GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION Great Myths of Evolution ======================== GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION: #1 by David Menton HUMAN EMBRYOS HAVE "GILL SLITS" AT ONE STAGE OF THEIR DEVELOPMENT PROVING THAT MAN EVOLVED FROM AQUATIC, FISH AND AMPHIBIAN, ANCESTORS. You can hardly attend high school or college now days with out hearing or reading this "whopper". In fact, neither gills nor their slits are found at any stage in the embryological development of any mammal including man. The folds in the neck region of the mammalian embryo, that are erroneously called "gills", are not gills in any sense of the word and never have anything to do with breathing. They are merely flexion folds, or wrinkles, in the neck region resulting from the sharply down turned head and protruding heart of the developing embryo. These folds eventually develop into a portion of the face, inner ear, tonsils, parathyroid and thymus. No reputable medical embryology text claims that there are "gill slits" in mammals. Still, the gill slit myth is perpetuated in many high school and college biology text books as "scientific evidence" for evolution. Even Dr. Spock in his book 'Baby and Child Care' claims that "as the baby lies in the amniotic fluid of the womb, he has gills like a fish." Perhaps the "gill slit" myth continues to be taught because there is no better "evidence" for evolution. How many of you were taught the gill slit myth in school?? FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution BBS. (314) 821-1078. 3/12/24. ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION # 2 by David Menton ONTOGENY RECAPITULATES PHYLOGENY Students of biology who have gone to the trouble to memorize this impressive sounding phrase will be disheartened to learn that it has been known to be untrue since it was first proposed as "fact" by Ernst Haeckel nearly 100 years ago! The recapitulation myth, better known as the biogenetic "law", claims that each embryo in its development passes through abreviated stages that resemble developmental stages of its evolutionary ancestors. The fictitious "gill slits" of human embryos discussed in Myth # 1, for example, are supposed to represent the "fish" or "amphibian" stage of man's evolutionary ancestors. Most professional evolutionists no longer believe this myth. The famous evolutionist Dr. Paul Ehrlich, for example, said: "this interpretation of embryological sequences will not stand close examination. Its' shortcomings have been almost universally pointed out by modern authors, but the idea still has a prominent place in biological mythology." ('The Process of Evolution' 1963, p.66). In his book 'The Beginnings of Life' (1977, p. 32), embryologist Dr. E. Blechschmidt reveals some of his frustration with the persistence of this myth: "The so-called basic law of biogenetics is wrong. No buts or ifs can mitigate this fact. It is not even a tiny bit correct or correct in a different form. It is totally wrong." Yet in a recent (1980) survey of 15 high school biology text books, 9 offered embryological recapitulation as evidence for evolution! FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution BBS. (314) 821-1078. 3/12/24/ ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #3 by David Menton THE APPENDIX OF MAN IS A VESTIGIAL AND USELESS ORGAN LEFT OVER FROM BACK WHEN PRIMATIVE MAN ATE MAINLY RAW VEGETATION Vestigial organs are believed to be nonfunctional in their present condition but are considered to have had a function in an evolutionary ancestor. It has been claimed by some evolutionists that the human appendix is a vestigial cecum from our evolutionary ancestors. The cecum is a blind ending pouch near the end of the large intestine (colon) which provides additional space for colonic function and may in some animals, such as cows, contain special bacteria which aid in the digestion of plant material. In fact, almost every mammal has a cecum and many of these ALSO have an appendix! Man, for example, has both a cecum AND an appendix - neither is vestigial or useless. The appendix is a lymphoid organ (part of the bodies immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the bowel. Thinking it was a useless evolutionary "left over", many surgeons used to remove the appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. This is no longer done unless the appendix is terminally infected. As recently as 1971, the Encyclopedia Britanica claimed that there were more than 100 vestigial organs in man, including the appendix and coccyx! In years past, some people lost their lives having "vestigial organs" such as the parathyroid removed by overzealous surgeons. Today there are few if any organs of the body that are thought to be without function. None the less, 7 out of 15 high school biology textbooks recently surveyed sighted vestigial organs, including the appendix, as evidence for evolution! FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS. (314) 821-1078 3/12/24. ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #4 by David Menton IN THE FAMOUS EXAMPLE OF THE PEPPERED MOTH, WE CAN ACTUALLY SEE EVOLUTION IN ACTION The Peppered moth (Biston betularia) is typically a whitish moth covered with black spots. This coloration provides an effective camouflage for the moths as they rest on certain Birch trees. Like humans, however, these moths can be found in a range of pigmentation from very black to very white and all shades in between. In a much touted study in England it was found that when the white trees, on which the moths rested, became dark from industrial pollution, birds ate more of the lighter moths (apparently missing the darker ones). It came as no surprise that the population of darker moths increased while the lighter ones decreased. It was further observed (but rarely mentioned) that when cities cleaned up their air, the trees got lighter and the lighter moths again predominated. This is clearly natural selection in action but is this evolution? Not really, unless we call the natural variation within species