comments answered, evolution and creation

Anonymous said...


""Aside from the fact that the theory of evolution is supported by scientific observation and is subject to testable predictions (which are routinely confirmed)



Nothing of significance, of course, as I will explain further down.





"How can you say that? You cannot go back to observe it happening in the past and you certainly can't show it happening today."



Okay, here is my previous comment on this subject:(From "Creation versus Evolution - Basics revisited)



Operational Science - "operational science is the nuts-and-bolts of science. The scientific method is a staple of operational science, in which:*a problem or question is addressed with a hypothesis*a test is devised that tests the hypothesis*if successful, the test is repeated several times and ways to see if the results are consistent*if still successful, now we have a valid theory*if the theory withstands further testing and is accepted by the scientific community as consistently true, it becomes a law."



Not to mention that operational science doesn't attempt to work beyond what is observable and testable today.



Two points about your operational science vs. historical science bit (which I note has made the rounds in creationist circles with the same gaping flaws as your argument) and especially about your erroneous claim that the theory of evolution is not subject to testing or observation:a. It is correct that, with any historical science, we cannot go back in time and find out 100% exactly what happened exactly when. We are indeed unable to observe directly with our own eyes events that lie in the past



So that part isn't a fallacy after all then? We have our first point of agreement.



– but that does not mean that what you refer to as historical science in this context is not subject to the scientific method in an attempt to get as close to an objective truth as possible.We cannot perform experiments in the sense of devising an experiment, physically going into a lab and performing the experiment. We can, however, use the scientific method and construct (and test) falsifiable hypotheses as follows:* a hypothesis is stated* a test is devised that tests the hypothesis: in this case, not a lab experiment, but a testable prediction – a prediction of what will and will not be found, because the “lab” of the archaeologist is our whole world, and the “experiments” are digs* if successful, the test is repeated several times and ways to see if the results are consistent* if still successful, now we have a valid theory



Wrong and wrong. You are going to go on to explain this and hang yourself in the process on the petard of your own reasoning...



For example, archaeologists in different parts of the world find fossils in different layers, allowing them to construct a rough timeline of what kind of fossils are found in which layers.



Ah-ah-ah! You are presupposing that fossils are layers according to a timeline in that different layers vary widely in age. You cannot prove that, you simply presuppose. In fact, the idea that the layering around the world is a result of flood and post-flood sedimentation makes much more sense. You are beginning with suppositions rather than facts.



Using radiometric dating, they can say that one layer in one location is the same age as another layer in another location.



As I have posted before and will post again, radiometric dating is very unreliable beyond a few thousand years. One of the dirty secrets of science is the number of times an object is dated by radiometrics and proof is then offered that the object is nowhere near as old as it was "dated." There is no dating method that is foolproof for a number of reasons stated previously, but for one thing we cannot know that systems in operation today were working the same way four thousand years ago because careful records and observations were not made. It is also true that, if there was a world-wide flood, anything found on earth before that flood was radically altered so that you could hardly "observe" what life and the earth was like previous to that event based on what is available to us in the rock layers.



These are observations.This allows them to form a picture of what kind of creatures lived at the same time, as well as before and after each other.



No, it most certainly does not. We can observe creatures that were buried during a catastrophic event and try to glean what we can from remains as to what they looked like and so on, but we cannot by any provable means determine dates.



From this they can form a hypothesis, say, that a certain creature evolves over time.



The hypothesis was already there. That was your presupposition in the first place. So far you have proved nothing.



From this, they can then construct a testable prediction, for example that if there were creatures that looked like X in one layer and there are creatures that looked like Z in another layer, that it is likely that we would find a transitional species Y in a layer that is dated by independent means to a time between the other two layers.



Besides the dating problem, it is no great feat to predict that a creature similar creatures will be found in different places. This is what we see all over the world today. Big surprise there.



