibly have spewed such garbage? We’ve all seen, I’m sure, seaweed dead on the shore because it was thrown up, dried out, and died. Out of the water, they die from dehydration. And oxygen poisoning – because the concentration of atmospheric oxygen is so much higher than in water. And gaseous diffusion stops because of the dehydration – so they can’t take in the carbon dioxide needed to photosynthesise, nor can they get rid of the carbon dioxide from their own respiration.

The mineral nutrients they need which are normally dissolved in the water of their environment, cannot be obtained, because there is no water around them any more. So they die.

But, as the article says:

“Clues to the history of such organisms lie within the chemical "spelling"—the sequence similarity—of the organisms' genes. The closer they resemble each other, the closer they are related.”

Here is proof positive that this technique is fundamentally flawed. Whichever higher plant the gene sequences show the closest similarity to, the relationship is really non-existent. An alga cannot crawl out, wade out, or anything else from water and survive for any length of time. Certainly not long enough to reproduce and produce a higher taxon. Therefore, if the gene sequences say that the alga’s closest relative is a redwood, then the interpretation of that sequence data is nonsensical.

Most algae reproduce vegetatively. Therefore there is no, or very very reduced possibility of introducing genetic variability. The sexual reproductive methods, are very complex, and show no indication of having evolved. Some useful diagrams are here: http://kentsimmons.uwinnipeg.ca/16cm05/16lab05/lb1pg7.htm

Read, and ask yourself, how did the plant figure out how to do this?

What is common to BOTH types of reproduction, is that water is needed, no, essential. So even if an alga crawled, waded, whatever on to land (and why should it do so anyway?), it could not reproduce. End of evolution.

“He and several colleagues made it clear that today's multicellular plants, such as corn, cabbages and all the other greenery, arose from a single type of algae.”

I wonder how people can say this stuff with a straight face. And why they aren’t pelted with tomatoes and cabbages for talking such rubbish.

One of the reasons I'm arguing from scripture in this debate, is because of the logical, scriptural consequences of Romans 5, which no-one has yet addressed, and I'd like to hear how a TE can possibly square that circle.

[b]Falsification of evolution is impossible[/b]

The great problem with evolution theory, as many writers have pointed out, is that it cannot be falsified. Nothing can falsify it, and that makes it an article of faith. It also puts it on a par with faith in God. Now that I regard as serious.

I say that it cannot be falsified for the following reasons:

1 If it has been seen to occur (it never has, as far as I know) that's proof of evolution(see, it happened!)

2 If it has not been seen to occur, that's proof too. (Never mind, we know it did, pat pat).

3 If it can account for the origin of anything, that's proof. (see, that's proof!)

4 If it can't, then that's proof too. (Ah the evidence hasn't emerged as yet).

It simply cannot be falsified and therefore it is not a scientific theory. Popper says so.

One patronising criticism one hears is 'that's found on a creationist site' as if that invalidates a fact! If one were to say, it's found on [i]talkorigins[/i], and is therefore invalidated, then who knows what wrath will descend? There's a double standard here.

It is also most curious and noteworthy that all of the modern evidence is based on molecular biology. There is no palaeontology or natural history that supports the theory, and to my mind that is the [i]second [/i]most ruinous fact about it.

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

2010-05-19T01:53:00.000-07:00

This is the text of a letter sent to 'Convert's Corner' on Richard Dawkins.net Whether it will ever see the light of day there is very doubtful, as my experience tells me that they are not at all willing to publish material which stabs the sacred cow where it hurts. I'll keep an eye open for it, but as I say, I'm not hopeful.

Dear Dr Dawkins

You have written such books as the Blind Watchmaker whose descriptions I have read, and to be frank, could not better myself. Your description of the bats and their echolocation devices is unsurpassable.

You described feats of biological engineering which the US Military even today is investigating with a view to emulating them - by so far do they exceed their existing missile tracking and echolocating devices in planes and submarines.

You look at the flying capacities of bats, which in terms of body length per hour, far exceed the speeds of F-14 Phantom jets. The little animals achieve all this flying with their fingers, yet.

Their insect-catching capacity is at the rate of about 5 per minute: and the insects are dodging and weaving – and still being caught. The calculations defy belief – yet they do occur, so effectively that the bats are one of the most successful groups of living animals today, being about 20% of all known mammal species.

And all this, you say, ‘evolved’ by little steps.

For shame, sir.

Such claims insult the intelligence of your readers. Anyone, such as yourself, who could look at an F-14 Phantom jet and say it evolved by little steps, without direct intelligent guidance and construction, would rightly attract the speculative psychiatric eye, and MacDonnell Douglas would probably have your shirt for slandering their splendid aeronautical engineers and their years of work.

Yet, the bats are far superior to the jets. They can reproduce themselves – and no jet can even begin to do that. This capacity is beyond even the imagination of the aeronautical engineers. They may dream about it, but that’s all. And here are the bats doing just that from the early Eocene, that’s over 50 milion years ago, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you.

Curiously enough, the very earliest bats possess the echolocation apparatus. The very earliest has been shown to use a form of laryngeal echolocation. And there the situation stands: they emerged at one go, it seems, with no discernible ancestors. Where are your ‘little steps’ of evolution then? Nonexistent, of course.

Such factual information as this hews great holes in any theory of evolution. And we haven’t even touched the greatest problem of all yet: where did the instincts which power the flight of the bats come from? Where did they originate, and how did they enter the genome? Please answer that if you will.

So I regret that I am not one joining the universal paean of praise for your alleged excellence. I can see the holes in the road before you far too clearly to be taken in by your fantasising.

Yours faithfully

Asyncritus

The Migration of the European Eels

2010-02-09T09:04:00.000-08:00

The recent BBC program about eel migration has highlighted another great defeat for evolutionary theory by the phenomenon of instinctive behaviour.

In essence, eels (which grow to maturity in freshwater rivers, pools, streams, ponds) leave their growing areas, and make their way down to the sea. They even swim across wet grasslands in order to get into the rivers which will take them down to the sea.

Question: How do they know that they have to get to the sea, and how do they know that the rivers are flowing to the sea?

When they reach the sea off the coasts of the UK, they are immediately faced with a huge problem.

Salt water is extremely different in physical and chemical properties to fresh water, and usually, an organism which lives in the one kind of water will not survive in the other kind. The osmotic factors alone are very, very different.

But they survive somehow. How did natural selection produce such an organism one wonders.

They then swim to join one of the great south-flowing currents of the ocean, and in that way piggy-back on it, and save energy, and increase their speed of travel.

"The researchers suggest that what they do is swim down to Africa and then hitch a ride on a fast-moving ocean current which helps them to speed up and get the rest of the way much more quickly." http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1817/

They are headed for the Sargasso Sea, no less, all of 3,000 miles away to the south west.

It has not been observed, but scientists believe that they spawn there - and then, the adults die.

Millions of young eels are produced: transparent slivers of tissue: so transparent in fact that they are called glass eels. One can read a newspaper through them, it is claimed.

And these little pieces of living tissue now begin their 3,000 mile journey back to the freshwater pool, stream, lake where their parents came from. And they make it.

The details are sketchy, but in outline this is what happens, and is well known.

At once, evolution theory is rendered impotent. I have yet to see mention of the word 'evolution' in the accounts I've read - though there's got to be some plank who will mention the E word.There is no number of 'small beneficial variations' which can bring this titanic migration about. Consider - there is a journey of about 6,000 miles involved here. Underwater, at that.

In the air, as with the Capistrano swallows, it may be possible (though unlikely) for the birds to use visible landmarks to help in their navigation - maybe the stars or whatever.

The eels swim at a depth of 3000 feet during the day, and come up to shallower waters during the night:

"But one of the really intriguing bits of data was that the eels change their height in the water column between day and night. So during the daytime, they swim much deeper. They go down to about a thousand metres and at night time, they come up close to the surface." http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1817/

So stars,landmarks, whatever are unavailable - and yet they do it.

Navigating at a depth of 3000 feet in a submarine is a tricky business, requiring some very sophisticated equipment, especially if the destination is 3000 miles away. Yet this is exactly what the eels do, WITHOUT any equipment at all.

Just as remarkable as the Pacific Golden Plover, which we already described, the young migrate back home with no guidance whatsoever, and make it (apart from those, of course, that die, or are trapped in their millions by fishermen).

There is no way evolution can account for the phenomenon. The information is obviously inborn into the fish. But how did it get there? And again, we note that the whole information packet had to spring full blown to birth, or the eels and their young would have been lost long, long ago in the trackless depths and wastes of the deep ocean.

If the information is correct, there are fossil eels dating back 95 million years. So they haven't got lost in all that length of time. Whether they were making the same journey then is obviously unknown, but there's no good reason to suppose that they didn't.

So we have another evolutionary brick wall. When are we going to discard this useless theory?

http://www.fossil-museum.com/fossils/fosil.php?Id=404

One of the mysteries of the animal kingdom is the long-distance migration (5000–6000 km) of the European eel Anguilla anguilla L. from the coasts of Europe to its spawning grounds in the Sargasso Sea. The only evidence for the location of the spawning site of the European eel in the Sargasso Sea is the discovery by Johannes Schmidt at the beginning of the previous century of the smallest eel larvae (leptocephali) near the Sargasso Sea. For years it has been questioned whether the fasting eels have sufficient energy reserves to cover this enormous distance. We have tested Schmidt's theory by placing eels in swim tunnels in the laboratory and allowing them to make a simulated migration of 5500 km. We find that eels swim 4–6 times more efficiently than non-eel-like fish. Our findings are an important advance in this field because they remove a central objection to Schmidt's theory by showing that their energy reserves are, in principle, sufficient for the migration. Conclusive proof of the Sargasso Sea theory is likely to come from satellite tracking technology.
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/news/news/1817/

The Peregrine Falcon

2010-02-02T01:58:00.000-08:00

by Vishesh Jain

Comments by Asyncritus

I was astonished to read the following blog article today, and take the liberty of reproducing it in its entirety.

The author Vishesh Jain is connected to Harker, which publishes a blog here:harkerbio.blogspot.com/ from which this article is copied in full. It is a marvellous description of this wonderful bird, and gives full rein to the inquirer's questions about just how this creature could have obtained the instinct package which powers its fantastic behaviour.

harkerbio.blogspot.com/

The Peregrine Falcon: Fastest Animal on the Planet
Peregrine Falcons are raptors with keen eyes, strong wings, powerful beaks, and tremendous speed. Outside their nesting season, peregrine falcons earn their name by traveling extensively, as much as 15,500 miles a year. Once endangered by DDT and human development, they have rebounded and are now found all over the world. Though they prefer open spaces such as plains and sea coasts, they live everywhere from tundra to desert to cityscape.

Peregrine falcons are known for their speed. When they plummet to catch an unsuspecting pigeon below them, they can reach velocities over 200 miles per hour (320 km/h). That's over a fourth of the speed of sound. Zoom. But what's also fascinating about these remarkable birds are the adaptations that allow them to use such power.

The Eyes:
If a peregrine falcon is flying or perched over a kilometer in the air, as they often are, it would be useful, perhaps, to be able to see what it's trying to strike. While they're no mantis shrimp in terms of spectral range, they do indeed have some of the keenest eyes on the planet. With full color vision and rapidly focusing lenses, their eyes have a resolving power up to 8 times greater than humans, enabling them to spot prey miles away and keep track of it while approaching at breakneck speed.

The Shape:
To achieve 70 mph speeds in pursuit of prey and 200 mph plummets to attack those below, the peregrine falcon has one of the most streamlined bodies in the air. The curved wings create an air foil effect in multiple dimensions, maximizing maneuverability, lift, and speed.

The Wings:
Besides the streamlined structure of the wings themselves, peregrine falcons maximize speed in every way possible. In pursuit, it can flap its wings up to four times a second, and in its dive it is able to let gravity pull it down with negligible air resistance, locking its wings in place to create minimum drag. The feathers themselves are stiff, slim, and unslotted, allowing them to literally slip through the air as they attack. As in all birds, their wings are hollow, enhancing flight and maneuverability in the air.

The Power:
Small tubercles and bones in the nose prevent the immense air pressure from flowing into and rupturing their respiratory system. In addition to tons of strong red muscle fibers, peregrine falcons have one-way lungs, like most birds, to maximize oxygen intake. To achieve torpedo-like speed both horizontally and vertically, peregrine falcons have an enormous keel, part of the sternum. As the attachment site for flight muscles, the larger the keel, the more powerful the flight, and this makes these birds some of the fastest in the world.

The Attack:
Now, if you were to drop a couple hundred stories, you'd probably be going pretty fast too. The question, then, is whether you'd be able to catch something, halt your dive, and be in a medical condition to eat it. From the muscle, to the talons, to the beak, these raptors are serious predators. When their keen eyes finish guiding their dive into their prey, if the impact of 200mph razor-sharp talons hitting a poor pigeon's back doesn't kill it, the tomial tooth of their strong beak can break the stunned bird's spine in a second. Then the falcon can leisurely eat it in the air or on the ground, after plucking its feathers, of course.

A National Geographic video tracking a peregrine falcon's flight speeds from the air.

-Vishesh Jain
Image Sources and Cool Links:

Speed and Strike:
Extreme Science - Fastest on Earth
HowStuffWorks - How Do Peregrine Falcons Fly So Fast?
National Geographic - High-Velocity Falcons

Endangered:
Science Daily: Peregrine Falcons May Face New Environmental Threat
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences: The Return of the Peregrine Falcons
Texas Parks and Wildlife: Peregrine Falcon

General:
Cornell Lab of Ornithology - Peregrine Falcon
National Geographic - Peregrine Falcon
University of Wisconsin - BioWeb: Peregrine Falcon

Images:
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Ozzie
Raptor Guide Gallery - Peregrine Falcon
TreeHugger - DDT Redux
Jerry Ting - Peregrine Falcon
Audubon - Signature Species: Peregrine Falcon
Posted by Harker Bio at 10:45 PM

The Infinite Loop : An Evolutionary Noose

2010-01-31T15:38:00.000-08:00

There are very many of these infinite loops in the biological world - and they cannot be closed or broken into apart from divine creation or intervention.

Here is one of the biggest.

The Cyanobacteria

The cyanobacteria are one of the earliest forms of life known, if not the earliest. They date back to 3.5 BILLION YEARS ago. So they say, anyway.

The cyanobacteria perform 2 functions which are absolutely mind-blowing, when you consider that they are probably the earliest form of life on the planet. They are found in huge bundles called stromatolites in many places on the earth's surface.

They carry out photosynthesis - which means that they possess that most complex system of biochemicals which includes chlorophyll.

Even more staggering, they fix atmospheric nitrogen directly. They convert the totally inert gas directly into biological compounds which other living things can use after the c-b's have died.

Now here's the noose, sorry, loop.

DNA is made up of molecules called nucleotides. Nucleotides can't be made without fixed nitrogen, because nitrogen gas simply does not combine with anything - especially not at temperatures at which life can survive.

