Asyncritus' How Does Instinct Evolve: 2009

Saturday 14 November 2009

THE INSTINCTS OF THE PARASOL ANTS

http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/atta.html

THE LEAF CUTTING ANT (PARASOL ANTS)

We have in this example, another phenomenal illustrative piece on the helplessness of the evolution theory to explain observable facts.

These are observable, have been observed, and there is no guesswork or speculation involved. The whole mechanism sprang full blown to birth, or it couldn’t have happened at all. Judge for yourselves.

The parasol ant is a real pest to farmers and causes a lot of damage to crops, because the foraging ants go out in numbers, cut large amounts of leaf material off crop plants, and this costs money.

They go forth, cut the leaves with their specially constructed jaws, and carry them back to their nests. They climb trees up to 100-feet tall and cut out small pieces of leaves. They then carry these fragments, weighing as much as 50 times their body weight, back to their homes. Sometimes they must travel 200 feet, equal to an average human walking about 6 miles with 5,000 lbs. on his/her back! The forest floor is converted to a maze of busy highways full of these moving leaf fragments.

They travel a distance equivalent to a 6 foot man walking 5 miles in a forest. So how do they get home? Incredibly, they leave a trail of pheromone-like substances on their trails.

Back at the nest, the marvels begin. The ants were once thought to use the ‘parasols’ as covering to shield them from the rain. That, however, is not the case.

The leaf cutters take the material back to their nests, and there, in specially designed underground chambers, cut them up into minute little pieces, spray them with excrement, saliva, and then plant a particular species of fungus on the decaying material.

But that is not the whole story.: http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2627

"Incredibly, the ants do not eat the leaves. Rather, they cultivate miniature gardens of fungus on pieces of leaves. which they chew and then store in underground compost piles.

Several million ants usually inhabit their colonies, and the garden chambers can extend as deep as twelve feet underground.

In order to fulfill all the needs of the colony, the ants divide the work among classes. Each class of workers is designed to do a special job. The biggest ants have powerful jaws to cut leaves, flower petals, and blades of grass. They bring these big pieces back to the nest where slightly smaller workers cut and dice the plant material into tiny lumps. The smallest workers chew these up into balls, adding bits of fungus. The ants’ saliva contains ingredients that help the fungus break down the plant material, and also kills harmful bacteria and other fungi.

Small workers strip off wax and other parts of the plants that the fungus cannot use. Workers dump this refuse into special waste chambers. The relationship between the ants and the fungus is symbiotic, meaning that both benefit. The fungus benefits because the ants feed it, protect it, and spread it from place to place. In return, the fungus grows a clump of special hyphae. Each clump is like an instant three-course meal, which the smallest ant workers use to feed the larvae."

This is the only fungus the ants eat and feed the larvae on.

You may recall the difficulties faced when researchers attempted to cultivate the Penicillium fungus in order to produce penicillin in the World War. Fleming, Florey and Chain were awarded Nobel prizes for their discovery (Fleming), extraction and purification of the antibiotic (Chain and Florey). Here are ants who have 'discovered' the single species of fungus that suits them, and 'developed' effective cultivation methods of the fungus.

They have 'discovered' how to obtain and produce the the right composting medium for its growth. They maintain the correct temperature for it's cultivation and growth. Instinct, you see. Perhaps they too should be awarded the Nobel prizes for the animal world!

When the young queen leaves the nest, she takes a piece of the fungus with her to act as seeding material!

While Mueller and Schultz worked on the ants’ relationship to fungi, a team of biologists at the University of Toronto were noting—and wondering about—the presence of a persistent and ravaging mold, called Escovopsis, in attine gardens. How was it, they asked, that this potent parasite didn’t regularly overrun the attine nests? Taking note of a white powder on the undersides of the attine ants, they ultimately identified it as a type of bacteria, Streptomyces, that secretes antibiotics. The antibiotics were keeping the Escovopsis at bay. More important, they were doing so over long periods of time, without the Escovopsis becoming totally resistant.

Evolution cannot account for the origin of this complex organisation, biochemistry, specific knowledge of fungal cultivation, specific knowledge of fungal identification, pre-programmed behaviour patterns of the workers, reccognition of which parts are waste, knowledge that a piece of fungus will act as a cutting which could be used to propagate the only fungus they eat, the scissor like jaws which do the leaf-cutting, the selection of proper leaves which can be used as their composting material, the production of the pheromone-like ‘scent’ which marks their tracks – all this and more.

At every step of their discovery process, error would have caused the extinction of the species. Recall that this is the only species of fungus that they eat.So if they got that wrong, species extinction would have taken place.

Which raises another of these curious anomalies. If this is the only fungus they eat, and this is the only way that the fungus is propagated, then which came first? The ant, or the fungus? The ant depends on the fungus, and the fungus depends on the ant, like the old lock and key analogy. Without the lock, the key is useless, and without the key, the lock is equally so.

Consider the number of individual pieces of instinctive behaviour the ants exhibit, and ask yourself, how did these a. start and b.get into the genome?

1. They know they have to eat. Where did that come from?

2 They can walk. Where did that come from?

3 They have leaf-cutting jaws. Where did that come from? And where did the instincts powering the use of those jaws come from?