But beyond that, the term "transitional species" is being bandied about. Is a salamander a transitional form? No, it is just a salamander. You want transitional, you have to find creatures that are in the middle of the transition from no eye to eye, yes, a partway eye that somehow functions as something else until it becomes an eye. Or, a Bombadier Beetle predecessor that has partly "evolved" some of the complex bombing apparatus and, again, is using it for something else until it can become the fiery weapon it is in creatures today.



(Note that such a prediction would confirm their hypothesis and falsify YEC, since especially the flood model offers no plausible explanation for the available data.)



I am waiting for such data....



Now, instead of heading into a lab and throwing some chemicals into a petridish (though more about that later), the scientists’ “test” is the next dig. They consistently find fossils that match the current understanding of the phylogenetic tree and the overall timeline. As they flesh out this model, there are occasional minor adjustments, but never anything that calls the entire model into question.The current scientifically accepted timeline was constructed in exactly this way, with many successive “tests” and predictions. (Tiktaalik is a good example of this.) Every time a new dig is started, scientists can predict with great certainty what kinds of fossils in general they will and will not find in each layer. That is not to say they won’t find new information (which is why they’re digging, after all), but it will not be information that fundamentally contradicts the current modern synthesis.Such predictions, by the way, universally elude creation science. Creation science has not come up with any consistent (and consistently confirmed) theory that explains why fossils are layered in predictable ways and in line with the phylogenetic tree. (Come to think of it, that was yet another question you were running away from a lot last year.)Tiktaalik, for example, was found when scientists were looking to fill in a part of the phylogenetic tree for which they did not yet have a fossil. They used a combination of dating methods and previous fossil finds of creatures both preceding and succeeding Tiktaalik to predict where such a fossil would be likely to be found – and found it.Such a (successful) prediction is one of many confirmations of the theory of evolution. Now, according to creation science, such a prediction should be impossible. And yet it was made and confirmed. You draw your own conclusions. If you have a logical explanation, by all means present it; if your only response is that “it’s just a matter of opinion”, then you’re conceding the logical argument.b. While creation science may be a purely historical (and speculative) science, the theory of evolution also covers genetics, biology etc. so actually there is no shortage of “going into a lab and doing an experiment” work as well. When hypothesizing, for example, that certain taxonomic groups split from each other at some point in the past, this can be observed not just in the fossil record, but also in a comparison of their DNA.



That certain animals are shown to be related is not a surprise to a YEC. In fact, we would expect that all animals found now are related to the animals found in fossil rocks. But this entire teaching about how the rock layers have the animals in "taxonomic order" is a complete pile of garbage that is as factual as the Haeckel drawings. In fact, the rock layers are not in consistent order around the planet. Not only that, often rock layers are assigned ages according to the fossils, which makes statements such as that above as classic circular reasoning. YEC models have several reasons why you would tend to find like animals grouped together.



(Yet another confirmation of the theory of evolution for which creation science offers no explanation.) See www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501177.html”>this article for an example.Creation science offers no research in this regard (again, because it is incapable of offering testable predictions). It only says that DNA is amazingly complex and must therefore be designed, and that’s where the matter rests.”



