The evolution of the evolutionary tree diagram

Don't be fooled by the "Tree of Life" diagram from your standard evolutionary textbook. Real evolutionary scientists know that is just to get you started, they now have any number of diagrams to choose from that don't look like trees at all.

It's much better to get the truth about life not from any diagram, but from the Bible - given to us by the Creator Himself. He created all living kinds to be similar in some ways, different in others!

(excerpts from David Coppedge, Convergence Convenience, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 5, September/October 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2005%20low%20res.pdf)

 

Darwin's tree diagram was
based on "homologous" traits.

In Charles Darwin's original tree diagram (1837), animals with similar structures on the same branch are said to have “homologous” traits, because they derive from the same common ancestor. 

But the living world is filled with traits that resemble each other on different branches.

What caused that?  Ah, the evolutionist replies, those traits are due to “convergent evolution.”  The similarities are “analogous” traits, because they do not derive from the same common ancestor. With this classification scheme, evolution explains everything: if similar animals are related, they evolved; if they are unrelated, they evolved.


Let's consider some of many recent examples in the evolutionist storytelling:

Jellyfish and Birds. PhysOrg¹ wrote, “Ion selectivity in neuronal signaling channels evolved twice in animals.”   Sea anemones and birds have complex channels in their cell membranes called volt- age-gated sodium channels, responsible for passing signals along nerves. 

Jellyfish and Man. Nature News² claims that muscles, too, evolved twice.  In discussing the alleged dual origins of muscles, Andreas Hejnol said, "Jellyfish move using a set of muscles that look remarkably similar to striated muscles in vertebrates.  However, new data show that the two muscle types contain different molecules, implying that they evolved independently."

Resistance to Plant Toxins. Another paper in Nature³ begins, “In a remarkable example of convergent evolution, insect species spanning 300 million years of divergence have evolved identical single-amino-acid substitutions that confer resistance to plant cardenolide toxins.”

Odor Detection. Fruit fly maggots and humans could hardly be further apart in the evolutionary tree, but three Cambridge evolutionists found an “unpredicted degree of similarity” between their odor-detection equipment.⁴ They said, "Our results reveal an unexpected degree of similarity between the development of the olfactory systems in vertebrates and the Drosophila larva."

Blood Suckers.  A paper about fleas in PLoS ONE states, “Blood feeding evolved at least ten times within arthropods, providing a scenario of convergent evolution for the solution of the salivary potion.”⁵

Crayfish. Another paper in PLoS ONE found convergent evolution in 12 subgenera of Appalachian crayfish.⁶ "Convergent morphological evolution appears to be a common occurrence in invertebrates suggesting the need for careful phylogenetically based interpretations of morphological evolution in invertebrate systematics.:

The Tree Diagram isn't just a Tree Anymore. Darwin's original tree of life does not accommodate "convergent" evolution very well. If you really insist on drawing pictures of what evolutionists can pick and choose from, there are 5 varieties, as discussed in Evillusion's blog⁷:

To make the point of this chapter very clear, and to do a bit of a review, below is a list of all of the scenarios that are available and imaginable for evolution as an explanation for the appearance, formation, and migration of organs and bio-logical systems into multiple species and groups of species.  Each one is a biological and logical impossibility.... The list below includes all scenarios, no matter how absurd that could have brought a full inventory of organs and bio-logical systems into a common ancestor of any group of modern species.  I realize that evolution would say only one of the choices actually occurred.  For the sake of good science, these are all of the various impossibilities, no matter how absurd.



1. Each species fills in its own missing inventory



2. Coalescing of species

3. Inter-Species Procreation



4. One species evolves a full inventory

5. A string of species evolved a complete inventory

Convergent Everything! The Wikipedia entry on “Convergent Evolution” ends with a statement that reveals that “convergent evolution” is an incomplete and controversial notion:

Simon Conway Morris counters this …, arguing that convergence is a dominant force in evolution, and that, since the same environmental and physical constraints act on all life, there is an “optimum” body plan that life will inevitably evolve toward.... Convergence is difficult to quantify, so progress on this issue may require exploitation of engineering specifications (e.g., wing aero- dynamics) and comparably rigorous measures of “very different course” in terms of phylogenetic (molecular) distances.

Although the escape clause “convergent evolution” may be thought by evolutionists to be a work in progress, it remains little more than a convenient phrase for evolutionists to toss around in their papers!

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

References (selected)

1. Univ. of Vienna (2012, July 26). Ion selectivity in neuronal signaling channels evolved twice in animals. PhysOrg. Retrieved October 11, 2012, from http://phys.org/news/2012-07-ion-neuronal-channels-evolved-animals.htm

2. Hejnol, A. 2012. Evolutionary biology: Muscle’s dual origins. Nature 487(7406):181–182.
3. Whiteman, N.K. and K.A. Mooney. 2012. Evolutionary biology: Insects con- verge on resistance. Nature 489(7416):376–377.

4. Prieto-Godino, L.L., S. Diegelmann, and M. Bate. 2012. Embryonic origin of olfactory circuitry in Drosophila: Contact and activity-mediated interactions pattern connectivity in the antennal lobe. PLoS Biology 10(10): e100014000. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001400

5 Ribeiro, J.M.C., T.F.C. Assumpção, D. Ma, P.H. Alvarenga, V.M. Pham, et al. 2012. An insight into the sialotranscriptome of the cat flea, Ctenocephalides felis. PLoS ONE 7(9): e44612. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044612.

6. Breinholt, J.W., M.L. Porter, K.A. Crandall. 2012. Testing phylogenetic hy- potheses of the subgenera of the freshwater crayfish genus Cambarus (De- capoda: Cambaridae). PLoS ONE 7(9): e46105. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0046105.
7. http://evillusion.wordpress.com/evolution-explodes-gets-hung-on-a-phylogenetic-tree/, retrieved 12/28/2012.

Abiogenesis: metabolism or information? Better question: chicken or egg?

Abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from inorganic matter, is between a rock and a hard place. If the origin of life began with metabolism, the first life molecules were so simple they could not copy themselves. If it began with information, the first life molecules had to be so complicated that they have never been produced by reasonable chemical processes. The real answer can be found in the age-old question: "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

(excerpts from Timothy R. Stout, Testimony of the Origins Divice, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 5, September/October 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2005%20low%20res.pdf)

Melissa Lee Phillips published an article not too long ago in BioScience magazine titled, “The Origins Divide: Reconciling Views on How Life Began” (Phillips, 2010). In it she gives a history of the understanding of abiogenesis, the idea that life arose from inorganic matter.

