Evolution: The Untold Story, Part 1

There are two kinds of evolution:

1) There’s the version that you read about in the bookstore. It’s two-thirds science fiction.

2) Then there’s the version that PhD biologists, cancer researchers and genetic engineers use to do their jobs.

The two are entirely different.

Popular books tell you evolution works like this:

“Mutations are the random changes in genes that constitute the raw material for evolution by non-random selection.”

-Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009

Dawkins would have you believe that all you need is the fantastically amazing power of natural selection, and given enough time, through random copying errors, the most extraordinary things become possible.

This is what casual bookstore readers and college freshmen are told. But it’s ridiculously oversimplified and it’s mostly false. It’sdick_and_jane the “Dick and Jane” story of Evolution.

But there’s another version of evolution:

It’s rarely mentioned, or at best glossed over, by the atheist evolution lobby and the mainstream press. Yet it’s incredibly sophisticated and elegant. This is “Real World” evolution.

As you begin to discover Real World Evolution, you find it’s entirely different from the Dick and Jane story you were taught. 98% of people know nothing about this. Today, the first in a series where I share with you the incredible adaptive engineering that’s under the hood of all living things.

Evolution Untold Story #1: How Bacteria Adapt

You probably know that bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. The more we use antibiotics, the more resistance bacteria develop and the harder it is to kill them. We all know that we must not over-use antibiotics. But has anyone ever told you how bacteria generate this resistance in the first place?

Hint: It doesn’t happen by accident.

You’re fighting off an infection and you’re taking antibiotics. To the bacteria, the antibiotic is poison. It leaks into the bacteria cell wall and begins to kill it. The bacteria says, “This poison is killing me. I have to find a way to pump this out of my system!”

It travels around in your body, hunting for a pump.

It locates a cell somewhere in your body that has a pump. It extracts a copy of that cell’s DNA from a plasmid. It locates the section of the new DNA that codes for a pump, inserts that code into its own existing DNA, and builds a pump.

This is called Horizontal Gene Transfer or HGT. It is one of the most common evolutionary mechanisms. This is “real world evolution.” It’s been observed in labs for 50 years now. Because of HGT, the traditional evolutionary “tree of life” isn’t really a tree, especially among lower organisms. Because of genes being passed back and forth between organisms, it’s more like a web.

If the new pump does its job, then the bacteria can now resist the antibiotic. It now produces other bacteria that inherit the same resistance.

But it also does something else: It finds its bacteria brothers and sisters in your system and gives them the same piece of code!

Now ALL the bacteria in your system have a pump that makes them immune to the antibiotic. Your only chance is to find a more powerful antibiotic or hope your body can find some other way to kill them.

Horizontal Gene Transfer on Video:

Consider what Horizontal Gene Transfer tells you about bacteria:

1. They know what new features they need to survive attack
2. They actively seek out other organisms with those features
3. They exchange and read the DNA of other organisms
4. They analyze the DNA of those organisms
5. They locate the sections of DNA that they need
6. They splice the correct sections of DNA into their own DNA
7. They build entire new complex structures with the instructions in that DNA
8. They evaluate the success of what they’ve done
9. They pass the adaptations along to their offspring
10. They evangelize the newly acquired code to their fellow bacteria

Notice that this does not take thousands of generations. It takes one! Through HGT, an organism can acquire a completely new feature in one step. No gradual accumulation of errors necessary.

Bacteria are not stupid. Invading organisms stage an attack, an arms race against your immune system. Bacteria are as skilled at using code as as any software programmer you’ve ever met.

Hmmm… what tricks could software engineers pick up by studying bacteria?

Your own immune system fights back the exact same way. When you get an immunization shot for tetanus, for example, a weak version of tetanus is injected into your blood stream. Your cells have to “crack the code” of how to kill it. Once they’ve done so, they pass this information to their offspring.

You need to get a new immune shot every 10 years, because after a long periods of time, if your immune cells don’t need the extra code, they’ll discard it. Your cells won’t carry around extra instructions they don’t need.

Single-celled organisms are capable of exchanging DNA with each other, and HGT is massively influential in the development of living things. My friend, Open Source Software is w-a-a-a-a-y older than Linux. It’s been powering nano-machines for 3 billion years!

Organisms share code much the same way musicians and writers and software engineers share riffs and rhythms and programs. The never-ending arms race between prey and predator makes each incredibly robust and ensures the survival of both.

Are you beginning to notice how entirely different this is from the antiquated “random mutation” theory? There’s nothing random about Real World Evolution at all. It’s spectacularly sophisticated. It’s intentional.

The “Dick and Jane” version of evolution is deeply misleading, because it fools you into believing that as long as cells replicate, evolution is somehow inevitable. That it’s bound to happen sooner or later. People try to tell you that natural selection is capable of cleaning up whatever mess is made by haphazard, purposeless accidents.

Not true. Even the most elementary mechanisms of evolution – like Horizontal Gene Transfer – are extraordinary feats of software programming genius. Natural Selection has no creative ability whatsoever. It’s just the final step after the cells have performed their task of innovation.

Organisms evolve much the same way human ideas evolve: By intentional innovation and necessity. By borrowing and recombining existing ideas from the outside to form new ones.

If you’ve witnessed the evolution of English or jazz or computer software or smart phones, then you also understand biological evolution. Because all these things evolve through an identical set of processes: Intentional lending, borrowing, and re-combining of the old to make something new.

By the way, geneticists and other professionals who do cancer research and artificially modify organisms do not splice DNA with a tiny set of tweezers. They employ Horizontal Gene Transfer and other mechanisms I’ll discuss in this series. Scientists set up the experiments, but the cells themselves do the heavy lifting.