No, YEC says much more than that. In fact, YEC scientists and non-YEC scientists have discovered that DNA must be in place to code for the RNA which precedes DNA. Also, YEC proponents don't just say "it is too complex", but rather give very sound reasons why (chirality, for instance). Here is just one such article:



~~~~~~~



Origin of life: the chirality problem


TJ Archive > Volume 12 Issue 3 > Origin of life: the chirality problem
First published:TJ 12(3):263–266December 1998



by Jonathan Sarfati


Many important molecules required for life exist in two forms. These two forms are non-superimposable mirror images of each other, i.e.: they are related like our left and right hands. Hence this property is called chirality, from the Greek word for hand. The two forms are called enantiomers (from the Greek word for opposite) or optical isomers, because they rotate plane-polarised light either to the right or to the left.

Whether or not a molecule or crystal is chiral is determined by its symmetry. A molecule is achiral (non-chiral) if and only if it has an axis of improper rotation, that is, an n-fold rotation (rotation by 360°/n) followed by a reflection in the plane perpendicular to this axis maps the molecule on to itself. Thus a molecule is chiral if and only if it lacks such an axis. Because chiral molecules lack this type of symmetry, they are called dissymmetric. They are not necessarily asymmetric (i.e. without symmetry), because they can have other types of symmetry.1 However, all amino acids (except glycine) and many sugars are indeed asymmetric as well as dissymmetric.


Chirality and life


Nearly all biological polymers must be homochiral (all its component monomers having the same handedness. Another term used is optically pure or 100 % optically active) to function. All amino acids in proteins are ‘left-handed’, while all sugars in DNA and RNA, and in the metabolic pathways, are ‘right-handed’.


A 50/50 mixture of left- and right-handed forms is called a racemate or racemic mixture. Racemic polypeptides could not form the specific shapes required for enzymes, because they would have the side chains sticking out randomly. Also, a wrong-handed amino acid disrupts the stabilizing α-helix in proteins. DNA could not be stabilised in a helix if even a single wrong-handed monomer were present, so it could not form long chains. This means it could not store much information, so it could not support life.2


Ordinary chemistry produces racemates


A well-regarded organic chemistry textbook states a universal chemical rule in bold type:
‘Synthesis of chiral compounds from achiral reagents always yields the racemic modification.’ and ‘Optically inactive reagents yield optically inactive products.’3
This is a consequence of the Laws of Thermodynamics. The left and right handed forms have identical free energy (G), so the free energy difference (ΔG) is zero. The equilibrium constant for any reaction (K) is the equilibrium ratio of the concentration of products to reactants. The relationship between these quantities at any Kelvin temperature (T) is given by the standard equation:


K = exp (–ΔG/RT)
where R is the universal gas constant (= Avogadro’s number x Boltzmann’s constant k) = 8.314 J/K.mol.


For the reaction of changing left-handed to right-handed amino acids (L → R), or the reverse (R → L), ΔG = 0, so K = 1. That is, the reaction reaches equilibrium when the concentrations of R and L are equal; that is, a racemate is produced. This explains the textbook rule above.


Separating the left hand from the right


To resolve a racemate (i.e. separate the two enantiomers), another homochiral substance must be introduced. The procedure is explained in any organic chemistry textbook. The idea is that right-handed and left-handed substances have identical properties, except when interacting with other chiral phenomena. The analogy is that our left and right hands grip an achiral (non-chiral) object like a baseball bat equally, but they fit differently into a chiral object like a left-handed glove. Thus to resolve a racemate, an organic chemist will usually use a ready-made homochiral substance from a living organism. The reaction products of the R and L enantiomers with an exclusively right handed substance R′ , that is R-R′ and L-R′ (called diastereomers), are not mirror images. So they have different physical properties, e.g. solubility in water, thus they can be separated.


However, this does not solve the mystery of where the optical activity in living organisms came from in the first place. A recent world conference on ‘The Origin of Homochirality and Life’ made it clear that the origin of this handedness is a complete mystery to evolutionists.4 The probability of forming one homochiral polymer of N monomers by chance = 2–N. For a small protein of 100 amino acids, this probability = 2–100 = 10–30. Note, this is the probability of any homochiral polypeptide. The probability of forming a functional homochiral polymer is much lower, since a precise amino acid sequence is required in many places. Of course, many homochiral polymers are required for life, so the probabilities must be compounded. Chance is thus not an option.


