Donald Prothero’s Imaginary Evidence for Evolution (yet another evo hoax!)

Evolution News & Views ^ | December 1, 2009 | Jonathan Wells, Ph.D.

[GodGunsGuts]

Need evidence for Darwinian evolution? Just make it up.

That’s the lesson of Donald Prothero’s book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Prothero is a professor of geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles. On November 30, he teamed up with atheist Michael Shermer (founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine) to debate Stephen Meyer and Richard Sternberg of the Discovery Institute.

Shermer wrote the foreword to Prothero’s book, calling it “the best book ever written on the subject.” In fact, “Don’s visual presentation of the fossil and genetic evidence for evolution is so unmistakably powerful that I venture to say that no one could read this book and still deny the reality of evolution.”

Of course, “evolution” can mean many things, most of which nobody would deny even without Prothero’s book. For example, evolution can mean simply change over time, or minor changes in existing species (“microevolution”), neither of which any sane person doubts. Both Shermer and Prothero, however, make it clear that by “evolution” they mean Darwin’s theory that all living things are descended from a common ancestor, modified principally by natural selection acting on unguided variations (“macroevolution”).

The modern version of the theory asserts that new variations originate in genetic mutations. Some of the most dramatic mutations occur in “Hox genes,” which can determine which appendages develop in various parts of the body. On page 101 of his book, Prothero shows pictures of two Hox gene mutations: “antennapedia,” which causes a fruit fly to sprout legs instead of antennae from its head, and “ultrabithorax,” which causes a fruit fly to develop a second pair of wings from it midsection. But both of these are harmful: A fruit fly with legs sticking out of its head is at an obvious disadvantage, and a four-winged fruit fly has no flight muscles in its extra pair of wings, so it has trouble flying and mating. Both mutants can survive only in the laboratory; in the wild they would quickly be eliminated by natural selection.

Some Darwinists have suggested that ancestral four-winged fruit flies could have evolved by mutation into modern two-winged fruit flies. But this explanation doesn’t work, because a two-winged fly hasn’t simply lost a pair of wings; it has acquired a large and complex gene (ultrabithorax) that enables it to develop “halteres,” or balancers. The halteres are located behind the fly’s normal pair of wings and vibrate rapidly to stabilize the insect in flight. So the two-winged fly represents the gain—not loss—of an important structure. (See Chapter 9 of my book Icons of Evolution).

Prothero ignores the evidence and suggests that ancestral four-winged flies simply mutated into modern two-winged flies. Modern four-winged mutants, he writes on page 101, “have apparently changed their regulatory genes so that ancestral wings appeared instead of halteres.”

Not only does Prothero ignore the evidence from developmental genetics, but he also invents an imaginary animal to complete the story he wants us to believe. Page 195 of his book carries an illustration of an eighteen-winged dragonfly next to a normal four-winged dragonfly, with the following caption: “The evolutionary mechanism by which Hox genes allow arthropods to make drastic changes in their number and arrangement of segments and appendages, producing macroevolutionary changes with a few simple mutations.”

Yet there is no evidence that eighteen-winged dragonflies ever existed. There are lots of dragonflies in the fossil record, but none of them remotely resemble this fictitious creature.

No matter. In what Michael Shermer calls “the best book ever written on the subject,” Donald Prothero simply makes up whatever evidence he wants.

[metmom]

You know, there’s lots of theories and explanations out there about this whole creation thing. There’s the evolutionist no God needed explanation, the God needed, ID, you earth Christian, old earth Christian, Gap Theory people, and probably some I missed.

Seems like everyone has an opinion and everyone is sure that there’s is right. And yet with most of them, even the ones with the strongest arguments to support them, there are complications. There are interpretations of the evidence which fit better with some positions and weaken others.

The YEC for 6,000 just doesn’t leave enough time for recorded history from the time of the Flood. So some make it 6,000 to 10,000 years, but if you’re going to reject the 6,000 year age which many have used the Bible to support, then 10,000 isn’t any better. It might as well be 10 billion.

The old earth people have the complication of *days* in Genesis being distinguished with *there was evening and there was morning, day ___*, indicating that it was 24 hour days.

The Gap Theory, that I’d heard a LONG time ago, that there is a gap between verse 1 and 2 in Genesis 1 is rejected by most parties. It fits OK to some extent, but does not have a lot of Scriptural support.

The IDers just have a lot of unanswered questions, although the basic premise of their position is just that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” (definition from wikipedia, for convenience sake). Both sides have a field day with that one.

The evolutionists, who claim that God used evolution, are forced into a position of denying the plain meaning of a lot of Scripture.

