Why Some People Favor Common Descent

_{Cornelius Hunter

September 11, 2010

Intelligent Design}

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The scientific evidence does not favor evolution but that doesn’t mean we know all the answers. In fact some people who agree evolution is unlikely, nonetheless argue for common descent. This can be confusing because common descent is so often presented as integral to Darwin’s idea. But this need not be the case. Read more

Comments

warehuff, I must be one of those people with a reading comprehension problem because I can't understand the point of your post. Bornagain was pointing out that very little change has happened in echolocation in bats. Maybe he should have said, very littie positive change has happened. No ID-er or creationist denies that loss of function can and does happen. His older bat seems to be evidence that echolocation showed up suddenly and went on unchanged for a long time. This is not a death blow to evolution, but it is a challenge to it.Collin_{September 14, 2010
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BA77, in #3 Davem made the unfortunate suggestion that bats were a good argument against evolution. In #4, #5 and #6 Fross and jurassicmac gave some reasons why he might want to rethink this suggestion. Then in #7 you gave a link to an illustration showing the striking homology between the bones of humans, pterodactyls, birds and bats (exactly what you would expect if they were all produced by evolution) and then asked, "and Bats go back ‘unchanged’ how many years in the fossil record?" In #11, I gave a link to a pair of newly discovered bat fossils that showed change - they had no trace of echo location. I also gave a quote that showed their age as 52.5 million years. You then replied that your bat was older at 54.6 million years - and had echo location - but that's the same as today's bats. I'm beginning to think that the people who claim that a steady diet of television and video is destroying reading comprehension may have a point.warehuff_{September 14, 2010
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bornagian77 @ 7, The sentiment that I was responding to was the good 'ole "What good is half a wing?" question that dave proposed. One thing that we must concede about any position is that there are both good and bad arguments for and against it. There may be some good arguments against evolution; the "half a wing is not advantageous," argument is one of the worst. Dave was saying that just a little bit of a membrane between body structures would not only not be helpful, but 'deleterious' instead. This is not the case at all. For example, let's put bats, will fully formed wings capable of powered flight at 100% on the 'wings' scale, and a grey squirrel at 0%. On this scale, a flying squirrel would be somewhere in between. Some squirrels live most of their lives in trees; any gene that gave its owners a greater chance of surviving a high fall (like the greater surface area that webbed skin would add) would have a distinct survival advantage, on average, over its kin with lesser surface area, thus causing that gene to spread throughout the population faster. Even a non-webbed squirrel can jump from tree to tree; but a squirrel with larger webbing could jump further because they loose less vertical height during the jump, and again, they could survive falls with less injury. (and this is what flying squirrels do) In this case, the question: "What good is half a wing?" Is easy: it's about 50% better than no wing at all. 25% of a wing is better than 5% of a wing, but not as good as 26%. There could easily exist a continual gradient from 0% wing functionality, to ~40% like a flying squirrel, to ~60% like a flying lemur, to 100% like a bat, with each minute step being advantageous in certain environment. There is no question that mutations can occur that produce the modest morphological changes for each step, just look at the variations between a pug and a greyhoud from their wolf ancestor in just a few thousand years. (he also mentioned an 'elongated digit' as being deleterious, if that's the case then this guy didn't get the memo: http://tinyurl.com/ayeayefinger) The ironic thing is that he states the premise correctly: "According to evolutionary theory, this advantage would result in longer digits and more webbing until eventually the animal becomes capable of flight." Bingo. but he seemingly goes on to dismiss it: "A number of other physiological changes would have had to take place also; musculature, tendons, etc." Exactly. We have known for a very long time that those physiological changes are influenced by genes, and that variations in genes can change those features. (short legs on a dachshund were caused by a mutated gene) And the changes track each other; The mutation that caused the dachshund's short legs was a single mutation: breeders didn't have to wait for one mutation to make the bones shorter, one to make the muscles shorter, one to make the tendons shorter, one to make the blood vessels shorter, one to make the skin shorter, etc. I that same way, mutations in genes that cause morphological changes can influence all those systems simultaneously. He then follows with: "The laws of aerodynamics are very strict and for a land animal to mutate over thousands of generations into one capable of flight is nothing short of miraculous." There are also lizards that have folds of skin between their limbs; they don't use these to glide so much as fall slower. So of course the ability to fly isn't going to come instantly. It doesn't matter how 'aerodynamically' efficient a structure is; if it helps the creature fall slower or jump further or survive falls better than its competitors, the genes that influence that trait will spread faster. That's what natural selection is; that's what evolution is. It's nonsense to say that 'nothing but a fully formed wing would be advantageous' because we see creatures at just about every single increment from no flight, to basic gliding, to advanced gliding, to flight.jurassicmac_{September 13, 2010
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I will be more clear. In principle, three slightly different design scenarios are possible...