A further problem is that homochiral biological substances racemize in time. This is the basis of the amino acid racemization dating method. Its main proponent is Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.5 As a dating method, it is not very reliable, since the racemization rate is strongly dependent on temperature and pH, and depends on the particular amino acid.6 Racemization is also a big problem during peptide synthesis and hydrolysis.7 It shows that the tendency of undirected chemistry is towards death, not life.
A tragic reminder of the importance of chirality is thalidomide. In the early 1960s, this drug was prescribed to pregnant women suffering from morning sickness. However, while the left-handed form is a powerful tranquilliser, the right handed form can disrupt fetal development, resulting in severe birth defects. Unfortunately, the synthesis of the drug produced a racemate, as would be expected, and the wrong enantiomer was not removed before the drug was marketed.8


In my own undergraduate chemistry education, one of the required experiments demonstrated these concepts. We synthesized the dissymmetric complex ion, [Co(H2NC2H4NH2)3]3+,9 from achiral reagents, so a racemate was produced. We resolved it by reacting it with a homochiral acid from a plant source, forming diastereomers that could be resolved by fractional crystallisation. When the resultant homochiral crystals were dissolved, and activated charcoal (a catalyst) added, the substance quickly racemized, because a catalyst accelerates approach to equilibrium.


Origin-of-life researchers have tried to think of other means of producing the required homochirality. There have been unsuccessful attempts to resolve racemates by other means.


Circularly polarized ultraviolet light


With circularly polarized light, the electric field direction rotates along the beam, so it is a chiral phenomenon. Homochiral substances have different absorption intensities for left and right CP light—this is called circular dichroism (CD).10 Similarly, CP light is absorbed differently by left and right enantiomers. Since photolysis (destruction by light) occurs only when light photons are absorbed, CP light destroys one enantiomer more readily than the other. However, because CP light also destroys the ‘correct’ form to some extent, this method would not produce the necessary 100 % homochirality required for life. One of the best results has been 20 % optically pure camphor, but this occurred after 99 % of the starting material had been destroyed. 35.5 % optical purity would have resulted after 99.99 % destruction.11 ‘A practically optically pure compound (99.99 per cent) … is obtained at an asymptotic point where absolutely no material remains.’12


Another problem is that magnitude and sign (i.e. right-favouring or left-favouring) of CD depends on the frequency of the CP light.10 This means that resolution can occur only with CP light over a narrow frequency band. Over a broad band, enantioselective effects would cancel.
Circularly polarised light has recently been revived as a solution in a paper by the Australian astronomer Jeremy Bailey in Science,13 and widely reported in the media. His team has discovered circularly polarised infrared radiation in a nebula. They admit in the paper that they have not discovered the required circularly polarised ultraviolet light nor any evidence that amino acids are produced in nebulae. They are also aware of the very limited enantioselectivity of CP light, and the fact that the effect averages to zero over a whole spectrum (the Kuhn-Condon rule). However, their faith in chemical evolution colours the way they interpret the evidence.


Not all evolutionists are convinced by the proposal of Bailey’s team. For example, Jeffrey Bada said, ‘It’s just a series of maybe steps. To me, that makes the whole thing a big maybe.’14
Another proposed source of circularly polarised light is synchrotron radiation from a neutron star,15 but this is speculative and doesn’t solve the chemical problems.


Beta decay and the weak force


β-decay is one form of radioactive decay, and it is governed by one of the four fundamental forces of nature, the weak force. This force has a slight handedness, called parity violation, so some theorists thought β-decay could account for the chirality in living organisms.16 However, the weak force is aptly named—the effect is minuscule—a long way from producing the required 100 % homochirality. One specialist in the chirality problem, organic chemist William Bonner, professor emeritus at Stanford University, said, ‘none of this work has yielded convincing conclusions’.17 Another researcher concluded:


‘the exceptional prebiotic conditions required do not favour asymmetric β-radiolysis as the selector of the exclusive signature of optical activity in living nature.’18


Another aspect of parity violation is that the L-amino acids and D-sugars have a theoretically slightly lower energy than their enantiomers so are slightly more stable. But the energy difference is immeasurable—only about 10–17 kT, meaning that there would be only one excess L-enantiomer for every 6x1017 molecules of a racemic mixture of amino acids!19


Optically active quartz powders


Quartz is a widespread mineral—the commonest form of silica (SiO2) on Earth. Its crystals are hexagonal and dissymmetric.20 So some investigators tried to use optically active quartz powders to adsorb one enantiomer more than the other. But they had no success. Besides, there are equal amounts of left and right-handed quartz crystals on Earth.21