And while evolution certainly makes many “fortunate discoveries,” they’re not “accidents” in the usual sense of the word. No more than Thomas Edison’s discovery that carbon is a good filament for a light bulb was an “accident.”

Edison’s light bulb was no accident! He swapped out thousands of materials until he found one that worked. Organisms exchange genes and chromosomes until they find genetic combinations that serve their purposes.

Horizontal Gene Transfer is just one of several amazing, systematic evolutionary mechanisms. It’s not random or accidental, it’s algorithmic. In future installments I’ll share 5 more with you. Stay tuned.

Perry Marshall

Bacterial Conjugation on Video:

National Science Foundation: “One step at a time!” Do organisms change slowly or by leaps and bounds?

Citizendium Encyclopedia: Horizontal Gene Transfer

HGT via Parasites: How Bacteria Can Transfer DNA Between Animals. That’s right – micro-organisms can transfer DNA from one species to another. From Medial News Today.

Download The First 3 Chapters of Evolution 2.0 For Free, Here – https://evo2.org/evolution/

Where Did Life And The Genetic Code Come From? Can The Answer Build Superior AI? The #1 Mystery In Science Now Has A $10 Million Prize. Learn More About It, Here – https://www.herox.com/evolution2.0

124 Responses

  1. joe says:

    Quote : “Intelligent designer theory has absolutely no explanatory power”

    What I found viewing that video is even more evidence that Darwinian evolution is even less likely now for me. Maybe evolution is driven by intent and not by random mutations overtime. All the facts I have read, to me seem to point to life evolving with intent to get somewhere, and not by a random act of chance and following well, the way Richard Dawkins and the NAS tells us, I would like to see how that video fits in with the one minded evo-atheists view, I know the answer “well Joe, it evolved that way by random, chance mutations over time, trust us its true: lol.. Thanks Patric and Perry (and every one else) for all the info here it has opened my mind a bit more.

    • Joe,

      Thanks so much for your comments. I just want to salute you in your pursuit of the truth and the path that it leads you through. Never fear facts. They are always your friends.

      Perry Marshall

  2. Ziad says:

    I’ve been reading the Works of Harun Yahyah. HIS main message is that there is NO evidence to support the theory of evolution. He wants to know why isn’t there more fossil evidence to prove it. He listed all the various forged fossils that supposedly proved man evolved from apes and what not until they were exposed as fakes. What I want to know from YOU Perry is if there IS any evidence to confirm that evolution, whether darwinian or, as you put it, the “real” evolution story actually happened? Also can you send me another email where you debunked the junk data thing on DNA? email is [email protected]. My mother deleted the entire inbox, because she’s and idiot >:(, and I had to subscribe again to cosmicfingerprints to get all the emails again.

  3. joe says:

    Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence:
    http://www.ted.com/talks/stefano_mancuso_the_roots_of_plant_intelligence.html

    This is a very good Video and one that touches a subject not many of us think about when we think of evolution, we all focus on molecules to man but how about molecules to plants.
    If animals can evolve into animals (humans) with vast intelligence I wonder if plants can do the same?? (seems they can going by the video) if so, is intelligence part of the the cells, meaning it has always been there from the first cells. Could this also point to the evolution of the cells evolving with intelligence rather than by Darwinian evolution that says we only have intelligence by random mutations over time. There is a lot of evidence in this blog that points to it being true, that life is here because it was designed that way in the first place.

    I cant see the problem if it is true and we are here because of the way the cells are designed. Why do a lot of people hate the word “designed” when talking about how life got here, hell its even be made a taboo in the science world, they say you must only use the tools of “the atheists view of Darwinian evolution” Science the main players running it have lock science into a atheist view of the world. Not all scientists are atheists or religious minded people most are normal open minded people, but if their quest for the truth with the evidence points to design, they cant enter that path. They can only enter the path called the “atheists view of Darwinian evolution” to me the atheist view is an extreme religious type of view. I don’t care where the truth lies Darwin, god, aliens from space or what ever, I just want the truth. For me a atheist view of life is just the same as a young earth religious view Its a one minded view and the evidence is being tainted to fit that view, All for the sake of peoples egos and NOT where the evidence points to, its pretty sad really.

  4. Old Git Tom says:

    patrikbeno,

    as Kamod’s post shows, I think what he is talking about is ‘speciation’. As Perry Marshall has shown, bacteria mutate in a weird & wonderful way. But even that is not the crude, random, mechanistic process beloved by Darwin’s followers.

    So, bacteria mutate, but only into other forms of bacteria. What Kamod is asking for is evidence that life-forms can evolve & change their whole structure, function & design, into something completely different – a novel phenotype from a revolutionized genotype.

    The Darwinian answer is that it is actually taking place, but too slowly for us to notice it. That’s a (vaguely) viable answer, but no more than another unproven theory. In fact, Darwinism has no satisfactory account of how speciation takes place. OGT

  5. oubaas says:

    I know about HGT between bacteria, but I have never heard of it between humans and bacteria. How would the bacteria deal with the introns in human genes or does it steal human mRNA, reverse transcribe it into DNA before integrating it into their genomes? Can you point me to a publication where human pump genes have been transferred to bacteria?

    As I understand immunization, there is no HGT involved. The injected antigen binds to an existing form of antibody presented on the cell surface. This binding stimulates proliferation of that specific lineage and after a week or 2 these cells are present in high numbers in the circulation. Once again, can you point me to publication showing HGT in immunization?

    • I don’t believe I specifically said that HGT occurs between humans and bacteria. I am aware of this paper though:

      “genes engineered into transgenic plants have transferred via pollen to bacteria and yeasts living in the gut of bee larvae.” See http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/GEessays/horizgenetransfer.html

      In regards to your second question, I don’t know. What I said was:

      Your cells have to “crack the code” of how to kill it. Once they’ve done so, they pass this information to their offspring.