Is it possible, in your opinion, to decide which scenario is true, or which is beter supported by evidence? Is there some hypothetical program of research that could clarify this?Petrushka_{September 13, 2010
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BA: the great "explosions" in natural history, especially OOL, The Ediacara and Cambrian explosion of phyla, and the flower plant explosion, remain one of the most amazing events we are aware of. They are a challenge for any intelligent person. When science will regain the courage to consider a mystery what is really a mystery, maybe these amazing discontinuities in our understanding will provide new insights and stimulate new paradigms. Obviously, in a design perspective.gpuccio_{September 13, 2010
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Robert Byers @ 10. Robert, can you clarify something for me? Are you advocating the YEC position, or are you mocking it with hyper-ridiculous statements? (poe's law, y'know)jurassicmac_{September 13, 2010
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PaV: I certainly mean the same thing as you say. The evidence for common descent is only evidence of inheritance of some information, while other information is certainly added by design at each new level where new dFSCI appears. IOWs, the only alternative to CD as I see it (and we can certainly call it "common inheritance", would be that all the design of each new species, or higher level, is each time created form scratch, and without any physical continuity of the "hardware implementation" (if I can call it that way). I will be more clear. In principle, three slightly different design scenarios are possible (I will not discuss the non design scenarios here, because I believe we perfectly agree about their value). 1) Each new species (or higher level or organization) is designed and implemented "from scratch". I suppose this corresponds more or less to the concept of "special creation". I would define that as "creation of a completely new design in a new body, without any informational or physical continuity with what already exists. 2) The design of a new species reutilizes part of existing designs, plus new designed features, but there is no phisical continuity in the implementation. That would be "pure common design". 3) The design of a new species reutilizes part of existing design, and also the physical support of it. IOWs, the new design is added and implemented in an existing species. That would mean common design and common descent (in my sense). In no way that implies gradualism, or pure mechanical descent. For various reasons, I prefer option 3. I would also add that option 3 is what we usually observe in human design, especially in those forms of human design which are often considered formally similar to what we observe in natural "evolution" (such as the developing and related models of cars, of software, and so on). In this scenario, it is perfectly possible to maintain some role for the best observed microevolutionary darwinian mechanisms, in particular the selection of small and partially useful transitions, and especially the role of negative selection and neutral mutations in explaining the gradual divergence of sequences in the context of the same functional space in the course of natural history. And all the "evidences" claimed by darwinists as proof of their theory are perfectly explained by this scenario, and are in no way evidence of darwinian mechanisms at macroevolutionary level.gpuccio_{September 13, 2010
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warehuff, I have a few quotes on the fossil record, that you may be interested in: Here are some quotes by leading paleontologists on the true state of the fossil record: "The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find' over and over again' not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another." Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager "A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God." Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." Professor of paleontology - Glasgow University, T. Neville George "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them." David Kitts - Paleontologist "The long-term stasis, following a geologically abrupt origin, of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists" – Stephen Jay Gould - Harvard "Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record." Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9 "The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be .... We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time ... so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated". David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History "In virtually all cases a new taxon appears for the first time in the fossil record with most definitive features already present, and practically no known stem-group forms." Fossils and Evolution, TS Kemp - Curator of Zoological Collections, Oxford University, Oxford Uni Press, p246, 1999 "Every paleontologist knows that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of family appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences.” George Gaylord Simpson (evolutionist), The Major Features of Evolution, New York, Columbia University Press, 1953 p. 360. "No wonder paleontologists shied away from evolution for so long. It seems never to happen. Assiduous collecting up cliff faces yields zigzags, minor oscillations, and the very occasional slight accumulation of change over millions of years, at a rate too slow to really account for all the prodigious change that has occurred in evolutionary history. When we do see the introduction of evolutionary novelty, it usually shows up with a bang, and often with no firm evidence that the organisms did not evolve elsewhere! Evolution cannot forever be going on someplace else. Yet that's how the fossil record has struck many a forlorn paleontologist looking to learn something about evolution." - Niles Eldredge , "Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate," 1996, p.95 "Enthusiastic paleontologists in several countries have claimed pieces of this missing record, but the claims have all been disputed and in any case do not provide real connections. That brings me to the second most surprising