Clay minerals


Some investigators have reported a very small chiral selection effect by clay minerals, but the effects may have been an artefact of the technique used. Selective adsorption and binding have now been rejected.22 Even if modern clays did have a chiral bias, this could be due to previous absorption of optically active biomolecules (which are, of course produced by living things). Prebiotic clays would then have had no chiral bias.


Self-selection


A small minority of chiral substances crystallize into homochiral crystals. Louis Pasteur was not only the founder of the germ theory of disease, the destroyer of ‘spontaneous generation’ ideas, and a creationist, he was also the first person in history to resolve a racemate. He used tweezers to separate the left and right-handed crystals of such a substance, sodium ammonium tartrate.23


This separation only happened because of outside interference by an intelligent investigator, who could recognise the different patterns. On the supposed primitive earth, there was no such investigator. Therefore the two forms, even if they could be separated by chance, would have re-dissolved together and re-formed a racemic solution.


Also, Pasteur was fortunate to choose one of the few substances that self-resolve in crystalline form. And even this substance has this property only below 23°C, so it’s perhaps fortunate that 19th century laboratories were not well heated!


Fluke seeding


Some theorists have proposed that a fluke seeding of a supersaturated solution with a homochiral crystal would crystallise out the same enantiomer. However, the primordial soup, if it existed,24 would have been extremely dilute and grossly contaminated, as shown by many writers.25 Also, nothing could be done with the growing homochiral crystal, because it would be immersed in a solution of the remaining wrong enantiomer. Concentrating the solution would crystallise out this wrong enantiomer. Diluting the solution would dissolve the crystal, so the alleged process would have to keep starting from scratch.


Homochiral template


Some have proposed that a homochiral polymer arose by chance and acted as a template. However, this ran into severe problems. A template of 100 % right-handed poly-C (RNA containing only cytosine monomers) was made (by intelligent chemists!). This could direct the oligomerisation (formation of small chains) of (activated) G (guanine) nucleotides. Indeed, pure right-handed G was oligomerised much more efficiently than pure left-handed G. But racemic G did not oligomerise, because:


‘monomers of opposite handedness to the template are incorporated as chain terminators … This inhibition raises an important problem for many theories of the origin of life.’26


Transfer RNAs selected the right enantiomer


One attempt to solve the chirality problem was proposed by Russell Doolittle, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California at San Diego, and an atheist. He claimed: ‘From the start of their [Transfer RNA synthetases’] existence, they probably bound only L-amino acids.’27 He never explains how such complicated enzymes could have functioned unless they were themselves homochiral, or how they would operate before RNA was composed of homochiral ribose. Doolittle’s ‘solution’ is mere hand-waving. It is hardly worth refuting except that it appeared in a well-known anti-creationist book, which says something about the quality of its editing, or the quality of anti-creationist arguments.


It seems like Doolittle was trying to explain away his prior televised evolution/creation debate with biochemist Duane Gish held before 5,000 people at Liberty University on 13 Oct 1981. The pro-evolution journal Science described the debate as a ‘rout’ in favour of Gish.28 The next day, the debate was reported by the pro-evolution Washington Post under the headline ‘Science Loses One to Creationism’. The sub-headline cited Doolittle’s anguished remark: ‘How am I going to face my wife?’ showing that Doolittle himself knew he was defeated.


Magnetic fields


Some German chemists, led by Eberhard Breitmaier of the Institute for Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University Gerhard-Domagk-Strasse in Bonn, announced that a very strong magnetic field (1.2–2.1 T) produced 98 % homochiral products from achiral reagents.29 So organic chemists like Philip Kocienski, of the University of Southampton, speculated that the earth’s magnetic field could have caused life’s homochirality. Although the earth’s magnetic field is about 10,000 times weaker than that of the experiment, Kocienski thought that vast time spans would result in the homochirality we see today.29 He may have forgotten about palaeogeomagnetic field reversals!


Yet other chemists like Tony Barrett, of London’s Imperial College, thought that the German experiment ‘seems just too good to be true.’29 This caution was vindicated about six weeks later. No-one else could reproduce the German team’s results. It turned out that one of the team, Guido Zadel, the post-doctoral fellow on whose thesis the original work was based, had adulterated the reagents with a homochiral additive.30


[Magnetochiral dichroism—post script]


See my subsequent article, Origin of life and the chirality problem: Is magnetochiral dichroism the solution?


Conclusion


