Reality Rushes Evolutionists

“Earlier than thought” is a common phrase encountered when evolutionists test their speculations against the real world.

The older a complex organism is, the less time there must have been for Darwin to collect and sort the necessary mutations. The faster evolution happens, the less time for the mutation-selection mechanism to work its way through population genetics. Older and faster are frequent refrains in the science literature – putting the squeeze on Darwinians.

Early colonization: Astrobiology Magazine uses the phrase about the first land animals: “Life took hold on land 300 million years earlier than thought.” Who thought so? Evolutionists. Their surprised looks depend on dating of certain crystals, and whether or not they have anything to do with microbes, but even so, “Their research pushes back the date for the oldest evidence of life on land to some 300 million years earlier than previously documented.

Underground activity: “Life in Earth’s soils may be older than believed,” Science Daily says. Believed by whom? Evolutionists. Gregory Retallack has been promoting the idea that early life was land-based. “Life was not only present but thriving in soils of the early Earth about two thirds of the way back to its formation from the solar nebula,” he now claims.

Rapid evolution: Phys.org tells how scientists at McGill University were surprised to see how humans influence the rapid evolution of other species. Three examples given are commercial fishing, invasive species and urbanization. What’s most telling, though, is the reaction of the evolutionists. “In many cases, these effects play out over only a few years to decades—more quickly than biologists traditionally thought possible.”

Fast fish: New Scientist reports that a particular kind of fish known as killifish doesn’t die as expected. [Source paper is in Science Magazine.]

It’s evolution in action seen in unprecedented detail. Genome sequencing of hundreds of killifish in the eastern US has reveal­­ed dozens of the evolutionary changes that allow them to survive in extremely polluted waters that would normally kill such fish.

“They can survive thousands of times the usual lethal levels,” says team member Andrew Whitehead at the University of California, Davis.

Another striking thing is that they managed to evolve this extraordinary ability in just half a century or so, since the estuaries they live in started getting polluted.

Breathing exercise: The existence of a diaphragm is another complex system “much older than expected,” Science Daily says.

The researchers conclude that already the least common ancestor of caseids and mammals had a diaphragm more than 300 million years ago — that is about 50 million years earlier than previously assumed. An efficient respiratory system is intertwined with the evolution of warmbloodedness, which in turn molded our entire behavior. This assumed early origin of the diaphragm now demands a reevaluation of these developments.

Virus speciation surprise: Science Daily shares Richard Lenski’s reaction to latest news from his lab. “Even though we set out to study speciation in the lab, I was surprised it happened so fast,” he says about a virus that separated into two species in just a month. Most biologists, however, do not consider viruses to be alive, since they cannot duplicate independent of a host.

If you search our back issues on “earlier than thought,” you will get a lot of hits. Each case is a failed prediction of evolutionists. So why hasn’t Darwinian evolution been falsified? Phillip Johnson gave the answer: “there is an important difference between going to the empirical evidence to test a doubtful theory against some plausible alternative, and going to the evidence to look for confirmation of the only theory that one is willing to tolerate.” (Darwin on Trial, 1991, p. 28)