Life in B Flat(Science and Spirituality): 2014

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Zerdini's World Article on George Chapman

George Chapman was a British spiritual healer who provided many amazing cures. When he healed people, he would go into a trance and the spirit of a deceased doctor, William Lang, would take over his body. Dr. Lang would then use Chapman's body to operate on the spirit body of the patient. The spirit body of the patient would influence the physical body and the patient would be cured.

The following excerpts are from the article on George Chapman at Zerdini's World.

The Daily Telegraph published the following obituary:

George Chapman

12:01AM BST 12 Aug 2006
Chapman's "surgery" on his patients was carried out on their spirit (or etheric) bodies, from which the benefits were transferred to the subjects' physical bodies. Sceptics may have scoffed, but Chapman's supporters point to many astonishing healings achieved. He is credited with curing an inoperable and malignant brain tumour, among other cancers, as well as with improving various eye conditions and even lengthening a patient's leg. Chapman himself maintained that the purpose of his healing mission was to prove that there was life after death; the healings, he said, were secondary.
...

THE MEDIUMSHIP OF HEALER GEORGE CHAPMAN

By David Nicholls Ph.D

...

Dr Lang advised George that his mediumship would relate to the work of healing, and furthermore, he would have the principal role in George's activity. The significant feature about Dr Lang was that, unlike many other guides and controls whose pre-mortem existence cannot be verified, he had lived in Britain in the twentieth century, and George therefore went to great lengths to verify this. George argues that verification of identity is of major importance: 'The spirit communicator should speak as near as possible to the way he spoke on earth, using the same phrases and mannerisms and manifesting personal characteristics. He should be able to give dates, names and details of his earthly experiences that can be verified, and be able to discuss intimate matters with relatives and colleagues still on earth'. And indeed, George reports that, 'William Lang, however, satisfied all my demands', and he was able to contact people, both colleagues of Dr Lang and the people whom he had treated, and, 'they confirmed it was the same Dr Lang they had known'.

...

During the spirit operations that were carried out by Dr Lang, it was noticed that he operated with his left hand, while George is right-handed; furthermore, a tremor was observed. On making enquiries, it was ascertained that Dr Lang, before he died, did in fact suffer from tremors, and as this was less of a problem in his left hand, he tended to use this hand when carrying out surgery.

...

Surely one of the most important statements concerning Dr Lang's continuing activity through George, is the one made by his own daughter, Marie Lyndon Lang: 'an active and very well-educated woman with a level-headed approach to life and death' . After meeting George, and seeing him regularly for many years, and speaking with Dr Lang while George was entranced, she was only too willing to make the following crucial statement: 'I can truthfully say the William Lang who operates via the body of George Chapman is, without a doubt, my father'. In addition to speaking with her father through George's mediumship, she was also able to do this with her mother and Basil. George regularly met Dr Lang's daughter together with a group of friends and medical contemporaries of Basil Lang, who also knew William Lang, and they 'questioned and tested' both George and Dr Lang. Of these occasions, Dr Lang's daughter stated: 'We could only come to one conclusion: that the person who speaks through George Chapman and claims to be William Lang is, without a doubt, my father...It is a fact that William Lang, my father, is as much alive today'. Noteworthy is the fact that it was Dr Lang's daughter and this group of persons who encouraged George to take up healing full-time, which he did in 1957.

...

Confidence is also expressed by the Revd Allan Barham, a experienced member of the SPR and Churches' Fellowship for Psychical and Spiritual Studies. On meeting George, he observed that the man with whom he spoke when George was entranced, 'had the appearance, voice and mannerisms of an elderly doctor of a generation earlier. He was obviously a cultured man with an extensive vocabulary'. Moreover, Barham remarked on how he understood, 'that a number of William Lang's former colleagues recognised him in George Chapman when the latter was in trance, and would meet him regularly...Sometimes they would even bring their patients for consultation and treatment'.

...

Hutton then details how Dr Lang explained what he was about to do and said that he would operate with the assistance of Basil and other colleagues: 'He came across to the edge of the couch and then lifted his hands and started to move them, and flick his fingers just above my eyes. His own eyes stayed tightly closed. The fingers of his hands opened and shut as though taking and using instruments'. Hutton comments that after Dr Lang had explained what he had done, that: 'Incredible as it may seem, I began to experience the physical sensation of incisions bring made. They were painless, but none the less capable of being felt. The man's eyes never opened, and he did not touch me'. Further surgery was carried out, at this point for the virus, and yet again, Hutton could feel instruments being used, albeit painless.

...

He continues by recounting how further surprises were in store when undressing that night, and he noticed 'a long mark, a thick line about five inches long', that 'looked exactly like the scar of a surgical incision just as if I had had an operation on my liver'.

...

Interview with Dr Lang - Guide of George Chapman

By George Cranley - January 1999

On a recent visit to George Chapman, while in the treatment room, I seized the opportunity to question Dr Lang about his method of entrancement. Here are his tape-recorded answers:

Q: Dr Lang, for over fifty years you have been working through George Chapman - how do you take control of the medium?

A: Quite simply, George spends a little time relaxing before he starts really working. He starves himself for the weekend. So he just has tea and water and maybe a small sandwich in the evening. He prepares his body and all that happens is that he is here half an hour before the patients to get himself into a relaxed state and then I start to move towards him and take over the physical body as his own spirit starts to move out.

Q: Is this a very complicated process?

A:What happens is, as George sees me moving towards him, it is as though he is being suffocated and starts to doze off and then from behind the eyes a pressure is exerted from the rod and cones to the bulbar part of the brain so the brain is deadened.

For instance, if you look at the light and you move your hand you pick up light reflections which are transmitted through to the brain so you don't actually feel that the eyes are light vibrations. So I exert pressure here (indicating the back of the head) so that his own spirit gradually moves out until the end of the healing session because he has to stay in trance this way for the whole period of time.

Q: What exactly can you see?

For instance, I can't see your machine, can't see the couch, I can't see anything that is of the material. I can only see the spirit of the object or person.

I can move around the room but I like everything fixed in a way that suits me. Where George is right-handed I operate left-handed so the couch must be for left- handed persons (the couch is flush with the wall so it can only be used by a left-handed person). At the end of today when I suppose I should have about thirty-odd patients and tomorrow there is a coach with about forty, I understand, from Holland, it will be trance throughout. I control George's body today till about 3.30 pm (approx. five hours) I suppose.

With patients I am rather quick to perform my operations but at the end of the trance Michael (George Chapman's son) will first come in talk with me, say it is all finished, he may ask me a few questions and then I gradually withdraw from George's body. His own spirit then will move strongly with the raised vibration from the Spirit World back into his own body and he starts to become at one with himself. It could take him two hours or more to recover.

Q: When you take control are there a group of people helping you to take control?

A: I have the team. Outside you see a brass plate with various names on it and these medical gentlemen, contemporaries of my son Basil most of them, and they, of course, made a contract for George going back to 1947 but they first met up with him in 1946 to talk with me in a general way. George used to travel to London each Thursday in the month for them to carry out various studies of George when in trance. There was Sir Alexander Cannon who used to try to get across from the Isle of Man and those people have now passed into this life, medical men who worked with me at London, The Middlesex, are still practising with me today. We are a team and so, if I have a patient with say an eye problem, I will call upon one of the oculists.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

NDE Researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long M.D. Refutes Materialist explanations for Near-death Experiences.

In Skeptiko podcast number 99, Dr. Jeffrey Long Takes On Critics of, Evidence of the Afterlife, near-death experience researcher Dr. Jeffrey Long M.D. is interviewed about his research by Alex Tsakiris. During the podcast, Dr. Long refutes several materialist explanations for near-death experiences. I have added these refutations to my post Materialist explanations of NDEs fail to explain the phenomenon.

In the interview Dr. Long explains why NDEs cannot be explained by

REM intrusions
Hallucinations
Brain chemicals such as Ketamine, DMT, etc.
Religious expectations
Cultural expectations
Hearing during resuscitation
Brain activity during CPR
Partial anesthesia
Misuse of anecdotes
Selective reporting

Here are Dr. Long's explanations:

Near-death experiences cannot be caused by REM intrusions, Hallucinations, or Brain chemicals such as Ketamine, DMT, etc, because those phenomena do not produce visions of people most of whom are dead, and REM intrusions and Hallucinations do not produce the same type of changes in the life of the experiencer that NDEs produce.

