Tag Archives: Naturalism

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New study: fossil discovery adds a new phyla to the explosive Cambrian explosion

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Apologetics and the progress of science
Apologetics and the progress of science

It’s Wednesday, so that means another scientific discovery has been made to falsify atheism. Put it on the pile with the others, I guess.

The story from Science Daily reads like Darwinist propaganda, but you can get the main idea if you ignore the fawning naturalistic bias.

Excerpt:

A team of Virginia Tech researchers have discovered fossils of kinorhynch worms — commonly known as mud dragons — dating back more than 530 million years.

The historic find — made in South China — fills a huge gap in the known fossil record of kinorhynchs, small invertebrate animals that are related to arthropods, featuring exoskeletons and segmented bodies, but not jointed legs.

The first specimen was unearthed in rocks in Nanjiang, China, in 2013 and more fossils were found later that year and in 2014.

Helping lead the international team of scientists and biomedical engineers who unearthed, studied, and imaged the ancient, armored, worm-like creature is Shuhai Xiao, a professor of geobiology in the Department of Geosciences, part of the College of Science at Virginia Tech.

Dubbed Eokinorhynchus rarus — or rare ancient mud dragon, the newly discovered animal dates back from the Cambrian period and contains five pairs of large bilaterally placed spines on its trunk. It is believed to be related to modern kinorhynchs.

The group’s findings were published in Scientific Reports, a Nature family journal.

“Kinos represent an animal group that is related to arthropods — insects, shrimps, spiders, etc. — which are the most diverse group of animals on the planet,” said Xiao, who refers to kinorhynchs as “kinos” for short. “Although arthropod fossils date back to more than 530 million years ago, no kino fossils have ever been reported. This is a huge gap in the fossil record, with more than 540 million years of evolutionary history undocumented. Our discovery is the first report of kino fossils.”

I took a quick peek at Wikipedia to make sure, and yes, they really are their own phylum. So, brand new phylum.

Evolution News comments on the discovery:

In Figure 2.5 of Darwin’s Doubt, Steve Meyer reports that about 20 of 27 animal phyla with known fossil records appear in the Cambrian period. Prior to this find, phylum Kinorhyncha was not known to have a fossil record. Now we can update Meyer’s tabulation to report that 21 of the 28 phyla with known fossil records apparently first appear — abruptly no less — in the Cambrian explosion of animal body plans.

Despite this non-Darwinian pattern of origin, the papers’ authors speculate that these ancient (and extant) kinorhynchs might shed light on the origin of arthropods, but that’s largely only because they are segmented — as various other living phyla are as well. Given that kinorhynchs entirely lack limbs and also lack arthropod-like eyes, it seems that they aren’t going to help us much towards understanding the unique defining characteristics of arthropods.

The paper also explains that these fossils come from about 535 million years ago in a section of strata bearing the “small shelly fossils,” in the early Cambrian period. As Meyer and I have discussed, some mistakenly cite the “small shelly fossils” (SSFs) as possible evidence of a gradual evolution of the Cambrian animals. But in this case, studies of the SSFs are showing the Cambrian explosion to be more explosive.

I blogged before about the Small Shelly Fossils that are hoped (by naturalists) to be ancestors of the Cambrian phyla, but as the Evolution News article stated, they’re not. Too bad Darwinists!

Positive arguments for Christian theism

Polemics

Can naturalism account for the origin of the 20 amino acids in living systems?

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Do the Miller-Urey experiments simulate the early Earth?
Do the Miller-Urey experiments simulate the early Earth?

The origin of life

There are two problems related to the origin of the first living cell, on naturalism:

  1. The problem of getting the building blocks needed to create life – i.e. the amino acids
  2. The problem of creating the functional sequences of amino acids and proteins that can support the minimal operations of a simple living cell

Normally, I concede the first problem and grant the naturalist all the building blocks he needs. This is because step 2 is impossible. There is no way, on naturalism, to form the sequences of amino acids that will fold up into proteins, and then to form the sequences of proteins that can be used to form everything else in the cell, including the DNA itself. But that’s a topic for a separate post.

Today, let’s take a look at the problems with step 1.

The problem of getting the building blocks of life

Now you may have heard that some scientists managed to spark some gasses to generate most of the 20 amino acids found in living systems. These experiments are called the “Miller-Urey” experiments.

The IDEA center has a nice summary of origin-of-life research that explains a few of the main problems with step 1.

Miler and Urey used the wrong gasses:

Miller’s experiment requires a reducing methane and ammonia atmosphere,11, 12 however geochemical evidence says the atmosphere was hydrogen, water, and carbon dioxide (non-reducing).15, 16 The only amino acid produced in a such an atmosphere is glycine (and only when the hydrogen content is unreasonably high), and could not form the necessary building blocks of life.11

Miller and Urey didn’t account for UV of molecular instability:

Not only would UV radiation destroy any molecules that were made, but their own short lifespans would also greatly limit their numbers. For example, at 100ºC (boiling point of water), the half lives of the nucleic acids Adenine and Guanine are 1 year, uracil is 12 years, and cytozine is 19 days20 (nucleic acids and other important proteins such as chlorophyll and hemoglobin have never been synthesized in origin-of-life type experiments19).

