Darwinism Degrades Logic

Materialists like to accuse
“people of faith” of pseudo-
science. Well, look again.

 

Before reading the following news headlines, remember that Darwinism is mindless, aimless, and impersonal. Nobody cares what happens. Nothing “evolves to” get better. Extinction is always the easiest way out of a struggle for existence, because, again, nobody cares. That is (and should be) the logic of Darwinism. But if logic evolved, it isn’t logical, is it? Indeed, it can’t be.

Note that the word “evolution” in Big Science and Big Media almost always refers to the Darwinian, materialist kind described above.

Why we haven’t evolved better knees – new research (11 Sept 2024, The Conversation). Darwin shaman Michael Berthaume of King’s College in London wants to offer his readers a bit of the coveted “understanding” that evolutionary theory promises but never seems to deliver (28 May 2021). Mike wants to, but he can’t. He doesn’t have it himself.

Many of us look down at our aching knees and curse them – wondering why they seemingly evolved to hurt so much. But the human knee has a complex evolutionary history. And new research is showing how misunderstood it is….

The knee is an intricate piece of biological machinery that scientists don’t fully understand….

Despite hundreds of years of research, little is understood about sesamoid evolution, growth, development and why they are present in some species and not others….

New work from my colleagues and I has shown that two of these often misunderstood bones, the medial and lateral fabellae, which are behind the knee, could have evolved in multiple ways in primates and helped early humans learn to walk upright.

Bones don’t “evolve to” do anything. Berthaume has illogically turned evolution into a benevolent helper trying to get your unknown primate ancestor to stand up and walk. Evolution doesn’t care.

The coveted understanding never comes. So what does Mike know? He knows that “it’s complicated” trying to weave a Darwinian narrative.

We know that the evolution of the knee in humans hasn’t been straightforward, and instead had branching paths. We also know that we are living in a way that our bodies are poorly adapted to, and lifestyle changes are probably the culprit of knee issues that have become more severe with time. The knee didn’t evolve for the age in which we find ourselves and the bone that may have helped us walk in the first place may be part and parcel of those problems.

So, when your knees buckle on the treadmill or feel sore when you’re sitting down, spare a thought for them because evolution isn’t as easy as it seems.

Appealing to the Gumby Theory of Evolution (27 Aug 2021, 19 Aug 2015), Michael B has abandoned empirical science and molded his narrative to fit his materialist philosophy. This not only degrades his logic, but makes him ungrateful for the “intricate piece of biological machinery” that allows him to walk. And then he teaches his readers to be ungrateful, too. So he doesn’t understand knee evolution, he doesn’t understand Darwinian theory, but he “knows” that knees evolved and that we should blame evolution when our knees hurt. Does that make any logical sense?

Baleen whales are among the biggest creatures on Earth – science is revealing new secrets about their size (11 Sept 2024, The Conversation).

“And God created great sea creatures,” Genesis 1:21 has stated for over three millennia, but Darwinians scoff at such notions believed by “people of faith.” In this piece on the Darwine-drunk website The Conversation (better dubbed The Indoctrination), Sam McKee dispenses with faith. He has Darwinian evolution to give him understanding! But has he not put his faith in People of Fluff?

“Baleen whales evolved bristly baleen plates instead of teeth, which filter or trap krill, plankton and small fish inside their mouths,” he says. But is it logical to beg the question? Has his study of rorquals, which includes baleen whales, given him understanding?

Rorquals swim large distances which has made uncovering their evolution difficult for many reasons, including that it’s harder to identify individual populations. Furthermore, the scale of commercial hunting in the past two centuries almost destroyed many rorqual populations.

The Australian study builds on recent genetic studies as well as studies from evolutionary biology, marine biology and animal behaviour that have given us a clearer picture about where rorquals’ evolution diverged, and how that made them grow giant.

The promised understanding never comes. He wonders why large animals like whales don’t get cancer, having many more cells than we do. Maybe it’s because “molecular mechanisms of rorquals seem to give them cancer resistance.” But that could be by design, not evolution. Where is the promised science (not faith) that can explain whales’ immunity from cancer and huge size? Comparing genes of rorquals of different sizes doesn’t mean that they evolved from each other in a Darwinian way. There is no clear evolutionary path. It’s all fluff.

Another 2023 genetic study helped us understand how hybridisation muddled the picture of their genomic makeup, as there has been much interbreeding between rorqual species. But we now know that rorquals took a different ecological and evolutionary niche to other baleen whales, as well as toothed whales, to become impressive hunters.