Also, amino-acids, that essential component of proteins, cannot be made without fixed nitrogen.

So proteins cannot be made without amino-acids, which cannot be made without fixed nitrogen, which cannot be made without cyanobacteria.

The cyanobacteria cannot reproduce or make proteins without DNA, and both proteins and DNA REQUIRE fixed nitrogen.

So the circle closes permanently.

Without cyanobacteria - no fixed nitrogen is available.

Without fixed nitrogen, no DNA, no amino-acids, no protein can be synthesised.

Without DNA, no amino-acids,protein, or cyanobacteria are possible.

There are several other points here, in addition.

These bacteria also photosynthesise (a process requiring a large number of proteins, both in the execution of the reactions, and in the structure of the membranes of the chloroplasts). Let's say 30 for argument's sake.

They fix nitrogen - and so require that marvellous enzyme nitrogenase, which is really a combination of 2 separate enzymes, proteins to be precise.

None of these, as shown above, can be made without fixed nitrogen.

Nitrogen cannot be fixed without them. So which came first, the chicken or the egg?

But wait, cyanobacteria are facultative anaerobes - meaning that they can respire either aerobically or anaerobically.

The complexity of two respiratory cycles is very high: the Krebs cycle alone requiring about 12 enzymes, and the anaerobic requiring somewhat fewer, say 8.

So in order for the cyanobacteria to survive, about 40 enzymes are already involved - none of which can be made without fixed nitrogen. But the c-b's are doing the fixing! So the noose tightens.

Abiogenesis research is time-wasting. There is no way to break into this loop, which is a prime requirement if life originated from non-life.

Of course, it couldn't, and didn't.

The Cyanobacteria: Evolution's Ignored Nightmare

2010-01-24T02:47:00.000-08:00

INTRODUCTION

THE NITROGEN CYCLE

I am, and have long been, impressed with the great cycles in nature.

We see, inter alia, the carbon dioxide cycle, the oxygen cycle, the rain cycle and the nitrogen cycle.

Of these four, the nitrogen cycle has been of the greatest interest to me, because of its colossal importance to the survival of agriculture in all its forms.

We are faced with a tremendous problem, because nitrogen is one of the least reactive gases known, excepting only the rare gases of group 8 in the periodic table, such as helium. It just doesn't combine with anything under ordinary conditions.

The problem arises, of course, because nitrogen is an essential constituent of proteins and other substances, all needed for life to survive. No nitrogen: no proteins, no enzymes, no life. (By the way, when I say 'essential' I mean that survival is impossible without it.)

So how does nitrogen become available to living organisms? How could it?

The Almighty, as usual, has the answer that works perfectly.

Nitrogen becomes available in 3 ways:

1 Lightning discharges, at 30,000 deg C, force the combination of nitrogen and oxygen, to produce nitrogen dioxide, which dissolves in rain water to form nitric and nitrous acids, which then combine with compounds in the soil to produce nitrates and nitrites - which are utilisable by plants. So that's number one.

2 In the root nodules of leguminous plants, the bacterium Rhizobium leguminosarum has a symbiotic relationship with the plant. It 'fixes' atmospheric nitrogen, making it available to the plant, and in return, the plant provides the bacterium with salts etc for its survival. Curiously, haemoglobin is formed in the nodules too. It's role is not yet known with certainty, but researchers agree that it must have a function there.

Which, of course, drips another drop of poison into the evolutionist's already bitter cup: what on earth is haemoglobin doing in such a place? How does evolutionary biochemistry account for its existence? Well, easy. It can't. So nuts to evolutionary biochemistry.

3 By far, the greatest contribution to nitrogen fixation comes from the cyanobacteria. These bacteria have 'evolved (ho ho!)' the ability to take nitrogen from the air, [I wonder how they figured that little trick out???] convert it into their cellular material, and on dying, decompose and make nitrogen available to the soil. Without them, life would surely perish.

Just as an aside, it wasn't until 1918 that Haber received a nobel prize for inventing the process which took nitrogen from the air to make ammonia, using catalysts and very high temperatures. That's how difficult it is to do industrially. Yet, here were these little bacteria doing it for the last n billion years. At ambient temperature, give or take diurnal variation!!! So who deserves that Nobel Prize?

So in the beginning, not only was lack of oxygen a gigantic problem, but the lack of nitrogen was no less so. In order for the anaerobic organisms, whatever they might have been, to generate oxygen in quantity, they simply HAD to have nitrogen in their tissues (as enzymes etc). With nitrogen as unreactive as it is, then how did they fix it? The advanced nitrogen fixers hadn't 'evolved' yet.

So yet another evolutionary brick wall stares us in the face.

The Cyanobacteria - Evolution's Ignored nightmare

Section 1

I had not realised just how titanic a problem the cyanobacteria present to the theory of evolution. It is obvious that the Creator knew what was required for the continuance and maintenance of His Creation, and took all reasonable steps,requiring stupendous intelligence to make sure the Creation got what it needs now, and needed then.

Here is the story of those marvellous little organisms, the Cyanobacteria. Present from the beginning, and exactly the same today as they were then, they furnish us with absolute proof that evolution simply does not work. It doesn’t explain their origin, it hasn’t got the time available for them to originate by the chance combination of nucleotides or whatever, and it cannot explain their stability of design.

Apart from viruses and phages, they are the ‘simplest’ organisms known. And yet, despite their early origin, they possess those most complex substances, DNA, RNA, proteins and most impossible of all for evolution to explain, nitrogenase and chlorophyll. Where did all this complexity come from so early on? The quotes show that they appeared fully formed, and highly complex 3.3 to 3.5 BILLION years ago. The oldest rocks are only 3.8 billion years old – so there isn’t a gap there big enough to allow an evolutionary rat to squeeze through.

Creation is the only explanation of these facts.

Look at this description from JSTOR, which shows the complexity of the organisms.

“Prokaryotic genomes are considered to be ‘wall-to-wall’ genomes, which consist largely of genes for proteins and structural RNAs, with only a small fraction of the genomic DNA allotted to intergenic regions, which are thought to typically contain regulatory signals.” http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/co...ull/30/19/4264

Section 2

1 Their Extreme Age

"One of the earliest types of bacteria were the cyanobacteria. Fossil evidence indicates that bacteria shaped like these existed approximately 3.3 billion years ago and were the first oxygen-producing evolving phototropic organisms..."

They have the distinction of being the oldest known fossils, more than 3.5 billion years old, in fact! It may surprise you then to know that the cyanobacteria are still around; they are one of the largest and most important groups of bacteria on earth.

The oldest known fossils are cyanobacteria from Archaean rocks of western Australia, dated 3.5 billion years old. This may be somewhat surprising, since the oldest rocks are only a little older: 3.8 billion years old.

2 Their absolute perfection

Cyanobacteria are among the easiest microfossils to recognize. Morphologies in the group have remained much the same for billions of years, and they may leave chemical fossils behind as well, in the form of breakdown products from pigments.

They photosynthesize like all other autotrophic bacteria and are just as efficient.

3 Their Complexity

The cyanobacteria are PROKARYOTES, not eukaryotes like the algae.

They contain chlorophyll, enclosed in chloroplasts.

Although they are truly prokaryotic, cyanobacteria have an elaborate and highly organized system of internal membranes which function in photosynthesis. Chlorophyll a and several accessory pigments (phycoerythrin and phycocyanin) are embedded in these photosynthetic lamellae, the analogs of the eukaryotic thylakoid membranes. The photosynthetic pigments impart a rainbow of possible colors: yellow, red, violet, green, deep blue and blue-green cyanobacteria are known.

Here's a diagram of a chloroplast:

4 Their critical role in life support

The oxygen atmosphere that we depend on was generated by numerous cyanobacteria during the Archaean and Proterozoic Eras. Before that time, the atmosphere had a very different chemistry, unsuitable for life as we know it today.

They were responsible for the initial conversion of the earth's atmosphere from an anoxic state to an oxic state (that is, from a state without oxygen to a state with oxygen) during the period 2.7 to 2.2 billion years ago. Being the first to carry out oxygenic photosynthesis, they were able to produce oxygen while sequestering carbon dioxide in organic molecules, playing a major role in oxygenating the atmosphere.

Cyanobacteria also play a major role in the nitrogen cycle. They are able to convert atmospheric nitrogen into its organic form. All plants use organic nitrogen as a nutrient to promote growth. Without this source of nitrogen, the plants would die. Cyanobacteria are one of the few types of organisms that are able to make this conversion from atmospheric to organic nitrogen.

Sources: Several articles on cyanobacteria.

Tiktaalik and the Tetrapods

2010-01-21T14:19:00.000-08:00

The evolution of tetrapods (4-footed animals) has remained a mystery.

It is absolutely remarkable that evolutionists can even begin to think that fishes evolved into four-footed amphibians, but that is exactly what they think. To be fair, they do admit that the gaps are wide, but they have suddenly become wider.

First, here are a couple of quotes to show that they do admit that the gaps are wide:

“The relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) is well established,[yeah, Like the coelacanth?] but the origin of major tetrapod features has remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes.”

(Edward B. Daeschler, Neil H. Shubin, and Farish A. Jenkins, “A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan,” Nature Vol 440: 757-763 (April 6, 2006))

"It has long been clear that limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) evolved from osteolepiform lobefinned fishes3, but until recently the morphological gap between the two groups remained frustratingly wide. The gap was bounded at the top by primitive Devonian tetrapods such as Ichthyostega and Acanthostega from Greenland, and at the bottom by Panderichthys, a tetrapod-like predatory fish from the latest Middle Devonian of Latvia (Fig. 1)."

(Jennifer A. Clack & Per Erik Ahlberg, "A firm step from water to land," Nature 440:747-749 (April 6, 2006); emphasis added)

It is truly astonishing how presumably competent biologists can fool themselves.

There are so many simply gigantic problems involved in the supposed transition from fish to amphibian or reptile that are simply swept under the carpet, it leads one to wonder where these people got their qualifications.

The veriest child knows that any fish, like its goldfish,left out of water, will shortly die.

Its gills are designed to function in water, and simply cannot do so in the air. Therefore, whichever fish the evolutionist cares to choose as the fancied ancestor of amphibian or reptile had to overcome this basic problem first.

To put it simply, it is just plain stupid to think that could happen.

Every day thousands of fish caught by fishermen die in the air. That's thousands of experiments being carried out to show that no fish can survive out of water. NOT ONE SUCH FISH HAS SURVIVED FOR ANY LENGTH OF TIME. Ask any fisherman!

Here's an idiotic statement (typical of this kind of foolish thinking):

"Most scientists believe the amphibians evolved (developed gradually) from the lobe-finned fish. Lobe-finned fish had lungs and enlarged fins supported by bones and muscles. They could use their fins as legs to come out of the water for brief periods. These fins probably developed into amphibian legs.
http://www.worldbook.com/wb/Students?content_spotlight/dinosaurs/creatures_fish

Ever heard such nonsense?

The fish crept out on land for brief periods - and asphyxiated. The faster they asphyxiated, the faster they evolved! It's hard to credit the stupidity of that idea, but because it emerged from some university, it is supposed to be an intelligent concept. The most stupid fisherman could tell those professors that they're wrong, mad, or on mushrooms.

I don't know which. You must choose, dear reader.

But that's not the only problem!

Look at these diagrams of the skeleton of a fish and a tetrapod:

http://www.infovisual.info/02/034_en.html

Let's make the first point here.

Look at the 'pectoral fin' and the 'pelvic fin'.

Do you see that neither of them IS CONNECTED TO THE BACKBONE IN ANY WAY, either directly or indirectly?

OK. That's a typical bony fish.

Now here's the skeleton of a frog, a typical amphibian.

http://www.k-state.edu/organismic/images/frog_skeleton.jpg

See any differences? Yes, of course.

There are bones in the frog's forelimbs, AND THEY ARE CONNECTED TO THE scapula (shoulder blade) WHICH IS A PART OF THE AXIAL SKELETON as it's called.

There is NO connection between the fins of a fish and the axial skeleton.

QUESTION: How the connection ever made?

ANSWER: It wasn't.

Now look at the star performers in the Tetrapod Evolution Circus Parade.

Do you see any connection between these things and the fins of fish? Look back at the fins of the bony fish above, and decide for yourself.

Now suppose, and we'll use Tiktaalik as an example that this fish ever came out on to land. I said 'fish' because that's what the discoverers called it. Here's wiki on the subject:

Tiktaalik is a genus of extinct sarcopterygian (lobe-finned) fish

Give the artists half a chance, and they'd have Tiktaalik flying! Here's a picture of one - just before it dashed back into the water before it dried out! Or is it dead because it dried out?

What reason does it have for being there anyway? After all, its food is in the water and has been for millions of years. Or has it just decided to take a walk to stretch its non-existent legs?

Just listen to Shubin (guess what, he was one of the discoverers of Tikaalik, and is busy hyping it up, with no evidence at all beside his overheated imagination) "It probably had lungs as well as gills, and it had overlapping ribs that could be used to support the body against gravity, Shubin said.

Did you get that? This creature (which, Clack, one of the other discoverers said was more like a fish than anything else) PROBABLY HAD LUNGS AS WELL AS GILLS!

Now what was it doing with both - and most important of all WHY did it have them, and HOW DID IT GET THEM?

There's another serious point which is never mentioned. In most fishes, the pelvic fins are a lot SMALLER than the pectoral fins. In ALL TETRAPODS, the hind limbs are the biggest, usually by a long way. Think of a kangaroo, the most extreme example. How did that arrangement come about?

Marvellous.

But let's now apply the instinct test.

Here's a fish, breathing with gills. It has the instincts to do so.

Here's a creature breathing with lungs AND gills. Allegedly.

Quite apart from the stupidity of a fish evolving the physical structures of lungs - and they are TOTALLY DIFFERENT TO GILLS - which would have filled up with water, drowning the poor brute, where did it get the instincts from TO USE the lungs, if its ancestors had been doing quite well, thank you, with gills before that?

To use our famous little diagram again:

Fish F (using gills) ------ X ------> Tiktaalik (using gills AND LUNGS)

What happened at X?

Tiktaalik was considered to be one of the ancestors of tetrapods, with much blowing of trumpets and evolutionist chortling.

Alas, alas! Woe is them, they are undone!

This very month (Jan 2010) an article was published in Nature which caused one of the editors (Henry Gee) to write this:

The best discoveries are those that overturn current thinking, revealing that what we thought, only yesterday, to have been a coherent and complete picture, is in fact a void that no discoveries can yet fill. Such is the report in tomorrow’s Nature (Niedźwiedzki et al., 463, 43-48, 7 January 2010) of footprints left by tetrapods (four legged land vertebrates) eighteen million years older than the earliest known tetrapod fossils, and ten million years older than the fossils of the creatures thought to be the closest relatives of tetrapods. A fairly complete picture of tetrapod evolution, built up over the past twenty years, has been replaced by a blank canvas overnight.