Regarding the large macromolecules which are so critical to the functioning of living organisms, she commented,

All of these molecules and processes are so intertwined that it’s difficult to imagine how any of them could have arisen without the others already in place. Chicken-and-egg problems abound.

It turns out that the big, fundamental divide facing abiogenesis researchers today is whether the origin of life was information first or metabolism first. Study has revealed serious problems with both of these situations! The molecules which are proposed to have arisen in the metabolism-first scenario are simple enough to have achieved some level of concentration in plausible prebiotic chemical processes. However, the fact that these molecules do not copy themselves is a critical shortcoming since reproducibility is a fundamental, required characteristic of life.



Phillips says: "The metabolism-first model proposes that life probably arose at deep-sea hydrothermal vents, like the black smoker pictured here, when very simple molecules such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and hydrogen sulfide reacted with each other on the common iron-sulfur minerals pyrrhotite and pyrite. Photograph: OAR/National Undersea Research Program (NURP); NOAA."

By contrast, the molecules associated with an information-first scenario are so complicated that they have never been produced by chemical processes which can be reasonably associated with prebiotic circumstances. The meager positive results occasionally observed experimentally in- variably are found to have required extensive human intervention. Indeed, Phillips quoted Jim Cleaves of the Carnegie Institute for Science who said that whenever researchers manage to synthesize an interesting molecule, “it’s such a complex and kind of contrived experiment, it’s hard to really swallow.”



Phillips says: "The 'RNA world' model arose with the discovery of ribozymes—RNA molecules, such as the self-cleaving hammerhead ribozyme depicted here, that can act as catalysts. Could these self-replicating molecules have evolved from short, noncatalytic stretches of RNA, or would an autocatalytic network of chemical reactions have had to come first? The pink spheres are Mg11ions that stabilize the structure of the ribozyme. Graphic: Kalju Kahn and Esther Zhuang, University of California, Santa Barbara; created with PyMol (DeLano Scientific)."

Finally, after six pages of pointing out major problems at every level of abiogenesis, Phillips endeavored to end the article on an optimistic note by discussing the new “emergent systems” approach.

In this approach, scientists “toss dozens or hundreds of chemicals together and see what happens.”  John Sutherland of the University of Manchester, United Kingdom, declared, “We spent fourteen years exploring all that assembly chemistry and were largely extremely unsuccessful…” Then, using this “systems” approach, they discovered a method to make RNA nucleotides, the only successful effort by abiogenists to make nucleotides (Powner et al., 2009)

However, they did not just step back and watch the synthesis happen. In order to avoid a series of problems, not the least of which was the formation of tar, they had to monitor and control the process very carefully.  In another article, Benner and others simply chalk this up as another example of an experiment which is supposedly plausible for a prebiotic scenario, but which realistically requires far too much human intervention to be suit- able (Benner et al., 2012 )

Sixty years of study in abiogenesis has not provided the anticipated solutions to the problem of life’s origin, but just the opposite! The abundance of “chicken-and-egg problems” implies the necessity of all of these components making a simultaneous, first appearance, in a fully-functioning interdependent form. If there were no religious implications, the evidence would be sufficient to make the case and this would be the end of the discussion.

Of course, there are religious implications and this changes the entire character of the discussion.

The Bible states that the Creation of the entire cosmos (universe) took place in six days. It is clear from the context that these were literal days, not figurative. Experts have failed to build a scientifically-defensible case otherwise. 
 Illustration from the Creation Facts Screen Saver. 

Marko's comment: It seems that scientists always like to talk about “chicken-and-egg problems." Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Thinking people who also believe that there is a God who gave us the Bible - they know the answer. It's the chicken! Created on Day Five of the Creation week! How did life arise from inorganic matter? The answer is not in the primeval depths of time, it is that God Himself called living creatures into being.

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

References

Benner S.A., H-J. Kim, and Z. Yang. 2012. Setting the stage: The history, chemistry, and geobiology behind RNA. Cold Spring Harb. Perspect. Biol. 4:a003541. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a003541

Phillips, M.L. 2010. The origins divide: Reconciling views on how life began. BioScience 60(9). 10.1525/bio.2010.60.9.3.  Retrieved October 25, 2012, from www.deepdyve.com/lp/university-of-california-press/the-origins-divide-reconciling-views-on-how-life-began-vOMlkgH3Lk

Powner, M.W., B. Gerland, and & J.D. Sutherland. 2009. Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. Nature. 459:239–242. doi: 10.1038/nature08013

Birds, Insects, and Bats Fly by Design, not by Accident!

Evolutionary philosophy tells us that "we can now safely say (!) that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that — an illusion.” But as any engineer or inventor can tell you, the mind staggers at the amount of planning which would be needed to accomplish this outrageous, systematic “appearance of design.”  The amazing and completely different ways that birds, insects, and bats are able to fly is a case in point, the workmanship of a majestic Creator!

(Selections from Gary Howell, "Naturalistic Evolution: a Dangerous Humanistic Philosophy" published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 4, July/August 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2004%20for%20web.pdf)

The grand difficulty revealed with the study of nature is that ineffable, pesky, enigmatic, and inviolable appearance of design; it just won't go away! Worse yet, the more layers that are peeled away, the more design is confirmed.

Speaking as an engineer with 17 domestic and international patents, I maintain that the proposition of complex systematic designs emerging devoid of preparation, concepts, planning, technological building blocks, and thinking is scientifically untenable and insulting. No matter how complex the design interaction, with design interdependency built upon design interdependency, evolutionary philosophy simply insists these only “appear designed.”¹

Leonardo da Vinci’s plans for an ornithopter,
a flying machine kept aloft by
the beating of its wings; about 1490.

Another assertion of naturalistic evolution is that multiple solutions to the same problem evolved independently. Take flying for example. Leonardo da Vinci dreamt of it and advanced unsuccessful designs, including the ornithopter.² It was not until we began to get the drift of differential pressure as a result of airfoil (Bernoulli's principle) did anything near a successful flying machine emerge. But the animal kingdom "solved" this system-intensive problem three different ways: birds, insects, and mammals.

Bird Flight

Birds fly by means of multiple technologies, but principally via a feature called feathers. Feathers are manufactured in hair-follicle variants consisting largely of finger-naillike material, β­-keratin.³
There are numerous feather variants that can be described within six general categories: tail, flight, semiplume, filoplume, bristle, and downy.⁴  Of these, downy or down is the simplest, having no barbs and barbules, or “hooks” latching adjacent filaments.  Being the “simplest feather” nonetheless, no manmade material to date approaches down’s thermal, weight, and rebound characteristics.

