Double Standard in Science Favors Darwin
Evolutionists get away with utter nonsense. If their skeptics were so careless, there would be outrage.
Sit down, kiddies. It’s Darwin storytime. Close your eyes and let your imagination do the scientific work.
Have humans evolved beyond nature – and do we even need it? (The Conversation). Manuel Berdoy, biologist at the prestigious Oxford University, can’t see the difference between artificial selection (which is intelligent design) and natural selection (the Stuff Happens Law).
Big changes are part of our evolution. After all, oxygen was first a poison which threatened the very existence of early life, yet it is now the fuel vital to our existence.
Similarly, we may have to accept that what we do, even our unprecedented dominion, is a natural consequence of what we have evolved into, and by a process nothing less natural than natural selection itself.
He has swallowed the serpent’s lie: we can be as gods, thanks to evolution. In fact, better than God. We can be “true gods,” a section title says. (Pilate: “What is truth?”)
There is something of true wonder at the basis of it all. The fact that chemicals can arise from the austere confines of an ancient molecular soup, and through the cold laws of evolution, combine into organisms that care for other lifeforms (that is, other bags of chemicals) is the true miracle.
Some ancients believed that God made us in “his image”. Perhaps they were right in a sense, as empathy and love are truly godlike features, at least among the benevolent gods.
Who are the benevolent gods, according to Berdoy? They are the evolved humans that emerged by natural selection. They know better than to believe in the ancient God who made us in his image.
Research could reveal how human social life evolved (University of Texas at San Antonio). It could. Call when it does. “Living as a pair represents an evolutionary puzzle in the evolution of mammalian social systems,” the storyteller chimes. Call when the puzzle is solved.
Whole-proteome tree of life suggests a deep burst of organism diversity (PNAS). Ooh. Aah. Fireworks.
The ToL [Darwin’s Tree of Life] suggests that 1) all extant organisms of this study can be grouped into 2 “Supergroups,” 6 “Major Groups,” or 35+ “Groups”; 2) the order of emergence of the “founders” of all the groups may be assigned on an evolutionary progression scale; and 3) all of the founders of the groups have emerged in a “deep burst” near the root of the ToL—an explosive birth of life’s diversity.
JaeJin Choi and Sung-Hou Kim get away with saying this in the prestigious journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Creation in six days? Foolish. Well, did they advance verifiable science with their work? Not exactly, but they sure told a whopper of a story:
The ToL reveals some unexpected features and notable differences compared to the existing gene ToLs. It is hoped that these differences stimulate additional and/or alternative narratives for some of the important aspects of the organism ToL.
For those confused by the Jargonwocky, narrative = story.
Research on soldier ants reveals that evolution can go in reverse (Rockefeller University). Of course evolution can go in reverse. It can also go sideways, up, down, around, in circles and in a drunken sailor’s walk. That’s the nature of the Stuff Happens Law. “The space that evolution has to play with is actually quite a bit larger than previously thought,” says the storyteller. The play’s the thing.
“Usually, you would think that once a species is specialized, it’s stuck in that very narrow niche,” says Daniel Kronauer, head of Rockefeller’s Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. “But turtle ants are an interesting case of a very dynamic evolutionary trajectory, with a lot of back and forth.”
Differences in signal contrast and camouflage among different colour variations of a stomatopod crustacean (Nature Scientific Reports). Here’s a way to understand the story of natural selection.
Animal body colouration is subject to opposing selective pressures. Predation often selects for patterns and colours that blend in with the background whereas communication selects for colours that have high contrast with the background1. Many strategies have evolved to deal with these opposing pressures. For instance, animals may use signal partitioning whereby body regions that are visible to predators provide camouflage and body regions hidden from potential predators are used for signalling…. Other animals may exploit limitations to spatial resolution by using patterns that cannot be resolved at large viewing distances but are conspicuous at short viewing distances… Alternatively, animals may communicate with conspecifics via signals that the predator cannot detect.
Got that? The same Stuff Happens Law explains why ravens are black and peacocks are decked in gaudy colors. They just use different strategies, that’s all. Isn’t this an amazing law of nature? It explains everything!