The textbook cited earlier states:


‘We eat optically active bread & meat, live in houses, wear clothes, and read books made of optically active cellulose. The proteins that make up our muscles, the glycogen in our liver and blood, the enzymes and hormones … are all optically active. Naturally occurring substances are optically active because the enzymes which bring about their formation … are optically active. As to the origin of the optically active enzymes, we can only speculate’31


If we can only ‘speculate’ on the origin of life, why do so many people state that evolution is a ‘fact’? Repeat a rumour often enough and people will swallow it.


References


Cotton, F.A. and Wilkinson, G., 1980. Advanced Inorganic Chemistry: a Comprehensive Text, 4th Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc, NY, p. 47. Return to text.
Thiemann, W., ed., 1973. International Symposium on Generation and Amplification of Asymmetry in Chemical Systems, Jülich, Germany, pp 32–33, 1973; cited in: Wilder-Smith, A.E., 1981. The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution, Master Books, CA. Return to text.
Morrison, R.T. and Boyd, R.N., 1987. Organic Chemistry, 5th ed. Allyn & Bacon Inc. p.150. Return to text.
Cohen, J., 1995. Getting all turned around over the origins of life on earth. Science, 267:1265–1266. Return to text.
For example, Bada, J.L., Luyendyk, B.P. and Maynard, J.B., 1970. Marine sediments: Dating by racemization of amino acids. Science, 170:730–732. Return to text.
Gish, D.T., 1975. The amino acid racemization dating method. Impact series #23, Institute for Creation Research. Return to text.
Gish, D.T., 1970. Peptide synthesis. In: Needleman, S.B., 1970. Protein Sequence Determination, Springer–Verlag, New York. Return to text.
Brown, J.M. and Davies, S.G., 1989. Chemical asymmetric synthesis. Nature, 342(6250):631–636. Return to text.
This is an example of a dissymmetric molecule that is quite symmetrical. It belongs to the symmetry group D3, meaning it has one three-fold rotational symmetry axis and three perpendicular two-fold axes. Return to text.
Cotton and Wilkinson, Ref. 1, p.669–676. Return to text.
Belavoine, G., Moradpour, A. and Kagan, H.B., 1974. Preparation of Chiral Compounds with High Optical Purity by Irradiation with Circularly Polarised Light. J Amer. Chem. Soc., 96:5152–58, 1974. Return to text.
Thiemann, Ref. 2, pp. 222—223. Return to text.
Bailey, J., et al. 1998. Circular polarization in star-formation regions: implications for biomolecular homochirality. Science, 281(5377):672–674; Perspective by Irion, R. Did twisty starlight set stage for life? Same issue, pp. 626–627. Return to text.
Cited in Hecht, J., 1998. Inner circles. A strange light from space may account for life’s love of the left. New Scientist, 159(2146):11. Return to text.
Bonner, W.A., 1991. Origins of Life, 21:59–111, 1991. Cited in: Chyba, C.F. 1997. A Left-handed solar system. Nature, 389:234–235. Return to text.
The first appears to be Ulbricht, T.L.V., 1957, Quart. Rev., 13:48–6. Cited in: Garay, A.S. and Ahlgren-Beckendorf, J.A., 1990. Differential interaction of chiral β-particles with enantiomers. Nature, 346(6283):451–453. Return to text.
As stated by Cohen, Ref. 4. Return to text.
Meiring, W.J., 1987. Nuclear β-decay and the origin of biomolecular chirality. Nature, 329(6141):712–714. Return to text.
Bada, J.L., 1995. Origins of homochirality. Nature, 374(6523):594–595. Return to text.
The stable form below 573°C is α-quartz, the space groups of which are C312 and C322. That is, they have a three-fold screw axis and three perpendicular two-fold axes, but no improper rotational axis. Return to text.
Amariglio, A and Amariglio, H. in: R. Buvet and C. Ponnamperuma, eds., 1971. Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam-London. Return to text.
Youatt, B. and Brown R.D., 1981. Origins of chirality in nature: A reassessment of the postulated role of bentonite. Science, 212:1145–46. Return to text.
Pasteur, L., 1848. Annales de Chimie Physique, 24:442–59. Return to text.
Brooks, J. and Shaw, G., 1973. Origins and Development of Living Systems. Academic Press, London and New York, 1973, p. 359: ‘If there ever was a primitive soup, then we would expect to find at least somewhere on this planet either massive sediments containing enormous amounts of the various nitrogenous organic compounds, acids, purines, pyrimidines, and the like; or in much metamorphosed sediments we should find vast amounts of nitrogenous cokes. In fact no such materials have been found anywhere on earth.’ (emphasis added). Return to text.
Thaxton, C.B., Bradley, W.L. and Olsen, W.L, 1984. The Mystery of Life’s Origin, Philosophical Library Inc., New York. Return to text.
Joyce, G.F., Visser, G.M., van Boeckel, C.A.A., van Boom, J.H., Orgel, L.E. and van Westrenen, J., 1984. Chiral selection in poly(C)-directed synthesis of oligo(G). Nature, 310:602–4. Return to text.
Doolittle, R., 1983. Probability and the origin of life. In: Godfrey, L.R., ed., 1983. Scientists Confront Creationism, W.W. Norton, NY. Return to text.
Lewin, R., 1981. Science, 214:638. Return to text.
Bradley, D., 1994. A new twist in the tale of nature’s asymmetry. Science, 264:908. Return to text.
Clery, D and Bradley, D., 1994. Underhanded ‘breakthrough’ revealed. Science, 265:21. Return to text.
Morrison and Boyd, Ref. 3, p.157. Return to text.