“Light as a feather” is more than a cliché as an engineering design team ponders equaling the feather’s specifications: strength-to-weight ratio, modulus of elasticity, ductility, hollow-tapered-cantilevered central-support beam — and let us not underestimate the incidental design detail — it must grow in place!



Bird wing is a true airfoil

Feathers must be sized and placed quite accurately, and hooked together, creating a contiguous outer surface. Bird-wing architecture is a true airfoil. Its arched geometry causes air passing over the top to travel at a greater velocity than air passing below the wing. This causes negative pressure above the wing which lifts the bird.  It’s fascinating for birds (that are, we’re told, dinosaur derivatives) to have solved this systematic, technological difficulty without intent or intelligence!

It is exactly the means of lift utilized by 747’s and F-15’s. But bird wings are much more complex than modern aircraft wings, because they are variable airfoils! With anticipatory, neural-feedback networks, bird wings adjust to situational events involving propulsion, ascent/descent, air speed, cross winds, air density, proximity, and the like. Modern aeronautical engineers can only dream of variable airfoils, as da Vinci dreamed of flying.

Insect flight

Naturalistic evolutionary philosophy alleges that insects evolved from different origins than did birds, but insects nevertheless "solved" the difficulties of flight with quite unusual features. Not with feathers but with chitin, a naturally-occurring, structural polymer called a polysaccharide.

Insect flight employs some elements of airfoil design, but insect propulsion and lift are largely credited to vortices which are created at the leading edge of the insect wing, and to the flapping motion that causes the vortices to spiral out to the wing tip.⁵ It is certain that man-made flight abhors vortices (turbulent air flow versus laminar air flow), but insect flight deliberately induces powerful vortices, and uses them effectively for lift, propulsion, and maneuverability!

Schematic reconstruction of wake pattern during wake–wing interaction in fruit fly and dragonfly model wings

Bird lift and propulsion are limited to the downward stroke, but insects are capable of rotating their wings fully backward so that the wing’s upper surface creates lift in the upward stroke also — i.e., every stroke provides lift and propulsion. They can fly upside down, as in landing on a ceiling, or backwards and sideways. The mind staggers at the number of prototypical iterations which would be needed to accomplish this outrageous, systematic “appearance of design.”  Entomologists and aeronautical engineers are just beginning to understand and appreciate the extreme airborne capability of these diminutive creatures.

Mammalian flight

Bat wing anatomy

Bats are mammals — live birth, warm bodies, milk-fed young — and quite different from bugs and birds, but they are creatures that once again solved the flying enigma by altogether different design stratagem and materials selection. Bats, after all, “simply” stretch a skin membrane over a bony structure and take to the air. But it’s hardly that simple, as the skin/bony structure must make up the aforementioned airfoil, with the neuro-muscular systems in place to vary wing geometry and, thus, to sustain intrepid, long-distance flight and crazy acrobatics.

Oh, and dare we mention the incidental, fully integrated, co-developmental echo-location feature! No big deal, according to our best collegial biology professors, but these cavalier academics never designed and developed anything themselves! It is scientifically antithetical and a hopelessly vacuous proposition (let alone a factual imperative) to suggest the mechanisms purported by naturalistic philosophy could produce any of these flying machines, and especially to do so by three distinctly differing methodologies.

Final thoughts

The evolutionary empire has grown so vast and powerful that no other viewpoint is tolerated at any venue. This is especially true in agencies associated with government. No competing view is permitted at schools or work places with government tentacles. Those who dare are ridiculed at best, but most often spurned, dismissed, and persecuted. No written, oral, private, or public dissention is tolerated.

Scriptural premise, especially Christianity, as a competing religion to that of naturalistic evolution, will not be tolerated.

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

References (selected)

1.  Dawkins, R. 2006. The God Delusion. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, MA.  [See p.. 139, “We live on a planet where we are surrounded by perhaps ten million species, each one of which independently displays a powerful illusion of apparent design.”; and p. 158, “Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that — an illusion.”

2. Fuller, J. 2012. Top 10 bungled attempts at one-person flight: 9. Leonardo da Vinci's Complex Ornithopter (c. 1505). HowStuffWorks. Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/classic/ten-bungled-flight-attempt2.htm.

3. Anonymous. 2012. Feather. Wikipedia.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feather.

4. Kazilek, C.J. 2012. Feather biology. Ask A Biologist, Arizona State University.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/feather-biology.

5. Anonymous, 2004. Animal Flight Group: Aerodynamics. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge.  Retrieved August 11, 2012, from www.zoo.cam.ac.uk/zoostaff/ellington/aerodynamics.html.

Evolutonists can create Soap Scum, but for Life you need a Creator!

David Deamer is one of the world’s foremost research scientists studying abiogenesis, or how biological life could arise by itself. In 2006, Deamer thought he would improve upon Stanley Miller's famous 1953 experiment, by starting with with an idealized source of chemicals of his own choosing. It is rather humorous that Deamer named his article, “Self-assembly processes in the prebiotic environment.” The only thing assembled in this experiment was soap scum! Indeed, God gives clear testimony of Himself that He alone is the creator of life.

(Selections from Timothy R. Stout, "The Testimony of Soap Scum," published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 3, May/June 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2003%20for%20web.pdf)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

David Deamer is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is one of the world’s foremost research scientists studying abiogenesis, or how biological life could arise from inorganic matter through natural processes.

In 2006, Deamer decided to go beyond Stanley Miller's famous experiment. In 1953 Miller mixed water vapor, methane, ammonia, and hydrogen in a spark chamber, and actually ended up producing a unusable types of amino acids, tar, fatal molecules, too much hydrogen, and a 50/50 mix of both the useless right-handed amino acids and their left-handed counterparts (see "Primordial Soup" - Actually a Most Toxic Brew)

Deamer thought he would improve upon Miller's results, by starting with with an idealized source of chemicals of his own choosing, at the ratios with each other he believed would be most conducive to achieving positive results, and at concentrations that he hoped might produce reportable results. If any scenario should demonstrate realistic progress towards abiogenesis, it seems that this would be it.



Boiling pools investigated in
(a) Kamchatka and (b) Mt Lassen sites.
Note the depression at the lower edge
of the Kamchatka pool that indicates
one of the clay sampling sites.
Scale bar, 25cm.

