One Big Happy Family
Witnessing Tools
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Wendy Wippel
You might have missed it, but headlines announced that science finally had slam-dunk proof that all life descended from a single organism.
Big news for Darwin’s fans, so--of course-- National Geographic featured the story on their cover. (May 13, 2010) What can I say? “He who sits in the heavens laughs?” (Psalm 2:4)
In the landmark study that National Geographic reported, a biochemist named Douglas Theobald did computer-driven statistical analyses using empirical data from genome sequencing that calculated the odds, given that all species in the three recognized domains of life ( Bacteria, microbes resembling bacteria called Archaea, and Eukaryotes, made up of both unicellular and multicellular organisms with cells that have a distinct, membrane-enclosed nucleus) share in common 23 proteins essential to life.
Bottom line: humans, have proteins very similar to protozoa and bacteria. And in the Darwinist delusion, that's incontrovertible proof that those single-celled organisms were our ancestors.
So in the Darwinist viewpoint, that's proof. Although the scientists concede that the organisms could have all independently evolved with these proteins, since all of the 23 proteins are pretty much essential to life as we know it (that’s called convergent evolution), but the authors reasoned that the DNA sequences observed would not be identical in that situation, just similar. “It’s highly unlikely that the protein groups would have independently evolved such similar DNA sequences."
With that line of reasoning, their results-- no surprise-- showed that it was very probable, since all animals share those proteins, that the animals were all related to each other. That they had one common ancestor. The odds in favor of that hypothesis, the authors said, were "astronomically enormous". So big that it was “kind of silly to say it—1 in 10 to the 2680thpower.”
The odds that all the proteins had separate origins (Adam-and Eve- style, the article noted), was considered even more preposterous: 1 in 10 to the 6000th power. Theobald called that an “absolutely horrible hypothesis." According to his statistical analysis.
A gleeful Darwinist describing the research online declared that the findings obtained by Theobald's genome sequencing experiments “decimated “special creation” as an even remotely plausible hypothesis for biological diversity.” “Why do creation scientists never ever have any empirical evidence of their own”, he asked mockingly. “I would think their research laboratories would be working overtime to somehow apologize for this devastating finding. Does anyone appreciate these enormous odds against special creation? Maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Isn’t their argument kind of like saying that because my Chevy, my husband’s GMC, and my daughter’s Ford all have pretty identical steering wheels, tires, radios and windshield wipers, they had to have been made at the same plant?
Seems so to me. But there's a bigger reason to dismiss Theobald and his statistical analyses anyway.
Enter (stage right) a recently discovered organism, the Collodictyon, a funny little, microscopic organism found in Arungen Lake in Norway. Collodictyon is single-celled and technically a eukaryote because it has a membrane-bound nucleus. It has flagella, however (like many bacteria), but not one, but four. It has some features characteristic of amoebas, but some that make it look more like a protists.
Taxonomy biology (the branch of biology that sorts organisms into groups by physical characteristics and appearance) was stumped. It didn't readily fit in anywhere. They couldn't confidently label it as a member of any of the existing groups of eukaryotes: animal, plant, fungi, algae or protist. In fact, the scientists who discovered it suggested that a whole new kingdom had should be created for it.
But what about DNA? Wouldn't that shed some light on their origins?
Norwegian scientists plucked a family of these tiny one-celled organisms (only 30 microns wide, one could fit on a strand of hair), out of Arungen Lake, took them home, gave them a nice place to live, and before long they had enough of these tiny single-celled organisms to start trying to figure out where they fit on that big ol' family tree that Darwinism demands.
That family tree that Theobald had slam-dunk proven they would belong to.
But when Collodictyon's DNA came back? The tiny organism didn’t have any resemblance at all to any of the rest of living things sequenced (and just about everything has.) Genetically, as well as physically, it couldn't be confidently labeled as as an animal, or a plant, or a fungus, or an algae or a protist.
In fact, when the study team compared the genome of Collodictyon with the sequences obtained from millions of other organisms, stored in hundreds of databases all over the world, they found nothing that matched.
Well, Ok, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. They found a partial match with one gene from an organism in Tibet. Dag Klaveness, study scientist at the University of Oslo, said, "We are surprised." "This organism is unique.”
They had reason to be surprised, because National Geographic had just proved that all life forms descended from one single organism and this strange beastie had no demonstrable relationship to any other living thing. No match to any of those 23 proteins that "proved" that we are all descended from some primeval single cell.
A wise man once defined statistics as the science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures." (Evan Esar). Scientists, in other words, sometimes paint their target where their arrow lands.
The National Geographic article that lauded Theobald's findings, for some reason, accompanied the title of the article on the National Geographic cover with a picture of a man seemingly communing deeply with a large snake. Seemed strange to me at the time. But now it makes perfect sense...
http://www.omegaletter.com/articles/articles.asp?ArticleID=7810
Subject: One Big Happy Family 
Tue May 13, 2014 8:28 am