4 They 'know' that they must go cut the leaves. Where did that come from?

5 They know they must bring it back to their nest. Where did that come from?

6 They know they mustn't eat the leaves. Where did that come from?

7 They know they have to chew them up and make compost with them. Where did that come from?

8 They know they must excrete on the chewed up leaves to make the compost. Where did that come from?

9 They know they must place spores of the fungus on the compost. Where did that come from?

10 They know how to keep the nest clean, and how to tend the 'gardens' of fungus. Where did that come from?

11 They know how to make tunnels, and keep them at the correct temperature and wetness. Where did that come from?

12 They know that the fungal hyphae must not be eaten. Where did that come from?

13 They know the fungal fruiting bodies are edible, and they eat those. Where did that come from?

14 There is a whole social stratification of ants in the nest. Queen, workers which do one thing, and workers which do another. For example, the leaf-cutting ants cannot chew the leaves up and make the compost. There are smaller ants whose jaws are designed for that purpose.

This is a leaf-cutter. Observe the size of the jaws.

The above are workers creating the compost. Note the small size of the jaws.

15 There are a very large number of other behaviours we could ask the same question about. But the next most remarkable is the fact that when a young queen flies off to start a new colony, she invariably carries a piece of the fungus with her to act as the seed for the new gardens. There is clear purpose in her doing so - but she has a brain the size of a pinhead.

If she didn't do this, she and the species would perish, since new colonies could not form, and the old ones would eventually die out. Species extinction would be the result.

Also note that the eggs she lays, and which hatch out, produce workers (and some males). The workers do NOT need instructions in constructing the fungus gardens, cutting the leaves, and all the other required behaviours. So, the information is somehow programmed into their genes.

'Somehow' is the leading word here. How? And how did it all begin?

As we can clearly see, it's all or nothing. It either worked first time, or the species perished. Since the ant is with us here today, then it worked. First time.

That is a description of an act of creation, not evolution.

The instincts, ants and fungus arose together, and have continued ever since their creation. There are fossil Atta ants in the Miocene (c25 mya) - identifiable ones, 'One of the fossil species of Atta resembles in general form and in the venation of the wings the curious Atta cephalotes of Tropical America'.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v16/n398/abs/016122a0.html

All of those instincts, and many others we haven't mentioned, were implanted in the ants when they were created. No small, beneficial steps could have implanted them.

It is staggering that both sides of the evolution debate have failed to see the importance of this point. The pro-evolutionists DON'T WANT to see it, and the anti-evolutionists have missed it altogether, or at least haven't capitalised sufficiently on it.

I am happy to redress the balance.

Q. How did all that get into their genes?

A. God put it there..

Friday 13 November 2009

The Migration of Birds

"There is good evidence that young birds are equipped with endogenous migratory programs, which tell them roughly how many days and/or nights that they must fly, and in what direction."

In his book La Puissance et la Fragilité, Prof. Pierre Jean Hamburger from René Descartes University describes the extraordinary 24,000-kilometer journey made by the shearwater that lives in the Pacific Ocean:

It sets out from the coast of Australia. From there it flies straight southward to the Pacific. Then it turns north and flies along the coast of Japan until reaching the Bering Sea where it can rest for a while.

Following that break it sets off again, and this time heads south. Crossing the western coast of America, it arrives in California.

It then crosses the Pacific to return to its starting point. The route and timing of this 15,000-mile (24,000-kilometer) figure ‘8’ journey it makes every year never change.

The journey in question lasts a whole six months, always coming to an end in the third week of September on the island it left six months before, at the nest it left six months before.

What comes next is even more astonishing; after their return, the birds clean their nests, mate, and lay a single egg over the last 10 days of October.

The chicks hatch out two months later, grow very fast and are cared for over three months until their parents set out on that stupendous journey. Two weeks later; around the middle of April, it is time for the young birds to take wing on their own journey. They follow exactly the same route as that described above, with no guide.

The explanation is so obvious: These birds must have all the directions for such a journey within the inherited characteristics passed on within the egg. Some people may claim that birds navigate by the Sun and stars or follow the winds prevailing along their route on this journey out and back. But it is clear that these factors cannot determine the journey’s geographical and chronological accuracy."
Pierre Jean Hamburger, La Puissance et la Fragilité, Flammarion Pub., Paris, 1972.

"migratory birds have comprehensive, detailed, innate spatio-temporal programs for successful migration.

Such programs evidently enable even young, inexperienced birds to migrate alone, with no adult guide, to the species- or population-specific winter quarters that they have never seen before.

As will be explained further below, they do this by "vector" navigation: referring to a vector composed of a genetically predetermined migratory direction and to a time-plan, also genetically predetermined, for the course of migration...

It follows that the departure time is programmed by genetic factors... "

Peter Berthold, "Bird Migration: Introductory Remarks and Overall Perspective", Torgos, 1998, Vol. 28, pp. 25-30

Not only is it preprogrammed, but it is preprogrammed to do impossible things!

"Some birds migrate at seemingly impossible altitudes. For instance, dunlin, knot and certain other small migrating birds fly at a level of 7,000 m (23,000 feet), the same altitude used by aircraft. Whooper swans have been seen flying at 8,200 m (27,000 feet). Some birds even reach the stratosphere, the layer of thin atmosphere, at an altitude of between 8 and 40 kilometers (5 and 25 miles).11 Bar-headed geese cross the Himalayas at an altitude of 9,000 meters (29,529 feet), close to where the stratosphere begins."