feature of the fossil record...the abruptness of some of the major changes in the history of life." Ager, D. - Author of "The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record"-1981 "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology." Stephen Jay Gould "Why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? But in the intermediate region, having intermediate conditions of life, why do we not now find closely-linking intermediate varieties?" Charles Darwin - Origin Of Species Here is a graph showing a partial list of fossil groups showing their sudden appearance in the fossil record- (without the artificially imposed dotted lines) - Timeline Illustration: http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/wp-content/majorgroups.jpg The Fossil Record - Don Patton - in their own words - video http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4679386266900194790 Here are four more pages of quotes, by leading experts, on the fossil record here: Creation/Evolution Quotes: Fossil Record #1 - Stephen E. Jones http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/fsslrc01.html Genesis 1:21 & 25 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.,,,,, each according to its kind”; and it was so. 25 And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. Here are a few more videos, and articles, on the 'lack of gradualism' found in the fossil record: Evolution Deception - First Life - Fossil Record - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4028129 The Fossil Record - Fact And Fiction - Marc Surtees - video http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/fossils.xml "A major problem for Neo-Darwinism is the complete lack of evidence for plant evolution in the fossil record. As a whole, the fossil evidence of prehistoric plants is actually very good, yet no convincing transitional forms have been discovered in the abundant plant fossil record" Jerry Bergman - The Evolution Of Plants - "A Major Problem For Darwinists" - Technical Journal - 2002 online edition Flowering Plant Big Bang: “Flowering plants today comprise around 400,000 species,“To think that the burst that gave rise to almost all of these plants occurred in less than 5 million years is pretty amazing - especially when you consider that flowering plants as a group have been around for at least 130 million years.” Pam Soltis, curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History.bornagain77_{September 13, 2010
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warehuff, you either need to go back to math class, or you need to teach me that new 2+2=147 stuff because my reference is dated to 54.6 mya: First Eocene Bat From Australia Excerpt: Remains of a bat, Australonycteris clarkae, gen. et sp. nov., are reported from freshwater clays radiometrically dated to 54.6 million years old in southeastern Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest bat recorded for the southern hemisphere and one of the world’s oldest. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4523576?cookieSet=1 and had echolocation,,, The ear bones of Australonycteris show that it could navigate using echolocation just like modern bats. http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australonycteris-clarkae whereas your reference says 52.5m years ago,,, so warehuff since I was taught that 54.6 mya is 2.1 million years older than 52.5, perhaps you could resolve this issue for me,,,, As well warehuff you seem to be overlooking the fact that there are also modern bats which do not have echolocation! Perhaps you could include that little detail in your future discussion of bat fossils instead of trying to paint imaginary pictures for the fossil record that are not there!.bornagain77_{September 13, 2010
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Robert Byers,
This YEC sees water mammals as indeed land creatures that instantly adapted to the seas after the flood. it ws empty
Why did all those creatures jump into the water when there was nothing there? To starve? Do you know anything about the food chain in the oceans? Please explain your theory.Cabal_{September 13, 2010
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Guys, meet a bat that is changed from today's bat: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/13/bat.evolution "The find puts to rest a long-standing argument over which came first, flight or echolocation - the bats' exotic navigation system. The new species of bat could fly, but didn't use echolocation." "It's clearly a bat, but unlike any previously known. In many respects it is a missing link between bats and their non-flying ancestors." BA77: "... and Bats go back ‘unchanged’ how many years in the fossil record?" "The new pair of fossils - which date from around 52.5m years ago - resolve the issue."warehuff_{September 13, 2010
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As a biblical creationist(YEC) another problem is with the geological presumptions behind all this. I.D also presume the geology is more competent then the biology. It ain't. Its only been a few thousand years since they were fossilized. This YEC sees water mammals as indeed land creatures that instantly adapted to the seas after the flood. it ws empty. likewise i see bats as instantly adapting to the air. No bats before the flood. The air was more empty. mechanisms for this are difficult to comprehend as would be expected in physical things that today are not comprehended to a point of fixing/healing broken parts. Thats the clue to the whole complexity issue. No intermediates will ever be found amongst creature lineages. in fact any slight change can be dismissed as mere local adaptation. the water mammals today, like seals, make this case. They live at the same time but if found in the fossils would be said to be ancestral to each other.Robert Byers_{September 13, 2010
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I have been opposed to the general understanding of "common descent" for some time now. My problem is that of the discontinuities, as mentioned above by Gil and gpuccio. Nevertheless, we know that certain 'information' flows from one class in a phyla to others. I think we can therefore talk about "common inheritance"---since we have evidence for this; but to speak of "common descent" is simply to think in Darwinian terms. Just think of the fish egg to reptilian egg transition. How did this happen? Gradually? Where are the intermediates? Instead, we are, "a la Gould," treated to discrete jumps in the very essence of inheritance: the egg. And the fossil record gives us no inbetweens.PaV_{September 12, 2010
