by
Lloyd Pye
from Nexus Magazine
Volume 9, Number 4
June-July 2002
Darwinists, Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents
are unable to explain
anomalies in the emergence of domesticated plants, animals and humans
THE ABSURDITIES OF DOGMA
In 1905, a 25-year-old patent clerk named Albert Einstein demolished the
200-year-old certainty that Isaac Newton knew all there was to know about
basic physics. In a technical paper only a few pages long, Einstein sent a
huge part of his current "reality" to history's dustbin, where it found good
company with thousands of other discards large and small. In 1905, though,
Newton's discard was about as large as the bin would hold.
Now another grand old "certainty" hovers over history's dustbin, and it
seems only a matter of time before some new Einstein writes the few (or many)
pages that will bring it down and relegate it to history. And, as was the
case in 1905, every "expert" in the world laughs heartily at any suggestion
that their certainty could be struck down. Yet if facts are any yardstick--which
should always be the case, but frequently isn't--Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution by natural selection is moving towards extinction.
Please note this: not everyone who challenges evolution is automatically a
Creationist. Darwinists love to tar all opponents with that brush because so
much of Creationist dogma is absurd. Creationists mulishly exclude
themselves from serious consideration by refusing to give up fatally flawed
parts of their argument, such as the literal interpretation of "six days of
creation". Of course, some have tried to take a more reasonable stance, but
those few can't be heard over the ranting of the many who refuse.
Recently a new group has entered the fray, much better educated than typical
Creationists. This group has devised a theory called "Intelligent Design",
which has a wealth of scientifically established facts on its side. The ID-ers,
though, give away their Creationist roots by insisting that because life at
its most basic level is so incredibly and irreducibly complex, it could
never have simply "come into being" as Darwinists insist.
Actually, the "life somehow assembled itself out of organic molecules" dogma
is every bit as absurd as the "everything was created in six days" dogma,
which the ID-ers understand and exploit. But they also suggest that
everything came into existence at the hands of God (by whatever name) or "by
means of outside intervention", which makes clear how they're betting. "Outside
intervention" is a transparent euphemism for "You Know What" (with apologies
to J. K. Rowling). [In Rowling's "Harry Potter"
books, the arch villain is
so despicable and dreadful, his name should not even be uttered; thus he is
referred to as "You Know Who".
Similarly, the very idea that humans might
have been created by extraterrestrials is so despicable and dreadful to
mainstream science and religion that no mention of it should be uttered;
thus the author refers to it as "You Know What". To Darwinists,
Creationists and ID-ers alike, creation at the hands of You Know What is the
most absurd suggestion of all. Yet it can be shown that You Know What has
the widest array of facts on its side and has the best chance of being
proved correct in the end.
Virtually every scientist worth their doctorate will insist that somehow,
some way, a form of evolution is at the heart of all life forms and
processes on Earth. By "evolution", they mean the entire panoply of possible
interpretations that might explain how, over vast stretches of time, simple
organisms can and do transform themselves into more complex organisms. That
broad definition gives science as a whole a great deal of room to bob and
weave its way towards the truth about evolution, which ostensibly is its
goal. However, among individual scientists that same broadness of coverage
means nobody has a "lock" on the truth, which opens them up to a withering
array of internecine squabbles.
In Darwin's case, those squabbles were initially muted. Rightly or wrongly,
his theory served a much higher purpose than merely challenging the way
science thought about life's processes. It provided something every
scientist desperately needed: a strong counter to the intellectual nonsense
pouring from pulpits in every church, synagogue and mosque in the world.
Since well before Charles Darwin was born, men of science knew full well
that God did not create the Earth or anything else in the universe in six
literal days. But to assert that publicly invited the same kind of censure
that erupts today onto anyone who dares to challenge evolution openly.
Dogma
is dogma in any generation.
Darwin's honeymoon with his scientific peers was relatively brief. It lasted
only as long as they needed to understand that all he had really provided
was the outline of a forest of an idea, one that only in broad terms seemed
to account for life's stunningly wide array. His forest lacked enough
verifiable trees.
Even so, once the overarching concept was crystallized as "natural selection", the term "survival of the fittest"
was coined to
explain it to laymen. When the majority of the public became convinced that
evolution was a legitimate alternative to Creationism, the scientific gloves
came off. In-fighting became widespread regarding the trees that made up
Darwin's forest.