His team conducted the experiments in geothermal volcanic aquifers at both the Russian Kamchatka and Mt Lassen in California. They added a defined set of primary molecular constituents of life to the hot springs. This included four amino acids (glycine, L-alanine, Laspartic acid and L-valine, 1 g each), four nucleobases (adenine, cytosine, guanine and uracil, 1 g each) sodium phosphate (3 g), glycerol (2 g) and myristic acid (1.5 g). The idea was that in a natural setting this ideal set of chemicals would automatically react with one another in the direction of life.

Surprising results

Deamer's research team was surprised at the results:

A white scum appeared in the Kamchatka pool within minutes of adding the organic mixture. The precipitate is probably a mixed iron and aluminum soap, which would remove the fatty acid as a potential reactant.

The phosphate and added amino acids were below detectable limits in minutes to hours.

The observation that organic compounds were below detection limits so rapidly was surprising.

The origin of life in a natural setting would have had a variety of possible fates other than those observed in a laboratory setting, where pure compounds react in glass containers.

Deamer is one of the foremost biochemists in the world. Yet, he was still unprepared for how much harsher a natural environment is than a laboratory setting. He effectively acknowledged that there can be all kinds of unexpected glitches that would be capable of thwarting abiogenesis in a natural setting.

Naturally occurring roadblocks have so far thwarted every effort to provide a clear, successful demonstration of an advance in abiogenesis at any stage. This is true even with all of the advantages
of a “laboratory setting, where pure compounds react in glass containers.” How much more in the wild, where Deamer demonstrated even worse results.

Deamer had yet another unexpected result. Many articles have been written proposing clay surfaces as a means of concentrating monomers such as amino acids and nucleotides in order to promote their concatenation into proteins and nucleic acids. The clay served to isolate the molecules attached to it, not force them together. This is not what was supposed to happen!

It is rather humorous that Deamer named his article, “Self-assembly processes in the prebiotic environment.” The only thing assembled in this experiment was soap scum. This does not bode well for those who are staking their eternal destiny on the validity of abiogenesis. Indeed, God gives clear testimony of Himself by His creation. This testimony is so clear that He considers a person who does not receive it to be without excuse.

Reference

Deamer, D., S. Singaram, S. Rajamani, V. Kompanichenko, and S. Guggenheim. 2006. Self-assembly processes in the prebiotic environment. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 361:1809–1818.

A review of The Devil's Delusion, by David Berlinski

Did you see the 2008 documentary Expelled in the movie theatres? You may remember David Berlinski’s conversation with Ben Stein in the film. Berlinski holds a philosophy Ph.D. from
Princeton, has served on the faculty of several universities, and lives in Paris.

Recently, Berlinski wrote The Devil's Delusion (2009), as an encouragement for people “frustrated by endless scientific boasting. They suspect that as an institution, the scientific community holds them in contempt” (p. xvii).

(selections from Don B. DeYoung's book review, published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 4, Spring 2012)

The author readily takes on and exposes the shallow atheistic arguments of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others in this sorry band of doubters. Many of Berlinski’s phrases and statements are quotable, and a sampling follows.


• Natural selection is described as “the Darwinian business of scrabbling up the greasy pole of life” (p. 17).
• Regarding the science establishment,“the worldwide fraternity of academics who are professionally occupied in sniffing the underwear of their colleagues for signs of ideological deviance” (p. 52).
• Concerning Stephen Hawking’s 1988 A Brief History of Time: “Widely considered fascinating by those who did not read it, and incomprehensible to those who did” (p. 98).
• Concerning the popularity of the multi-universe idea: “It is better to have many worlds than one God” (p. 135).
• An understatement concerning the comparable mysteries of the particle-wave nature of light and the Trinitarian nature of the Deity: “This is not an analogy that has captured the allegiance of scientific atheists” (p. 93).
• “A miracle is what it seems: an event offering access to the divine” (p. 182).
• “Computer simulations of Darwinian evolution fail when they are honest and succeed only when they are not” (p. 190).
• “Although Darwin’s theory is very often [said to be] as well established as gravity, very few physicists have been heard observing that gravity is as well established as evolution. They know better and they are not stupid” (p. 191).
• If God directly addressed scientists, he might say, “You have no idea whatsoever how the ordered physical, moral, mental, aesthetic, and social world in which you live could have ever arisen from the seething anarchy of elementary particles” (p. 201).

Berlinski suggests that evolutionary science itself has become an unwieldy, outdated religion complete with an ecclesiastical hierarchy, museum edifices, Darwinian holy books, and extreme efforts to convert doubters. Supporters of this secular worldview are thus in a similar position to the geocentrists of the 1600s, including inner doubts that cannot be expressed in public.

The Devil’s Delusion
by David Berlinski
Basic Books, New York, 2009
238 pages, $16.00.

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

Humanzee? No, scientific bias!

The story is that there is "nearly identical” similarity between the DNA of humans and chimpanzees. Does good science support this?

It turns out that a wide assortment of key secular human-chimp DNA research publications have something to hide. All analyzed cases of reported high human-chimp DNA sequence similarity are based on biased data selection and exclusion techniques. DNA sequence data that are too dissimilar to be conveniently aligned are omitted, masked, or completely excluded. Furthermore, gap data within DNA sequence alignments are typically omitted, further biasing similarity estimates. These are the findings of a report by Jeffrey Tomkins and Jerry Bergman in the April 2012 issue of Journal of Creation.

Humanzee? No... Photoshop!

These highly selective data-discarding techniques, fueled by Darwinian dogma, lead to the commonly claimed 98 percent similarity in DNA between human and chimp. Based on the reanalysis of DNA similarity estimates using discarded data in leading secular research publications, it is safe to conclude that genome-wide DNA similarity between human and chimpanzee is not more than 81 to 87 percent identical. These numbers are in good agreement with the range of estimates obtained by independent research at the Institute for Creation Research.¹

One must keep in mind that the chimpanzee genome is larger than the human genome by at least 8 percent (based on current data). Therefore, overall genome similarity between human and chimpanzee is most likely lower than 81 percent.

You may remember the "New Math". This is the "New Science" - if you have data that doesn't fit your theory, just hide it somewhere!

Good science should admit that an honest comparison of humans and chimpanzees points not to so-called "natural selection", but to an Intelligent Designer. Who could that be? We have someone out there who has already laid claim to that role - the God of the Bible!

