Ant What She Used to Be

Darwinians are masters at
twisting evidence of stasis into
tales of ancient evolution

 

Here’s today’s Darwin tale: a fossil ant in amber has the same sensory organs as modern ants. It’s basically like a modern ant, except for minor features that might represent it as an extinct group of ants. (There are lots of species of ants, and lots of taxonomists who argue about how to arrange them.) It was likely entombed in tree sap a few thousand years ago. But lo, readers are told that this magic ant represents a major turning point in evolution, when wasps-evolving-into-ants discovered socialism. Believe it or not.

As you read these articles and the scientific paper they are based on, note the difference between the evidence and the narrative gloss being smeared on top of it.

Researchers discover that ants from millions of years ago used the same sensory organs as modern ants (Phys.org, 17 June 2024). A necessary step in Darwinizing evidence is to place it into the moyboy timeline. This fossilized ant lived millionnnnzzzz of yearzzzz ago, reporter Bob Yirka tells us. Since he knows in his bosom that ants evolved from wasps, he is starstruck and dumbfloundered that these ants look modern.

A multidisciplinary team of scientists from several institutions in Japan, working with colleagues at the American Museum of Natural History, has found evidence that some types of ants that lived during the Cretaceous Period had sensory organs for communication similar to those used by many modern ant species….

The researchers then compared the images with similar images made of modern ants. They found them to be nearly identical and located in the same places on the bodies of both ancient ants and modern ants.

OK then, Bob, why did you list your report under the category “Evolution”? Why not mention this as a challenge to Darwinism? Why not discuss that such sensory organs indicate intelligent design?

Early ants may have had complex social lives, fossil data suggests (Science News, 14 June 2024). The sensory organs, called sensilla, on these ants are located on the antennae. Modern ants use their sensilla (sing. sensillum) to detect pheromones from conspecifics in their colonies. Their presence indicates complex social organization that characterizes ants today, as we all know from ant trails, ant hills and ant farms. We see ants touching antennae when they meet. All hymnopterans (wasps, ants and bees) have sensilla, but some have lost particular types.

Sensilla make no functional sense alone; they only make sense as parts of functional wholes: the suite of traits that allows for complex societies. This includes the sensilla organs themselves, the ability to manufacture pheromone compounds, and the instinctive behavioral responses to the perception of pheromones. At a higher level, the group interactions of these responses must be coordinated for maintenance of a hierarchical society, so that each caste member responds reliably to its role in the social order. Identification of sensilla in a fossil ant indicates that all these parts were already present. Could such a society evolve?

Ants fossilized in 100-million-year-old amber have sensory equipment that suggests they had complex social lives similar to their modern-day ancestors [sic, descendants], researchers report June 14 in Science Advances.

All ants live in advanced societies where adults live in large groups and engage in cooperative parenting and divisions of labor, but ants’ ancestors were solitary wasps. Researchers aren’t sure when the insects’ social lifestyle evolved. Some early ants have been found fossilized as groups, which hinted at social living around the time of the insects’ evolution during the Early Cretaceous Period. But it was still unknown if early ants chemically communicated with each other as colony members or simply shared their habitats.

“Researchers” (meaning evolutionists in this context) don’t know much. They don’t know when eusociality evolved; they don’t know what fossilized groups of ants mean. But one thing they know: evolution is a fact! —even when the evidence is missing.

What is an “early ant” in reporter Jake Buehler’s mind? It’s one that was evolving from a wasp. But the only “early ants” he points to were already ants that already lived in social colonies! Where is the evolution?

This is why we say that Darwinians are masters at twisting evidence of stasis into tales of ancient evolution. To believe his tale, one has to accept the absurdity that ant social organization appeared suddenly, fully formed, 100 million Darwin Years ago (with sensilla, pheromones, instincts and all), only to stay the same ever since! What’s Darwin got to do with it? The ant is still the same as what she used to be!

Today, many ant species create massive colonies thousands to millions strong, but the researchers argue that the fossil record suggests that the earliest ants lived in very small colonies of a few dozen nestmates. Despite this, “we can consider that ants lived in a highly advanced social system even in their early evolutionary stages,” Taniguchi says.