In other words, it's "Back to the drawing board, fellow evolutionist guessers! It was all wrong, dammit!"

You really must read the article. It's here: http://network.nature.com/people/henrygee/blog/2010/01/05/first-footing

But this tetrapod thing was a major plank in the support for evolution, with new 'transitional fossils' being found at a rate of knots every day!

So what's going to happen next month? Where are you going to run, dear evolutionists, if another major plank is blasted next month?

And they will be. Just you wait and see.

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MY NEW BOOK: HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE

2010-01-21T05:09:00.001-08:00

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THE EVOLUTION OF FLIGHT

2010-01-21T05:06:00.002-08:00

Perhaps I may be allowed a few words on this, the most fatal argument against evolution.

Imagine reptile X no feathers, no wings.

Imagine some mutation (systemic, enormous as per Goldschmidt) and lo and behold, we have the first bird, B -as I said, warmblooded, fully feathered, with wings instead of reptile forelimbs, one way lung circulation instead of bellows arrangement, etc etc.

One may well say, that is a creative act, just taken place, but we'll let that pass.

Diagrammatically:

X (reptile) ----Mutation --------> B (bird, with wings etc)

Now what does B do?

One of 2 things:

a. gets eaten by the parent reptile who thinks it's food

b. attempts to fly off into the distance

BUT IT DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO FLY!!!

As we all know, flight training is a complex affair. If we were to put an untrained person into the cockpit of a fighter aircraft, saying 'Get on with it', disaster is guaranteed.

In order to fly, that bird MUST HAVE THE INSTINCTS REQUIRED. Else disaster is guaranteed. Those instincts are complex, and built into every flying bird.

We know that because young fledglings are shoved out of their parents' nests - AND THEY FLY OR DIE.

So we now have 2 diagrams:

X ------- M-------> B (without flight instincts)---> death/extinction)

or

X----M-----I.I ---->B (with flight instincts) ---> gone to Hawaii.

I.I = instinct implantation.

There can be NO intermediate steps. The bird either knew how to fly, or it died. If we postulate a gliding intermediate, then that too requires training/instinct.

I'm sure you would think twice before leaping off the top of a high tree or cliff if you didn't KNOW how to hang-glide.

So the question before us is, who or what implanted that instinct, and how?

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THE BUCKET ORCHID

2010-01-21T05:06:00.001-08:00

THE BUCKET ORCHID

Darwin in his book 'On the pollination and fertilisation of Orchids' included a description of the pollination of the Bucket Orchid, Coryanthes speciosa.

He was so surprised on receiving the description that until he checked and found that it was a respectable botanist who had made the report, he would not credit it.

The BBC have filmed it happening, and the film is probably available from them.

The orchid's labellum is shaped as a bucket, and above the bucket, on another petal, is a gland which secretes a liquid, probably water, which drips into the bucket and accumulates in it.
There are some photos here:
http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/categ...006/06/29.html

The bucket possesses three remarkable features.

1 Cut into the outer side of the bucket, away from the main flower structure, is a slit, which functions as an overflow: so when the liquid reaches a level about half a centimetre BELOW the upper edge of the bucket, it overflows, so at no time is it ever full to the brim.

2 On the opposite side, inside the bucket, and below the level of the liquid, is what looks for all the world like a little step.

3 The outer lip of the bucket is made of some material which is intensely attractive to the blue euglossine male bee.

The bees come and struggle to get at the lip of the bucket, and of course, in the struggles one falls in sooner or later.

Because the walls of the bucket are smooth, he cannot get a grip EXCEPT at the point where there is the aforementioned step. Wet and bedraggled, he climbs on to the step and out, right into the heart of the flower.

As he enters the tube formed by the other petals, he is suddenly clamped and held for a few moments, unable to move or escape, and on to his back, the anthers are pressed.

On the anthers, there is a glue, which takes exactly the same amount of time to dry, as he is held motionless. It dries, he buzzes off, and goes to another flower where the process is repeated - and so the pollen from the anthers reaches the stigma, thus fertilising the orchid.

Darwin also noted that a phenomenon known as pollinarium bending occurred. The term refers to the manner in which orchid pollinaria start to bend after an 18- to 20-second interval after attaching to a visiting insect. The bending mechanism prevents self-pollination of the orchid.

It so happens that only one species of bee comes to a particular species of Coryanthes.

The probability of these features coming together by chance is astronomically small.

1 The structure of the labellum as a bucket is remarkable in itself

2 The gland above is obviously placed there to produce the liquid for the bucket. Imagine it producing liquid with no bucket there, or a bucket there with no liquid coming!

3 The overflow is there for the designed purpose of preventing the liquid from flowing out, over the top of the bucket. If it could flow over the top, the bee, when he fell in, could simply float out over the edge, and thus defeat the purpose of the exercise.

4 The little step, contrived and placed there for the express purpose of preventing the bee drowning, also forces him to enter the heart of the flower.

5 The flower has a designed clamping action, with a timer built in, exactly matched to the drying time of the glue on the anthers.

6 The anthers stick to his back, and do not impede his flight to another plant after he has dried off.

7 The stigma of the flower is positioned on the top petal of the flower, to make sure that it is in the correct position to receive the pollen when the bee arrives. If it was on the underside of the flower, then it would never receive any pollen.

We won't go into the complexities of anther construction until the post on mitosis and meiosis are completed.

8 The glue on the anthers is exactly right for the purpose, and its chemical composition known, and the manufaturing technique as well.

Having read all that, it is no wonder that Darwin staggered at the description. He said that the orchids employed a 'beautiful contrivance' to avoid self pollination.

The question of how all this evolved clearly didn't arise in his mind, or else he pushed it to the back of it. But who contrived the contrivance?

Explanations?

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THE FIG WASP

2010-01-21T05:05:00.000-08:00

THE FIG WASP

I've put up some amazing things, but this is certainly one of the highest ranking. Judge for yourself.

The fig tree has a tightly closed inflorescence, which means that the hundreds of tiny flowers (florets to give them their proper name) are completely inclosed inside the fig. They can't be seen from the outside.

Each species of fig seems to be pollinated by only ONE species of wasp! There are about 730 species of fig so that would seem to require 730 species of wasp- but not all of these are known as yet.

How do the insects find the flowers?

When the tree is ready for pollination, it releases tree-specific volatile substances which the wasp tracks down to their source. Lo and behold, there's the flower, or the inflorescence, rather.

So the female finds the inflorescence. Thousands die in the search process though, because it's a big world out there.

How do they get in?

When she finds it, there is another big hurdle to cross. The entrance to the inflorescence (called the ostiole) is extremely small, and lined with bracts, which are placed there to keep out the unwanted. They fit tightly, and that makes life very difficult for the unwanted, but no less so for the wasp, to get in.

She, however, has been explicitly designed for this very task.

Her head and thorax (chest) are extremely flattened and elongated: just the job for squeezing past the bracts! ('Remarkably adapted' is the description. Ho ho ho!) Her 'teeth', on her mandibular apparatus, point backwards, and she's got teeth on her hind legs, also pointing backwards. They do so in order to prevent her from slipping out!

Her wings very often break off in the struggle to get in - so once in there, there's no way back.

Once inside, she sets about, in complete or nearly complete darkness, to pollinate the stigmas, and to lay eggs in some of the ovules. She distinguishes between those ovules which are going to become seeds, and those which are not.

Those ovules whose styles are too long for her ovipositor to reach the ovule, she simply pollinates.

Those ovules her ovipositor can reach, she leaves unpollinated, so they will only contain her larvae.

This makes certain that the plant will survive, and that her larvae will have food to eat.

What happens then? She dies. Her young never see her alive, and can't copy her actions - but they do exactly the same as she did.

As the eggs develop and hatch out into larvae, the eat the endosperm of the ovules they have been laid in, and they grow into adulthood.

The males mate with the females, and amazingly, chew a hole in the wall of the maturing or matured fig SO THAT THE FEMALES CAN GET OUT.

Then they die.

The females in the meantime, load up with pollen, or get covered in it, and then set off to find another flower inflorescence.

EVOLUTIONARY DIFFICULTIES

1 How do we explain the fact that the young never see the adult in action - and yet they do exactly the same as she does?

2 How do the males know that unless they dig a hole, the females won't get out, the plants won't get pollinated, and their own species will die out?

3 How is it that only the fig wasp pollinates the fig flowers? Without the wasp, as with the bucket orchid, the fig will die out, and without the fig, the wasp will die out?

4 How did the female 'develop' the elongated and flattened shape that enables her to get into the ostiole?

5 How is it thar her ovipositor length has become the determining factor in whether the ovules get pollinated or not? If it was too long, then no pollination would take place. If it was too short, then the eggs would not be laid. So who or what determined that length?

6 How did this relationship, as specific and complicated as it is, ever get started?

7 Where did the plant get the necessary chemical knowledge to produce the volatile substances which attract the wasps, and how did it know that it would attract them anyway?

8 Where did the insects get the brain to figure out that if they followed the scent, they would find a fig they could pollinate?

It happens, that once the fig is pollinated, and the females have left the fig, its colour and smell change, and it becomes attractive to the fruit eating community like birds, bats, monkeys etc etc.

Does God take thought for wasps? And figs? And birds? And monkeys? Obviously, He does!

Here's another account: http://figs4fun.com/Links/FigLink006a.pdf

The common fig is a member of the genus Ficus. Ficus is a large genus with some 2000 tropical and subtropical tree, shrub and vine species distributed around the whole world.

The fruit of all ficus species isthe syconium, an enlarged, fleshy and hollow peduncle bearing closely massed tiny flowers on its inner wall. The true fruits are tiny drupelets which develop from these flowers.

The problem is these flowers are borne on the inside of the syconium. They never open to the outside world like respectable roses, cabbages and oak trees.

How do they get pollinated?

That's their weird sex life. Hold on for this is complicated.

F. carica and some closely related species come in two basic forms: edible figs and caprifigs. Caprifigs are the host of the fig pollinator Blastophages psenes or fig wasp which lays its eggs in the caprifig's short-styled female flowers.

The male fig wasp grows, mates and dies inside the caprifig fruit in which he is born. The female is more adventuresome.

She leaves the caprifig fruit through its ostiole or eye (picking up a lot of pollen in the process) and flies off in search of a new fruit at the right stage of development in which to lay her eggs.

The kicker is this: female fig wasps lay so many eggs in each caprifig fruit that very few, if any, of the female flowers ever produce seeds. Not good for ficus species survival.

Evolution (or God, if you prefer) provided a solution: the edible fig.

The plant and fruit look just like those of the caprifig, but have two important differences: no male flowers, and the female flowers have long styles which prevent the fig wasp from laying her eggs.

If she enters the fruit of an edible fig, she searches desperately for, but finds no suitable female flowers. As she does, she scatters the pollen she picked up leaving the caprifig. And, this pollenizes (or caprifies) the edible fig. When caprified, each fruit will produce several hundred to several thousand seeds per fruit, depending on the variety.

Not so great for the individual fig wasp, but good for the ficus species. Overall, the situation benefits both figs and fig wasps. There are plenty of caprifigs to nourish the fig wasps and plenty of edible figs to produce fig seeds which develop into fig and caprifig plants.

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THE MIRACLE OF ILLOGIC

2010-01-21T05:04:00.000-08:00

THE MIRACLE OF ILLOGIC

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I am always amazed when I hear of some anthropologist finding a crude, brutishly made, blunt, prehistoric stone axe. Because, immediately, they leap upon it, with great cries of triumphant glee, crowing happily that our ancestors made it, and it was xyzanthropus wot did it n thousand years ago.

The product of human intelligence they cry! See, hominids made it. Or something else did. And look how advanced it is! Why, there's a slot here for the haft of the axe to fit in! And some indentations where the binding was attached to hold the device together. And look! There's a few skulls nearby with marks of an axe indented into them! That proves that xyzanthropus used tools as weapons! A tool maker, and a weapons maker! A mark of extremely advanced stages of human evolution!

Little realising that this is really a ton of garbage.

That blunt, crude stone axe is mark of human intelligence of very high order for the time, they say.

But then, the same evolutionary palaeontologist finds a fossilised flight feather. Or some tissue with DNA in it.

That flight feather, or fossil thereof, shows considerable amounts of aeronautical engineering skill, enabling us to know that the bird could and did fly. It is clearly designed for the purpose.

In the DNA are millions of coded, precisely detailed instructions, for the construction of that feather, far surpassing anything even modern Homo sapiens can construct.

And yet, they cannot see that that feather, and that DNA could not possibly have evolved. Nobody in their right senses would claim that the stone axe evolved. But they claim the feather and the DNA did.

It takes a Miracle of Illogic to make that leap.

THE ARCTIC ROSE

2010-01-21T05:03:00.002-08:00

THE ARCTIC ROSE
http://ucdnema.ucdavis.edu/imagemap/...10/pollbio.htm

Got a satellite dish which can track a satellite?

Well, I've got news for you: this plant beat your gadget's designers to it.

In the arctic, heat is at a premium. And so, the arctic rose attracts the insects which pollinate it with the freebie of heat!

The little arctic rose is shaped like a radio telescope monitoring outer space: but for a far more useful purpose.

The parabola shape of its petals gathers and reflects heat from the sun's rays as well as foil, and focusses warmth on the stamens and the stigma!

Both food (nectar and pollen) and warmth (from the parabolic structure) are available to the insects here - so they come to these private sun traps, which are about 10 degrees warmer than elsewhere. They themselves become warmer and better able to fly in very short time, and move on to the next solar heated flower!

They've got to work hard, because the Greenland summer is only about 5 weeks, even though there are nearly 24 hours of daylight. Therefore the plant has to keep warm all day.

So how does it do it? Its stem rotates because of its extraordinary design, and it tracks the sun 24 hours per day, being never more than 2 degrees off course!

So evolution lads, how did this one evolve?

1 Let's leave aside the meiosis and mitosis questions - ie how does the plant figure out that its gametes (sex cells) must contain half the required number of chromosomes.

2 How did it know that it had to get insects in to pollinate itself? And how did it know there were such things as insects, anyway?

3 How did it figure out that warmth and food are essential to insects?

4 How did it conceive the idea of a nice reflective parabolic shape that would focus (focus? - what's that in plant language?) the heat on the stigma and stamens?

5 How did it invent the tracking device, which allows it to know that there IS a sun, where that sun is, and alter its position to follow the sun?

6 And how did it get the plans for the tracking device into its own genes when it had figured out everything else?

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THE ARCHERFISH

2010-01-21T05:03:00.001-08:00

THE ARCHERFISH (Toxotes spp)
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10268.html

Still on the theme of being able to see both under water and in the air, we have this lovely little specimen called the archerfish.