The percentage of time that people encounter deceased relatives is extremely high. It was actually 96% in the NDERF study and only 4% of near-death experiencers met beings who were alive at the time of the near-death experience. That’s actually corroborated by another major scholarly study which found it was 95% of the time that they encountered beings they knew from their earthly life that were deceased.
The important thing is that any other experience of altered consciousness that we experience on earth, dreams, hallucinations, drug experiences, you name it; all of these other types of experiences of altered consciousness, a vastly higher percentage of people are going to be alive at the time of their experience.
You're going to remember the banker that you did business with that day or your family member you said hi to as you were walking into the house. This is what's in the forefront of consciousness. So for people to so consistently encounter deceased relatives is very, very strong evidence that they are, indeed, in an unearthly realm and it certainly points to evidence of an afterlife.
...
People in general, all other hallucinatory events, dreams, all other temporary, transient, even pathological alterations of consciousness are essentially never going to result in that high a percentage of people experiencing them going on and have those types of profound life changes that we see in near-death experiencers.
And moreover, what you see in the life changes of near-death experiencers is markedly consistent. In other words, it’s not just that they have life changes; it’s the consistency of those life changes. The substantial majority, if not overwhelming majority of near-death experiencers believe that there's an afterlife. They believe that there's a God. They no longer fear death. They're less materialistic. They value loving relationships more. The list goes on and on. I consistently observed, not only in the NDERF study but from scores of prior scholarly studies of this phenomenon over 30 years.

NDEs cannot be caused by religious or cultural expectations because children who are too young to have religious or cultural expectations have NDEs that contain the same elements as the NDEs of older children and adults.

A really interesting part of the study that I did was looking at children age 5 and under. In fact, their average age was 3-1/2 years old. These are children so young that to them, death is an abstraction. They don’t understand it. They can't conceptualize it. They’ve almost never heard about near-death experiences; have no preconceived notions about that. They certainly have far less cultural influence, both in terms of religion or anything else that could even potentially modify the near-death experience at that tender young age.
And yet looking at these same 33 elements of near-death experience that I did in other parts of this study, I found absolutely no statistical difference in their percentage of occurrence in very young children as compared to older children and adults. So no question about that.
That almost single-handedly shoots down the skeptical argument that near-death experiences are due to pre-existing beliefs or cultural influences. We’re not seeing a shred of evidence that corroborates that at all. In fact, that finding is actually corroborated with another major scholarly researcher who actually reviewed over 30 years of near-death experience research and came up with the same conclusion.

NDEs cannot be caused by hearing during resuscitation because many people who have NDEs have accurate perceptions of locations that are too far away to perceive with their normal senses.

Yet there are dozens of these out-of-body perceptions during near-death experiences where they can hear and see events far, far removed from their physical body, often in completely different rooms, geographically far away, where any possible physical sensory awareness should be absolutely impossible.
And yet when they make these very remote out-of-body experience observations, their accuracy is absolutely the same – about 96% — as the observations of events going on around their physical body. So no doubt about that.
...
In fact, it's often the case that they’ll make out-of-body observations of events right around their physical body during the NDE, and then as part of the same experience, make out-of-body observations far removed from their physical body. Absolutely no difference in what they're describing.

NDEs cannot be caused by brain activity during CPR because CPR patients report confusion and amnesia while NDErs report lucid experiences. NDEs often begin before CPR is administered and the quality of consciousness and the pattern of events in NDEs does not change once CPR is started. Also, if consciousness in NDEs is caused by CPR, the patients should remember the pain of compressions and cracked ribs that sometimes occur during CPR, but NDErs do not feel the pain from CPR.

When you talk to the patients who have actually survived CPR, one thing that is very, very obvious is that the substantial majority of them are confused or amnesic, even when they're successfully recovered. They may be amnesic for the period of time following their successful resuscitation or even for events prior to the time of their cardiac arrest.
...
If you read even a few near-death experiences, you immediately realize that there’s essentially none of them that talk about episodes of confusion or altered mental status when they just don’t understand what’s going on. You really don’t see that at all.
Again, for near-death experiences, they're highly lucid, organized events. In fact, in the survey we did, we found 76% of people having a near-death experience said their level of consciousness and alertness during the NDE was actually greater than their earthly, everyday life. So again, getting back to statistics, that’s 3/4 and a substantial majority of the remaining 24% still had at least a level of consciousness and alertness equal to their earthly, everyday life.
So for that to be the statistics that you consistently see during near-death experiences and balance that with a substantial majority of people being confused around the time of their successful resuscitation from CPR, you really have to come away with the conclusion that even if there’s blood flow to the brain induced by CPR, it's a life-saving maneuver. By no means is that correlated with clear consciousness and certainly nowhere near the level of consciousness and alertness with near-death experiences. You just don’t see that.
But also, in addition to that, note that the substantial majority of people that have a near-death experience and have an out-of-body experience associated with cardiac arrest, are actually seeing their physical body well prior to the time that CPR is initiated. Once CPR is initiated, you don’t see any alteration in the flow of the near-death experience, suggesting that whatever blood flow might be going back to the brain is affecting the content, modifying it at all, in any way.
...
When there’s a cardiac arrest, the out-of-body observations that are often described during these near-death experiences certainly correlates to a time prior to CPR being initiated, and prior to a time there should be no possibility of a conscious, lucid, organized experience. And yet that’s exactly what happens.
I'll tell you another thing, too, is if you were doing CPR and that were accounting for memory, I would tell you that you would hear a lot more from near-death experiencers. They would talk about their remembrance of the pain of the chest compressions.
Alex, that’s a fairly painful procedure. It often breaks ribs and hurts. And yet, even when you have a patient who had a cardiac arrest and had a near-death experience, essentially never do you hear them describing as part of their near-death experience the pain of chest compressions.
...
And if their consciousness was really returning during CPR, wouldn't near-death experiencers not have out-of-body perceptions but describe their perceptions from within their physical body? And yet you don’t see that with near-death experiences.
So in other words, if you started CPR and they had a near-death experience and suddenly they started to have some consciousness, you’d expect that instead of having the out-of-body experience where their consciousness is apart from their body, their consciousness would be within their body. You just don’t see that.

NDEs cannot be explained by partial anesthesia because a partial anesthesia experience is not at all like an NDE.

Rather than the type of coherent NDEs you read here, anesthetic-awareness results in a totally different experience.
...
Those who experience anesthetic-awareness often report very unpleasant, painful and frightening experiences. Unlike NDEs which are predominately visual experiences, this partial awakening during anesthesia more often involves brief and fragmented experiences that may involve hearing but usually not vision.
... you just don’t have near-death experiences that are predominately hearing but no vision.
...when we talked about near-death experiences under general anesthesia, out of 33 elements of near-death experience, we compared between NDEs under general anesthesia and all types of causes of near-death experience, and in 32 out of 33 elements studied there was no statistical difference between the two groups.
Now, virtually anybody in the science or medical field would say, “Well, that pretty much nails it down that these two experiences are basically the same, with at most, minor differences between the two of them.

NDEs cannot be explained as the misuse of anecdotes:

... the NDERF study that I presented in the book is certainly vastly beyond anecdotal evidence. We actually studied 1,300 near-death experiences. It’s certainly not just a limited number of case reports. And you're right, our modern questionnaire is over 150 questions, so no doubt we have the depth of analysis, as well. And most of the research that’s published in the book was based on surveying over 600 near-death experiencers that filled out the most recent version of the questionnaire.
Let me start out with sort of a basic scientific overview, and that is what’s real is consistently observed. So we've observed evidence of the afterlife and near-death experience is not only in the vast number of near-death experiences studied in tremendous depth in my own study, but all my major findings are corroborated by scores of prior scholarly studies. We're way beyond what could reasonably be called anecdotal. We're really in very hard-core evidence based on my work and the work of many others.

NDEs cannot be explained by selective reporting:

What we did with our NDERF study is we studied every single person who had a near-death experience. In other words, they nearly died and they had an experience.
In addition to that, we used the most validated research tool in near-death experience research, and that’s called the NDE scale. So we analyzed every single person that had such an account. In fact, we post every single near-death experience on the website for the people who give us permission, which is over 95%. So we not only have a very valid, comprehensive look at near-death experience because of the numbers, but in addition to that we share that with the world, so everybody else can see the data set that we’re seeing, too.

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Information Theory: Chance and natural law cannot explain the origin of life.

Information theory indicates that chance (random noise) and or natural law (crystal-like order) cannot produce information, codes, or cybernetic systems (systems with feedback controls). Evolution of the first cell from a simple self-replicating system and chance variation is implausible. Therefore, for life to exist, somehow genetic information had to be created, the genetic code designed, and metabolic systems designed before natural selection could ever operate on them. Intelligence is the only phenomenon proven to produce information, design codes, and design cybernetic systems and do it with intent and purpose. Therefore intelligent design is the best explanation for the origin of life.

Consider the problems you would face and choices you would have to make if you were going to create life from simpler molecules.

First you identify all the structures and processes a cell would need to grow and divide: metabolism, a cytoskeleton, a cell membrane that regulates what goes in and out of the cell, how the cell uses chemical energy, feedback control mechanisms etc.

