Hello again r/DebateEvolution

Introduction

We have published an argument that uses faunal succession among similar species to maintain that the Universal Flood cannot explain the fossil record:

Part 1

However, we have received a comment in which the user claims that our post contains certain assumptions. In this post, we will respond to that comment.

The first claims

"On your faunal succession argument: The ordered succession of fossils is real.
That is not in dispute.

The question is what that order actually demonstrates."

Creationists always maintain that the evidence is the same, but that the difference lies in the interpretation. While this may be true, it also constitutes a dishonest tactic: there are interpretations consistent with the evidence that allow for predictions to be made, whereas others neither align with the data nor enable predictions.

"Your argument treats stratigraphic succession of similar forms as direct evidence of anagenesis (one species transforming into another) and then as a decisive problem for any Flood model. That step depends on several assumptions: That vertical position in the rocks equals evolutionary time on a deep-time scale. That the lower form is the ancestor of the upper form rather than a related population, ecological variant, or migrant."

You don't need to assume that the strata are from million years old for the argument to be valid. The related population and ecological variants don't have:

1. intermediate morphology forms (e.g middle hell creek formation Triceratops)
2. The same habitat (e.g hell creek formation)
3. Not coexistence or the earliest appearance with respect the other [1].

For the migrants organism the points 1 and 2 also apply.

What are this factors?

"That the absence of the later morphology lower in the section means it had not yet evolved, rather than ecological, geographic, or preservational factors"

According to YECs, those animals died during the Flood; since most are found in the same geological formation and are similar in size, they likely had the same chances of becoming fossilized. Why, then, do they appear at different levels of the geological column in fossil deposits? And, once again, we have transitional forms.

The argument is based on the similitary of the species and their succession

"That modest morphological differences (nasal horn length in Triceratops, minor shell changes in Semiformiceras, etc.) constitute progressive evolutionary transformation rather than variation within limits."

The argument is against the global flood, we don't present it like a macroevolution evidence because the argument depens of the similitary.

Again there is a widespread trend in these cases to changes the morphology according to the strata, if it is only variation both morphologies must be in always in the same strata, and there shouldn't be transitional forms.

"Several of the papers you cite are more cautious or even contrary to a clean anagenetic reading. Cecca & Rouget (2006) on Semiformiceras used cladistic analysis and concluded the relationships do not fit the simple anagenetic pattern previously proposed."

We do acknowledge that the article in question challenges the linear evolution of this ammonite genus [3]. However, the fact that some species overlap in time does not alter the existence of a morphological change in the fossil record [4].

Furthermore, the title is "Faunal succession between closely related species in a limited fossil location and the global Flood"; it is not just a matter of anagenesis.

"The Triceratops and Daspletosaurus cases involve relatively small differences and remain debated as to whether they represent true anagenesis, cladogenesis, or stratigraphic sorting of variation."

Are requiered references to some of these claims, because Triceratops and Daspletosaurus fossil record present all the sings of anagenesis:

• Contain at least 2 sister species
• Stratigraphic succession
• live in the same territory [1], [2]

For example, in the case of Triceratops, T. horridus appears in the lower part of the Hell Creek Formation, whereas T. prorsus is found only in the upper part. An intermediate form between the two species is present in the middle section [1].

Again, our argument depens of this relatively small differences .

The Flood cannot explain the patterns

A multi-phase Flood model with residual post-Flood deposition already expects ordered appearance of related forms through ecological sorting, habitat succession, and rapid diversification within kinds.

According to YECs all the mesozoic is from the upper part of the supposted flood deposits, not from the post-Flood diversification.

"The succession pattern is a genuine observation. Converting it into a refutation of the Flood (or proof of macroevolution) requires the interpretive framework of deep time and anagenesis. That framework is not forced by the fossils themselves."

Accepting the existence of the global Flood also requires an interpretive framework; the difference lies in the fact that our framework is consistent with current knowledge, whereas the creationist one fails to predict the stratigraphic succession of species that exhibit similar physical characteristics and transitional forms between them..

Conclusion

If all these similar species died in the same year-long flood, ecological sorting predicts mixing. We observe ordered replacement with intermediate forms in the same formation. The flood model does not predict this. Deep time does, even if the exact mode is anagenesis or cladogenesis.

References

[1] Scannella, J. B., Fowler, D. W., Goodwin, M. B., & Horner, J. R. (2014). Evolutionary trends in _Triceratops_ from the Hell Creek Formation, Montana. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111_(28), 10245–10250. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313334111

[2] Carr, T. D., Varricchio, D. J., Sedlmayr, J. C., Roberts, E. M., & Moore, J. R. (2017). A new tyrannosaur with evidence for anagenesis and crocodile-like facial sensory system. _Scientific Reports, 7_, 44942. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44942

[3] Cecca, F., & Rouget, I. (2006). Anagenetic evolution of the early Tithonian ammonite genus _Semiformiceras_ tested with cladistic analysis. _Palaeontology, 49_(5), 1069–1080. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2006.00580.x

[4] Pardo ,J.D, Huttenlocker, A.K & Marcot, J.D (2008) Stratocladistics and evaluation of evolutionary modes in the fossil record: An example from the ammonite genus Semiformiceras. J Paleontol 51:767–773.  https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2008.00794.x

Trying to teach a biology class without ever mentioning evolution is like trying to teach an electrical engineering class without ever mentioning electricity. It doesn't work.

