Explaining Mammals: “Origination” as a Darwin Dodge

Where did mammals come from? They “originated.”
What kind of scientific explanation is that?

Our Darwin Dictionary defines “poof spoof” as follows: “a phrase representing the evolutionists’ propensity to use words like ’emergence’ — a miracle word masquerading as a natural process. Applicable when they say something emerged, arose, originated, became, developed, exploded, radiated, diversified or appeared, without saying exactly how.”

A poof spoof has been illustrated clearly in a paper this month about the “origination” of placental mammals. The authors bait readers with science, but switch to miracles. Watch how the bait-and-switch trick is done.

A timescale for placental mammal diversification based on Bayesian modeling of the fossil record (Carlisle et al., Current Biology, 7 Aug 2023). Forms of the word “originate” appear 36 times in this paper. How much light is shed on where mammals came from by using this word? It’s like a miracle. One day there were no placental mammals. The next day, there was one. Shazam!

Watch how many times they use the word in the opening Summary:

The timing of the placental mammal radiation has been the focus of debate over the efficacy of competing methods for establishing evolutionary timescales. Molecular clock analyses estimate that placental mammals originated before the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction, anywhere from the Late Cretaceous to the Jurassic. However, the absence of definitive fossils of placentals before the K-Pg boundary is compatible with a post-Cretaceous origin. Nevertheless, lineage divergence must occur before it can be manifest phenotypically in descendent lineages. This, combined with the non-uniformity of the rock and fossil records, requires the fossil record to be interpreted rather than read literally. To achieve this, we introduce an extended Bayesian Brownian bridge model that estimates the age of origination and, where applicable, extinction through a probabilistic interpretation of the fossil record. The model estimates the origination of placentals in the Late Cretaceous, with ordinal crown groups originating at or after the K-Pg boundary. The results reduce the plausible interval for placental mammal origination to the younger range of molecular clock estimates. Our findings support both the Long Fuse and Soft Explosive models of placental mammal diversification, indicating that the placentals originated shortly prior to the K-Pg mass extinction. The origination of many modern mammal lineages overlapped with and followed the K-Pg mass extinction.

Tell us professors, how mammals originated. Answer: They appeared. They arose. They evolved. Students, learn your science!

It might be argued that these five Darwinians are not attempting to answer if animals originated (they obviously came into existence somehow), but when. But their use of the e-word “evolved” an equivalent number of times (36) shows that they reject any explanation other than Darwinian evolution.

• The timing of the origin of placental mammals (crown eutherian mammals) has been the subject of a heated debate over how best to establish a timescale for evolutionary history.
• Part of the difficulty in establishing the timeline of placental evolutionary history stems from the uncertainties of mammal phylogeny.
• The estimates of origination and extinction inform our understanding of placental mammal evolutionary history.

Why must the history of mammals be an evolutionary history? Why not just a history?

Since they evolved in a Darwinian way, the authors assume, they must have originated in a Darwinian way. But instead of begging the question about evolution, these authors should address the how question. How did they originate? What turned a pre-mammal into a placental mammal? What mutation randomly occurred to get selected? Was it a cosmic ray hitting a reptile’s gonads? Did any of these five authors witness the magic mutation millions of years ago that gave us rodents, elephants and people?

On and on they go in their poof spoof with their chosen miracle word, originate:

• Deciphering the origination of orders is more complicated, with support for either the Long Fuse Model or the Soft Explosive Model (Figure 5).
• Given this, the model is suitable for estimating the extinction and origination age of placental mammals, many of which have poor fossil records especially at the origin of the clade.
• Simulations were extended up to 600 Ma, long before mammals are expected to have originated, to assess the model’s accuracy for both young and old clades.

How can one “assess the accuracy” of a model (i.e., a story) that requires multiple miracles? The insistence on chance miracles blows away all hope for a law-like scientific explanation. An intelligently-designed origination is one thing; we can observe a genius originating an original novel, symphony or machine. But the incorporation of highly-improbable chance miracles should be rejected in a scientific journal.

Their first diagram shows five ways the miracle of “the origination of mammals” might have occurred. Notice that bold blue lines represent families known from fossils. Below the patterns, common ancestors are inferred by thin green lines.

Patterns of Placental Mammal Diversification (Fig 1., Carlisle et al.)

Actual fossil evidence, therefore, indicates abrupt appearance of mammal families. That’s assuming deep time. If the geologic column had not been chosen as a framework for interpretation, none of the mammal families appear to be related by common ancestry. The diagrams would then be consistent with creation.

The paper uses Jargonwocky to deceive readers into thinking it demonstrates evolution. It does nothing of the sort. It shows abrupt appearance in fossils, interpreted through the lens of prior commitment to Darwinism. Accessory miracles can be added at will by Nirwad, the wizard, by applying Darwin Flubber (an elastic potion composed of emergence, convergence and submergence) to impress the townspeople.

In the land of Jargonwocky, a wizard named Niwrad came up with a theory of everything he called Galumph. With frabjous joy, he investigated all the creatures of the borogoves with his apprentice, Ecallaw. He found that the Jubjub birds had round eyes and the mome raths, though similar, have square eyes. That’s because of Galumph, he explained. The Bandersnatch and Jabberwock, though looking very different, both have round eyes. “Galumph triumphs again!” Niwrad chortled. “But how can that be?” burbled Ecallaw with uffish look. “They are so very different in other respects.” “Callooh! Callay!” exclaimed Niwrad frumiously. “’Tis only to demonstrate the power of Galumph. The former is a case of Parallel Galumph. This one, a case of Convergent Galumph. Do you see? Galumph explains all. We must away and tell Yelxuh, our mimsy publicist, to announce our scientific triumph to the townspeople! We have slain the mystery of Jargonwock with Galumph. Galumph has wiped the brillig from our slithy toves, and given us Enlightenment!”

The tale about the “origination of mammals” is pseudoscience masquerading as scholarship, begging the question about evolution and confabulating a just-so story with imaginary miracles of chance. It should be condemned by honest scientists not only for storytelling but also for pretense, having been published in a “scientific” journal instead of in a children’s storybook.