April 16, 2018 | David F. Coppedge

Silly Darwinian Stories to Laugh At

The just-so storytelling empire continues. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Is Darwinian evolution good science? David Klinghoffer at Evolution News & Science Today said, “When it comes to explaining major biological novelties, the evolutionary story is a matter of extrapolation and imagination.” Let’s see if that description is apt in recent science news about evolution.

Chimps Eat Baby Monkey Brains First—A Clue to Human Evolution (National Geographic). You can start laughing even before reading the details. This silly article is full of uncertainties and illogical extrapolations, for which there is no evidence to suggest human behavior has anything to do with chimps eating baby monkey brains first. “Whatever the reason,” Shauna Steigerwald writes with high perhapsimaybecouldness score, “studying meat in the diet of chimpanzees, with whom we likely share a common ancestor, could shed light on human evolution.

The evolutionary advantage of having eyebrows (The Conversation). Penny Spilkins weaves this tangled logic: ‘eyebrows exist, therefore they evolved.’ This is from not just an ordinary Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins, but a Senior Lecturer in the Archaeology of Human Origins. Is this science? She says, with imagination supporting Klinghoffer’s description,

It seems then that for humans (and dogs), being able to get along with others was key to survival. And for our ancestors, the evolution of the eyebrows performed an important function in expressing friendliness. All of which forms part of a process of “self-domestication” – where our human brains, bodies and even anatomy reflects a drive to get on better with those around us.

Humans risked limb ischemia in exchange for bipedal walking (Science Daily). Japanese Darwinians came up with this science dilly. Ischemia is a restriction of blood flow. They explain, that millions of years ago, when our chimp ancestors decided to leave the trees and walk, “over time, the distance between the pelvis and the lower leg has become too far for the artery to reach. In other words, evolution has increased the human risk for lower limb ischemia.” Tell that to Olympic track and field champions. Should they return to the trees to get better blood flow?

Neanderthals’ Big Noses Get an Airy Explanation (Live Science). Mindy Waisberger is back to her just-so storytelling habit. She will parrot any Darwinist with any crazy idea, never laughing at it or criticizing it in any way. This time, Stephen Wroe, director of the Function, Evolution and Anatomy Research (FEAR) Lab at the University of New England in Australia, gives an evolutionary explanation for something no paleoanthropologist has ever seen: a Neanderthal nose. The only part of the story close to being supported by genetic evidence is that Neanderthals were equal to, if not superior to, modern humans. Time for some hard questions, Mindy! Did Wroe ever watch Neanderthals in their daily work? And if they “needed” something, were they able to call on Darwin to provide the right mutation to get it?

To survive and thrive in an Ice Age landscape, Neanderthals may have needed lots of energy to regularly chase after large animal prey or just to keep warm — “Or it could be some combination of both,” Wroe said in the statement.

Ctenophores and the story of evolution in the oceans (Phys.org). Little children, let us call on Father Darwin so that we can “understand the evolutionary history of these remarkable animals.” This article is supersaturated with the word evolution, and yet we find that the scientists don’t understand anything about the evolution of these creatures. Does it concern the Darwinians at Monterey Bay Aquarium that ctenophores, or comb jellies, appeared in the Cambrian Explosion and are unchanged after over 500 million Darwin Years of evolution? One way to dodge the issue is to say it’s complicated. They state, “ctenophores as a group have a long and complicated evolutionary history.” Toss in a little microevolution and convergent evolution, and they can avoid the main question: how did these complex animals emerge in a geological instant from non-ctenophores? It doesn’t matter to them, because evolutionary storytelling is always a work in progress, with futureware vanishing forever into the horizon: “it’s likely that some of his team’s work will shed further light on the history of animal evolution.” Well, it hasn’t yet (see Darwin’s Dilemma). How much longer do we have to wait for the light to shine?