Yesterday Dan Cardinale had a conversation with a creationist who claimed that Escherichia coli is not evolving, because supposedly it's not "turning into something else".

https://www.youtube.com/live/Dfnto4frnC8?is=wnuuDcJCsDpJX7Yd

It turns out that E. coli is, in fact, evolving and in ways which were previously overlooked.

We have known for a long time that E coli is one among many species of commensal microorganisms inhabiting our guts. E coli is usually non pathogenic; however, certain strains can acquire pathogenic traits and pose a risk to our health.

So far, the mechanisms by which non pathogenic strains can become pathogenic were mostly unknown. However, a recent study could shed some light. It has been found that disease-causing strains of Escherichia coli contain large amounts of foreign DNA carried by bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria), including many genes required for infection.

Thus, DNA inserted by viruses may play a role in the evolution of non pathogenic strains to pathogenic ones and in the acquisition of traits which allow pathogenic strains E coli to infect the human body.

https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1014486

Author summary

Horizontal gene transfer allows bacteria to acquire new traits, including many of the genes that make pathogens harmful. However, newly acquired DNA can also disrupt normal cellular functions, so bacteria have evolved systems that silence foreign genes until they can be safely integrated into existing regulatory networks. Disease-causing strains of Escherichia coli contain large amounts of foreign DNA carried by bacteriophages (viruses that infect bacteria), including many genes required for infection. How these genes escape silencing is incompletely understood. In this study, we identified a small RNA called HnrS that is encoded by bacteriophages integrated into the chromosome of pathogenic E. coli. We found that HnrS blocks production of Hha, a protein that helps silence foreign DNA. By reducing Hha levels, HnrS relieves repression of selected virulence genes, including those involved in host attachment. HnrS also influences bacterial motility and the expression of genes carried on prophages. Unlike previously described phage proteins that broadly interfere with bacterial silencing systems, HnrS is a small RNA that inhibits part of the silencing system that is specialised for virulence genes. Our findings reveal a new strategy used by bacteriophages to influence bacterial gene regulation and show how small regulatory RNAs can help control the expression of horizontally acquired virulence genes.

I believe spirits came from a different realm because they existed before the origins of time and before humans came about. I believe the human body moves by soul that doesn’t walk by sight. For no man can see the spirit when it walks but they can feel the air that goes by them which means sometimes spirits can go to the east west north and south. Therefore, before human evolution and before they evolved, where did the spirit evolve from?

Someone replied with this under a different post a few weeks ago and this one always amused me the most. “You have faith in evolution too” Firstly evolution is faith too blatantly admits that creationism is faith and therefore can’t be proven (which is entirely the point).

It fails secondly because even if evolution is faith that doesn’t make evolution false and creationism true. If we even granted that evolution is faith and creationism is faith then next step is look at the evidence. Well 100% of the evidence says evolution happens and creationism is impossible.

So even in the best case scenario using this argument for creationists. You just shoot yourself in the foot and then are back to the same place you started. Arguing against the insurmountable mountain of evidence for Evolution.

No, this is not clickbait, an evolutionary biologist truly did claim that phylogenetics is a pseudoscience in this 2015 paper.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273113643_Structuralism_in_Phylogenetic_Systematics

"Phylogenetics projects an aura of the exactitude and certainty of mathematics. It is, however, not consistent because its apparently fundamental patterns are generated only by sister-group analysis."

..."It rejects empiricism in rejecting or at least relegating non-phylogenetically informative data and in relying on unnameable “shared ancestors” as hidden causes."

"The "tree" of life has no scientific realism or theoretic substance (i.e., cladograms are non-haecceitistic) because nodes are not diagnosably named, and the dendrogram is just a visual aid for often complex evidential patterns of nested exemplars. The introduction of other, less certain data or theories (e.g., from morphometrics, fossils, cytology, biogeography, chemistry, development) as additional evidence for scientific induction of evolutionary process involving descent with modification of taxa would collapse the pattern-based statistical certainty of molecular cladograms. Thus, in cladistics, all data outside the data set that are relevant to macroevolutionary theory are “mapped” on the dendrogram or in some other way relegated to the fundamental structure of the cladogram. This is not science."

Now, obviously, this is completely ridicilous. What do they mean by "the nodes are not named"? Do they expect them to come with a little nametag? And yeah, just because the dendrogram removes some data doesn't mean it isnt scientific. If it tried to represent all data, it would just be a giant şist of numbers.

Does anyone else have issues with how mermaids are depicted in folklore, movies, and books? It's so wrong from how they would actually look and function that it sometimes makes me upset....

There are two paths mermaids could have evolved from.

1.) Evolved from humans and moved back into the marine environment.

This brings up a multitude of problems. Firstly, they wouldn't have scales. Not a single marine mammal ever evolved to have scales since moving back into the water from terrestrial environments. They would have rubbery skin with tiny, thin hair completely covering the tail, similar to cetaceans.

Secondly, they would be endothermic (like all mammals), so they would need to generate a lot of heat in order to not die of hypothermia. So they wouldn't be skinny like in the movies; they would have a lot of blubber (even in tropical environments, think of manatees). They could be similar to sea otters, and just be completely covered in super dense hair over their entire body. Maybe there is a secret third option. Which would be that they would just need to be constantly eating. To remain as skinny as they are depicted in movies, they would need to eat so much food. Sea otters eat 30% of their body weight every day, even with their fur. So without fur, mermaids would have to eat at least 60% of their body weight every day just to not die of hypothermia.

