Evolutionists Do Not Understand Evolution

Reporters and journal editors continue
to misrepresent Darwinian evolution as
a goal-oriented design process

 

You could arrange all the tools in your garage into a phylogenetic tree. With some imagination, you could weave clever stories about how one tool evolved into another. On the hammer, for instance, a second pair of claws “emerged” on the handle that could move up and down. “Selection pressure” drove the lower claw to develop a ratchet that allowed the pairs of claws to clamp onto pipes. The hammer thus evolved to become a wrench, and the shape of the hammerhead was modified to fit the new function. Is this whimsical storytelling similar to what evolutionary biologists do?

Biology is a large set of particulars: a bird, a grasshopper, an iguana, a mouse, a cell, a fossil. Biologists only witness the particulars. They do not witness processes changing one particular into another, because those take millions of years in their notion about how things came to be. Variations within populations have been witnessed, but not transformations of one kind of organism into another. Evolutionary biologists merely assume that all the particulars are related by universal common ancestry and have changed according to natural selection, the Stuff Happens Law.

Repeatedly, however, evolutionary biologists speak of unobservable processes changing one type of creature into another as if on purpose toward a goal. Worse, they describe one creature evolving to obtain some beneficial trait that a “more evolved” creature has. By assuming evolution, they tell stories about the imaginary lines between creatures, when all they have access to are particular living creatures or fossils. This is like telling stories about which screwdrivers evolved into other types and sizes of screwdrivers: e.g., “selection pressure drove the flat head screwdriver to become a Phillips head screwdriver because it gave it an ‘evolutionary advantage’ of more torque.” Lost in the storytelling is the fact that Darwinian evolution is aimless, directionless, purposeless, unguided and blind. It doesn’t care what happens.

See if this isn’t the way evolutionists think and write.

How humans evolved to be ‘energetically unique’ (18 Nov 2024, Harvard Gazette). The tip-off for evolutionary shenanigans is adding the word “to” after “evolved”—as if something “evolved to” become something else. Darwinian evolution has no purpose or direction. This press release commits the fallacy repeatedly:

• humans, unlike most mammals including other primates, have evolved to escape a tradeoff between resting and active metabolic rates.
• The team’s analysis shows that monkeys and apes evolved to invest about 30 to 50 percent more calories in their resting metabolic rates than other mammals of the same size, and that humans have taken this to a further extreme, investing 60 percent more calories than similar-sized mammals.
• “Since we evolved to be active, how does having a desk job change our metabolism in ways that affect health?”

Sound the buzzer on all these statements. Nothing “evolves to” achieve some goal or advantage. Darwinism is about chance—stuff happens—and nobody cares what happens. Notice how the evolutionary biologists here tell stories about a process between organisms. They only witnessed the organisms, though, not imaginary lines connecting them by random mutations and natural selection.

Thanksgiving special: dinosaur drumsticks and the story of the turkey trot (20 Nov 2024, Yale News). Pay attention to the particulars in this press release as you read it and watch the embedded video. The particulars are: a T. rex, a turkey, an iguana, and an alligator, with some other characters tossed in, like peacocks and penguins. Two bones are also mentioned as particulars: the tibia and the fibula, which are common to all tetrapods and birds.

Science can only observe those particulars. But the evolutionary biologists in the article and video are obsessed with connecting them with imaginary lines—unobservable processes that they believe made one object evolve into another. The only process they can call on is chance (“stuff happens”), which is the opposite of scientific explanation.

Wings may be the obvious choice when studying the connection between dinosaurs and birds, but a pair of Yale paleontologists prefers drumsticks. That part of the leg, they say, is where fibular reduction among some dinosaurs tens of millions of years ago helped make it possible for peacocks to strut, penguins to waddle, and turkeys to trot.

No scientist has observed millions of years. Nothing in Darwinism “helps makes it possible” for some new function to emerge.

After this statement, on they go about how the fibula bone shrank and moved about to give different creatures their mobility, as if Darwinian evolution was doing these things on purpose by design.

“This shortened fibula is what allows birds to twist and turn around when they’re not in flight. And to understand its evolutionary story, we have to look at dinosaurs.”

The story’s the thing. And it’s an evolutionary story (ooh, aah). It will bring us “understanding” (28 May 2021). Look at a dinosaur, they say, until you imagine it morphing into a parakeet.