Why is it an “evolutionary niche” and not just a niche? Is his use of that adjective a subconscious tribute to Darwin? Hybridization is not evolution. It merely shuffles existing genetic information. It doesn’t create new genetic information as Darwinism requires. The facts fit within creationist models of diversification within created kinds. Creationists believe God installed mechanisms for adapting to environmental change as design specifications to allow them to fill the earth. That’s intelligent foresight, not Darwinian chance.

Like Mike, Sam personifies evolution, asserting that rorquals “took” an “evolutionary niche” (not just an ordinary niche, mind you, but an evolutionary niche) “… to become” impressive hunters. That’s illogical. Evolution doesn’t care. If Sam stayed within the bounds of Darwinian theory, he would have to say nothing more than Stuff Happens without a plan, purpose, or goal. But instead he shloops along, turning the Stuff Happens Law into a force for progress.

New fossil fish on plate tectonics map (12 Sept, Flinders University). The Darwinist authors of this press release are proud of themselves, but here’s their theory in a nutshell: plate tectonics drives evolution. What? If that idea fits comfortably within someone’s skull, it’s in a nut shell for sure.

Climate change and asteroids are linked with animal origin and extinction – and plate tectonics also seems to play a key evolutionary role, ‘groundbreaking’ new fossil research reveals.

Oh, now we understand. Plate tectonics doesn’t cause evolution; it just plays a role. OK; show us the script of the play. Is it a lead role or a bit part? Is evolution the protagonist or the antagonist? We want to know the role.

“Our analyses found that tectonic plate activity had a profound influence on rates of coelacanth evolution. Namely that new species of coelacanth were more likely to evolve during periods of heightened tectonic activity as new habitats were divided and created,” she says.

It isn’t a bit part; plate tectonics plays a profound role. Mark that down.

But wait; this play only runs in the Deep Time Evolution Theater. They have displayed a variety of coelacanth fish species, but why does that support Darwinism? There are a variety of trout today, a variety of pine trees, and a variety of hawks. Without the prior assumption of evolutionary time over millions of Darwin Years and Darwin’s doctrine of universal common ancestry, they have no argument. Why not suggest the possibility that these species were all contemporaneous, but most of them died in the Flood?

No way would they admit that possibility. ‘We’re talking about SCIENCE in this Theater of the Absurd! Keep those People of Faith out!’

Yet even accepting the Darwinian timeline, they cannot tell a straightforward evolutionary story. They have to speed up evolution and then slow it down—even though, within their narrative, plate tectonics should have been imperceptibly gradual and steady throughout earth history. (Naturally, they deny catastrophic plate tectonics.)

“We calculated the rates of evolution across their 410 million-year history. This revealed that coelacanth evolution has slowed down drastically since the time of the dinosaurs, but with a few intriguing exceptions.”

The authors try to argue that coelacanths should not be called “living fossils” because they never stopped evolving. Yet they admit the worldwide surprise of finding a living coelacanth in 1938 after coelacanths had long been thought extinct for tens of millions of years. This “Lazarus” fish rising from the dead implies that populations of coelacanths kept surviving for 66 million Darwin Years but none of them fossilized despite many fossil beds of fish forming after the supposed age the dinosaurs. Ask Mr. Spock if that sounds logical.

Less logical is the notion that plate tectonics drove evolution in coelacanths but not everything else at the same rate. If tectonics is a physical cause driving evolution like a law of nature, one would expect to write equations like e = f(t), evolution is a function of tectonics, and that the speed of plate tectonics corresponds to the speed of evolution. They should plug in values for t and see the values of e fall on a graph line. Isn’t that what true scientists are expected to do? Such a law of nature for a worldwide phenomenon like plate tectonics should maintain for any plant or animal plugged into the equation. There shouldn’t be any “intriguing exceptions” that allow for theory-escape gimmicks.

Exceptional new fish fossil sparks rethink of how Earth’s geology drives evolution (12 Sept 2024, The Conversation). The above press release encouraged its readers to read this article too. To show we’re not mischaracterizing their hypothesis, read the headline: “how Earth’s geology drives evolution.” A subsection says it again: “Plate tectonics drive coelacanth evolution.”

Of all the variables we looked at, the one with the greatest influence on the rate of coelacanth evolution was tectonic plate activity. New species of coelacanth were more likely to evolve during periods of heightened tectonic activity, as seismic movement transformed habitats.

