Archive: Cells, Io, Cave Art, Solar System, Sex, More

Here are some of the stories we were reporting in October 2001.

Note: some embedded links may no longer work.

Genomics Joins Geology in Search for Evolutionary Ancestors  10/05/2001
The Astrobiology Institute posted a popular-level article about how molecular biologists are piecing together evolutionary family trees by studying proteins, and how they expect to correlate their data with those of geologists and paleontologists who piece together evolutionary relationships with bones and rocks. Stephen Benner and colleagues are using a new search engine and database of proteins called DARWIN (Data Analysis and Retrieval With Indexed Nucleic-acid-peptide sequences) to compare proteins from distant organisms and find evidence of ancestry.

The article is mostly bluff, with a lot of positive-sounding claims about evolution being evident in the genes and proteins, when in fact we have been reporting frequently that it is not, and that the molecular evidence does not match the paleontological evidence. On October 1 [see below] for instance, we relayed a story about how the DNA clock method for dating evolutionary changes was found unreliable. The same applies to any alleged protein clock, since proteins are encoded by genes. One cannot draw relationships between diverse animals without first believing evolution to be true, so it becomes a case of question-begging to get the data to fit preconceived notions. If you read this article with that in mind, you can find circular reasoning, extrapolation, and faith in evolution all built up on very little actual evidence.  Phanerozoic, by the way, is Greek, not Latin; more bluffing?

Of Centromeres and Telomeres  10/05/2001
Two cell biology reports are revealing that “mere” parts of DNA are vital. A news release in Nature announced that a university team in Cleveland, Ohio has sequenced the centromere of the human genome. These are the junction points that join the two strands of chromosomes. They consist of long repetitive sequences of genetic letters. Though no one understands how they work at this point, they parcel out equal shares of chromosomes during cell division. Flaws in the centromeres are implicated in many cancers.

In a second news item, a paper in the journal Cell discusses the role of telomeres in cell death and cancer. Telomeres are the “end caps” on DNA strands that prevent them from unraveling; at each cell division, the length of the telomere is reduced by one unit. Researchers found that the shortest telomere determines when the cell signals itself to die, not the average telomere length. Scientific American comments that cells with short telomeres act as if the DNA strand has broken, and receive a signal to “arrest or die as a protection against chromosome rearrangement and cancer.” When the telomere-repair tool, telomerase, is present, it lengthens the telomere just enough to function. Runaway telomere lengthening appears to be a characteristic of some cancers. A related paper published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that “telomere dysfunction triggers extensive DNA fragmentation and evolution of complex chromosome abnormalities in human malignant tumors.”

The human genome is so complex, its wonders continue to baffle scientists. It is also apparent that failures in its complex operations lead to cancer and death. When God told man that he would surely die, and cursed the world because of sin, it subjected the original perfect designs to malfunction and entropy. We see the grand design that points to a Designer, but we feel the malfunctions that take us eventually back to the dust from whence we came. Is it possible that early in the history of mankind, better centromere and telomere operation (with fewer accumulated mutations) could have allowed men to live for centuries, like Methuselah?

Evolutionists, however, continue to attribute these complex systems to chance, and look for ape in our ancestry at every turn. Consider this statement from the centromere story:

The group also compared sequences that bookend the alpha repeats with equivalent sections in primates. One part of an ancestral primate centromere is amplified in humans, they found. The work “gives a clear picture of how [the centromere] might have evolved”, says chromosome researcher William Brown of the University of Nottingham, UK. “It grew relatively recently in human evolution.” Even with the sequence in hand, no one knows how centromeres work . . . .

So nobody knows how they work, but it doesn’t stop this scientist from confidently stating with an air of authority how and when they evolved. In the presence of design perfection, a bit of humility is in order.

Jupiter Moon Reaches New Volcanic Heights  10/04/2001
New pictures of Jupiter’s Little Moon Io were released today by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory that have planetary scientists excited. Although the Tvashtar volcanic plume was inactive that they had hoped to fly Galileo through, a new larger plume was seen 370 miles to the south that set a new height record above the surface– 310 miles. In addition, two new global views show a donut ring of fresh material around the new vent, and another previously unknown vent can be seen with newly deposited material that was not present during the previous encounter in January. The Galileo spacecraft then prepared for two final flybys of Io, the closest so far on October 15 (which was successful) at just 112 miles above the south pole, and the final one in January 2002. These will be followed by a visit to the tiny moon Amalthea the following November and a crushing plunge into Jupiter, its grand finale, in September 2003.

