We did discover a fossil in Antarctica of an animal that lived 252 million years ago.¹ It was during the time when Pangea was whole, and the volcanoes did emit high amounts of greenhouse gasses. This gasification of the Earth did produce catastrophic global warming resulting in the death of 80-95 percent of life in the oceans and on land (Praise Science).

So, we do imagine that this fossil is of an animal that had no fur and “probably laid eggs.” We imagine it on the line between reptiles and mammals. We did find some related fossils in Africa, and therefore pieced together that these animals migrated south and lived with other animals that were probably the ancestors of mammals.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Naturwissenschaften, may offer insights into potential survival techniques for modern day animals threatened by climate change .

“Countless species are threatened by global warming today,” said Frobisch. “A prime example of a threatened species is the polar bear, whose habitat becomes increasingly smaller as a result of melting sea ice in the Arctic Circle.”

“However,” he added, “it is questionable whether the polar bear or other threatened animals can respond in the same way as Kombuisia did in the Permian, simply because human activities severely limit the animals’ possibilities.”

He concluded: “The primary lesson we should learn from the studies of extinction due to climate change in the past is that it is of utmost importance today to control and reverse human induced global warming by taking counteractive measures, such as greatly reducinggreenhouse gas emissions.”

Anyway, the animals and fossils are irrelevant, because the point is, if we don’t act soon, we’ll all be dead in a couple hundred years (Praise Science). Please don’t give up on being terrified of the environment, because Mother Earth is very angry at what you are doing to her. She will punish and probably kill you if you don’t straighten up and curtail your gaseous emissions.

1) Ancient animals escaped warming in Antarctica

From the article:

The voluminous research on the evolution of the adaptive immune system describes in enormous detail both the similarities and differences between the immune systems of a wide variety of animals, but does not provide evidence for the evolution of these irreducibility complex systems. The complex, designed processes used to produce antibody diversity and then to fine tune the adaptive immune response are not evidence of Darwinian evolution, but rather of intelligent design.

Recent work has also shown that innate immune systems formerly thought to be very primitive are far more complex than once believed, blurring ‘traditional distinctions between adaptive and innate immunity.’³⁸ Various phyla use ‘a remarkably extensive variety of solutions to meet fundamentally similar requirements for host protection.’³⁷ The large discontinuity between the various means of generating immune system diversity in the animal kingdom makes it highly unlikely that one system could have evolved into another.

Creation scientists have also been hard at work in generating theoretical frameworks and hypotheses on a number of fronts.

1). A framework has been developed for explaining bacterial pathogenicity.

2). Fungi have been examined from a creationist perspective, and natural selection is considered as a process for the development of pathogenicity.  Similar to the first paper, evolutionary processes are considered corrupting influences of the original designs.

3). Initial work has been done on developing a field of creation microbiology.  Promising areas for future research and practical applications are also considered.

While those who pontificate about the absence of any real scientific progress being made from a creationist perspective, creation scientists are laying the groundwork for biological studies, and are generating testable scientific hypotheses.  Whereas materialist scientist do not often recognize their metaphysical assumptions, creationist scientists and IDers are generally much more aware of the metaphysical assumptions of science on both sides of the issue.

]]> http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/11/08/recent-work-in-creation-science/feed/ 6 http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/04/06/science-id-and-darwinism/ http://www.intelldesign.com/2009/04/06/science-id-and-darwinism/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:15:44 +0000 The Country Shrink http://www.intelldesign.com/?p=837 In an experiment, there are one of more hypotheses. When positive predictions are made, there necessarily exists what is called a null hypothesis. The null hypothesis should be stated formally, and constructed before the study is conducted.

H₀: Two simultaneous mutations are the upper limit for providing any functional advantage by evolutionary processes.
H₁: Evolutionary processes may result in three or more simultaneous mutations conferring a functional advantage to an organism.

In the example above, H₀ is the null hypothesis, and H₁ is the experimental hypothesis. When an experiment is conducted, a finding of 3 or more simultaneous mutations resulting in a functional advantage would be said to falsify the null hypothesis.

The final writeup would go something like, “Our experiments demonstrated that 3 simultaneous mutations occurred resulting in a functional advantage for the organism. Therefore, we reject H₀ in favor of H₁.” The trouble in evolutionary biology is that there often is no H₀. There is no formal null hypothesis. Evolution is considered to be a fact, and the null hypothesis is not addressed or tested.

