Neil Degrasse Tyson Baby T Shirts Forget Being a Princess

Creation past Neil deGrasse Tyson
Episode two: "Some of the things that molecules practise"

Propaganda for chemical and biological development

Published: five April 2014 (GMT+10)

Table of contents

• Development, allurement-and-switch, and straw men
• Domestication of dogs
• Artificial v natural pick
• Deoxyribonucleic acid
• Mutations
• Polar bears and origin of whiteness
• Common ancestry claims
• Mimicry
• Eye development?
• Permian extinction
• Extremophiles
• Origin of life
• From goo to you

In the review of Episode 1, I provided the materialistic background to Neil de Grasse Tyson'southward reboot of Cosmos, probably even more materialistic than the 1980 serial past Tyson'due south mentor, Carl Sagan.

Evolution, allurement-and-switch, and harbinger men

Right at the start, Tyson poses the question almost where the variety of living creatures came from, and he makes it clear that the answer is goo-to-you evolution: "The answer is a transforming power that sounds like something out of a fairy tale or myth." I would debate that it sounds that manner considering that's exactly what it is, only Tyson disagrees.

However, to 'bear witness' his point, Tyson must resort to the evolutionists' old faithful fallacy of equivocation or bait and switch. Basically, the fallacy in the argument of so many Apostles of Atheopathy, including Tyson and Dawkins, can exist boiled downwardly to the post-obit argument:

1. Evolution = change in allele frequency over time [an allele is a variant of a cistron]
2. Change in allele frequency over fourth dimension is a fact
3. Therefore goo-to-you evolution is a fact
4. Corollary: biblical cosmos is incorrect.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The absurdity of this should be discernable past Blind Freddie'southward deaf guide dog: if development really meant 'change in allele frequency over fourth dimension', and then all of CMI would be evolutionists! Also, Dawkins would be wrong in his scaremongering that 40% of Americans deny 'evolution', since there probably would exist none who deny 'alter in allele frequency over fourth dimension'.

The straw man charge comes afterwards—Tyson claims that in Darwin's time:

The prevailing belief was that the complexity and variety must be the work of an intelligent designer, who created each of these millions of species separately.

This is a half truth. Indeed, this probably was the prevailing belief, just not that of biblical creationists! Rather, this belief in 'fixity of species' was the dogma of the old-age propagandist Charles Lyell, Darwin's mentor and foil. To explain the limited geographical distribution of diverse species, Lyell proposed that each species had a 'centre of creation' in a habitat best designed for it. The species would sometimes go extinct as the habitat inverse over the vast eons he advocated, so he proposed different creative episodes over time.ⁱ In preparing for his famous Origin of Species,² Darwin too oft assorted "Points for me" (transmutation) vs. "Points for Lyell" (fixity of species).³

Notwithstanding, pre-Darwinian creationist scientists had deduced from the account of Noah's Ark and subsequent dispersion that many varieties, and even what we now call 'species', could have arisen from insufficiently few animal kinds on the Ark. For example, in 1668, Anglican Bishop John Wilkins (1614–1672), the founder of the metric system and the first secretary of the Royal Society (formed 350 years ago this twelvemonth), argued that all the varieties of cattle today, including the American 'buffalo' or bison, would accept arisen from ii (or probably 7) cattle ancestors on the Ark:

At that place being much less difference betwixt these, than at that place is betwixt several Dogs: And it being known by feel what diverse changes are frequently occasioned in the same species, by several countries, diets, and other accidents.⁴

His contemporary, German Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680), renowned in his day equally 'principal of a hundred arts', had much the aforementioned idea in his meticulously illustrated volume on Noah'southward Ark:⁵

Kircher expressed his belief that our modernistic species had developed by transmutation within definite series of forms.⁶

Modern biology provides farther support: information technology is well known that mountains provide splendid places for speciation. That'south because they provide a strong geographical barrier to the dispersing small populations, enabling allopatric speciation.⁷

Furthermore, the Flood/Dispersion history of the world revealed in Scripture also explains one of Darwin'south stiff points against Lyell. That is, why are creatures on islands similar to those on the nearest mainland? This indeed seems similar special pleading on the Lyellian fixity of species/centres of cosmos model. However, it is perfectly explained by migration patterns from the Ark'due south landing place.