Then you decide how to implement all that. You decide you will use amino acids to create proteins. Some proteins will work as enzymes to carry out metabolism and other proteins will be used to build cellular structures. This adds many new processes the cell must be capable of including the metabolic pathways needed to produce the amino acids. Then you have to figure out the amino acid sequences of all the proteins the cell will build.

Next you have to devise an information processing system to store and retrieve the sequences of amino acids. So you invent the genetic code to store the information about amino acid sequences in DNA, and you design the machinery to implement it: DNA replication, DNA transcription, DNA error correcting, RNA transcription, ribosomes, tRNA and the enzymes that produce them and all the proteins and enzymes needed to do these things. All of this needs to be regulated to operate efficiently. This adds many more new processes the cell must be capable of.

Then you have to construct the first cell. You have to encode the amino acid sequences into DNA, make lipids, membranes, and proteins and other molecules needed for the first cell. You have to put each component in the right place with respect to the other components.

Could an unguided natural process accomplish that?

No:

A living system is unfavorable thermodynamically. Life has a very low state of entropy. The fact that the earth is an open system doesn't eliminate the necessity of a mechanism to overcome the improbability of forming a highly ordered system spontaneously. The fact that the earth is an open system doesn't allow tornadoes to turn rubble into buildings.²
Natural laws cannot produce functional information such as the amino acid sequence of an enzyme. Natural laws are compression algorithms. Functional information is not compressible because it is not highly ordered. Natural laws can produce highly ordered crystals, not computer programs.¹⁴

Could a cell be produced through natural selection and random variation from a much simpler self-replicating system?

No:

There is no plausible hypothesis for a natural origin for life. There is no location where life could plausibly have originated naturally, not in deep sea thermal vents, tide pools, the ocean, volcanic ridges, clay surfaces or extraterrestrial locations. There is no good candidate for the first self-replicating molecule, not RNA, DNA, or protein. Hypotheses such as "RNA and protein", metabolism first, etc. do not work either.^1,^3,^5,^6,^7,¹³
Natural processes that produce biomolecules don't produce proteins and RNA or DNA, they produce tar. The cellular structures that separate and combine biomolecules are needed to produce biopolymers. Only a cell can produce a cell.⁶
Self-organizing systems are limited in the complexity they can achieve.⁴
Simple self-replicating systems mutate toward simplicity not complexity because competition for resources favors reduced resource requirements.³ A self-replicating molecule would not lead to the development of metabolism, it "would self-optimize its self-replicative function to the exclusion of other potentially metabolic functions and consume all resources."¹³
Natural selection cannot improve or modify anything until it exists and has utility in a self-replicating system, i.e. natural selection cannot operate on utility that does not yet exist. Natural selection also cannot accomplish anything without a source of variation.¹³ Natural selection and random variation are not capable of producing functional proteins de novo or significant changes to existing proteins. The distance between functional proteins in the "fitness landscape" is too great to be bridged by Darwinian mechanisms^8,^9,^10,^11,^15,¹⁶. (This argument applies equally to macroevolution by natural selection and to the origin of genetic information in the first cell.) Therefore the genetic information in cells cannot have been produced by natural selection and random variation. The genetic information in cells must have been produced before it could have any utility and therefore it must have been produced for an intended purpose.¹³
Duplication with modification cannot produce new genetic information. Duplication does not increase information. Information theory shows that random variation in DNA cannot produce information. Randomness in information is noise, it reduces information content.¹³ Listen to a radio tuned between channels. Does the static produce useful information?
The genetic code is finely tuned, not random, and it could not evolve from something simpler.^12,³

Chance and natural law cannot explain how life arose. Only intelligence could have made a living cell.

References:

1) Problems with the Natural Chemical "Origin of Life" (updated)
by Casey Luskin
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/838

2) http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/intelligent-design.1228/#post-33668

3) Chance and necessity do not explain the origin of life
J.T. Trevors, D.L. Abel
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_L_Abel/publication/8164763_Chance_and_necessity_do_not_explain_the_origin_of_life/links/09e4150d4791d394ab000000

4) Self-Organisation in Dynamical Systems: A limiting result
Richard Johns
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/rjohns/spontaneous_4.pdf

5) Can the Origin of the Genetic Code Be Explained by Direct RNA Templating?
Stephen C. Meyer* and Paul A. Nelson
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/download/BIO-C.2011.2/69

6) Video: Life could not have formed by natural means. Biomolecules naturally react to form tar.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/09/video-life-could-not-have-formed-by.html

7) Top Five Problems with Current Origin-of-Life Theories
Casey Luskin
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/12/top_five_probl067431.html

(8) Extreme Functional Sensitivity to Conservative Amino Acid Changes on Enzyme Exteriors
Douglas D. Axe
http://www.toriah.org/articles/axe-2000.pdf

(9) Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds
Douglas D. Axe
http://www.toriah.org/articles/axe-2004-1.pdf

(10) The Case Against a Darwinian Origin of Protein Folds
Douglas D. Axe*
http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/download/BIO-C.2010.1/56

(11) Lee Spetner explains why natural selection can't produce macroevolution.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/09/lee-spetner-explains-why-natural.html

(12) Life did not Arise Through the Unguided Action of Natural Laws
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/03/life-did-not-arise-through-unguided.html

(13) 7. The Genetic Selection (GS) Principle
David L. Abel
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_L_Abel/publication/216660503_Review_of_The_Genetic_Selection_(GS)_Principle/links/02bfe50d478c6eddd2000000

(14) Complexity, Self-organization, and Emergence at the Edge of Chaos in Life-Origin Models
http://www.academia.edu/1203553/Abel_D._L._2007_Complexity_self-organization_and_emergence_at_the_edge_of_chaos_in_life-origin_models_Journal_of_the_Washington_Academy_of_Sciences_2007_93_4_1-20

(15) Exon Shuffling, and the Origins of Protein Folds
Jonathan M.
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/exon_shuffling074401.html

(16) Exon Shuffling: Evaluating the Evidence
Jonathan M
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/an_evaluation_o074441.html

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Results from mainstream biological research call into question the materialist narrative of the origin of life and macroevolution.

Many results from mainstream biological research call into question the materialist narrative of the origin of life and macroevolution. At some point, as more and more evidence contradicting the materialist narrative accumulates, scientists will have to abandon the materialist view of biological history:

DNA sequence data falsifies common descent. An evolutionary tree can be constructed by comparing the same gene in different organisms but using different genes produce widely divergent trees.

Homologous genes that regulate analogous structures. Genes with similar sequences regulate similar features (Pax-6: eyes, GSK-3b: limbs, Csx/tinman: hearts, etc) that evolved independently in different organisms:

There is no plausible materialist explanation for the origin of life. Video

Missing evidence of transitional fossils. Change not stasis should be the norm in the fossil record.

Missing evidence of precambrian fossils. Enough soft-bodied Precambrian fossils have been found for fossils of the ancestors to the animal types that appeared in the Cambrian explosion to have been found if they existed.

Information theory shows that random variation cannot produce information, randomness is noise it reduces information.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Lee Spetner explains why natural selection can't produce macroevolution.

Lee Spetner, author of Not By Chance! and The Evolution Revolution, explains why natural selection can't produce macroevolution.

For the grand process of evolution to work, long sequences of “beneficial” mutations must be possible, each building on the previous one and conferring a selective advantage on the organism. The process must be able to lead not only from one species to another, but to the entire advance of life from a simple beginning to the full complexity of life today. There must be a long series of possible mutations, each of which conferring a selective advantage on the organism so that natural selection can make it take over the population. Moreover, there must be not just one, but a great many such series.

The chain must be continuous in that at each stage a change of a single base pair somewhere in the genome can lead to a more adaptive organism in some environmental context. That is, it should be possible to continue to climb an “adaptive” hill, one base change after another, without getting hung up on a local adaptive maximum. No one has ever shown this to be possible.

Now one might say that if evolution were hung up on a local Maximum, a large genetic change like a recombination or a transposition could bring it to another higher peak. Large adaptive changes are, however, highly improbable. They are orders of magnitude less probable than getting an adaptive change with a single nucleotide substitution, which is itself improbable. No one has shown this to be possible either.

Moreover, as I have noted in my book, the large mutations such as recombinations and transpositions are mediated by special enzymes and are executed with precision - not the sort of doings one would expect of events that were supposed to be the products of chance. Evolutionists chose the mechanism of randomness, by the way, because we can’t think of any other way beneficial mutations might occur in the absence of a law that might govern them. Genetic rearrangements may not be really random at all. They do not seem to qualify as the random mutations Neo-Darwinists can invoke whenever needed to escape from a local adaptive Maximum.

Differences in early embryonic development provide evidence that the animal phyla did not share a multicellular common ancestor.