Consider a recent peer-reviewed article that provides a null hypothesis that has not been falsified by Darwinist researchers:

The theme of this paper is the active pursuit of falsification of the following null hypothesis:
“Physicodynamics alone cannot organize itself into formally functional systems requiring algorithmic optimization, computational halting, and circuit integration.” At first glance the falsification of this hypothesis might seem like a daunting task. But a single exception of non trivial, unaided, spontaneous optimization of formal function by truly natural process would quickly falsify this null hypothesis.⁽¹⁾

Again, the trouble with most Darwinists is that they would not even consider testing this null hypothesis, because “evolution is a fact.” It is my opinion, that the metaphysical worldview of these scientists (i.e., philosophical naturalism), prevents them from doing real science. Without testing their theories against ID hypotheses, they are failing to conduct valid research, and are engaging in little more than materialistic apologetics.

It is also possible to use a null hypothesis as an experimental hypothesis. Extra safeguards are needed with an experiment of this nature. Specifically, what is needed is more experimental power. This translates essentially to a larger subject pool or number of trials. The experimental power required varies based on the field of study and what is being studied. The level required is based on a scientific consensus. In other words, scientists may agree in a given area of study that the power must be 95%. This translates essentially to “The probability that a true experimental hypothesis will be supported by our methods.” The 5% in this case is considered to be an acceptable risk for the given field of study. In other words, 5% of the time in similarly conducted studies, we would find results that do not support the experimental hypothesis when the experimental hypothesis is in fact true.

In psychology, the level of power needed is often considered 80%. When a null hypothesis is used as an experimental hypothesis, the power needed may be set at 90 to 95%. There are other technical and statistical aspects of determining the number of trials or subjects needed, but I won’t get into that.

Suffice it to say, that properly conducted research may state as an experimental hypothesis: “Two mutations are the maximum number of simultaneous mutations that can occur in a population of X size and given Y generations which would confer a functional advantage.” This is one reason that part of the work done by Michael Behe in the Edge of Evolution is valid science. Hypotheses stated in this way are not arguments from ignorance, but valid scientific hypotheses that lend themselves to scientific investigation.

I don’t know if Dr. Abel, who published the article, The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity, is an IDist or a Darwinist. That doesn’t really matter much to me, but what does matter is that he has given a fair treatment to the issue in a way that advances science.

Dr. Abel writes:

While proof may be evasive, science has an obligation to be honest about what the entire body of evidence clearly suggests. We cannot just keep endlessly labeling abundant evidence of formal prescription in nature “apparent.” The fact of purposeful programming at multiple layers gets more “apparent” with each new issue of virtually every molecular biology journal [179-181]. Says de Silva
and Uchiyama:

Molecular substrates can be viewed as computational devices that process physical or chemical ‘inputs’ to generate ‘outputs’ based on a set of logical operators. By recognizing this conceptual crossover between chemistry and computation, it can be argued that the success of life itself is founded on a much longer-term revolution in information handling when compared with the modern semiconductor computing industry. Many of the simpler logic operations can be identified within chemical reactions and phenomena, as well as being produced in specifically designed systems. Some degree of integration can also be arranged, leading, in some instances, to arithmetic processing. These molecular logic systems can also end themselves to convenient reconfiguring. Their clearest application area is in the life sciences, where their small size is a distinct advantage over conventional semiconductor counterparts. Molecular logic designs aid chemical (especially intracellular) sensing, small object recognition and intelligent diagnostics [181].

What scientific evidence exists of physicodynamics ever having programmed a single purposeful configurable switch-setting? If we cannot present any such evidence, we should be self-honest enough to start asking ourselves, “How long are we going to try to maintain this ruse that the cybernetic programming we repeatedly observe is only ‘apparent’ rather than real?”

Indeed, if you want to start conducting real science in evolutionary biology, then it is time to start including ID notions as null or experimental hypotheses. However, the Darwinists are likely to continue their metaphysical pursuits at the sacrifice of properly conducted scientific investigation.

References:
(1). Abel, D. L. (2009). The Capabilities of Chaos and Complexity, International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

Hat Tip: scordova @ Uncommon Descent

This brings us to the reason for my post.  A recent study found that a statistical method used in many studies of natural selection is invalid.