What more do we need before we reject this hopeless theory?

The evidence I have been presenting, and which has received no refutation worthy of the name, supports the exceedingly realistic hypothesis that these things were all super-intelligently designed.

Any aeroplane, flying a journey of 1000 miles or so, with fully functioning GPS, at an altitude of 25,000 feet or more at the very edge of the stratosphere, has got to be intelligently designed, or it either wouldn't get there, or would simply perish.

Consider the requirements of survival alone.

The temperature is killing.

The troposphere begins at the Earth's surface and extends up to 4-12 miles (6-20 km) high. This is where we live. As the density of the gases in this layer decrease with height, the air becomes thinner. Therefore, the temperature in the troposphere also decreases with height. As you climb higher, the temperature drops from about 62°F (17°C) to -60°F (-51°C).).

They must be, therefore, extraordinarily well insulated creatures. Which poses yet another problem for the evolutionists. Did they develop their absolutely superior insulation IN ORDER TO FLY THAT HIGH? Or do they fly that high BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE INSULATION? And how did they figure out how to produce it?

But that's just the beginning of the problem. Water freezes at 0 deg C. The liquid covering the eyes of the birds is mainly water. If it is like normal tears, then it should freeze at -0.52 C. But since the birds fly in considerably lower temperatures, the problem becomes very severe. If the liquid froze at -0.52 C, then they could not possibly fly at that height, because their eyes would freeze up. But they do manage it.

Therefore the tears of their eyes must be specially designed with antifreeze built in. So must their nostril linings, and their lungs.

But how is that possible? A bird has no way of knowing what the upper tropospheric temperature will be. Neither does it know what chemicals need to be in its tears to prevent freezing, and least of all does it know how to synthesise that material.

So where did it come from? Design seems the only possible answer.

And then there’s the pressure question. The cabin of an aircraft flying at 26-30,000 feet HAS TO BE PRESSURISED, or all air travellers would die. The atmospheric pressure outside, is far too low to sustain human life. Here is a summary of what happened to James Glaisher, a balloonist who went up to 26,000 feet in the days before we knew all that we know today about the effects of high altitude:

In 1862, James Glaisher and Henry Coxwell ascended to 29,000feet in an open hot-air balloon. During the ascent, Glaisherdescribed marked neurologic compromises: appendicular and latertruncal paralysis, blindness, initially preserved cognition,and subsequent loss of consciousness.

http://www.neurology.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/6/1016

The birds, therefore, MUST have a compensating mechanism built in. But they didn’t know about all this before starting their journeys! So Who knew?

We will discuss the instincts powering flight later on, but let's return to the navigation problem.

Whooper swans fly from Siberia to Britain and return each year - something over 2000 miles. Short-tailed shearwaters, Puffinus tenuirostris migrate from South Australia to the North Pacific and back - a total distance of some 32,000 km (20,000 miles).

"Each year the bulk of the colony (the breeding age birds) return to the nesting grounds on almost the same day. Individuals return to the same nest burrow they occupied the previous year and generally mate with the same partner throughout their breeding life...

In mid April the adult birds commence their Pacific migration leaving the young behind. Hunger begins to bring the chicks from the nest at night, until they eventually set off after the adults. Somehow they find the migratory route without the guidance of the older birds."

http://www.port-fairy.com/shearwaters.htm

This, I thought, was astonishing enough. Maybe the shearwater is unique in this.

But no. Although not over such a great distance, the Pacific golden plover is another phenomenal migrator.

It flies from its breeding grounds in Alaska to its wintering grounds in Hawaii.

That is a distance of about 2,500 miles across open ocean, without any stopping points either available or possible. The birds stock up on food, fattening themselves, and burn it up on the journey. In Alaska, they breed and rear their young.

But that's not the end of the matter.

When the young have reached a reasonably independent state of maturity, the adults fly off and leave them!

Some time later, the young set off on their own, and without parents or any other guides, fly the return 2,500 miles to Alaska. Again across open ocean: no waymarks, no food, no stopping places.

Can you see the nonsense all this makes of evolution?

There are 2 journeys before us, totalling 25,000 miles, which is approximately the circumference of the planet. The plovers strain credulity, but the shearwaters kill it altogether.

And then we find out about the arctic tern - which flies from the top of the world, down to the antarctic every year, and back again.

All this is unbelievable, but comes from the work of highly reputable observers and organisations.

We may as well toss in the fourth unbelievable migration for good measure.

Cliff swallow scouts fly in from the sea, to the village/town of Capistrano in southern California, on the 17th of March every year. The following day, on the 18th March EVERY YEAR, the main flock arrives. They return to the nests they built last year, squabble and fight and breed, and then on October 23rd, they fly up, circle the town as if saying goodbye, and disappear out to sea once again.

This happens EVERY YEAR, on the same date (apart from leap years) without fail.

For the longest time, they had no idea where the birds came from, or where they went, until modern tracking methods were employed, and the truth came out.

They start their journey in Goya, a town in southern Argentina, and fly 7,500 miles up to Capistrano, and return about 6 months later.

In every case, there is dating accuracy – but the Capistrano swallows take the breath away. Somehow, those little birds have a calendar built in and arrive on the same date EVERY YEAR.

Now consider what the theory of evolution has to account for.

1 The ability to fly, and how that ability came from wingless reptiles. More on this later.

2 The existence in the birds of an amazingly accurate GPS system which somehow navigates them to and from their incredibly distant destinations.