Many scientists believe that by studying embryonic development in living animals, they can learn about the animal's long extinct ancestors. An example of this can be found in the document 15 EVOLUTIONARY GEMS: A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection. by Henry Gee, Rory Howlett and Philip Campbell. This document was published by the prestigious scientific journal Nature, in January 2009. In this document, the authors say that studying the development of the neural crest in embryos of living organisms "casts light on the evolution of structures in the heads and necks of animals long extinct."

New techniques have allowed researchers to label and follow individual cells as embryos develop. They have revealed the boundaries of the bone derived from the neural crest, down to the single-cell level, in the neck and shoulders. Tissue derived from the neural crest anchors the head onto the front lining of the shoulder girdle, whereas the skeleton forming the back of the neck and shoulder grows from a deeper layer of tissue called the mesoderm.

Such detailed mapping, in living animals, casts light on the evolution of structures in the heads and necks of animals long extinct, even without fossilized soft tissue such as skin and muscle. Skeletal similarities that result from a shared evolutionary history can be identified from muscle attachments. This allows the tracing of, for example, the location of the major shoulder bone of extinct land vertebrate ancestors, the cleithrum. This bone seems to survive as part of the shoulder blade (scapula) in living mammals.

...

Matsuoka's study shows how a detailed analysis of the morphology of living animals, informed by evolutionary thinking, helps researchers to interpret fossilized and now-extinct forms.

This excerpt explains that because of the shared evolutionary history of modern animals and their fossilized ancestors, scientists can tell which fossilized bones had developed from neural crest cells.

If this is true and the embryonic development of living animals reflects the embryonic development of their long extinct ancestors, then certain evidence from embryology provides evidence that the animal phyla did not descend from a multicellular common ancestor.

According to the theory of evolution by natural selection, as organism evolved they developed more complex features. Therefore the oldest ancestors will be much simpler than modern animals. The embryos of the simple ancestors would not develop the complex features of modern animals. Therefore the embryonic development of an organism and its ancestors should start out the same but then diverge at the point in development where features in the modern animal but absent in the ancestor cause changes in the development of the embryo. But if the embryos of two animals start out embryonic development differently, then the two animals should not have shared a multicellular common ancestor.

In the first stages of embryogenesis in multicellular animals, the fertilized egg goes through a series of cleavages to form a hollow ball of cells called a blastula, then the cells migrate to form a multi-layered gastrula. However, vertebrates and insects don't form a gastrula in the same way. The pattern of migration of their cells from the blastula to the gastrula is different. In fact, vertebrate and insect embryos don't even form a blastula in the same way. The fertilized egg in vertebrates and insects go through a different pattern of cleavage while forming blastulas. In vertebrates and insects, starting at the very beginning of embryogenesis their embryos form differently.

If it is true that embryonic development of an organism reflects the embryonic development of the organism's ancestors, as indicated by the excerpt from Nature above, then the difference in blastulation and gastrulation in vertebrates and insects shows that the embryos of their earliest multicellular ancestors developed differently and therefore could not have been the same organism. But it is not just vertebrates and insects in which the initial stages of embryogenesis are different. Most of the animal phyla also have unique patterns of early embryogenesis. This is evidence that the animal phyla did not share a common multicellular ancestor.

This conclusion is consistent with the fossil evidence showing that the animal phyla that first appeared in the Cambrian explosion did not have ancestors.

The absence of common ancestry falsifies evolution by natural selection but is predicted by intelligent design.

The study of regulatory genes that control embryonic development also supports this view. Homologus genes that control the embryonic development of analogous structures is better explained by intelligent design than by evolution by natural selection.

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Homologous genes that regulate the development of analogous structures are better explained by intelligent design than natural selection.

There are many genes that have been discovered which regulate embryonic development in animals. Similar versions of some of these genes are found in different phyla where they regulate similar structures that are thought to have "evolved" independently. These homologous genes that regulate analogous structures might encourage the Darwinist to reconsider whether those structures might actually be homologous due to common ancestry. However, in consideration of the evidence that the animal phyla do not have common ancestors, these "homologies of process" are better explained as evidence of intelligent design, where the designer reused the same control mechanism for the development of similar structures in unrelated organisms.

Examples of structures that evolved independently but are controlled by the same genes include:

The anterior-posterior axis in vertebrates and flies.¹
The vertebrate and insect eyes.¹
Gastrulation in vertebrates and insects¹
The insect and vertebrate hearts.¹
The nematode vulva, the mammalian epidermis, and the Drosophila terminal segments.¹
The body axes and limbs in vertebrates and drosophila.¹
"Mammals, urochordates, sea urchins, insects, annelid worms, and onycophorans, all use a similar regulatory gene to control limb growth. But they have radically different types of limbs, making this either a case of radically extreme "convergent evolution" or simple common design."²

Notes:

Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology

REVIEW

Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology

Scott F. Gilbert,*,1 John M. Opitz,† and Rudolf A. Raff‡

...

Three major groups (E. B. Lewis and D. S. Hogness in California; W. Gehring in Basel; T. Kaufman in Indiana; and their respective students) used the new molecular techniques to isolate and sequence these genes, and they discovered a remarkably stable region: a 180-bp consensus sequence called the ‘‘homeobox.’’ It appeared that the genes responsible for homeotic transformations were themselves homologous.

...

These genes were said to be homologous, and since the homeotic genes appeared to create the anterior–posterior axis in flies, it was speculated that the same genes might create the anterior–posterior axis in humans. To some, this idea seemed bizarre.

...

In the 1990s, the use of homologous recombination to functionally delete homeotic genes in mice enabled numerous laboratories to see what happened when vertebrates lacked one or more of these genes. The results demonstrated that these genes controlled the formation of the anterior–posterior axis in vertebrates as well as in flies

...

The segmentation of Drosophila and the segmentation of vertebrates had been a classic example of analogy. Yet, here it was seen as being directed by a homologous set of genes.

...

The insect eye and the vertebrate eye are two examples of structures said to be analogous. However, they can be shown to both be based on the expression of the Pax-6 gene (Quiring et al., 1994), and it is probable that the vertebrate and insect (and cephalopod) eyes are the modified descendents of a basic metazoan photoreceptive cell that was regulated by Pax-6.

...

Similarly, the Xenopus gene chordin and the Drosophila gene short-gastrulation have similar sequences and expression patterns, and they act similarly in vertebrate and insect gastrulation (to counter the lateralizing effects of BMP-4/decapentaplegic). Even though the types of gastrulation do not appear similar to any marked degree, the genes controlling them may be homologous (Francois and Bier, 1995; Holley et al., 1995). Similarly, the heart of vertebrates and the heart of insects have hardly anything in common except their ability to pump fluids. Yet, they both appear to be predicated upon the expression of the same gene, Csx/tinman (see Manak and Scott, 1994).

...
[The] same system has been found to exist in the determination of the nematode vulva, the mammalian epidermis, and the Drosophila terminal segments. The similarity in these systems is so striking that many of the components are interchangeable between species. The gene for human GRB2 can correct the phenotypic defects of sem-5-deficient nematodes, and the nematode sem-5 protein can bind to the phosphorylated form of the human EGF receptor (see Greenwald and Rubin, 1992; Gilbert, 1994b). The process is thus historically (specifically) homologous between species (Drosophila retina/nematode vulva) and serially homologous within species (Drosophila retina/Drosophila acron and telson).

...

In vertebrates, there are several homologues to wingless, namely, the wnt proteins; the homologue to zest-white 3 is glycogen synthase kinase 3b (GSK-3b); and there are numerous hedgehog analogues, such as sonic hedgehog. In vertebrates, the wingless–hedgehog system is thought to be needed for producing the body axes (as in Drosophila) and the limbs (as in Drosophila).

...

Recently, several laboratories have shown that the same proteins that generate the insect leg also generate the vertebrate limbs.

...
Few people would have expected that a similar situation would exist for another embryological field—the vertebrate limb field. After all, here is the classic example of analogy as opposed to homology. The insect and vertebrate legs share the same function, but that’s about it. The insect leg forms from the telescoping of the ectodermal imaginal disc. The vertebrate limb forms from the reciprocal induction of the Apical Ectodermal Ridge, the mesodermal Progress Zone mesenchyme, and the mesodermal Zone of Polarizing Activity.

This section is particularly illustrative of why evolutionary biology is really just a house of cards:

The insect eye and the vertebrate eye are two examples of structures said to be analogous. However, they can be shown to both be based on the expression of the Pax-6 gene (Quiring et al., 1994), and it is probable that the vertebrate and insect (and cephalopod) eyes are the modified descendents of a basic metazoan photoreceptive cell that was regulated by Pax-6.

