Good for you, Art. Its always amusing to me to read how anti-intellectual,
anti-evolution I am because the facts support creation by God infinitely
more that time + chance + Environment..
Trust in the LORD with all your heart,
and do not rely on your own insight.. Pr. 3:5
Ron Chitwood
chitw@flash.net
----------
> From: Arthur V. Chadwick <chadwicka@swac.edu>
> To: Robert L Trivers <r.l.trivers@juno.com>; evolution@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: Molecular Clocks
> Date: Thursday, February 19, 1998 12:44 PM
>
> At 08:08 AM 2/19/98 -0600, Robert L Trivers wrote:
>
> >Yes, work on the molecular clock hypothesis has some interesting
> >ramifications for reconstructing the evolution of behaviour. Indeed,
the
> >molecular clock hypothesis increasingly provides mathematically
> >irrefutable evidence that should silence all but the most shameless
> >anti-intellectual ant-evolutionists. The charge that behavioural
studies
> >and molecular clock work are examples of "retrofit" analysis is
> >groundless.
>
> Can you falsify a molecular clock? Well, you have worked it out by
> discrediting Popper. I guess that is one way to deal with those who
oppose
> you: define them out of existence! Check this out: If differences in
> organisms are related only to differences in their physiological
> requirements rather than some fanciful relationship to evolutionary
> history, what differences would you predict to see? It is interesting
to
> see that universally, the more comparisons that are used in a molecular
> cladistic analysis, the less certain any particular line of relationship
> becomes. Why should this be true if molecular clocks are so invincible?
> Why don't all the proteins in an organism give the same time for
> divergence? Why do we select the clocks that give us the results we
want?
> Why don't we do molecular clock studies on histones or developmental
genes?
> And it is one thing to talk about little perturbations in the molecular
> structure, little fine tunings that are being used as molecular clocks,
but
> this overlooks the real question, which is "Where did the molecules come
> from in the beginning?" If we were to look closely at this question, we
> would find that essentially all of the molecular complexity of modern
> organisms was already here when the first metazoan fossils occur in the
> record. This means that whatever molecular evolution means, it does not
> deal with the origin of the system itself. All of the complexity of the
> modern cell was already there before any record of complex life forms
> existed. Thus there is no evidence for the origin of molecular
complexity.
> We can continue to disparage others, or we can look at the data. Any
> molecular features that modern humans share with modern insects, for
> example, were present in the trilobite, the first widespread metazoan
> organism. That is just about everything. But this is just the
beginning.
> Because the posited ancestor of humans and insects not only doesn't
exist,
> but if it did exist, it would have been so far in the past that it would
> not have had any of the features of either group today; yet we find genes
> for development of cephalization, of complex eyes, and of many other
> features in common for these groups. The list of "Evolutionarily
> conserved" (read embarassingly similar) developmental pathways is growing
> daily. Check out:
>
http://iubio.bio.indiana.edu/IUBio-Software%2BData/flybase/allied-data/inter
> active-fly/aimain/aadevinx.htm
> for a list of 40 of these, most of which include insects and man. But
> there is no evidence for anything metazoan in the Precambrian. So if you
> choose to believe in evolution, you do so in the face of overwelming
> absence of evidence. That constitutes in my parlance a shameless
> anti-intellectual ant-creationism.
> Art
> http://chadwicka.swau.edu
>
>