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jurassicmac; one of the main problems I'm having with this whole evolutionary thing, as you can see with the Bat and flying lemur fossils, is that there are fossils that go back millions of years, even hundreds of millions of years, in the fossil record that just suddenly appear in the fossil record and remain unchanged in their shape: Ancient Fossils That Have Not Changed For Millions Of Years - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4113820 and shoot while we are on fossils, I was hoping you might clear up that whole Cambrian explosion thing for me? The Cambrian Explosion - Back To A Miracle! - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4112218bornagain77_{September 12, 2010
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jurassicmac: elongated digits? but theses 'flying lemurs', which they are not, are the most capable of all gliding mammals, using flaps of extra skin between their legs to glide from higher to lower locations. And there skeleton looks like this: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.boneclones.com/images/sc-049_web-lg.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.boneclones.com/SC-049.htm&usg=__n0qcWekvfoI7fv7uIKgAVy_jpic=&h=414&w=500&sz=77&hl=en&start=14&zoom=1&tbnid=AH4eFHYDd5Ae-M:&tbnh=146&tbnw=174&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dflying%2Blemur%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D637%26addh%3D36%26tbs%3Disch:10%2C750&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=736&vpy=208&dur=941&hovh=204&hovw=247&tx=183&ty=105&ei=aXWNTLXNNsT_nAeZ5siACw&oei=VXWNTNaZLt_snQeEu7WgCQ&esq=2&page=2&ndsp=15&ved=1t:429,r:14,s:14&biw=1024&bih=637 whereas the bat fossil looks like this: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.jwaller.co.uk/batgroup/images/biology/bat%2520vs%2520skeleton.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.jwaller.co.uk/batgroup/biology.asp&usg=__7At-5jE5IwbxxY0LNnMNyzGqhyc=&h=578&w=458&sz=39&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=DeoN7B-VsiqsuM:&tbnh=129&tbnw=102&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbat%2Bfossil%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dcom.ubuntu:en-US:official%26channel%3Ds%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D637%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=731&vpy=276&dur=13040&hovh=252&hovw=200&tx=103&ty=146&ei=D3eNTKOQIImrnge7qJCdDA&oei=BXeNTNHKK4iBnwe7pYS-CQ&esq=3&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:16,s:0 and Bats go back 'unchanged' how many years in the fossil record? Within the roughly 10 million years of time that whales are purported to have dramatically evolved from some wolf-like animal 50 million years ago, with at least +50,000 major morphological innovations no less, bats did not, and have not, changed in their basic shape at all. Bats popped out of the 'evolutionary woodwork' about 55 million years ago. They first appear as a radically new yet fully developed form, which was not in any way significantly different from modern bats. Their debut in the fossil record is sudden, complete, and lacks intermediaries as these following articles make clear: Australonycteris clarkae is the oldest bat ever found in the fossil record at 54.6 million years old. The ear bones of Australonycteris show that it could navigate using echolocation just like modern bats. https://uncommondescent.com/biology/the-bionic-antinomy-of-darwinism/#comment-340412 Earliest known Australian Tertiary mammal fauna:- 1992 Excerpt: REMAINS of Early Eocene vertebrates from freshwater clays near Murgon, southeastern Queensland, represent Australia's oldest marsupials, bats, non-volant placentals, frogs, madtsoiid snakes, trionychid turtles1and birds. Radiometric dating of illites forming part of the matrix of the mammal-bearing zone has given a minimum age estimate of 54.6 plusminus 0.05 x 106 years, http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v356/n6369/abs/356514a0.html First Eocene Bat From Australia Excerpt: Remains of a bat, Australonycteris clarkae, gen. et sp. nov., are reported from freshwater clays radiometrically dated to 54.6 million years old in southeastern Queensland, Australia. It is the oldest bat recorded for the southern hemisphere and one of the world's oldest. http://www.jstor.org/pss/4523576?cookieSet=1 Australonycteris clarkae Excerpt: Australonycteris clarkae, from the Eocene of Queensland, is the oldest bat from the Southern Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. It is similar to other archaic Eocene bats from the Northern Hemisphere, and could probably navigate using echolocation, like most bats do today. (of note: some "modern" bats do not use echolocation today): http://australianmuseum.net.au/Australonycteris-clarkae Of note; The bat’s echometer has more accuracy, more efficiency, less power consumption and less size than any artificial sonar constructed by engineers. The echometer cannot be installed into the bat in the afterward as a simple plug-in, rather echometer and brain had to be designed as a whole system from the beginning. http://focus.ti.com/docs/solution/folders/print/119.html and 'flying lemurs' go back at least 34 million years in the fossil record unchanged: http://books.google.com/books?id=LD1nDlzXYicC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=Colugos+fossils+million+years&source=bl&ots=fxOhUh0DbY&sig=q3knTigqTQkG8UF3zIcSFRw7kVk&hl=en&ei=A3iNTKrIMsydnwe9oZigDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CCcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=Colugos%20fossils%20million%20years&f=false So jurassicmac, do you see the problem that I see here? Can you please provide some evidence besides your imaginative speculation to clear this problem up?bornagain77_{September 12, 2010
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Davem:
yet never rodents with elongated digits with webbing between them. Such a mutation would be deleterious to the individual and not advantageous.