Thus Darwin was not addressing the biblical Creation/Flood/Dispersion model at all, and neither is Tyson. Meet discussion of kinds, natural selection, and speciation from ch. 4 of Refuting Evolution 2.

Domestication of dogs

Tyson's first instance of 'development' is the domestication of dogs from wolves, and production of many varieties. Actually, this is hardly news to biblical creationists, as opposed to Lyellian advocates of fixity of species (such as modern long-age compromiser Hugh Ross). Creationists have often pointed out that Noah didn't demand to take wolves, foxes, coyotes, dingoes, chihuahuas, corking danes, spaniels, dachshunds, etc. on the Ark, considering it was sufficient to accept a pair of wolf-like creatures with all the potential for diversifying into different varieties. And evolutionists at present concede that domestic dogs came from wolves just a few thousand years ago, and are not really very different, although they insist on calling this 'evolution'.^eight

One interesting sit-in occurred in Berlin, where a female wolf and (big!) male poodle were mated. The pups looked fairly like to each other and nix special, with genetic information from both parents. But the inbred 'grand-pups' were very dissimilar from each other: one was like its grandmother wolf in appearance and killer instincts, while the other looked clearly 'poodle' and however others were mixtures.⁹

This shows that:

• The poodle and wolf are the same kind, and even the same biological species.
• The first generation of pups had plenty genetic variety to produce a wide variety of descendants.
• Therefore, it would have been possible in principle to have a single pair on the Ark with like variation.

Note that one of the poodle'south most famous traits, the long pilus, is acquired past an information-losing mutation―loss of power to shed pilus.

Another example involved a Russian research group breeding a husky and a jackal to produce a 'jacksy'. This takes advantage of the domestication of the husky and the abrupt sense of odour of the wild jackal, sharper than that of whatever domestic domestic dog. The jacksy is thus the 'ultimate' drug sniffer dog.¹⁰ This as well suggests that the procedure which produced the husky from its original canine ancestor resulted in a loss of genetic information, such as reduction in aroma sensitivity.

As for how domestication first began, Tyson argued that humans selected the tamest dogs. From the dog's point of view, Tyson reasonably claimed that domestication of humans is an excellent survival strategy, or "survival of the friendliest". He shows a os on the basis shut to a human, and says:

All the wolves want to go at the os, but most of them are too frightened to come close enough. Their fear is due to high levels of stress hormones in their claret. It's a matter of survival. Because coming likewise close to humans can be fatal. But a few wolves— due to natural variations—have lower levels of those hormones. This makes them less afraid of humans. Let the humans exercise the hunting, don't threaten them, and they'll let you scavenge their garbage. Y'all'll swallow more than regularly, you lot'll leave more than offspring, and those offspring will inherit your disposition. This selection for tameness would be reinforced with each generation until that line of wild wolves evolves into dogs. This wolf has discovered what a co-operative of his ancestors figured out some xv,000 years ago, an fantabulous survival strategy: the domestication of humans.

Actually, this is nothing that informed creationists need dispute. As I explained in my book The Greatest Hoax on Globe? Refuting Dawkins on evolution (pp. 47–48):

Dawkins provides interesting information on how wolves possibly diverged into dogs. Wolves volition forage for food around humans, simply will abscond if humans approach closer than a certain distance, or won't approach closer than this. This minimum is chosen the "flight distance". Those wolves with smaller flight distances are of necessity "tamer", and humans captured and bred from these, and progressively selected notwithstanding tamer varieties (pp. 71–76 of his The Greatest Bear witness on Earth).

Simply how did distinctive domestic dog characteristics arise? Plain by pleiotropy: where ane gene controls more than one characteristic, as Dawkins says, "Presumably genes for floppy ears and piebald coats are pleiotropically linked to genes for tameness." (p.76) This was shown by the fact that Russian geneticist Dmitri Konstantinovich Belyaev (Дми́трий Константи́нович Беля́ев, 1917–1985) produced many of the same changes while domesticating foxes; Dawkins shows pictures of Belyaev with some of his domestic dog-like domesticated foxes (p. 75 of his The Greatest Bear witness on Globe).

