“The Evolution of…” Is a Useless Phrase

The only thing the phrase accomplishes is perpetuating
myths about the magical power of the Stuff Happens Law.

It pulls the wool over the eyes. It hides the true nature of things. It’s a bad habit. It conveys no meaning. It misleads people and dumbs down their minds with propaganda. What is it? It’s the oft-used phrase in science, “The evolution of.”

Heard so often, people don’t even notice it. The wool over the eyes feels normal, somewhat like the face masks that some people are still wearing in their cars or outside alone after having been vaccinated from Covid-19. It’s time to cast it off and see things with open eyes. Enough! Out with “the evolution of photosynthesis, the evolution of body plans, the evolution of birds, and a thousand other mythoids stated in traditional worship of the Bearded Buddha. Science needs to get back to real causal explanation instead of hiding behind the Stuff Happens Law—natural selection—which says nothing more than, “whatever exists, it evolved.”

Here are recent examples of the phrase in action:

The evolution of axial patterning (University of Vienna). Look at that headline. What should you expect to learn in the article? Wouldn’t an honest reader expect to find specific mutations in DNA, and an account of how nature selected them, leading to a new species or group? It’s not there. The reader only learns that a highly-regulated, vital guidance system in animal embryonic development “already existed” at the beginning—

Body axes are molecular coordinate systems along which regulatory genes are activated. These genes then activate the development of anatomical structures in correct locations in the embryo. Thus, the body ensures that we do not develop arms on our heads or ears on our backs. In many organisms, the main body axis is regulated by the β-catenin signaling pathway. In a new article in Nature Communications, a research group led by Grigory Genikhovich at the University of Vienna has found that the way the main body axis of sea anemones is patterned by different intensities of β-catenin signaling is similar to that of sea urchins and vertebrates. This suggests that this axial patterning mechanism already existed about 650 million years ago.

It suggests nothing of the sort. Nothing evolved! The system already existed. The team found the same mechanism at work way back in unrelated animals. “From this we conclude that animals, including the last cnidarian-bilaterian ancestor, already used this mechanism of axial patterning some 650 million years ago”, the guy said. What’s evolution got to do with it? Nothing!

Actually, what makes animals grow with a bilateral axis requires complex interactions and signals between genes and transcription factors. Genes are complex sequences of an information-rich code that tells complex machines how to build other machines, which have a specific task to accomplish. Such things do not just happen.

The researchers found that β-catenin signaling in the sea anemone activates a number of transcription factor genes at the future oral end of the embryo. The expression areas of these genes form a regular pattern along the oral-aboral axis.

The paper in Nature Communications does no better. “If bilaterality indeed evolved prior to the cnidarian–bilaterian split,” the authors say – then they waltz into their assumption fantasyland. But what if bilaterality did not “indeed evolve”? What if it was always there?

Revisiting the sedimentary record of the rise of diatoms (PNAS). This paper uses “the evolution of” five times, three of them in the references (showing that the bad habit stretches back to 2004 and beyond). Evolutionary words appear 30 times. Marvel at the uselessness of the phrase in this sentence:

In addition, the evolution of relatively large, well-protected phytoplankton lineages including diatoms, coccolithophores, and dinoflagellates, and their subsequent rise in ecological significance, is hypothesized to be the bottom-up impetus for massive ocean ecosystem restructuring in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic.

Here the phrase becomes an impetus. “The evolution of” is now a force with momentum enough to restructure all the life in the oceans for millions of years, including whales! That is absurd. Who could believe that without first selling his soul to Darwin?

What is this “rise of diatoms” they speak of? It’s another miracle story of “emergence” based on the belief that stuff happens. “The rise of” is functionally equivalent to “the evolution of” in terms of uselessness. Watch them say it 3 times, even as they suggest that the “traditional” evolutionary interpretation needs modification:

The presence of a strong taphonomic bias against diatoms for much of the Cenozoic casts doubt on some of the proposed connections that make up the traditional interpretation of silica cycle evolution during the past 20 My, including causal links between the rise of grasslands, diatoms, and whales. Grasslands are proposed to have elevated the marine Si flux to the oceans, facilitating diatom expansion during the Neogene. The rise of grasslands, in turn, has been linked to the rise of whales through diatoms.

Do these four geniuses from Yale realize how complex a diatom is, let alone a whale or a grassland? Ponder the outrageous day we live in, when top scientists can just close their eyes and imagine that diatoms just rose up, grasslands rose up, and whales rose up.