Early Life Had Evolutionary Power to Survive Radical Changes in Environment (Space.com). Evolutionist reporter Charles Q. Choi never saw an evolutionary claim he didn’t salivate over. “Life on Earth could have originated in cold conditions near the surface, before spreading to warmer environments, according to research that analyzes the possible gene sequences belonging to the earliest life,” he begins. Has anyone seen the first life? Has anyone seen the proposed Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA)? Has anyone seen a cell originate? Enough said. But he adds some anti-science to the mix: “Ultraviolet light can damage RNA, but it may have also triggered chemical reactions that helped create key building blocks of life.” He uses the perhapsimaybecouldness word may, may, may all over the place. He even calls on a fictional debunked myth as if it is a creative force: “The Late Heavy Bombardment could have instigated a dramatic shift in climate and environment that helped spur the formation of life on Earth.” Back to Philosophy of Science class for you, Mr. Choi, after you watch Origin.

First an alga, then a squid, enigmatic fossil is actually a fish (Science Daily). This article is not about evolution so much as identification of fossils. It shows that scientists can be wrong for decades. “New study suggests that Cretaceous fossil discovered 70 years ago is a large ray.” If they can’t even tell what some fossils are, how on earth can they tell how they evolved? Maybe this was just a one-off goof. Well, the lead author had this to say about that: “There are many examples of temporarily misplaced taxa in paleontological history, including ferns that were once thought to be sponges and lungfish teeth thought to be fungi.” In his book (pictured below), Jerry Bergman documents several glaring and embarrassing mistakes made by evolutionists.

Species with big sex differences are more likely to die out (Science Daily). Smithsonian scientists have made a mountain out of an ostracod-pile. They used ‘sexual dimorphism’ in these “tiny crustaceans that have been on the planet for nearly 500 million years” to build a case for Darwin’s theory of sexual selection. They added their version, which postulates that the more dimorphism, the more likely a species is to die out. Did anyone point out to them that ostracods have been around for 500 million Darwin Years, in their thinking? Did anyone point out that peacocks have not gone extinct? Alice Klein at New Scientist played along with this idea, but noted that sexual selection theory is not a settled fact:

It was Darwin who realised that sexual selection by females can lead to the evolution of extreme traits in males – from colourful plumage to extravagant dances and displays –  that reduce their overall fitness. Biologists have been arguing about how this affects the long-term survival of species ever since.

Klein calls this “the most comprehensive study yet done” (see paper in Nature). Poring over thousands of ostracod fossils, and believing in the moyboy timeline without question, the Smithsonian team felt they provided evidence for their hypothesis. But the dimorphism they identified just concerned tiny differences in size and shape between the ostracods. Is that a basis for claiming a law of nature that governs elephant seals and peacocks? Are they trying to imply that men with beards and large muscles and women with long hair and big boobs are in danger of extinction, and that we should all aim for the unisex look? The French have a contrary view: vive la différence.

Important book showing the shady history of evolutionary storytelling.

Dr Jerry Bergman, a contributing author for Creation-Evolution Headlines, has a whole chapter on sexual selection in his latest book, Evolution’s Blunders, Frauds and Forgeries. He first explains (with references) how Darwin felt compelled to come up with the idea, because it contradicted his theory of natural selection. Many features in organisms reduce fitness. The peacock’s tail, for instance, hinders the male’s flight, is costly in terms of biological resources, and attracts predators as well as females. Bergman quotes leading evolutionists who have severe problems with sexual selection theory, and yet readers of Science Daily might never know (1) how controversial it is, and (2) how illogical the Smithsonian story is to extrapolate tiny differences in fossil ostracods to large, gaudy peacocks.

This gets SO tiring! The collapse of Darwin’s House of Cards is long overdue. Why is there not a public uproar over this anti-empirical charade of pseudoscientific storytelling? And yet the public lets the Darwin Lobby outlaw any criticism of Darwinism in the public schools! That’s something to get mad about after you stop laughing.

 

 

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