Scientists at Penn State and the National Institute of Genetics in Japan have demonstrated that several statistical methods commonly used by biologists to detect natural selection at the molecular level tend to produce incorrect results. “Our finding means that hundreds of published studies on natural selection may have drawn incorrect conclusions,” said Masatoshi Nei, Penn State Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and the team’s leader.

Of course, nearly all of these hundreds of potentially invalid studies do not employ the experimental method, but simply use statistical analyses of DNA/gene sequences and so forth. And from this, they often draw causal conclusions (RM+NS resulted in this new function). However, it was found that the statistical methods were incorrect in their predictions.

In real fields of science, the experimental method is performed routinely. In psychology, the experimental method is practiced very often. Not so with evolutionary biology. The reason given in this press release was:

Nei said that to obtain a more realistic picture of natural selection, biologists should pair experimental data with their statistical data whenever possible. Scientists usually do not use experimental data because such experiments can be difficult to conduct and because they are very time-consuming.

Yes, real science is difficult to conduct and is time consuming, but I submit to you that it would be worth it to have properly designed, and properly conducted research. I think an interesting statistic would be to determine how much money has been wasted on improperly conducted research by evolutionary biologists.  I’m not saying that correlational research is not science, but it’s not science to make causal inferences from methods that do not support causal inferences.  Even by using the experimental method, the best you can hope for is a reduction in bias.  Bias is nearly impossible to eliminate from studies, because studies are conducted by scientists (i.e., biased human beings).

Here is the take home message for Darwinists:

1). When you make causal predictions and wish to draw causal inferences, you must use the experimental method.

2). If you are not going to use the experimental method, but a correlational method, your conclusion must not go beyond the method you are using (e.g., this caused that). The best you can say is: this is related to that or this is associated with that.

3). Imagination is not an experimental or even scientific method.

4). If you use statistical methods to make predictions, the methods must first be validated. Otherwise your predictions are of unknown validity.

Reference

(1). Hundreds of Natural Selection Studies could be Wrong, Study Says

Original Source: Reliabilities of identifying positive selection by the branch-site and the site-prediction methods

Regardless of age assumptions, it is clear that the theory of evolution requires deep time to work it’s magic. So, for the sake of argument, we will grant the Darwinists deep time and use their own dating assumptions to discuss the problems with their theory. When a fossil is discovered much earlier than previously thought, it gives the purported gradualism or slow process of evolution less time to work its magic.

Stephen J. Gould postulated ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to attempt to fit the theory of evolution with the evident discontinuity of the fossil record. In other words, creatures appear in the fossil record with no evident precursors, and other fossils exhibit little differences from current species despite hundreds of millions of years of time that has purportedly passed. This can be thought of as the “naturalism of the gaps” hypothesis. The trend in paleontology is that these gaps are decreasing with each fossil find of a species that remains unchanged in the fossil record and appears earlier than previously thought.

As Cornelius Hunter, author of DarwinsPredictions.com notes:

It is now known that evolution has nowhere near the eons of time predicted and required by Darwin. Indeed, the time windows available are even less than those allowed by William Thomson, which themselves were unacceptable to the evolutionists. This falsification of evolution’s prediction does not derive from the age of the earth, but rather from the fossil record. We now know that, even with billions of years of earth history, the major events in the fossil record take place in time windows that are no longer than a few tens of millions of years or even less.⁽²⁾

It is with these facts in mind that I start this series to illustrate yet another glaring problem for naturalistic evolution.

References

(1). On Christian Views of Creationism–Part IV (Continued: Young Earth Creationism)
(2). On Christian Views of Creationism–Part III (Continued: Young Earth Creationism)
(2). Evolution has hundreds of millions of years available, Darwin’s Predictions, Cornelius Hunter

Notes:

I would like to thank my coauthor mynym for suggesting the idea for this series.

Octopus fossil with modern comparison

Paleontologists recently discovered a fossil of an octopus and attributed an age of 95 million years (late Cretaceous) to the specimen.⁽¹⁾ They noted that:

“These things are 95 million years old, yet one of the fossils is almost indistinguishable from living species.” [EurekAlert] The fossils provide an extraordinary glimpse into the evolutionary history of the creatures, pushing back the birth of the modern octopus millions of years.

The fact that these fossils exist is a small miracle of science and a big victory for paleontologists and evolutionist alike.

