Crying Evolution, Evolution, When There Is No Evolution

Here’s how the Darwin Party
keeps Darwinism alive using
propaganda tactics

Before reading the following science news articles, realize that Darwinian evolution is about much more than change within species, or change within genera or families. Even young-earth creationists accept that level of variation. It’s about the creation of novel traits (innovations) of significant enough complexity to push animals upward and onward into higher levels of structure and function. This would require big changes, like new senses, new organs, new limbs, wings, or body plans that never existed before.

These changes, moreover, would have to be explainable only by chance variations and “natural selection” which we call the Stuff Happens Law, because in the materialistic consensus view of Darwinian evolution, there is no mind or purpose at work. Nobody was around to cause the changes or aim them for a functional purpose. In the consensus Darwinian worldview, no God was around to care how things turned out.

Now, look for evidence of that level of change in these recent evolutionary stories.

Unveiling Ancient Life: New Method Sheds Light on Early Cellular and Metabolic Evolution (24 Sept 2024, Tohuku University). This article provides no evidence for Darwinian evolution. It’s only about a procedure that the university developed to measure trace elements in marine microfossils.

Cretaceous Fireflies Reveal Early Evolution of Insect Bioluminescence (24 Sept 2024, Chinese Academy of Sciences). They found fireflies in amber that already had bioluminescent organs. No evolution here. “The light-emitting organ near the tip of the abdomen closely resembles those of modern Luciolinae fireflies, demonstrating evolutionary stability in this trait.” Stasis is not evolution.

Rare Florida fossil finally ends debate about how porcupine jaws and tails evolved (20 Sept 2024, The Conversation). Natasha Vitek gets all excited about solving a “decades long debate” about the evolution of porcupines, but it’s only about relationships between existing porcupines in North and South America with minor differences in teeth and tails. Not only that, the differences “evolved” recently! Ken Ham would yawn.

Cacti are highly diverse and well adapted to arid habitats. That does not mean they evolved. (DFC)

The cactus family’s surprising evolutionary journey (19 Sept 2024, New Scientist). Oooh, an “evolutionary journey” adventure story. “Cacti are one of the world’s most beguiling and easily recognised plant families,” Penny Sarchet begins, “but how and why the spiky family evolved into its many diverse shapes and sizes has been a mystery.” So where’s her evidence? All she presents is the wide diversity of cacti, no proof that one evolved from the other, or that cacti emerged from other plants by the Stuff Happens Law. Did aridity (dry habitat) cause cacti to emerge from pre-cacti?

And the places with the largest number of cactus species tend to be arid and semi-arid regions. But, as Jamie Thompson at the University of Reading in the UK and his colleagues write in a new study, ancient aridification – an increase in dryness seen in several American regions – cannot fully explain cactus evolution. Some big periods of diversification seem to have happened more recently than the transition to a drier climate, for example, and new species seem to have emerged more quickly in places that aren’t as dry.

Did you enjoy this evolutionary trip? If not, complain to her editor for false advertising.

Researchers Publish Breakthrough Study on How New Genes Evolve (19 Sept 2024, Univ of Arkansas). Pound the drums and blow the trumpet fanfare for this “breakthrough study” on gene evolution! Oops; the press release only shloops about antifreeze proteins in fish that they claim arose through “convergent evolution”—a theory rescue device (23 Sept) accompanied by copious amounts of Darwin Flubber. The particular genes, furthermore, appear to have degenerated from pre-existing genes. That’s devolution, not evolution.

Convergent evolution in Afrotheria and non-afrotherians demonstrates high evolvability of the mammalian inner ear (16 Sept 2024, Nature Communications). More Darwin Flubber here, built on ideology about Darwin. “Evolutionary convergence in distantly related species is among the most convincing evidence of adaptive evolution,” they begin. No it’s not! It is evidence for creation by common design. Convergent evolution falsifies Darwinian evolution.

The emerging view on the origin and early evolution of eukaryotic cells (11 Sept 2024, Nature). The tale: eukaryotic cells with all their complex organelles must have come from bacteria. The evidence: “In the tree of life, the branch separating the first from the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes is long and lacks evolutionary intermediates.”

Humans have evolved to digest starch more easily since the advent of farming (4 Sept 2024, Nature). Humans have always had the ability to digest starch. Where is the evolution? Attention, Nature: all human beings are interfertile. There was no origin of species. There was no new body plan, organ, or progress. This is not evolution.

A Whale of A Tail: Unraveling the evolutionary secrets of how whales and dolphins adapted their backbones for aquatic life (4 Sept 2024, Harvard). To swallow this tale, one has to believe that whales evolved from land animals like snakes. No wonder their backbones are different! They were created for different habitats and functions. Cetaceans did not “adapt their backbones” for aquatic life. What? Did they hold a committee meeting and decide to do this? One thing Harvard got right: it’s a whale of a tale. Our cartoonist shows how it might have happened with cats (right).

Plant-eating dinosaurs evolved backup teeth to eat tough food, research reveals (27 Aug 2024, London Natural History Museum). Dinosaurs didn’t evolve backup teeth; they already had them. More convergent evolution tales here, claiming that backup teeth evolved rapidly, too. Similarities do not establish Darwinian evolution. Teeth already existed. “It’s tempting to speculate that these changes happened for similar reasons.” Operative word: speculate.

Tarantulas have surprising partnerships with other species and their hairiness may be a defence mechanism (22 Aug 2024, Turku University). Why did tarantulas grow body hairs? To defend themselves against ants. They “may have in fact evolved as a defence mechanism against these predatory ants.” Ahem. “May have” and “in fact” are opposites.

Size doesn’t matter for mammals with more complex brains, according to new study (25 July 2024, Univ of Bath). “New research in Nature Communications investigates the effect of sexual size dimorphism [SSD] on genome evolution.” Some mammals show big differences between male and females sizes. Some do not. Is there a pattern?

“It shows that while size in some species is an important sexual selection pressure for evolution, for others it doesn’t matter so much.

“It makes us ask the question how traits like SSD are shaping the evolution of our brains and genomes.”

So with that tale disproven, they’re off on the next story. “In future work, the researchers want to investigate how testes size impacts the evolution of mammals’ genomes.” Since Darwin granted job security for storytellers, it doesn’t take cojones to write up a new tale. It doesn’t matter if it proves true or not. The play’s the thing.

Had enough? On and on it goes in the Darwin Party storytelling empire.

Here are the three steps for success in Darwin’s castle:

• • Believe in Darwinian evolution with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
  • Observe a fact.
  • Make up a story that fits the fact into evolution. Force it if you must.
    

Follow those three steps, and you will survive in academia and even get notoriety, if not promotions to tenure and full professorship. But criticize this awful degradation of the ideals of science, and your career will be in danger.

Exercise: Go into our Baloney Detector and list the propaganda tactics that were employed in the articles above. This will help you identify these tactics when reading Darwinian claims. Study, for instance, Begging the Question (circular reasoning), Sidestepping, Card Stacking, Non-Sequitur and Repetition. Are there others you can identify?