A New Scientist article describes it thus:

Awesome skills of spitting archerfish revealed

The Indo-Pacific fish is able to spit water at its prey out of the water, and hit it. A video shows a fish leaping out of the water to catch an insect.

"Scientists had thought their hunting technique was an unsophisticated skill, based on blasts of water with a "spit and hope" quality.

However, in 2004 researchers showed that these fish are able to precisely judge the size and position of prey above the water line, taking into account the distorting effect on light of passing from air to water."

There's another fascinating feature. The mouthparts are poked out of the water when firing the blast.

That means 2 things at least.

1 The eyes are UNDERWATER while the gun is OUT of the water in the air. Imagine underwater frogmen with a gun firing at a helicopter. They can only see the target, and have no radar, sonar or other aid. What are the chances? And remember, they have brains.

2 Somehow the fish has figured out that if it remains too far UNDERWATER, the jet will be either weakened or won't reach the surface because of water resistance. So it sticks its mouth out of the water.

Their mouthparts are specially designed to enable this unique phenomenon to take place. As far as I know, no other fish in the world can do this accurate spitting, and therefore this is an evolutionary nightmare: no relatives, no gradual acquisition of the necessary physical characteristics, and definitely no acquisition of the instinctive behaviour pattern. No common ancestors.

So where did it come from?

Here is the obligatory, stupid comment: "This suggests the behaviour is evolutionarily "hardwired" and not subject to learning, the researchers say."

Not learned. Right there in our faces. Where did it come from?

Let me point out the difficulties any evolutionary theory has to face.

1 The unique mouthparts. No other fish has them, and they have to work first time, or the fish would have starved. They don't eat anything else.

DIET

Archerfish prey mainly on insects, which are shot down from overhanging branches with a strong and accurate jet of water. They form a spitting tube by positioning their tongue against a groove on the roof of their mouth.

Water is forced through this tube by quickly snapping shut their gills creating a very effective water pistol. For maximum accuracy the tip of their snout extends out of the water while the rest of the body remains submerged. They direct the jet of water with the tip of their tongue.

1. How did they learn to do this with the mouthparts when they've got them?
Remember the question: "Duh! Now what the hell do I do with this??"

2 The ability to take account of the differences in refractive index of water and air. From underwater, an insect would appear to be somewhere else than directly above the fish, and not in a straight line. Somehow the fish corrects for this. How?

3 How does a fish calculate that it will take more force to blast a bigger prey off its perch into the water? It obviously does, says the article - so where did this bit of 'fishy intelligence' come from?

ArcherFish: Changing Caliber to Fit Prey
by Brad Harrub, Ph.D.

"A fish learning the laws of optics is an amazing feat. But to combine those optical laws with the precision shooting of a sniper and then calculating the force of the shot according to the size of the prey (in order to obtain food), defies evolutionary explanation.

How was this creature able to “evolve” these distinctive abilities, and furthermore, why go through all the trouble? Why not just eat aquatic animals like other fish?"

Heidi Hardman remarked:

In a series of experiments, the researchers showed that the fish do not learn this by remembering which combinations of spatial configurations and the corresponding images were rewarding in the past. Rather, the fish extracted the underlying law that connects spatial configuration and apparent size. This remarkable cognitive ability allows the fish to readily judge a target’s objective size from underwater views they have never encountered before (2004).

Random mutations, anyone? Thought so.

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THE FOUR-EYED FISH

2010-01-21T05:00:00.000-08:00

LIFE CYCLE OF THE LIVER FLUKE

2010-01-21T04:58:00.000-08:00

There is something ugly in this article.

This example may be gruesome in some ways, but it does demonstrate what I consider to be an unevolvable phenomenon.

The mature liver fluke lives in the bile duct of a mammal.

It is a flat, leaf shaped organism when mature, which is hermaphrodite, containing both testes and an ovary.

It produces eggs, self-fertilised, which pass into the mammal's duodenum. Strangely enough, they are not digested by the proteolytic enzymes produced by the pancreas.

The eggs pass out in the faeces of the animal in an unembryonated state. They take 2 weeks or so to develop into 'miracidia' as they are called, which are actively mobile, and swim using flagella, no less.

A snail, coming into contact with the miracidia, is penetrated by them, and they burrow into the snail's digestive tract, where a 'sporocyst' forms: completely different in appearance to the flagellated miracidium.

Inside this structure, a 'redia' forms, which is again completely unlike the sporocyst, and inside the redia, another quite different form develops called a 'cercaria'. Inside one redia, many cercaria form and eventually there are so many of them, the snail dies. Each cercaria looks like a tadpole with a tail.

The cercaria erupt out of the snails tissues, find wet grass blades, and swim up the film of water, and then encyst, in which form they are able to resist drying out to a limited but not indefinite extent.

The cyst is now ingested by the mammal as it eats the grass. It survives the passage through the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum and the abomasum - the four stomachs of a ruminant animal - and when it reaches the duodenum the cyst wall digests, and the young parasite emerges.

Amazingly, it burrows its way through the duodenal wall, into the peritoneal cavity, and finds its way to the liver. There it feeds on the host's blood, grows to maturity, and then, again remarkably, makes its way into the bile duct where it lays its eggs, and the cycle begins again.

IMPOSSIBILITIES

It would be difficult to imagine a life cycle like this: but there it is.

Every stage is preparatory to the next, and any failure to develop say the redia, would mean the end of the life cycle.

So the young swim.

They produce digestive enzymes to penetrate the snail.
Having penetrated the snail they become something totally different.

Where did the instinctive behaviour come from? At what point in the parasite's evolution did it decide to enter a snail? And when it entered, why did it decide to go through 2 phases?

How did it know that it had to get out of the snail's body and on to the grass? And why grass which would be eaten by mammals? It then encysts - in order to pass through the mammal's stomach(s).

How could it be that the cyst's material resist the digestive juices of 4 ruminant stomachs? And then, conveniently digests in the duodenal juices?

But the young parasite itself is not digested! It somehow has the equipment to bore its way through the duodenal wall, and in the darkness of the peritoneal cavity finds its way unerringly to the liver. As if it knew the anatomy of the sheep!

And finally, it somehow finds its way into the bile duct - the only place where it could possibly lay its eggs and be certain that they would enter the sheep's alimentary canal again.

This life cycle is complex to the nth degree. Everything had to be in place AT ONCE for this to happen: the liver of the sheep, the gall bladder, the snail, the grass, the sheep's grass eating habit.

It is totally inexplicable on any evolutionary hypothesis.

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BIRDS’ LUNGS

2010-01-21T04:57:00.000-08:00

NEWS FLASH!

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BIRDS’ LUNGS

As Darwin said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down”

Here’s a prize example which pulverises it completely.

One of the very biggest stumbling blocks to the theory of evolution by gradual steps or in mighty leaps, is that group of magnificent creatures, the birds.

The theory at present, holds that the birds evolved from the reptiles. That the scales of reptiles somehow became frayed out and turned into feathers over millions and millions of years.

Look carefully at the scales on this snake.

Here’s a flight feather:

I’m sure you can see some of the visible problems involved in producing the flight feather from the scale. When we look at the detailed structure of the feather, the problems become astronomical, and the evolution proposal hopelessly absurd.

That somehow, a torpid, cold-blooded reptile turned into the warm-blooded bird with probably the highest metabolic rate in the animal kingdom. (In case the pedants are out in force, I am referring to the ectothermic and endothermic animals. Ectotherms have variable body temperatures, endotherms have constant body temperatures).

Whatever problems evolving that lot involved, they pale into insignificance in the presence of the one fact which I shall now describe. It is the difference between the lung of a reptile, and the lung of a bird.

To crudely illustrate the problems that the evolutionist has to account for, think of an ordinary balloon with air entering and leaving the balloon constantly full or partially deflated.

It enters the neck, goes into the balloon, and is squeezed out. BOTH INFLOW AND OUTFLOW USE THE SAME NECK. So air that is going to go out of the balloon, can mix with the air that’s just coming in. There is TWO WAY airflow.

That’s a reptile’s lung, very similar to ours. There’s a MIXTURE of incoming and outgoing air in our lungs.

Now think of one of those long, thin balloons, like the ones used at parties to make dogs and so forth, with a hole AT BOTH ENDS.

Bend it into a U shape, and blow into one end.

Air goes in at one end, and out the other, rather like a jet engine or a wind tunnel.

That’s how the bird’s lung works. IT USES ONE WAY TRAFFIC. There is NO MIXING of incoming and outgoing air.

How does the first sort of lung (in the reptile) become the second kind (in the bird)?

No evolutionary explanation for that fact is possible, and to hypothesise dinosaurs with feathers running round and turning into birds is a complete nonsense. Their lungs say so. As Michael Denton says:

“Just how such an utterly different respiratory system could have evolved gradually from the standard vertebrate design is fantastically difficult to envisage, especially bearing in mind that the maintenance of respiratory function is absolutely vital to the life of an organism to the extent that the slightest malfunction leads to death within minutes.”

So imagine a reptile whose lungs developed a big hole in the bottom for the air to flow through. Guess what? Yeah.

“Just as the feather cannot function as an organ of flight until the hooks and barbules are coadapted to fit together perfectly, so the avian lung cannot function as an organ of respiration until the parabronchi system which permeates it and the air sac system guarantees the parabronchi their air supply are both highly developed and able to function together in a perfectly integrated manner.”

Those are the headlines. Here is some more detail so any interested parties can examine them and satisfy themselves that the above description is correct. Follow the blue arrows in the exhalation diagram (the top one) and the inhalation diagram (below) to see that there is no mixing of incoming and outgoing air.

The advantageis that air, high in oxygen content, always moves unidirectionally through the lungs.”

Here is a more pictorial representation of exhalation. Just follow the blue arrows.

and inhalation:

The system is described as a counter-current/flow system, where air with the highest concentration of oxygen meets blood with the lowest concentration of oxygen across the membranes. It is an extremely efficient system, used by intelligent design engineers to maximize heat exchange or other. “In counter-flow heat exchangers the fluids enter the exchanger from opposite ends. The counter current design is most efficient, in that it can transfer the most heat.” Wiki.

Now you’ve looked at those facts, can you imagine how the one system could have evolved from the other?

Denker also raises the interesting point that “the avian lung cannot be inflated out of a collapsed state as happens in all other vertebrates after birth. … the air capillaries are never collapsed as are the alveoli of other vertebrate species; rather as they grow into lung tissue, the parabronchi are from the beginning open tubes filled either with air or fluid (which is later absorbed into the blood capillaries).”

This set of facts alone finishes any idea that a bird evolved from anything. This kind of breathing occurs nowhere else in the vertebrates. Birds have no ‘common ancestors’ - nor even close relatives.

Therefore birds are a completely unique creation, and did not ‘evolve’ from anything else.

I cannot see any possible mechanism whereby this could have evolved, and it is up to the gallant rearguard-fighting proponents to produce some explanation or the other, fanciful or otherwise. I think Goldschmidt’s idea was probably the best:

PS

Nice summary here:

http://www.science.org.au/nova/newsc.../104ns_002.htm

“When a bird breathes in, air does not go directly into the lungs. Instead, it enters the air sacs, where it is stored briefly before passing into the lungs at the next inhalation. In this way, air enters and exits a bird's lungs at different points - in via the air sacs, out via the windpipe - allowing them to maintain near-constant, one-way airflow through their lungs. This allows a countercurrent system to be set up between the air and the bloodstream, with air passing in one direction and blood in the other. The result is far more efficient gas exchange between air and blood than is possible in lizards, or even mammals.

The differences between animals that use air sacs and those that don't are striking. Birds extract more oxygen from the air than any other animal of comparable size. At sea level they are 33 per cent more efficient at extracting oxygen than mammals. At 1500 metres a bird may be 200 per cent more efficient. This gives birds a huge advantage over mammals at altitude. It also explains why geese can migrate over the Himalayas at an altitude that would kill a human.”
__________________

""This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.""—Sir Isaac Newton

PLANTS AND THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

2010-01-21T04:55:00.000-08:00

PLANTS AND THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION:

WHERE DID THE FLOWERING PLANTS COME FROM?

We have seen that evolution has no explanation to offer for the absolutely gigantic phenomenon of instinct’s origin.

The migrating birds are only the tip of a gigantic iceberg: because as I have said before, EVERY function which supports life is instinctive: from breathing, eating, reproducing, moving etc – instinct is universal in the living world.

However, it is the Plant Kingdom which presents, in my opinion, the most ENORMOUS difficulties for evolution theory. The picture in the animal kingdom is messy – but the plant kingdom leaves us in no doubt at all that evolution is a complete non-starter.

Let’s begin with the two most difficult problems of all, leaving aside the question of the origin of life itself.

Nitrogen Fixation

As we all know, life is impossible without proteins. Enzymes which make the reactions which support life possible at manageable temperatures, are proteins.

DNA, the carrier of the genetic code of life, contains nitrogen, and without nitrogen it would be useless.

The Problems Regarding Nitrogen

There are 2 such problems.

1 Life cannot function without proteins – and proteins cannot be made without proteins to make them! A truly vicious cycle.

But it’s No.2 I want to focus on in this article.

2 Nitrogen absolutely MUST get into the cells for life to go on. But nitrogen is one of the most unreactive gases on the planet. It combines with nothing at normal temperatures.

In nature, at the temperature of lightning flashes, (about 30000 -50000 C) it is forced to combine with oxygen in the air. That process produces gases containing nitrogen, which then dissolve in rainwater and form nitric and nitrous acids.

Those acids fall on the earth and combine with other substances there, forming nitrates and nitrites which are then available to plants. The plants use them to manufacture their own tissues, animals eat the plants, and so nitrogen enters the living world.

That however, is not the main entry point.

There are microorganisms (called cyanobacteria) which fix nitrogen, taking it directly from the air. There is a very small group of other bacteria in the root nodules of leguminous plants, which do the same – hence farmers like to plant clover and other such plants, because they introduce nitrogen into the soil and the crops benefit.

So far so good.

The cyanobacteria, as we mentioned above, ‘fix’ nitrogen, and are the entry point of the largest amounts of nitrogen into the living world. They soak up the nitrogen, incorporate it in their tissues, and then die, liberating nitrogen compounds for use by other life forms.

Fixing Nitrogen

This is not an easy process. Lightning flashes do it. Haber and Bosch invented the process called by their names, which is currently used today. They got Nobel prizes for their invention.

In essence, they use a temperature of >400C, catalysts of one sort or another, high gas pressures and so forth. It is a complex process requiring high degrees of technical knowledge to create and operate, and it works, producing ammonia which is used as the basis of fertilisers and explosives..

The cyanobacteria are among the oldest, if not the oldest fossils ever found. They date back to the pre-Cambrian era, upwards of three billion years ago http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html.

So we have the completely extraordinary picture, of this lowly group of bacteria, right from the dawn of life, FIXING NITROGEN, no less. At normal, average temperatures. Unlike Haber and Bosch, they don’t need 400C, high pressures, metallic catalysts and so forth.