The no God needed people have the weakest argument. They scoff at the idea that *Goddidit* and then expect us to believe that it just happened with NO impetus. More unreasonable that *Godiddit* and I doubt many people are solidly in that camp.

The explanation that I find that fits the best, which is rejected pretty much uniformly amongst the different groups, is this one.....

The Age of the Universe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1576941/posts

It seems to corroborate the evidence with Scripture the best, but the young earthers don’t like it and most of the comments by the evolutionists are not complimentary.

All that said, God tried to explain something extremely complex and intricate, in as concise a way as possible. Even if He had gone into great detail in the Bible, the Bible would still be considered wrong by many if it didn’t line up with the current, but still very limited, state of knowledge about our world and universe.

The long and short of it is that I essentially don’t think that ANYONE is completely right, and we won’t find out until we see God face to face, if it’s even a priority anymore after meeting Him.

To me, the age of the earth is completely irrelevant in terms of the practical working out of my day to day living. Whether the earth is 6,000 years old or 6 billion, since I’ve been around only a few decades, it doesn’t really matter.

The thing to remember for all college professors and scientists is that they really believe that they’re right and teach it as fact, but it’s just their interpretation of what happened. It doesn’t mean that it really did happen that way. They can’t be sure because nobody was there to see it, and honestly, some of the presumptions that anthropologists and archaeologists make are, umm, quite a stretch.

Keeping that in mind helps.

[Ira_Louvin]

How many of these can explain why do we not find mammals in the Cambrian strata?

[metmom]

Probably a couple.

So?

[Ira_Louvin]

Which ones and what is the explanation?

[UCANSEE2]

Thanks for providing that link.

[UCANSEE2]

Would the scraps of bone called the Millennium Man do?

Don't they burn him every year?

[count-your-change]

I think that's another kind of strawman. The Millennium Man was another “oldest human ancestor-walked upright” imaginations from a couple of pieces of leg bone and a few teeth. It makes an interesting story.

[metmom]

It would clearly depend on the presumptions that you’re starting with.

From the worldview of the scientist and what has been decided about how the earth was formed,etc, their explanation does fit their paradigm. But that depends on whether the scenarios put forth by scientists are correct.

For the others, since fossilization is currently not well understood, from everything I’ve read, it gets back to the adage of, in the field, lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. Since not everything was fossilized, there’s simply no way to determine what may have existed that wasn’t.

FWIW, lack of an explanation does not invalidate the other views. Sometimes lack of information can be the cause. I’m not going to be writing them off because of an anomaly.

There is plenty of other issues with the ToE that weaken it, though.

Like I said, they all have their strong and weak points and none are a completely satisfactory explanation. Evolution presumes too much without good reason. The level of order and complexity and information defies probability for it to be unguided.

Did you ever read Schroeder’s work on the age of the universe?

[Ira_Louvin]

Your argument about the unguided probability fails because over the time frame from the late Hadean to the present, this becomes sufficient to explain both the diversity within and similarities between the forms of life observed on earth, including both living forms directly observed in the present, and extinct form indirectly observed from the fossil record.

Also good job at avoiding the question, lots of words but no answer,so lets try this different way and this time give straight answer.

So how do you explain the fact that we never find any trilobites above the Permian strata, and why we never find dinosaurs above the cretaceous strata?

[metmom]

Your argument about the unguided probability fails because over the time frame from the late Hadean to the present, this becomes sufficient to explain both the diversity within and similarities between the forms of life observed on earth, including both living forms directly observed in the present, and extinct form indirectly observed from the fossil record.

Which is really a matter of opinion...

Length of time notwithstanding, probability is against the level of complexity arising spontaneously that scientists claim. There's the mentality that since we're here, it must have happened, but that's just rationalizing it away.

None of the *scientific* explanations for origins are anywhere near adequate. There's simply not enough known about early earth history to justify their pronouncements about how life began. And before you go off on how origins are not part of the ToE, without origins, there could be no ToE.

So, variation within species and natural selection aside, which can and does explain a lot, life itself originating unaided is just not feasible.

THAT's the big weakness of the no-God scientific worldview.

So how do you explain the fact that we never find any trilobites above the Permian strata, and why we never find dinosaurs above the cretaceous strata?

I know of no mechanism that could separate out fossils into distinct categories like that. That's what I consider one of the complications of the young earth Flood scenario.

[UCANSEE2]

[Ira_Louvin]

The evolutionary theory offers a very simple explanation for that.

Also you’re argument from personal incredulity fails. The fact is that the evolutionary theory does not address the origins of life, no matter how many times up set that straw man up it does not change the facts.

Darwin was not trying to explain the origins of life

“It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life” (Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. 6th edition, 1882. p. 421

Science does not allow you to change to facts to fit your inability to accept what the evidence clearly shows.