Thus foxes are besides probable part of an original created Canid kind. Indeed, foxes have been claimed to hybridize with wolves.¹¹

Bogus v natural selection

Tyson, similar Darwin, asks, "If artificial option tin can work such profound changes in only 10,000 or fifteen,000 years, what can natural selection do operating over billions of years? The answer is all the beauty and diversity of life." The real respond, not what Tyson wants, is: not as much as he expects.

Beginning, artificial selection, unlike natural selection, tin take foresight (i.e. the end plan of the human selector), so it can tolerate less fit intermediate forms. Natural pick cannot know that these intermediate forms will evolve into something much better in a 1000000 years, and would instead eliminate them. A skillful case would be the alleged evolution from a reptilian 'bellows' lung to the avian ane-fashion lung—1 of the hypothetical intermediates would be a poor fauna with a diaphragmatic hernia, i.e. a pigsty in the lung, which would be unlikely to survive. Meet Bird animate anatomy breaks dino-to-bird dogma.

2d, artificial pick can be much stronger than natural choice. The strength is expressed by the pick coefficient due south. If a mutation has s = 0.001 or 0.1%, a supposedly typical value, then the number of surviving offspring is 0.ane% greater for organisms with the mutant than without it. In artificial choice, this tin can be ane: the selectors merely decline to breed from anything lacking the desired trait. However, for depression s, natural selection is often swamped by randomness, or genetic migrate, which accept a very adept chance of eliminating even a beneficial trait. Its probability of survival, assuming that this is the only cistron under consideration, is only about 2 south, meaning that this beneficial mutation has just one chance in 500 of surviving.¹² Equally explained in The Greatest Hoax on World? (pp. 50–51):

Slightly beneficial changes may not be the primary factor for survival. For example, the fastest gazelle might by chance come across a waiting lioness while a slow i might escape while another finds a calf—and it wouldn't help the calf much if it happened to take good genes for adult speed. And it would seem that many extinct creatures were very 'fit', so some prominent evolutionary paleontologists refer to "survival of the lucky".¹³ Indeed, computer simulations accept shown that at that place is a 'choice threshold' of about 10^–4–10^–three below which a benign mutation will not exist selected because random 'racket' swamps selective furnishings.^fourteen

More than avant-garde programs with realistic values for selection coefficients, genome size, reproductive and mutation rates show that Dawkins' mutation/selection model would not work in real living creatures.^15,16,17

Dna

Tyson gets downwardly to the molecular level of life, into our bulletin molecule, Dna. Tyson aptly calls this "The ancient Scripture of our genetic code, and it'southward written in a linguistic communication that all life can read." However, he fails to make the obvious connectedness: any volume requires an author!

In particular, the information in Scripture or other books is in the form of ink molecules on paper. Just nothing in the ink molecules themselves made them form into the letters, words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs of the Scriptures. It certainly wasn't produced by an ink spill. Rather, the data was imposed on the ink by an outside intelligent source (or a program ultimately programmed past an intelligent mind).

But here is the connexion with living things. At that place is also aught in the chemistry of DNA's letters themselves that would make them join upwardly in predetermined means, whatsoever more than forces between ink molecules make them join up into letters and words. Michael Polanyi (1891–1976), a former chairman of concrete chemistry at the University of Manchester (UK) who turned to philosophy, confirmed this:

As the arrangement of a printed page is extraneous to the chemistry of the printed page, and so is the base sequence in a DNA molecule extraneous to the chemical forces at piece of work in the DNA molecule. It is this physical indeterminacy of the sequence that produces the improbability of any particular sequence and thereby enables it to accept a meaning—a meaning that has a mathematically determinate information content.¹⁸

But every bit the Scripture had intelligent writers to produce its data, and then it is scientific to believe that the information in the living world likewise had an original Writer.^nineteen

Furthermore, it is not much use without all the associated machinery, and Cosmos has very elegant animations of Deoxyribonucleic acid unwinding and copying, and of proof-reading machines. Deoxyribonucleic acid needs these machines for copying itself, only it also codes the instructions to build its ain copying machines. But these instructions to build copying machines tin can't be passed on without the copying machines already present.

