Junk Science Exposed In Evolutionary Theory

OrthodoxNet.com ^ | 12/16/2009 | Babu G. Ranganathan

[ezfindit]

Millions of high school and college biology textbooks teach that research scientist Stanley Miller, in the 1950’s, showed how life could have arisen by chance. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Miller, in his famous experiment in 1953, showed that individual amino acids (the building blocks of life) could come into existence by chance. But, it’s not enough just to have amino acids. The various amino acids that make-up life must link together in a precise sequence, just like the letters in a sentence, to form functioning protein molecules. If they’re not in the right sequence the protein molecules won’t work. It has never been shown that various amino acids can bind together into a sequence by chance to form protein molecules. Even the simplest cell is made up of many millions of various protein molecules.

[schaef21]

“How does one reproductive system evolve into another, as with amphibians to reptiles?”

Even more ridiculous......dinosaurs to birds.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, dense-boned and had no sound producing organ.

Birds are warm-blooded, hollow-boned and have a sound-producing organ.

[schaef21]

“How does one reproductive system evolve into another, as with amphibians to reptiles?”

Even more ridiculous......dinosaurs to birds.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, dense-boned and had no sound producing organ.

Birds are warm-blooded, hollow-boned and have a sound-producing organ.

[Stultis]

He [Darwin] delved into the origin of life with later books.

Nope. No he didn't. You're wrong.

[AndyTheBear]

OK, to play Darwin's advocate, I could imagine a small nub on a tiny creature that helped it get around eventually improving as the critter got bigger into a leg.

If you want to argue irreducible complexity, there are probably better examples.

[AndyTheBear]

Actually, Darwin didn't address the origin of life, just the origin of species.

Can you have life without at least one species?

But your right in that his famous theory is about common origin rather than the source of that first species. However, I've read where actually did address the idea of the origin of life, he just had no idea how it could be treated as a scientific theory. He essentially just presumed it somehow emerged from the muck. I have the impression that it wasn't a subject he wrote on often because he didn't want to be labeled a kook by revealing he was a naturalist.

[AndyTheBear]

Natural Selection, by definition, would select the legs out of the process because there would be no survival advantage in a water environment.

Great theory. Lets apply some scientific method to it and put a bunch of fish on land with no water and see what nature selects for them.

[wbarmy]

Darwin's 1871 letter to Joseph Hooker with his speculations on the spontaneous generation of life. This is where he talked about the small warm pond where some chemicals and light and heat and electricity combined to form the first stirrings of life. Exactly the scenario that Miller started out with.

[MetaThought]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lungfish

[AndyTheBear]

Sorry...I misunderstood what you were saying and was arguing against the opposing view.

[allmendream]

There is nothing “junk” about Stanley Miller's experiment.

It also has to do with the hypothesis of abiogenesis, not the theory of evolution through natural selection.

Is it really too much to ask that people know and understand the difference if they want to be taken seriously?

[AndyTheBear]

Interesting. But see my post 24. I already thought that legs were hardly the way to argue for irreducible complexity.

My post 26 on the other hand was arguing against a point that wasn't actually made...I had thought he was proposing natural selection would evolve legs on a stranded water creature.

[AndyTheBear]

OK thanks for the reference. I remembered the gist of his comments on the origin of life, but I did not remember enough specifics to get google to find it.

[Stultis]

Even more ridiculous......dinosaurs to birds.

Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, dense-boned and had no sound producing organ.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. (Although I'm not quite sure what you mean by "sound producing organ". Birds don't have any special "sound producing organ" apart from what any other terrestrial vertebrate has.)

To just focus on your error about dense bones. Not only did many dinosaurs have hollow bones, for a genus described last year, there is specific evidence that these bones possessed the same special respiratory function they (otherwise uniquely) do in birds! Full article is online at the link:

Sereno PC, Martinez RN, Wilson JA, Varricchio DJ, Alcober OA, et al. (2008) Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina. PLoS ONE 3(9): e3303.

In this YouTube video you can see one of the authors holding one of the hollow bones.

The following figure from the article shows some of the pneumatopores (where the air sacs entered the bones) in the fossils from this dinosaur, which btw is named Aerosteon, Greek for "air bone":

So, we find a very specialized adaptation, otherwise utterly unique to birds, in a group of dinosaurs which were previously identified (about 150 years ago, btw) as closest to modern birds. Coincidence? For creationists, I suppose it has to be.

[NicknamedBob]

“Presumably there are steps between the two with an intermediate state that mostly tended to make sense at each step. Anyway, there are tons of people looking for the evidence of fossils to back fill this theory.”

"In my wildest imagination I can’t figure out how partial evolution of a leg might produce some kind of survival advantage whereby it would be kept by the selection process because it might be of use to the organism further down the road."

First, you began in this period to get plants invading the water margins, forming dense swamps and forests around the water's edge. And some of the fishes living in the shallows would have found it advantageous perhaps to lose the fin webbing from their fingers and develop separate digits. Fish have bony supports for the fin web. If you lose those and make the digits separate, then you can begin to grasp things and push aside the vegetation. You can also grasp the vegetation to hold your position in the water. There are quite a lot of modern fish that do this.

This is from a Nova series on evolution, in this case, the creature that may come closest to providing the link between water-dwellers and land-crawlers that may be found, Acanthostega.