That is more that a complication it is one of the many facts that falsifies the young earth flood scenario.

[metmom]

Without origins, there is no life.

Science may be able to explain variation within species and natural selection, Even creationist websites don’t deny those aspects of the ToE (if you’d ever bothered to read some of the articles, you’d have found that out) but there is NO reasonable explanation for origins.

I know what evos keep saying about them being separate, but it is unreasonable. The distinction is simply a break in the continuum from the initial formation of simple chemicals to the most complex to the point of what we define as life, that is just for the convenience of giving some sort of credibility to the ToE. Since spontaneous generation has been disproved, that complication has to, and had to, be removed from the ToE.

You can’t logically and honestly keep saying that you look at how life evolved from one common ancestor and then just stop cold when you get to the first one and pretend that it’s irrelevant as to where that came from. If it’s relevant where everything else came from, it’s reasonable to ask where the first came from.

What were the common ancestors of the bacteria and algae? From what did they evolve?

The long and short of it is, that there is simply no reasonable explanation that science can give for the formation of life at all, whatever they think that they can explain about what may or may not have happened after that.

Plus, origins not being part of the ToE is not a universally held view outside of FR, and that has been rehashed many times already.

[metmom]

Well, why didn’t you answer my question in the previous post?

I’ll repost it here.

“Why didn’t he just go ahead and use a REAL example from REAL life, instead of making something up? Wouldn’t that be more effective? Wouldn’t that have given him more credibility?”

You can have another chance.

Why didn’t he use a real life example? Aren’t there any he could have used?

[Ira_Louvin]

You are still presenting an argument from personal incredulity and it still fails.

Your straw man still does not change the fact that Darwin was not trying to explain the origins of life. Just because it is too difficult for you to understand does not prove that God did it.

Stating that we do not understand the origin of life does not invalidate the evolutionary theory there are mountains of evidence much of which you accept showing how life has changed since its inception.

While the origins of life are a question of interest to evolutionary biologist and frequently studied in conjunction with researchers from other fields such as geochemistry and organic chemistry, the core of evolutionary theory itself does not rest on a foundation that requires any knowledge about the origins of life on earth. It is primarily concerned with the change and diversification of life after the origins of the earliest living things –

Here is a useful link on your question about the bacteria and algae

http://4e.plantphys.net/article.php?ch=1&id=399

[Stultis]

Can you explain how a “random” process doesn’t produce at least as many failures as successes?

Huh??? Why would I explain why it "doesn't"? Of course it does.

Mutations are random with respect to fitness. That is, mutations just occur, by various mechanisms, and it's only later, in the nonrandom process of selection (the effect of differential rates of survival and reproduction) that nature "decides" what constitutes success or failure.

Incidentally... Strictly speaking the mutations themselves are neither successes or failures. It is the variant forms the mutations sometimes produce (and sometimes mutations are neutral or "silent," and not associated with variations in outward form or behavior) that will succeed or fail relative to other variant forms.

Let’s say mutation A is a viable mutation and is represented by heads.

Mutation B is a non-viable mutation and is represented by tails.

Is it then your contention that “evolution” always comes up heads?

Yes, of course that is my contention.

The entire process of evolution -- including both mutation and selection -- always comes up heads. ("Always," at least assuming parameters are not wildly askew; i.e. mutation rates are not abnormally high, population sizes are not abnormally low, etc.)

Especially in respect to the stark contrast you posit, of "viable" versus "non-viable" mutations. (Actually, many mutants are only slightly more or less viable than other forms.) You do know what "viable" means, don't you?

1 : capable of living; especially : having attained such form and development as to be normally capable of surviving outside the mother's womb
2 : capable of growing or developing
3 a : capable of working, functioning, or developing adequately b : capable of existence and development as an independent unit c (1) : having a reasonable chance of succeeding (2) : financially sustainable

Certainly any variant that is literally "non-viable" must be rapidly eliminated from a population.

Where are the fossils of the failures? Produce one.

You continue with this bizarre notion -- and I'm not sure exactly what your thinking is here, or if even you are clear about your thinking -- that failures should produce fossils, even abundant fossils. Why do you think this? If failure means a failure at surviving or reproducing, then how do populations of failures ever become large enough to leave fossils?

How about this. Why don't YOU produce one. Let's take polydactyly (the congenital production of extra fingers or toes) for instance.

This condition occurs in about 1 in 500 live births. That means there are MILLIONS of humans alive right now who have this condition (or had it surgically fixed after birth).

But -- so far as I know -- there is not one single human fossil with extra fingers of toes.

This is a complete absence of fossil "failures" not for something hypothetical, but for a condition that we KNOW exists, and reoccurs regularly in every generation.