This reaction is performed exclusively by these bacteria, using an enzyme complex termed nitrogenase. This enzyme consists of two proteins - an iron protein and a molybdenum-iron protein.

We are immediately in the realms of miracle.

First, this lowly bacterium is able to perform, in a far superior and safer manner to the Haber- Bosch process, the difficult feat of fixing nitrogen.

Second, they’ve been quietly doing this for more than 3 billion years, having invented the process with no kind of brain.

Third, they invented the enzyme complex and use it, unchanged to this day.

But I said ‘miracle’ a moment ago.

It’s this. That enzyme complex consists of two PROTEINS. Proteins, remember, NEED NITROGEN in their molecular structure. So if nitrogen WASN’T available to enter their tissues, the proteins could never have formed.

But nitrogen COULDN’T enter their structure UNTIL IT WAS FIXED and available. So what fixed it? Why, the cyanobacteria of course. But…..!!!

Another point of immense interest is that the cyanobacteria have remained unchanged from the very beginning. Here are some ancient ones, and some modern ones. They haven’t changed at all.

Which is very revealing. The design cannot be bettered, has not been bettered in 3.5 billion years.

Another Amazing Fact

And there is another amazing fact. The cyanobacteria are ALSO able to photosynthesise. They have chlorophyll – and that is the second most important compound in nature, without which, life as we know it would perish.

But photosynthesis produces oxygen, and that oxygen interferes with the nitrogen fixing process. So how to avoid this conflict in cells which can do both? The Designer solved it at a stroke.

He separated the two parts of the organism that perform the two separate processes.

Ancient

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/origin7sm.jpg
http://www.emc.maricopa.edu/faculty/.../ApexChert.jpg

Modern

http://www.geology.wisc.edu/homepage...nobacteria.jpg

Please understand that this is one of the most fundamental processes of life on this planet. Unfixed nitrogen is useless to life, though it does play a part in maintaining the proper balance of gases in respiration.

Without nitrogen fixation, there could be no proteins.

Without proteins, life itself would be impossible.

Without proteins, nitrogen fixation itself is impossible.

The vicious cycle will certainly strangle the theory sooner or later in the open-minded.

THE ORIGIN OF THE ANGIOSPERMS

About half of the plants on the planet are ‘angiosperms’.

That term means : ‘plants which have their seeds in a closed ovary.’ What does that mean?

Think of an apple or a plum fruit. The edible fruit, as a whole, is the vastly enlarged ovary of the plant. The seed (in the case of the plum) and the pips (seeds in the case of the apple) are ‘enclosed in the ovary’. The ovary has become filled with good things which animals can eat, and in the process, the seeds are dispersed elsewhere to produce new plants.

Here is a helpful diagram to show what I mean:
http://www.learner.org/jnorth/images...ower_parts.gif

Notice, the ovule, which will become the seed, is INSIDE THE OVARY. This is the distinguishing characteristic of the angiosperms.

The more ‘primitive’ plants, the ‘gymnosperms’ have ‘naked seeds’ which are NOT ENCLOSED in an ovary.

The impossibility which faces the evolutionist is: if the gymnosperms are the predecessors of the angiosperms, then how did the seed become ENCLOSED in the ovary, while in the gymnosperms it is NOT ENCLOSED? There is absolutely no explanation of this phenomenon extant.

Such is the force of this fact, that Darwin had this to say:

"The rapid development as far as we can judge of all the higher plants within recent geological times is an abominable mystery."
—Charles Darwin in a letter to Sir Joseph Hooker, 1879.

Nothing has changed.

The botanist Chester A. Arnold, who studies fossil plants at the University of Michigan, makes the following comment:

It has long been hoped that extinct plants will ultimately reveal some of the stages through which existing groups have passed during the course of their development, but it must be freely admitted that this aspiration has been fulfilled to a very slight extent, even though paleobotanical research has been in progress for more than one hundred years.

Arnold accepts that paleobotany (the science of plant fossils) has produced no results in support of evolution: "[W]e have not been able to track the phylogenetic history of a single group of modern plants from its beginning to the present."
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/orig...plants_05.html

“More than one-hundred years ago, Darwin called the origin of angiosperms an "abominable mystery". Angiosperms appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, with no obvious ancestors for a period of about 80 to 90 million years prior to their appearance. Not even fossil leaves or pollen are known from this earlier time.”
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/anthoph...hophytafr.html

It doesn’t seem likely that they will either. As I said before, moving the seed from OUTSIDE the ovary to a position INSIDE an ovary, permits no intermediate conditions.

As we might expect, there are guesses galore, but Arnold (above) has stated the matter very clearly and correctly.

This is a magnificent disproof of common descent.

The angiosperms, as said before, constitute about half the plants on the face of the planet.

So this is not a minor objection, it is one of unimaginable magnitude. Animal life depends in the main, for example, on the grasses for food . Grasses are angiosperms – so the theory cannot account for the existence of this most vital single group of plants.

As we will show later, it cannot account for the existence of the gymnosperms either – so that is well over 75% of the plant kingdom.

What opinion must one hold of a theory of origins that fails so dismally to account for such major groups of organisms? A pretty low one, I suggest.

For such an important group of plants to emerge out of nowhere in the Cretaceous as they do, is positive proof of Creation. It is exactly what we would predict based on a creation model. No ancestors, common or otherwise. Just BANG! Here we all are, chaps.

Here’s Berkeley again:

The rapid diversification of angiosperm taxa began in the Albian,

[incidentally, just notice the question begging! It did evolve; they did diversify; but we haven’t a clue where they came from! Reminds me of Arnold Lunn’s comment: “Now faith is the substance of fossils hoped for, the evidence of links unseen”]

in the mid-Cretaceous, and has continued to this day. At that time, there is an almost exponential increase in angiosperm diversity, and there does not appear to have been any major extinctions of groups in between. Despite the large numbers of taxa that are known from rather early in this diversification, there is no indication of where the taxa are coming from. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/anthoph...hophytafr.html

To help you orientate yourself as to what ‘Cretaceous’ means, here is a geological chart.
http://creationwiki.org/pool/images/...x-Geo_time.JPG

Notice how late it really is. That means they have had a lot of history to examine in order to find the ancestors they need. They haven’t found any.

Common ancestors anybody?

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!

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LIFE CYCLE OF THE BUTTERFLy

2010-01-21T04:53:00.000-08:00

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 (which we discussed previously. If you didn't read it, go have a look, and marvel as I did when I first found out about it)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.How did that happen, one wonders.

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. How convenient!

Butterfly eggs consist of a hard-ridged outer layer of shell, called the chorion. This is lined with a thin coating of wax which prevents the egg from drying out before the larva has had time to fully develop. Even more convenient!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ariadne_merione_egg_sec.jpg

The eggs hatch out into larvae or grubs or caterpillars, which as we all know, are about as un-butterfly-looking creatures as elephants.

Source:wiki

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.

Source: wiki

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.

Source: wiki
There is no conceivable way that this life cycle could have evolved. From what? And how?

No. This was designed by the Great Designer.

PS Have a look at this: I've just discovered some absolutely fascinating information about the mantis shrimp here:

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THE EYE OF THE TRILOBITE

2010-01-21T04:52:00.000-08:00

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THE EYE OF THE TRILOBITE
A Miracle of Creation

http://shkrobius.googlepages.com/wondersofnature

A beautiful drawing can be seen above. The link is here, where it can be viewed at a larger size: http://www.biology-resources.com/insects-02.html

Let’s first get acquainted with a compound eye. Instead of the single eye such as we have, each compound eye consists of a thousand or so individual ‘eyes’ called ommatidia.

Each ommatidium is made up of a lens (more about this later), a crystalline cone under it, and a nerve cell which conducts the electrical impulse to the creature’s brain where it is interpreted.

Around each cone (corresponding to the biscuit of an ice cream cone) is a layer of light absorbing material, which prevents the light in each cone being scattered and degrading the image created by other ommatidia.

All arthropods have this type of eye.

The trilobite’s eye, consisting of millions of honeycomb-shaped tiny particles and a double-lens system, this eye "has an optimal design which would require a well-trained and imaginative optical engineer to develop today". David Raup

”Moreover, the honeycomb eye structure of the trilobite has survived to our own day without a single change. Some insects such as bees and dragon flies have the same eye structure as did the trilobite.”

So, to put it plainly, the design of the trilobite’s eye was so advanced that it exists today, virtually unchanged. That unchanging structure is direct testimony that evolution has not taken place: certainly not in this structure.

I used the word ‘design’ because it clearly meets the criteria for deciding whether or not something was designed: it is a complex structure, it has a specific function, and it employs advanced information in its construction. To reiterate:

1 It is a very complex structure, not a simple one that may have just happened.

2 It has a specific function, which it fulfils well – and we know that because the eye has persisted unchanged for millions of years.

3 It makes use of information – which blind mutations cannot do. The high quality of the information is shown below.

The lens system refracted light incident from any angle into the trilobite vision system. A small wall to keep refracted light from interfering also partitioned the separate lenses. This is a feature of modern cameras: there is a light absorbing layer (usually black) inside the camera’s film chamber – to absorb stray light and prevent it degrading the image.

This is clear evidence of specificity of the design. The Designer knew about light scattering, and specifically prevented it. He knew about lenses, their required curvature, and the aberrations that such lenses produced. And as a direct, required consequence, produced the next invention:

‘The thick lenses in the aggregate eyes of a group of trilobites were doublet structures designed to eliminate spherical aberration.’ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v254/n5502/abs/254663a0.html
Nature 254, 663 - 667 (24 April 1975); doi:10.1038/254663a0

“The thick lenses in the aggregate eyes of a group of trilobites were doublet structures designed to eliminate spherical aberration. The shape of the optically correcting interface is in accord with constructions by Des Cartes and Huygens and is dictated by a fundamental law of physics. Trilobites may have evolved such sophisticated eye-lenses to maximise optic neurone response in a dimly lit environment.”

This is even clearer use of information, proving conclusively that design is present. The Designer knew about correcting spherical aberration by using doublets possessing different refractive indices. He was way ahead of DesCartes and Huygens, and knew about the fundamental law of physics governing such correction.

He also knew about amplifying dim light – presumably as Night Vision Goggles are intended to do today, as the authors above said: “…such sophisticated eye-lenses to maximise optic neurone response in a dimly lit environment.”

Here is another article describing the same phenomenon.

“This eye possessed an internal optical-doublet structure together with a refracting interface (comprised of two lenses with differing refraction so they would work together) that corrected focusing - a lens design that human scientists would repeat hundreds of millions of years later.” (In fact courses on optical DESIGN are offered which teach about optical doublets, inter alia). Here if you want to attend one: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/research/optics/msc/syllabus.htm

In case you don’t know, spherical aberration is the blurring of an image that occurs when light from the margin of a lens or mirror with a spherical surface comes to a shorter focus than light from the central portion. The changing focal length is caused by deviations in the lens or mirror surface from a true sphere.

‘The novel eyes of the trilobites were a particularly effective adaptation to underwater sight, and were ostensibly plagued by neither near-sightedness nor far-sightedness. Close and distant food and predators would be simultaneously in focus.’

This is a feature of modern wide-angle lenses: which are among the most advanced in the world. And here it is in the eye of a humble trilobite, millions of years ago.

Evolution is helpless to produce such a structure. A Designer, on the other hand, could do it with ease.

THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION

2010-01-21T04:50:00.000-08:00

Having read a great deal about this ‘explosion’ I want to put before the expanding readership some little facts that they may not know. These facts show that it is far beyond the bounds of credibility for so many, and such varied organisms to have evolved in any step by step fashion.

Simply because they appeared so suddenly and in one fell swoop.

This obviously bothered Darwin, and later on, Gould and many other palaeontologists. There is NO credible evolutionary explanation of the phenomenon, and I am amazed to know that so many informed people (on the subject of the Cambrian explosion, I mean) can look at those facts in the face, and still go along with the ToE.

What does ‘Cambrian’ mean?

Palaeontologists dig down into the earth’s crust, and they have found that there are many layers of rock. They’ve given the layers some very long and fancy names, and the names depend on the kind of fossils in the rock.

The oldest animals/ plants are in the deepest layers, which are the oldest ones, and the newest animals/plants are in the highest ones.

Right at the very bottom of the layers is granite, which cannot and does not contain fossils, and is the oldest of the rocks.

So imagine a pack of cards resting on a granite surface. The granite represents the basement layer of rocks and piled on top of it are the cards, each of which represents a layer of rock. The layer resting on the granite is called the ‘Pre-Cambrian’ layer, and contains a very limited number of fossils: limited both in number and kind.

The layer on top of that one is the ‘Cambrian’ layer, and it is this one we are going to discuss in brief.

What’s in the Cambrian Layer?

To everybody’s astonishment, especially the people who believed in the gradual evolution theory, there are thousands upon thousands of different kinds of animals and plants in that layer, and they weren’t simple ones either.

Here are some famous evolutionists:

Most families, orders, classes, and phyla appear rather suddenly in the fossil record, often without anatomically intermediate forms smoothly interlinking evolutionarily derived descendant taxa with their presumed ancestors.
• Eldredge, N., 1989
Macro-Evolutionary Dynamics: Species, Niches, and Adaptive Peaks
McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, New York, p. 22

The record jumps, and all the evidence shows that the record is real: the gaps we see reflect real events in life's history -- not the artifact of a poor fossil record.
• Eldredge, N. and Tattersall, I. (1982)
The Myths of Human Evolution
Columbia University Press, p. 59

Described recently as "the most important evolutionary event during the entire history of the Metazoa," the Cambrian explosion established virtually all the major animal body forms -- Bauplane or phyla -- that would exist thereafter, including many that were 'weeded out' and became extinct. Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100. The evolutionary innovation of the Precambrian/Cambrian boundary had clearly been extremely broad: "unprecedented and unsurpassed," as James Valentine of the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently put it (Lewin, 1988).

"This is true of all thirty-two orders of mammals...The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed...

This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all classes of animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate...it is true of the classes, and of the major animal phyla, and it is apparently also true of analogous categories of plants.
• Simpson, G. G. (1944)
Tempo and Mode in Evolution
Columbia University Press, New York, p. 105, 107

The gaps in the fossil record are real, however. The absence of a record of any important branching is quite phenomenal. Species are usually static, or nearly so, for long periods, species seldom and genera never show evolution into new species or genera but replacement of one by another, and change is more or less abrupt.
• Wesson, R., 1991
Beyond Natural Selection
MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 45

We could go on collecting these quotes. But I want to underline 2 important things.

1 Darwin was wrong, is wrong, and will continue to remain wrong in THIS MOST IMPORTANT MATTER. The fossils say so. There’s nothing gradual about all this – it was BANNNGGGG!!!! Here we all are.

2 All these diverse forms performed ALL THE FUNCTIONS OF ALL LIVING THINGS.

Therefore they all had the instincts required to perform all these functions.