Over time, scientists parsed Darwin's original forest into more different
trees than he could ever have imagined. That parsing has been wide and deep,
and it has taken down countless trees at the hands of scientists themselves.
But despite such thinning, the forest remains upright and intact. Somehow,
some way, there is a completely natural force at work governing all aspects
of the flow and change of life on Earth. That is the scientific mantra,
which is chanted religiously to counter every Creationist--and now
Intelligent Design--challenge to one or more of the rotten trees that
frequently become obvious.
Even Darwin realized the data of his era did not provide clear-cut evidence
that his theory was correct. Especially troubling was the absence of
"transitional species" in the fossil record. Those were needed to prove
that, over vast amounts of time, species did in fact gradually transform
into other, "higher" species.
So right out of the chute, the theory of evolution was on the defensive
regarding one of its cornerstones, and more than 140 years later there are
still no clear-cut transitional species apparent in the fossil record.
Because this is the most vulnerable part of Darwin's theory, Creationists
attack it relentlessly, which has forced scientists periodically to put
forth a series of candidates to try to take the heat off. Unfortunately for
them, in every case those "missing links" have been shown to be outright
fakes and frauds. An excellent account is found in Icons of Evolution by
Jonathan Wells (Regnery, 2000). But scientists are not deterred by such
exposure of their shenanigans. They feel justified because, they insist, not
enough time has passed for them to find what they need in a grossly
incomplete fossil record.
The truth is that some lengthy fossil timelines are missing, but many more
are well accounted for. Those have been thoroughly examined in the past
140-plus years, to no avail. In any other occupation, a 140-year-long trek
up a blind alley would indicate a wrong approach has been taken. But not to
scientists.
They blithely continue forward, convinced of the absolute
rightness of their mission and confident their fabled missing link will be
found beneath the next overturned rock. Sooner or later, they believe, one
of their members will uncover it, so they all work in harmonious concert
towards that common goal. Individually, though, it's every man and woman for
themselves.
TWEEDLEDUM AND TWEEDLEDEE
Plants and animals evolve, eh? Alright, how do they evolve?
By gradual but constant changes, influenced by adaptive pressures in their
environment that cause physical modifications to persist if they are
advantageous.
Can you specify the kind of gradual change you're referring to?
In any population of plants or animals, over time, random genetic mutations
will occur. Most will be detrimental, some will have a neutral effect and
some will confer a selective advantage, however small or seemingly
inconsequential it might appear.
Really? But wouldn't the overall population have a gene pool deep enough to
absorb and dilute even a large change? Wouldn't a small change rapidly
disappear?
Well, yes, it probably would. But not in an isolated segment of the overall
population. An isolated group would have a much shallower gene pool, so
positive mutations would stand a much better chance of establishing a
permanent place in it.
Really? What if that positive mutation gets established in the isolated
group, then somehow the isolated group gets back together with the main
population? Poof! The mutation will be absorbed and disappear.
Well, maybe. So let's make sure the isolated population can't get back with
the main group until crossbreeding is no longer possible.
How would you do that?
Put a mountain range between them, something impossible to cross.
If it's impossible to cross, how did the isolated group get there in the
first place?
If you're asking me just how isolated is isolated, let me ask you one. What
kind of mutations were you talking about being absorbed?
Small, absolutely random changes in base pairs at the gene level.
Really? Why not at the chromosome level? Wouldn't change at the base pair
level be entirely too small to create any significant change? Wouldn't a
mutation almost have to be at the chromosome level to be noticeable?
Who says? Change at that level would probably be too much, something the
organism couldn't tolerate.
Maybe we're putting too much emphasis on mutations.
Right! What about environmental pressures? What if a species suddenly found
itself having to survive in a significantly changed environment?
One where its members must adapt to the new circumstances or die out?
Exactly! How would they adapt? Could they just will themselves to grow
thicker fur or stronger muscles or larger size?
That sounds like mutations have to play a part.
Mutations, eh? All right, how do they play a part?
This game of intellectual thrust and parry goes on constantly at levels of
minutiae that boggle an average mind.
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Traditional Darwinists are one-upped
by neo-Darwinists at every turn.