3 The existence of a calendar in their little brains, accurate to the very day.

Instinct, says the evolutionist. Yes, we say – but where did this stupendous instinct come from?

In order for a GPS system to work, there must be navigational satellites ready set up, and accurate to within a few hundred feet. There has to be a receptor device, which will not only read those satellite signals, but also unscramble them and translate the messages into comprehensible materials.

There has to a map of some kind, built in to the navigator device. And lastly there must be a mind with the ability to receive and obey the messages from the satellites.

If any one of these elements missing, the whole thing is useless. Therefore in the birds, all of this had to have arisen AT THE SAME TIME. But a map implies that someone has been there before, who knows the way, and can program the route into the system.

The sheer improbability of all this happening by chance is incalculable. And there’s no use bleating pathetically that evolution is not a random process. Random or not, it cannot reasonably explain the origin of these mighty instincts by any method at all.

It’s no wonder that they never attempt to explain the origin of instinct.

Darwin was right when he said:

C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1909), p. 189.

"This [instinct] is by far the most serious special difficulty which my theory has encountered. . . . The problem at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my theory."

"No complex instinct can possibly be produced through natural selection except by the slow and gradual accumulation of numerous, slight, yet profitable variations. . . .We ought at least to be able to show that gradations of some kind are possible, and this we certainly can do."

He was wrong. No amount of ‘numerous, slight yet profitable variations’ can take a bird from Australia to Japan, to the Bering Strait, to California and back across the Pacific ocean to Australia, to arrive there at the same time every year, and nest in the same nest each time. Any errors, and the bird would be as good as dead.

No amount of ‘numerous, slight yet profitable variations’ can take a bird 7,500 miles from Goya in Argentina to Capistrano in California ON THE SAME DATE every year.

And how many of such variations do we need to carry the arctic tern from the top of the world down to the bottom, every year? Or how many do we need to carry the golden plover young 2,500 miles across a trackless ocean and back – without parents, guides and way marks ? At every step of the way an error means death and species extinction.

Yet they are still here doing the same wonderful things year after year.

How much more evidence do we need before we dump this silly theory which is so hopelessly useless at explaining such gigantic phenomena?

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Thursday 12 November 2009

The honey bee (part 2)

It's time to resume our evolution bashing endeavours, using the little bee as a diabolically powerful instrument.

First, let's look at the mathematical abilities of the bee.

"The two most efficient packing arrangements are the hexagonal closest-packed structure (hcp) and the cubic closest-packed structure (ccp). This exercise focuses on the hexagonal closest-packed structure, and the next exercise deals with the cubic closest-packed structure."

"In the hexagonal closest-packed structure, a = b = 2r and c = 4(2/3)^1/2 r, where r is the atomic radius of the atom. The sides of the unit cell are perpendicular to the base, thus α = β = 90^o. The base has a diamond (hexagonal) shape corresponding with γ = 120^o."

That is too difficult for me to derive, and I would not have guessed that the hexagonal structure is the most efficient for a storage structure. But it is - and can you imagine the ancestors of the bees sitting somewhere with pencils and paper at the ready, figuring out which shape to use?

No? But it MUST have happened sometime.

To even suggest that a bee, with brain the size of a pinhead, could figure out any such thing is the height of stupidity. To suggest that it took millions of years of evolution to produce such a thing is absurd. The bees would have died out long, long before they ever managed the calculations.

But let's hypothesise that one did figure it out. The next question is devastating. HOW DID THIS ABILITY GET INTO THE GENOME? The instincts possessed by all honeybees are transmitted from generation to generation - presumably in the genetic structure of the insects.

But how did it get in there? No evolutionist even dares guess - it woud expose them to too much ridicule. Here is some idiotic bleating: http://everything2.com/user/eien_meru/writeups/honeycomb

"In nature, evolution is the mother of all design. In order to produce an ounce of beeswax, bees have to collect eight times as much pollen. Collecting pollen is a very dangerous activity, as compared to hanging around the hive. So one could speculate that bees that made efficient use of their wax had more "disposable income" to deal with contingencies, and it just so happens that the honeycomb shape is very, very close to the optimal shape, in terms of unit volume per unit area."

Just so happens. Marvellous. My Mercedes just happened! And evolution is the 'mother of all DESIGN'. Get that? This totally blind process, is the mother of all DESIGN. THEY CAN'T GET AWAY FROM USING THAT WORD - IT'S SO BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS! And yet, have to kow-tow to 'science'. Here he is again:

"Mother Nature is a mathematician at heart. Really, I should say Mother Nature is an engineer, but some things are too elegant to be left to engineers."

And of course, engineers just drop out of trees. And 'too elegant' designs just happen!

"A honeycomb constructed from beeswax is nothing short of a triumph of engineering. It consists of hexagon shaped cylinders (six-sided) that fit naturally side-by-side. It has been

proven by mathematicians that making the cells into hexagons is the most efficient shape. The smallest possible amount of wax is used to contain the highest volume of honey. It has also been shown to be one of the strongest possible shapes while using the least amount of material."
http://www.beeswaxco.com/howBeesMakeWax.htm

"Math teachers (and Platonist mathematicians) point to things like the honeycomb as examples of mathematics realized in nature, descended from some higher Form. But bees, as smart as they are — and they're quite intelligent — are only acting on an instinct passed down from generation to generation.