Well, praise Science. It’s not quite a bunny in the Cambrian, but it would seem to me to be problematic at best for a theory of change. I suppose we are to believe that the right mix of blind processes and necessity were somehow kept at bay for this creature, or that it is a perfect adesign.⁽²⁾ In other words, this creature has been in the punctuated stage of punctuated equilibrium for 95 million years.

What’s also interesting about the octopus is that Darwinists have claimed that the eyes of the octopus and human eyes evolved

Human to Octopus Eye Comparison

independently.⁽³⁾ They even go so far to note that the octopus eye shows that the human eye is poorly designed, as I’ve noted previously, despite obvious problems with that explanation.⁽⁴⁾ The assertion is that a completely different set of blind circumstances results in technology with all the major functional parts in common.  What makes a great deal more sense is common design by a single Designer. Either that, or mother nature is smarter than you are.  Or as the old saying goes, “Evolution is smarter than you are.”⁽⁵⁾

Interestingly, the phrase is intended to be a rejoinder to the purported logical problem often attributed to IDists and Creationists who claim that blind processes are incapable of producing things of such complexity (i.e., argument from lack of imagination).  The trouble is, that it’s the same old attribution of sentience to blind processes, and the fact of the matter is, some things do not occur through blind processes.  Car parts in a junkyard will not assemble into a brand new car no matter what natural forces act upon those parts regardless of the number of billions of years given to do so.  Similarly, blind processes cannot lead to sentience or sight, but Darwinists will continue to follow that blind watchmaker no matter how incapable she may be.  All the while, they will marvel at her creativity and astounding abilities to create everything from nothing.

References

(1). Against the odds ancient octopus fossils discovered
(2). Darwinists on Design: Jumping to Confusions
(3). Comparative Analysis of Gene Expression for Convergent Evolution of Camera Eye Between Octopus and Human
(4). An eye for creation
(5). Orgel’s rule

Other Interesting Reads:
Octopus–Beautiful AND Intelligent

ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2009) — A new and comprehensive analysis confirms that the evolutionary relationships among animals are not as simple as previously thought. The traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from simple to complex—from sponge to chordate—meets a dramatic exception in the metazoan tree of life.

New work suggests that the so-called “lower” metazoans (including Placozoa, corals, and jellyfish) evolved in parallel to “higher” animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates). It also appears that Placozoans—large amoeba-shaped, multi-cellular animals—have passed over sponges and other organisms as an animal that most closely mirrors the root of this tree of life.

“To make inferences about the origin of Bilaterians—animals with a bilateral symmetry, like humans—earlier studies suggested sponges, ctenophores (comb jellies), or a small, interesting group called Placozoa as the most basal or primitive animal,” says senior author Rob DeSalle, Curator at the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History. “But our new analysis implies that the first major event in animal evolution split bilateral animals from all others, and our work firmly places Placozoa as the most primitive of the nonbilaterian animals.”

Then they go on to note that the nervous system must have had to evolve twice, because of where the supposed split in the evolutionary branch occurred.

The phylogeny drawn from the new analysis places Placozoans as basal within the Diptoblasta, a group of animals that includes sponges, comb jellies, jellyfish, corals, and anemones. This means that sponges and comb jellies, both previously considered candidates for the most basal animal, fall within the clade as more derived than Placozoans and as sister taxa to each other. Study results also identify a very deep division between the Diptoblasta and the Bilateria/Triploblasta: when looking at all animals, scientists now see that Placozoans and their relatives are in a separate lineage from all other metazoans (starfish, bivalves, anthropoids, crustaceans and chordates). This means that the nervous system, once thought to have arisen once, must have evolved twice from the DNA that coded for these complex systems (keeping in mind that while Placozoans and sponges do not have nervous systems, many of the taxa related to them do.)

Count me as one who is “shocked” by these findings.  The Darwinists now want us to believe that neurons and nervous systems evolved independently in two separate instances with nothing more than blind processes as their guide.

“Some people might initially be shocked to see that nerve cells in cnidarians and higher animals (Bilateria), the group of animals that includes humans, evolved independently,” says Schierwater. “But with this new phylogeny, we can take a closer look at the anatomy of these organisms—and we can see that their nervous systems are not all that similar at the morphological level after all.”