      My understanding is that immunizations stimulate cells to build up resistance to a specific germ.

  6. pradip_sapkota says:

    I have few questions in mind that are bothering me one of them is about evolution. my question is if every species in the world are evolved from same single celled organism then it should evolve to same complex organism when it is in the same condition. Why it evolve into billion of different complex organism.

    • Because organisms edit their own DNA in response to their environment, and environments vary widely.

      • pradip_sapkota says:

        even if so all the DNA in every cell in certain environment should do that and ultimately every organism should evolve into same being.

        • Old Git Tom says:

          pradip_sapkota,

          you commented to Perry,

          “even if so all the DNA in every cell in certain environment should do that and ultimately every organism should evolve into same being.”

          Do I u/stand you right? You mean Darwinism suggests all or most species are in competition? So therefore one ‘super-species’ should come to dominate all environments & make all other competitors extinct?

          If so, I have no good answer to this, except to comment that Darwinism is a very ‘woolly’ theory, so it throws off differing interpretations.

          Version 1 says (like Perry) that there are many different environments. Handy, since then any & every configuration of organism can be explained away as well-adapted! There is no ‘competition’ since every one is a winner.

          Version 2 might say that humankind is the super-species that is eliminating all other species. The trouble with this version is that we humans long since stopped adapting to environments. We construct our own, like villages, farms, & now mega-cities. So Darwinism as a macro theory does not apply.

          Version 3 says humanity is the super-species becoz it has the ultimate survival tool, intelligence. This version strongly suggests therefore that intelligence is the quite natural outcome of brute evolutionary processes. This Darwinians dogmatically reject – “There is no teleology in evolution”!

          If you ever wondered why the Darwinian orthodox get so irascible, look at the mess above they have to contend with. The theory was brilliant in its day, but is now an obsolete Victorian relic. OGT

          • pradip_sapkota says:

            Yes, I understand but I never asked about Darwinism it just occurred in my mind.
            I was just wondering about that but still I am not satisfied with your comment.if you don’t mind would you explain this in detail if possible with example because this question is just eating me up.

  7. Old Git Tom says:

    Patrickbeno,

    I think Kamod is querying how mutation explains speciation. I don’t think the various versions of Darwinism ever did. OGT

    • patrikbeno says:

      If you are able to accept that mutation causes change in individuals, it should not be so hard to explain.

      Speciation is a sequence of genetic changes that make individuals within species gradually less and less genetically compatible, thus causing genetic divergence of the populations.

      This happens e.g. when two populations are geographically separated but it is not the only case. Still the same species, but they continue to change (evolve) independently until they are reproductively incompatible.

      This is gradual process, never new species just pop up into existence. there’s never dog giving birth to a frog.
      The process of gradual incompatibility might look like this:

      1) individuals from different populations can mate with each other and have a healthy offspring
      2) they can mate but produce offspring some kind of handicap or even with genetic disorder.

      This is because their genomes become less able to cooperate. The fit perfectly into their own populations but are unable to function with different genomes. Cooperation is breaking down.

      3) offspring may be in general healthy but becomes sterile / infertile
      4) offspring won’t survive until adulthood (because of genetic disorder)
      5) offspring won’t survive childhood
      6) offspring won’t survive infancy
      7) offspring is born dead
      8) they mate but each pregnancy ends with spontaneous abortion
      9) individuals can mate but are unable even to conceive
      10) they don’t even try to mate

      Population diverge, they start to evolve without affecting their respective gene pools. Their gene pools diverge.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

      As posted elsewhere:
      Macroevolution is composed of microevolutionary events. Sequence of various trivial changes leads to different species in the long run. This is basically proven by common descent.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent
      (Forget for now about whether these changes are designed or not, it is irrelevant. The point is that trivial changes between every step in 1..1000 accumulate to make illusion of big significant change visible when comparing the step #1 to step #1000)

  8. Old Git Tom says:

    Patrikbeno,

    thanks for your reply. You said;

    “If you are able to accept that mutation causes change in individuals, it should not be so hard to explain.”

    Mutation = change, & there is no time w/out change. So in accepting evolution of some kind, I/we merely don’t deny the existence of time. But that gets neither of us very far in evaluating Darwin’s theory. It seems Darwinism’s base tautology keeps resurfacing in various forms of ‘explanations’ that are not; they are just more empty affirmations of the obvious.

    Eg., “Macroevolution is composed of microevolutionary events. Sequence of various trivial changes leads to different species in the long run. This is basically proven by common descent.”

    To which I reply that trivially, all macro are composed of micros. Over the body of another truism, I affirm that biology is still struggling to demonstrate how small quantitative changes can become qualitative change – new species. It is empirically suggested, but not theoretically defined, or illustrated by repeat experiments. What is left is belief or assumption – dogma in a white lab coat.

    Common descent is widely accepted, but Darwinism still does not explain the mechanism, & IMHO, cannot w/out self-contradiction. Ie., small (infinitessimal) changes either affect survival rates positively/negatively, or they have no effect. As has been well said, 0.0001% of nothing is still nothing.

    ‘Species’ has different definitions. The inability to sexually reproduce is one part. Genetics & taxonomy provide others. In Darwin’s classic account, birds become blown to offshore islands & ‘gradually’ develop independently. That is plausible, yet it contradicts a Darwin fundamental. If the island environment is the same as the mainland’s, birds should not evolve differently from mainland relatives. On the other hand, if environments are dissimilar, the island birds would be ill-adapted & so sooner or later become extinct. Note, Darwinism wants to have it both ways. Nor can Darwinism claim an infinite number of possible environments, since then any form or shape can be emptily explained away.