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Quantum evolutionists refashion the work of
those who support the theory of peripheral isolates.
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Mathematicians model
mutation rates and selective forces, which biologists do not trust.
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Geneticists have little use for
paleontologists, who return the favor in
spades (pun intended).
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Cytogenetics labours to find a niche alongside
genetics proper.
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Population geneticists
utilize mathematical models that
challenge paleontologists and systematists.
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Sociobiologists
and
evolutionary psychologists struggle to make room for their ideas.
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All
perform a cerebral dance of elegant form and exquisite symmetry.
Their dance is, ironically, evolution writ large throughout science as a
process. New bits of data are put forth to a peer group.
The new data are
discussed, written about, criticized, written about again, criticized some
more. This is gradualism at work, shaping, reshaping and reshaping again if
necessary until the new data can comfortably fit into the current paradigm
in any field, whatever it is. This is necessary to make it conform as
closely as possible to every concerned scientist's current way of thinking.
To do it any other way is to invite prompt rejection under a fusillade of
withering criticism.
This system of excruciating "peer review" is how independent thinkers among
scientists have always been kept in line. Darwin was an outsider until he
barged into the club by sheer, overpowering brilliance. Patent clerk
Einstein did the same. On the other hand, Alfred Wegener was the German
meteorologist who figured out plate tectonics in 1915. Because he dared to
bruise the egos of "authorities" outside his own field, he saw his brilliant
discovery buried under spiteful criticism that held it down for 50 years.
Every scientist in the game knows how it is played, and very few dare to
challenge its rules.
The restrictions on scientists are severe, but for a very good reason.
They
work at the leading edges of knowledge, from where the view can be anything
from confusing to downright terrifying. Among those who study the processes
of life on Earth, they must cope with the knowledge that a surprising number
of species have no business being here. In some cases, they can't even be
here. Yet they are, for better or worse, and those worst-case examples must
be hidden or at least obscured from the general public. But no matter how
often facts are twisted, data are concealed or reality is denied, the truth
is out there.
THE EMERGENCE OF DOMESTICATED PLANTS
There are two basic forms of plants and animals: wild and domesticated. The
wild ones far outnumber the domesticated ones, which may explain why vastly
more research is done on the wild forms. But it could just as easily be that
scientists shy away from the domesticated ones because the things they find
when examining them are so far outside the accepted evolutionary paradigm.
Nearly all domesticated plants are believed to have appeared between 10,000
and 5,000 years ago, with different groups coming to different parts of the
world at different times. Initially, in the so-called Fertile Crescent of
modern Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, came wheat, barley and legumes, among other
varieties. Later on, in the Far East, came wheat, millet, rice and yams.
Later still, in the New World, came maize (corn), peppers, beans, squash,
tomatoes and potatoes.
Many have "wild" predecessors that were apparently a starting point for the
domesticated variety, but others--like many common vegetables--have no
obvious precursors. But for those that do, such as wild grasses, grains and
cereals, how they turned into wheat, barley, millet, rice, etc. is a
profound mystery.
No botanist can conclusively explain how wild plants gave rise to
domesticated ones. The emphasis here is on "conclusively". Botanists have no
trouble hypothesizing elaborate scenarios in which Neolithic (New Stone Age)
farmers somehow figured out how to hybridize wild grasses, grains and
cereals, not unlike Gregor Mendel when he cross-bred pea plants to figure
out the mechanics of genetic inheritance. It all sounds so simple and so
logical, almost no one outside scientific circles ever examines it closely.
Gregor Mendel never bred his pea plants to be anything other than pea
plants. He created short ones, tall ones and different- colored ones, but
they were always pea plants that produced peas. (Pea plants are a
domesticated species, too, but that is irrelevant to the point to be made
here.)
On the other hand, those New Stone Age farmers who were fresh out of
their caves and only just beginning to turn soil for the first time (as the
"official" scenario goes), somehow managed to transform the wild grasses,
grains and cereals growing around them into their domesticated "cousins". Is
that possible? Only through a course in miracles!
Actually, it requires countless miracles within two large categories of
miracles. The first was that the wild grasses and grains and cereals were
useless to humans. The seeds and grains were maddeningly small, like pepper
flakes or salt crystals, which put them beyond the grasping and handling
capacity of human fingers. They were also hard, like tiny nutshells, making
it impossible to convert them to anything edible. Lastly, their chemistry
was suited to nourishing animals, not humans.
