Rebuttal of "Evolution - is it true"

There are a few problems in one of your essays - Essay - part 3, Evolution - is it true ? Is it fact or faith?

Firstly, your list

"For evolution to be true there must be a continuous unbroken pathway from the very beginning until now. Origin of scientific laws"

Not quite sure what is meant by this unless it is the true, but trivial and circular, point that without scientific laws there would be no regularity from which we can derive scientific laws.

"Origin of Universe - big bang. Origin of Solar system. Origin of Earth."

Untrue. These features have no effect whatsoever on evolutionary theory, but are within the confines of cosmology, astronomy and physics.

"Origin of single celled creatures - chemical evolution (abiogenesis or biopoesis)."

Untrue. Abiogenesis, while implied by evolutionary theory, is not required by it.

As a general point, evolutionary theory is concerned with the development of living organisms for an initial primitive living organism. It assumes the origins of both the universe and life itself, and can be true if the universe and life can into being as described by modern science or if created ab initio by God (or indeed little green men from another plant)

"Origin of plants and multi-cellular organisms. Origin of fish, animals, insects and reptiles. Origin of man."

Clearly, only the last three fall under the provenance of evolutionary theory.

"The evidence from molecular biology.

In some protein molecules there can be differences in the amino acid sequence for different species without changing the proteins function. Two examples being haemoglobin and cytochrome C. The assumed evolutionary sequence goes: cyclostome » fish » amphibian » reptile » mammal however looking at the percentage difference in the haemoglobin of lamprey (cyclostome) and other species we get: Carp 75; Frog 81; Chicken 78; Kangaroo 76; and human 73. We would expect that the carp would be much closer to the cyclostome, followed by the frog, but at a molecular level there is no hint that fish and amphibians evolved from cyclostome.?

This claim, or a variant of it is commonly made by creationists.

What does this type of sequencing do and predict under evolutionary theory?

Since many mutations do not affect function ? cytochrome c is a classic example. It is essential to all forms of life. Varieties of yeasts without it have been created and function quite happily with human cytochrome c, despite a xx% difference in the sequencing. Since mutation rate is essentially constant for any protein, the difference between sequences will reflect the length of time that has passed since a pair of organisms last common ancestor.

Your claim is that the essentially similar differences between the Lamprey and Carp, Frog; Chicken; Kangaroo; and Human is a problem because Carp would be expected to be closer is wrong because the order Craniata contains two living groups (plus an number of extinct groups): Hyperoartia (jawless fish) and Gnathostomata (all other Vertebrata with jaws) who share a last common ancestor. Please note that both groups have been evolving since the last common ancestor, and that the Gnathostomata are not decendants of Lampreys, but a sister species. See here: http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Hyperoartia&contgroup=Vertebrata on the Tree of Life site for more details.

Lampreys are in Hyperoartia. All the other examples are in Gnathostomata. So, a clade diagram would show:

(Lamprey, (Carp, Frog, Chicken, Kangaroo, Human))

with the bracketed inner group indicating identical degrees of relatedness. This clade relation was created on anatomical grounds, independently of the molecular evidence. So, the relations quoted, far from being in conflict with evoltion, is exactly what an evolutionary model would predict.

Charles Darwin on the eye, from Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, Chapter ?Difficulties?:

""To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

Most creationists only quote this bit ? a rhetorical device: outlining the problem before proceeding to the solution.

"He goes on to try explain how an eye could evolve by the process of natural selection

"Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound." ?

Darwin himself is sceptical as to how evolution could produce something as complicated as the human eye."

Quoting from the latter part shows that you have read Darwin?s "Origin of the species". In that case I have no hesitation in calling this section a direct lie. It is impossible to read this without gaining the clear impression that Darwin considered the "problem of the eye" solved, and no difficulty for his theory. It is clear that it is giving a solution, not outlining a problem. It is worth noting that Darwin goes on for several lengthy paragraphs detailing his solution and expanding his argument.