    If we talk of species, as metaphorically, completely different shapes, mechanisms & ‘designs’, then the Darwinian incremental change theory appears even more threadbare. As Perry Marshall has so brilliantly argued, DNA has a complex integrity that is incompatible with the crude idea of random, singular changes. And as Howard Bloom has argued, even the most humble bacteria have an incredible ability to ‘redesign’ their genetics to adapt to a radically changed environment.

    Last, Darwinism still lacks laboratory support. Eg., for decades experimentalists have been inducing mutations in fruit flies (dropsila). Even four-wing mutations have been produced from the standard two-wing design. But as you say, these variations either do not survive or reproduce.

    In other words, experimental biology knows much more about the ‘mechanism’ of genetics; but still, little about the mysteries of speciation. OGT

    • patrikbeno says:

      Tom,

      First, you need to get rid of some of your invalid assumptions:

      (1) With respect to speciation, source of mutation is irrelevant. It may be random, it may be designed. Does Not Matter.

      (2) Small changes DO accumulate. Try simple math. Add $0.0001 a year and you’ll have $100 in a million years. And don’t get me started on exponential accumulation (like mutation in previously mutated data, or interest of interest: you invest $1 for 0.0001% p.a., you’ll have 171% gain in a million years). And now surprise: even random changes DO accumulate in some direction, you won’t be going around one place. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion

      (3) ‘Species’ has different definitions, yes. SPECIATION does not. Speciation means forking of one species into two species. It never happens overnight, and you cannot expect frog becoming a dog in a single generation. You seem to expect something like this come from he laboratory experiment but this is your failure only.

      Furthermore:

      Common Descent proves speciation as I described it (forking of species). It also proves you cannot expect frog becoming a dog overnight. Even if there are some details left unexplained, it does not invalidate speciation as I described it.

      OGT: “The inability to sexually reproduce is one part. Genetics & taxonomy provide others. ”

      Taxonomy? Not really. Genetics? Yes. But the net result when it comes to mechanics of speciation is always the same. Child must be compatible with parent, descendant with its ancestor. If a speciation occurs that renders child incompatible with parent, child does not survive. It is gene pools that speciate, not single individuals. Stick to the example of sexual reproduction, it is much easier to understand than bacteria, and it is the only one that explains speciation in e.g. mammals.

      OGT: “If the island environment is the same as the mainland’s, birds should not evolve differently from mainland relatives.”

      First, two environments are never the same. Second, even if they are, mutagenesis sequence is never the same. It cannot be. Don’t make me explain why.

      OGT: “On the other hand, if environments are dissimilar, the island birds would be ill-adapted & so sooner or later become extinct. ”

      It depends on how much different. “Little different” is just enough selection pressure to enforce species adaptation towards new environment. “Much different” renders the species extinct.

      OGT: “Perry Marshall has so brilliantly argued, DNA has a complex integrity that is incompatible with the crude idea of random, singular changes ”

      This proves that you fail to understand that the speciation process does not care about the source of mutation/adaptation. Forget random.

      You really should do your homework:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation#Artificial_speciation
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
      http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

      • There’s a big difference between mechanisms that produce micro-evolution and those that produce macro. For example there’s no one-part-at-a-time transition from car to airplane. The two may have many parts in common but one did not gradually morph into the other.

        We have many examples from human experience of tiny incremental “kaizen” improvements; we have other examples of wholesale reorganization and massive change. Sometimes it is impossible to get from A to B one tiny step at a time. You can’t go from DOS to Windows with tiny incremental changes.

        My research indicates that some mechanisms, like epigenetics, do operate at the level of small incremental changes. Horizontal gene transfer and transposition mostly produce small incremental changes too, but sometimes produce large ones when huge numbers of genes are re-arranged.

        Genome doubling aka Ohno’s 2R Hypothesis says that invertebrates evolved into vertebrates in one giant step – through the doubling of the organism’s DNA. The 2R hypothesis also posits that vertebrates evolved into jawed vertebrates in another similar huge step – the genome doubled again.

        Symbiogenesis is a well documented path by which two species combine to make a third species. For example algae + fungus = lichen. This also is a wholesale reorganization, a quantum leap, not a gradual transition.

        ID people have always said you could never get from single cells to humans by a long series of incremental changes. They were correct. Contrary to classical Neo-Darwinism, there are many huge leaps along the way. The discoveries of gene transfer, transposition, symbiogenesis and genome doubling replace the classical Darwinian theory with multiple mechanisms capable of making quantum leaps.

  9. Old Git Tom says:

    Patrikbeno,

    “(1) With respect to speciation, source of mutation is irrelevant. It may be random, it may be designed. Does Not Matter.”

    Radnomness is/was central to Neo-darwinism, according to the books/articles by Richard Dawkins I read. Has opinion changed? The only alternative to the random is the purposive, & the Ds keep insisting that evolution has no direction (anti-teleology). Do you (honestly) understand what you are defending?

    “(2) Small changes DO accumulate.”

    Trivially true, but undemonstrated in the laboratory, as my fruit fly eg. implies. If you are saying it may/will be experimentally proven at some future date, you also confirm that it is an unproven theory of macro speciation, by extension of your own argument.

    “ (3) ‘Species’ has different definitions, yes. SPECIATION does not. Speciation means forking of one species into two species. It never happens overnight, and you cannot expect frog becoming a dog in a single generation.”

    You miss my major point. ‘Species’ is a human way of sorting living things. As I said, there are differing interpretations. The Darwinian task was to explain the differences, & its attempt remains unproven. If decades of fruit fly studies cannot produce micro-evolution, Darwinism is further impoverished in explaining macro-evolution (speciation).

    We have on this site some very strong counter-evidence from Perry Marshall, & if you recall what I wrote, Bloom cites experimental evidence of bacteria re-engineering their DNA. Unfortunately for Darwinians, this is no matter of petty, incremental changes, but quasi-intelligent redesign of the DNA holistically.

