Transcript PowerPoint - Living Stones

Evolution – inevitable or impossible
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Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Not so long ago, all species were thought
to have been created by god. Then along
came evolution…
• The work of Charles Darwin is irrefutable,
that humans are just another animal
occupying a small branch on a vast tree of
life. No divine spark is needed to explain
our existence and traits.
• New Scientist 16 July 2016, p.36
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Could life arise without that divine spark?
• In 1953 Urey & Miller made small amounts
of impure glycine & alanine using an
electric spark.
• In 2016 glycine was detected on comet
67P by the Rosetti probe. NS 4/7/16
• A & G, components of RNA, have been
made in the lab. NS 21/5/16
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Nothing works unless everything works.
•
Incomplete complex parts decompose
over time by the entropy law, so millions
of years would not help.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Life forms are defined by their genes that
make up 2 per cent of DNA.
• Not only are genes made of millions of
nucleotides in an exact sequence, but they
carry coded information.
• These make RNA that codes for proteins.
• Complexity and information speak of
design.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
The tiniest genome that can live and
reproduce has been made by the J Craig
Venter Institute in California.
NS 2/4/16
minimal genome of only 473 genes
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Venter’s team that did this brilliant
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piece of genetic engineering had no
idea what a third of the genes did.
Professor Richard Kitney of Imperial
College commented: “No, it tells us
nothing about how life started
naturally.” NS 2/4/16
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• This highlights our lack of knowledge of
many cell functions.
• The idea that a genome of 473 genes (the
simplest genome possible) could assemble
itself by chance is ludicrous. It is
statistically impossible.
• And then there is the rest of the cells
machinery –mitochondria, organelles of
various kinds, cell division systems that
check nucleotide sequences, and so on.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• ATP Synthase in the mitochondra. It is
the source of the energy that powers
every cell of every animal, plant, fungus
and bacterium.
• Assemblage of 31 proteins, each of
precise construction and vital to its
function.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• They are 200,000 times smaller than
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a pinhead
Each of these has a wheel that
rotates at 6,000 revs per minute when
just ticking over, to make ATP.
ADP + P > ATP
ATP > ADP + P + Energy
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• It could not be formed a bit at a time.
• So no living thing could have evolved
a bit at a time.
• They all required an intelligent
Creator.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• An article in New Scientist 28 September
2013 p. 12 lists some possible
mechanisms for evolution as
• “sex, where two organisms combine their
genes by mating;
• random DNA mutation;
• and the active transfer of genes between
live microbes.”
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Micro-evolution and macro-evolution
Prof. Downey
• ‘microevolution’ – small scale evolutionary
change within species
• ‘macroevolution’ – protozoa to people
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Variation cannot be extrapolated to
macro-evolution. Variation uses preexisting genes, (alleles) whereas
macro-evolution would require the
formation of new genes.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
Tasmanian Devils
New Scientist 10 September 2016 p.14
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Antibiotic resistance has been claimed
as an example of evolution in action
today. Not so.
• ‘Superbugs’ such as MRSA are resistant to
antibiotics. This is because there was
always a proportion of resistant bugs, and
once the antibiotic has wiped out the nonresistant bugs, the superbugs multiply.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Canadians found DNA from mammoths,
bison and other species in ice cores, and
with them found a variety of bacterial
antibiotic-resistant genes. “Sure enough,
they found several, including those for
resistance to penicillin, tetracycline and
vancomycin - conclusive proof that these
genes truly pre-date medical antibiotics.”
NS, 3 September 2011 p. 14
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Mutations involve a loss of genetic
information.
• Because it is deleterious, natural selection
will tend to eliminate the change.
• Natural selection is a conserving
mechanism, rather than an agent of
upward evolution as Darwin supposed.
Bicentenary
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Each of us has 50 to 100 new mutations
not present in our parents.
• IQ tests now show a steady decline in
scores.
• Reaction times in tests give slower results
than the same tests a century ago.
• Allergies and genetic diseases are more
common today, despite medical advances.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• “An average European woman today, for
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example, has a brain about 15 per cent smaller
than that of her counterpart at the end of the
last ice age.” NS 23 August 2014 p. 5
“How’s this for impressive: a genome pieced
together from a 30,000-year-old finger bone
contains fewer errors than genomes generated
using samples from living people.”
NS, 11 February 2012 p. 7
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Devolution?
• “In fact he (Gerald Crabtree of Stanford
University in California) says, someone
plucked from 1000 BC and placed in
modern society, would be ‘among the
brightest and most intellectually alive of
our colleagues and companions’.”
Trends in Genetics, vol. 29, p 1, 2014
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Fins to limbs?
• In an attempt to artificially grow limbs on
zebrafish, their embryos were injected
with the hoxd13 gene that makes
autopods in mice leading to paws. The fish
hatched with autopods and carried on
growing for four days, but then died.
NS, 15 December 2012 p. 20
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Convergent evolution?