Raise your hand if you have ever seen a geological plate in a driver’s seat. Does it make any sense to think that a mindless plate cares what a fish does? Does it make any sense to imagine a coelacanth hearing the rumbling of a geological plate and telling its mates, “The plates are moving fast! They’re going to drive us to evolve rapidly!” or “The tectonic plates have slowed down; our evolution is going to be boring for a few million years.” How absurd to imagine them scheming to baffle evolutionists with the strategy, “Hey, let’s refuse to fossilize for 66 million Darwin Years and then have our great-great-gr-g-g-g-g-g-g-g…-grandchildren show up in a fishing net in 1938!”

Ancient relative of ‘living fossil’ fish reveals that geological activity supercharges evolution (12 Sept 2024, Live Science). Now we learn that plate tectonics doesn’t merely drive evolution; it supercharges it! Reporter Stephanie Pappas, who seems to feel her mission in life is to cram Darwinism down the throats of her readers without ever giving any counter-arguments by Darwin skeptics* like paleontologist Günter Bechly (former Darwinist turned ID advocate) or philosopher Stephen Meyer, raises her tale of coelacanth evolution tale to heights above Fantasyland Castle itself. “The ancient coelacanth, which has existed for some 419 million years, never stopped evolving despite its reputation as a “living fossil,” she rhapsodizes. “A new discovery reveals that it evolved faster when plate tectonics were most active.” On she goes with 18 mentions of the e-word evolution. Feel the drama in her creative writing—

Primeval fish that were thought to be “living fossils,” largely unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs, are actually evolving dramatically — and they evolved faster when Earth’s continents moved faster, fossils of a newly identified coelacanth species have revealed.

The findings suggest that the large-scale movement of continents may spur the evolution of life, the researchers reported Thursday (Sept. 12) in the journal Nature Communications.

Coelacanths are large fish that evolved 410 million years ago.

Pappas has reached down into the grab-bag of discarded evolutionary notions. There is nothing “primeval” about coelacanths. They are complex creatures with molecular machines, body systems, and successful lives. Evolutionists used to think of them as transitional forms to land animals, until finding out that living coelacanths do not use their bony fins to support their bodies at all. They typically feed head down in a vertical position. They are NOT PRIMEVAL.

In case anyone can’t follow her logic, a little repetition might help:

Combined with other coelacanth fossils, the discovery reveals that the more geologically active the environment was, the more evolutionary change the fish underwent.

“Somewhat surprisingly, plate tectonic activity had a strong influence on rates of evolution of coelacanths throughout their 400 million-year history,” said study first author Alice Clement, an evolutionary biologist at Flinders University in Australia.

Darwin priestess Pappas offers tokens to her readers to bless them on the way home: links at the bottom of her article to “More About Evolution” and “How Fast Does Evolution Happen?”

*Unlike CEH, where we always give full exposure to the very best Darwin spokespersons along with analysis and commentary. Apparently Lie Science has a policy of never giving voice to Darwin skeptics lest their pure minds of scientism be corrupted.

A Late Devonian coelacanth reconfigures actinistian phylogeny, disparity, and evolutionary dynamics (Clement et al, Nature Communications, 12 Sept 2024). Here’s the paper, complete with 94 mentions of the e-word evolution or evolved, and zero mentions of any non-Darwinian explanation for their data. But wait! There is one mention of the word creation! Here it is—

Of the putative environmental drivers considered, the influence of subduction flux (a proxy of tectonic activity) was the most strongly associated environmental measure to the rate of evolution (median relative influence = 36%; range = 13–60%) — thus, indicating that coelacanth species evolved more rapidly during periods of higher global tectonic activity (Fig. 5B), suggesting that the creation of new habitats favoured rapid morphological evolution.

Sigh. Time to leave Darwin Fantasyland and get back to Main Street where, without logic, you get run over by an intelligently designed Model T.

Reminder: The Venn Diagram of people looks like this:

People of Faith consists of U = every human being who ever lived.

But there are subsets:

• People of Fluff: illogical people.

• People of Froth: angry people.

The intersection of those two groups comprises People of Frothy Fluff, or People of Fluffy Froth – e.g., dogmatic Darwinians.

Recommended Resource: Want to both applaud and roll your eyes within 21 minutes? Watch Mark Rober describe the robot his team made that can solve a jigsaw puzzle 200 times faster than human puzzle champion. Rober’s popular YouTube channel challenges kids and adults to “think like an engineer” (as he was himself at NASA). In this captivating and often humorous video, he describes the challenges of building a robot that can match the four capabilities of the human eye, hand, and brain that allow even a child to solve a puzzle. No easy task! It took his team 3 years of trying to perfect the hardware and software for his robot. But (get ready to roll your eyes), he claims that our human capabilities that he tried so hard to mimic took (…expect it…) “200 million years of evolution.” Go figure. He wasn’t thinking like an engineer when he shlooped that remark!