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EVOLUTIONIST CLAIMS &THE FACTS The Myth of Homology Structural similarities between different species are called "homology" in biology. Evolutionists try to present those similarities as evidence for evolution. Darwin thought that creatures with similar (homologous) organs had an evolutionary relationship with each other, and that these organs must have been inherited from a common ancestor. According to his assumption, both pigeons and eagles had wings; therefore, pigeons, eagles, and indeed all other birds with wings were supposed to have evolved from a common ancestor. Homology is a deceptive argument, advanced on the basis of no other evidence than an apparent physical resemblance. This argument has never once been verified by a single concrete discovery in all the years since Darwin's day. Nowhere in the world has anyone come up with a fossil remain of the imaginary common ancestor of creatures with homologous structures. Furthermore, the following issues make it clear that homology provides no evidence that evolution ever occurred. 1. One finds homologous organs in creatures belonging to completely different phyla, among which evolutionists have not been able to establish any sort of evolutionary relationship; 2. The genetic codes of some creatures that have homologous organs are completely different from one another. 3. The embryological development of homologous organs in different creatures is completely different. Let us now examine each of these points one by one.
There are a number of homologous organs shared by different groups among which evolutionists cannot establish any kind of evolutionary relationship. Wings are one example. In addition to birds, we find wings on bats, which are mammals, and on insects and even on some dinosaurs, which are extinct reptiles. Not even evolutionists posit an evolutionary relationship or kinship among those four different groups of animals. Another striking example is the amazing resemblance and the structural similarity observed in the eyes of different creatures. For example, the octopus and man are two extremely different species, between which no evolutionary relationship is likely even to be proposed, yet the eyes of both are very much alike in terms of their structure and function. Not even evolutionists try to account for the similarity of the eyes of the octopus and man by positing a common ancestor. These and numerous other examples show that the evolutionist claim based on resemblances is completely unscientific. In fact, homologous organs should be a great embarrassment for evolutionists. The famous evolutionist Frank Salisbury's confessions revealed in his statements on how extremely different creatures came to have very similar eyes underscores the impasse of homology:
There are many creatures which, despite their very similar physical make-up, do not permit any claims of evolutionary relationship. Two large mammal categories, placentals and marsupials, are an example. Evolutionists consider this distinction to have come about when mammals first appeared, and that each group lived its own evolutionary history totally independent of the other. But it is interesting that there are "pairs" in placentals and marsupials which are nearly the same. The American biologists Dean Kenyon and Percival Davis make the following comment: According to Darwinian theory, the pattern for wolves, cats, squirrels, ground hogs, anteaters, moles, and mice each evolved twice: once in placental mammals and again, totally independently, in marsupials. This amounts to the astonishing claim that a random, undirected process of mutation and natural selection somehow hit upon identical features several times in widely separated organisms.165 Extraordinary resemblances and similar organs like these, which evolutionist biologists cannot accept as examples of "homology," show that there is no evidence for the thesis of evolution from a common ancestor. What, in that case, could be the scientific explanation of the similar structures in living things? The answer to that question was given before Darwin's theory of evolution came to dominate the world of science. Scientists like Carl Linnaeus, who first systematized living things according to their similar structures, and Richard Owen regarded these structures as examples of “common” creation. In other words, similar organs (or, nowadays, similar genes) are held to be so because they were created to serve a particular purpose, not because they evolved by chance from a common ancestor. Modern scientific findings show that the claim of a "common ancestor" made with regard to similar organs is incorrect, and that the only possible explanation is common creation, confirming once again that living things were created by God.
In order for the evolutionist claim concerning "homology" to be taken seriously, similar (homologous) organs in different creatures should also be coded with similar (homologous) DNA codes. However, they are not. Similar organs are usually governed by very different genetic (DNA) codes. Furthermore, similar genetic codes in the DNA of different creatures are often associated with completely different organs. Michael Denton, an Australian professor of biochemistry, describes in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis the genetic impasse of the evolutionist interpretation of homology: "Homologous structures are often specified by non-homologous genetic systems and the concept of homology can seldom be extended back into embryology." 166 A famous example on this subject is the "five digit skeletal structure" of quadrupeds which is quoted in almost all evolutionist textbooks. Quadrupeds, i.e., land-living vertebrates, have five digits on their fore- and hindlimbs. Although these do not always have the appearance of five digits as we know them, they are all counted as pentadactyl due to their bone structure. The fore- and hindlimbs of a frog, a lizard, a squirrel or a monkey all have this same structure. Even the bone structures of birds and bats conform to this basic design. Evolutionists claim that all living things descended from a common ancestor, and they have long cited pentadactyl limb as evidence of this. This claim was mentioned in almost all basic sources on biology throughout the 20th century as very strong evidence for evolution. Genetic findings in the 1980s refuted this evolutionist claim. It was realised that the pentadactyl limb patterns of different creatures are controlled by totally different genes. Evolutionist biologist William Fix describes the collapse of the evolutionist thesis regarding pentadactylism in this way: The older text-books on evolution make much of the idea of homology, pointing out the obvious resemblances between the skeletons of the limbs of different animals. Thus the "pentadactyl" limb pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and the flipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their common origin. Now if these various structures were transmitted by the same gene couples, varied from time to time by mutations and acted upon by environmental selection, the theory would make good sense. Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down...167 Another point is that in order for the evolutionary thesis regarding homology to be taken seriously, the periods of similar structures' embryological development-in other words, the stages of development in the egg or the mother's womb-would need to be parallel, whereas, in reality, these embryological periods for similar structures are quite different from each other in every living creature. To conclude, we can say that genetic and embryological research has proven that the concept of homology defined by Darwin as "evidence of the evolution of living things from a common ancestor" can by no means be regarded as any evidence at all. In this respect, science can be said to have proven the Darwinist thesis false time and time again.