As we've seen, eating (as an example in the first post on this blog), is powered by instinct.

The animal has to know what is food, what to do with it; how to catch it; where its mouth was; what to do with whatever it used to catch its food. All these are basic instincts. The food had to be processed and absorbed - and it is a form of instinct that does all this.

All these HAD TO BE PRESENT IN THEIR ENTIRETY, or the first such animal would immediately have perished.

Therefore, the Cambrian layer represents not only a vast explosion of physical types, it also represents a vast explosion of instinct implantation.

An evolutionist can, and will argue till the cows come home, about intermediate fossils, the incompleteness of fossilization in the preCambrian etc etc. But if he has a single leg to stand on, it is yanked violently from under him by the fact that he HAS to account for the ORIGIN,and implanting of all of these instincts IN THEIR ENTIRETY in about a billion organisms, at more or less the same time.

I was interested read that Gould was of the opinion that the Cambrian period lasted no more than 5 – 30 million years, but the likelihood is that the figure of 5 million was most likely to be the truth.

So all this incredible diversity arose in a geological eye-blink – which is exactly what the creation model predicts.

No evolution here!

See also:
http://www.wasdarwinright.com/intermediates-f.htm

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MEIOSIS. THE WONDERFUL DIVISION

2010-01-21T04:49:00.000-08:00

MITOSIS, MEIOSIS AND PURPOSE

2010-01-21T04:48:00.001-08:00

Mitosis

For those who may not know, a cell can divide in two ways. It can use a process called mitosis, or it can use the other method called meiosis.

The mechanics of the two processes are quite startling, and are very clearly designed to carry out their absolutely vital functions accurately.

Cells have to reproduce themselves in order for growth to take place, to repair damage, for simple maintenance and other needed functions.

When they divide, the number of chromosomes, and thus the genes on them must be replicated exactly in the new cells, otherwise damage and destruction will take place. A mutation damages the genetic make up of the cell, and such damage is destructive in 99.99% of the cases in which it occurs.

Which is only to be expected. If the plans for say, a car, become damaged in any way, and the construction continues despite the damage, we wouldn’t be too surprised to find the steering wheel up the exhaust pipe, or the engine in the passenger seat! Either way, the car will not function, or at best will be badly impaired.

Continued damage to the plans, does not, or is most unlikely to produce improvement in the car. No matter how many times we tear up and reconstitute the plans for a Honda Civic, we will never get the plans for a Boeing 747.

And there is another problem, the problem of size. A Rolls Royce is not simply a scaled up version of a Honda Civic. It is a completely different animal, whose physics, chemistry and metallurgy are entirely changed. The design of a mud hut cannot simply be enlarged to produce the Empire State Building. It would definitely look a bit odd, for starters.

In the cell, the damage can be of several well known kinds.

1 The chromosome may duplicate itself unnecessarily: so there is one or more than one extra chromosome in the make up.

2 The chromosome may have a section torn off or lost

3 The chromosome may break and rejoin the wrong way round, so instead of the genes being in the order AAABBBCCC, something else appears like CCCAAABBB. This also produces damage, much as if a page of the plans for the car was torn in 3, and the sections glued back in the wrong order.

In every case there is damage of one sort or another. Mutations occur frequently, but beneficial mutations are extremely rare, and never produce new species, far less new genera. Micro-evolution, like the emergence of bacteria resistant to antibiotics, is a very long way indeed from the macro-evolution of a whole new family, or phylum.

But back to mitosis.

In a normal body cell, let’s say there are 10 individual chromosomes. These are in pairs, so there are 5 pairs. In order to make sure that the daughter cells have exactly the same number of chromosomes, this remarkable process takes place.

A.A B.B C.C D.D E.E

Each pair of chromosomes copies itself exactly.

A.A B.B C.C D.D E.E ---> A.A A.A B.B B.B C.C C.C D.D D.D E.E E.E

So for a brief moment, the cell has 20 chromosomes, in 10 pairs. 5 pairs are exact replicas of the other five. The dot in the middle indicates that they are joined at a certain point.

Two structures called centrioles appear, and move to the opposite ends of the cell, and fibres begin to appear: they then join, believe it or not, to form what is called a ‘spindle’. The nuclear membrane disappears.

Amazingly, the chromosomes arrange themselves at the ‘equator’ of the spindle and are attached to the fibres of the spindle.

The spindle pulls them apart, and they separate, going to the opposite ends of the cell. So at each end of the cell there are now 5 pairs of chromosomes. The original number.

The nuclear membrane reforms round the chromosomes, and the cell pinches in the middle, and two new cells are now formed, each containing 5 pairs of chromosomes: A.A B.B C.C D.D E.E once more.

Here are still photographs of the process by Anne Bruce: http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/indexmag.html?http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artaug99/mitosis2.html

And here is an animation: http://www.cellsalive.com/mitosis.htm >

There is very clear purpose in every move of this division process.

1 The chromosomes duplicate themselves, as if they knew that the new cell must have a copy.

2 The spindle is constructed, at the right time and in the right place SO THAT it can pull the chromosomes apart from their joint. It is a subject of much research, which is showing much protein involvement in the structure.

3 The nuclear membrane dissolves, with the purpose of getting out of the way so the division can take place.

4 The chromosomes arrange themselves at the ‘equator’ of the spindle, the maximum distance away from the centrioles SO THAT the maximum leverage can be exerted on them to separate them. They separate.

5 They move to opposite ends of the cell, SO THAT each new cell has exactly the same number of chromosomes as the original.

6 But number is not enough. Five DIFFERENT chromosome pairs must be in each daughter cell. This way of doing the division ENSURES that they ARE different.

7 The nuclear membrane reforms when the division is complete, and TO COMPLETE THE PROCESS, the cell wall itself pinches off to make 2 new cells.

At every step of the way, design, foreknowledge and purpose are displayed. The most surprising thing in my view, is that the exact numbers of chromosomes is preserved in each daughter cell. If they weren’t, then chaos would soon result.

Order, purpose, design, and intelligence are displayed in abundance in this process. There is nothing whatsoever left to chance. If it were, there would be, as I have said, chaos in the genetics of the organism, which would result in death, disease or sterility.

The probability of the biochemistry of this process having emerged by chance movement of molecules is ridiculous. The very possibility does not exist. Errors here, and even more so in meiosis, would result in the extinction of life itself.

But we here run up against the old, old evolutionary conundrum. Life could not exist without mitosis, and mitosis could not exist without life. Therefore, life and mitosis could not have come from inert molecules.

God designed them.

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THE INSTINCTS OF THE PARASOL ANTS

2009-11-14T02:05:00.000-08:00

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/atta.html

THE LEAF CUTTING ANT (PARASOL ANTS)

We have in this example, another phenomenal illustrative piece on the helplessness of the evolution theory to explain observable facts.

These are observable, have been observed, and there is no guesswork or speculation involved. The whole mechanism sprang full blown to birth, or it couldn’t have happened at all. Judge for yourselves.

The parasol ant is a real pest to farmers and causes a lot of damage to crops, because the foraging ants go out in numbers, cut large amounts of leaf material off crop plants, and this costs money.

They go forth, cut the leaves with their specially constructed jaws, and carry them back to their nests. They climb trees up to 100-feet tall and cut out small pieces of leaves. They then carry these fragments, weighing as much as 50 times their body weight, back to their homes. Sometimes they must travel 200 feet, equal to an average human walking about 6 miles with 5,000 lbs. on his/her back! The forest floor is converted to a maze of busy highways full of these moving leaf fragments.

They travel a distance equivalent to a 6 foot man walking 5 miles in a forest. So how do they get home? Incredibly, they leave a trail of pheromone-like substances on their trails.

Back at the nest, the marvels begin. The ants were once thought to use the ‘parasols’ as covering to shield them from the rain. That, however, is not the case.

The leaf cutters take the material back to their nests, and there, in specially designed underground chambers, cut them up into minute little pieces, spray them with excrement, saliva, and then plant a particular species of fungus on the decaying material.

But that is not the whole story.: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2627

"Incredibly, the ants do not eat the leaves. Rather, they cultivate miniature gardens of fungus on pieces of leaves. which they chew and then store in underground compost piles.

Several million ants usually inhabit their colonies, and the garden chambers can extend as deep as twelve feet underground.

In order to fulfill all the needs of the colony, the ants divide the work among classes. Each class of workers is designed to do a special job. The biggest ants have powerful jaws to cut leaves, flower petals, and blades of grass. They bring these big pieces back to the nest where slightly smaller workers cut and dice the plant material into tiny lumps. The smallest workers chew these up into balls, adding bits of fungus. The ants’ saliva contains ingredients that help the fungus break down the plant material, and also kills harmful bacteria and other fungi.

Small workers strip off wax and other parts of the plants that the fungus cannot use. Workers dump this refuse into special waste chambers. The relationship between the ants and the fungus is symbiotic, meaning that both benefit. The fungus benefits because the ants feed it, protect it, and spread it from place to place. In return, the fungus grows a clump of special hyphae. Each clump is like an instant three-course meal, which the smallest ant workers use to feed the larvae."

This is the only fungus the ants eat and feed the larvae on.

You may recall the difficulties faced when researchers attempted to cultivate the Penicillium fungus in order to produce penicillin in the World War. Fleming, Florey and Chain were awarded Nobel prizes for their discovery (Fleming), extraction and purification of the antibiotic (Chain and Florey). Here are ants who have 'discovered' the single species of fungus that suits them, and 'developed' effective cultivation methods of the fungus.

They have 'discovered' how to obtain and produce the the right composting medium for its growth. They maintain the correct temperature for it's cultivation and growth. Instinct, you see. Perhaps they too should be awarded the Nobel prizes for the animal world!

When the young queen leaves the nest, she takes a piece of the fungus with her to act as seeding material!

While Mueller and Schultz worked on the ants’ relationship to fungi, a team of biologists at the University of Toronto were noting—and wondering about—the presence of a persistent and ravaging mold, called Escovopsis, in attine gardens. How was it, they asked, that this potent parasite didn’t regularly overrun the attine nests? Taking note of a white powder on the undersides of the attine ants, they ultimately identified it as a type of bacteria, Streptomyces, that secretes antibiotics. The antibiotics were keeping the Escovopsis at bay. More important, they were doing so over long periods of time, without the Escovopsis becoming totally resistant.

Evolution cannot account for the origin of this complex organisation, biochemistry, specific knowledge of fungal cultivation, specific knowledge of fungal identification, pre-programmed behaviour patterns of the workers, reccognition of which parts are waste, knowledge that a piece of fungus will act as a cutting which could be used to propagate the only fungus they eat, the scissor like jaws which do the leaf-cutting, the selection of proper leaves which can be used as their composting material, the production of the pheromone-like ‘scent’ which marks their tracks – all this and more.

At every step of their discovery process, error would have caused the extinction of the species. Recall that this is the only species of fungus that they eat.So if they got that wrong, species extinction would have taken place.

Which raises another of these curious anomalies. If this is the only fungus they eat, and this is the only way that the fungus is propagated, then which came first? The ant, or the fungus? The ant depends on the fungus, and the fungus depends on the ant, like the old lock and key analogy. Without the lock, the key is useless, and without the key, the lock is equally so.

Consider the number of individual pieces of instinctive behaviour the ants exhibit, and ask yourself, how did these a. start and b.get into the genome?

1. They know they have to eat. Where did that come from?

2 They can walk. Where did that come from?

3 They have leaf-cutting jaws. Where did that come from? And where did the instincts powering the use of those jaws come from?

4 They 'know' that they must go cut the leaves. Where did that come from?

5 They know they must bring it back to their nest. Where did that come from?

6 They know they mustn't eat the leaves. Where did that come from?

7 They know they have to chew them up and make compost with them. Where did that come from?

8 They know they must excrete on the chewed up leaves to make the compost. Where did that come from?

9 They know they must place spores of the fungus on the compost. Where did that come from?

10 They know how to keep the nest clean, and how to tend the 'gardens' of fungus. Where did that come from?

11 They know how to make tunnels, and keep them at the correct temperature and wetness. Where did that come from?

12 They know that the fungal hyphae must not be eaten. Where did that come from?

13 They know the fungal fruiting bodies are edible, and they eat those. Where did that come from?

14 There is a whole social stratification of ants in the nest. Queen, workers which do one thing, and workers which do another. For example, the leaf-cutting ants cannot chew the leaves up and make the compost. There are smaller ants whose jaws are designed for that purpose.

This is a leaf-cutter. Observe the size of the jaws.

The above are workers creating the compost. Note the small size of the jaws.

15 There are a very large number of other behaviours we could ask the same question about. But the next most remarkable is the fact that when a young queen flies off to start a new colony, she invariably carries a piece of the fungus with her to act as the seed for the new gardens. There is clear purpose in her doing so - but she has a brain the size of a pinhead.

If she didn't do this, she and the species would perish, since new colonies could not form, and the old ones would eventually die out. Species extinction would be the result.

Also note that the eggs she lays, and which hatch out, produce workers (and some males). The workers do NOT need instructions in constructing the fungus gardens, cutting the leaves, and all the other required behaviours. So, the information is somehow programmed into their genes.

'Somehow' is the leading word here. How? And how did it all begin?

As we can clearly see, it's all or nothing. It either worked first time, or the species perished. Since the ant is with us here today, then it worked. First time.

That is a description of an act of creation, not evolution.

The instincts, ants and fungus arose together, and have continued ever since their creation. There are fossil Atta ants in the Miocene (c25 mya) - identifiable ones, 'One of the fossil species of Atta resembles in general form and in the venation of the wings the curious Atta cephalotes of Tropical America'.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v16/n398/abs/016122a0.html

All of those instincts, and many others we haven't mentioned, were implanted in the ants when they were created. No small, beneficial steps could have implanted them.

It is staggering that both sides of the evolution debate have failed to see the importance of this point. The pro-evolutionists DON'T WANT to see it, and the anti-evolutionists have missed it altogether, or at least haven't capitalised sufficiently on it.

I am happy to redress the balance.

Q. How did all that get into their genes?

A. God put it there..

The Migration of Birds

2009-11-13T05:41:00.000-08:00

"There is good evidence that young birds are equipped with endogenous migratory programs, which tell them roughly how many days and/or nights that they must fly, and in what direction."

In his book La Puissance et la Fragilité, Prof. Pierre Jean Hamburger from René Descartes University describes the extraordinary 24,000-kilometer journey made by the shearwater that lives in the Pacific Ocean:

It sets out from the coast of Australia. From there it flies straight southward to the Pacific. Then it turns north and flies along the coast of Japan until reaching the Bering Sea where it can rest for a while.

Following that break it sets off again, and this time heads south. Crossing the western coast of America, it arrives in California.

It then crosses the Pacific to return to its starting point. The route and timing of this 15,000-mile (24,000-kilometer) figure ‘8’ journey it makes every year never change.