A basic metazoan photoreceptive cell is only "probable" if you assume insects and vertebrates had a common ancestor. But the evidence shows that there is no common ancestor to vertebrates and insects and so there cannot be a common ancestor (a basic metazoan) that had a photoreceptive cell. But evolutionists assume that all animals have a common ancestor and then they use that to explain observed phenomena. As these explanations accumulate they claim evolution is supported by masses of evidence... but that evidence is based on assuming what they are trying to prove.

Another interesting point is that these regulatory genes have been so highly conserved over hundreds of millions of years that some are interchangeable between phyla, yet they are responsible for embryonic development in animals that are supposed to have evolved during that time. Species are different because they develop as embryos differently. These differences are not just differences between phyla but between species within phyla. If differences between phyla and species within phyla are due to evolution, one should expect to find differences in the genes that control embryonic development. However, if organisms were designed, one would expect to see identical parts used in different systems.

One of the evolutionist explanations for the Cambrian explosion is that new genetic information was not needed because the changes in body plan were caused by changes in regulatory genes. That seems doubtful given that regulatory genes seem to be so highly conserved that some are interchangeable between phyla.

Yet ironically, the last section of the article includes this:

The homologies of process within morphogenetic fields provide some of the best evidence for evolution.

In fact, the homologies of process provide some of the best evidence for intelligent design.
Casey Luskin at evolutionnews.org writes:

But the case for intelligent design in limb-bud controlling genes gets stronger when one realizes that the same regulatory genes are used to control limb growth in organisms far more diverse than vertebrates: mammals, urochordates, sea urchins, insects, annelid worms, and onycophorans, all use a similar regulatory gene to control limb growth. But they have radically different types of limbs, making this either a case of radically extreme "convergent evolution" or simple common design. (See Paul Nelson and Jonathan Wells, "Homology in Biology," in Darwinism, Design, and Public Education (Michigan State University Press, 2003), pg. 316.) As plant geneticist from the Max Plank Institute, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig, wrote in Dynamical Genetics, "No theorist in evolutionary biology will ever derive chicken and insects from a winged common ancestor, and yet, clearly related sequences are specifically expressed in wing buds and imaginal disks."

Monday, September 15, 2014

Video: Darwinism on Trial with University of California Berkley law professor Phillip E. Johnson

Darwinism on Trial, is a video with University of California Berkley law professor Phillip E. Johnson author of the book Darwin on Trial.

The video discusses some of the problems with Darwinism and also how Darwinists control the debate on natural selection. As a law professor, Johnson's area of expertise is debate and rhetoric and in this video he brings clarity to the debate on Darwinism.

For example, Johnson points out how Darwinists often use shifting definitions when making arguments. Darwinists will assert that science disproves the biblical account of creation and then act as if they have refuted all other possible modes of creation. Darwinists also point to evidence of microevolution as proof of evolution and then incorrectly claim macroevolution is proved.

Another example of poor logic Darwinists use is the argument from analogy to artificial selection. Darwinists incorrectly use examples from artificial selection as proof of macroevolution by natural selection. Artificial selection, such as breeding different types of dogs, uses the variations that currently exist in the gene pool, and therefore has a very limited ability to create changes in a species. Macroevolution involves major changes to an organism like the evolution of an organ such as an eye or a substantial change in an animal type such as the evolution from a land mammal to a whale. Macroevolution requires huge amounts of new genetic information which is a completely different mode of evolution than artificial selection which uses existing genes. Furthermore, artificial selection is not "natural" it is accomplished by intelligence and is purposeful.

Another flaw in Darwinism which Johnson points out is that mutations often have multiple effects. When trying to understand how some feature of an organism evolved, a Darwinist will propose that a mutation occurred as a first small step toward that feature and provided a survival advantage. Johnson says that this type of hypothetical speculation ignores the fact that most mutations have multiple effects and some may reduce the survival advantage so this speculation is not logically valid. But Darwinists accept their brand of logic because they have already assumed the truth of what they are trying to prove so they know there must have been beneficial mutations because the feature exists and must have arisen through natural selection.

Johnson lists four flaws in the theory of evolution by natural selection:

You don't know if the necessary mutations will arise in the right order at the right time.
Artificial selection is not natural selection.
Mutations have multiple effects so beneficial mutations are unlikely.
The fossil record is not consistent with what you would expect if evolution by natural selection is true.

Natural selection requires step by step gradual changes over long periods of time but the fossil record shows stasis over millions of years through environmental changes and there is an absence of transitional fossils. When your theory requires small step by step changes over long periods of time and you have millions of years of stasis with no evidence of transitions, you ought to realize your theory is wrong.

The missing transitions can't be explained by saying the fossil record is incomplete. There are millions of years of fossils that show stasis when they should be showing gradual change. Natural selection requires many small changes each providing a selective advantage. A key feature of natural selection, the engine that makes it work, is that these changes provide a selective advantage that cause them to become predominant throughout the population. This is important because beneficial mutations are rare and if you want a sequence of mutations to occur, each new mutation has to become predominant through out the population. This is necessary to provide a large enough population with one mutation for another mutation to become probable within that population. If the engine of Darwinism was really the cause evolution, the fossil record would show gradual change not millions of years of stasis with significant changes occurring suddenly in an improbably short time for which there are no fossils. The fossil record falsifies Darwinism.

There is no other theory to explain how evolution could occur naturally except by a series of small changes. (Punctuated equilibrium is not a theory it is a description.)

Johnson went on to explain how Darwinists prevent debate about whether Darwinism is wrong.

Darwinists define science as the study of natural and material processes, and as the pursuit of ever more improved natural explanations. Critics of Darwinism are dismissed if they don't have an alternative to natural selection: "They don't know how science works". Darwinists do not recognize that not knowing something is valid scientific position. They prefer a wrong theory to no theory. The way Darwinist science really works in practice is that they make an assumption and assert it is a fact.

Johnson then goes on to show that Darwinists misuse the mantle of science to give the theory of natural selection authority is doesn't deserve. He points out that technology produced by science is impressive. But technology is based on repeatable phenomena. Evolution is a scientific consensus not a repeatable experiment and therefore it is not reliable. Johnson illustrates this with a hypothetical example based on the Challenger explosion. He says that if a panel of rocket scientists agreed the Challenge mission would be successful, any outsider who disagreed would be ridiculed ... until the launch and explosion of the space shuttle that tested the panel's conclusions.

Johnson also points out that philosophies that attach themselves to science do not have a good track record and lists Marxism and Freudian psychology as examples, claiming Darwinism belongs with the other two as being unfalsifiable - anything that happens within their domain can be explained by these philosophies.

Another rhetorical device used by Darwinists is to reject the existence of God because nature is cruel or because some features of organisms seem poorly designed or are vestigial. Darwinists assert this is evidence that macroevolution by natural selection is true. This is not science, it is a theological argument. It is also a false dichotomy between God and Darwinism. A scientific approach would be to attempt to refute the criticisms of Darwinism by experiment, observation, or mathematically precise theoretical work.

The missing ancestors of the Cambrian explosion would have been found if they existed.

The Cambrian explosion refers to a period of time 530 million years ago when many animal phyla first appeared on earth. Darwinism predicts that these phyla should have evolved from simpler organisms. If that were true, fossils left by those organisms might provide evidence for their existence. However no such fossils have ever been found. One might suppose that the ancestors of the Cambrian phyla existed but the fossil record is incomplete because conditions at the time were not right for preservation of fossils, or erosion destroyed their fossils, or they did not have shells and their soft tissues did not leave fossils, or their fossils exist but have not yet been found. However, many fossils from before the Cambrian era have been found. In fact, enough precambrian fossils of soft-bodied organisms have been found for the missing ancestors of the Cambrian explosion to have been found if they existed. Therefore the fossil record shows that many animal phyla arose without evolving from simpler organisms. This contradicts the theory of evolution by natural selection but is predicted by intelligent design.

From Deepening Darwin's Dilemma by Jonathan Wells

So there is now no shortage of Precambrian fossils. Not only do we have fossils of bacteria, but we also have many fossils of soft-bodied Multicellular organisms. “In the Ediacaran organisms there is no evidence for any skeletal hard parts,” wrote Conway Morris in 1998. “Ediacaran fossils look as if they were effectively soft-bodied” (Crucible of Creation, 28).

From Questions about the Cambrian Explosion,
Evolution, and Intelligent Design

That the precursors to the Cambrian groups are indeed missing from the record is widely accepted among paleontologists; thus, this is not the controversial aspect of the ID position. About the missing precursors at the base of the tree of the animal phyla, Valentine notes:

...many of the branches, large as well as small, are cryptogenetic (cannot be traced into ancestors). Some of these gaps are surely caused by the incompleteness of the fossil record..., but that cannot be the sole explanation for the cryptogenetic nature of some families, many
invertebrate orders, all invertebrate classes, and all metazoan phyla.

