Darwinism Stretches Imaginations

Is the Gumby Action Figure of Darwin made of Flubber or Silly Putty?
Either material works, depending on the need of the moment.

Here are more examples of Darwinians stretching, squeezing and bouncing their theory to fit observations. With their brand of magic material (Darwin Flubber), Darwinians can’t lose. They can accommodate any anomaly with their unfalsifiable narratives built on imagination.

CT scan of an ancient reptile skull reveals little evolutionary change over 22 million years (Southern Methodist University). A plesiosaur skull should have evolved, but didn’t. 22 million Darwin Years is two to three times longer than evolutionists use to account for a wolf turning into a whale, or an ape turning into a human.

A CT scan of the skull of a long-necked plesiosaur shows the cranial architecture of these long-extinct marine reptiles didn’t evolve much over 22 million years that they lived during Cretaceous time.

That’s very unusual, said SMU paleontologist Louis Jacobs, one of the world’s foremost authorities on prehistoric creatures and co-author of a study published in the journal PLOS One.

“Basically, in anything except living fossils, you don’t go 22 million years without evolving,” said Jacobs, professor emeritus of Earth Sciences at SMU and president of ISEM at SMU.

Darwinism adapts to meet this anomaly, because no anomaly is ever out of reach of its mystical powers. Things evolve except when they don’t. Evolution explains both explosive radiations and extreme stasis. Why does Louis say this is “very unusual”? He already believes that “living fossils” stayed the same for hundreds of millions of years. Nothing is unusual under the Stuff Happens Law; there is no such thing as “usual” in Darwin’s fantasyland.

Allosaurus (Wiki Commons)

The giant Jurassic dinosaur Allosaurus was a scavenger, not a predator (Portland State University). Another thing that stretches, squishes or accommodates change is “established thought.” This is because the thinkers of “established thought” trust the Stuff Happens Law, so whatever they are thinking was never established to begin with.

In a paper published August 23, authors Cameron Pahl and Luis Ruedas, of Portland State University, show that Allosaurus, a large carnivorous dinosaur from the Jurassic that has long been thought to be a top predator, could probably have acquired most of its calories by scavenging on the carcasses of enormous sauropod herbivores that lived alongside it. Pahl noted that “This new perspective may overturn 150 years of established thought.”

Evolutionists have no problem with Allosaurus (“other lizard”) “upending years of established thought.” They just say, “‘Allo, saurus; ‘ow’s supper?” and watch as the giant beast bares its dagger-like teeth, runs through the forest with its mighty legs and pounces on an unsuspecting sauropod carcass, ripping into the gobs of flesh with its rapacious jaws.

What this implies, if they are right, is that one cannot judge the eating habits of animals with big teeth. Some bats have vicious sharp teeth but eat fruit.

Most dinosaurs lived in rich ecosystems or deserts where ambient temperatures were high. Does temperature influence the rate of evolution? Yes or no; it doesn’t matter. Evolutionary theory survives with either answer.

Macroevolutionary thermodynamics: Temperature and the tempo of evolution in the tropics (PLoS Biology). Daniel Robosky upsets an applecart. But that’s OK in Darwin fantasyland; as long as the thinking stays within the confines of the consensus, anything is possible.

An influential hypothesis proposes that the tempo of evolution is faster in the tropics. Emerging evidence, including a study in this issue of PLOS Biology, challenges this view, raising new questions about the causes of Earth’s iconic latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG).

Evolutionists love new questions. It gives them more opportunities for storytelling. Nothing ever falsifies the set of Darwinian stories; certain stories replace other ones, that’s all. Pour in Darwin Flubber as needed.

New questions about causes, they say? What causes? Stuff just happens. If the old view had been supported, the same theory would have accounted for it.

Discovered: Fossilized Spores Suggestive of Early Land Plants (The Scientist). Scientists are excited that some spores Darwin-dated to 480 million years ago seem to alleviate the strain on molecular evolution studies. Did you think that petunias evolved from algae? Well you should have. That’s the consensus.

Plants that live on land are thought to have evolved from algae—typically aquatic plants lacking stems, roots, leaves, and vascular systems. But when and how plants first adapted to life on land is a matter of debate. The first macrofossil evidence of land plants is in the form of 425 million-year-old specimens of Cooksonia, a primitive vascular plant. However, molecular clock estimates—which are based on, among other things, genetic mutation rates—have suggested an origin for land plants in the Cambrian period (approximately 505 million years ago).

That was an 80-million-year disconnect, the article says. It really was putting a strain on poor Darwin Gumby. He can relax a little, now that older spores have been claimed. But are any evolutionists worrying about adding land plants to the Cambrian Explosion? What’s to worry about? Twenty animal phyla emerged by chance, they believe. If Darwin can handle that, he can handle a few plants too.

Denver Museum poster of the Cambrian Explosion

Rare Cambrian fossils from Utah reveal unexpected anatomical complexity in early comb jellies (Harvard University). Comb jellies (ctenophores) have been considered candidates for the first animals, from which all others sprang. Conflicting views put sponges as the main ancestor.

These hypotheses carry different and important implications for understanding the origin of animals themselves because, depending on the position of comb jellies in the tree of life, it’s possible that muscles and the nervous system might have had multiple origins, a rather big deal as these are some of the most distinguishing features of animals today.

Living ctenophores have 8 comb rows, as in Mnemiopsis leidyi here. The two new fossil species have up to 24 comb rows plus protective armor. (Marco Faasse, Creative Commons)

That has been a problem for years, but now can evolutionists handle “unexpected anatomical complexity” in early comb jellies? Sure; the Darwinian web of belief has incredible flexibility. Two new species of fossil comb jellies, Darwin-dated to 520 million years, show more comb rows and more features than living comb jellies. The first comb jellies were more advanced, the Harvard Darwinistas have to confess; living comb jellies have lost features that the first ones had. Is that a problem for Darwin Daddy? It’s not for a skilled circumlocutionist able to rescue Darwin from the evidence of devolution:

“This discovery means that there has a been a secondary simplification of comb jellies during their evolution, first losing the rigid skeleton, and then the discrete nerves observed in the fossils,” said Dr. Luke A. Parry, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, UK. “These are insights that would be impossible to obtain from only studying living comb jellies, so the fossil record is providing a valuable glimpse into the evolution of these enigmatic animals.”

Ortega-Hernández agreed, “In this context, Euplokamis would be showing a sort of vestigial organization of the nervous system, which are not seen in other living ctenophores. Ctenophores have a more complex evolutionary history than what can be reconstructed from their living representatives alone. Fossils allow us to understand the morphology that developed first and how it has changed through time.”

Do you understand now? Don’t look at the fossils. They will fool you. Look through them until the image of Darwin appears. Then you will – you will —underrrrsssssssstannnndddd.

Crystal ball mister (source: CostumePub)

John Wesley must be turning over in his grave to see Southern “Methodist” University sacrificing to Darwin-Baal instead of bearing the reproach of Christ. So, is science “better” now after the Darwin revolution?