(based on Jeffrey Tomkins, 2012. Journal Reports Bias in Human-Chimp Studies. Acts & Facts. 41 (6): 6.)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

References (selected)

1. Tomkins, J. 2011. Genome-Wide DNA Alignment Similarity (Identity) for 40,000 Chimpanzee DNA Sequences Queried against the Human Genome is 86-89%. Answers Research Journal. 4: 233-241.

Life Chemistry just happened? Then who was the Chemist?

The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions. A Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!

(selections from Timothy R. Stout, The Testimony of the Origin of RNA, published in Creation Matters, a publication of Creation Research Society, Volume 17, Number 2, March/April 2012, to appear at http://www.creationresearch.org/creation_matters/pdf/2012/CM17%2002%20for%20web.pdf)

The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory recently posted online a collection of articles about the origin of life(Deamer and Szostak, 2012). The laboratory is one of the world's foremost private research laboratories, with 8 Nobel Prize winners associated with it over the years.

There is one article in the collection which was particularly intriguing, "Planetary Organic Chemistry and the Origins of Biomolecules" by Steven Benner et al (Benner, et al., 2010). This quote is from the abstract.

According to various models for the origin of life on Earth, biological molecules that jump-started Darwinian evolution arose via this planetary chemistry. The grandest of these models assumes that ribonucleic acid (RNA) arose prebiotically, together with components for compartments that held it and a primitive metabolism that nourished it. Unfortunately, it has been challenging to identify possible prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. Organic molecules, given energy, have a well-known propensity to form multiple products, sometimes referred to collectively as “tar” or “tholin.” These mixtures appear to be unsuited to support Darwinian processes, and certainly have never been observed to spontaneously yield a homochiral genetic polymer. To date, proposed solutions to this challenge either involve too much direct human intervention to satisfy many in the community, or generate molecules that are unreactive “dead ends” under standard conditions of temperature and pressure.

One might think that Dr. Benner and his colleagues had obtained their list of problems from the creation literature... To his credit, he is simply being honest about the issues and their significance. Notice, he refers to a number of problems:

• It has been challenging to identify prebiotic chemistry that might have created RNA. They still haven't identified it.
• Organic molecules have a "well known" tendency to form tar instead of biologically usefol molecules.
• A homochiral genetic polymer has certainly never been observed. This is a significant admission and observation. The world's most brilliant scientists have never been able to produce a single RNA molecule starting with their choice of raw materials, their choice of environmental conditions.
• The proposed solutions require trained scientists, using expensive laboratory equipment, implementing intricate sequences of steps, using purchased chemicals of laboratory grade purity.

"Blue compounds are dead-end compounds that accumulate in the reaction. A chemist must intervene to prevent this mixture from evolving further to give still more complexity."

It would require intervention by an intelligent being to overcome the overcome the myriad observed and documented problems which are counter to a natural origin of life. Man's inability to produce even a single, useful, genetic polymer starting from any assortment of assumed raw chemicals shows that a Being more intelligent and more powerful than man is required!
 
(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

How did Animals Cross the Ocean? Humans did it, after the Flood!

The Bible records for us the world wide flood of Noah's day, and how two of every animal found refuge in the Ark so that they could re-populate the earth. Soon afterward, mankind spread across the whole earth, travelling across the seas, and brought animals and plants with them. How do we know? Ancient coins, stone heads with negroid features, platypus, elephants, pineapples, peanuts, in wrong places everywhere! Creationists require miracles at the beginning to explain this, evolutionists require miracles at every turn...

Selections from Biogeography: A Creationist Perspective, by Bill Johnson.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 3, Winter 2012)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

Why is it that animals and plants are not equally distributed over the face of the earth? In Part 1 of this article, Evolution says, uhhh..., we saw how Evolutionists have three totally different methods they they mix and match to explain the distribution of animals and plants across the face of the earth: Land Bridges, Oceanic Dispersal, and the Pangaea supercontinent. If one doesn't sound right, try the other! Now we will find out whether the worldwide flood of the Bible offers a better explanation...

Transportation by Human Agency

The creationist view has always maintained that from his inception man was endowed with great intelligence, ingenuity, and technological abilities. Humans made numerous voyages across our great oceans long before Columbus. Most of the biogeographical enigmas that haunt evolutionists can be easily explained by this view.

The most convincing evidence for these transoceanic voyages comes from archaeology. The American continents, especially North America, have turned up numerous ancient coins from such places as China, Rome, Greece, and Egypt (Mahan and Braithwaite, 1975; Epstein et al., 1980). These coins cannot be easily dismissed as “recently lost” for several reasons: (1) Some coins have been found in undisturbed soil twenty-five feet deep (Deans, 1884) or in ancient Indian gravesites with stone tools found in the same locality (Butler, 1886); and (2) Chinese coins are confined to the west coast (i.e., Oregon and British Columbia), whereas Roman coins are east of the Mississippi, a pattern you would not expect to see if the coins were randomly dropped in modern times.

Archaeologists in Central America also have unearthed evidence for pre-Columbian contact from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Many large stone heads (some 9 feet high and 22 feet in circumference circumference) from southeastern Mexico display clear negroid characteristics (Stirling, 1940; Von Wuthenau, 1975). The same Olmec culture also produced a two-foot-high basalt statuette of an oriental man, which is presently housed in a Mexico City museum (Coe and Miller, 2004). And recently, a rediscovered black terracotta head from the 1930s identified as European was dated to be 1800 years old (Knight, 2000).

The traditions of the Polynesian people also support long sea journeys. Anthropologist Roland Dixon documented the types of canoes used and their varying lengths (some were 90 feet long and could accommodate as many as 100 people). He also documented the distances of many of their excursions (Dixon, 1934). Tangiia, a man from Fiji, traveled as far as 4,000 miles to Rapanui—the native name for Easter Island (Dixon, 1934). Many others made these long excursions, including Paao priest of Upolu in the Samoan Islands, who traveled a distance of 2,300 miles to Hawaii (Emerson, 1893). Had the early explorers reached as far as Easter Island and Hawaii, the journey eastward to America would not have been difficult.

Early humans traveled often and far for exploration, trade, and colonization. Couple this with G. G. Simpson’s (1940) observation that people have always had a fascination with animals from distant places, and creationists can explain not only island distributions but even continental ones. It is far more reasonable to believe that some of Hawaii’s fauna and flora arrived from southeastern Polynesia carried by humans, or that an early Polynesian explorer took back to Fiji the banded iguana than it is to believe that they transported themselves. Even some evolutionists accept this approach and have recently argued that the arrival of the coconut (Ward and Brookfield, 1992) and the Polynesian chicken in America are best explained by human transportation (Storey et al., 2007).