Tell that to this guy: http://tinyurl.com/324ggx5 Apparently, he didn't get the memo.jurassicmac_{September 12, 2010
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Davem
Bats are my favorite argumant as to why evolution is impossible. We see illustrations of two legged donosaurs with feathers on their arms, yet never rodents with elongated digits with webbing between them.
Yeah, it's not like there are any such creatures as flying squirrels or lemurs, Y'know, mammals with webbed skin between limbs that allow them to glide. And it's also not like any other animals have "musculare, tendons, etc." that could be modified by genetic variation. And, it's not like having some gliding abilities is better than none at all in certain environments, giving a creature with a better ability a selective advantage, or anything. (maybe pick a better 'argumant' as to why evolution is impossible)jurassicmac_{September 12, 2010
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Davem, you are right, a mutation like that would be pretty harmful. If bats evolved, it would have to be gradual. Ie early bats would have only been able to glide short distances like the common sugar glider. Only then would slightly elongated digits offer small degrees in glide distance.Fross_{September 12, 2010
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Bats are my favorite argumant as to why evolution is impossible. We see illustrations of two legged donosaurs with feathers on their arms, yet never rodents with elongated digits with webbing between them. Such a mutation would be deleterious to the individual and not advantageous. According to evolutionary theory, this advantage would result in longer digits and more webbing until eventually the animal becomes capable of flight. A number of other physiological changes would have had to take place also; musculature, tendons, etc. The laws of aerodynamics are very strict and for a land animal to mutate over thousands of generations into one capable of flight is nothing short of miraculous.Davem_{September 11, 2010
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Gil: I perfectly agree with you. I accept common descent as a reasonable scenario to explain some facts, but only in the context of ID. And anyway, only facts can solve that specific problem, which is in itself much less important than the problem of the causal explanation. But, absolutely, I don't believe in slow gradualism, In that sense, I am an IDist "a la Gould". The fossil record is clear about that. I really hope that IDists may agree that common descent is not the main problem. Moreover, I am convinced that some common descent scenarios can really strengthen the ID position.gpuccio_{September 11, 2010
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On the subject of common descent one thing is certain: Darwin's step-by-tiny-step gradualism thesis is dead. Irreducible complexity works at all levels, from the level of biochemistry to that of the entire organism, to that of the universe itself. (Change any of the laws of physics by the slightest amount, and they are no longer functionally integrated to make life possible.) The testimony of the fossil record is clear, and that is one of profound and consistent discontinuity. After 150 years of intense fossil hunting with the explicit goal of cramming the evidence into Darwin's gradualism, a few speculative examples have been proposed, with no way of determining ancestor-descendent genealogy. Bats appear in the fossil record pretty much as they are today, and the obvious reason is that all of their highly sophisticated systems must function in perfect coordination: echolocation technology, central nervous system flight-control systems with echolocation feedback, etc. It seems unreasonable to assume that bats just popped into existence from nonliving matter, but it is equally unreasonable to assume that they evolved step-by-tiny-step through Darwinian mechanisms, and the empirical evidence is that they did not. Of course, humans represent the most profound "evolutionary" discontinuity of all. The bottom line is that we do not know how all this occurred. But one thing seems certain to me: Life was designed by an intelligence, astronomically more sophisticated than ours.GilDodgen_{September 11, 2010
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