Charles Marshall concurs:

While the fossil record of the well-skeletonized animal phyla is pretty good, we have virtually no fossils that are unambiguously assignable to the most basal stem groups [putative ancestors] of these phyla, those first branches that lie between the last common ancestor of all bilaterians and the last common ancestor of the living representatives of each of the phyla….their absence is striking. Where are they?

To be clear: Valentine and Marshall, leading paleontologists, oppose ID theory.

Pre-cambrian fossils include:

Charia, which is a single celled algae, originally wrongly thought to be a shelly invertebrate due to more misguided attempts to solve ‘Darwin’s Dilemma.’

-

Barghoorn Gunflint microfossils, which again comprise bacterial stromatolites that do not serve as precursors to the Cambrian fauna.

-

Bitter Springs Chert, which again are microbe fossils, not clear evolutionary precursors to the Cambrian fauna.

-

Saucer-sized organisms, at Ediacara, also called the Ediacaran Fauna, which are enigmatic fossils generally not thought to be ancestral to the Cambrian fauna.

Nature's best evidence for natural selection does not show that natural selection can cause macroevolution.

A fossilized whale bone is found that is older than fossils of animals that are supposed to be the evolutionary ancestors of whales.
Fossil tracks from a land animal are found that are older than the fossil of the supposed intermediate between fish and land animals.
Feathered dinosaurs supposedly intermediate between dinosaurs and birds are found not to be dinosaurs but birds that have lost the ability to fly.

If the most compelling evidence claimed to support evolution by natural selection failed to demonstrate macroevolution, that would be a strong indication that there is no evidence that natural selection is the cause of macroevolution.

In 2009, the journal Nature published a document titled 15 EVOLUTIONARY GEMS: A resource from Nature for those wishing to spread awareness of evidence for evolution by natural selection. It was intended to help anyone interested in evolution to explain the case for evolution by natural selection. The only problem is that none of these "gems" actually provided evidence for macroevolution. Some of the "gems" were incorrect interpretations of the fossil record that were exposed by later discoveries. Other gems, at best, only provide evidence for microevolution, the equivalent of breeding different types of dogs. Some gems have nothing at all to do with evolution, unless you first assume what you are trying to prove, ie. that natural selection is the cause of differences in organisms.

The mechanisms of microevolution include loss of function mutations, changes in the frequency of existing alleles in a population, and mutations that can provide a survival advantage in one step. Microevolution requires little new genetic information, if any. Macroevolution involves significant changes to an organism such as development of an eye, or the change from a land mammal to a whale. Macroevolution requires huge amounts of new genetic information. Darwinists cite microevolution as proof of evolution and then act as if macroevolution is proven, but microevolution is not proof that natural selection can produce the large amounts of genetic information needed for macroevolution.

The article Evaluating Nature's 2009 "15 Evolutionary Gems" Darwin-Evangelism Kit at evolutionnews.org makes a detailed analysis of Nature's "gems" and shows that the best evidence for evolution by natural selection does not offer evidence of macroevolution by natural selection. The claim that natural selection can cause macroevolution is not supported by any evidence, it remains an assumption or a false conclusion based on flawed reasoning.

The article at evolutionnews.org also mentions Nature was founded by T. H. Huxley in part to promote Darwinism and naturalism ... which explains the journal's name.

The 15 gems (and why, according to evolutionnews.org, they are not evidence of macroevolution) are:

Gems from the fossil record

Land-living ancestors of whales (New fossils show that whales existed before their "ancestors".)
From water to land (The supposed intermediate between fish and land animals dates from a time after land animals already existed.)
The origin of feathers (Feathered dinosaurs said to be intermediate between dinosaurs and birds are now believed to be birds that lost the ability to fly.)
The evolutionary history of teeth (The study referenced by Nature doesn't provide evidence for macroevolution, or any type of evolution, it is based on existing species.)
The origin of the vertebrate skeleton (Claims that embryology can reveal information about ancient ancestors is falsified by many cases of homologous structures developing from non homologous pathways.)

Gems from habitats
Natural selection in speciation (Differences in stickleback fish populations might be due to environmental factors not evolution, at best it demonstrates microevolution.)
Natural selection in lizards (When a predator causes lizards to develop longer legs and larger body size, it is microevolution not macroevolution.)
A case of co-evolution (Co-evolution among fleas and their parasites is microevolution.)
Differential dispersal in wild birds (Studies showing the effects of different locales and migration on genetic variation in birds demonstrate microevolution.)
Selective survival in wild guppies (Variation in colored spots on guppies is not macroevolution.)
Evolutionary history matters (The fact that different animals have different morphological features is not proof of evolution by natural selection.)

Gems from molecular processes
Darwin’s Galapagos finches (Different alleles produce differences in phenotype. This is not proof of macroevolution.)
Microevolution meets macroevolution (The formation of colored spots on fly wings is not macroevolution. Determining the genetic basis for a phenotype is not proof of evolution.)
Toxin resistance in snakes and clams (Resistance to toxins due to mutations in sodium channels is not proof of macroevolution.)
Variation versus stability (Loss of function mutations do not cause macroevolution.)

The evolutionnews.org article gives detailed explanations of why these "gems" do not provide evidence for macroevolution. Below, I provide a brief summary. For more information see the evolutionnews.org article linked above.

Gems from the fossil record

Land-living ancestors of whales: Darwinists claim there is a series of fossils that show the evolution of land mammals into whales. However, the evolutionnews.org article explains that similarity in fossils is not proof of ancestry. The evolutionnews.org article also points out that the time given for the evolution of whales, ten million years, is too short to have occurred by natural selection. But recent developments have made the situation much worse for Darwinists. A new fossil found since the articles were published has shown that whales lived before some of those fossils that are claimed to be ancestors of whales and it leaves only a few million years for the evolution of whales from land mammals.

That the first "gem", the best argument for macroevolution by natural selection, was a total misconstruction of the fossil record should be enough to convince anyone that Darwinists are not using sound logic when making their conclusions from the evidence. Darwinists should have understood that those fossil ancestors could easily have been species of differing similarity without being a series of ancestors and they should not have claimed the fossils were proof of macroevolution by natural selection.
From water to land: The fossil that Nature claims is from an animal intermediate between fish and land animals, tiktaalik, is actually more recent than fossils tracks made by a land animal. Contrary to what is written in the Nature article, tiktaalik is not an intermediate between fish and land animals, land animals already existed at the time the tiktaalik fossil was formed. There is currently no evidence of an intermediate between fish and land animals.
The origin of feathers: The Nature article claims that a certain species of feathered dinosaurs are intermediates between dinosaurs and birds. However according to the evolutionnews.org article, these species are now considered not to have been dinosaurs but were birds that had lost the ability to fly.
The evolutionary history of teeth: Nature claims that a study of teeth formation in mice is evidence for evolution because it predicts a relationship between certain aspects of tooth formation and diet. This is not evidence of macroevolution. At best it might be a result of microevolution. However, this example is based on existing species and does not show any evidence that it is a result of evolution by natural selection, they are simply assuming what they are trying to prove.
The origin of the vertebrate skeleton: Nature claims observations of the development of the head and neck in mice embryos tell us about the evolution of structures in long extinct species. But it doesn't. The evolutionnews.org article explains there are many example of homologous structures in embryos of different species developing by non-homologous pathways. What you see in an embryo is not proof of what happened in the embryo's supposed ancestors.

Gems from habitats
Natural selection in speciation: Nature claims differences in different populations of stickleback fish show evolution in action. However these traits could be caused by environmental factors not genetic differences. At best it would be an example of microevolution.
Natural selection in lizards: According to Nature, in an experiment in which a new predator was introduced to an island, male Anolis lizards were found to develop longer legs while females developed larger body size. This is an example of microevolution, and it is not "natural" it was caused by an experimenter.
A case of co-evolution: A study of water fleas and their parasites showed that over time as the fleas develop resistance to the parasites, the parasites adapt to overcome that resistance. These "flea-sized" adaptations are an example of microevolution.
Differential dispersal in wild birds: Studies showing the effects of different locales and migration on genetic variation in birds only demonstrates microevolution.
Selective survival in wild guppies: A study showed that guppies with rare color patterns had a survival advantage. This is supposedly a evidence of how genetic diversity can be maintained. It doesn't explain macroevolution, it is about maintenance of existing genes not the mechanism by which new genes arise.
Evolutionary history matters: Moray eels have a unique mechanism of capturing prey. Most fish suck in prey by opening their jaws, but because the moray's head is so short, insufficient suction is generated. Instead, the moray moves its pharyngeal jaw forward to snatch its prey. This is not evidence for evolution any more than any feature of any organism is evidence for evolution.