They were once domestic pets, then natural selection made dingoes wild (Phys.org). Let’s try hard to understand the plot of this story. Dingoes evolved from wild dogs. Then some Australians tamed them, making them domestic pets. Now, they are evolving back to the wild. This is the genius of natural selection that made humans from bacteria? Let’s go watch the Disney remake of Call of the Wild instead; Harrison Ford is a much better storyteller.
Human cultural evolution found to be just as slow as biological evolution (Phys.org). Evolutionists love slow-and-gradual evolution, except when they like “deep bursts.” Whatever works to keep the story going is a fair game strategy. Like in Calvinball.
The researchers even suggest that cultural artifacts in a given society could be viewed as similar to organisms living in a given environment. Artifacts such as scientific papers, they note, when carried into society at large, either survive and become a part of the culture, or they die—just like natural selection. They acknowledge that there are instances in both cultural and biological evolution that change very quickly, such as smartphones or finch beaks, but overall, the rates come out nearly evenly.
This can only mean that this article by Bob Yirka (which begins with a silhouetted version of actors in the discredited March of Human Progress formation; read evolutionist Jordi Paps criticizing that point) is an artifact of the Stuff Happens Law by his own admission. Good. We can choose to ignore it by applying negative selection pressure.
Insects’ ability to smell is phenomenally diverse, a new protein structure hints at how (Phys.org). This article begins with a molecular diagram of an olfactory receptor channel in all its glory. You don’t really need to understand anything about this scientifically. All you have to demonstrate to the proofreaders is expertise in argument by assertion: It evolved because it evolved. Stuff happens.
“All animals use large families of olfactory receptors to detect the incredible variety of chemicals that exist around us. Insects evolved a unique molecular solution, the largest and most diverse group of specialized channels in nature, due to the large number of different insect species. And yet, we knew so little about these proteins,” Ruta said. Ruta and colleagues unveiled the structure of a protein for insect scent that provides an explanation for how insects evolved millions of odor receptors suited for a wide range of lifestyles and habitats.
New drugs could stymie superbugs by freezing evolution (Live Science). “Evolve or perish,” the bumper-sticker slogan says. Since bacteria emerged by evolution, we can make them perish by stopping their evolution. But the evolution Nicoletta Lanese is talking about has nothing to do with Darwinian evolution. It’s sharing of genetic information by means of machinery.
One of the ways that bacteria evolve to become “antibiotic resistant” is by picking up free-floating genetic material from their environments. They then incorporate the scavenged genes into their own DNA. In this way, bacteria can collect genes shed from microbes that are already resistant, and thus, gain resistance themselves. But bacteria aren’t able to catch wayward bits of DNA without the right equipment; the “bugs” must first enter a state called “competence” to build the machinery required to scoop genetic material from their surroundings.
Human language most likely evolved gradually (Phys.org). These storytellers think their story is better than the other one.
One of the most controversial hypotheses for the origin of the human language faculty is the evolutionary conjecture that language arose instantaneously in humans through a single gene mutation.
It’s a nicer story that Darwin would like, because it is slower and gradual, and doesn’t involve a miracle of chance. But is a slow miracle any different than a fast miracle, when all is said and done?
Researchers concluded that, instead of a single mutation with an extremely large fitness advantage, the most likely scenario is one where higher number of mutations, each with moderate fitness advantages, accumulate. “A scenario in which the genetic bases of our linguistic ability evolved through a gradual accumulation of smaller biological changes….”
Darwin is happy, but reading this, he gets a horrid doubt, wondering if the ideas in a monkey’s mind could be in any way trustworthy. Either scenario, if it tries to explain human conceptual communication as a product of the Stuff Happens Law, destroys language, doesn’t it? The authors might as well try saying brbrbrbrbrb chirpchirpchirp burpburpburp xmqwerxdfvpo. It’s all gibberish anyway.
The kiddies are asleep now. Sweet dreams. Nighty-night, everybody.
In the morning we will recite our two-minute hate against creationists – those ignoramuses who don’t know the first thing about science.