Similarly, Evolution has a major problem in explaining proof-reading mechanism. Natural selection requires that the information selected for tin be reproduced accurately. But without an already operation repair mechanism, the information would exist degraded speedily. Furthermore, the instructions to build this repair machinery are encoded on the very molecule information technology repairs, another vicious circle for evolution. See New Dna repair enzyme discovered.

Creation likewise shows kinesins that are of import for all life more circuitous than bacteria. Run into Incredible Kinesin! Biological 'robots' volition blow your mind!

Mutations

Tyson rightly points out that the DNA copying and proof-reading machines are not perfect, then copying mistakes arise: mutations. Tyson says: "near mutations are harmless, some are mortiferous." Actually, most mutations are bad–near-neutral: very slightly harmful mutations that will non exist eliminated by natural selection.²⁰ So like tiny rust spots on a car, they accumulate through the genetic pool. This contrasts with major damage that can be noticed and repaired, such as a apartment tyre, smashed headlights, worn brakepads, or natural pick removing the very bad mutants. Eventually, as rust can eventually build upward till it causes structural harm, these mutations would have resulted in genetic meltdown afterward even hundreds of thousands of years.²¹

These mutations are accumulating much faster than previously thought. The lead researcher in human mutation rates, evolutionary geneticist Alexey Simonovich Kondrashov (Алексе́й Симо́нович Кондрашо́в, 1957– ), based on his conventionalities that humans have been around for that long, asked, "Why aren't we dead 100 times over?"²² He thinks that the mutation rate could be even college, as much as 300 per person per generation,²³ although a more recent "Icelandic written report^[24] found that on average, every newborn baby has 36 spontaneous new mutations, those non inherited from either parent."²⁵ This level, if confirmed, would still exist a huge trouble for the long-age viewpoint that Tyson dogmatically pontificates.

Kinesin is the minuscule longshoreman (stevedore) of the cell, toting parcels of cargo on its shoulders as it steps along a scaffolding of microtubules. Each molecule of ATP fuel that kinesin encounters triggers precisely ane eight-nanometer step of the 'longshoreman'.

Polar bears and origin of whiteness

The data Tyson presented well-nigh Deoxyribonucleic acid and mutations was basically correct as far as it went, although he failed to draw the correct conclusions. He used it to explain how polar bears could 'evolve' whiteness. Offset, outset with the factor for the paint to make nighttime coloured fur. And so information technology undergoes a random mutation. Tyson gives the impression that all mutations are point mutations, or single letter 'typos', which is an oversimplification. Anyhow, it's rather hypocritical for evolutionists to complain that we don't consider gene duplication for example (although we do!) when their leading propagandists don't either.

This mutation destroys the information for pigment, leaving the fur white. All the same, this is one of a number of examples where an informationally downhill change provides an reward. In a snowy environment, the bear is inconspicuous, then tin can sneak up on prey better. So it has a improve chance of reproducing, and then passing on this defective cistron. But evolutionists inappreciably have a monopoly on such explanations: informed biblical creationists even before Darwin have pointed out such natural selection in performance.²⁶ See for example the old—merely non out-dated—article Bears across the world. This besides explains a characteristic of polar bears that Tyson thinks is 'development':

The polar conduct's partly webbed feet may take come up from a mutation which prevented the toes from dividing properly during its embryonic development. This defect would give it an reward in swimming, which would make it easier to survive as a hunter of seals among ice floes.

Tyson and so moves on to claim that this new variety of bears became a different species. Every bit stated, speciation is part of the biblical creationist model. But in this case, have they really speciated? Different varieties of bears hybridize readily, including polar bears with grizzlies, to course 'pizzlies' or 'grolar bears'. See The Pizzly: a polar carry / grizzly comport hybrid explained by the Bible.