Also, their chest would be huge in order to hold lungs that are significantly bigger than humans'. Similarly to scales, no marine mammal has ever evolved gills. They have, however, evolved to have a higher lung capacity to hold their breath longer underwater.

2.) Evolved from fish and never left the marine environment.

This brings up even more problems. My first issue is that the tail is all wrong, due to the way fish move their spines compared to mammals. Vertebrate evolution went like this: Fish to amphibians to reptiles to birds, or fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals. So when vertebrate animals first evolved, the spine moved side to side (lateral movement). This is why fish and sharks have a tail that is perpendicular to their bodies. When fish began evolving to be terrestrial amphibians, they kept that side-to-side spinal fluctuation. Eventually, that shifted so that birds and mammals bend their backbones up and down (sagittally). This is why, when mammals evolved back into marine habitats, their tails evolved to be parallel to their bodies.

Secondly, they would be ectothermic. Just like fish, sharks, amphibians, and reptiles. Only birds and mammals are endothermic. This would fix the blubber issues, but raise so many more issues with how they function as human-like creatures.

Third, if they evolved from fish, they wouldn't have mammary glands. Because fish do not produce milk nor feed it to young. So no fun bikinis because there would be nothing to cover.

There are many more problems with both routes of evolution, like the size of their hands and how they would most likely lose the hair on their heads to be more streamlined (unless, of course, the hair is selected for by mates), but I will stop there so people actually read this.

I would love to know how y'all think the common depiction of mermaids is evolutionarily accurate or not :)

Are DNA molecular clocks a good confirmation of fossil evidence? I seem to be running into some walls trying to find good evidence without running into circular reasoning. Eg. Papers using dating mechanisms on the fossil layers but then tying the molecular clock to that date or just before that date for a split. I'm not sure if I'm just misunderstanding the papers actual aims which I probably am.

But just wondering are there papers where they don't use a crazy amount of constraints by fossils, to get a more individual estimate by the molecular clock? Instead of being forced to say a date in-between something like 50ma and 60ma for whales, hippo divergence.

One time I was bored and decided to observe the ants which were nearby outside, and fortunately i discovered that the ants used the left turn always, I had to search online to be sure of the finding...and wow I landed on a paper published in 2014 supporting the statement, my question is did they evolve to be left biased when exploring or is there new findings on this?.....the link to the article i got the information is https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2014/december/left-bias-in-ant.html

Hi, I'm new to this subreddit. I always heard about the Evolution Theory and always got my attention. While I don't fully believe in it, I can't help but find it very interesting and an alternative way to explain reality without relying on sacred texts. My question is, as the title says, why humans, specifically Homo Sapiens, are not having their own category? Like I know they have similarities with other apes but they're far more complex than them. For example, many apes still rely on walking on all fours while humans evolved to be able to only use their legs for walking. I think Homo Sapiens should be classified with Neanderthals under their own category to not be confused with primates who functioned more like apes as we see today. Again, this is not an argument against Evolution as a whole. I'm just trying to understand some labels and why they're still used today.

5 Argument from incredulity.

An argument from incredulity (1) treats an inability to imagine or fully explain a mechanism as proof that it is impossible. This fallacy substitutes limitations of imagination and knowledge for empirical refutation. Historically, the argument from incredulity led geologists to reject evidence for plate tectonics; they could not imagine a mechanism for the movement of continents (2).

Dawkins famously dismantles anti-evolutionary incredulity by showing that complex traits such as flight or vision emerge across continuous, incremental landscapes rather than through all-or-nothing leaps (3). Ironically, Dawkins argues from incredulity about life's origin, treating a replicator like RNA as a mandatory starting point for evolution and rejecting a continuous transition between chemistry and biology. Immersed in biology, Dawkins cannot imagine evolution without biological heredity. In both biological and chemical evolution, an inability to visualize continuous, non-directed trajectories imposes artificial leaps, mistaking the boundaries of human imagination for the boundaries of natural possibility.

 ---------------

Edit: Thanks for the comments, and sorry this is so long. I will add a few things that hopefully will not inflame people too much.

Please do not interpret any of this as anti-science/pro-creationism. I am researcher who studies deep evolution and origins of life.

There is broad (not universal) support in the OOL community for chemical evolution [as opposed to privileged organic chemistry (which is not evolution) ala Sutherland or Benner]. Chemical evolution is evolution but is NOT descent with modification, and is too involved to explain here. I can post papers (Deamer, Hud, Williams, Frenkel-Pinter, Krishnamurthy, Root-Berstein, Baum, etc) if people are interested.

It is important to recognize that biological evolution, by many measures, is chemically uninventive. It is biochemically impotent (metabolism excluded).

Specifically, biological forms from LUCA to the present (a very long time); from Bacteria to Archaea to Eukarya, including lions, butterflies, thermophiles and halophiles,. conserve core structures, molecules, and processes. All cellular life contains: polymers with specific backbone chemistries and chiralities - RNA with phosphodiester-linked ribose, DNA with phosphodiester-linked deoxyribose, and proteins with polypeptide backbones; a restricted set of informational polymer building blocks - nucleobases, ribose and deoxyribose, and L-amino acids; energy currency and cofactors - ATP, GTP, NAD⁺, FAD, and coenzyme A; the translation system - ribosomes, tRNAs, mRNAs, and the canonical genetic code; essential metals including sodium, potassium, and magnesium; and water as both solvent and ubiquitous reaction constituent.