Miller and Urey didn’t account for molecular oxygen:

We all have know ozone in the upper atmosphere protects life from harmful UV radiation. However, ozone is composed of oxygen which is the very gas that Stanley Miller-type experiments avoided, for it prevents the synthesis of organic molecules like the ones obtained from the experiments! Pre-biotic synthesis is in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. The chemistry does not work if there is oxygen because the atmosphere would be non-reducing, but if there is no UV-light-blocking oxygen (i.e. ozone – O3) in the atmosphere, the amino acids would be quickly destroyed by extremely high amounts of UV light (which would have been 100 times stronger than today on the early earth).20, 21, 22 This radiation could destroy methane within a few tens of years,23 and atmospheric ammonia within 30,000 years.15

And there were three other problems too:

At best the processes would likely create a dilute “thin soup,”24 destroyed by meteorite impacts every 10 million years.20, 25 This severely limits the time available to create pre-biotic chemicals and allow for the OOL.

Chemically speaking, life uses only “left-handed” (“L”) amino acids and “right-handed” (“R)” genetic molecules. This is called “chirality,” and any account of the origin of life must somehow explain the origin of chirality. Nearly all chemical reactions produce “racemic” mixtures–mixtures with products that are 50% L and 50% R.

Two more problems are not mentioned in the article. A non-peptide bond anywhere in the chain will ruin the chain. You need around 200 amino acids to make a protein. If any of the bonds is not a peptide bond, the chain will not work in a living system. Additionally, the article does not mention the need for the experimenter to intervene in order to prevent interfering cross-reactions that would prevent the amino acids from forming.

Usually when you hear the origin of life debated, they sort of skirt about the problem of where the amino acids come from, but there is no reason not to make that an issue. The naturalist has to explain how the first living cell could come about naturalistically.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

 

News

Is Darwinist P.Z. Myers right to say that the appendix is vestigial?

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Apologetics and the progress of science
Apologetics and the progress of science

First, let’s hear prominent atheist P. Z. Myers, who believes in Darwinism, explain why he thinks that the appendix is a useless vestigial organ leftover from an unguided, random process of evolution:

The appendix in humans, for instance, is a vestigial organ, despite all the insistence by creationists and less-informed scientists that finding expanded local elements of the immune system means it isn’t. An organ is vestigial if it is reduced in size or utility compared to homologous organs in other animals, and another piece of evidence is if it exhibits a wide range of variation that suggests that those differences have no selective component. That you can artificially reduce the size of an appendix by literally cutting it out, with no effect on the individual (other than that they survive a potentially acute and dangerous inflammation) tells us that these are vestigial.

Got that? You can cut out the appendix and it has “no effect on the individual”.

Now let’s look at the peer-reviewed science, so we can get the truth of the matter.

My good friend Joe Coder told me about this article from the Melbourne Herald Sun.

Excerpt:

MELBOURNE scientists have discovered new proof that the appendix — the often-removed organ once thought to be redundant — can be crucial to digestive health.

Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have shown how a group of immune cells team up with the appendix to protect the gut during infection.

They work together during bouts of food poisoning and other bacterial illnesses, and also help boost the immune systems of cancer patients.

Lead researcher Professor Gabrielle Belz, a laboratory head from WEHI’s molecular immunology division, said about 70,000 Australians have their appendix removed every year — making it one of the most common surgical procedures.

“Popular belief tells us the appendix is a liability,” Prof Belz said.

“However, we may wish to rethink whether the appendix is irrelevant for our health.”

Prof Belz said surgeons no longer removed the appendix “at the first drop of a hat”, reserving surgery for more serious cases of appendicitis.

The new research, led by Prof Belz and leading French immunologist Prof Eric Vivier, has shown that innate lymphoid cells (ILCs) shield the appendix from harmful bacteria.

This allows the small organ to act as a safe haven for “good” bacteria, which could then “reseed” the intestines and restore the health of the digestive system.

Prof Belz, whose research was published today in Nature Immunology journal, said ILCs offered an added layer of immune protection for healthy people.

But they were vital in fighting bacterial infections in people with compromised immune systems, such as cancer patients, Prof Belz said.

“This is particularly important because ILCs are able to survive in the gut even during (cancer) treatments, which typically wipe out other immune cells,” she said.

Prof Belz said that ability of ILCs to withstand chemotherapy also opened up “new avenues of investigation” for cancer treatment.

This expands on a previous study reported by the Washington Post.

Excerpt:

The appendix “acts as a good safe house for bacteria,” said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. Its location — just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac — helps support the theory, he said. Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts like a bacteria factory, cultivating the good germs, Parker said. That use is not needed in a modern industrialized society, Parker said. If a person’s gut flora dies, it can usually be repopulated easily with germs they pick up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it wasn’t as easy to grow back that bacteria and the appendix came in handy.

Evolution News comments:

[…][A] few months back David Klinghoffer reported that researchers in the journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology found:

Individuals without an appendix were four times more likely to have a recurrence of Clostridium difficile, [a pathogen common in hospitals,] exactly as Parker’s hypothesis predicted. Recurrence in individuals with their appendix intact occurred in 11% of cases. Recurrence in individuals without their appendix occurred in 48% of cases.

In other words, the appendix performs important immune-related functions. Thus, the appendix is not there to occasionally explode. With the appendix increasingly considered to be an important organ that you wouldn’t want to lose, researchers have also found that antibiotics can cure many cases of appendicitis (see Eriksson et al., 2006  ).

Look, everyone has to decide whether they want to believe in religion or whether they want to believe in science. I understand that some people want to assume a religion of naturalism, and then try to fit reality into that pre-supposed dogma. But I don’t think that’s the right way to develop an accurate view of reality. We should follow the scientific evidence wherever it leads, and we should seek the truth – no holds barred.

Positive arguments for Christian theism