Common ancestry claims

Tyson makes the huge and unwarranted step from the mutual ancestry of dogs and that of bears to that of all life on earth. Tyson patronizingly tries to empathize the motives of Bible-believers for rejecting common ancestry, claiming that it's a knee jerk response to thinking we are related to apes. Well, evolutionary agitprop would be incomplete without 'Bulverism', a term that C.Southward. Lewis coined for a common blazon of logical fallacy:

Y'all must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modernistic method is to presume without give-and-take that he is wrong and then distract his attending from this (the only real event) by busily explaining how he came to exist and so silly.

For more, see Is Belief in God a case of Christian wish fulfillment? too as this explanation of the genetic fallacy: the mistake of trying to disprove a argument of fact by tracing information technology to its source.

The same could be thrown back at Tyson and his ilk: they desire common beginnings to avert the implications of a Creator owning them. Also, in that location are noxious consequences of denying the biblical teaching that humans were created separately from animals and uniquely behave God'due south paradigm, albeit now broken by sin. Information technology might be argued that humans and other creatures should be treated every bit, but this can happen in two reverse and equally absurd ways (compare Chesterton and the tiger).

1. Elevating apes and even plants to the same level equally humans, giving them equal rights. Merely note that the apes and plants themselves are non clamouring for equal rights!
2. Downgrade human rights to the same level as we now treat animals. So the megademocides (killing of a meg people past the government) by evolutionary regimes like Nazism and Communism are no different from an antibiotic wiping out millions of leaner. Nor exercise human being babies, whether built-in or unborn and able to recall, have any special right to life—they can be used as heating fuel instead.

As alleged show for common beginnings, Tyson claims, "Deoxyribonucleic acid doesn't lie." He's right there: DNA is incapable of uttering a propositional argument, the just thing that can be truthful or false. Only humans interpreting the Deoxyribonucleic acid data are certainly capable of uttering fake propositions to describe the Deoxyribonucleic acid.

For example, similarity (homology) in Dna does non prove a mutual antecedent. Another reason could exist a mutual designer nether similar design requirements. Tyson inadvertently provided one case: life uses sugars for energy and Dna, so it should not be surprising that it has similar machinery with similar coding for it in the Deoxyribonucleic acid. See Homology made uncomplicated.

Actually, as cited before, Tyson claimed that Deoxyribonucleic acid was "written in a language that all life can read." And later on:

Merely differences between us and life found in even the most farthermost environments on our planet are only variations on a single theme, dialects of a single language. The genetic code of Earth life.

Actually, this is not truthful, and Dawkins has often made the aforementioned mistake. Different codes are a big problem for evolution, because irresolute from one code to some other would be like switching keys on a computer keyboard—the letters would become garbled. See Responses to our xv Questions: part ane, nether 2. How did the Dna code originate? Answer 3.

So Tyson makes a announcement well-nigh the huge multifariousness of living creatures:

Biologists have catalogued a half a one thousand thousand dissimilar kinds of beetles alone. Not to mention the numberless varieties of bacteria.

Indeed, in that location are near 450,000 known species of beetles, but as we frequently point out, the created kind is much broader than today's 'species' by most definitions of the term.

Mimicry

And then Tyson shows some amazing examples of mimicry, which again he attributes to natural selection. As we have stated, natural pick has a office in the creation model. It's notable that Carl Sagan used mimicry in the old Cosmos series to prove unintentional artificial choice to explain the Heikigani. This is a crab with a shell with a superficial resemblance to a human face, in particular an angry Samurai of the Heiki association, explaining both the Japanese proper noun and the English language nickname 'Samurai Crab'. Sagan popularized the explanation of Julian Huxley, that human fishermen had thrown back crabs that bore a resemblance to a face, so they would accept the all-time hazard to reproduce.

In a very early debate, long before I joined CMI, Dr Carl Wieland faced an evolutionist who used that case every bit proof of development. Dr Wieland easily defeated that by agreeing with Sagan's explanation, and reminding anybody that natural and bogus selection are not the sole property of evolutionists.