Evolutionists' advancement of homology as evidence for evolution is invalid not only at the morphological level, but also at the molecular level. Evolutionists say that the DNA codes, or the corresponding protein structures, of different living species are similar, and that this similarity is evidence that these living species have evolved from common ancestors, or else from each other.
Concerning these findings in the field of molecular biology, Dr. Michael Denton comments:
The “Tree of Life” Is Collapsing In the 1990s, research into the genetic codes of living things worsened the quandary faced by the theory of evolution in this regard. In these experiments, instead of the earlier comparisons that were limited to protein sequences, "ribosomal RNA" (rRNA) sequences were compared. From these findings, evolutionist scientists sought to establish an "evolutionary tree". However, they were disappointed by the results. According to a 1999 article by French biologists Hervé Philippe and Patrick Forterre, "with more and more sequences available, it turned out that most protein pyhlogenies contradict each other as well as the RNA tree." 171 Besides rRNA comparisons, the DNA codes in the genes of living things were also compared, but the results have been the opposite of the "tree of life" presupposed by evolution. Molecular biologists James A. Lake, Ravi Jain and Maria C. Rivera elaborated on this in an article in 1999:
Neither the comparisons that have been made of proteins, nor those of rRNAs or of genes, confirm the premises of the theory of evolution. Carl Woese, a highly reputed biologist from the University of Illinois admits that the concept of "phylogeny" has lost its meaning in the face of molecular findings in this way: No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various (groups) to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves." 173 The fact that results of molecular comparisons are not in favour of, but rather opposed to, the theory of evolution is also admitted in an article called "Is it Time to Uproot the Tree of Life?" published in Science in 1999. This article by Elizabeth Pennisi states that the genetic analyses and comparisons carried out by Darwinist biologists in order to shed light on the "tree of life" actually yielded directly opposite results, and goes on to say that "new data are muddying the evolutionary picture": A year ago, biologists looking over newly sequenced genomes from more than a dozen microorganisms thought these data might support the accepted plot lines of life's early history. But what they saw confounded them. Comparisons of the genomes then available not only didn't clarify the picture of how life's major groupings evolved, they confused it. And now, with an additional eight microbial sequences in hand, the situation has gotten even more confusing.... Many evolutionary biologists had thought they could roughly see the beginnings of life's three kingdoms... When full DNA sequences opened the way to comparing other kinds of genes, researchers expected that they would simply add detail to this tree. But "nothing could be further from the truth," says Claire Fraser, head of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville, Maryland. Instead, the comparisons have yielded many versions of the tree of life that differ from the rRNA tree and conflict with each other as well...174 In short, as molecular biology advances, the homology concept loses more ground. Comparisons that have been made of proteins, rRNAs and genes reveal that creatures which are allegedly close relatives according to the theory of evolution are actually totally distinct from each other. A 1996 study using 88 protein sequences grouped rabbits with primates instead of rodents; a 1998 analysis of 13 genes in 19 animal species placed sea urchins among the chordates; and another 1998 study based on 12 proteins put cows closer to whales than to horses. Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells sums up the situation in 2000 in this way:
“Molecular phylogeny” is facing a crisis—which means that the theory of evolution also faces a crisis. (Phylogeny refers to the so-called “family relationships” among various living things and is the hypothetical basis of the theory of evolution.) Once again, science undermines the thesis that living things evolved from one another, demonstrating that all living groups were created separately.
What used to be called the "recapitulation theory" has long been eliminated from scientific literature, but it is still being presented as a scientific reality by some evolutionist publications. The term "recapitulation" is a condensation of the dictum "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", put forward by the evolutionist biologist Ernst Haeckel at the end of the 19th century. This theory of Haeckel's postulates that living embryos re-experience the evolutionary process that their pseudo-ancestors underwent. He theorised that during its development in its mother's womb, the human embryo first displayed the characteristics of a fish, and then those of a reptile, and finally those of a human.
It has since been proven that this theory is completely bogus. It is now known that the "gills" that supposedly appear in the early stages of the human embryo are in fact the initial phases of the middle-ear canal, parathyroid, and thymus. The part of the embryo that was likened to the "egg yolk pouch" turns out to be a pouch that produces blood for the infant. The part that had been identified as a "tail" by Haeckel and his followers is in fact the backbone, which resembles a tail only because it takes shape before the legs do. These are universally acknowledged facts in the scientific world, and are accepted even by evolutionists themselves. George Gaylord Simpson, one of the founders of neo-Darwinism, writes: Haeckel misstated the evolutionary principle involved. It is now firmly established that ontogeny does not repeat phylogeny.176 In an article published in American Scientist, we read:
Another interesting aspect of "recapitulation" was Ernst Haeckel himself, a faker who falsified his drawings in order to support the theory he advanced. Haeckel's forgeries purported to show that fish and human embryos resembled one another. When he was caught out, the only defence he offered was that other evolutionists had committed similar offences:
There are indeed "hundreds of fellow culprits, among them many of the most trusted observers and most esteemed biologists" whose studies are full of prejudiced conclusions, distortions, and even forgeries. This is because they have all conditioned themselves to champion evolutionary theory although there is not a shred of scientific evidence supporting it.
164
Frank Salisbury, "Doubts About the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution",
American Biology Teacher, September 1971, p. 338. |