    “But the net result when it comes to mechanics of speciation is always the same.”

    Unfortunately for Darwinians & their 19th-century materialism, ‘mechanics’ is a gross mis-characterization of the speciation they cannot explain. Hope, faith, describing & redefining, are no substitutes.

    “First, two environments are never the same.”

    Very handy for Darwinians! If you do the homework, you will find they provide no objective set of necessary & sufficient conditions for defining an environment, so no support for your above claim. Curious, no? ‘Environment’ on close examination turns out to be everything but the living organism – incoherent, but certainly comprehensive! In fact, the Darwinian life-form is defined in relation to the environment, environment by life-form. After 150-odd years, they are still playing this ring-a-roses.

    “ ‘Little different’ is just enough selection pressure to enforce species adaptation towards new environment. ‘Much different’ renders the species extinct.”

    Quite: with Darwinism, whatever happens is dismissable/explicable, since the theory is at base a tautology. A tautology is never wrong, just the self-evident masquerading as a fundamental. And yes, I read the Wiki article on this, & it was a poor piece of sophistry. OGT

    • patrikbeno says:

      OGT,

      Speciation *has been* demonstrated:

      Evening Primrose (Oenothera gigas), Kew Primrose (Primula kewensis), Tragopogon, …
      Sexual Isolation as a Byproduct of Adaptation to Environmental Conditions in Drosophila melanogaster – Kilias, et al. (1980)
      Selection for Geotaxis with and without Gene Flow – Soans, et al. (1974)
      Speciation in a Lab Rat Worm, Nereis acuminata – Weinberg, et al. (1992)

      Domestic sheep were created by hybridisation, and no longer produce viable offspring with Ovis orientalis, one species from which they are descended.

      However, I am not going to waste my time persuading you. Enjoy your position.

      • Old Git Tom says:

        patrikbeno,

        yes, Darwinism has produced an awful lot of experimental data. I’ve read some of it over the years & been unwilling to settle for quantity over quality. A lot, since the majority of evolutionary biologists are Darwinians. They have a ruthless way of silencing all other voices in the profession.

        The trouble with the data is that it does not unambiguously support the blessed Charles. And, the research I cited for you paints a different picture. I am sorry you don’t wish to read it. OGT

        • patrikbeno says:

          I am sorry, maybe I cannot read. What research you cited? Where are the links? I don’t see any.

          I am reading Perry Marshall now. So it’s not that I reject contradicting opinions without giving them a chance.

          Speciation is technically least of all problems between creationism and darwinism. It has nothing to do with this or that version of evolution, it only offends our crippled and buggy and naive intuition.

          In science nothing is 100% conclusive. You have to weigh both quality and quantity of data both in favor as well as against given hypothesis.

          Do you accept common descent? Then you should not have a problem with speciation.
          You don’t? Than you have a problem I cannot solve.

          Speciation is only a problem for people who do not want to accept that they are descended from ape, or those who cannot sustain darwinism being right about anything.

  10. Howie47 says:

    I find our progressive thinking to be alike. So I’ve joined the discussion.
    There is indeed two forms of evolution postulated. But in my mind, only the classical, “biological evolution” should be called evolution. That’s because the word “evolution” has become synonymous with Darwinism. Here is a quote form my humble blog. “Why evolution is impossible. By impossible I mean so mathematically improbable, that it can be ruled impossible. By Evolution I mean the process that mindlessly builds the physical mechanical systems, that make the bodies for Life to exist in. If an involved mind is added to the process, it no longer fits the definition of Biological Evolution as it is taught. There is another definition of evolution that fits an intelligently guided, advance in technology. Like the evolution of a Corvette car. Step by step improvements. Which are tested with each new model. So that the car we now have is much more advanced. Much more capable of doing what we expect a sports car to do. Go fast and hold the road! This process is different then what is taught as Biological Evolution. There is no mind working in the materialist idea of Evolution.” claification.webs.com
    So you are postulating, “theistic evolution”, or “Intelligent Design”. If you want to make it your own. Then why not call it something else, like, “The Development of Life” or “Bio-development”. So a clear line is drawn between the different views?

    • Old Git Tom says:

      Howie47,
      I am not fully sure I u/stand you. Perry Marshall argues very persuasively for intelligent design, so he’s against the Darwinian theory of random mutations sorted by natural selection. But I’d go further. There is no solid evidence that the ‘physical’ universe, as we see it, could appear by random collision of its parts. And that is even if you accept the rather problematic ‘big bang’ theory.

      For centuries before Darwin, evolution of some kind was accepted. I personally would not argue against this, since it simply means, generally, change over time. Indeed, w/out change, the idea of time would be meaningless. But that is not the last word, since some have proposed that time is an illusion.

      Darwin studied one version of evolution you mention – human-directed – but that was around long before him as domestic animal breeding. He noted that in this, if human interference stopped, the animals reverted to ‘feral prototype’, a kind of mix of the original wild animal, plus some characteristics from the domesticated mutations. He found this a puzzle. It remains so.

      Modern experiments have discovered that wolves & foxes cannot be domesticated in less than 6 generations – picking the friendliest animals to breed each time. But the domesticated version is also physically changed, not just its behavior. It tends to have changed skull shape, & curly tail! So the versions of Darwinism that specify a division b/ween the DNA-shaped physical animal, & its immaterial behavior patterns, are dubious.

      Please consider the significant implications of this. Even if DNA is matter, the above suggests we cannot rule out the possibility that it has associated behaviors. In other words, matter may carry hidden intentions, directions, or intelligence (whatever). This would seem to be a small matter for science to accept for experimental purposes. The trouble seems to be, biology is enclosed by, & beholden to, a society deeply imbued with the ethos of materialism. OGT

  11. Old Git Tom says:

    patrikbeno,

    for Howard Bloom site –
    http://www.science20.com/howard_bloom/who_s_smarter_chimps_baboons_or_bacteria_the_power_of_group_iq_part_i

    That should keep you busy for a while. Bear in mind, I’m not entirely happy with all he says on his wilder flights.