So true. Instinct. Passed down from generation to generation. But we're really inquiring about Bee No.1 - the one who figured all this out. How could it? And how did that 'instinct' evolve - and from what.

The simple answer is that it didn't. Mathematics and engineering do not come about by randomised guesswork. Genetic engineering doesn't either - but that is what the evolutionist must postulate to get this to work.

Bee A (can't make a honeycomb) -----------X----------> Bee B (can make a honeycomb.)

What happened at X?

Let's leave that for the moment and think of another little problem. Well, another dozen really.

WHY does a bee build a honeycomb? Answer, to store honey. But there are a few odd things here.

Back to Bee A (above) who can't make a honeycomb. Did it figure out that it was going to store honey in it? But, what's honey? Do you see that there is purpose involved in this?

Honeycombs without honey are just so much waste of good wax. But equally, honey without honeycombs can't really be stored. And if our evolutionist enemies start shouting that there are bees which don't store honey in combs, then we ask: how did those bees, who don't know how to make honeycombs become bees which have learnt how to do so? And we're right back to square one.

The bees plainly make combs to store their honey in. Equally, they make honey to PUT in the combs. So which came first? The honey or the comb? Evolution has no answer.

The claim is sometimes made that the bees came from wasps, but we've put that to rest in the previous article on bees.

Here's another little problem.

Honey. As you may know, bees go to flowers, slurp up the nectar (how did they ever figure out that there was such a thing? I wonder.)

Most wasps are meat eating - we gave a beautiful illustration in the article on the Eumenes wasp.

Bees eat nectar and honey. The digestion of these entirely different substances is entirely different, requiring a totally different set of digestive enzymes, a totally different stomach wall structure - because the protein digesting enzymes would destroy the walls of a non-protein digesting alimentary canal. Enzymes are tremendously complicated proteins with very, very specialised functions.

A protein digesting enzyme cannot digest sugars such as are in nectar. And a sugar digesting enzyme cannot digest proteins. And to add insult to injury, proteins cannot be made without other proteins to make them! The trap has closed on our poor evolutionist friend.

But here's another problem.

Wasps make paper to buil;d their nests. Bees make wax to build their nests. The chemical structure of these substances is entirely different. Wasps chew timber and make their paper. Bees produce wax from glands under their abdomens.

Paper is a mixture but its main constituent is indigestible cellulose, which is a complex carbohydrate with chemical formula (C₆H₁₀O₅)_{n, where n is a very large whole number.}There is a lot more than this, obviously, but even from this (below) you can see that there is nothing simple about it.

The nature of the other lipid constituents can vary greatly with the source of the waxy material, but they include hydrocarbons, sterol esters, aliphatic aldehydes, primary and secondary alcohols, diols, ketones, β-diketones, triacylglycerols, and many more.

Tulloch, A.P. Beeswax: structure of the esters and their component hydroxy acids and diols. Chem. Phys. Lipids, 6, 235-265 (1971).

Further, bees produce wax from two glands under their abdomens.

That means, the substances which make the paper made by wasps, NEVER ENTERS THEIR ALIMENTARY CANALS.

That means that the sources of the wax made by bees, enters their alimentary canals, is biochemically processed, and secreted out of the wax glands.

There is nothing common to the processes in wasps and bees. They did not evolve from one another.

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils/images/de_tab_pleuro.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.uky.edu/KGS/fossils/tabulatemound2.htm&h=394&w=796&sz=113&tbnid=MSAvGDK0hLipNM:&tbnh=71&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfossil%2Bwasp%2Bnests%2Bpics&hl=en&usg=__tvRkbqFIsPOAhr054XqJLy6cimI=&ei=mWv8SoKFGdGx4Qawi73fAw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=3&ct=image&ved=0CA0Q9QEwAg

Fossil Wasp nests

Fossil bees nest

http://www.ub.es/dpep/meganeura/ichnol06.jpg

These are pictures of the earliest fossil nests found. They don't look very different to those of today - so we can safely conclude that both bees and wasps had figured these things out right from the very beginning. Like for instance:

1The wasps knew how to make paper and the bees knew how to make wax.

2 They knew how to make honey in the case of the bees.

3 That flowers existed, which were producing nectar for the bees.

Which creates one hell of a conundrum for evolution. Flowers and bees HAD TO HAVE ARISEN AT THE SAME TIME. Otherwise, the plants could not survive, and neither could the bees.

How did that happen? Ah, says our evolutionist triumphantly, Co-evolution! As if a name makes a difference to the total absence of explanations!

On the right is a fossilised bee from 45 million years ago. It's impossible to tell the difference between this one, and a modern bee.(Similarly with the centipede on the left) Have they evolved since then? Clearly not. Did evolution get them there? Equally clearly, no.

S J Gould wrote:
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology . . . We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life's history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study. (S. J. Gould, "Evolution's Erratic Pace," Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, p. 14, May 1977.)

The above furnishes very clear evidence of the truth of Gould's statement.

We could go on at length about the bees, and will probably do so in subsequent articles, but next, we will look at the phenomenon of bird migration and the absolutely horrendous problems the instincts of those beautiful creatures pose for evolution.

STOP PRESS

(PhysOrg.com) - "Their brains are tiny - about the size of sesame seeds - and yet the behaviour of the humble honey bee is so advanced it has scientists scratching their heads in disbelief.

