At Phys.Org there is an article describing the work of some scientists with the “chordate” Oikopleura dioica which does not have the genes for Retinoic Acid (RA), which all other chordates have. RA is a form of Vitamin A and is needed in the development of the heart.
In this organism, the heart develops but without the presence of RA. How can this happen? Answer: “Regressive Evolution.”
All the genes for RA have been lost, and lost in a non-random fashion.
You would be hard-pressed to identify the above organism (a planktonic organism) as a “chordate,” but developmentally, it is one—you know, the chordate “body-plan” allows it to be identified as one. Now, this O. dioica cannot be the LCA of chordates because it lacks RA, so we have “evolution” via loss of genes, a theme that was sounded here not too long ago.
What’s intriguing here, of course, is the “non-random” nature of this “loss.” Nevertheless, what is seen with O.dioica has to be called “evolution” since it cannot have happened before all the other changes that took place in phylum chordata, but after some LCA. But then what do you call this process?
“Regressive evolution” seems to be just the term the doctor ordered. If you want to explain what biology produces, all you need is an ever expanding “dictionary.”
If you add new genes, this is “evolution.” If you lose already present genes, this too is “evolution.” If you add the genes “non-randomly” (transposons), this is Darwinian. If you lose genes “non-randomly,” this too is Darwinian.
Heads I win; tails you lose.
Retinoic ?
Thanks. It’s fixed.
OT: Tonight at 7:30 Pacific Time – Live-Stream Douglas Axe and the Undeniable Book Party!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC9Hx3WpsCk
Watching Douglas Axe now via live-stream. Impressive guy.
PaV:
And, obviously, the genes related to RA metabolism were lost because their function was no more necessary to the species, while obviously all non coding DNA in animals was retained because…
???
Boy, I just wonder at what point does macro-evolution become falsified.
Every time I bring up the issue of falsification in conversations with evolutionists, majority of them react with vociferous incivility which makes me wonder why one would act like that if your position is “settled” – “logical” – “reasonable”.
Rennie as to:
Darwinian evolution is more realistically classified as a pseudoscience, instead of a real science, because it does not have a rigid falsification criteria based in mathematics as other overarching theories of science have.
The primary reason why no one has been able to find a rigid, falsifiable, mathematical basis for Darwinian evolution that can be tested against is because there are no known laws of nature for Darwinists to appeal to to base their math on. In other words, there is no known ‘law of evolution’ within the physical universe such as there is a ‘law of gravity’ etc,, for physicists to base their math on:
In fact, not only does Darwinian Evolution not have any universal physical law to appeal to as other overarching theories of science have, Entropy, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science, almost directly contradicts Darwinian claims that increases in functional complexity can be easily had:
Here is a lecture video based on Granville Sewell’s 2013 paper ‘Entropy, Evolution and Open Systems’ from the book Biocomplexity (A book, and paper, both of which some Darwinists had tried to censor)
Without such a rigid falsification criteria, (based in math on a physical law), to test against, Darwinists are able to ‘explain away’ falsifying evidences that contradict fundamental predictions of Darwinian evolution with ‘just-so stories’:
Dr. Hunter has compiled a list of some of the major false predictions generated by evolutionary theory. False predictions that are fundamental to evolutionary theory, i.e. go to the ‘core’ of the theory, and falsify it from the inside out as it were.
And although Darwinists, (instead of honestly admitting that Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a pseudo-science), try to shift the focus and try to claim that Intelligent Design is a unfalsifiable pseudo-science. But the fact of the matter is that Intelligent Design (ID) is mathematically based on a known law of the universe, i.e. the ‘law of conservation of information’, and ID is therefore falsifiable and is therefore very much ‘scientific’:
Moreover, despite the fact that Darwinian evolution does not have a rigid mathematical basis to test against, yet in so far as math can be applied to Darwinian claims, the mathematics of population genetics does eventually, in a round about way, falsify the claims of Darwinian evolution:
As well, although Darwinists have ignored it, empirical evidence has now, recently, falsified Darwinian claims:
In fact, since Darwinian evolution is based on a reductive materialistic view of reality, recent empirical evidence from ‘Quantum Biology’ now also falsifies Darwinian evolution from the inside out, as it were, by showing that it is not even based on the right scientific framework for understanding biology in the first place:
@ BA77
Thanks for all the info. I always enjoy your contributions on these threads.
I also think, along with the long list of items you have provided, that Stasis within species hundreds of millions of years old, presents a very challenging conundrum for evolutionary proponents. But then again I have seen evolutionists like Prof Larry Moran postulating that these species have undergone evolution on a molecular level.
How exactly he arrived to that conclusion without a hundred million year old specimen against which modern specie’s DNA can be measured I don’t know.
No problem Rennie.
Of related note to Darwinian evolution being a pseudo-science, it is also interesting to point out that everything within the atheistic/naturalistic worldview, (i.e. sense of self. observation of reality, even reality itself), collapses into self refuting, unrestrained, flights of fantasies and imagination.
As to the fossil record. The fossil record actually reveals a ‘top down’ pattern instead of the ‘bottom up’ pattern that was predicted by Darwinian theory:
Specifically, the fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin’s theory predicted.
Also of interest, there are ‘yawning chasms’ in the ‘morphological space’ between the phyla which suddenly appeared in the Cambrian Explosion,,,
Moreover, this top down pattern in the fossil record, which is the complete opposite pattern as Darwin predicted for the fossil record, is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion, but this ‘top down’, disparity preceding diversity, pattern is found in the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian explosion as well.