Opinion:The Great Fossil-Tree Fiasco

	Opinion
	This is an original work by LoonyBunny. Please comment only on the talk page.

The Art and Practice of Anti-Science 3: The Great Fossil-Tree Fiasco

(The content of these essays were taken from: http://www.hatemongering.co.za/, version 1.4)

For me this was the most satisfying of all the sections of hatemongering: there is no way to argue against what is written here, and it directly converts the entire life-work of a whole branch of academia into so much mulch. So much for: "the idea of Evolution has advanced scientific progress." Ha!

Cladistics

The central idea that the so-called Fossil-Tree is based on, is cladistics. Cladistics is a way to group lots of things into sub-groups & over-groups. An example would be to group everything that has teeth. Then sub-group into meat-eating teeth, plant-eating teeth, etc. Then sub-sub-group the various sizes of meat-eating teeth. An so on, and so forth.

What they are doing, in effect, is grouping animals by FUNCTION. Using the only thing available: BONES. What is quite interesting, is that whether you group by teeth, spines, or whatever, you tend to get the same Tree. This is said to be, perhaps, the single greatest proof of Evolution. More than that, one can generate a very SIMILAR Tree using raw DNA information...

Hence the irony, oh the irony...

The Wolf - Pekinese Paradigm

Behold the wolf. Behold the Pekinese. The Chinese bred wolves, and made the Pekinese. How? Via alleles, of course. The Pekinese consist of a very limited sub-section of the wolf Allele-Pool. Wolves can be turned into Pekinese, but Pekinese can NOT be bred back into wolves: the required alleles for that are not present. This is all very simple and straightforward.

The Death Of The Fossil Tree

Now. The interesting thing is this: breeding using alleles, can produce CLADISTIC changes.

To put it bluntly: there is no reason NOT to think of the Fossil-Tree as a record of wolf-Pekinese-type events. I.e a NS-of-A-FT.

To put it bluntly: there is no reason to think that the Fossil-Tree is a record of Evolution-in-Action. I.e. E-FT.

(Maybe Yay for Occam; but rather this: NSoA is DEMONSTRABLE. Evolution is NOT demonstrable.)

Transitional Nonsense

So. All that talk about transitional fossils? Gunk. Why? Because given the sheer, actual, demonstrable, power of Natural Selection of Alleles (NSoA), their presence is IRRELEVANT...

Mmmm. Well, not quite. There is the little problem that the Fossil Record shows periods of Stasis, followed-and-preceded with sudden Jumps.

Now, given how RAPIDLY NSoA works, how is it POSSIBLE that species remained so very static for such long periods of time? Mmmm? Surely as time passed, the environment would have changed/ fluctuated, resulting in NS-of-A activity? I myself am not a full-fledged young-earth proponent (but so far I seem to be drifting that way), yet what else could explain the fossil record, as observed, BESIDES a LACK of time?

• You see, NSoA is documented, it is understood. It WILL happen.

• Evolution, on the other hand, is not understood, and not documented. So the scientists were quite free to try and explain-away the Stasis/ Jump periods... as long as nobody let the allele-cat out of the bag... oopsie.

More Victims Of Elementary Reasoning

Two more Awesome-Evolution-is-like-Obvious-dude science-stuffies that Epic-Fail when alleles are considered:

• Vestigial Organs: example the wings on an Ostrich. Proof of Evolution in action, or example of NSoA in action?

• Atavisms: example whales with leg-bones. Proof of Evolution in action, or example of NSoA in action (after all, those prehistoric whales certainly did have leg-like flipper-thingies... right?)?

Well, Duh

Lastly. Consider this: how is it possible that the Fossil Tree, which while powered by NSoA, is a record of randomly-occurring-environmental events, so closely matches the DNA-Tree-of-Life? Mmmm?

The DNA-ToL is BASED on differences in function (ooh! that is yet ANOTHER teensy little scientific misconception) between genes of essentially the same function. For these two Trees to match, it would imply that genetic-function-differences was NOT the driver for specie-split-offs! I.e. Evolution just, like, dunno, changes stuff for no reason... which is, well, kinda silly.

There is a lot more to be said, this is enough for here.