The journey in question lasts a whole six months, always coming to an end in the third week of September on the island it left six months before, at the nest it left six months before.

What comes next is even more astonishing; after their return, the birds clean their nests, mate, and lay a single egg over the last 10 days of October.

The chicks hatch out two months later, grow very fast and are cared for over three months until their parents set out on that stupendous journey. Two weeks later; around the middle of April, it is time for the young birds to take wing on their own journey. They follow exactly the same route as that described above, with no guide.

The explanation is so obvious: These birds must have all the directions for such a journey within the inherited characteristics passed on within the egg. Some people may claim that birds navigate by the Sun and stars or follow the winds prevailing along their route on this journey out and back. But it is clear that these factors cannot determine the journey’s geographical and chronological accuracy."
Pierre Jean Hamburger, La Puissance et la Fragilité, Flammarion Pub., Paris, 1972.

"migratory birds have comprehensive, detailed, innate spatio-temporal programs for successful migration.

Such programs evidently enable even young, inexperienced birds to migrate alone, with no adult guide, to the species- or population-specific winter quarters that they have never seen before.

As will be explained further below, they do this by "vector" navigation: referring to a vector composed of a genetically predetermined migratory direction and to a time-plan, also genetically predetermined, for the course of migration...

It follows that the departure time is programmed by genetic factors... "

Peter Berthold, "Bird Migration: Introductory Remarks and Overall Perspective", Torgos, 1998, Vol. 28, pp. 25-30

Not only is it preprogrammed, but it is preprogrammed to do impossible things!

"Some birds migrate at seemingly impossible altitudes. For instance, dunlin, knot and certain other small migrating birds fly at a level of 7,000 m (23,000 feet), the same altitude used by aircraft. Whooper swans have been seen flying at 8,200 m (27,000 feet). Some birds even reach the stratosphere, the layer of thin atmosphere, at an altitude of between 8 and 40 kilometers (5 and 25 miles).11 Bar-headed geese cross the Himalayas at an altitude of 9,000 meters (29,529 feet), close to where the stratosphere begins."

What more do we need before we reject this hopeless theory?

The evidence I have been presenting, and which has received no refutation worthy of the name, supports the exceedingly realistic hypothesis that these things were all super-intelligently designed.

Any aeroplane, flying a journey of 1000 miles or so, with fully functioning GPS, at an altitude of 25,000 feet or more at the very edge of the stratosphere, has got to be intelligently designed, or it either wouldn't get there, or would simply perish.

Consider the requirements of survival alone.

The temperature is killing.

The troposphere begins at the Earth's surface and extends up to 4-12 miles (6-20 km) high. This is where we live. As the density of the gases in this layer decrease with height, the air becomes thinner. Therefore, the temperature in the troposphere also decreases with height. As you climb higher, the temperature drops from about 62°F (17°C) to -60°F (-51°C).).

They must be, therefore, extraordinarily well insulated creatures. Which poses yet another problem for the evolutionists. Did they develop their absolutely superior insulation IN ORDER TO FLY THAT HIGH? Or do they fly that high BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE INSULATION? And how did they figure out how to produce it?

But that's just the beginning of the problem. Water freezes at 0 deg C. The liquid covering the eyes of the birds is mainly water. If it is like normal tears, then it should freeze at -0.52 C. But since the birds fly in considerably lower temperatures, the problem becomes very severe. If the liquid froze at -0.52 C, then they could not possibly fly at that height, because their eyes would freeze up. But they do manage it.

Therefore the tears of their eyes must be specially designed with antifreeze built in. So must their nostril linings, and their lungs.

But how is that possible? A bird has no way of knowing what the upper tropospheric temperature will be. Neither does it know what chemicals need to be in its tears to prevent freezing, and least of all does it know how to synthesise that material.

So where did it come from? Design seems the only possible answer.

And then there’s the pressure question. The cabin of an aircraft flying at 26-30,000 feet HAS TO BE PRESSURISED, or all air travellers would die. The atmospheric pressure outside, is far too low to sustain human life. Here is a summary of what happened to James Glaisher, a balloonist who went up to 26,000 feet in the days before we knew all that we know today about the effects of high altitude:

In 1862, James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell ascended to 29,000feet in an open hot-air balloon. During the ascent, Glaisherdescribed marked neurologic compromises: appendicular and latertruncal paralysis, blindness, initially preserved cognition,and subsequent loss of consciousness.

http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/6/1016

The birds, therefore, MUST have a compensating mechanism built in. But they didn’t know about all this before starting their journeys! So Who knew?

We will discuss the instincts powering flight later on, but let's return to the navigation problem.

Whooper swans fly from Siberia to Britain and return each year - something over 2000 miles. Short-tailed shearwaters, Puffinus tenuirostris migrate from South Australia to the North Pacific and back - a total distance of some 32,000 km (20,000 miles).

"Each year the bulk of the colony (the breeding age birds) return to the nesting grounds on almost the same day. Individuals return to the same nest burrow they occupied the previous year and generally mate with the same partner throughout their breeding life...

In mid April the adult birds commence their Pacific migration leaving the young behind. Hunger begins to bring the chicks from the nest at night, until they eventually set off after the adults. Somehow they find the migratory route without the guidance of the older birds."

http://www.port-fairy.com/shearwaters.htm

This, I thought, was astonishing enough. Maybe the shearwater is unique in this.

But no. Although not over such a great distance, the Pacific golden plover is another phenomenal migrator.

It flies from its breeding grounds in Alaska to its wintering grounds in Hawaii.

That is a distance of about 2,500 miles across open ocean, without any stopping points either available or possible. The birds stock up on food, fattening themselves, and burn it up on the journey. In Alaska, they breed and rear their young.

But that's not the end of the matter.

When the young have reached a reasonably independent state of maturity, the adults fly off and leave them!

Some time later, the young set off on their own, and without parents or any other guides, fly the return 2,500 miles to Alaska. Again across open ocean: no waymarks, no food, no stopping places.

Can you see the nonsense all this makes of evolution?

There are 2 journeys before us, totalling 25,000 miles, which is approximately the circumference of the planet. The plovers strain credulity, but the shearwaters kill it altogether.

And then we find out about the arctic tern - which flies from the top of the world, down to the antarctic every year, and back again.

All this is unbelievable, but comes from the work of highly reputable observers and organisations.

We may as well toss in the fourth unbelievable migration for good measure.

Cliff swallow scouts fly in from the sea, to the village/town of Capistrano in southern California, on the 17th of March every year. The following day, on the 18th March EVERY YEAR, the main flock arrives. They return to the nests they built last year, squabble and fight and breed, and then on October 23rd, they fly up, circle the town as if saying goodbye, and disappear out to sea once again.

This happens EVERY YEAR, on the same date (apart from leap years) without fail.

For the longest time, they had no idea where the birds came from, or where they went, until modern tracking methods were employed, and the truth came out.

They start their journey in Goya, a town in southern Argentina, and fly 7,500 miles up to Capistrano, and return about 6 months later.

In every case, there is dating accuracy – but the Capistrano swallows take the breath away. Somehow, those little birds have a calendar built in and arrive on the same date EVERY YEAR.

Now consider what the theory of evolution has to account for.

1 The ability to fly, and how that ability came from wingless reptiles. More on this later.

2 The existence in the birds of an amazingly accurate GPS system which somehow navigates them to and from their incredibly distant destinations.

3 The existence of a calendar in their little brains, accurate to the very day.

Instinct, says the evolutionist. Yes, we say – but where did this stupendous instinct come from?

In order for a GPS system to work, there must be navigational satellites ready set up, and accurate to within a few hundred feet. There has to be a receptor device, which will not only read those satellite signals, but also unscramble them and translate the messages into comprehensible materials.

There has to a map of some kind, built in to the navigator device. And lastly there must be a mind with the ability to receive and obey the messages from the satellites.

If any one of these elements missing, the whole thing is useless. Therefore in the birds, all of this had to have arisen AT THE SAME TIME. But a map implies that someone has been there before, who knows the way, and can program the route into the system.

The sheer improbability of all this happening by chance is incalculable. And there’s no use bleating pathetically that evolution is not a random process. Random or not, it cannot reasonably explain the origin of these mighty instincts by any method at all.

It’s no wonder that they never attempt to explain the origin of instinct.

Darwin was right when he said:

C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1909), p. 189.

"This [instinct] is by far the most serious special difficulty which my theory has encountered. . . . The problem at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my theory."

"No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural selection except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet profitable variations. . . .We ought at least to be able to show that gradations of some kind are possible, and this we certainly can do."

He was wrong. No amount of ‘numerous, slight yet profitable variations’ can take a bird from Australia to Japan, to the Bering Strait, to California and back across the Pacific ocean to Australia, to arrive there at the same time every year, and nest in the same nest each time. Any errors, and the bird would be as good as dead.

No amount of ‘numerous, slight yet profitable variations’ can take a bird 7,500 miles from Goya in Argentina to Capistrano in California ON THE SAME DATE every year.

And how many of such variations do we need to carry the arctic tern from the top of the world down to the bottom, every year? Or how many do we need to carry the golden plover young 2,500 miles across a trackless ocean and back – without parents, guides and way marks ? At every step of the way an error means death and species extinction.

Yet they are still here doing the same wonderful things year after year.

How much more evidence do we need before we dump this silly theory which is so hopelessly useless at explaining such gigantic phenomena?

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The honey bee (part 2)

2009-11-12T10:48:00.000-08:00

It's time to resume our evolution bashing endeavours, using the little bee as a diabolically powerful instrument.

First, let's look at the mathematical abilities of the bee.

"The two most efficient packing arrangements are the hexagonal closest-packed structure (hcp) and the cubic closest-packed structure (ccp). This exercise focuses on the hexagonal closest-packed structure, and the next exercise deals with the cubic closest-packed structure."

"In the hexagonal closest-packed structure, a = b = 2r and c = 4(2/3)^1/2 r, where r is the atomic radius of the atom. The sides of the unit cell are perpendicular to the base, thus α = β = 90^o. The base has a diamond (hexagonal) shape corresponding with γ = 120^o."

That is too difficult for me to derive, and I would not have guessed that the hexagonal structure is the most efficient for a storage structure. But it is - and can you imagine the ancestors of the bees sitting somewhere with pencils and paper at the ready, figuring out which shape to use?

No? But it MUST have happened sometime.

To even suggest that a bee, with brain the size of a pinhead, could figure out any such thing is the height of stupidity. To suggest that it took millions of years of evolution to produce such a thing is absurd. The bees would have died out long, long before they ever managed the calculations.

But let's hypothesise that one did figure it out. The next question is devastating. HOW DID THIS ABILITY GET INTO THE GENOME? The instincts possessed by all honeybees are transmitted from generation to generation - presumably in the genetic structure of the insects.

But how did it get in there? No evolutionist even dares guess - it woud expose them to too much ridicule. Here is some idiotic bleating: http://everything2.com/user/eien_meru/writeups/honeycomb

"In nature, evolution is the mother of all design. In order to produce an ounce of beeswax, bees have to collect eight times as much pollen. Collecting pollen is a very dangerous activity, as compared to hanging around the hive. So one could speculate that bees that made efficient use of their wax had more "disposable income" to deal with contingencies, and it just so happens that the honeycomb shape is very, very close to the optimal shape, in terms of unit volume per unit area."

Just so happens. Marvellous. My Mercedes just happened! And evolution is the 'mother of all DESIGN'. Get that? This totally blind process, is the mother of all DESIGN. THEY CAN'T GET AWAY FROM USING THAT WORD - IT'S SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS! And yet, have to kow-tow to 'science'. Here he is again:

"Mother Nature is a mathematician at heart. Really, I should say Mother Nature is an engineer, but some things are too elegant to be left to engineers."

And of course, engineers just drop out of trees. And 'too elegant' designs just happen!

"A honeycomb constructed from beeswax is nothing short of a triumph of engineering. It consists of hexagon shaped cylinders (six-sided) that fit naturally side-by-side. It has been proven by mathematicians that making the cells into hexagons is the most efficient shape. The smallest possible amount of wax is used to contain the highest volume of honey. It has also been shown to be one of the strongest possible shapes while using the least amount of material."
http://www.beeswaxco.com/howBeesMakeWax.htm

"Math teachers (and Platonist mathematicians) point to things like the honeycomb as examples of mathematics realized in nature, descended from some higher Form. But bees, as smart as they are — and they're quite intelligent — are only acting on an instinct passed down from generation to generation.

So true. Instinct. Passed down from generation to generation. But we're really inquiring about Bee No.1 - the one who figured all this out. How could it? And how did that 'instinct' evolve - and from what.

The simple answer is that it didn't. Mathematics and engineering do not come about by randomised guesswork. Genetic engineering doesn't either - but that is what the evolutionist must postulate to get this to work.

Bee A (can't make a honeycomb) -----------X----------> Bee B (can make a honeycomb.)

What happened at X?

Let's leave that for the moment and think of another little problem. Well, another dozen really.

WHY does a bee build a honeycomb? Answer, to store honey. But there are a few odd things here.

Back to Bee A (above) who can't make a honeycomb. Did it figure out that it was going to store honey in it? But, what's honey? Do you see that there is purpose involved in this?

Honeycombs without honey are just so much waste of good wax. But equally, honey without honeycombs can't really be stored. And if our evolutionist enemies start shouting that there are bees which don't store honey in combs, then we ask: how did those bees, who don't know how to make honeycombs become bees which have learnt how to do so? And we're right back to square one.

The bees plainly make combs to store their honey in. Equally, they make honey to PUT in the combs. So which came first? The honey or the comb? Evolution has no answer.

The claim is sometimes made that the bees came from wasps, but we've put that to rest in the previous article on bees.

Here's another little problem.

Honey. As you may know, bees go to flowers, slurp up the nectar (how did they ever figure out that there was such a thing? I wonder.)

Most wasps are meat eating - we gave a beautiful illustration in the article on the Eumenes wasp.

Bees eat nectar and honey. The digestion of these entirely different substances is entirely different, requiring a totally different set of digestive enzymes, a totally different stomach wall structure - because the protein digesting enzymes would destroy the walls of a non-protein digesting alimentary canal. Enzymes are tremendously complicated proteins with very, very specialised functions.

A protein digesting enzyme cannot digest sugars such as are in nectar. And a sugar digesting enzyme cannot digest proteins. And to add insult to injury, proteins cannot be made without other proteins to make them! The trap has closed on our poor evolutionist friend.

But here's another problem.

Wasps make paper to buil;d their nests. Bees make wax to build their nests. The chemical structure of these substances is entirely different. Wasps chew timber and make their paper. Bees produce wax from glands under their abdomens.

Paper is a mixture but its main constituent is indigestible cellulose, which is a complex carbohydrate with chemical formula (C₆H₁₀O₅)_{n, where n is a very large whole number.}There is a lot more than this, obviously, but even from this (below) you can see that there is nothing simple about it.

