Mike King #fundie tomatobubble.com

One of the ironies of the crackpot theory of "Evolution" TM, is that the deceitful dogma itself is always "evolving." Since the 1860's inception of Darwinian doctrine, mad scientists have bickered endlessly about how "Evolution" TM actually played out, never questioning the basic foundational assumption that life spontaneously, with neither reason nor guidance, emerged from non-life in the first place.

From Darwin's Origin of the Specious Species to the present day, the case for "Evolution" TM must, by necessity, rely upon the classic logical fallacies that are so evident to philosophers; yet completely invisible to arrogant "theoretical scientists" emotionally attached to a dogma disguised as "science." This idiotic article by renown "science journalist" and author Nicholas Wade is no different.

Haz Mat suits and goggle on. Into the "Primordial Soup" (or is it "deep sea vents" now?) we "wade" (corny pun intended).

"Shhhh, Mr. Wade. You must never tell anyone about the Anti-New York Times."

Wade: A surprisingly specific genetic portrait of the ancestor of all living things has been generated by scientists who say that the likeness sheds considerable light on the mystery of how life first emerged on Earth.

Rebuttal: Notice how it is already assumed, without evidence, that "all living things" have a common ancestor. (fallacy of assumed truth)

Wade: This venerable ancestor was a single-cell, bacterium-like organism. But it has a grand name, or at least an acronym. It is known as Luca, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, and is estimated to have lived some four billion years ago, when Earth was a mere 560 million years old.

Rebuttal: Mr. Wade, before you school us dumb plebes about Luca's birthplace, please prove to us that Luca even existed; and then prove how Luca "evolved" into other species; which in turned "evolved" and "evolved" millions of times into all current life forms. And by "proof," we mean observational evidence -- the very definition of the Scientific Method.

Wade: The new finding sharpens the debate between those who believe life began in some extreme environment, such as in deep sea vents or the flanks of volcanoes, and others who favor more normal settings, such as the “warm little pond” proposed by Darwin.

Rebuttal: Whatever happened to the "Primordial Soup" TM theory?

You see, these erudite eggheads love to "debate" endlessly over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, without ever demonstrating that there were actually any angels dancing on the pin, at all!

"Luca! We have you surrounded. Come out of that sea vent with your flagella up. And don't try any of that binary fission business"

They found little Luca in the deep sea, not the Primordial Soup as had once been theorized.

Wade: The nature of the earliest ancestor of all living things has long been uncertain because the three great domains of life (bacteria, plants, animals) seemed to have no common point of origin.

Rebuttal: Mr. Wade, has it ever occurred to you and your sci-fi cult that the reason why the various domains "seem to have no common point of origin" is because maybe, just maybe, they do not have a "common point of origin?"

Wade: Specialists have recently come to believe that the bacteria and archaea were the two earliest domains, with the eukaryotes emerging later. That opened the way for a group of evolutionary biologists, ... to try to discern the nature of the organism from which the domains emerged.

Translation: The high-priests of "Evolution" TM have just concocted a new theory to explain away the gaping holes in the previous theories.

Wade: Their starting point was the known protein-coding genes of bacteria and archaea. Some six million such genes have accumulated over the last 20 years in DNA databanks as scientists with the new decoding machines have deposited gene sequences from thousands of microbes.

Rebuttal: "DNA decoding machines" were used to sniff out little Luca --- (palm to face, deep sigh, shaking head)

Wade: Genes that do the same thing in a human and a mouse are generally related by common descent from an ancestral gene in the first mammal.

Rebuttal: The belief in the "common descent" between a human and a mouse is based on the fallacious prior assumption that we all came from Luca. It can just as easily be argued that DNA similarities between Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mantle are due to both of them having been designed by the same Creative Force which Tesla, Edison, Einstein (puke) all believed to exist. Hence, genetic similarities between the two Mickeys can be explained as cross-associations / basic templates of the same life-transmitting Creative Force which animates the universe.

Will the wonders of modern "science" ever cease?! The new Super Duper Decoding Machine not only links Mickey Mantle to the rodent family; it traced the birth of Luca to a deep sea vent!

Wade: By comparing their sequence of DNA letters, genes can be arranged in evolutionary family trees, a property that enabled Dr. Martin and his colleagues to assign the six million genes to a much smaller number of gene families.

Rebuttal: One can arrange and categorize the various "families" of automobiles (trucks, sports cars, SUV's, luxury cars, go-carts etcp) into a "tree" with many branches. Would their common component similarities therefore "prove" that Ferraris blindly "evolved" from school-buses?

Wade: Genes are adapted to an organism’s environment.

Rebuttal: Wrong again, Mr, Wade! The gene pool is not "adaptable." What happens sometimes is that environmental changes will favor one existing genetic trait over another. Hence, those specimens without the trait are at a disadvantage while those with it will prosper and produce offspring. This might explain why one group of finches has a beak like this while another group of finches has a beak like that. But it damn sure cannot explain how Marylyn Monroe and a putrid maggot have the same 1 millionth grandmother!

Wade: So Dr. Martin hoped that by pinpointing the genes likely to have been present in Luca, he would also get a glimpse of where and how Luca lived.

Rebuttal: "Likely to have been present in Luca" --- that's called conjecture, not science.

Wade: “I was flabbergasted at the result, I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

Rebuttal: We can't either.