    I hope after 40-odd years of considering Darwinism, I am not suffering from ‘naive intuition’ (you patronizing young scamp!). You say now ‘speciation’ is currently defined as the inability of a mutation to mate with its ancestor? As I claimed, there are different ways of sorting species, but your criterion has obvious power. Yet, that is a limited way of defining speciation, & it allows Darwinism off the hook too easily. I was thinking more of Darwin’s broader u/standing of species, as in ‘Origin’.

    In this view, species are the utterly different ‘designs’ of animals, eg., mammals, lizards & birds. With incremental gradualism, Darwinians seem to appeal to faith, over shortage of both field & lab evidence. As Perry Marshall has cogently expounded, the fossil record seems to show gradualism interrupted by sudden jumps (yep, I know the anti-rationalizations for this). Gradualism demands evidence of smooth transition, which we don’t have.

    As for genetic sorting of species & common descent –

    “Even more baffling is the fact that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that look outwardly very similar & exhibit similar behaviour, while creatures that look & behave completely differently can have much in common genetically. There are, for instance, more than 3,000 species of frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a greater variation of DNA between them than there is between the bat & the blue whale.

    Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA & complex organisms have complex DNA. In some cases, this is true. The simple nematode worm is a favourite subject of laboratory study because its DNA contains a mere 1,000 nucleotide bases. At the other end of the complexity scale, humans have 23 chromosomes which in total contain 3,000 million nucleotide bases.

    Unfortunately, this promisingly Darwinian progression is contradicted by many counter examples. While human DNA is contained in 23 pairs of chromosomes, the humble goldfish has more than twice as many, at 47. The even humbler garden snail — not much more than a glob of slime in a shell — has 27 chromosomes. Some species of rose bush have 56 chromosomes.

    So the simple fact is that DNA analysis does not confirm neo-Darwinist theory. In the laboratory, DNA analysis falsifies neo-Darwinist theory.”

    Etc., etc., Richard Milton http://morostrips.blogspot.com/2008/01/finestra-n7_28.html

    Perry has presented much telling evidence that even ‘small’ genetic changes are unlikely to give any survival edge w/out compensating adjustments to the organism as a whole. The fossils suggest holistic ‘re-designs’ of some genotypes at irregular intervals, while other ‘designs’ continue for millennia.

    In ‘Descent of Man’, Darwin found this puzzling – not that he had much genetic knowledge. So also puzzling, the fruit fly series that produce ‘biplanes’ that cannot fly. There is possibly an anti-mating mechanism that cuts in when a non-viable mutation occurs? Please don’t accuse me/us of being unscientifically fanciful. Bloom’s bacteria somehow ‘know’ about their changed environment & re-engineer themselves to suit.

    In sum, there is indicated some form of designing intelligence at work in evolution, & the Darwinian/natural selection mindset precludes even considering this, let alone studying it. That is suggestive of closed minds, not scientific ones. OGT

    • patrikbeno says:

      Debate between Richard Milton and Jim Foley
      http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/milton.html

      Looks like if you read MIlton, you need to read this too.

    • patrikbeno says:

      OGT,

      re: Howard Bloom – thank you, it looks interesting, will read through.

      OGT: “I hope after 40-odd years of considering Darwinism, I am not suffering from ‘naive intuition’”

      Good for you. I would not get *my own* hopes too high. In my experience, what seemed counterintuitive 25 years ago, sounds equally counterintuitive today as well. I was only able to break the spell by education, intelligence, reasoning and logic. I understand things better, but they still look counterintuitive.

      OGT: “you patronizing young scamp!”

      Well, thank you. I hope you feel better now.

      OGT: “You say now ’speciation’ is currently defined as the inability of a mutation to mate with its ancestor? As I claimed, there are different ways of sorting species, but your criterion has obvious power. Yet, that is a limited way of defining speciation, & it allows Darwinism off the hook too easily. ”

      Please try to differentiate between (A) species and various ways of their classification, and (B) speciation as the process of “forking and branching of species”

      Now, I don’t claim that what I describe is the only way how new species can be formed. I am barely advocating that speciation as I described it, really happens, and we have a hell of a lot supporting evidence for this. (I already posted some links but you are free to ignore them.)

      OGT: “Even more baffling is the fact that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that look outwardly very similar & exhibit similar behaviour, while creatures that look & behave completely differently can have much in common genetically.
      Further, if neo-Darwinist evolutionary ideas of gradual genetic change were true, then one would expect to find that simple organisms have simple DNA & complex organisms have complex DNA. ”

      Naive intuition again. Maybe 40 years is not enough, Tom, but I don’t want to sound as patronizing young scamp.

      This is why you are wrong (but of course you can dismiss this as poor piece of sophistry):

      DNA code is a script that gets executed by nature. This process inherently results in emergence of interacting and competing phenotypic effects. Phenotypes are criteria used by natural selection that sorts them “by success” (for lack of a less teleological description). Not the DNA code – natural selection does not care about the DNA, it cares about their manifestations (phenotypes). By definition of DNA language, there is infinite number of combinations of the DNA letters that lead to one single particular phenotype (and I am not talking about codons, amino acids or proteins, I am talking about phenotypes).

      Baffled? No. I am not surprised.

      Divergent evolution is the default, expectable, and a way of speciation. Not very intuitive, but logical and thus hardly surprising.
      Convergent evolution is a far more fascinating subject, true. Seeing nature inventing the same phenotypes in so many different ways is beautiful experience. But it is still 100% compatible with modern evolution synthesis, yet it does not make a tiny bit of sense in Intelligent Design Hypothesis.