The new findings suggest that tens of millions of years before they became an ecological force in ecosystems around the world, ants may have been marching together.

This is stasis, not evolution. Why does Buehler do this? It’s in line with the mission of Science News since its founding in 1921. The magazine played a key role in popularizing evolution and was largely responsible for ridiculing William Jennings Bryan and Bible believers at the Scopes Trial. Evolutionists used misinformation (Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man) then, and still use misinformation today.

Sensory evidence for complex communication and advanced sociality in early ants (Taniguchi et al., Science Advances, 14 June 2024). Here’s the scientific paper. It’s open access, so take a look. You’ll see electron micrographs of the sensilla, and learn how they are divided into eight types, some of which protrude from the antennae. That part is regular science. But as for evolution, it is only assumed. They use the e-word three times in the body of the paper, but never in the sense of explaining how blind, unguided, random, purposeless, chance mutations somehow were “selected” to create the astonishing complexity of ant social organization. Here are the three mentions of evolution:

[1] “Advanced social behavior, or eusociality, has been evolutionarily profound, allowing colonies of ants, termites, social wasps, and bees to dominate competitively over solitary species throughout the Cenozoic. Advanced sociality requires not just nestmate cooperation and specialization but refined coordination and communication.”

Why is it “evolutionarily profound” instead of just profound? How could Darwinism come up with multiple parts working together—cooperation, specialization, coordination, and communication?

[2] The evolution of sociality brought altruism to a selfish world, and, thus, it has been a key innovation in the history of life, spawning the large discipline of sociobiology.

See commentary below.

[3] These specimens are, therefore, ideal for reconstructing the communication systems of ants in their early evolutionary stages.

No evolutionary stages are described, and nowhere does the paper explain what genetic mutations were naturally selected for eusociality, even though the first reference is to Charles Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection.

As previously noted (25 March 2024) Robert Shedinger reconstructed the Origin‘s history from Darwin’s own private letters, showing that Darwin only intended Origin to be an “abstract” for a “big book” on species—never published in Darwin’s lifetime—that he promised would contain all the evidence for his audacious theory, as would have been expected for a scientific treatise. His contemporaries waited in vain. When it came out a hundred years later, the “big book” was remarkably devoid of actual evidence. It was one of history’s most famous bluffs. (Shedinger, Darwin’s Bluff).

Evolutionists have learned from The Mosssstaaaah well. They’re bluffing still today. They can take evidence for stasis, show it under black light, chant Abracadabra, and wow the audience, even if the hat still contains no rabbit. ‘Now we are shedding light on the evolution of ants,’ they say, even though the ant is still what she used to be, many long years ago.

Let out a big sigh for point [2] above. It’s hard to know what to say in response to rhetoric like that. “The evolution of sociality brought altruism to a selfish world, and, thus, it has been a key innovation in the history of life, spawning the large discipline of sociobiology.” Wow. Presumably Darwin would be pleased with India’s caste system. Maybe he would tell the Dalits to accept their lot as pawns in a grand scheme of the Stuff Happens Law, which brought altruism to a selfish world, where some animals are more equal than others. As for the “large discipline of sociobiology,” which some Darwinists themselves have repudiated, it did succeed in one sense: job security for storytellers.

Three steps for doing science as a Darwinist:

• • 1. Believe in Darwinian evolution with all your heart, mind, and soul.
  • 2. Observe a fact.
  • 3. Make up a story to fit it into step #1.

We must shame these people out of science.

Recommended Resources:

Shedinger, Darwin’s Bluff (2024, described above).

Woodward, Thomas, Doubts About Darwin (2003). A PhD in the Rhetoric of Science, Dr Woodward elucidates the “tricks of the trade” used by Darwin and his followers, using rhetorical devices to present a materialistic worldview in quasi-scientific dress.

Woodward, Thomas, Darwin Strikes Back (2006). In this follow-up book, Dr Woodward describes how the Darwinians doubled down on the burgeoning Intelligent Design movement, using rhetorical devices and legal strategies to try to quash it.

Morris, Henry M., Jr, The Long War Against God (1989). The founder of ICR explains with numerous historical accounts that evolution was never really about science. It is one part of a long historical conflict by fallen men to justify their sin by denying the obvious evidence for their Creator.