So wild varieties were entirely too small, entirely too tough and
nutritionally inappropriate for humans. They needed to be greatly expanded
in size, greatly softened in texture and overhauled at the molecular
level--which would be an imposing challenge for modern botanists, much less
Neolithic farmers.
Despite the seeming impossibility of meeting those daunting objectives,
modern botanists are confident the first sodbusters had all they needed to
do it: time and patience. Over hundreds of generations of selective
crossbreeding, they consciously directed the genetic transformation of the
few dozen that would turn out to be most useful to humans.
And how did they
do it? By the astounding feat of doubling, tripling and quadrupling the
number of chromosomes in the wild varieties! In a few cases, they did better
than that. Domestic wheat and oats were elevated from an ancestor with seven
chromosomes to their current 42--an expansion by a factor of six. Sugar cane
was expanded from a 10-chromosome ancestor to the 80-chromosome monster it
is today--a factor of eight.
The chromosomes of others, like bananas and
apples, were only multiplied by factors of two or three, while peanuts,
potatoes, tobacco and cotton, among others, were expanded by factors of
four. This is not as astounding as it sounds, because many wild flowering
plants and trees have multiple chromosome sets.
But that brings up what Charles Darwin himself called the "abominable
mystery" of flowering plants. The first ones appear in the fossil record
between 150 and 130 million years ago, primed to multiply into over 200,000
known species. But no one can explain their presence because there is no
connective link to any form of plants that preceded them.
It is as if, dare I
say it?, they were brought to Earth by something akin to You Know What. If
so, then it could well be that they were delivered with a built-in capacity
to develop multiple chromosome sets, and somehow our Neolithic forebears
cracked the codes for the ones most advantageous to humans.
However the codes were cracked, the great expansion of genetic material in
each cell of the domestic varieties caused them to grow much larger than
their wild ancestors. As they grew, their seeds and grains became large
enough to be easily seen and picked up and manipulated by human fingers.
Simultaneously, the seeds and grains softened to a degree where they could
be milled, cooked and consumed. And at the same time, their cellular
chemistry was altered enough to begin providing nourishment to humans who
ate them. The only word that remotely equates with that achievement is:
miracle.
Of course, "miracle" implies that there was actually a chance that such
complex manipulations of nature could be carried out by primitive yeomen in
eight geographical areas over 5,000 years. This strains credulity because,
in each case, in each area, someone actually had to look at a wild
progenitor and imagine what it could become, or should become, or would
become.
Then they somehow had to ensure that their vision would be carried
forward through countless generations that had to remain committed to
planting, harvesting, culling and crossbreeding wild plants that put no food
on their tables during their lifetimes, but which might feed their
descendants in some remotely distant future.
It is difficult to try to concoct a more unlikely, more absurd, scenario,
yet to modern-day botanists it is a gospel they believe with a fervor that
puts many "six day" Creationists to shame. Why?
Because to confront its
towering absurdity would force them to turn to You Know What for a more
logical and plausible explanation.
To domesticate a wild plant without using artificial (i.e., genetic)
manipulation, it must be modified by directed crossbreeding, which is only
possible through the efforts of humans. So the equation is simple.
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Firstly,
wild ancestors for many (but not all) domestic plants do seem apparent.
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Secondly, most domesticated versions did appear from 10,000 to 5,000 years
ago.
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Thirdly, the humans alive at that time were primitive barbarians.
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Fourthly, in the past 5,000 years, no plants have been domesticated that are
nearly as valuable as the dozens that were "created" by the earliest farmers
all around the world.
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Put an equal sign after those four factors and it
definitely does not add up to any kind of Darwinian model.
Botanists know they have a serious problem here, but all they can suggest is
that it simply had to have occurred by natural means because no other
intervention--by God or You Know What--can be considered under any
circumstances.
That unwavering stance is maintained by all scientists, not
just botanists, to exclude overwhelming evidence such as the fact that in
1837 the Botanical Garden in St Petersburg, Russia, began concerted attempts
to cultivate wild rye into a new form of domestication. They are still
trying, because their rye has lost none of its wild traits, especially the
fragility of its stalk and its small grain. Therein lies the most
embarrassing conundrum botanists face.