DeSalle agrees. “It is the underlying genetic tool kit that is similar amongst these basal animals. Placozoa have all of the tools in their genome to make a nervous system, but they just don’t do it.” (emphasis added)

So, these animals have all the tools available in their toolkit of a genome to make a nervous system, but they just don’t do it.  Score one for the “front-loaders.”  I’m a front-loader, but not of the common descent variety.  I believe that God may have designed mechanisms into the genome in order to allow for adaptation and change in response to environmental demands.

(1). New Tree of Life Divides all Lower Metazoans from Higher Animals

Dark Flow

And then did we, the Most High Scientists, decide to share our latest discoveries. We know you will be impressed. We did discover that Dark Flow, that mysterious Dark Force that is causing cluster galaxies to move at an impossible 1000 kilometers/second, may tell us what lies beyond that cosmic horizon.⁽¹⁾ The cosmic horizon is 45 billion light years away. We did figure out that these clusters are moving at this incredible speed from looking at particle interactions with the cosmic microwave background (CMB), either that, or there is a fundamental problem with our cosmology (Praise Science). So we did get to wondering what could cause this Dark Flow. It can’t be invisible Dark Matter, because there is not enough of it in the universe (even though it’s invisible and unmeasurable, it makes up 95% of the mass of the universe). It can’t be Dark Energy (that unmeasurable force that is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate), because it’s spread evenly throughout space.

The Multiverse

So, we did continue asking the question, and we came up with an answer (Praise Science and Ourselves), just as you knew we would. So, we got to thinking that something outside of our bubble must be tugging on these galaxies. And then we did get to thinking that perhaps the pre-existing patch of space-time before the Big Bang did result in lots of bubbles, with a universe in each (Praise Science and the Multiverse). We even coined a new phrase, “Eternal Inflation.” We already predicted you would like it, and yet again, our predictions were confirmed. Others of us think that our bubble might have crashed into another bubble shortly after popping into existence. Others just think the standard model of cosmology is  incorrect, but we’ll print that later in the article, and go back to focusing on more interesting things.

(1). Dark Flow: Proof of another Universe?

The irony here is that evolutionists make naturalism unscientific according to their own criterion of testability. This is because naturalistic explanations are the only explanations that are allowed. They therefore cannot be tested because they are true by definition. The only testing that can be done is between different sub-hypotheses of naturalism. Gradualism can be compared with punctuated equilibrium, drift can be compared with selection, and so forth. But naturalism has been defined as the only scientific option available.

Imagine if the species were designed, as they appear to be. Imagine that the DNA code, the bat’s sonar system, the towering redwood trees, and the other biological wonders were designed. If this were true, it would never be allowed within evolutionary science. How can evolutionists claim their theory is a fact while simultaneously ruling out certain explanations? They can do this by allowing for only scientific explanations to be factual. The world outside of science may be beautiful, awesome, intriguing, enchanting, and so forth, but it is not factual. In a word, science deals with facts while non-science deals with values.

So the basis, the philosophical underpinnings, of their position is untestable, and is, therefore, unscientific by their own criteria. Science, it seems, lacks a definition apart from philosophical naturalism, which is held as a metaphysical truth…a metaphysical “truth,” which is untestable.

In the century and a half since Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, science has discovered a plethora of contradictory information. Many predictions of the theory have been falsified, including foundational expectations. The theory has consistently failed and as a consequence it has grown far more complex than anything Darwin ever envisioned. Evolution is not a good scientific theory and in this sense it is comparable to geocentrism. Both theories grew ever more complicated in response to the evidences of the natural world, adding epicycle upon epicycle.

In stark contrast to these evidential problems, evolutionists believe that their theory is a fact. Evolution is a fact, they say, just as gravity is fact. This remarkable claim is an indicator that there is more to evolution than merely a scientific theory. In light of the scientific evidence, the claim that evolution is a fact may seem to be absurd. But it is not.

The fact of evolution is a necessary consequence of the metaphysical assumptions evolutionists make. Metaphysical assumptions are assumptions that do not derive from science. They are made independent of science. These metaphysical assumptions that evolutionists make would be difficult to defend as necessarily true outside of evolutionary circles, but within evolution their truth is not controversial. All of this means that the scientific problems with evolution are relegated to questions of how evolution occurred. The science cannot bear on questions of whether or not evolution occurred.