Actually, there is debate about whether this explanation is valid, since humans don't eat Heikigani anyway, then the proposed artificial pick would non have occurred, and the shape of the ridges is good for musculus attachment.²⁷ But this doesn't change the indicate: fifty-fifty if the selection explanation were right, it would not threaten biblical creation. A like case applies to the infamous brindled moths. For a long fourth dimension, creationists pointed out that the selectionist explanation was no threat to biblical creation—sometimes black moths do meliorate, sometimes white ones do, so what? But then some serious discrepancies in the story arose, as explained in More near moths and the linked articles.

However, even back in the 1930s, data had demonstrated serious limitations to the power of selectionist explanations of mimicry. Ornithologist McAtee clustered much data on the contents of bird stomachs, and plant that their prey were taken in accordance with availability, and the and then-called protective adaptations made no difference:

In other words there is utilization of animals of practically every kind for nutrient approximately in proportion to their numbers. This means that predation takes place much the same as if there were no such affair as protective adaptations. And this is just another way of proverb that the phenomena classed by theorists as protective adaptations have petty or no effectiveness. Natural Selection theories presume discrimination in the option of prey. The principle of proportional predation so obvious from the data contained in this paper vitiates those theories for it denotes indiscrimination, the very antonym of pick.^28,29,30

These were presumably already highly evolved 'protective adaptations', yet they make little difference. A fortiori, the alleged incipient stages would make even less difference, and so selection would be weaker still.

Eye evolution?

Tyson commencement provides a summary of what he thinks his opponents, i.e. Design proponents, think, and information technology's not as well bad:

Living things are only besides intricate, it was said, to be the result of unguided development. Consider the human eye, a masterpiece of complexity. It requires a cornea, iris, lens, retina, optic nerves, muscles, let alone the brain's elaborate neural network to interpret images. Information technology'due south more complicated than any device ever crafted by human intelligence. Therefore, it was argued, the human eye can't be the upshot of mindless evolution.

Yet, Tyson has a different idea:

Until a few hundred 1000000 years passed, and then, ane mean solar day, there was a microscopic copying error in the Dna of a bacterium. This random mutation gave that microbe a poly peptide molecule that captivated sunlight.

Tyson makes it sound so simple. However, every bit we have pointed out earlier, Behe has shown that even a 'simple' light sensitive spot requires a dazzling assortment of biochemicals in the right place and time to function. He states that each of its 'cells makes the complexity of a motorcycle or television fix wait paltry in comparison' and describes a minor part of what's involved:

When light kickoff strikes the retina a photon interacts with a molecule chosen xi-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. (A picosecond [10^–12 sec] is nearly the time it takes calorie-free to travel the breadth of a single human hair.) The change in the shape of the retinal molecule forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The poly peptide'south metamorphosis alters its beliefs. Now called metarhodopsin 2, the protein sticks to some other poly peptide, called transducin. Before bumping into metarhodopsin II, transducin had tightly spring a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with metarhodopsin II, the GDP falls off, and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but different from, GDP.)³¹

GTP-transducin-metarhodopsin II at present binds to a protein chosen phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the jail cell. When fastened to metarhodopsin II and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the chemic ability to "cutting" a molecule called cGMP (a chemic relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially in that location are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, only equally a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub.

The rest of Tyson'southward caption is similar to that popularized by Dawkins, so see the response at Centre evolution, a case study. Just Tyson has a few quirks of his own, starting with "Another mutation caused a night bacterium to abscond intense light." Again, then uncomplicated it sounds, as if a unmarried genetic typo acquired such a coordinated response to light. Then why should it be advantageous to flee?

Those bacteria that could tell low-cal from dark had a decisive advantage over the ones that couldn't. Why? Because the daytime brought harsh, ultraviolet light that damages Deoxyribonucleic acid. The sensitive bacteria fled the intense light to safely exchange their Dna in the dark. They survived in greater numbers than the bacteria that stayed at the surface.

One wonders how blind bacteria survive today. Just Tyson throughout this serial acts as if explaining a reason why a feature is advantageous is enough to explicate its origin, or with the added handwaving of 'a mutation occurred'. See also Does biological reward imply biological origin?