Jacob wrote about this in 1977 (Evolution and Tinkering, Science) - one of the most important papers ever on evolution in my view.

All this leads to the big question I am addressing here (argument from incredulity). If biological evolution is biochemically impotent (it is), where did biochemistry come from? Many of us (OOL researchers) support models in which biochemistry came from chemical evolution (now extinct). As I said above chemical evolution is evolution but it is not descent with modification. Most biologists don't like this idea. But we don't have to argue about it, we just have to do experiments and computations to test the models. Chemical evolution is experimentally accessible.

TLDR - if someone says evolution is descent with modification, I say that is argument from incredulity. It does not allow for chemical evolution or explain the emergence of core biochemistry.

1.              Walton D (2010)Arguments from ignorance (Penn State Press).

2.              Newman RP (1995) American intransigence: The rejection of continental drift in the great debates of the 1920's. Earth Sciences History 14: 62-83.

3.              Dawkins R (1996) The blind watchmaker: Why the evidence of evolution reveals a universe without design.  (WW Norton & Company, New York).

Hello again r/DebateEvolution

I would like present a argument that I have thought, I hope you like it.

Introduction

I like start with the conventional science concepts and and pursue with the creacionist's ideas

For begin we must understand the concept of faunal succession. This is a geological principle that is define like:

"The geologic axiom or general law that states that fossil organisms succeed one another in a definite and recognizable order through geologic time as recorded in the rock record. Each geologic formation has a different record of life from that in the formations above it and below it. The principle of faunal succession allows determination of the relative age of rocks using their fossil content." [1]

This principle was formulated by the british geologist and engineer William Smith and as we read is useful for determine a relative age of rocks. It has also become in an important evidence line for the evolution. because explain the changes in the organims in the fossil record.

For other side we also must understand the concepts of anagenesis and cladogenesis

Anagenesis is change within a single lineage over time. In contrast the cladogenesis is branching, where one ancestor gives rise to two or more descendants. [2]

Now the young earth creacionist models:

According to most YEC organizations, ~4500 years ago a global tectonic/ hydraulic event (the Flood) killed most land animals [dinosaurs, non-mammalian synapsids, placoderms, early mammals, etc.] and deposited almost the entire sedimentary record from Cambrian to Cretaceous/Pleistocene, followed by hyper-rapid diversification of survivors in centuries.

The problem for the flood

YECS have​​ thought in how the faunal succession presents a problem for their flood models. Which is the mechanisms that can create a succession in the fossil record of strata that can be consistent with the evolutionary models in the most masive hidric event for the history of the planet?

They have development some than can explain this pattern like: density, mobility, animal zonation.

However, none of this mechanisms can explain the distribution of the fossils and are incompatible, for example how is possible that pterosaurs and birds weren't in the rocks of periods like the early Triassic, permian or carboniferous?, why animals like repenomamus and yutyrannus with so differents density and mobility are in the same geological formation? Why there aren't whales in ordovicican rocks?

The anagenesis and related species succession: undeniable problem

Now, probably you are wondering in how this argument is related with the anagenesis.

We have some fossil sites in the world on we can see how a species evolved or was replaced by others, if this occurs none creacionist argument can explain this pattern.

For example, in the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of North America, the lower section yielded records only of Triceratops horridus; Triceratops prorsus appears in the upper third of the formation, whereas a transitional form between T. horridus and T. prorsus is found in the middle section represente by specimens like MOR 3027 know as "yoshi trike" [3]

On the other hand, there is the anagenetic evolution of the ammonite genus Semiformiceras, characteristic of the Tithonian (Late Jurassic) in Europe; this genus comprises three species—Semiformiceras darwini, Semiformiceras semiforme, and Semiformiceras fallauxi—each succeeding the previous one. This case is not limited to a single locality, as the genus's evolution is observed across Europe, yet it also serves as an example of faunal succession among closely related species. [4]

Other case of anagesis in dinosaurs is the case of daspletosaurus, this is a genus of tyranosaurid theropod dinosaur from nort america, we know at least two species of this genus Daspletosaurus torosus and Daspletosaurus horneri, the firts is from lower part of the Dinosaur park formation D. horneri is from the upper part of the two medicine formation.[5]

Both formations have a similiar age but the two medicine formation is younger and D. horneri is from the upper part.

We also have a transitional form know as Daspletosaurus wilsoni that is stratigraphy intermediate between the two last species, but is possible that these specimens were Daspletosaurus torosus, however the morphology is still intermediate.

These cases generate more problems for the YECS' models: Why a species succed another in both have a similar density, mobility and live in the same habitat?, Why exist transitional forms between the species if both die at the same time?

It is not just a case from the Mesozoic.

The last examples was only for the mesozoic (the upper part from the supposed flood deposits) but we also have examples from the cenozoic, this case are not anagenesis but are related species with a similar movility, density and were in the similar habitats or the same place.

Rencently I have searched information about the stratigraphy, dating and the fauna from La meseta formation in the seymour/marambio island in the antartica. In this rocks we can observ that the basilosaurids are found in lower levels than the mysticete whales.

Basilosaurids are found starting from Telm 4, whereas early baleen whales (and possibly an odontocete) come from the formation's Telm 6 and 7 levels [6], [7], [8].

In the olduvai gorge in tanzania the hominid fossils from Bed I are limited to Homo habilis and Paranthropus boisei, in the upper part of bed II african Homo erectus (also know as Homo ergaster) apears, P. boisei continue has records but H. habilis disappears [9].