      What baffles me, actually, is the question why on Earth do you people try to deny natural selection or gradualism or even common descent so much when actually they are all completely compatible with your Intelligent Design Hypothesis.
      On second thought, I am less baffled: You want your hypothesis to be true, and to have it true, you need to falsify darwinism, and to falsify darwinism, you need to get rid of its main supporting arguments: natural selection and gradualism (among others).

      OGT: “ In the laboratory, DNA analysis falsifies neo-Darwinist theory. ”

      Great. If you can falsify it in laboratory, you have the Nobel Prize for certain.

      DNA analysis just points out individual errors in taxonomy but does not invalidate Darwinism at all. Please note, that while modern evolution synthesis embraces DNA analysis and accepts it as superior evidence correcting all previous mistakes, creationists can’t live with gradualism and natural selection even if it *does not* contradict their preferred pet hypothesis at all.

      OGT: “In sum, there is indicated some form of designing intelligence at work in evolution, & the Darwinian/natural selection mindset precludes even considering this, let alone studying it. ”

      Explain how the design works. Saying it is designed means nothing. When you really try to explain things, you’ll find out there’s no difference between Designer and No Designer. Go ahead, do it, you have my support.

      • GMEstes1 says:

        Excellent conclusion OGT, you covered all the bases.
        This site is a litle slim on behavioral science, astroarcheology, nuclear force,
        (atomic structure) , and verification of specifics. The mutaions of cellular life, as all genes do not fit into the grand skeme of their hypothesis.
        All matter is made of the same stuff, atoms…even the cells; A,G.C,and t. We find there is enormeous space between the parts of an atoms and composed of porks, the subatomic level.
        Atoms never change…only their characteristics in combining and recombining as their molecular structure change. us earthling have 94 elements…the periodic table. A biggie today is enriched grade plutonium, heavy because it contain so many electrons on the outter most race. Atoms never cease to exist just recombine into different elements.

        It is refreashing to read your post and your prespective on science.

        • Old Git Tom says:

          GMEstes1,

          thank you for your too- kind words, becoz I have only the superficial u/standing of science I get from general reading. I have tried to follow the advances in physics over the past 40-odd years, but w/out advanced maths, it’s not really possible.

          You mention the sub-atomic realm. Things there are alien to most laypeople’s mental processes. As with astrophysics, the scales of micro & macro just leave me dizzy. So I can only deal with ordinary language presentations of evidence, arguments & conclusions. OGT

  12. Old Git Tom says:

    patrikbeno,

    once more, you evade the major point. Darwin’s theory was proposed to explain what we call today ‘phenotypes’. In his day, these were sorted into ‘species’ by taxonomy (configuration, anatomy, etc.). If modern genetics (DNA) is able to uncover previous ‘mistakes’, well & good. But as my Milton quote implied, this is still short of supporting Darwin’s inadequacies. And note, I am not going by ‘intuition’, but by evidence that counters Darwinism.

    Thus, species by taxonomy is out, & the genetic sorting method, once supported by Dawkins et al, is also out. Eg., some frogs are more mutually distant genetically than bats & whales. How many ‘graduals’ from whale to bat, or V-V? Rather than the Darwinian imposture of, “We can explain all that” (in the neologisms of newly-minted theories non-specialists cannot disentangle), why not honestly say, “We don’t know”?

    How many ‘graduals’ from whale to bat, or V-V? If materialist hubris is even half-justified, we should be in a position to conjure whales from bats in X easy stages. I jest; our super-confident materialists are unable to even get their dropsila biplane off the ground. I do not mock their efforts in extremely difficult work, simply the arrogance of the materialists’ PR lobby.

    You repeat once again your faith in natural selection, your own ‘pet hypothesis’. But the gradualism necessary to that theory is confounded (eg.) by such hard evidence as Perry Marshall has presented here. Indeed, the equally necessary role of randomness has been denied in the formation of the universe itself (Bloom again – which you apparently refused/failed to read/understand).

    It does not follow that if DNA code is designed, there is a designer – eg., if intelligence is inherent, imminent in the universe. A point you yourself tacitly accept in, “DNA code is a script that gets executed by nature.” Can you cite any research papers that report sightings of this elusive Mother Nature, at work, deciphering the DNA code? Maybe ‘she’ does the genetic cryptography?

    Have you ever seen a recipe devised, that cooks itself, independent of any intelligent agency?

    Perhaps you read the recent press reports that bacterial life based on arsenic has been detected? The materialist (pro-Darwinian) spin put on this is that the most intractable chemicals can give rise to life. A rash claim, since it may also support the rival proposition, that life is potential in any matter, but only given the necessary spark of ‘intelligence’. OGT

  13. Howie47 says:

    I posted before with the question. “Why use the word evolution, to catagorize the changes that take place in life” ?

    We can look up on the Internet the different definitions that Biologist give for evolution. Many of the latest say: just “change”. Or if they want to sound more scientific, they say, “change in the alleles frequency within a gene pool”. But both of these definitions and all the others are disingenuous to what people picture in their minds, when we talk about biological evolution.

    Evolution as used in biology. Is usually and normally thought to mean. Progressive change from simpler forms to more sophisticated, or more efficient and more developed forms. That are better at overcoming obstacles to life.

    What we observe in nature is. Life changing in concert with it’s environment. To maintain it’s ability to survive in the environment.

    We don’t observe an upward climb of life. Starting from some imagined single celled life. That is made up of a few simple compounds. Into ever more complex forms. The fact is the simplest life is in every way as complex, well developed and sophisticated as those forms that are considered, “higher forms”. They are also often, if not usually, better at surviving then the higher forms. In fact the simplest seem to be better equipped to adapt to a wider range of environments then the higher forms are! That in itself speaks loudly against the Darwin theory and for the creationist theory.