To domesticate a wild grass like rye or any wild grain or cereal (which was
done time and again by our Neolithic forebears), two imposing hurdles must
be cleared. These are the problems of "rachises" and "glumes", which I
discuss in my book, Everything You Know Is Wrong ; Book One: Human
Origins (pp. 283-285) (Adamu Press, 1998). Glumes are botany's name
for husks, the thin covers of seeds and grains that must be removed before
humans can digest them. Rachises are the tiny stems that attach seeds and
grains to their stalks.
While growing, glumes and rachises are strong and durable, so rain won't
knock the seeds and grains off their stalks. At maturity, they become so
brittle that a breeze will shatter them and release their cargo to
propagate. Such a high degree of brittleness makes it impossible to harvest
wild plants because every grain or seed would be knocked loose during the
harvesting process.
So, in addition to enlarging, softening and nutritionally altering the seeds
and grains of dozens of wild plants, the earliest farmers also had to figure
out how to finely adjust the brittleness of every plant's glumes and
rachises.
That adjustment was of extremely daunting complexity, perhaps more complex
than the transformational process itself. The rachises had to be toughened
enough to hold seeds and grains to their stalks during harvesting, yet
remain brittle enough to be collected easily by human effort during what has
come to be known as "threshing".
Likewise, the glumes had to be made tough
enough to withstand harvesting after full ripeness was achieved, yet still
be brittle enough to shatter during the threshing process. And--here's the
kicker--each wild plant's glumes and rachises required completely different
degrees of adjustment, and the final amount of each adjustment had to be
perfectly precise! In short, there is not a snowball's chance that this
happened as botanists claim it did.
THE EMERGENCE OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS
As with plants, animal domestication followed a pattern of development that
extended 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. It also started in the Fertile Crescent,
with the "big four" of cattle, sheep, goats and
pigs, among other animals.
Later, in the Far East, came ducks, chickens and water
buffalo, among
others. Later still, in the New World, came llamas and vicuna. This process
was not simplified by expanding the number of chromosomes.
All animals--wild
and domesticated--are diploid, which means they have two sets of
chromosomes, one from each parent. The number of chromosomes varies as
widely as in plants (humans have 46), but there are always only two sets
(humans have 23 in each).
The only "tools" available to Neolithic herdsmen were those available to
farming kinsmen: time and patience. By the same crossbreeding techniques
apparently utilized by farmers, wild animals were selectively bred for
generation after generation until enough gradual modifications accumulated
to create domesticated versions of wild ancestors. As with plants, this
process required anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years in each case,
and was also accomplished dozens of times in widely separated areas around
the globe.
Once again, we face the problem of trying to imagine those first herdsmen
with enough vision to imagine a "final model", to start the breeding process
during their own lifetimes and to have it carried out over centuries until
the final model was achieved. This was much trickier than simply figuring
out which animals had a strong pack or herding instinct that would
eventually allow humans to take over as "leaders" of the herd or pack.
For
example, it took unbridled courage to decide to bring a wolf cub into a
campsite with the intention of teaching it to kill and eat selectively and
to earn its keep by barking at intruders (adult wolves rarely bark). And who
could look at the massive, fearsome, ill-tempered aurochs and visualize a
much smaller, much more amiable cow? Even if somebody could have visualized
it, how could they have hoped to accomplish it? An aurochs calf (or a wolf
cub, for that matter), carefully and lovingly raised by human "parents",
would still grow up to be a full-bodied adult with hardwired adult
instincts.
However it was done, it wasn't by crossbreeding. Entire suites of genes must
be modified to change the physical characteristics of animals. (In an
interesting counterpoint to wild and domesticated plants, domesticated
animals are usually smaller than their wild progenitors.) But with animals,
something more, something ineffable, must be changed to alter their basic
natures from wild to docile. To accomplish it remains beyond modern
abilities, so attributing such capacity to Neolithic humans is an insult to
our intelligence.
All examples of plant and animal "domestication" are incredible in their own
right, but perhaps the most incredible is the cheetah. There is no question
it was one of the first tamed animals, with a history stretching back to
early Egypt, India and China. As with all such examples, it could only have
been created through selective breeding by Neolithic hunters, gatherers or
early farmers. One of those three must get the credit.