It is just that it is relatively rare, and rare forms generally aren't preserved as fossils, just due to the laws of chance. Fossils themselves are rare (with exceptions, e.g. diatoms and such, but certainly few exceptions for complex animals like mammals, reptiles or birds) so a particular form must be numerous in the first place to even leave fossils, and even then fossils will tend to be of the most "typical" forms for a given species.

I never said I expected anything to survive. In fact, I said the opposite.

Actually you said (if evolution were true) you would expect literally "impossible" creatures to be common found as fossils. Which is to say they would exist in large enough numbers to leave enough fossils that would be commonly found. Which is, in effect, to say that non-viable creatures be viable. Which is quite nonsensical.

But feel free to believe in your miraculous unknown force that never fails, only succeeds.

That would be the "force" that says viable creatures are more viable than non-viable creatures. Now, how is that "miraculous"?!?

Where do you get the bizarre notion that “random” means always succeeding?

Nowhere, because obviously I don't have such a notion. Again, the entire process of evolution -- variation WITH variants experience differing rates of survival and reproductive success based on their fitness, i.e. mutation AND selection -- is NOT random. It's not, of course, deterministic either, but it's NOT random.

What's random about evolution is the PARTS of evolution that are random, namely the mutations that produce variation. IOW, variation occurs in all organically and genetically possible directions. A mutant is, in the general case, as apt to be a bit smaller as it is to be a bit larger than the non-mutant form.

THEN there's the NON-random part of evolution -- selection -- where it gets decided, based on all the interacting factors of the environment and the organism's relation to that environment, whether it's better to be a bit smaller, better to be a bit bigger, or best to remain about the same.

That selection factor determines whether the randomly occurring variation will non-randomly move the population in the direction of getting smaller, of getting larger, or of (despite the presence of variation in each generation) staying about the same.

The whole process is therefore NON-random. Selection NON-randomly tends to eliminate either larger variants and preserve smaller ones, or eliminate smaller and preserve larger, or eliminate both larger and smaller and preserve average.

How did “evolution” discover, mathematically, the concept and application of a straight line? How about a parabolic curve? How many times did “evolution” cause a plant to grow in a completely erratic fashion, because it hadn’t yet discovered the engineering concept of a straight line? Oh, a straight line is nothing, you say? Then lets see you produce one...from nothing, with no knowledge.

First, plant branches generally are not straight. It's why we invented this thing called "lumber," and why we cut branches to make it.

But what is the, relatively, straightest part of a plant? The trunk, right? What do a need to "know" as a plant to grow a straight trunk? I need to know the direction called "up". If I grow consistently "up," my trunk will be generally straight. How do I know "up" from down? Well, it's this little thing called "gravity".

In fact if you start a plant normally, but then turn it sideways, the branch or shoot will NOT grow straight. It will bend in order to keep growing "up" wrt gravity.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[UCANSEE2]

It will bend in order to keep growing "up" wrt gravity.

That is not quite true.

It will bend to keep growing towards the maximum source of sunlight.

[ElectricStrawberry]

Why don't you ever answer other peoples' questions while demanding everyone else to answer YOUR stupid questions??

I answered your question...I'll do it yet again. He DID provide "real" examples of exactly what he was talking about...Hox genes and how a few mutations in a Hox gene will have dramatic effects on phylogeny, presumably providing a method by which major changes could happen in one or a few generations.......like changing from 4-winged insects to 2-winged insects with haltares. He provided the specific Hox gene, explained what it did, explained what happens with very few mutations to the specific gene, and had an illustration of what can happen with only a few minor changes in the specific gene. The illustration was not of an actual living 18-winged dragon fly. It was an illustration of what changes to the specific Hox have the capability of doing....forming wings on each thoracic segment.

Then YOU ran around harping about 18-winged dragonflies never existing in nature (strawman)....when the man NEVER MADE THE CLAIM THAT THEY DID EXIST.

Now, you want "real examples in nature" of actual living insects that have a mutation in that specific gene and the effect on the phylogeny that he's talking about....look to EVERY species that has haltares instead of 2 pairs of wings.

Here's one to get you started:

[Aliska]

I really appreciate your eloquent summary there, good job! I took a look at the link, read it almost through and was going to read it more carefully again.

Before you wrote your latest, it occurred to me the time element was the key, had worked it out some but not nearly to the extent it is explained at the link.

The earliest writer(s) had to express with the language as it had developed by that time as to vocabulary, doubt they had a word such as millenia, etc., or a numbering system into the billions when that was written.

It gets pretty deep, but the link is such that I can comprehend it but couldn't have possibly come up with it myself.

Thanks again!