Withal, Tyson is inadvertently on to something very important: a astringent problem for chemical evolution. It is true that UV is very damaging to DNA. This would accept been an especially acute trouble for the early oxygen-free atmosphere proposed by evolutionists, considering without oxygen there would be no protective ozone layer. The chemical evolutionists' dilemma is that oxygen would take prevented biomolecules forming in the first place. See 15 loopholes in the evolutionary theory of the origin of life.

Tyson continues his story-telling with:

Over time, those light-sensitive proteins became concentrated in a pigment spot on the more avant-garde, i-celled organism. This made it possible to find the light, an overwhelming advantage for an organism that harvests sunlight to make nutrient.

OK, and then earlier information technology was for fleeing light, now it'south for finding light. The plasticity of evolution is a miracle to behold, only it becomes impossible to examination it if reverse explanations can both be invoked. See besides Darwinian explanations are too flexible to exist useful. Actually, although Tyson would not go and so far, he hinted at the problems in a 2005 interview:

Darwin'southward theory of evolution is a framework past which nosotros understand the diverseness of life on Earth. But there is no equation sitting there in Darwin'southward Origin of Species that y'all apply and say, "What is this species going to look like in 100 years or 1,000 years?" Biology isn't there yet with that kind of predictive precision.³²

Then he continues that the further evolution of the middle "launched the visual equivalent of an arms race." The screen portrayed an Anomalocaris (not identified) capturing a flat worm and eating information technology. The problem for his scenario is that Anomalocaris had incredibly sophisticated eyes, just evolutionists 'engagement' this extremely early, and at that place is no evidence for whatever eye development. Dr John Paterson of the University of New England, said:

[T]here was no evidence for optics in organisms that lived before the Cambrian Explosion—a rapid increment in the diversity of life that began about 540 one thousand thousand years ago. The latest find showed sophisticated vision had evolved very rapidly. Information technology came with a bang, in a geological blink of an eye.³³

Also, Tyson'due south whole scenario is about the origin of an eye like ours, while Anomalocaris had compound eyes, a very different design. See likewise Giant compound optics, one-half a billion years agone? and Telling tales—how evolutionists 'spin' their story: 'Early Cambrian' arthropod fossils showing 'exceptionally preserved optics' with 'mod eyes' should be an center-opener for evolutionists—but they resort to 'spin' instead.

Afterward, Tyson discusses some other animate being that evolutionists believe were contemporary with Anomalocaris:

Trilobites were armored animals that hunted in great herds across the seafloor.
They were among the offset animals to evolve image-forming optics.

Just the trouble with trilobite eyes, if anything, is even more acute than for Anomalocaris centre. The complex compound optics of some types of trilobites, are amid the well-nigh complex eyes of whatsoever creature that ever lived, although they were supposedly very early. They comprised tubes that each pointed in a slightly different management, and had special lenses that focused light from any distance. The lens had a layer of calcite on pinnacle of a layer of chitin — materials with precisely the right refractive indices — and a wavy boundary between them of a precise mathematical shape.³⁴ This is consistent with their being designed by a master physicist, who applied what nosotros now know as the physical laws of Fermat's principle of least time, Snell's constabulary of refraction, Abbé's sine police and birefringent optics.³⁵ The eye of this humble beast displays some pretty fancy physics!

wikipedia.org

Lystrosaurus

And then Tyson attacks the efficiency of our centre blueprint, starting by pointing out the refraction (bending) of calorie-free when it travels between air and water. Supposedly vertebrate optics evolved in fish, in h2o.

Simply for land animals, the light carries images from dry out air into their even so-watery eyes. That bends the light rays, causing all kinds of distortions. When our amphibious ancestors left the water for the country, their eyes, exquisitely evolved to run into in water, were lousy for seeing in the air. Our vision has never been as skilful since. We like to remember of our optics as country-of-the-art, but 375 million years later, we still tin't see things correct in forepart of our noses or discern fine details in near darkness the fashion fish can.