It seems unbelievable that this tiny frozen moon could show this much activity after 4.5 billion years. We reported in August 2000 that the common explanation of tidal flexing is insufficient to account for the heat being generated through the surface.

Stellar Images Released  10/04/2001
The Gemini Telescope North on Mauna Kea has released the “first light” from its new Multi-Object Spectrograph, and it’s a beauty: M74, a face-on galaxy in Pisces, a near-perfect “Grand Design” spiral. It made NASA Goddard’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. Also, the Hubble Space Telescope Heritage Project has just released a stunning photo taken in 1997 of the inner core of Omega Centauri, a big globular cluster of several million stars. The detailed sample region contains about 50,000 stars, many sun-sized but with a scattering of red giants and blue supergiants.

Galaxies and globulars are prize targets for amateur astronomers, and these images will surely delight and amaze anyone. M74 reminds us of the spiral galaxy wind-up problem for cosmologists. If galaxies like this one are as old as claimed, they would have wound up so tightly that the spiral arms would be hopelessly scrambled. Globular clusters also have their conundrums; we reported on March 6 that no planets were detected in a globular where astronomers expected to find several. And their assumed ages (12 billion years) are in the same ballpark as the assumed age of the universe itself, putting pressure on theories of star and galaxy formation so soon after the birth of the universe.

Oldest Cave Art Is the Best  10/04/2001
According to Scientific American, the cave art discovered in Chauvet is made up of “masterpieces comparable to the best Magdalenian art” that is much younger. New radiocarbon dates set the Magdalenian art of Lascaux and Altamira at 12,000 17,000 years old, but sets the Chauvet art, which is just as good if not superior, at 27,000 to 32,000 years old. According to Helene Valladas, who made the radiocarbon measurements, this is a problem: “Prehistorians, who have traditionally interpreted the evolution of art as a steady progression from simple to more complex representations, may have to reconsider existing theories of the origins of art.”

Like maybe it’s not as old as claimed? Think about it. Here you have artwork that is of the highest caliber, indicating a high degree of intelligence, yet evolutionists expect us to believe its creators did not evolve civilization, agriculture and rocket science for 32,000 years. Consider how much mankind has learned and changed in just the last 5,000 years and see if their timeline is even remotely credible. Look at the Chauvet art and judge for yourself. Radiocarbon dates, like all other radioactive dating methods, are subject to unproveable assumptions and cannot be trusted. It is only evolutionary assumptions that keeps these dates from being tossed into the wastebasket as unreasonable.

Early Cells Repeatedly Evolved Powerhouses  10/04/2001
Eukaryotic cells possess two organelles that can manufacture energy: mitochondria, which require oxygen; and hydrogenosomes, which do not. The NASA Astrobiology Institute theorizes that, because these organelles differ significantly from one protozoan to another, they must have evolved from one type into the other on many occasions.

Another example of circular reasoning. Evolutionists assume that these complex organelles can evolve, then use unexpected data to tell stories how they did evolve. Never would it be considered that perhaps could not evolve. Instead, we are asked to believe in multiple miracles.

Solar System Theories Still Not Solid  10/03/2001
The October 2001 issue of the Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society is devoted to Solar System Evolution, particularly the origin of solid matter within the solar system. The opening paper, “Unresolved questions regarding the origin of solar system solids” by Patrick Cassen, makes it clear that there is much still not understood about our neighborhood.

One of the difficulties is the origin of short-lived radioactive elements in a supposedly 4.5 billion year old solar system. The untouchable parameter is the age, so evolutionists have to invoke all kinds of ad hoc scenarios for getting these materials injected into the solar system that should otherwise have burned out long ago. This issue of Philosophical Transactions should be a good source of information for those questioning the viability of naturalistic theories regarding the origin of our solar system.

Sex Retards Evolution  10/02/2001
The recent PBS Evolution series, episode 5 Why Sex? explained that sex helps evolution by providing more genetic diversity, and creates a moving target harder for opponents to attack. This explanation is challenged in a new paper just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which claims that in evolutionary terms, sex is a disadvantage:

… a sexual population may evolve two or more times slower than an asexual population because only asexual reproduction allows some overlap of successive allele replacements. Many other fitness surfaces lead to an even greater disadvantage of sex. Thus, either sex exists in spite of its impact on the rate of adaptive allele replacements, or natural fitness surfaces have rather specific properties, at least at the scale of intrapopulation genetic variability.