~~~~~~~



It is important to emphasize that, in operational science, experimentation can yield results that can serve to more or less "prove" or "disprove" a hypothesis.”Again, while hypotheses and theories may be “disproven”, they are never “proven”, merely confirmed. “Proofs” happen in mathematics.”Sadly, the world doesn't understand this and many people believe that evolution, which is not even a testable theory, is a proven fact.”



Not only is the theory of evolution a testable theory, it is a tested theory.



Nope. You are beginning with presuppositions that provide you with a result that you desire, but because the presuppositions themselves are unproven, you have in fact proven nothing at all.



You’ve been arguing on this subject for years – would it kill you to read a mainstream text on the subject so you can argue your case more effectively?”So please understand that in the realm of historical science, particularly in the world of creation science versus evolution science, it is all about the interpretation of evidence, period. One must simply decide for oneself which model fits the evidence best in one's own opinion.”



... bearing in mind that the theory of evolution makes testable falsifiable predictions (see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ ) that are routinely confirmed, while creation science is incapable of offering such a thing. I guess it’s up to your opinion which of these two you would consider the more sound science.Or could you name any falsifiable predictions that creation science could offer, Radar?



Talkorigins is a terrible example for you to use, first of all. I pointed out last year that they still had disproven "proofs" in place on their website and, although these were pointed out to them, they remained. I might as well cite "Dr. Dino" in return.



Again, as I pointed out previously, YEC expects that the world would be covered with layers of rock, all of them with signs of water activity, and it would be quite possible for the layers to be found extending for many hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles. This has been found to be true.



YEC would predict that, occasionally, the remains of animals would be found to still be actual tissue rather than fossil, since the flood event was so relatively recent. Both the tissue remains of mammals and dinosaurs have been found in recent years.



