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.’