New Study Sheds Light on Evolution of Photosynthesis (Rutgers University). Aren’t they clever. Their study “sheds light” on the “evolution of photosynthesis” which relies on light to build complex biomolecules. (For a taste of just how complex the process is, read this article at Evolution News, especially the section “Underestimating the complexity of photosynthesis”). So tell us, Rutgers geniuses, about this “evolution of photosynthesis.” Turn on the lights and shed light! Maybe one cell ate another cell and became its friend, you say. (Don’t ask about that, because they say, “Despite its critical evolutionary role, there is limited knowledge about how endosymbiosis is initially established”).

“It turns out that photosynthesis results in enormous risks because it produces harmful chemicals and heat as byproducts that can damage the host cell,” said senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Therefore, creating a novel organelle is a highly complex process that makes it fleetingly rare in evolution. Paulinella, which is the only known case of an independent plastid primary endosymbiosis other than in algae and plants, offers many clues to this process that helps explain why it is so rare.”

Oooh. Clues. Tell us more! Keep going:

The light just went out in the shed.

“Because Paulinella is an independent origin of photosynthesis, it provides key clues to how this process occurs and what costs it imposes on the host cell,” said lead author Timothy G. Stephens, a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers. “The genome of Paulinella contains many independently evolved genes involved in photosynthesis and dealing with the associated stresses that can potentially be engineered in algae and plants could help to improve their ability to withstand stresses such as high light levels or salt stress.”

A common-sense farmer interrupts. ‘Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute. Before talking about how engineering might improve my cotton crop, where is that light that you promised on evolution?’ The light they shed was black light. It glows in the dark, producing a fleeting image of Darwin until the house lights are switched on. What did they say, really? They said that the “origin of photosynthesis” [i.e., “the evolution of” photosynthesis] produced “many independently evolved genes involved in photosynthesis.” What a fake light show. ‘It evolved to produce evolved genes.’ Ask for your money back!

Antarctica as an evolutionary arena during the Cenozoic global cooling (PNAS). The setting for this scenario is that “species richness is not evenly distributed across the surface of the planet.” OK, that’s an observation. Tell us about it, you two French evolution experts. How did it come about in Antarctica, this “evolutionary arena” you mention?

Our understanding of the origin and evolution of Antarctic biodiversity has greatly improved in recent years, thanks in part to studies revealing high levels of cryptic diversity, especially for marine organisms for which species diversity is often underestimate.

Miss Information demonstrates how to see the light that is being shed on evolution.

They comment on a study by Baird et al. that shows Antarctica has almost as much biodiversity as the tropics. In fact, “the sub-Antarctic region acted as a dynamic evolutionary arena for a beetle lineage during major cooling episodes and glacial cycles, spurring a significant radiation that parallels some of the adaptive radiations experienced by marine lineages.” Interesting. So how did that come about?

The study by Baird et al. calls for reevaluation of the paradigm on the origin and evolution of species diversity in Antarctica during the Cenozoic. This study demonstrates that diversification of Antarctic terrestrial organisms may mirror those of marine organisms. This unveiling calls for more studies in other terrestrial groups, especially for those that potentially house high levels of cryptic biodiversity such as springtails or tardigrades. This study on weevils should encourage further studies to infer dated phylogenies for Antarctic groups, as it is of paramount importance to determine their mode and tempo of diversification and assess whether there are similar trends in relation with known paleoenvironmental changes (Fig. 1). Studying these Antarctic groups can also bring light to the evolution of the latitudinal diversity gradient, in particular to understand why some regions are species-poor compared to others but show high in situ diversification.

In short, evolutionists do not understand “the evolution of” biodiversity, and the problem exists not only for Antarctica, but for biodiversity all over the planet. Keep waiting for “further studies,” they say. The answer will be provided sometime in the form of futureware. Then we will all have “understanding.”

Agggh! Stop! That’s enough. You guys do not know what you are talking about. You’ve been mouthing on about “the evolution of” this and that for 160 years, and now all you can say is that everything you know is wrong, the paradigm needs to be reevaluated, and you need “further studies” on “the evolution of” just about everything (Evolution News). You’ve been stringing us along forever with promises to shed light, but the light never comes!

Losers! Charlatans! Empty talkers and deceivers! Take your bluffing boasts and get out of here!