The origin of sex has been termed the “queen of evolutionary problems” because sex appears more costly to organisms than any benefit that can be described in terms of survival of the fittest.

This illustrates the difference between real scientific discussion of evolution, as seen in the journals, and evolution for the masses as portrayed on public television. Darwinism does not predict sex, and cannot explain it. The existence of sexual reproduction is a mystery for Darwinism, and it is disingenuous for PBS to ignore the controversy over this and other mysteries, and portray everything as support for evolution.

Walter ReMine’s book The Biotic Message contains a detailed analysis of evolutionist storytelling about the origin of sex, and concludes that sexual reproduction resists a Darwinian explanation.

Update 10/18/2001:  Scientists at University of California at Santa Barbara are claiming the opposite conclusion, that sex is advantageous to evolution. By studying the rapidity with which a red eye gene in fruit flies (assumed to be beneficial mutation) accumulated, they found that the sexual population achieved maximum accumulation faster than the asexual population.

It is not new for evolutionary scientists to come to opposite conclusions. Here they assume that red eyes are better, and find one species of fly accumulating the mutation faster. Is that enough to declare a law of science, especially when other experiments reached opposite conclusions? But the bluff goes on. This press release makes it sound like it has proven an evolutionary law, and pretends that beneficial mutations are plentiful, when it’s doubtful they even exist.

The way to read announcements like this is to sweep away the bluff like cobwebs, and look at the raw data, and notice their admissions. They admit that the explanation of sex has stymied evolutionists for a long time. They admit that sex has a cost that should make it a disadvantage. They totally overlook how sexual organs, meiosis, and all the other appurtenances of sex arose. But one tiny hint of victory is blown way out of proportion to make them dance on the 1-yard line that they have scored another touchdown for Darwinism. The facts remain: sex is not predicted by evolution, it is not explained by evolution, and evolutionists are losing the game while their cheerleaders are screaming louder and louder trying to encourage the apathetic fans.

More responses to the PBS Evolution series have appeared:

• Michael Behe writing “Fatuous Filmmaking” in WorldNetDaily tells how claims the series made can be interpreted as evidence for the opposite view.  He explains that science often cannot provide a single cause for a given phenomenon.
• Stephen Meyer in the same issue writes in “Darwin’s Defenders” that the evolutionists are telling the public only what they want them to hear.
• Answers in Genesis in “Speedy Species Surprise” asks whether the rapid emergence of new species is really support for evolution, or is included in the creationist view.

DNA Clock Is Broken  10/01/2001
–or rather, never worked to begin with. Molecular biologists are unhappy to hear that a dating technique they have relied on for decades is unreliable. Based on a claim in 1965, they have built their evolutionary trees on the assumption that mutations accumulate at a constant rate. Now, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences summarized in a news report in Science, researchers at the University of California in Irvine have found “vastly different mutation rates, even for closely related species . . . . Molecular clocks in general are much more ‘erratic’ than previously thought, and practically useless to keep accurate evolutionary time, the researchers conclude.”

Hear, O skeptics! Thy prophets have spoken lies unto thee in the name of science. Molecular dating is flawed, and now evolutionists must cast away another worthless clock. Creationists believed all along that the DNA clock was built on circular reasoning and therefore unreliable. Let’s see some prominent Errata in the next issue for claims made over the last 36 years. (So much for the Sept 17 story, for instance.)

So will this be a blow to evolutionary theory? If you think so, you don’t understand the power of faith. Evolution is a fact that must be saved from the evidence at all costs. This 1998 article shows that doubts about molecular clocks have been around for some time, but no matter what the fossils or the molecules show, the story will be adjusted to fit Darwinism:

Is it then justified to test the accuracy of the fossil record using the molecular clock hypothesis, when this requires extrapolation between groups with scarce fossil data? Can we even use the rates calculated within a group of organisms to infer the origin of this group? Can we exclude the possibility that rates of evolution change over time? Specifically, what if the emergence of a group of organisms coincides with an initial acceleration of substitution rates followed by a slowdown or period of molecular stasis? . . . . Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there have been significant changes in the rates of nucleotide substitution in taxa with remote origins before sending palaeontologists out to fill perceived gaps in the fossil record.

Evolutionists will argue about which evidence supports Darwinism better, but Darwinism itself, like American foreign policy with the Taliban, is not open to negotiation or discussion.