Lucy: The Evidence For Evolution

I was quite young when Donald Johanson's book Lucy - The Beginnings Of Humankind was published in 1981. But, I read it and was captivated with the compelling story that it portrayed of how humankind as we know it today came to be.

In some respects, I've always thought of Lucy as the answer to the creationist arguments about the so-called "missing link". I realize that Lucy's story is far from complete even today, but it represents a great example of why evolution as a scientific model works.

Consider the story of Lucy's Foot that just emerged. Here's another piece of evidence that fills in some of the questions that were outstanding after the original work on Lucy was published in the mass media. Now we have good evidence that shows that Australopithecus Afarensis walked upright more or less the way that we do, which reinforces the idea that there is more than a small chance that the species is one of the predecessors of what becomes Homo Sapiens.

The beauty of the model of evolution is that every time new evidence is found, it either fits into the theory as it is already understood. Once in a while, a piece of evidence comes forth that changes the specific understanding of a particular line of the fossil record, but it doesn't result in the theory itself suffering a major change. ... and yet the theoretical construct itself stands open to refutation the moment that a fossil is found which contradicts the tenets of the theory.

Creationists can complain all they like, but the fact is that the body of evidence found to date fits the model that evolution postulates. You can argue that the earth is flat all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that the world is in fact a globe, does it?

I look forward to hearing what the creationists have to say in their efforts to dismiss this latest piece of the puzzle.

This Will Get The Creationists Going...

One of the often repeated saws out of creationists is that science has never successfully produced life in a laboratory experiment.

There is a certain amount of reasonableness to that argument. Although science in general has a pretty good idea of how life got started on this world, those ideas have been largely unprovable, since the most that scientists have seemingly been able to do is form some of the basic proteins that are part of RNA.

But then again, unlike scripture, science isn't standing still for anybody. Sure enough, someone has put aside the "you can't do that" rulebook, and done some very interesting experiments that we should take note of.

However, though researchers have been able to show how RNA’s component molecules, called ribonucleotides, could assemble into RNA, their many attempts to synthesize these ribonucleotides have failed. No matter how they combined the ingredients — a sugar, a phosphate, and one of four different nitrogenous molecules, or nucleobases — ribonucleotides just wouldn’t form.

Sutherland’s team took a different approach in what Harvard molecular biologist Jack Szostak called a “synthetic tour de force” in an accompanying commentary in Nature.

“By changing the way we mix the ingredients together, we managed to make ribonucleotides,” said Sutherland. “The chemistry works very effectively from simple precursors, and the conditions required are not distinct from what one might imagine took place on the early Earth.”

Is this life created in a lab? No. But it has established one more piece of the picture, and as you add pieces to the picture, the number of unknowns drops off, until you are left with a fairly coherent sense of the possibilities.

The Stupidity ... It Burns

I seldom comment on what others write on their blogs, but sometimes an author writes something so monumentally illogical that it's worth slapping about.

Today's illogic du jour comes from Shock and Blog.

Apparently, recent work which has found a functional purpose for the human appendix somehow "blows a hole" in the theory of evolution. Or, so "Jason" thinks.

Sadly, he's horrendously mistaken. The claim rests upon the notion that the purpose of the appendix has remained constant over time - hardly something that we can claim is guaranteed.

While we certainly do not need the ability to deal with large amounts of cellulose as our ancestors did, and human beings clearly can live quite well without their appendixes, it does not mean that the appendix is entirely without purpose (even if that purpose was misunderstood previously.

The notion of body parts having "fixed" and immutable uses is demonstrably false when you consider something as simple as bacterial flagellae:

For instance, precursors to the flagellum's motor can be found being used as ionic channels within bacteria, known as the Type III Secretory System.[11] This is true for most of the structure of the flagellum in general; of the 42 proteins found in the flagellum, 40 have already been found in use in different biological pathways.[12

If you want a more specific discussion, this article was pretty clear about pointing out why the idea of static purpose really doesn't hold together so well.

The observation that the appendix now serves as a "refuge" for certain kinds of bacteria that live in our intestines is hardly surprising, nor does it substantively affect the validity of evolution as a scientific theory.

Even more depressing for hard-line creationists is the cold reality that the notion of an organ being "vestigial" ultimately means that the original purpose of the structure is no longer significant. There is nothing to say that the structure no longer has a use in the body. In fact, the observations suggest an intriguing degree of adaptation in the relationship between the body and some of the microorganisms that live within.

The Insanity's Leaking North

I see that Ken Ham's unique brand of evangelical insanity is creeping its way out of Kentucky and into Alberta.

For those not familiar with Ham, he started the creationist "Answers in Genesis" website/ministry, and is in process of opening a rather elaborate "Creation Science Museum" somewhere in Kentucky.

A few days ago, I heard part of an article about a "Creation Science" museum somewhere in Alberta being opened. Because I was still in the fog of sleep, I wasn't entirely sure what I'd heard, and left it alone until I had time to investigate further. Today, I was doing a bit of wandering about on the web, and I found that yes, Alberta is busy creating its very own "Creation Science Museum".

The website for them is here, and the Museum itself is somewhere in Big Valley, Alberta - a small town southwest of Red Deer.

Looking through the Alberta museum's claims about the material they are presenting is a glimpse into the fervent insanity of Young Earth Creationism.

Here are some of the more amusing gems:

The interactive bacterial flagellum and DNA displays both provide compelling evidence for creation and refute any unguided, 'natural' processes such as evolution.

Oh yes, resurrecting the already discredited theories of Michael J. Behe and the other ideologues that hang out with William Dembski over at the Discovery Institute. Brilliant, credible science to be referencing.

The "Age of the Earth" display is finished. This beautiful display packs a pile of leading-edge information regarding dating methods, fast fossils, rapid cave formations and Out of Place Artifacts.

Fast Fossils? There's an oxymoron if I've ever heard one. Not to mention "rapid cave formations" - short of the kind of forces that plate tectonics involves (or small thermonuclear devices), caves are geological formations, and "rapid" in geological terms is something you can measure in a few thousand years.

The "Evidence From Geneaology" display, donated by Edgar Nurnberg, is one of the more favourite displays of our visitors. These scrolls from the Lambeth Palace in England trace the geneaology of King Henry the 6th back to Adam and Eve.

Uh-huh. I'll bet that these are just irrefutable evidence of the lineage of King Henry VI. Given the time period, King Henry may have commissioned those scrolls himself either to feed his ego or insanity.

The "Dinosaurs and Humans" display shows considerable evidence that not only did dinosaurs exist recently, but that humans existed with them. This evidence is fatal to the evolutionary dogma which has dinosaurs extinct at least 60 million years before humans evolved.

This is the classic rubric of the "Young Earther" arguments. Essentially, it's like claiming that the Flintstones was a documentary. The claim is, essentially, that Dinosaurs were wiped out in the "Great Flood" described in Genesis chapters 6 and 7.

While a "young earth creation" view may be a valid position of faith, it's a different thing altogether to try and twist the evidence that nearly several centuries of scientific inquiry has found that speaks otherwise.