• “Dolphins, bats and several species of
cave-dwelling bird separately hit on echolocation.” NS, 21 January 2012 p. 35
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Missing Links
• Darwin complained about the lack of
intermediate forms in the fossil record.
• Leading American evolutionist, the late
Stephen Jay Gould, claimed that missing
links are the ‘trade secret’ of
palaeontologists.
• ‘punctuated equilibrium’.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Archaeopteryx – an intermediate fossil?
• T H Huxley - some reptiles evolved into birds.
• Shortly after the publication of On the Origin of
Species, Archaeopteryx found and proclaimed a
•
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missing link.
Other fossil birds had teeth, and some reptiles
had teeth while others didn’t.
The young of the living Hoatzin (pronounced
wotseen) bird have hooks on their wings.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• The Archaeopteryx skull of the Nat.
History Museum, London, specimen was
studied in a CT Scanner.
• “What these scans revealed was that,
beneath the skull, archaeopteryx had
much in common with a modern bird… ‘It
definitely had a flight-ready brain.’”
NS, 3 April 2010 p.13
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• “One revelation was the size and shape of
the delicate semi-circular canals in the
inner ear, which are crucial for balance.
They were highly arced like those of
modern birds, a trait associated with an
acrobatic or aerobatic lifestyle.”
Ibid
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• “As for the brain itself, archaeopteryx had
massive birdlike visual centres jutting out
from either side of the brain, and the
apparatus for a superb sense of hearing.”
Ibid
• Its large eye sockets showed that it
hunted at night, like an owl.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• “But perhaps the most notable feature
was a hefty cerebellum - the brain’s
‘autopilot’, where sensory information is
coordinated and integrated. Its relative
size was far larger than even the birdiest
dinosaurs, which include velociraptor. That
is the real neural advance, says Rowe.
Integration is ultimately what it is all
about - how you put senses together and
make decisions.’” Ibid
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Fossils of so-called feathered
dinosaurs - The ‘feathers’ are not
designed for flight, nor for insulation.
• Archaeoraptor. National Geographic
magazine
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Storrs Olsen, curator of Washington
DC’s Smithsonian Institute wrote:
“There is not one undisputed example
of a dinosaur with feathers. None.
The public deserves to know this.”
NS, 29 January 2000 p. 12
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Apes to Man – What evolutionary advantage is
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there for an ape to shed its warm fur coat, lose
a lot of its musculature and leave the safety of
the trees to walk among carnivorous preditors?
Neanderthals are genetically the same as
modern man.
The variation in shape and size of ancient
human skulls is no wider than that which exists
between people alive today.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
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Fakery and fraud
Java Man: skull parts of giant gibbon + human
femur
Neanderthal Man : an old man with rickets
Piltdown man: Modern human cranium + ape
jaw
Nebraska Man: a peccary (pig) tooth
Pekin Man: broken ape skull collection that
disappeared during WWII
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• Darwin’s tree of life
• Darwin first proposed his ‘tree of life’, in 1837.
“But today the project lies in tatters, torn to
pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence.
Many biologists now argue that the tree concept
is obsolete and needs to be discarded. ‘We have
no evidence at all that the tree of life is a
reality,’ says Eric Bapteste. That bombshell has
even persuaded some that our fundamental
view of biology needs to change.” NS, 24 January
2009 p.34
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• ‘Deep time’: billions of years. History
goes back only thousands of years.
Similarly agriculture and cities.
• Noah’s Flood - Sedimentary rocks can be
laid down rapidly under high-energy
conditions, and plants and animals can be
rapidly fossilised because they were buried
alive.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
But if biological complexity with coded
information require input from an
intelligent source, no amount of deep time
would allow one kind of creature to evolve
into a different kind.
The only alternative to evolution is
intelligent design by a Creator God.
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• “Why are scientists and teachers resistant
to mentioning intelligent design and
climate change denial in school science
classes? They are wonderful examples to
demonstrate the difference between
pseudo-science and real science. Properly
equipped teachers will not have to take
sides; the students will work it out for
themselves. Problem solved.”
NS, 11 February 2012 p. 33, Letters
Evolution – inevitable or impossible
• The Holy Bible claims to be the word of
the Creator God
• In it He tells us He created in 6 days.
• We are warned not to add to or take away
from the text:
You shall not add to the word which I
command you, nor take from it, that
you may keep the commandments of
the LORD your God which I command
you.
Deuteronomy 4:2
Every word of God is pure; He is a
shield to those who put their trust in
Him.
Do not add to His words, lest He
rebuke you, and you be found a liar.
Proverbs 30:5,6
For I testify to everyone who hears the
words of the prophesy of this book: If
anyone adds to these things, God will add
to him the plagues that are written in this
book; and if anyone takes away from the
words of the book of this prophesy, God
shall take away his part from the Book of
Life, from the holy city, and from the
things which are written in this book.
Revelation 22:18,19
For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven
and earth pass away, one jot or one
tittle will by no means pass from the
law till all is fulfilled.
Matthew 5:18
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