    Darwinian evolution is no more then a materialist philosophical view of life. It has zero science to back it up. There is no lab. experiments to back it up. No observation’s of nature. Nothing. Absolutely nothing to support the idea that life has started from some simple metabolism, and is evolving toward some god like creature. It’s total bunk.
    So why even use the word “evolution” to describe the changes that happen in biology? visit me at: clarification.webs. commercial.

  14. stillbrook3 says:

    Dear Perry:

    I am new to this site and I have read your theory of evolution and its preceding theory on the origin of the universe. I am a biomedical scientist and your argument on evolution as an intelligently designed sequence of developmental and/or adaptive events based on the instructions coded for by DNA is quite interesting. Having published a few scientific papers myself, I have gone through the rigors of peer review which is the current norm in scientific publishing especially in internationally circulated journals. While your theory seems to hold out in the face of readers of this site all over the world, may I suggest that you publish your elegantly organized theory in appropriate scientific journals where peers in the same field as you are can validate, reject, strengthen, or filter your ideas. Some readers of this site may not be scientists and are not really qualified to make intelligent critique but scientists delving deep into the same question of evolution, Darwinism, etc. will be better qualified to either refute or accept your theory. I have read your arguments on evolution but some detail on how you came up with some mathematical figures are not presented but rightly so since this is not the proper forum for such data. A scientific journal on molecular evolution or any closely related journal would be the most appropriate forum. In peer-reviewed journals we do away with the vitriolic comments and just stick coldly to hard scientific facts and evidence. If your peers will accept the publication of your paper, it is a strong indication that you may be on the right track technically. I just hope your ideas will find space in a journal somewhere. As a biologist, I have a level of confidence that your ideas will be validated eventually if you can provide all the arguments for your molecular evolution theory. Publication in scientific journals is a means to impress your ideas for posterity on the annals of human science. Such publication can be quoted later by any technical or non-technical papers or presentations or websites. Quoting this site as a reference for your ideas may not have the same authority as quoting a paper from a respectable journal. Regarding your theory on the origin of the universe, I am totally convinced that you got it right. Again, a respectable journal or publication is needed. Better still, a publication in book form authored by you. The number of copies you sell is strongly indicative of a positive validation of your ideas. Wish you luck!

  15. chris says:

    I’m throwing this out to everyone here, not just Perry, but I want to ascertain just how apt the word information is in one particular instance.

    Imagine we have a miscellaneous organism. This organisms DNA contains information regarding its environment.

    Now, if the environment were to undergo an abrupt change, would the DNA contain the same amount of information?

    Furthermore, if, prior to the change, the organism mutated randomly for the worse you would state that this was “noise” – a reduction in information content. What if the environmental change were beneficial to this random mutation (more so than the original organism)? Would the DNA contain more information, less or the same amount as the original creature?

  16. christaras says:

    Hello. Darwinists get really upset when others
    say ‘evolutionists believe’. They demand the
    phrase to be changed to ‘scientists prove’.This is not fair. They may accept darwinian evolution as fact, science.. but it does not cease to be a belief.
    Belief = the spiritual state where a person holds a statement or premise to be true.
    When belief is justified, it becomes knowledge.Even if there was plenty of scientific evidence that evolution was true, it would still not cease to be a belief. Some people could accept it, some not. It is still a personal view. An evolutionist accepts evolution as fact, but he stills ‘believes’ evolution is true. So ‘belief’ is not irrelevant with ‘fact’ and ‘science’.

  17. christaras says:

    And here I will put ‘species evolution’ belief in real doubt. According to many evolutionists it is science, a fact that can be proven.

    So, where is darwinian evolution? A usual answer is -It happens too slow so it can not be observed in our tiny lifes.

    With such an answer, it immediately becomes evident that the arrogant demand we should all accept a belief as science, starts to lose its’ power.

    BUT, even if it happens too slow.. shouldnt million years of evolution provide us with thousands of ‘half organisms’ and ‘missing’ links? Why do we have perfect organisms?(it wouldnt be wise to call ‘junk’ the one whose function we still continue to discover). What about the drosophila fly, where we could see evolution in action? What about so many animals’ fossils, appearing simultaneously in the Cambrian period?

  18. Old Git Tom says:

    Christaras,

    IMHO, many/most posters accept evolution, but not Darwin’s natural selection theory – they likely share your very valid doubts about it. I’d suggest it is not only bad, dogmatic, obsolete, science. In its materialist aspect, it remains a force for great evil.

    It has infected economics, so the world worships money & material rewards, above human life & values. Our modern world has re-erected Moloch, the pitiless idol who rewards his worshippers with gold for human blood. War is terrible, but terribly profitable.

    Moloch’s high priests are in power. They are Malthus & Darwin’s ideological heirs, calling for a global, massive eugenics campaign to ‘cull’ excessive human population. They call themselves environmentalists. Don’t be fooled. Fanatical ‘scientific’ Darwinism links them to Adolf Hitler & Joe Stalin.

    If you think I’m raving (!), try this brilliant lecture (1 hour).

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3Eo2YTQUr8

    OGT

  19. perrari says:

    You’re a smart guy Tom. Now the question is how are you going to stop it?

  20. Old Git Tom says:

    perrari,
    smart, no, & certainly not smart enuf to answer your question simply. I would just say, evil is a very real force in the world, & it seems to be getting stronger. Good men & women must not tolerate it like dumb sheep. I have good (scientific-pedigree) evidence that most/many of world leaders are instruments of evil, but w/out the passive AND active collusion of the many, they would be powerless. Faith & reason are sword & shield. The good must use them. OGT

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