What we think happened is that these creatures, which were developing this mode of life in the shallows, developed legs with digits before they ever started really to walk on the land at all. So they would have got their legs first, then gradually perhaps moved into shallower and shallower water—more and more vegetation and less and less water—and eventually emerged onto the land. But it took a very long time.

The show was fascinating, and the article is a very interesting read. Fins to fingers. Whoulda thunkit?

[walford]

The idea that life emerged “by chance” is not the foundation of evolution. The fact that evolutionists disagree amongst themselves about how it works does not by default prove that the world is 6,000 years old and the fossils are the remains of animals wiped out in a Biblical flood.

Evolution is not incompatible with faith; it can indeed be one of the many mechanisms used by the Divine to facilitate life.

The tilt of the Earth, the rate it spins on its axis, the strength of its protective magnetic field, the size, speed and shape of its orbit around the sun — this and so much more is in such a precise balance to allow for life. Chance simply does not explain just how precious of a Blessing this world is.

[walford]

“Dinosaurs were cold-blooded, dense-boned and had no sound producing organ.

Birds are warm-blooded, hollow-boned and have a sound-producing organ.”

That is incorrect. Dinosaurs are characterized by being warm-blooded. [Regular reptiles like the ancestors of crocodiles were indeed cold-blooded and are not called dinosaurs.]

T. Rex had a high metabolic rate and moved like birds. They were big, strong and fast. Many dinosaurs had feathers that were mostly used to preserve internally generated warmth. Their descendants are birds.

Feathers and fur would be useless for cold-blooded animals; their skin must be naked so they can absorb externally generated warmth. Their descendants are lizards.

Accepting this does not mean that Jesus did not die for your sins.

[schaef21]

Please note the following words used in the NOVA documentary:

“What we THINK happened”, “They WOULD HAVE got their legs first”, “then gradually PERHAPS moved into shallower and shallower water”,

In every scientific discipline words like “scientists think”, “we believe”, “perhaps”, “would have”, “could have”, “might have”, “possibly”, “maybe” are used in describing the evolutionary process.

Is any of this actual science? Does any of it meet the scientific method....observable, testable, repeatable, falsifiable?

In the current “Climate Change (formerly Global Warming) debate” Scientists had the worldview that it was true and then twisted and turned the evidence to fit their worldview. The same thing has been going on in the Creation vs. Evolution debate for years.

“We know evolution is true, therefore what would have had to have happened to get from a cell in a mud puddle to a human being”?

Conjecture, conjecture, promising bit of data that might fit our worldview, more conjecture, leap of faith, unverifiable generalization, more conjecture and voila.
This then is followed by the inevitable shot across the bow of anyone who says the Emporer has no clothes. “What are you nuts? Evolution is a fact you flat earth idiot.”

Browbeat me all you want.....I believe in our Creator.

[NicknamedBob]

"Is any of this actual science?"

Yes.

The part where they dig the bones out of the rock is science.

If you don't like their conjectures, guesses, and postulations, you are free to develop your own. But keep in mind that the late Devonian was just a little bit different from what we see around us now.

From where do we derive the word tetrapod? Why do most animals have the form of four limbs?

Why do we have no more than five fingers? Acanthostega was experimenting with eight!

How did animals, and by extension those curious bipeds with four limbs and minimally effective dentition, come to be the way they are?

Answering those questions, and having your answers come to be respected opinion ... that's actual science.

[schaef21]

So Stultis, educate me some more.

Which came first the dense-boned or hollow-boned dinosaurs? How exactly did that evolutionary process occur? Since some reptiles/dinosaurs are warm-blooded and some are cold-blooded (as you seem to indicate) what might have been the sequence of events?

Archaeopteryx supposedly proved that birds came from dinosaurs....except that was refuted by many bird experts (See Alan Feduccia)who have concluded that Archaeopteryx was 100% bird. The fact that birds were found later in lower strata than Archaeopteryx put to rest the conjecture that it was a transitional fossil.

Then came Archaeorapter, a hoax from China.... the big deal about this is not that it was a hoax. Fossil hunters know the big dollars that are out there if they can convince someone that they found a “transitional fossil”.

The big deal is that the major media wanted so much for it to be true that they threw “due diligence” out the window and just blindly accepted it.... kind of like the mainstream media does whenever some new “statistic” is put forth by NOW, GREENPEACE or any other left wing group with a cause they agree with.

National Geographic still has egg on their face over the huge spread they did on Archaeoraptor.

Having said all that....I’ll go to your links and read the information there. I’ll also do some due diligence and find out what others have concluded.

[thulldud]

There is nothing “junk” about Stanley Miller's experiment.

It also has to do with the hypothesis of abiogenesis, not the theory of evolution through natural selection.

And if anything, it proves that that sort of abiogenesis is a dead end. The "junk" comes in when people try to claim that it showed a potential abiogenetic pathway.

Miller had to create an atmosphere for which, as it turns out, there is no evidence that it ever existed on this planet. He had to artificially trap the amino acids in one section of his apparatus. He only got a few of the twenty that are used in life forms, and the ones he did get were racemic mixtures, whereas lifeforms use only laevorotatory forms.

Even if we granted the presence of all the amino acids needed to build a particular protein, the fact remains that they aren't going to react spontaneously to do any such thing: all those polymerization reactions are reversible in the presence of water. Which means, they break up as well as join together, and just as easily.

You'd be as well off throwing a bucket of nickels in the air and betting that they all land heads-up as relying on such a "mechanism" as this to get life started. And Darwin has nothing to offer until you have something live that can reproduce itself.