Wade: The 355 genes pointed quite precisely to an organism that lived in the conditions found in deep sea vents, the gassy, metal-laden, intensely hot plumes caused by seawater interacting with magma erupting through the ocean floor.

Rebuttal: Cheese and crackers! We can't even find lost civilizations from a few thousand years ago and this academic ass-clown found little Luca in a deep sea vent?

Wade: Deep sea vents are surrounded by exotic life-forms and, with their extreme chemistry, have long seemed places where life might have originated.

Rebuttal: "Seemed" -- "might have." Save the speculative words for Star Trek or Jurassic Park, not the Science Section of a newspaper that so many people actually place trust in.

1- Mr. Spock of Star Trek says: "Evolution is not logical."

2- Some evolutionists now believe that T-Rex "evolved" into a bird.

Wade: The 355 genes ascribable to Luca include some that metabolize hydrogen as a source of energy as well as a gene for an enzyme called reverse gyrase, found only in microbes that live at extremely high temperatures...

Rebuttal: So, some of the genes "ascribed to" (speculative) this ancestral organism called Luca (never proved to have existed), are found in microbes that live at high temperature. Therefore, Mickey Mantle and Mickey Mouse, Marilyn and the maggot do all have a common ancestor after all. Brilliant! (palm to face, deep sigh, shaking head)

Wade: The finding has “significantly advanced our understanding of what Luca did for a living,” James O. McInerney of the University of Manchester wrote in a commentary, and provides “a very intriguing insight into life four billion years ago.”

Rebuttal: How does one even begin to respond to this madness?

Wade: Dr. Martin... argues that Luca is very close to the origin of life itself. The organism is missing so many genes necessary for life that it must still have been relying on chemical components from its environment. Hence it was only “half alive,” he writes.

Rebuttal: In other words, the "Luca-was-born-in-a-sea-vent" theory has so many holes that it requires another band-aid theory to keep it viable --- the "half alive" theory.

Wade: The fact that Luca depended on hydrogen and metals favors a deep sea vent environment for the origin of life, Dr. Martin concludes, rather than the land environment posited in a leading rival theory proposed by the chemist John Sutherland of the University of Cambridge in England.

Rebuttal: Wade, with his "Luca-was-born-in-a-sea-vent" theory, is seeking to dethrone Sutherland and his "Luca-was-born-on-land" theory as the crackpot theorist of the year. This heated competition among psychos has always been a comical feature of "theoretical science."

Wade: Luca and the origin of life are “events separated by a vast distance of evolutionary innovation,” said Jack Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital, who has studied how the first cell membranes might have evolved.

Rebuttal: This crackpot believes in cellular life before Luca --- which means that there was another great great great grandma Luca long before "sea vent" Luca was born.

Wade: Dr. Sutherland too gave little credence to the argument that Luca might lie in some gray transition zone between nonlife and life just because it depended on its environment for some essential components. “It’s like saying I’m half alive because I depend on my local supermarket.”

Rebuttal: The lunatic Sutherland is dismissing the lunatic Martin. Just another day at the asylum of modern academia. Let the "academic debate" begin!

Wade: Dr. Sutherland and others have no quarrel with Luca’s being traced back to deep sea vents. But that does not mean life originated there, they say. Life could have originated anywhere and later been confined to a deep sea environment because of some catastrophic event like the Late Heavy Bombardment, which occurred 4 billion to 3.8 billion years ago.

Rebuttal: The Late Heavy Bombardment? What the heck was that?

Wade: This was a rain of meteorites that crashed into Earth with such force that the oceans were boiled off into an incandescent mist.

Rebuttal: Mr. Wade, can you cite for us the observational evidence for this "rain of meteorites" and the "boiling off" of the oceans?

Wade: Life is so complex it seems to need many millions of years to evolve.

Rebuttal: Circular logic! It goes like this:

"Life takes 'million of years' to 'evolve' --- We cannot observe this because it played out over 'millions of years.' "

Once upon a time, the meteors rained, the oceans boiled, and out popped little Luca -- with his millions of complex DNA codes, cell wall, cell membrane, cell plasma and flagella already intact.

Wade: Dr. Sutherland, working from basic principles of chemistry, has found that ultraviolet light from the sun is an essential energy source to get the right reactions underway, and therefore that land-based pools, not the ocean, are the most likely environment in which life began.

Translation:

Sutherland: "Luca came from a land pool, you idiot!"
Martin: "Nonsense, fool! Luca came from a deep sea vent!"
Sutherland: "Land pool!"
Martin: "Sea vent!"
Sutherland: "Your momma wears combat boots!"
Martin: "Your momma so ugly, the strip club paid her to keep her clothes on!"

Wade: "We didn’t set out with a preferred scenario; we deduced the scenario from the chemistry,” Sutherland said, chiding Dr. Martin for not having done any chemical simulations to support the deep sea vent scenario.

Rebuttal: You tell him, Dr. Sutherland! The absence of chemical simulations means that Dr. Martin's theory has no merit.

Say, Dr. Sutherland, can you tell us about your "chemical simulations" that prove that life came from non-life, formed in a land pool and then evolved and evolved and evolved? Just sayin'.

Wade: Dr. Martin’s portrait of Luca “is all very interesting, but it has nothing to do with the actual origin of life,” Dr. Sutherland said.

Rebuttal: So, Dr. Sutherland is saying that Dr. Martin is an even nuttier mad scientist than he is? --- OK. We'll accept that.

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