Gems from molecular processes
Darwin’s Galapagos finches: A study of finches showed that increased expression of the calmodulin gene coincides with changes in beak morphology. This is evidence that genes determine morphology and variations in morphology are due to differences in genes. It says nothing about macroevolution.
Microevolution meets macroevolution: A genetic regulatory element in fruit flies that is involved in forming pigmented spots on the wing binds to transcription factors that are components of wing development and also binds to a transcription factor that is "fundamental to development as a whole". Supposedly this shows the regulatory element evolved over time from a single purpose to multiple purposes. However pigmentation spots on the wings of files qualifies as microevolution not macroevolution. Furthermore this not evidence evolution by natural selection any more than any heritable characteristic of any organism is evidence of evolution by natural selection. These "gems" are supposed to prove that evolution occurred by natural selection. This gem simply explains the genetic basis of a phenotype. You have to already believe that unguided genetic mutation and natural selection is the basis for the diversity of life in order to believe this "gem" has anything to do with evolution by natural selection.
Toxin resistance in snakes and clams: Garter snakes develop resistance to newt toxins and clams develop resistance to red tide algae toxin both through a mutations involving sodium channels. This is evidence of microevolution not macroevolution.
Variation versus stability: The fossil record seems to show species are stable for long periods of time and changes species occur over short periods of time. This is supposedly explained by "evolutionary capacitance" which involves genetic diversity that is unexpressed except in times of stress. You might wonder how changes in gene expression caused by stress could be heritable and cause evolution. What the nature article doesn't say is that the experiments designed to study evolutionary capacitance relied on loss of function mutations and these mutations produced deleterious effects on the organism. Loss of function mutations do not cause macroevolution.

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Video: Life could not have formed by natural means. Biomolecules naturally react to form tar.

Edward T. Peltzer did his PhD research studying organic compounds found in meteorites. He was hoping to find clues to the origin of life on earth. In the video below Peltzer explains why life could not have arisen by natural means.

In the video, Edward Peltzer explains that when biomolecules such as amino acids and sugars are produced naturally, they are intermediates in a multi-step reaction and are consumed as quickly as they are produced. That reaction does not produce the biopolymers needed for life such as proteins or nucleic acids, instead the reaction produces tar.

Biopolymers cannot be produced naturally because without the cellular structures that compartmentalize biomolecules and control how they interact, the subunits will not form biopolymers, they will react randomly and form gunk. Even if by chance several subunits do form a biopolymer, that polymer is still going to go on to form gunk.

In the video, Peltzer discusses various origin of life theories including "protein first", "protein and nucleotides together", metabolism first, membranes first, clay, and RNA world and panspermia. None of these can explain how life could originate. Proteins do not polymerize naturally, they form gunk. This is why cataracts form in lens of the eye. The same is true for nucleotides. If one hypothesizes membranes formed spontaneously to protect biomolecules from the environment, then the reactants of polymerization will be used up without any means of replenishment. If the membranes are leaky, then you have the same problems as with no membrane at all. If you mix biomolecules with clay, they stick to the clay and stay there, they are removed from solution and cannot carry out any biological functions. Panspermia, the theory that life came to earth from space, doesn't solve anything unless the laws of chemistry are different elsewhere in the universe.

Peltzer concludes you can't produce a cell unless you already have a cell.

Newly discovered whale fossil, older than its supposed ancestor species, proves Darwinists rely on flawed logic.

The evidence that is claimed to prove Darwinian evolution is often a misrepresentation based on faulty logic. For example, Darwinists claim that the evolution of the whale from a land mammal is one of the best examples of how Darwinian evolution is proven by the fossil record. However, a new fossil has been discovered which shows whales existed before many of their supposed ancestors. The fact that one of Darwinism's best cases of evidence for evolution is wrong indicates how poorly evolution is supported by the empirical evidence, and how claims made by Darwinists are based on flawed logic. While it isn't fair to expect Darwinists to know what fossils will be found in the future, they should know what the existing fossil record proves an what it doesn't prove, and they should be forthright about it when they talk to the public.

An NPR article gives the usual Darwinist explanation of how the fossil evidence demonstrates that whales evolved from land mammals:

Some details remain fuzzy and under investigation. But we know for certain that this back-to-the-water evolution did occur, thanks to a profusion of intermediate fossils that have been uncovered over the past two decades. ...

You can read the article for the full explanation.

However, a series of fossils that looks like they might be successive intermediates in the evolution from one animal type to another is not proof that the fossils really are a series of intermediates. The fossils might just be from a number of different species of varying similarity but not ancestral. This is shown by a recent discovery discussed at evolutionnews.org of a whale fossil that is older than many of the whale's supposed ancestors.

In an article titled "Ancient whale jawbone found in Antarctica," the Associated Press reports that paleontologists have found "the oldest fully aquatic whale yet discovered," which is about 49 million years old.

...

But this new fossil might imply that the amount of time available [for the evolution of whales] was actually less than 5 million years.

Until now, the whale series went something like this:

Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya

Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya

Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya

Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya

Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

So under the previous timeline, Darwinian biologists didn't have to worry about accounting for the origin of fully aquatic whales until about 40 mya. This new find pushes fully aquatic whales back to 49 mya. Now the timeline looks something like this:
Pakicetids (fully terrestrial): ~50 mya

New Fossil Jawbone (fully aquatic whale): 49 mya

Ambulocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya

Remingtonocetids (semi-aquatic): 49 mya

Rodhocetus (a Protocetid, semi-aquatic): 47 mya

Basilosaurids (fully aquatic): 40 mya

In light of this new find, it appears that fully aquatic whales existed at 49 mya -- around the same time that Ambulocetids appear. The fossil record now might jump from fully terrestrial Pakicetids to fully aquatic whales in just a couple million years -- maybe much less than 5 million years.

It isn't fair to expect Darwinists to know what fossils will be found in the future, but they should know what the existing fossil record proves an what it doesn't prove, and they should be forthright about it when they talk to the public. Furthermore, the impossibly short time span that the Darwinist interpretation of the fossils allowed for the evolution of the whale (even before this new fossil was discovered) should have given them a warning that their interpretation was impossibly wrong.

Video: A Critique of Darwinist Icons

In the video A Critique of Darwinist Icons, Jonathan Wells explains why the evidence most often offered as proof of Darwinian evolution doesn't actually prove Darwinian evolution. These misleading examples are often repeated because there really isn't any good evidence for evolution. Wells also explains that the reason these misleading examples are used is that evolutionary biology as taught in schools is really teaching atheism. Neither physics nor chemistry text books make statements about God or religion. Those books just discuss the evidence and the science. It is only in evolutionary biology where statements are made asserting that science makes belief in God and religion unnecessary, and since there is no good evidence to support that point of view, they have to resort to making misleading statements to do it.

The video contains the most important examples of bogus evidence of evolution found in the book Icons of Evolution also by Jonathan Wells. Some of these examples are discussed in Survival of the Fakest by Jonathan Wells. And some of the examples in the book but not covered in the video or Survival of the Fakest can be found in these articles:

Briefly the examples in the video include:

The evolutionary tree is false: The evolutionary tree shows the relatedness of different organisms. It is possible to produce a tree by comparing the DNA sequence of a gene in different organisms. However, using different genes produces different trees. The Cambrian explosion is also evidence against common descent because the major animal phyla appeared at the same time and there is no evidence they evolved from a common ancestor.
Homology in vertebrate limbs: Does not support common descent because it doesn't rule out common design. Homology only looks like evidence of evolution if you assume what you are trying to prove, ie. that homology is evidence of evolution.
Vertebrate embryos: The classic diagrams showing similarities in embryos were faked.
Peppered moths: Supposedly peppered moths evolved darker protective coloration in response to air pollution making tree trunks darker in color. However, peppered moths don't normally rest on tree trunks. Once pollution decreased, the peppered moths became lighter in color, but this began before the tree trunks became lighter.
Darwin's finches: A one year drought caused changes in beak morphology, but the beaks reverted after the drought. This is at best microevolution caused by a change in the frequency of existing genes in the population. It is not evidence of macroevolution - substantial changes in organisms such as the development of an eye or land mammals evolving into a whale.
Four-winged fruit files: Do not show that natural selection can cause changes in organisms because the flies were created by scientists, the extra wings had no muscles to move them, and they made the files less fit for survival.

The article Fact-Checking Wikipedia on Common Descent: The Evidence from Paleontology discusses the lack of fossil evidence for intermediate stages of evolution. The excerpt below discusses the series of fossils claimed to show the evolution of the whale from a land mammal. It is not credible that they could represent a sequence of ancestor species because there is not enough time for the changes in the species to have occurred naturally.

One of the most notable problems with the evolution of the whale is the extremely abrupt timescale over which it is supposed to have occurred. The sheer force of this conundrum is only properly appreciated when one considers the multiple feats of anatomical novelty, innovative engineering and genetic rewiring necessary to change a terrestrial mammal like Pakicetus into a fully aquatic whale. Indeed, evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg has argued that even many of the relatively minor changes are extremely unlikely to have occurred in the time-frame allowed.