The cheetah is the most easily tamed and trained of all the big cats. No
reports are on record of a cheetah killing a human. It seems specifically
created for high speeds, with an aerodynamically designed head and body. Its
skeleton is lighter than other big cats; its legs are long and slim, like
the legs of a greyhound. Its heart, lungs, kidneys and nasal passages are
enlarged, allowing its breathing rate to jump from 60 per minute at rest to
150 bpm during a chase. Its top speed is 70 miles per hour, while a
thoroughbred tops out at around 38 mph. Nothing on a savanna can outrun it.
It can be outlasted, but not outrun.
Cheetahs are unique because they combine physical traits of two distinctly
different animal families: dogs and cats. They belong to the family of cats,
but they look like long-legged dogs. They sit and hunt like dogs. They can
only partially retract their claws, like dogs instead of cats.
Their paw
pads are thick and hard like a dog's, but to climb trees they use the first
claw on their front paws in the same way a cat does. The light-colored fur
on their body is like the fur of a short-haired dog, but the black spots on
their bodies are inexplicably the texture of cat's fur. They contract
diseases that only dogs suffer from, but they also get "cat only" diseases.
There is something even more inexplicable about cheetahs. Genetic tests have
been done on them, and the surprising result was that in the 50 specimens
tested they were all, every one, genetically identical with each other! This
means the skin or internal organs of any of the thousands of cheetahs in the
world could be switched with the organs of any other cheetah and not be
rejected. The only other place such physical homogeneity is seen is in rats
and other animals that have been genetically altered in laboratories.
Cheetahs stand apart, of course, but all domesticated animals have traits
that are not explainable in terms that stand up to rigorous scientific
scrutiny. Rather than deal with the embarrassment of confronting such
issues, scientists studiously ignore them and, as with the mysteries of
domesticated plants, explain them away as best they can. For the cheetah,
they insist it simply cannot be some kind of weird genetic hybrid between
cats and dogs, even though the evidence points squarely in that direction.
And why? Because that, too, would move cheetahs into the forbidden zone
occupied by You Know What.
The problem of the cheetahs' genetic uniformity is explained by something
now known as the "bottleneck effect". What it presumes is that the wild
cheetah population--which must have been as genetically diverse as its long
history indicates--at some recent point in time went into a very steep
population decline that left only a few breeding pairs alive. From that
decimation until now, they have all shared the same restricted gene pool.
Unfortunately, there is no record of any extinction events that would
selectively remove cheetahs and leave every other big cat to develop its
expected genetic variation. So, as unlikely as it seems, the "bottleneck"
theory is accepted as another scientific gospel.
Here it is appropriate to remind scientists of Carl Sagan's famous riposte
when dealing with their reviled pseudoscience: "Extraordinary claims require
extraordinary evidence." It seems apparent that Sagan learned that process
in-house.
It also leads us, finally, to a discussion of humans, who are so genetically
recent that we, too, have been forced into one of those "bottleneck effects"
that attempt to explain away the cheetah.
THE ARRIVAL OF HUMANS
Like all plants and animals whether wild or domesticated, humans are
supposed to be the products of slight, gradual improvements to countless
generations spawned by vastly more primitive forebears. This was firmly
believed by most scientists in the 1980s, when a group of geneticists
decided to try to establish a more accurate date for when humans and
chimpanzees split from their presumed common ancestor.
Paleontologists used fossilized bones to establish a timeline that
indicated the split came between five and eight million years ago. That wide
bracket could be narrowed, geneticists believed, by charting mutations in
human mitochondrial DNA--small bits of DNA floating outside the nuclei of
our cells. So they went to work collecting samples from all over the world.
When the results were in, none of the geneticists could believe it. They had
to run their samples through again and again to be certain. Even then, there
was hesitancy about announcing it. Everyone knew there would be a firestorm
of controversy, starting with the paleontologists--who would be given the
intellectual equivalent of a black eye and a bloody nose and their heads
dunked into a toilet for good measure! This would publicly embarrass them in
a way that had not happened since the Piltdown hoax was exposed.