New Australian research just published by Proceedings of the Royal Society of London has shown that the bee brain has the ability to estimate energy expenditure while foraging for pollen.

"To make honey, bees must gather more nectar from flowers than the energy spent collecting it, so in order to forage efficiently they need to know how much energy each foraging trip costs them," said Dr Andrew Barron, the author of the study and senior lecturer at Macquarie University.

Bees estimate distance visually, by watching the environment pass them during flight. Barron set out to determine whether bees also use this visual information to estimate their flight costs. His first step was to build two tunnels - one 10 metres long and one 20 metres long - and place feeders at the end of each to attract the bees. He then created an optical illusion to trick the bees into believing that the closest feeder was actually the furthest distance away."

Good one, evolution!

NEW! HOT OFF THE PRESS!!

“HOW DOES INSTINCT EVOLVE”

OR

Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus

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The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is

NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!

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Thursday 29 October 2009

Translation and transcription

Jaques Monod, Nobel Prize Winner, had this to say about transcription mechanisms. He is an evolutionist, on your side, chaps. But what he says must surely make you take a respectful step back! I've broken it up into smaller paragraphs to make it a little more readable.

"The development of the metabolic system, which, as the primordial soup thinned, must have "learned" to mobilize chemical potential and to synthesize the cellular components, poses Herculean problems.

So also does the emergence of the selectively permeable membrane without which there can be no viable cell.

But the major problem is the origin of the genetic code and of its translation mechanism.

Indeed, instead of a problem it ought rather to be called a riddle. The code is meaningless unless translated. The modern cell's translating machinery consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA:

the code cannot be translated otherwise than by products of translation.

It is the modern expression of omne vivum ex ovo. When and how did this circle become closed? It is exceedingly difficult to imagine."

(Monod, Jaques [Biochemist, Director of Pasteur Institute, Paris], "Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology", [1971], Penguin: London, 1997, reprint, p.143. Emphasis mine).

In the same vein, Professor Karl Popper, the famous and very well respected policeman of science, experimentation and the interpretation of results, had this to say about the very same matter. I've again broken the text up into more manageable chunks.

"What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code.

But, as Monod points out the machinery by which the cell (at least the nonprimitive cell which is the only one we know) translates the code `consists of a least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in DNA' (Monod, 1970; 1971, 143).

Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a really baffling circle: a vicious circle, it seems for any attempt to form a model, or a theory, of the genesis of the genetic code."

(Popper, Karl R., [Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of London], "Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science," in "Studies in the Philosophy of Biology," Macmillan: London, 1974, pp.259-284, p.270. Emphasis mine).

So these despised ERVs, 'junk' as they were called, are not useless remnants of a 'common ancestor'. They are extraordinarily useful elements in the cell transcription process, and seem common to all cells.

So bye, bye, common ancestor.

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ERVs Function Discovered

"Large Scale" Function for Endogenous Retroviruses: Intelligent Design Prediction Fulfilled While Another Darwinist Argument Bites the Dust

In his "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" on TalkOrigins, Douglas Theobald claims that "Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent." The presumption behind his argument is that endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are functionless stretches of "junk" DNA that persist because they are "selfish"—but they have no function for the organism. If we find the same ERVs in the same genetic loci in different species of primates, Theobald concludes they document common ancestry.

But what if ERVs do perform important genetic functions? Even theistic evolutionist Francis Collins acknowledges that genetic similarity "alone does not, of course, prove a common ancestor" because a designer could have "used successful design principles over and over again." (The Language of God, pg. 134.) The force of Theobald’s argument thus depends upon the premise that ERVs are selfish genetic "junk" that do not necessarily perform any useful function for their host.

In contrast, ID proponents would predict function for ERVs. This isn’t because ID has an inherent quarrel with common descent—it doesn’t. Rather, ID predicts function because the basis for ID’s predictions is observations of how intelligent agents design things, and intelligent agents tend to design objects that perform some kind of function. As William Dembski wrote in 1998, "If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, we expect DNA, as much as possible, to exhibit function." It seems that the expectations of ID are turning out to be right.

A recent 2008 paper, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," in the journal Bioinformatics (Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008)) discusses the fact that "Endogenous retrovirus (ERV) elements have been shown to contribute promoter sequences that can initiate transcription of adjacent human genes. However, the extent to which retroviral sequences initiate transcription within the human genome is currently unknown." The article thus "analyzed genome sequence and high-throughput expression data to systematically evaluate the presence of retroviral promoters in the human genome."

The results were striking:

We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5' untranslated regions (UTRs).

[…]

Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome. These data suggest that ERVs may regulate human transcription on a large scale.

(Andrew B. Conley, Jittima Piriyapongsa and I. King Jordan, "Retroviral promoters in the human genome," Bioinformatics, Vol. 24(14):1563–1567 (2008).)

Darwinists who labeled ERVs as a form of "selfish" and "junk" DNA have been chasing explanations down a blind alley. It should be stated that the authors [of the article quoted above- Asy] do not deviate from the neo-Darwinian paradigm, putting the obligatory evolutionary spin on the data. They claim that it’s a possibility that some of the transcribed ERVs are "not functionally significant," exposing that even in the face of this compelling contrary data, it is difficult for many Darwinists to let go of their seductive but science-stopping "junk-DNA" paradigm.