that occurs in all plants and animals "evolution". The problem with equating this type of variation with evolution is that it is STRICTLY LIMITED. There are, for example, over 150 varieties (breeds) of dogs recognized by the AKC and more are added each year, but they are ALL DOGS (Canis familiaris). You can select for dogs with long ears or short ears, big dogs or small dogs, but you can,t select successfully for dogs with wings. The reason is simple, there are no genes for wings (and their associated struc- tures) in the gene pool of the species Canis familiaris. Thus dogs remain dogs and Peppered moths remain Peppered moths and, as far as we know, they always have and always will (excepting extinction). One of the great triumphs of modern genetics has been to explain how it is possible to have so much variation with in a species with out losing the distinctiveness of the species itself. This is now known to be do to multiple alleles in the gene pool of the species. For many genes of a species there exists several alternative versions (alleles) though any individual can have no more than two "versions" of a particular gene at one time. Thus a person may have eye color genes for blue eyes or brown eyes, but they are still eyes and both remain Homo sapiens. If we were all genetically alike we would be clones! An entire species of identical twins would not be very interesting but more importantly, such a population might not survive long in a variable environment. In conclusion, natural selection among existing alleles is known to promote the stability and continued survival of a species, but it is not known to be responsible for why we have come to have people, cows, dogs, moths, giraffes etc. etc. etc. FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS. (314) 821-1078 3/12/24 ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #5 by David Menton MAN AND ALL OTHER LIVING ORGANISMS HAVE EVOLVED FROM A PRIMITIVE LIFE FORM BY MEANS OF A VAST NUMBER OF LUCKY MUTATIONS Evolutionists concede that mutations are the only source of NEW genetic information for natural selection to work on. Mutations are changes in the genes or chromosomes caused by radiation, chemicals or unknown agent. Mutations cause cancer but few if any have been proven to be "good" for an organism. Dr. H.J. Muller, who won the Nobel prize for his work on mutations said: "It is entirely in line with the accidental nature of mutations that extensive tests have agreed in showing the vast majority of them detrimental to the organism in its job of surviving and reproducing --- GOOD ONES ARE SO RARE WE CAN CONSIDER THEM ALL BAD" (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11:331). It should be remembered that only mutations occurring in the germ cells (sperm and eggs) can have any chance of being passed on to the next generation. The probability of getting five mutations ("good" or bad) in the same nucleus has been estimated to be 1 in 10 to the 22 power! If there was a population of 100 million organisms with a reproductive cycle of 1 day, such an event (5 mutations in one nucleus) would be expected to occur ONCE in 274 BILLION YEARS! Recent scientific evidence has shown that the survival of ALL living organisms depends on an incredibly complex DNA REPAIR mechanism that actually cuts damaged (mutated) sections of DNA out of chromosomes and replaces them with a perfect patch! There is a human disease called xeroderma pigmentosa in which the DNA repair mechanism is inactive. These people generally die from mutations caused in part by occasional exposure to the sun. It requires an immense amount of faith to believe that our body is the result of "lucky" mutations! FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS (314) 821-1078, 3/12/24, 24 hrs. ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #6 => ((THE FACT OF EVOLUTION IS SUPPORTED BY A RATHER WELL FORMED SEQUENCE OF INTERMEDIATE STAGES IN THE FOSSIL RECORD)) This comment by the famous Harvard evolutionist Steven J. Gould when he testified before judge Overton in the Arkansas Creation-evolution trial suggests that the countless intermediate stages in the evolution of one organism into another, really are visible in the fossil record - as indeed they should be IF evolution has occured. This same Dr. Gould, however, in one of his regular columns in Natural History magazine (May 1977) said: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology (study of fossils) -- In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors, it appears all at once and fully formed." The paleontologist Dr. David B. Kitts agrees: "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them" (Evolution 28:476). Dr. David Raup, a paleontologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, recently pointed out that Darwin himself was: "embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn't look the way he predicted it would -- different species usually appear and disappear from the record without showing the transitions that Darwin postulated -- we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much -- We have fewer examples of evolutionary transiton than we had in Darwins time. By this I mean that some some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information" (Field Museum Natural History Bulletin 50:22-29). The evolutionist Dr. Steven M. Stanley put it bluntly: "The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition -" (Macro- evolution: Pattern and Process 1979 p.39). No wonder G.K. Chesterton quipped that folks "seem to know everything about the missing link except that it IS MISSING." ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #7 by David N Menton PROFESSIONAL EVOLUTIONISTS ARE OPEN TO ACTIVE HELP FROM GOD REALIZING THAT THE EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED WITHOUT DIVINE INTERVENTION Creationism was ruled to be "unscientific" by Judge Overton in the recent Arkansas Creation-Evolution trial precisely because it "involves Divine intervention." Evolutionists are not about to open evolutionism to the same criticism, though some evolutionists tolerate "theistic evolution" as a sop for those who they see as too weak to entirely abandon their belief in the supernatural. But what do leading evolutionists really think about the role of God in evolution? Dr. Carl Sagan, perhaps the single most important voice of evolutionism, confidently claimed in his book COSMOS (p. 177) "the world was not made by the gods, but instead was the work of material forces interacting in nature." Sagan's former teacher, the famous evolutionary astronomer Harlow Shapely, once said "Some piously record, 'In the beginning God', but I say, 'In the beginning hydrogen'." The famous Harvard evolu- tionist Dr. Steven J. Gould insists in his book EVER SINCE DARWIN, that "Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal (brain cell) complexity." The distinguished evolutionist Dr. George Gaylord Simpson in his book THE MEANING OF EVOLUTION (951 P.135) claimed that "There is neither need nor excuse for postulation of nonmaterial intervention in the origin of life, the rise of man or any other part of the material cosmos." In like manner, Sir Julian Huxley explained that "in the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, in- cluding our human selves mind, and soul as well" (EVOLUTION AFTER DARWIN, 1960, p.252). And finally, what did Charles Darwin himself believe about the role of God in evolution? Darwin expert Neal Gillespie, in his book CHARLES DARWIN AND THE PROBLEM OF CREATION (1974, p. 141), said that "Darwin clearly rejected Christianity and virtually all conventional arguments in defense of the existence of God and human immortality." In his own autobiography, Darwin admitted that his evolutionary beliefs gradually made the Bible unbelievable to him and said "Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true." FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS (314) 821-1078, 3/12/24 baud, 24 hrs ======================================================================= GREAT MYTHS OF EVOLUTION #8 by David N. Menton GIVEN ENOUGH TIME ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE - EVEN EVOLUTION This myth is the ultimate argument of those who attempt to "explain" the origin of the Cosmos and all life by CHANCE and the natural properties of matter and energy. Evolutionists hope that by invoking immense amounts of time, highly improbable events can somehow be made probable. But with this type of argument it is possible to "explain" ANYTHING. We've all heard it said, for example, that "given enough monkeys and enough typewriters, EVENTUALLY one of them is bound to type the sonnets of Shakespeare error free." But this outrageous myth violates the statistical foundation on which all modern science rests. Statistically controlled experiments are useless if we do not assume that highly improbable events simply do not occur. The probability of any event which has a known number of possible outcomes can be cal- culated quite easily. The probability of rolling a particular number on a die, for example, is one chance out of six (the total number of possible sides) or 1/6. The probability of getting TWO particular numbers on two successive rolls of the die is 1/6 x 1/6 or 1/36, which is to say you would expect to succeed once in 36 rolls. What then is the probability of randomly selecting the appropriate letters and spaces from a Scrabble set to spell "THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION"? There are 26 different letters and a space in the alphabet (total 27) and there is a total of 23 of these letters and spaces in our sentence. The probability of spelling this sentence without error by blindly drawing and replacing letters from our 27 character set is calculated by mult- iplying 1/27 x 1/27 x 1/27 .... 23 times. The answer reveals that we would expect to spell this simple sentence correctly by CHANCE approximately ONCE IN 8 HUNDRED MILLION, TRILLION, TRILLION draws!! If we drew and replaced letters at the rate of a billion a second we would expect to succeed once in 26 THOUSAND, TRILLION YEARS!! Now the simplest living organism is so vastly more complex than our simple sentence, that we have no way of really calculating its probability. If, however, we consider just one one particular protein of average size (say 500 amino acids) from among the thousands of proteins in a living organism, we can easily calculate the probability of forming it by CHANCE. Proteins are made of a tightly linked chain of amino acids. There are only 20 different amino acids used in the proteins of ALL living organisms and they are arranged in a linear sequence much like the letters of a long paragraph. Assuming an inexhaustible supply of each of the 20 different amino acids, the probability calculation would be 1/20 x 1/20 x 1/20 ... 500 times. The number of possible combinations of the amino acids in this protein is 1 with over 600 zeros after it! Even if we were to begin with the proper mixture of 500 amino acids to make our particular protein, we could never get the correct sequence for them by CHANCE. Even if the entire universe were packed tight with computers the size of electrons, each trying a billion combinations of our 500 amino acids a second, we could sample only an infinitesimally small fraction of all of the possible combi- nations in 300 billion years! Even if every medium sized protein molecule that ever existed on earth were ALL DIFFERENT, our vast "fleet" of busy computers could not be expected to come up with the combination of amino acids in ANY ONE OF THEM in a mere 300 billion years!! What all this means is that if the whole of evolution were re- duced to the question of the probability of forming ANY ONE biologically useful protein of average size, we could safely conclude that evolution would be a VIRTUAL IMPOSSIBILITY by reason of the fact that there would be INSUFFICIENT TIME AND MATTER IN THE UNIVERSE!!! Now calculate how much faith it takes to believe in evolution. FROM: M.A.C. Creation - Evolution PBBS (314) 821-1078, 3/12/24 baud, 24 hrs =======================================================================