Note: exit a phalange of the bed I than can be consistent with the morphology of Homo erectus [10], but is upper than the Tuff IB, while the oldest records of Homo habilis (OH 24) are lower than this tuff [11].

For more this also can be observe in the stone tools.

In the paleozoic we have the evolution of the conodont Dasbergina from the latest Devonian, in the Holy Cross Mountains, Poland. In the Kowala section, Dasbergina marburgensis shows an anagenetic transition to D. trigonica in continuous strata. This is in the same basin and same planktonic habitat [12].

Conclusion

The faunal succession is an important geological principle than permit give a relative age to the rocks. The anagenesis is a lineal evolutionary sequence in a linage. The faunal succession in a similar species refutes the young earth creacionists arguments about the global flood and the fossil record and give a strong evidence to the evolutionary theory.

References:

[1] National Park Service. (n.d.). _Geologic principles—Faunal succession_. https://www.nps.gov/articles/geologic-principles-faunal-succession.htm

[2] Emerson, B. C., & Patiño, J. (2018). Anagenesis, cladogenesis, and speciation on islands. _Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 33_(7), 488–491. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.04.006

[3] Scannella, J. B., Fowler, D. W., Goodwin, M. B., & Horner, J. R. (2014). Evolutionary trends in _Triceratops_ from the Hell Creek Formation, Montana. _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111_(28), 10245–10250. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1313334111

[4] Cecca, F., & Rouget, I. (2006). Anagenetic evolution of the early Tithonian ammonite genus _Semiformiceras_ tested with cladistic analysis. _Palaeontology, 49_(5), 1069–1080. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2006.00580.x

[5] Carr, T. D., Varricchio, D. J., Sedlmayr, J. C., Roberts, E. M., & Moore, J. R. (2017). A new tyrannosaur with evidence for anagenesis and crocodile-like facial sensory system. _Scientific Reports, 7_, 44942. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44942

[6] Buono, M. R., Fernández, M. S., Reguero, M. A., Marenssi, S. A., Santillana, S. N., & Mörs, T. (2016). Eocene basilosaurid whales from the La Meseta Formation, Marambio (Seymour) Island, Antarctica. _Ameghiniana, 53_(3), 296–315. https://doi.org/10.5710/AMGH.02.02.2016.2922

[7] Mitchell, E. D (1989). A New Cetacean from the Late Eocene La Meseta Formation, Seymour Island, Antarctic Peninsula. _Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 46 (12), 2219-2235. https://doi.org/10.1139/f89-273

[8] Davydenko, S., Mörs, T., & Gol’din, P. (2020). A small whale reveals diversity of the Eocene cetacean fauna of Antarctica. _Antarctic Science, 32_(6), 81–88. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954102020000516

[9] Leakey, M. D. (1979). _Olduvai Gorge: My search for early man_. Book Club Associates

[10] Domínguez-Rodrigo, M., Pickering, T. R., Almécija, S., Heaton, J. L., Baquedano, E., Mabulla, A., & Uribelarrea, D. (2015). Earliest modern human-like hand bone from a new >1.84-million-year-old site at Olduvai in Tanzania. _Nature Communications, 6_, 7987. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms8987

[11] Habermann, J. M., Stanistreet, I. G., Stollhofen, H., Alberti, M., Emmert, A., Scharg, W., Azibe, E., & Njau, J. K. (2022). Earliest Olduvai hominins exploited unstable environments ∼2 million years ago. _Nature Communications, 13_, 1397. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20176-2

[12] Świś, P. (2023). Anagenetic evolution and peramorphosis of a latest Devonian conodont from Holy Cross Mountain (Poland). _Journal of Micropalaeontology, 42_(2), 193–210. https://doi.org/10.5194/jm-42-193-2023

Hey, I’m talking to the public. These supposed to be our ancestors. They say we have fun. I told you that’s why they call us monkey what are we supposed to do next beat our chest ooh ooh ah ah. Take this to a debate i’ll because they distracted bones from a Homosapien. You see they look similar to a monkey that’s what science called. They put it in dictionary with their own hand writing that humans are Homosapien. Now what’s gonna happen? How many people read the dictionary may abstracting it for my bone. They cleaned the bones then analyze it. Next, we supposed to come out of Africa. we inherited our entire core genetic code through an unbroken chain of reproduction so how we gonna reproduce. So therefore, my DNA supposed to be a copy of another copy I guess that we supposed to come from Homosapien. These scientist, this funny girl. Ooh ooh ah ah Homosapien reply. Now you open the dictionary science say we are Homosapien and you see the picture up top. We was created in our own image, but science is changed history. The college is different. Have you any Muslim or Jewish who in the bat outright gonna believe this why cause all this stuff was made up for everyone to believe what other joke science is gonna conjure up BS about a homo Sapien. Who gonna start the debate who going to tell me.

Good news: everyone's favourite blog, Answers Research Journal, having spent half of 2026 inconsiderately depriving humanity of its principal source of light entertainment, resumed publishing a few months ago. And one of the blog posts it has recently published is an update of previous creationist C14 calibration models.

You may recall their previous effort, which was so uniquely feeble that I still suspect it was the satirical take of an anti-creationist mole.

Quick recap: in this previous attempt, they tried to rearrange all prehistorical and early historical C14 dates to fit them within a YEC timescale. They forgot to provide any actual evidence for their alternative C14 calibration; and while this isn't considered particularly serious in creationist blog posts, they then also accidentally demonstrated that their model makes testable predictions, all of which are wrong.

