Mysterious Microbes Astonish Evolutionists

Evolutionary scientists like to talk as if they understand everything about life on Earth. We know all life on earth evolved from single-celled microbes, and that each type of animal evolved from a common ancestor too. We understand DNA and what genetic similarities and differences mean. What few things we don’t understand, we soon will. Evolution will explain it to us. Unfortunately, pesky little problems keep popping up to throw the proverbial monkeywrench into the works.

Take the bacteria found at the bottom of Lake Huron near Thunder Bay, on the northeast coast of Michigan. While studying underwater sinkholes, scientists found a type of bacterium most similar to the salt-loving sorts that live near hydrothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and deep under ice-covered Antarctic lakes—except these bacteria live just 70 feet down in a freshwater lake. The discovery has surprised everyone:

“We’re seeing organisms and biochemical processes we’re not supposed to be seeing in the Great Lakes,” said Bopaiah Biddanda, an aquatic microbial ecologist at the Annis Water Resources Institute at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

“It’s strange that salt-savoring bacteria from deep in the ocean would be in the lake,” said Eugene Braig, assistant director of the Ohio Sea Grant program.

Quotes from: Mayhood, Kevin. “A Hole in Huron: Newly Discovered Sinkholes Sustain Unusual Bacteria at the Bottom of the Great Lake.” The Columbus Dispatch, 10 March 2009.

Contrary to popular myth, humans have not explored every inch of this planet. Consider a place as popular as the Grand Canyon. A recent documentary on the National Geographic Channel followed an expedition through the canyon. When the expedition’s boat broke down, the team’s botanists explored areas along the banks of the Colorado River. There they found plant species no one had seen before, because no one had bothered to look, in spite of the Grand Canyon’s popularity as a tourist destination.

We don’t know how many bacteria and plants (or animals for that matter) live on our planet, or where they might turn up. Still, you might say, we do know how many people are in the world. Think again. As a 2007 article made clear, we still don’t know how many people live in the world’s backcountry.

The article, in the UK newspaper The Guardian, explained how anthropologists remain largely in the dark about how many isolated tribes live the remote areas of the world—and how many individuals survive in the tribes they do know about. Recent reports of encounters with isolated tribes in Peru have caused anthropologists to take a harder look at how many tribes may live deep in the remotest parts of South America. Just three decades ago, anthropologists thought a dozen tribes lived in isolation; now they think 107 exist in the jungles. How many people make up each tribe? Nobody knows that either. Similar problems have arisen in other parts of the world, where scientists struggle to estimate the number of unknown or little-known tribes living in the woods.

From bacteria to plants to people, life on this planet continues to elude our understanding and surprise us. Only arrogance causes us to think we know everything about not only the life that currently exists on this planet, but also the life thatI once existed— and how it came to be.

Learn more about the troubles with evolution in my new book The Evolution Conspiracy, to be published in September 2009 and available on Amazon.com for pre-ordering now!

References

“Grand Canyon.” National Geographic Channel, 2009.

Janega, James. “Great Lakes Sinkholes a Window to Ancient Life.” Chicago Tribune online, 27 April 2009.

Vidal, John. “‘We said to them, ‘Come closer’ but they said to us, ‘Go further back’: Increasing number of isolated groups being found in world’s last wildernesses.” The Guardian online, 6 October 2007.

The Evolution Conspiracy is “An Educated Alternative Argument”

“Evolution is an issue that causes everyone to jump on their soapbox. Some people believe that it is totally true and anyone else is crazy. Others believe that God created the world and anyone who says otherwise is a heretic. The rest of us straddle the fence, unable to decide and not wanting to offend the two militant parties.

Lisa Shiel is willing to question the scientists. She believes that evolution is not the well proven fact scientists insist it is. In reality, evolution doesn’t even rate the title of theory. Scientists treat the public as if they are too ignorant to understand the arguments and don’t rate the effort to impart the truth. Shiel says anyone can understand the arguments, but they are not sound enough to be convincing.”
—Emily Decobert, Book Pleasures

Read the rest of this review on the Book Pleasures website:

http://www.bookpleasures.com/websitepublisher/articles/784/1/The-Evolution-Conspiracy–Vol-1-Reviewed-By-Emily-Decobert-Of-Bookpleasurescom/Page1.html

Did Darwin Create Bigfoot?