Other articles in the same series include:

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Video: Unlocking the Mystery of Life

Unlocking the Mystery of Life

In 1993 professor Phillip Johnson of the University of California Berkley invited a group of scientists and philosophers to a small beach town on the central coast of California. They came from major academic centers including Cambridge University and the University of Chicago to question an idea that had dominated science for 150 years.

...

The scientists who came to Pajaro Dunes set out to reexamine the history of life's origin, for each had significant doubts about widely held evolutionary ideas. Among them biochemist Michael Behe questioned how natural processes could have assembled the intricate structures found within living cells. Dean Kenyon was an evolutionary biologist who no longer though chemistry alone could account for the origin of life on earth. Stephen Meyer, Paul Nelson, and William Dembski were seeking a new approach. one that could explain the origin of the genetic information encoded in living organisms. These scientists and philosophers began to formulate an alternative to the central theory of modern biology a theory born in the mind of a British naturalist his name was Charles Darwin.

The entire video is in 12 parts. The playlist is here.

Friday, August 22, 2014

The Privileged Planet: The rare confluence of conditions that allow Earth to support complex life also make the Earth the best location from which to make scientific discoveries. Those scientific discoveries reveal that the universe is understandable to humankind. All this indicates a purpose to the universe: to support intelligent life and to allow intelligent life to discover that the universe was created.

The Privileged Planet is a video about the conditions required for a planet to support intelligent life. It is based on a book by the same name by Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards. The video starts out discussing the scientific discoveries that led to the belief that the earth is ordinary - the earth orbits the sun, the sun is just one of many stars in our galaxy, and our galaxy is just one of the many galaxies in the universe. But the video goes on to point out there are about twenty conditions needed for a planet to be able to support life. These conditions are not individually likely to occur by chance, and they are exceedingly unlikely to occur together. It is also an odd coincidence that planets like earth that can support complex life, ie. that can support intelligent observers, are also the best platforms for observing the universe and making scientific discoveries. Furthermore, it surprising that our complicated universe seems to be fine-tuned to support life and natural laws are discoverable to humans All of this taken together, the conditions for a planet to be able to support intelligent life are very unlikely, those same conditions that make life possible also provide the best conditions for making scientific discoveries, the universe is finely tuned to support life, and natural laws are intelligible to humankind, suggest that there is a purpose to the universe. That purpose is to support intelligent life and provide a place where intelligent life can understand the universe and ultimately understand that the universe was created.

The video is in 12 short parts included in the youtube
playlist.

Conditions necessary for a planet to support life.

The factors necessary for a planet to support complex life include:

Liquid water.
The planet must be within the circumstellar habitable zone around its star - the distance from the star that liquid water and an oxygen rich atmosphere can exist.
The planet must be in the galactic habitable zone. Being too close to the center of the galaxy would expose the planet to too much radiation. Too far from the center there are not enough heavy elements to support life.
Orbiting main sequence G2 dwarf star, which is not too hot and not too cool. A smaller star would have a habitable zone too close to itself and the gravity of the star would keep the same side of any planet within the zone constantly facing the star. The side facing the star would be too hot and receive too much radiation to support life, the side facing away from the star would be too cold.
Protected by gas giant planets that shield the inner planets from comet impacts.
Nearly circular orbit.
Oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Correct mass.
Orbited by large moon - "if the moon didn't exist, neither would we". The moon is 1/4 the size of the earth. The moon's gravity stabilizes the angle of the earth's axis insuring temperate seasonal changes. It also helps to circulate the warm and cold waters of the ocean stabilizing the climate and distributing elements, chemicals, and nutrients needed for life.
Magnetic field - generated by the movement of liquid iron deep in the planet's interior, protects the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind.
Plate tectonics - regulates interior temperature of the planet, recycles carbon, mixes elements necessary for life, shapes the continents ensuring land as well as ocean environments.
Enough heat in the interior to circulate liquid iron.
Ratio of liquid water and continents to allow the diversity of life and an active biosphere needed to support complex life.
Moderate rate of rotation
Oxygen / Nitrogen atmosphere. Assures temperate climate, provides protection from sun's radiation, is the correct combination of gases for liquid water and complex life.

The video states the the probability of a planet having all the conditions needed to support life is 10^-15. There are about 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Most sources say there are between 100 and 500 billion galaxies in the universe. By chance, there should be less than one habitable planet per galaxy but a few million habitable planets throughout the universe.

The conditions necessary for a planet to support life make a planet the best location for making scientific discoveries.

The Moon The best place in our solar system to observe a solar eclipse is the earth which is also the one place that has observers. During an eclipse, the moon appears to be about the same size as the sun. In order for this to happen, the earth has to be the right distance from the sun and it has to have a large moon. These are both factors that also allow the earth to support life.

An eclipse also provides an opportunity to make scientific discoveries. When the moon blocks the sun during an eclipse, stars near the sun become visible. Also the sun's atmosphere, the chromosphere, which extends beyond the surface of the sun, becomes visible too. Observations of the positions of stars near the sun allowed scientists to confirm that the gravity of the sun bends light that passes near it confirming Einstein's theory of relativity. Observations made of the sun's chromosphere allowed scientists to discover helium in it. Other observations allowed scientists to discover how the spectrum of sunlight is produced. This led to the understanding of how the spectra of distant stars are produced which is crucial to our understanding of astrophysics.
The Atmosphere The Earth's atmosphere has the right mixes of gasses to support life and is transparent which allows us to observe the universe around our planet: the other planets, the sun, stars in our galaxy and other galaxies. There are 70 planets and moons in our solar system. Only seven have a substantial atmosphere, and only the earth has an atmosphere that is transparent and can support life. The sun, super novae, and other sources in the universe emit electromagnetic radiation, including gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infra-red light, microwaves and radio waves. Visible light is less than one trillionth of a trillionth of the natural range of the electromagnetic spectrum but visible light is useful for life processes. For example, photosynthesis could not make use of gamma rays or microwaves. Visible light is also the most informative about the structures in the universe. Visible light is produced in abundance by the sun and it most easily penetrates the atmosphere of earth. The atmosphere that is needed to support life allows us to observe the distant universe.

The universe is finely-tuned to support life.

The forces and mathematical constants of the laws of physics that apply in our universe are finely tuned to support life. Gravity causes planets, stars and galaxies to form. If the force of gravity was even slightly stronger, intelligent life could not exist. The strong nuclear force is necessary to holds protons and neutrons together to make the atoms which make up our environment and our bodies. If there were no electromagnetic force, there would be no light and no bonding between the atoms which is needed to construct our environment and our bodies. If the masses of subatomic particles were different, life as we know it could not exist. A slight change in any of the forces of nature or physical constants or if they were chosen at random, would make the universe unable to support life. The forces and constants are another example of the correlation between life and discovery. They are finely tuned to support life, and they can also be discovered and understood by humankind.

The universe is intelligible.

The human mind can understand the universe. Natural laws are discoverable because they obey simple mathematical relationships. Many of the most important theories in physics can be written on a single sheet of paper. This intelligibility cannot be explained by naturalistic assumptions. The discoverablity of natural laws is not needed for survival. According to materialist belief, human reason supposedly developed to hunt and survive in the wild. Our ability to discover and understand atoms or black holes, is unnecessary for Darwinian survival.

There is a plan for the universe.

The founders of modern science Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Kepler, all believed the universe was the product of a mind and that it was intelligible to us because it was the product of an intelligent being. In those times, science was part of religion, it was the study of the mind of God.

Modern science shows us that the universe seems to have been intended to contain observers who can understand it. The conditions that make a planet habitable also provide the best conditions to make scientific discoveries. The earth's atmosphere, its location in the solar system, its moon, the arrangement of other planets in its solar system, its star, and its location in galaxy are the most important conditions needed to support life, and also are ideal for making a wide range of scientific discoveries. The laws of nature are intelligible by humankind and from studying them we understand that the universe is finely tuned to support life. All of this cannot be explained by coincidence. It is too improbable to be the result of chance. It cannot be explained by impersonal forces of nature. It indicates a plan. Something beyond the universe must account for it. The universe seems to have been designed by a transcendent creator in order to support intelligent life, and allow intelligent life to discover that.

Many modern scientists believe the evidence that the universe was designed. These scientists include Nobel prize winners such as Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow, and other scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, Louis Pasteur.

Resources

There are links to resources for further study at theprivilegedplanet.com.

Pages

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Thursday, September 18, 2014

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Monday, September 15, 2014

Sunday, September 14, 2014

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Friday, August 22, 2014

Conditions necessary for a planet to support life.

The conditions necessary for a planet to support life make a planet the best location for making scientific discoveries.

The universe is finely-tuned to support life.

The universe is intelligible.

There is a plan for the universe.

Resources

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