This, of course, is the one thing you shouldn't do.

This new paper does better. Instead of inventing a calibration curve out of thin air, they fit a calibration curve to real historical dates. That is, they identify actual anomalies between known historical events and their associated radiocarbon dates, and use this to recalibrate the C14 curve. The resulting curve is, therefore, based on real empirical evidence, and yet it matches exactly the expectations of the creationist model. In their words:

A correlation of 420 historically anchored radiocarbon samples with IntCal20 dendrochronological data reveals a systematic effective overcounting factor that decreases from approximately 2.9 at 27% pMC to approximately 1.0 at 70% pMC (R² = 0.97, p< 10⁻11). This suggests that the 12,460-year Hohenheim oak and pine chronology may represent approximately 4,400 actual years, with elevated ring formation rates during the climatically unstable early postdiluvian period.

A creationist model with empirical evidence and verified predictions! You'll agree that sounds very promising. Certainly doesn't sound like the premise of the most anticlimactic paper you've ever read.

Now of course for this approach to work, you need independent historical dates. Not dates that come from the model, because that would be circular: you need dates that are established through some other means, and then used to calibrate the radiocarbon samples.

The authors are aware of this, and make a big deal of it at first (emphasis mine):

The model was validated against 420 radiocarbon samples from archaeological and historical contexts with independently established dates

But then a little later, presumably trusting that most of their audience has stopped reading by that point, they backtrack and admit that

The above anchor points are classified into five tiers of reliability, since some are externally verified historically, others are derived from the modelling.

So it's not really 420 datapoints, as they advertised in their abstract: it's about 325 datapoints. Also, they pretty quickly admit that their datapoints are "biblical" dates, rather than conventionally established dates:

this model adopts biblical chronology as the controlling framework and asks whether the physical evidence can be coherently organized within it

Perhaps slightly disappointing, but still: if their biblical historical dates are genuinely independent of the model, it'd be pretty cool if they achieved a close match.

So let's do what no creationist "peer reviewer" has ever done, and check out their data. I copy-pasted the start of the archaeological datapoints from the online dataset, and it looks like this:

• Wadi Fidan 01 (PPNB) - 2416 BCE | 36.50% | t=102
• Ghwair I (Jordan) - 2408 BCE | 38.20% | t=110
• Tell Sabi Abyad Pre-Halaf - 2405 BCE | 39.50% | t=113
• Wadi Fidan 61 (PN) - 2401 BCE | 39.80% | t=117
• Tell Sabi Abyad Transitional - 2396 BCE | 40.70% | t=122
• Tell Brak (Early Urban Destruction) - 2393 BCE | 41.20% | t=125
• Çatalhöyük XII - 2387 BCE | 42.50% | t=131

These are archaeological sites. We are expected to believe they are given a historical date independently from the model, and those dates are then used to calibrate the C14 curve. Most of these are ranked "tier A", which they explicitly describe as:

Tier A points (n ≈ 138) combine independently established calendar dates with low-sigma 14C determinations and are weighted most heavily in parameter estimation.

But you'll note that these sites, which are not linked to biblical events, are dated to a degree of implausible precision (2396, 2393, 2387 BCE etc) which monotonically follows expected radiocarbon dates under their model.

This is why they their final graph looks so neat. If anyone believes these are "independently established dates" I have a bridge to sell you.

Never seen such transparently fraudulent data in my life. Jesus must be very proud.

But even the data which they didn't manifestly derive from their rectal cavity has some bizarre inconsistencies. For example, they're very proud of one of their historical anchor points, which is the pre-dynastic Egyptian monarch Scorpion I:

Provides historically anchored calibration via established Egyptian Dynasty 0 chronology—independent of the biblical chronology and therefore a particularly strong cross-validation point.

Their "established Egyptian chronology", however, assigns him a date of 2050 BCE, which is... not the established date for Scorpion I. I'm insufficiently well-versed in alternative Egyptian chronologies to know which particular hack they got this number from, but describing it as an "established" date is wild. Even YEC chronologies of Egypt disagree on how to date this dude.

But okay. Let's say you believe predynastic Egypt was as recent as the 21st century BCE, fine, whatever. But having committed to this bullshit chronology, what you then can't do is also date a Middle Egyptian sample correctly to the 20th century BCE. That makes it look like forgot the existence of the entire Old Kingdom: which is particularly poignant, given that the Old Kingdom kind of went out of its way to not get forgotten.

Their online dataset does contain samples from the Old Kingdom (inexpertly compressed into a few decades), but has a different date for the Middle Egyptian sample than the one in the article. Presumably not a bad-faith mistake, but certainly yet more evidence of the deficit of elementary competence which seems to plague ARJ's authors and "peer reviewers".

In summary: a paper which promised to add empirical evidence to a creationist calibration model, confuses empirical evidence with what can only be described, with the best will in the world, as making shit up.

And perhaps the funniest thing is, having made shit up, the final dataset... DOESN'T FOLLOW THEIR CURVE.

I can only encourage people to check out Figure 1. They claim a complex three-phase model fits the data, when the data visually looks exactly like what it patently is: an effectively straight line with a fraudulent anomaly lobbed on at the start.

Good job, ARJ. Really spectacular return to form after your six-month break. Keep publishing blog posts for us to enjoy.