It seems that Richard Sternberg was correct when he predicted 5 years ago that "the selfish DNA narrative and allied frameworks must join the other ‘icons’ of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory that, despite their variance with empirical evidence, nevertheless persist in the literature." (Richard Sternberg, "On the Roles of Repetitive DNA Elements in the Context of a Unified Genomic–Epigenetic System," Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 981: 154–88 (2002).)

Posted by Casey Luskin on August 21, 2008

With Acknowledgements to Evolution News and Views published by the Discovery Institute.

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Tuesday 27 October 2009

The Endogenous Retroviruses

I am taking the unusual step of placing this information before readers out of sequence, because the ERVs are one of the greatest props available for evolution. Now this one is on the way out, perhaps attention will focus once more on the absence of intermediate fossils.

I acknowledge the source of this article in: The Journal of Creation Research
http://creation.com/large-scale-function-for-endogenous-retroviruses#txtRef8
Large scale function for ‘endogenous retroviruses’

by Shaun Doyle

Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are some of the most cited evidences for evolution. They are part of the suite of ‘junk DNA’ that supposedly comprised the vast majority of our DNA. ERVs are said to be parasitic retroviral DNA sequences that infected our genome long ago and have stayed there ever since. These short DNA strands are found throughout the human genome, and make up about 5% of the DNA,(1) or about 10% of the total amount of DNA that is classified as transposable elements (i.e. 50%).(2)

However, the term ‘endogenous retrovirus’ is a bit of a misnomer. There are numerous instances where small transposable elements thought to be endogenous retroviruses have been found to have functions, which invalidates the ‘random retrovirus insertion’ claim. For instance, studies of embryo development in mice suggest that transposable elements (of which ERVs are a subset) control embryo development. Transposable elements seem to be involved in controlling the sequence and level of gene expression during development, by moving to/from the sites of gene control.(3)

Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs. They act as promoters, starting transcription at alternative starting points, which enables different RNA transcripts to be formed from the same DNA sequence.

‘We report the existence of 51,197 ERV-derived promoter sequences that initiate transcription within the human genome, including 1,743 cases where transcription is initiated from ERV sequences that are located in gene proximal promoter or 5’ untranslated regions (UTRs).’(4)

And,

‘Our analysis revealed that retroviral sequences in the human genome encode tens-of-thousands of active promoters; transcribed ERV sequences correspond to 1.16% of the human genome sequence and PET tags that capture transcripts initiated from ERVs cover 22.4% of the genome.’(5)

Moreover, researchers have recently identified an important function for a large proportion of the human genome that has been labelled as ERVs.

So we’re not just talking about a small scale phenomenon. These ERVs aid transcription in over one fifth of the human genome! ‘These data illustrate the potential of retroviral sequences to regulate human transcription on a large scale consistent with a substantial effect of ERVs on the function and evolution of the human genome.’(3) This again debunks the idea that 98% of the human genome is junk, and it makes the inserted evolutionary spin look like a tacked-on nod to the evolutionary establishment. These results support the conclusions of the ENCODE project, which found that at least 93% of DNA was transcribed into RNA.

Evolutionists have used shared mistakes in ‘junk DNA’ as ‘proof’ that humans and chimps have a common ancestor. However, if the similar sequences are functional, which they are progressively proving to be, their argument evaporates.

It seems that evolutionist Dr John Mattick, director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, was spot on in his assessment of the gravity of the ‘junk DNA’ error:

‘The failure to recognize the full implications of this—particularly the possibility that the intervening noncoding sequences may be transmitting parallel information … may well go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the history of molecular biology.’(6)

Both biblical creationists(7) and ID proponents (8) predicted that transposable elements, such as ‘endogenous retroviruses’, would have a function. In 2000, creationist molecular biologist Linda Walkup proposed that God could have created transposable elements to facilitate variation (adaptation) within biblical kinds.(7)

If the ‘junk DNA’ is not junk, then it puts a big spanner in the work of molecular taxonomists, who assumed that ‘junk DNA’ was free to mutate at random, unconstrained by the requirements of functionality. As Williams points out:

‘The molecular taxonomists, who have been drawing up evolutionary histories (“phylogenies”) for nearly every kind of life, are going to have to undo all their years of “junk DNA”-based historical reconstructions and wait for the full implications to emerge before they try again.’(9)

References

1. Conley, A.B., Piriyapongsa, J. and Jordan, I.K., Retroviral promoters in the human genome, Bioinformatics 24(14):1563–1567, 2008. Return to text.
2. Thornburg, B.G., Gotea V. and Makałowski W., Transposable elements as a significant source of transcription regulating signals, Gene 365:104–110, 2006. Return to text.
3. Batten, D., No joy for junkies, Journal of Creation (TJ) 19(1):3, 2006; . Return to text.
4. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1563. Return to text.
5. Conley et al., ref 1, p. 1566. Return to text.
6. Mattick, J., cited in: Gibbs, W.W., The unseen genome: gems among the junk, Scientific American 289(5):26–33, November 2003; pp. 29–30. Return to text.
7. Walkup, L., ‘Junk’ DNA: evolutionary discards or God’s tools?, Journal of Creation (Technical Journal) 14(2):18–30, 2000; . Return to text.
8. Luskin, C., ‘Large Scale’ function for endogenous retroviruses: Intelligent Design prediction fulfilled while another Darwinist argument bites the dust, Discovery Institute, 21 August 2008, , accessed 12 September 2008. Return to text.
9. Williams, A., Astonishing DNA complexity demolishes neo-Darwinism, Journal of Creation 21(3):111–118, 2007; p. 113.