Postdiluvian Dispersal of Land Animals

“How did kangaroos and giant earthworms make their way across the oceans to their present home in Australia?” (Coyne, 2009, p. 89). Contrary to the evolutionist claims, creation is not only consistent with the facts, but also provides a much simpler and non-miraculous explanation for continental distributions.

How exactly did marsupials get to Australia, and why are they mostly confined to this continent? Creationists have utilized two slightly different ways to explain these distributions, depending on when they believe continental drift took place. Some creationists have suggested that the continents were separated during the Flood and that marsupials got to Australia either by a land connection (i.e., since this area is still tectonically active) or by island hopping/rafting. This was followed by an extinction of marsupials in Asia. This view should not be ridiculed, especially since this was the dominant explanation given by evolutionists up until the acceptance of plate tectonics.

Other creationists believe the continents were still united after the Flood and every animal was more or less widely distributed, some even reaching as far as North America. Almost 400 years after the Flood, the continents separated (cf. Gen. 10:25 "Two sons were born to Eber: One was named Peleg, because in his time the earth was divided"), and some animals (e.g., marsupials) were spared the competition that their close cousins were suffering in other parts of the world (e.g., Asia). Due to competition, as well as other environmental factors, some members of a species died out while others flourished. What are seen are not evolutionary centers of origin followed by miraculous dispersals, but relicts, or survivors, of a once wide continuous range.

Evolutionists have flirted with what is essentially a creationist explanation. This simple way of explaining animal distributions (i.e., moving continents rather than animals) is explicable only by a theory of contemporaneous creation; that is, where all animals were present and widely distributed before the fragmentation of the world’s landmasses. Furthermore, the empirical evidence for a more or less widespread distribution becomes more impressive with each passing year. Prior to 1985, there was no evidence for marsupials anywhere but Australia and the New World, and evolutionists took this absence of evidence as evidence of absence, but now marsupial fossils have turned up in many unexpected places, including Africa Bown and Simons, 1984), Madagascar (Krause, 2001), and even Asia (Benton, 1985; Ducrocq et al., 1992).

We are discovering that more animals are proving to have a wider distribution than previously thought. The monotremes (e.g., platypus, spiny anteaters) were for the longest time believed to have been confined to Australia, yet to the amazement of many, a monotreme fossil was discovered in the early 1990s in South America (Pascual et al., 1992). Even elephants were far more widespread  than evolutionists were willing to admit. Elephant remains (i.e., bones, teeth) and man-made objects of elephants also place this creature in southern Mexico (Anonymous, 1903; Nomland, 1932), South America (White, 1884; Carter, 1989), and even possibly Australia (Vickers-Rich and Archbold, 1991).

Another factor that increases the chances of extinction is human introductions. As more exotic animals escape or are released in the wild, some will colonize these locations and force others into extinction.

Survival and Dispersal of Plants

Up until the time of the Flood, the world was lush with vegetation. All kinds of fruits, vegetables, flowering plants, and numerous other plant species were widely distributed on Pangaea. This tropical paradise was completely destroyed by the Flood, and only some species of plants, through the survival of their seed, succeeded in leaving representation in the postdiluvian world.



Wind-dispersed seeds & fruits in different plant families.

After the Floodwaters abated, seeds were scattered over the face of the earth, further dispersal occurred by other means: dispersal of seeds attached to animals’ bodies, seeds inside animals’ bodies, by physical expulsion and wind. Add this to human interest in many plants (e.g., fruits, vegetables, angiosperms) and our ability to facilitate dispersal.



Stone carving of a pineapple
in a cave temple
in Udaiguri, India.

The evidence from archaeology provides overwhelming support for a wide distribution of plants, especially fruits and vegetables. The pineapple, for example, was widespread in South and Central America when Columbus and other explorers came to the New World (Collins, 1948). As a result, it was long assumed that this fruit originated in Brazil until a wealth of archaeological evidence confirmed that the pineapple also existed in the Old World from very early times. The pineapple is clearly depicted in old Indian temple art (Gupta, 1996), found on pottery in Egyptian tombs (Wilkinson, 1837), represented on murals in Pompeii(Carter, 1953), and, to the amazement of nineteenth-century archaeologists, the pineapple was carved on walls in ancient Nineveh (Layard, 1853; Rawlinson, 1885).



Remains of peanuts found
in Peruvian mummies.

The peanut was once believed to have originated in the Old World because of how widespread it is there. When archaeologists recovered peanuts from ancient Peruvian tombs, it was then believed that the peanut originated in South America and was carried over to Asia in recent times. Archaeologists have recently discovered several-thousandyear-old peanuts in China (Chang, 1973) and in caves on the island of Timor, Indonesia (Glover, 1977).

Many other plants thought “native” to one hemisphere also existed early in the other hemisphere. Ancient Indian temple art clearly depicts plants that supposedly originated in America, such as the cashew nut, custard apple, and chili pepper (Gupta, 1996). The custard apple also was discovered in caves on the island of Timor (Glover, 1977), and the chili pepper had a history in Tahiti before European contact (Langdon, 1988).

Evolution depends more on miracles

The evolutionary claims for this wide transoceanic distribution of plants is unconvincing because plants have limited mobility and are poor dispersers.
 
Evolutionists, however, have an a priori commitment to naturalism; thus they are forced to explain away the evidence. They also distort and misrepresent the creationist position to give the impression that their theory is the only viable explanation.

The creationist explanation is the better argument. The idea of a contemporaneous creation dispersed widely on the earth followed by partial extinctions is a simple approach, especially when dispersal is facilitated by humans. This view also fits with the archaeological evidence. The problem of biogeography from an evolutionary perspective is that all of life is stretched out over half a billion years, with the fragmentation of the world occurring late in the history, leaving a large percentage of plants and animals to disperse in a miraculous way.

Creationists are often chided for reliance on miracles. They require them, though only in the beginning. Evolution, however, requires them at almost every turn, especially when dealing with the geography of life.
 
References (selected)

Anonymous. 1903. Elephant remains in Mexico. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 25:395–397.
 
Benton, M. 1985. First marsupial fossil from Asia. Nature 318:313.
 
Bown, T.M., and E.L. Simons. 1984. First record of marsupials (Metatheria: Polyprotodonta) from the Oligocene in Africa. Nature 308:447–449.
 