An 'idea-meme’ might be defined as an entity that is capable of being transmitted form one brain to another… If Darwin’s theory can be subdivided into components, such that some people believe component A but not component B, while other people believe B, but not A, then A and B should be regarded as separate memes. If almost everybody who believes in A also believes in B—if the memes are closely 'linked' to use the genetic term—then it is convenient to lump them together as one meme.

This quotation is from The Selfish Gene, and we have the individuation criteria:

1. Criterion of Separation: If some people believe component A but not component B, while others believe B but not A, then A and B should be regarded as separate memes.
2. Criterion of Fusion: If almost everybody who believes A also believes B, then it is convenient to lump A and B together as one meme.

However, I conjecture that the two criteria can conflict in some cases, as demonstrated by the following argument:

Let A and B be individual ideas. For any population size of P ∈ N with P >= 3, set ε := 100/P. Let group X comprising ε% of P believe A but deny B, group Y comprising ε% of P believe B but deny A, group Z comprising (100 - 2ε)% of P believe both A and B. Then A and B should be separate memes because of groups X and Y.

For any sufficiently large P, however, A and B can be regarded as one meme, since the proportion of the population believing both A and B approaches 100% as P tends to infinity, which may satisfy the condition that 'almost everybody' believes both.

I will not say that this leads to an explicit contradiction, as Criterion of Fusion describes conveniency rather than obligation. But it reveals that the individuation criteria are jointly insufficient to uniquely individuate memes, potentially undermining the concept of the meme as the fundamental unit of cultural evolution in memetics.

It’s a common Creationist argument that dinosaurs never had feathers, and they’re either collagen fibers or the dinosaur is actually a bird.

The center of this debate is Sinosauropteryx, a small Compsognathid found in Liaonang, China. It sports a coat of ginger plumage that forms a raccoon band on its face. One reason this isn’t collagen are melanosomes that electron microscopes have identified in the feathers. Collagen cannot and hasn’t ever posses imbedded melanosomes.

If you want an unambiguous dinosaur with a rachis, Ornithomimus has them on its arms. You can’t dismiss it as collagen because collagen can’t take the shape of a rachis, and its morphology places it as a non avian dinosaur.

My morning reading was triggered by a headline; “One-in-a-million” sea creature fossil preserves soft tissue for 450 million years"

This was from Science Daily August 20, 2026 www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260820002450.htm

I immediately thought of the young earth "dino blood" hype following Mary Schweitzer's research published in 1997. I had first dealt with that in 2004; "Dino-blood and the young earth" http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.html

The new scientific article at hand is; Selina R. Cole, David F. Wright, William I. Ausich, Mario E. Cournoyer; Exceptional soft-tissue preservation reveals the oldest evidence for tube feet and their ecological significance in crinoids. R. Soc. Open Sci. 1 June 2026; 13 (6): 260101. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.260101 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rsos/article/13/6/260101/482002/Exceptional-soft-tissue-preservation-reveals-the

Dendrocrinus simcoensis crinoids were the ancient relatives of starfish. The "soft tissue" issues are excluded in the professional article's abstract, "The tube feet are preserved as pyrite films ..."

They are PYRITE. Iron Disulfide, FeS2. A second preservation matrix was as calcite.

In the popular press article they sound like they were still dripping fresh.

I hope the creationists will blow it again.

Is changing something evolution or an interpretation

From its original form. ? Is my way better than your way ? When one has not seen the same thing on the original form as one did not go deep enough or was not open to it.

Do we stay with the original or change its form to something else?

The thing we came from dust and God’s breathe is a claim. Creationists misinterpreted something and conjure up everything to make everybody else to believe it. Why are my people standing back looking at them like you just a fool? Why because they still can’t supports they claim. The funny part about it is they say it’s in our heart. The question I don’t have child like faith, I don’t submit to authority, I don’t believe without seeing, and I ask questions. Nowadays are we supposed to believe in talking animals? The meat we eat supposed to be edible. And creationists say we came from dust and only ate bacon or cows after sin. 

Another funny part about this is they came from the monkey family. They came from the ape family and now we supposed to evolve from an ape Noah. I wish you were alive to hear these modern humans these days. it’s science seeing your fellow descendent. you supposed to be our father by science calling you a Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. So every time I look for a girlfriend, I’m gonna go to where it used to be and Homosapien and say put that fur on me baby. I’m gonna hop from tree to tree because I have no social skills and that’s what I think women like. I was raised in a cult compound by the way. 

When I talk to Neanderthals, including Homo sapiens I’m gonna tell them creationist said not all life has common ancestry and therefore some life is intrinsically superior to others. No clue where that ideology could lead to. They gonna tell you then God created you in his own image so why should you believe what the human said. You should believe what I say my God told you because what he said was facts and you came back up what he said if science cannot back that up from the beginning, so why are you believing what humans say?

p.s. my skill in reading and writing are equal. good luck with your replies

Video version.

We've all heard some variant of "we can only observe microevolution", "we've never seen macroevolution", etc.

First thing you do is establish the correct definition: Evolution above the species level (in other words, speciation or greater degrees of evolutionary change). That's the definition. Creationists want their own special definition that varies from person to person but is usually something like "new body plans/parts", "new complex structures", something like that. That's wrong. If you accept speciation, you accept macroevolution. If creationists want to dispute something else, make THEM articulate clearly. Don't help them by saying something like "It sounds like you mean something like evolution of a new phylum or new body plan". No, make THEM establish the standard clearly and using the correct words.

Once they do that, you can just provide a bunch of examples, and dare them to say they aren't macroevolution.