Despite the usual scientific practice of keeping a lid on data that
radically differs from a current paradigm, the importance of this new
evidence finally outweighed concern for the image and feelings of
paleontologists. The geneticists gathered their courage and stepped into
the line of fire, announcing that humans were not anywhere near the official
age range of eight to five million years old. Humans were only about
200,000
years old. As expected, the howls of protest were deafening.
Time and much more testing of mitochondrial DNA and male Y-chromosomes
now
make it beyond doubt that the geneticists were correct. And the
paleontologists have come to accept it because geneticists were able to
squeeze humans through the same kind of "bottleneck effect" they used to try
to ameliorate the mystery of cheetahs.
By doing so, they left paleontologists still able to insist that humans
evolved from primitive forebears walking upright on the savannas of Africa
as long ago as five million years, but that between 100,000 and 200,000
years ago "something" happened to destroy nearly all humans alive at the
time, forcing them to reproduce from a small population of survivors.
That this "something" remains wholly unknown is a given, although
Creationists wildly wave their hands like know-it-alls at the back of a
classroom, desperate to suggest it was the Great Flood. But because they
refuse to move away from the biblical timeline of the event (in the range of
6,000 years ago), nobody can take them seriously. Still, it seems the two
sides might work together productively on this crucial issue. If only...
Apart from disputes about the date and circumstances of our origin as a
species, there are plenty of other problems with humans. Like domesticated
plants and animals, humans stand well outside the classic Darwinian
paradigm. Darwin himself made the observation that humans were surprisingly
like domesticated animals. In fact, we are so unusual relative to other
primates that it can be solidly argued that we do not belong on Earth at all, that we are not even from Earth,
because we do not seem to have
developed here.
We are taught that, by every scientific measure, humans are primates very
closely related to all other primates, especially chimpanzees and gorillas.
This is so ingrained in our psyches that it seems futile even to examine it,
much less to challenge it. But we will.
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Bones. Human bones are much lighter than comparable primate bones. For that
matter, our bones are much lighter than the bones of every "pre-human"
ancestor through to Neanderthal. The ancestor bones look like primate bones;
modern human bones do not.
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Muscle. Human muscles are significantly weaker than comparable muscles in
primates. Pound for pound, we are five to ten times weaker than any other
primate. Any pet monkey is evidence of that. Somehow, getting "better" made
us much, much weaker.
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Skin. Human skin is not well adapted to the amount of sunlight striking
Earth. It can be modified to survive extended exposure by greatly increasing
melanin (its dark pigment) at its surface, which only the black race has
achieved. All others must cover themselves with clothing or frequent shade
or both, or sicken from radiation poisoning.
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Body Hair. Primates need not worry about direct exposure to sunlight because
they are covered from head to toe in a distinctive pattern of long
body-hair. Because they are quadrupeds (move on all fours), the thickest
hair is on their back, the thinnest on the chest and abdomen. Humans have
lost the all-over pelt, and we have completely switched our area of
thickness to the chest and abdomen while wearing the thin part on our back.
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Fat. Humans have ten times as many fat cells attached to the underside of
their skin as primates. If a primate is wounded by a gash or tear in the
skin, when the bleeding stops the wound's edges lie flat near each other and
can quickly close the wound by a process called "contracture". In humans,
the fat layer is so thick that it pushes up through wounds and makes
contracture difficult if not impossible. Also, contrary to the propaganda to
try to explain this oddity, the fat under human skin does not compensate for
the body hair we have lost. Only in water is its insulating capacity useful;
in air, it is minimal at best.
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Head Hair. All primates have head hair that grows to a certain length and
then stops. Human head hair grows to such lengths that it could be dangerous
in a primitive situation. Thus, we have been forced to cut our head hair
since we became a species, which may account for some of the sharp flakes of
stones that are considered primitive hominid "tools".
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Fingernails and Toenails. All primates have fingernails and toenails that
grow to a certain length and then stop, never needing paring. Human
fingernails and toenails have always needed paring. Again, maybe those stone
"tools" were not only for butchering animals.
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Skulls. The human skull is nothing like the primate skull. There is hardly
any fair morphological comparison to be made, apart from the general parts
being the same. Their design and assembly are so radically different as to
make attempts at comparison useless.
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Brains. The comparison here is even more radical because human brains are so
vastly different. (To say "improved" or "superior" is unfair and not
germane, because primate brains work perfectly well for what primates have
to do to live and reproduce.)