Butler, J.D. 1886. Roman coins found in Oshkosh. American Antiquarian and Oriental Journal 8:372.
 
Carter, G. 1989. A note on the elephant in America. Epigraphic Society Occasional Publications 18:90.

Chang, K.C. 1973. Radiocarbon dates from China: some initial interpretations. Current Anthropology 14:525–528.

Coe, M., and M. Miller. 2004. Olmec wrestler: a masterpiece of the ancient Gulf Coast. Minerva 16:18–19.

Collins, J.L. 1948. Pineapples in ancient America. Scientific Monthly 67:372–377.
 
Coyne, J. 2009. Why Evolution Is True. Viking, New York, NY.
 
Deans, J. 1884. Chinese coins in British Columbia. American Naturalist 18:98, 99.
 
Dixon, R. 1934. The long voyages of the Polynesians. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 74:167–175.
 
Ducrocq, S., E. Buffetaut, H. Buffetaut-Tong, J. Jaeger, Y. Jongkanjanasoontorn, and V.Suteethorn. 1992. First fossil marsupial from South Asia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 12:395–399.
 
Emerson, N.B. 1893. The Long Voyages of the Ancient Hawaiians. Hawaiian Gazette Co., Honolulu, HI.
 
Epstein, J., D.B. Buchanan, T.V. Buttrey, G.F. Carter, W.L. Cook, C. Covey, S.C. Jett, T.A. Lee Jr., B. Mundkur, A.C. Paulsen, H.J. Prem, J.E. Reyman, M.R. Dorado, and N. Totten. 1980. Pre-Columbian Old World coins in America: an examination of the evidence. Current Anthropology 21:1–20.

Glover, I. 1977. The Late Stone Age in Eastern Indonesia. World Archaeology 9:42–61

Gupta, S. 1996. Plants in Indian Temple Art. B.R. Publishing Co., Delhi, India.

Knight, J. 2000. Did Roman sailors shake hands with ancient Mexicans? New Scientist 2225:7.
 
Krause, D. 2001. Fossil molar from a Madagascan marsupial. Nature 412:497–498.

Langdon, R. 1988. Manioc, a long concealed key to the enigma of Easter Island. The Geographical Journal 154:324–336.
 
Layard, A. 1853. Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. John Murray, New York, NY.

Mahan, J., and D. Braithwaite. 1975. Discovery of ancient coins in the United Sates. Anthropological Journal of Canada 13:15–18.

Nomland, G.A. 1932. Proboscis statue from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. American Anthropologist 34:591–593.
 
Pascual, R., M. Archer, E. Jaureguizar, J.L.Prado, H. Godthelp, and S.J. Hand. 1992. First discovery of monotremes in South America. Nature 356:704–705.

Rawlinson, G. 1885. The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World. John Alden, New York, NY.

Simpson, G.G. 1940. Mammals and land bridges. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 30:137–163.

Stirling, M. 1940. Great stone faces of the Mexican jungle. National Geographic 78:309–334.

Storey, A., J.M. Ramırez, D. Quiroz, D.V.Burley, D.J. Addison, R. Walter, A.J.Anderson, T.L. Hunt, J.S. Athens, L.Huynen, and E.A. Matisoo-Smith. 2007. Radiocarbon and DNA evidence for a pre-Columbian introduction of  Polynesian chickens to Chile. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 104:10335–10339.
 
Vickers-Rich, P., and N. Archbold. 1991. Squatters, priests and professors: a brief history of vertebrate paleontology in Monaghan, R.F. Baird, and T.H. Rich (editors), Vertebrate Paleontology of Australasia, pp. 1–39. Monash University Publications, Melbourne, Australia.

Terra Australis. In Vicers-Rich, P., J.M.

Von Wuthenau, A. 1975. Unexpected Faces in Ancient America. Crown, New York, NY.

Ward, R.G., and M. Brookield. 1992. The dispersal of the coconut: did it float or was it carried to Panama? Journal of Biogeography 19:467–480.

White, R.B. 1884. Notes on the aboriginal races of the north-western provinces of South America. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 13:240–258.

Wilkinson, J.G. 1837. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. J. Murray, London, England.

How did Animals Cross the Ocean? Evolution says, uhhh...

Evolutionists have three totally different methods they they mix and match to explain the distribution of animals and plants across the face of the earth: Land Bridges, Oceanic Dispersal, and the Pangaea supercontinent. If one doesn't sound right, try the other! Is this Science? Are we in the midst of another paradigm shift and a return to “a science of the improbable, the rare, the mysterious, and the miraculous”? Or maybe the worldwide flood of the Bible offers a better explanation...

Selections from Biogeography: A Creationist Perspective, by Bill Johnson.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the article published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 48, Number 3, Winter 2012)

(To receive new uMarko posts via a daily email, please click Subscribe)

Why is it that animals and plants are not equally distributed over the face of the earth? Why are some animals, like giraffes and lions, confined to only one location—Africa, whereas other plants and animals are either ubiquitously or discontinuously distributed? Biogeography, or the geography of life, has been an active field of study for centuries. Early creationists tried to explain these distributions a variety of ways. Universal Flood geologists postulated that all animals dispersed from the Middle East. Can this be true? From the mid-nineteenth century to the present, evolutionists have dominated the biogeographical debate, and creationists have largely remained silent on the issue. As a result, it is commonly believed that evolution best explains the geography of life. But macroevolutionary biogeography is far from proven.

Land Bridges

Until recently, it was widely accepted that the continents as we know them have always been in their current locations. Belief in the permanence of the continents led many evolutionists to explain distributions by postulating land bridges between the continents. These land bridges crisscrossed every ocean and were thrown up or torn down wherever and whenever their theory required. Up until the second half of the twentieth century, most evolutionists employed this line of reasoning. Ernst Haeckel is a case in point:



The Lemuria land bridge of nineteenth-century geology.

Even Europe and America have been directly connected. The South Sea at one time formed a large Pacific continent... The Indian Ocean formed a continent which extended from the Sunda Islands along the southern coast of Asia to the east coast of Africa (Haeckel, 1892, pp. 375–376).

Everywhere there was a disjunct distribution to explain, evolutionists like Haeckel “sharpened their pencils and sketched land bridges between the appropriate continents” (Corliss, 1970, p. 61). Some of the land bridges were small and plausible; others, such as the landmass that stretched across the entire Pacific Ocean to allow bears, raccoons, and other animals to gain access to the American continent, were of continental proportion. After the fauna and flora reached their appointed destination the evolutionists’ “eraser disposed of the bridge when it had outlived its usefulness as evidenced by the divergence of species on the sundered continents” (Corliss, 1970, p. 61). The problem with continental land bridges and their sudden disappearance after they served their purpose was that in nearly every case there was absolutely no geological evidence for their existence. The only reason for their construction was to explain away the puzzling distributions of life.