The idea that the shortened fibula had a distinct evolutionary benefit was relatively unexplored.

Why does it have to be an evolutionary benefit instead of just a benefit? Birds can twist and turn, but they need such agility in their ecological niche, so they were supplied with a fibula that benefits that need. What’s Darwinism got to do with it? The Phillips screwdriver meets a need in one context. The flat head screwdriver meets the need in another. A big hefty screwdriver is useful in one context; a short small screwdriver is useful in another. A tiny screwdriver might be useful for fixing eyeglasses. A powered screwdriver has the benefit of adding force, but it is not an “evolutionary benefit.” Why do evolutionists talk this way? Darwinism couldn’t care less about benefits. It’s only engineers and designers who care about benefits, and they have minds. They use knowledge and skill to turn a foreseen benefit into a reality.

“But evolution acts on all parts of the body, great and small. Structures and regions that have been ignored are often gold mines for new insights and untold tales.”

—emphasis on tales. Does evolution “act”? No! Actors act; evolution does not. It has no mind. It doesn’t care. It is blind and aimless. Evolutionists don’t understand their own theory! Their tale only makes sense if one already assumes evolution.

“We found that the very features that appeared in early dinosaurs to stiffen the leg ended up being co-opted in birds and their close relatives to mobilize the knee joint in a unique and extreme way,” Bhullar said. “Over and again, we see that evolution operates by repurposing existing structures and functions, often in surprising and unpredictable ways.”

Evolution does not—indeed, cannot—operate according to a purpose. God engineered the particulars; evolutionists imagine processes connecting them. In a very real sense, evolution serves the same role as an idol worshiped by pagans.

Bird brain from the age of dinosaurs reveals roots of avian intelligence (13 Nov 2024, University of Cambridge). As you read the text and watch the video, look for the particulars: Archaeopteryx, a small bird fossil, and modern birds like parrots. Notice how these particulars are placed into the moyboy timeline so that they can draw lines of transformation between them. Notice especially that the entire evolutionary tale relies on empty space! For the fossil birds, they only have skulls with empty space inside them, yet they imagine the sizes, structures, and capabilities of brains inside fossil skulls filled with nothing but air.

A ‘one of a kind’ fossil discovery could transform our understanding of how the unique brains and intelligence of modern birds evolved, one of the most enduring mysteries of vertebrate evolution.

Waiting for Bigot

Does the “understanding” ever come? Did the fossil skull answer all the questions? Clearly not. As usual, it raised more questions mentioned in the text and video.

While the discovery is a significant breakthrough, the researchers say it is only the first step in understanding the evolution of bird intelligence. Future studies may reveal how Navaornis interacted with its environment, helping to answer broader questions about the evolution of bird cognition over time.

Ah yes, future studies. The “understanding” that evolutionists keep promising always is out there in futureware, like the fruit that Tantalus could never grasp. The lack of understanding reduces the evolutionary biologists’ bluffing assertions to chutzpah.

“This fossil represents a species at the midpoint along the evolutionary journey of bird cognition,” said Field, who is also the Strickland Curator of Ornithology at Cambridge’s Museum of Zoology. “Its cognitive abilities may have given Navaornis an advantage when it came to finding food or shelter, and it may have been capable of elaborate mating displays or other complex social behaviour.”

It “may have” given an advantage? That’s a clue that they are engaging in storytelling, not science. Don’t be distracted by the artwork and the busy work. Reconstructing the skeleton of Navaornis and digitizing it into a 3-D model certainly required expertise and time, but the skeleton belonged to a successful flying bird, not a primitive bird trying to evolve into an advanced bird. It’s like arranging three different shovels in the garage (one flat, one curved, one for snow) and telling a story about how they evolved from a common ancestor. Tools presuppose a toolmaker.

Update 11/22/2024: Paleontologist Günter Bechly wrote about Navaornis at Evolution News, stating that “New Fossil Stem Bird Is Surprisingly Modern.”

In that last video, notice how they included a brief clip of starling murmurations (coordinated flight). Watch this Illustra video about starlings, and this one too, and consider whether King Charley’s Stuff Happens Law could ever account for the “evolution” of brains that enable such wonders.