At “HGT: Flowering plant genome captures four entire genomes,” it was noted that
The research also shows, for the first time, that an organelle genome has captured an entire foreign genome, in this case, at least four of them. It is also the first description of a land plant acquiring genes from green algae.
Commenter Mapou writes,
The main prediction of common descent is that branches of the tree of life are strictly nested. Gene sharing between distant branches of the tree are thus forbidden by the theory of evolution.
The Darwinian theory of evolution has been falsified.
No amount of bogus claims of convergent evolution can save the theory now. Read it and weep.
Horizontal gene transfers high up in the tree of life is a much bigger problem for the theory of evolution than most people think. It falsifies it. The ID movement should jump on this and make it their primary focus. This is the biggest vulnerability of evolution. Don’t let the Darwinists get away with it with cockamamie pseudoscientific non-explanations like convergent evolution. Let the lay public know about this. Announce it on the rooftops.
Horizontal gene transfers are what software designers call multiple inheritance. It can only occur via intelligent design.
Assume Mapou is right.
It doesn’t matter.
If Darwin’s theory of evolution had ever been just a theory about how life forms change over time, it would have been discredited long ago by lack of evidence for its primary mechanism (natural selection acting on random mutation), together with significant evidence for alternatives like horizontal gene transfer (HGT).
But we live in an age where, while The Onion offers Darwin Christmas kitsch for fun, “evolutionary leaders of the world” apparently think that C.S. Lewis’s mock hymn to evolution is actual praise. And Darwin’s idea is supposed to be the most powerful ever. More powerful than zero, for example, or calculus.
One outcome is that Darwinian evolution is not evaluated according to the normal constraints of logic or evidence. For example, as the recent discussions around claims of quote mining show (see here also), one can quote exact words with the exact meaning deceitfully if the net effect of the resulting communication is to cause doubts about Darwin.
It’s that simple, really. Niles Eldredge and Ian Tattersall can say, “Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record” and Barry Arrington can quote them saying “Change in the manner Darwin expected is just not found in the fossil record.”
But the difference is as night and day because every true follower knows that Eldredge and Tattersall would immediately attempt to cover butt whereas Arrington would … well … conclude something unfavourable to the truth status of Darwin’s theory.
Just watch, Mapou, it’ll go the same way with horizontal gene transfer.
Suppose a Darwin notable has said that, on account of the power of Darwinian evolution, HGT seldom happens or only in a very limited way. Neither the fact that he said that nor the fact that it would be incorrect matters. His statement just falls soundlessly into the same memory hole as Kim Jong Un’s uncle. And Arrington’s act of reminding people that the Darwin notable said that would be a thought crime.
Such quotations are a thought crime because they imply that, in relation to Darwinism, facts matter. No. Darwinism is there to tell you when facts matter and when they don’t. You didn’t evolve in such a way as to know that for yourself.