Even Darwin, who was once an avid land bridge builder, eventually saw just how convenient it was to throw up land bridges to explain distributions. In a letter to J. D. Hooker he noted that some conjure up land bridges “as easily as a cook does pancakes” (Darwin, 1959, p. 432).

Oceanic Dispersal

Another way to explain the puzzling distribution of life is to have animals and plants crossing formidable water gaps by means of rafting, or, in the case of birds, postulating island colonizations achieved by transoceanic flights. Ernst Mayr used oceanic dispersal to explain how the banded iguana came to reside in the south Pacific.

The lizard family Iguanidae is confined to the Americas, except for one genus (with two species) found in Fiji and Tonga …a long time ago they floated there on logs and flotsam carried by ocean currents (Mayr, 2001, p. 32).

Mayr’s explanation seems plausible until one realizes that the Fiji Islands are 5,000 miles away from America. Granting a generous thirty miles of drift per day for this treacherous journey (which required a sail mate of the opposite sex), the iguanas would have arrived in Fiji eight months later!

Mayr and Phelps claimed the Hawaiian Islands house many land birds that supposedly migrated there from the American continents. These birds would have had to fly over 2,000 miles without the aid of intervening islands to serve as “steppingstones” (Mayr and Phelps, 1967). Some of these long-distance colonizations
seem miraculous.
 
How about the dispersal of freshwater fish (i.e., cichlids) found only in Africa and South America? Phillip Darlington, the most prominent biogeographer of the twentieth century, flirted with a south Atlantic land bridge but favored the hypothesis that these fish traveled out of Africa, up through Asia, across the Bering land bridge, down North and Central America, and finally into South America (Darlington, 1957). The most amazing part of this story is the disjunct distribution is also explained by extinction in the intermediate parts of a wide distribution that did not leave a single fossil behind!

Continental Drift



Generalized reconstruction of the supercontinent,
Pangaea in latest Paleozoic time.

 In the 1960s many evolutionists opted for what is called vicariance biogeography, i.e., that most plants and animals were widely distributed on the super continent Pangaea and the discontinuities we observe today are largely due to the breakup of this continent. The cichlids, along with other fish, would not have had to travel tens of thousands of miles from Africa to South America (as Darlington claims); they needed only to disperse a short distance while the continents were still together. With vicariance it appeared that evolutionary biogeography was saved from the embarrassing theories of the past. Or has it?

For example, if the continents were once connected, why are there not more fauna and flora similarities between the southern continents?

Also, it requires many taxa to have originated preceding the breakup of Pangaea. Recently, evolutionary dating methods have shown that many plants and animals evolved after the continents separated. This would include freshwater fish (i.e., aplocheiloid, cichlid), ratite birds, parrots, frogs, baobab trees, and anolis lizards (Briggs, 2003; De Queiroz, 2005). Evolutionists are now forced to acknowledge that longdistance dispersalism must have played an even greater role than many have suspected.

So which is it, Land Bridges, Oceanic Dispersal, or Pangaea? Are we in the midst of another paradigm shift and a return to “a science of the improbable, the rare, the mysterious, and the miraculous” (Nelson, 1978, p. 289)?

Is this Science?

Evolutionary biogeography has now come full circle. The “recent flood of evidence” that McGlone and others talk about is not evidence, per se; rather it is lack of evidence for drift. Alan De Queiroz (2005, p. 70) notes, “A main objection to dispersal hypotheses is that they are unfalsifiable and thus unscientific … However, this can be countered by noting that, if plausible vicariance hypotheses are falsified, then dispersal is supported by default.”

The explanations given for the dispersal of freshwater fish are just as eclectic. Evolutionists originally postulated a land bridge between Africa and South America (Eigenmann, 1909). Darlington (1957) followed this idea by moving these fish across almost every continent. Along came vicariance with its explanation of short-distance dispersal before the continents fragmented (Stiassny, 1991; Murphy and Collier, 1997).

Now that many freshwater fish are judged as too young to have been moved by drift, the explanation is that they are tolerant of saltwater and made the long journey across the Atlantic Ocean.

Biogeography can “explain” every distribution in a multitude of ways, while never making a prediction that could subject the theory to falsification. Even evolutionists have long recognized that it is an explain-all theory. How is this Science?

We began by with the early creationists, who were Universal Flood geologists. They postulated that all animals dispersed from the Middle East, as suggested by the Biblical worldwide flood described in the book of Genesis. In the second part of this article, we will reexamine this old viewpoint. It turns out to be a far superior explanation.

References (selected)

Briggs, J.C. 2003. Fishes and birds: Gondwana life rafts reconsidered. Systematic Biology 52:548–553.
 
Corliss, W. 1970. Mysteries Beneath the Sea. Crowell, New York, NY.

Darlington, P. 1957. Zoogeography: The Geographical Distribution of Animals. John Wiley and Sons, New York, NY.

Darwin, C. 1959. Life and Letters of Charles Darwin. Basic Books, New York, NY.

De Queiroz, A. 2005. The resurrection of oceanic dispersal in historical biogeography. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 20:68–73.

Eigenmann, C. H. 1909. The fresh-water fishes of Patagonia and an examination of the Archiplata – Archhelenis theory. In Scott, W.B. (editor), Reports of the Princeton University Expedition to Patagonia 1896–1899, pp. 227–374. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Haeckel, E. 1892. The History of Creation. Appleton, New York, NY.

Mayr, E. 2001. What Evolution Is. Basic Books, New York, NY.

Mayr, E., and W.H. Phelps. 1967. The origin of the bird fauna of the south Venezuelan highlands. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 136:273–327.

Murphy, W.J., and G.E. Collier. 1997. A molecular phylogeny for aplocheiloid fishes (Atherinomorpha, Cyprinodontiformes): the role of vicariance and the origins of annualism. Molecular Biology and Evolution 14:790–799.

Stiassny, M. 1991. Phylogenetic interrelationships of the family Cichlidae: an overview. In Keenleyside, M.H.A. (editor), Cichlid Fishes: Behavior, Ecology and Evolution, pp 1–35. Chapman and Hall, London, UK.