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Locomotion. The comparison here is easily as wide as the comparison of
brains and skulls. Humans are bipedal; primates are quadrupeds. That says
more than enough.
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Speech. Human throats are completely redesigned relative to primate throats.
The larynx has dropped to a much lower position, so humans can break typical
primate sounds into the tiny pieces of sound (by modulation) that have come
to be human speech.
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Sex. Primate females have oestrous cycles and are sexually receptive only at
special times. Human females have no oestrous cycle in the primate sense.
They are continually receptive to sex. (Unless, of course, they have the
proverbial headache!)
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Chromosomes. This is the most inexplicable difference of all. Primates have
48 chromosomes. Humans are considered vastly superior to them in a wide
array of areas, yet somehow we have only 46 chromosomes! This begs the
question of how we could lose two full chromosomes--which represents a lot
of DNA--in the first place, and in the process become so much better.
Nothing about it makes logical sense.
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Genetic Disorders. As with all wild animals (plants, too), primates have
relatively few genetic disorders spread throughout their gene pools.
Albinism is one that is common to many animal groups as well as humans. But
albinism does not stop an animal with it from growing up and passing the
gene for it into the gene pool. Mostly, though, serious defects are quickly
weeded out in the wild. Often, parents or others in a group will do the job
swiftly and surely, so wild gene pools stay relatively clear. In contrast,
humans have over 4,000 genetic disorders, and several of those will
absolutely kill every victim before reproduction is possible. This begs the
question of how such defects could possibly get into the human gene pool in
the first place, much less how they remain so widespread.
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Genetic Relatedness. A
favorite Darwinist statistic is that the total
genome (all the DNA) of humans differs from chimpanzees by only 1% and from
gorillas by 2%. This makes it seem as if evolution is indeed correct and
that humans and primates are virtually kissing cousins. However, what they
don't stress is that 1% of the human genome's three billion base pairs is
30
million base pairs--and to any You Know What that can adroitly manipulate
genes, 30 million base pairs can easily add up to a tremendous amount of
difference.
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Everything Else. The above are the larger categories at issue in the
discrepancies between primates and humans. There are dozens more listed as
sub-categories below one or more of these.
To delve deeper into these fascinating mysteries, check
The Scars of
Evolution by Elaine Morgan (Oxford University Press, 1990). Her work is
remarkable. And for a more in-depth discussion of the mysteries within our
genes and those of domesticated plants and animals, see Everything You Know
Is Wrong.
BREAKING RANKS
When all of the above is taken together--the inexplicable puzzles presented
by domesticated plants, domesticated animals and humans--it is clear that
Darwin cannot explain it, modern scientists cannot explain it, not
Creationists nor Intelligent Design proponents. None of them can explain it,
because it is not explainable in only Earthbound terms.
We will not answer these questions with any degree of satisfaction until our
scientists open their minds and squelch their egos enough to acknowledge
that they do not, in fact, know much about their own backyard. Until that
happens, the truth will remain obscured.
My personal opinion, which is based on a great deal of independent research
in a wide range of disciplines relating to human origins, is that ultimately
Charles Darwin will be best known for his observation that humans are
essentially like domesticated animals.
I believe that what Darwin observed with his own eyes and research is the
truth, and that modern scientists would see it as clearly as he did if only
they had the motivation or the courage to seek it out. But for now, they don't, so, until then, we can only poke and prod at them in the hope of some
day getting them to notice our complaints and address them. In order to poke
and prod successfully, more people have to be alerted to the fact that
another scientific fraud is being perpetrated.
Future editions of Icons of Evolution will discuss the current era when
scientists ridiculed, ignored or simply refused to deal with a small
mountain of direct, compelling evidence that outside intervention has
clearly been at work in the genes of domesticated plants, animals and
humans. You Know What has left traces of their handiwork all over our
bodies, all through our gene pools. All that will be required for the truth
to come out is for a few "insiders" to break ranks with their brainwashed
peers.
Look to the younger generation. Without mortgages to pay, families to raise
and retirements to prepare for, they can find the courage to act on strong
convictions. Don't expect it of anyone over forty, possibly even thirty. But
somewhere in the world, the men and women have been born who will take
Darwinism down and replace it with the truth.
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