YEC would predict that multiple species of the same basic kind of animal can be produced in just a few hundred years or less, thus accounting for the wide variety of species found on the planet today just a few thousand years after the flood event. This has proven to be observably true.



YEC would predict that, no matter how many generations of an animal were observed, it would never evolve into another kind of animal. This has proven to be true thus far (how many thousands of generations of bacteria and even fruit flies have we observed, eh?)



YEC would predict that every kind of animal found in fossils would have at least been noted to have existed in the records of early man, even if some of them have since fallen extinct. True.



There are many, many more. I have read articles by evolutionists about evolution being shown within the DNA code and it is always untrue. Yes, mutations can change DNA, but only in the way that one can shuffle cards. You can change the order, you can lose a card or two, but you never see a new card added to the deck. This is true with every form of life found on earth. Speciation and variation within kind has been observed, variation available from the genetic pool already in place. But new kinds of animals are not observed to arise.



Wait a minute, you ask. What about that link?



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/25/AR2005092501177.html



I fear it is old and disproven news.



In 2006, Dr. Georgia Purdom summarized the fallacy of the article with these bullet points:


"The amount of chimp DNA is 12% larger than what it is in humans.


Several hundred million bases (individual components of the DNA) of the chimp genome are still unanalyzed.


In many areas of the DNA sequence, major “rearrangements” seem apparent. These account for perhaps 4–10% dissimilarity between chimps and humans.


Chimps have 23 chromosomes and humans have only 22 (excluding sex chromosomes for both species)."



But we have learned much more recently. Allow me to quote from volume 21 (2) 2007 of the Journal of Creation - Peter Borger and Royal Truman:



"According to Darwinian theory, in the past we had a common ancestor with baboons, further back with bananas and still further with bacteria. This dogma has spread like a "meme", which is a contagious idea that propagates in a similar way as a virus by infecting brains, according the the inventor of the word, Richard Dawkins. In 2002, Roy Britten dispelled the first monkey meme that human and chimpanzee DNA sequences are 98.5% identical. He showed that when indel-mutations were also taken into account, the diffference suddenly became about 5%. The fact that chimpanzee genomes are about 10% larger than that of humans, a detail few people are aware of, raises the obvious question how a mere 5% difference, not to mention only 1%, could be mathematically even possible.



In 2005, the human and chimp genomes were compared. It became apparent that many protein coding genes fournd in humans are uniquely human and not found in chimpanzees. What about most of the other DNA, which does not code for proteins and differs between these organisms? Is there any significance to the differences, or are these biologically irrelevant?



MicroRNA





MicroRNA(miRNAs) genew, which do not code for proteins, are capturing headlines. MiRNAs are smaill single-stranded molecules consisted of ca.22 neucleotides, and have been shown to regulate the expression of genes either by blocking translations or inducing the degradation of selected mRNA strands. Typically, each kind of miRNA regulates the expression of hundreds of different mRNA, an inconceivable challenge for natural selection....



Using a new sequencing technique, Berezikov et al. (from a posting in 2006 in Natural Genetics) examined miRNAs expressed in human and adult brains, finding 447 new versions which had not been known earlier. They reported in December 2006 that about 8% of these new miRNA genes are uniquely human: 51 new sequences were absent in the chimpanzee dataset. In additiona, 25 miRNAs were found to be unique to the chimpanzee dataset, and none of these new miRNA are related to tRNAs, rRNAs or any other kinds of RNA expressed. Incidentally, there are hundreds of miRNA codes(miRNA does not appear in DNA) which appear in primate genomes but not in other taxa.



This is highly significant, since each miRNA can regulate networks of dozens or hundreds of mRNAs.....



Instead of a handful of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes scientists must now confront the possibility that many among the tens of millions of differences actually have biological significance..."



All creatures have some similarity in DNA, which testifies to a common designer. But certainly with each new finding about the human genome, the idea of humans having evolved from apes or anything else becomes more and more absurd.