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Evolution's Soft Underbelly
by Asyncritus

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The Argument Darwin Dreaded…
The Argument No-One Has Developed Before…
The Argument to Which There Is

NO ANSWER FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!

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Monday 26 October 2009

INSTINCTS OF THE HONEY BEE

Because honey is such an important substance in human nutrition (we’ll go into this in some detail later on), and bees have been cultivated for so many centuries because of that honey, there exists a considerable body of knowledge about their behaviour. It is quite impossible to do full justice to them in this short article.

That knowledge has accumulated from the experience of apiculturists, and from very many scientific experiments. The following account is drawn from several major authorities on bees.

Instincts

In this account, you will see just how remarkable a thing instinct is. At every step of this fascinating way, you need to ask the question:

How did an insect, with a brain not too much bigger than a pinhead, ever figure out how to do this? Darwin’s answer would probably be ‘by little steps’. The modern evolutionist’s answer will be : Oh, these branched off from their ancestors 285 million years ago. Our computer programs tell us..

http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall01%20projects/sbeefig6.jpg

There, isn’t that marvellous? Looking at that diagram, you would be less than human if you failed to be impressed with the certainty it exhibits. The combination of large names, and the apparent exactness of the diagram, create a powerful impression of correctness.

Unfortunately, the facts are against the connecting lines, ESPECIALLY AT THE START OF THE DIAGRAM RIGHT AT THE TOP LEFT HAND CORNER.

THERE IS NO COMMON ANCESTOR KNOWN, as the fossil record shows very plainly.

Fossil Bees

The very first fossils of bees are identifiably bees. There is no question about this, and here is a picture of one of the first bee fossils.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15418131/

It is unquestionably a bee, and there is no question about it having evolved from anything else.

Of course there are silly suggestions about ‘evolution from wasps’, but they are quite necessarily vague about it, because the wasps show no sign of having evolved from anything else either. (See the article on the Eumenes Wasp in this series on this blog).

Here is Cornell University on the point:

“The fossil record of bees is relatively poor. Alexander & Michener (1995) commented as follows: "the fossil record [of bees] is extraordinarily fragmentary and biased toward taxa that collect resin for nesting purposes, and thus occasionally are trapped in it and fossilized in amber." The vast majority of bee fossils are in amber, and virtually all are Eocene or later in age (Rasnitsyn & Michener 1991, Engel 2001b).

Among the most important fossil bees is the presumed oldest fossil bee, Cretotrigona prisca, (here’s an artist’s impression of how it looked) from New Jersey amber (Michener and Grimaldi 1988a,b; Engel 2000a).

[In the original paper, it is described as a worker bee, indicating that the social stratification of bees was already in existence].

While initially presumed to be 80 Ma in age (Michener & Grimaldi 1988a, b), it has since been estimated to be 70 Ma (Grimaldi 1999) and 65 Ma (Engel 2000a) in age. Furthermore, whether it is Cretaceous at all has been questioned by Rasnitsyn & Michener (1991). If this fossil is indeed from the late Cretaceous, it suggests that, far from being in their earliest stages of evolution, the bees had already undergone significant diversification by the end of the Cretaceous.

Overall, considering the bee and spheciform fossil record one is forced to the conclusion that the fossils currently available significantly underestimate the age of both these groups.”

The wasps, from the Lower Cretaceous, are also easily identifiable as wasps, and it is a useful exercise to look at this link, where you will see that every specimen, is as exactly and easily identifiable as those of today. http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm

So it is curious to hear the suggestion that bees evolved from wasps.

The differences are enormous:

1 Wasps do not make honey, bees do.

2 Wasps do not collect pollen and nectar. Bees do.

3 Wasps make nests out of paper. Bees make nests out of wax. The two chemicals are entirely distinct, require entirely different biochemical processes in their manufacture, and have nothing in common.

The wasp chews timber into a pulp and makes the paper that way. Bees have special glands under their abdomen which produce the wax.

4 Wasps chew food. Bees lap nectar

5 Wasps can sting more than once. Bees can only sting once and then die.

6 Wasps don't store food in their nests. Bees do

7 Wasps don't swarm. Bees do.

Bees' Wings

If you look at the fossil of the bee (above) you will note that it has wings. If you look here again http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Fossil_Galleries/Insect_Galleries_by_Order/Hymenoptera/hymenoptera_fossil_gallery.htm

you will notice that the wasps also had wings.

Now these are among the VERY EARLIEST BEES AND WASPS found. And that presents evolutionists with some dire problems.

Assuming they could fly (which seems reasonable, given their wings, similar as they are to today’s bees) then:

Flying is a tremendous skill to have, once you’ve got it. But how does a bee, with a brain, as we have said, about as big as a pinhead,

a. get its wings (remember, there are two pairs!) and

b. learn how to use them? and

c. figure out how to get that information into its genome?

There are no sensible answers to those questions. The physical equipment is difficult enough to account for in evolutionary terms, but the skills and the instincts? And getting the information into the genome?

Evolution cannot account for the origin of these very basic questions, and therefore fails, and should be rejected as a theory of origins.

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