According to a June 16 press release, when Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859 he triggered a monster metamorphosis. His theory of natural selection turned werewolves into Bigfoot. So says Brian Regal, an assistant professor of the history of science at Kean University. The press release states that Regal uses “period artwork” to show how the werewolf evolved into Bigfoot in response to Darwin’s theory.

Based on the information in the press release, factual errors riddle Regal’s hypothesis. Let’s explore those errors.

First, Regal assumes belief in werewolves stopped shortly after the publication of Darwin’s book. If he had browsed the Internet or watched Monster Quest, he’d know people still claim to see werewolves and, hence, that belief in werewolves endures—whether you believe they are real creatures are not. Any hypothesis that claims Darwin’s ideas did away with werewolves is erroneous.

Second, Regal apparently assumes the idea of Bigfoot did not exist before 1859. True, the term Bigfoot didn’t yet exist, but the idea did.  Recorded sightings of Bigfoot date back to the early 1800s, while legends date back thousands of years. Hairy wildmen frequented medieval artwork. Hairy, bipedal creatures pop up in ancient mythology too—for instance, the character Enkidu in The Epic of Gilgamesh. And these are just two examples from the rich history of hairy humanoid lore.

Did Darwin create Bigfoot? The evidence refutes this notion.

A better question is why do academics spend so much time inventing silly explanations for the Bigfoot phenomenon. That remains a mystery for the ages.

Read more about the ancient origins of Bigfoot in my book Backyard Bigfoot, available now.

When Science Meets Fortune and Glory

Ida [the newest primate fossil]  is not the missing link. She is a product of hype, promoted by the History Channel and the BBC as something other than what the evidence suggests. Politics and, as Indiana Jones would put it, fortune and glory play a bigger role in the naming of new species than science does.

Read my full comment here:

http://www.examiner.com/x-12760-Phoenix-Protestant-Examiner~y2009m6d19-Darwin-where-is-your-missing-link?#comments

Read more about the politics of evolutionary science in my new book The Evolution Consiracy, to be published in September 2009 and available for pre-order now!

What Is Human?

If you browse the news websites, you’ll read articles about recent discoveries in anthropology. Often these articles talk about when “humans” emerged on the planet. But the term “human” gets tossed about in a rather cavalier manner, sometimes referring to Homo sapiens and sometimes not. You see, since science presumes humans evolved from ancient hominids, those ancient hominid species can be referred to as “human” too. Yet most of us humans think of the term as meaning Homo sapiens.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines a human as “a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens)” or more broadly as a “hominid.” Hominids include both us and presumed ancestors of humans. The definitions lead us in a circle, and for good reason. Paleoanthropology centers around the assumption that modern humans descended from ancient, apelike creatures which became slightly less apelike with each new species until—voila!—our species popped up looking only superficially like the ancient hominids.

Princeton’s WordNet describes a human as any species belonging to the family Hominidae, whether living or extinct, which exhibits “superior intelligence, articulate speech, and erect carriage.” Which extinct species could speak? Little evidence exists to tell us, though recent DNA studies supposedly show Neanderthals possessed the gene for speech.

We can’t define a species accurately. We also can’t seem to agree on a definition for “human.” Scientists can define plenty of terms–like atom and cell–yet defining the terms that serve as keystones for evolutionary theories stymies them.

If we can’t define human, how do we know then that creatures like Bigfoot don’t qualify as some sort of human? They have more in common with us than the great apes. When will someone think to compare “unknown primate DNA” attributed to Bigfoot with Neanderthal DNA? Most likely never. If the two samples matched, then all those Giganto theory proponents might have to alter their perceptions of the purported ape in our midst.

Read more about evolution’s unanswered questions in my new book The Evolution Conspiracy, to be published in September 2009.