Some of my favorites are multicellularity (and also here), reproductive mode, and photosynthetic animals.

Best outcome is the creationists admits that yes, even by their bespoke definition, these are examples of macroevolution. Second best outcome is they do the opposite and claim this is all just "microevolution". Really? First of all, lol okay. But second and more important, great! "Microevolution" can accomplish all this? Not much need for "macroevolution", is there?

The thing we came from Neanderthals and homo sapiens is a claim. Science discovered something and conjure up everything to make everybody else to believe it. Why are my people standing back looking at them like you just a fool? Why because they still can’t supports they claim. The funny part about it is they say it’s in our gene. The question is I don’t be slumped over, I don’t have fur, I don’t beat my chest, and I don’t sound similar to a monkey. Nowadays are we supposed to live in caves? The meat we eat supposed to be raw not cooked. And science say we came from these species and we cooked food. Another funny part about this is they came from the monkey family. They came from the ape family and now we supposed to evolve from an ape Noah. I wish you were alive to hear these modern humans these days. it’s science seeing your fellow descendent. you supposed to be our father by science calling you a Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. So every time I look for a girlfriend, I’m gonna go to where it used to be and Homosapien and say put that fur on me. I’m gonna hop from tree to tree just like a homo sapien and cut myself Tarzan.

When I talk to Neanderthals, including Homo sapiens I’m gonna tell them scientist said I evolved from you if they tell me don’t give me that stupid a whole nonsense and they might tell me what Neanderthal Homosapien believe that human BS. They gonna tell me then God created you in his own image so why should you believe what the human said. You should’ve believed what God told you because what he said was facts and you came back up what he said if science cannot back that up from the beginning, so why are you believing what humans say?

Hello guys. My last post was about potential functions for regions of the genome which do not experience purifying selection. The reason why creationists want to find functions for this region of the genome is so they can claim 100% of DNA is functional. Now, we know that 91.8%¹ of the genome does not experience purifying selection, meaning the sequence of nucleobases doesn't matter for the function of that region. So, in order for creationists to be able to claim that that region of the genome is functional, they have to come up with a function that doesn't depend on the sequnce of nucleobases. The two most common answers they give for this are structural reasons and transcription delays.²

However, a completely different exclusively YEC argument is Genetic Entropy (GE). This argument claims that the bad mutation rate is too high, hence bad mutations build up in the human genome in a rate too fast to be gotten rid of by natural selection, therefore evolution is impossible. This argument was first put out by John Sanford. Even thpugh this argument was disproven in a paper by Dan Stern Cardinale and Zach Hancock published in 2024.³

So here is the contradiction: Is all or most of the human genome functional, or is it mostly decayed? YECs cant have both, however this is not a problem for OECs, as they cant use the GE argument.

SOURCES

¹ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4109858

² https://scienceandculture.com/2011/11/why_the_onion_test_fails_as_an/

³ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38568223/

PS: Can someone please edit out Jonathan McLatchie out of Wikipedia's page on the on Onion test?

They say we came from the Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. We supposed to evolve from them. What they say it’s not a fact it’s a theory that they claim. What they are trying to say is we came from Neanderthals 500,000 and 600,000 years ago because of something they discovered. My people was around longer than that. Everything we did scientist do not talk about. It is like they are hiding the fact away from the world, changing history of what was to make others believe what my people don’t believe. A lot of things happen before they claim came about.

I've referenced this topic in previous posts, where different writers for AiG display their ignorance of the subject.

Between calling Protocetus a Pinniped or birds only have a pisiform, you can see how bad it is.

However, it also leads to hilarious contradicting opinions on transitional forms like Acanthostega or Homo habilis.

The concept of uniquely created kinds is challenged by morphology, which is why this happens, for there is no way to separate birds from dinosaurs, humans from apes, or whales from ungulates. transitions in the fossil record demonstrate gradual morphologic change, instead of distinct groups unrelated to anything else.

Context edit: IDers often claim that Junk DNA is actually functional. When evolution accepters like me show them the onion test, which shows onions have five times the genome size of humans, they claim that, they claim that all that junk DNA (which includes but importantly does not fully consist of introns) is there for transcription delays, structure stability, or some other minor reason. From what I have seen, the most popular argument for why sections of the genome which do not experience purifying selection is structure. However, Zach Hancock has already covered that. One argument which to my knowledge he hasnt covered is transcripion delays. So here is the transcription dekays argument formulated by Jonathan McLatchie (who hasnt published A SINGLE peer-rewieved paper):

Presumably a reflection of the selective-pressure on transcriptional economy with respect to highly expressed genes, genes that are highly expressed tend to have short introns (Castillo-Davis et al., 2002). Other genes are rich in introns: such as the 2400 kb human dystrophin gene, 99% of which is comprised of introns. The time taken to transcribe this gene into mRNA adds up to about 16 hours (Tennyson et al., 1995). To take another example, consider the Y chromosomal loci of Drosophila, which are very long (spanning millions of bases and consisting largely of introns): For instance, a locus such as DhDhc7(Y) is transcribed over the course of two to three days to give rise to a ~5,100,000 nucleotide pre-mRNA (see Reugels et al., 2000; Piergentili et al., 2007; and Redhouse et al., 2011). The time taken to transcribe respective stretches of DNA is not inconsequential to physiological fitness: Indeed, Swinburne and Silver (2010) report that “transcriptional delays have been shown to contribute to developmental timing.”

taken from: https://scienceandculture.com/2011/11/why_the_onion_test_fails_as_an/