The nature of the other lipid constituents can vary greatly with the source of the waxy material, but they include hydrocarbons, sterol esters, aliphatic aldehydes, primary and secondary alcohols, diols, ketones, β-diketones, triacylglycerols, and many more.

Tulloch, A.P. Beeswax: structure of the esters and their component hydroxy acids and diols. Chem. Phys. Lipids, 6, 235-265 (1971).

Further, bees produce wax from two glands under their abdomens.

That means, the substances which make the paper made by wasps, NEVER ENTERS THEIR ALIMENTARY CANALS.

That means that the sources of the wax made by bees, enters their alimentary canals, is biochemically processed, and secreted out of the wax glands.

There is nothing common to the processes in wasps and bees. They did not evolve from one another.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils/images/de_tab_pleuro.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils/tabulatemound2.htm&h=394&w=796&sz=113&tbnid=MSAvGDK0hLipNM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfossil%2Bwasp%2Bnests%2Bpics&hl=en&usg=__tvRkbqFIsPOAhr054XqJLy6cimI=&ei=mWv8SoKFGdGx4Qawi73fAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CA0Q9QEwAg

Fossil Wasp nests

Fossil bees nest

http://www.ub.es/dpep/meganeura/ichnol06.jpg

These are pictures of the earliest fossil nests found. They don't look very different to those of today - so we can safely conclude that both bees and wasps had figured these things out right from the very beginning. Like for instance:

1The wasps knew how to make paper and the bees knew how to make wax.

2 They knew how to make honey in the case of the bees.

3 That flowers existed, which were producing nectar for the bees.

Which creates one hell of a conundrum for evolution. Flowers and bees HAD TO HAVE ARISEN AT THE SAME TIME. Otherwise, the plants could not survive, and neither could the bees.

How did that happen? Ah, says our evolutionist triumphantly, Co-evolution! As if a name makes a difference to the total absence of explanations!

On the right is a fossilised bee from 45 million years ago. It's impossible to tell the difference between this one, and a modern bee.(Similarly with the centipede on the left) Have they evolved since then? Clearly not. Did evolution get them there? Equally clearly, no.

S J Gould wrote:
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology . . . We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study. (S. J. Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, p. 14, May 1977.)

The above furnishes very clear evidence of the truth of Gould's statement.

We could go on at length about the bees, and will probably do so in subsequent articles, but next, we will look at the phenomenon of bird migration and the absolutely horrendous problems the instincts of those beautiful creatures pose for evolution.

STOP PRESS

(PhysOrg.com) - "Their brains are tiny - about the size of sesame seeds - and yet the behaviour of the humble honey bee is so advanced it has scientists scratching their heads in disbelief.

New Australian research just published by Proceedings of the Royal Society of London has shown that the bee brain has the ability to estimate energy expenditure while foraging for pollen.

"To make honey, bees must gather more nectar from flowers than the energy spent collecting it, so in order to forage efficiently they need to know how much energy each foraging trip costs them," said Dr Andrew Barron, the author of the study and senior lecturer at Macquarie University.

Bees estimate distance visually, by watching the environment pass them during flight. Barron set out to determine whether bees also use this visual information to estimate their flight costs. His first step was to build two tunnels - one 10 metres long and one 20 metres long - and place feeders at the end of each to attract the bees. He then created an optical illusion to trick the bees into believing that the closest feeder was actually the furthest distance away."

Good one, evolution!

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The Argument to Which There Is

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Translation and transcription

2009-10-29T16:30:00.001-07:00

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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The Argument to Which There Is

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ERVs Function Discovered

2009-10-29T01:53:00.000-07:00

"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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The Endogenous Retroviruses

2009-10-27T04:11:00.000-07:00

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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INSTINCTS OF THE HONEY BEE

2009-10-26T04:40:00.000-07:00

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? Darwin’s answer would probably be ‘by little steps’. The modern evolutionist’s answer will be : Oh, these branched off from their ancestors 285 million years ago. Our computer programs tell us..

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 Cornell University on the point:

“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.

Bees' Wings

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 Bell Spider

2009-10-23T07:12:00.000-07:00

Male and female spiders from wiki

THE BELL SPIDER (Argyroneta sp)

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/13855

The 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.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Spider_in_amber_%281%29.jpg/150px-Spider_in_amber_%281%29.jpg

Wiki;

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.

^{You note, they knew how to spin silk, make webs, catch insects and feed. They knew how to lay eggs, how to mate.

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

2009-10-23T05:50:00.000-07:00

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..

'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. (!!!!!)

[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!]

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.'

http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0040108&ct=1

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.

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2009-10-23T05:36:00.000-07:00

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.

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The Evolution of snakes' poison apparatus

2009-10-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

THE SNAKE'S POISON APPARATUS

Alan Hayward said that : Professor G A Kerkut of Southampton University, was an evolutionist. His standing was such that he was appointed General Editor of an important series of more than 50 textbooks of Zoology "The International Series of Monographs in Pure and Applied Biology - Zoology Division" published by Pergamon Press, Oxford. His own book in the series was entitled Implications of Evolution.

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 Bell spider is amazing; the life history of the butterfly is inexplicable – and so we could go on.

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.

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The Migration of the green turtle

2009-10-23T05:10:00.000-07:00

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.

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The Bats; flight and echolocation

2009-10-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

There are 3 groups of flying animals in existence today: the birds, the bats and the insects. Each of these presents evolution with insuperable problems, but my especial favourite is the bat.

It’s a shame they have had such bad press with such films as Dracula etc, because these creatures possess some of the most stupendous and miraculous pieces of biological engineering on the planet. For those who are convinced that evolution did occur, this will make not the slightest difference. For those who believe otherwise, this will be another club to beat their heads with.

Remember, the title of Darwin’s book was ‘On the Origin of Species’. That was what he set out to do, and it is what he singularly failed to achieve. It is on the origin question where he and his theory have failed most lamentably.

Fossil bats

There aren’t all that many of them, that’s for sure, and that may have something to do with the fact that they are flying animals. But what IS remarkable, is that the very first fossil bat looks remarkably like the bats of today: and has the echo-location apparatus in its head.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/eutheria/bat_fossil.jpg

The author says: ‘These fossils represent essentially modern-looking microchiropterans; bats had evolved all of their characteristic features and begun to diversify by this time. In fact, the oldest known complete fossil bat, the Eocene-age Icaronycteris shown at left, shows specializations of the auditory region of the skull that suggest that this bat could echolocate.’

Remember, these are one of the earliest specimens of bat fossils ever found.

Therefore, they could fly. Now a bat does not fly using feathers, it flies using the skin between its fingers. That’s the origin of the name ‘chiropteran’ – hand-wing.

Here is a diagram to show what that means. Notice the vast difference between the bird’s wing and the bat’s:

http://www.nurseminerva.co.uk/adapt/wings.htm#bat

There is absolutely NO indication of any fossil ancestor of the bat, which hopped, jumped or leapt. There is absolutely NO indication of where and how they could have obtained the power of flight. None whatsoever. This, of course, is what the creation model predicts.

They fly at speeds of about 11.14 mph. In itself that doesn’t sound like much, but when we compare that with the body length of the animal, it is quite startling. It’s 234432 times its body length (say 3 inches) per hour, as compared with a car 20 ft long which at the same speed is only traveling 36000 times its length per hour.

Evolution is helpless to explain how this could have arisen so swiftly, so unexpectedly and so perfectly. Dawkins has laughably conceded that this gives the appearance of being designed, and then goes on to propound his pathetic fantasies about how this could have evolved. Have a look in Blind Watchmaker, (starting at page 22 where you'll find this:

The Sonar and Radar pioneers didn't know it then, but all the world
now knows that bats, or rather natural selection working on bats, had
perfected the system tens of millions of years earlier, and their 'radar'
achieves feats of detection and navigation that would strike an engineer
dumb with admiration.) Pity they didn't strike Dawkins dumb with admiration, but one can't have everything!

Flight is one thing – marvelous as it is – but the echolocation system the animal uses beggars description.

In essence, the bat emits a squeak, which like radar, bounces back to the source. Knowing the speed of the radio wave emitted we can work out very accurately how far away an object is.

That’s us. The bats do this as well, but better than we can.

Let’s say that a bat is not moving, and emits a shriek. The sound wave travels to the insect it’s interested in, hits it, and bounces back. Let’s also say the insect is still. What happens then? We know the speed of sound and can calculate the distance to the object from the time it takes for the shriek to get there and reach back to us.

But the bat doesn’t know the speed of sound. So how can it calculate the distance of the insect? Evolution does not know.

Notice 2 things:

1 It has a sound emitter, and a sound receiver, and a computer connected to the two things which is able to calculate at phenomenal speeds, and immediately communicate those results to the muscles and nervous system.

But recall that both the bat and the insect were still.

That is not the case when the bat is hunting.

The bat is flying at up to 11 mph, and the insect is dodging and on an uncertain flight path. The calculations immediately begin to defy belief. Bear in mind too, that there are other bats emitting shrieks. How does our bat keep track of, and identify its own signal?

Answer, it possesses the necessary equipment. That equipment is of extraordinary high quality, as we’ve seen from the requirements.

From a computational neuroscience perspective, bats are remarkable because of the very short timescale on which they operate. The barrage of returning sonar echoes from a bat's near-environment lasts approximately 30 milliseconds following a sonar emission with the echo from a specific target lasting, at most, a few milliseconds.

From an engineering standpoint, biosonar systems (e.g. bats and dolphins) have inspired the design of very sophisticated sonar and radar systems that can map distant surfaces and track targets with great precision. Even with powerful mathematical tools and decades of experience, however, our best systems still do not rival the perceptual capabilities of dolphins. Many bats demonstrate incredible aerial agility, flying in complete darkness through branches and caves while hunting evasive insects. These animals perform such tasks in real-time with a total power consumption (including flight) measured in Watts, not hundreds of Watts. In addition to the ability to navigate in complete darkness by echolocation, both bats and dolphins live in very social environments using echolocation in group situations without any obvious problems with interference. All of these capabilities are highly desired by current military programs developing unmanned-aerial vehicles (UAV) especially since many of the target environments are in places where Global Positioning System (GPS) signals are unavailable and obstacle locations are not mapped.

It gets extremely technical, as we might guess, but the biggest points are very obvious.

Clearly, there is extremely high order design and implementation in this system. The military want to copy the design – which means that the bats’ system is superior to any of their own.

We have high order flight engineering and acoustic engineering allied to extreme efficiency of power consumption (measured in Watts, not hundreds of watts). And meanwhile, the animal is alive, growing, breathing, excreting, responding, moving, feeding, and reproducing. So successful is the group, that they are one of the most numerous sets of animals on the planet, as far as the numbers of species is concerned. They are estimated to be about 20% of all mammalian species.

There is not even a reputable theory to account for the evolutionary origin of bats that I have been able to find. The writers content themselves with mumbling about the as yet undiscovered ancestors of bats.Too soft, they say. But they've found birds, and jellyfish, and spiders and...

The instincts involved: flight and use of this incredible sonar system are mind boggling. Imagine putting an ignoramus in the cockpit of a modern jet fighter aircraft! Because the bat has a brain the size of a brazil nut, or less.

Evolution has failed miserably here, as usual when presented with a concrete case. The animals scream ‘We are designed’ and each little creature is a small hymn of praise to its Maker.

Thomas Addison said it well: “In reason’s ear, they all rejoice, and utter forth a glorious voice….. the Hand that made us is divine”.

Well said, Thomas.

REFERENCES

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1998/10/981013075520.htm

Dawkins, Richard: The Blind Watchmaker
http://uath.org/download/literature/Richard.Dawkins.The.Blind.Watchmaker.pdf

http://neuroscience.brown.edu/simmons.html

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The Eumenes Wasp

2009-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

THE EUMENES WASP

This wasp occurs in my country of origin, so I'm happy to be able to say that I can testify to the accuracy of some of this from what I personally saw. However the full details are taken from various authors, such as Henri Fabre, whose observations carry more weight.

After mating has ocurred, the female wasp begins the process of confounding evolutionists (and amazing me, when I saw it doing this).

She actually builds what looks like a hollow igloo made out of mud, and sticks it on a wall or the underside of a roof. The mud is made of her own spittle, dust, and small stones. It’s quite a structure, too: about 1 cm in diameter, and 1 cm deep.

At the top, she creates an opening, and curves the lip of the opening backwards, much like the lip of a round ornamental vase. She decorates the nest with shiny pebbles too!

She then catches and stings small green grubs.

Now hear this you unbelievers, and marvel with me. She stings them - but does not kill them, merely inducing partial paralysis. This keeps the game fresh and not putrefying. I wonder how many wasps take degrees in anaesthesiology!!

Somehow, the wasp knows what sex her offspring is going to be!!! If male, she catches fewer grubs, and if female she catches more. Here's J H Fabre describing the Ammophila wasp:
http://www.pdbooksonline.com/free_books/The_Wonders_Of_Instinct_by_J_H_Fabre/page_23.php

'But the egg is laid when the provisions are stored; and this egg has a determined sex, though the most minute examination is not able to discover the differences which will decide the hatching of a female or a male.

We are therefore needs driven to this strange conclusion: the mother knows beforehand the sex of the egg which she is about to lay; and this knowledge allows her to fill the larder according to the appetite of the future grub.

What a strange world, so wholly different from ours! We fall back upon a special sense to explain the hunting; what can we fall back upon to account for this intuition of the future? Can the theory of chances play a part in the hazy problem? If nothing is logically arranged with a foreseen object, how is this clear vision of the invisible acquired?'

Fabre asks a question it's impossible for evolution to answer.

But the wonders aren't over yet.

Where is the mother to lay her extremely fragile eggs? If she lays them in the mass of grubs, then they might squash it as they wriggle around.

Fabre says that he and his friends were astonished at the answer, and admits that he was unable to guess it. Before you read further, can you guess it?

The mother suspends the egg by a silken thread from the ceiling, out of reach of the grubs. When it hatches, it is suspended by its hindquarters, and can raise itself out of danger if a grub becomes too frisky.

She has also built an escape route for it, a protecting sheath that he failed to observe initially, because it was so well hidden.

Now wasps have a brain the size of a mustard seed. And yet, the mother is able to do all this - without having been taught - after all, she never sees her own mother, who dies after all the above is done.

How can she possibly

1 know how to make mud?

2 know how to build an igloo?

3 know which grubs to catch?

4 know how much venom to inject, and where to inject it so it paralyses, but doesn't kill?

5 And who thought up the idea of hanging the egg from the ceiling?

6 And how does a wasp learn how to manufacture a silk thread?

7 And how did all that get into the chromosomes?

The only answer is that the whole thing was carefully and competently designed.

And if it was designed, then there was a Designer.

REFERENCES

http://www.pdbooksonline.com/free_books/The_Wonders_Of_Instinct_by_J_H_Fabre/page_23.php

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