But this is contrary to optical physics. Distortions are not an outcome if the interface is shine, and the very bending of light is how the middle focuses. The cornea, the transparent layer at the front of the eye covering the iris and pupil, does well-nigh of the focusing; the lens but fine-tunes that. So an centre outside h2o would exist better at close-upward distances than one within h2o, where there is less angle. Information technology'southward actually the opposite to what Tyson claims: when we swim under water, everything looks blurry precisely because the refraction at the h2o/cornea boundary is so much less that our lens is incapable of focusing. It basically makes u.s.a. extremely longsighted or farsighted. Swimming goggles avoid this by making sure there is air rather than water against the cornea.

Permian extinction

Evolutionists believe in five mass extinctions, although as geologist and cave expert Dr Emil Silvestru explains, the evidence supports only one major geological ending, consistent with Genesis 6–eight (see The Permian extinction: National Geographic comes close to the truth). The worst is claimed to be the Permian–Triassic (P–Tr) extinction, 251 1000000 uniformitarian years ago:

Nine in ten of all species on the planet went extinct. Nosotros phone call information technology the 'Great Dying'. Life on Earth came and so most to being wiped out that it took more than ten million years to recover. But new life-forms slowly evolved to fill the openings left past the Permian holocaust.

Nevertheless, it's worth comparing this with the Cambrian Explosion, the rapid appearance of new phyla, including the phylum Chordata to which we belong, with no ancestors (run into Exploding evolution and Ediacaran explosion). 1 evolutionary explanation is that these phyla evolved apace to fill vacant ecological niches. So why did non a single new phylum evolve, and exercise then equally quickly, after the Permian extinction? Instead, a pig-sized mammal-like reptile called Lystrosaurus, not only survived only supposedly became the most dominant land vertebrate of all time: Lystrosaurus comprised 95% of all land vertebrates in the early Triassic, past evolutionary dating.

Tyson goes on to merits, "Among the biggest winners were the dinosaurs." Only as shown, the biggest winners under evolutionary dating were the lystrosaurs. Rather, according to that 'dating', dinosaurs go dominant only later the Triassic-Jurassic extinction, 50 million years afterwards the P-Tr extinction.

Extremophiles

commons.wikimedia.org

Tardigrade

Tyson discusses the amazingly hardy water bears or tardigrades, "most the size of a pinpoint":

I know an fauna that can live in boiling water or in solid ice. Information technology can go ten years without a drop of water. It can travel naked in the cold vacuum and intense radiation of space and will return unscathed. … It'southward equally at home atop the tallest mountains and in the deepest trenches of the bounding main. … The tardigrades accept survived all five mass extinctions.

They have fascinated us too—encounter Life at the extremes: Development struggles to explain the existence of extremophiles (e.k. the tardigrades). The bespeak is not Tyson's, that life could accept arisen in very harsh places, but, every bit i evolutionist put it, "tardigrades appear to be over-engineered."³⁶

Origin of life

Afterwards a bizarre show-free diversion most the possibility of life in the liquid hydrocarbons on Saturn'south moon Titan, Tyson resorts to some false humility:

wikipedia.org

Saturn'south moon Titan

Nobody knows how life got started. Near of the evidence from that time was destroyed by impact and erosion. Science works on the frontier between knowledge and ignorance. We're not afraid to admit what we don't know. At that place's no shame in that. The only shame is to pretend that nosotros take all the answers. Possibly someone watching this will be the first to solve the mystery of how life on Globe began.

Of course, Tyson acts every bit if he knows for sure that life did not have a designer and instead evolved from not-living chemicals. This is a tenet of his materialistic faith. And then he proposes:

The evidence from living microbes suggest that their earliest ancestors preferred loftier temperatures. Life on Earth may have arisen in hot water around submerged volcanic vents.

This merely ignores the huge problems: the edifice blocks of life are extremely unstable at high temperature. Organisms that thrive in high temperatures, thermophiles, have elaborate repair machinery, but a hot primordial soup (i.due east that from which the beginning building blocks originated according to evolutionary theory) would lack these. See Hydrothermal origin of life?

From goo to you

Tyson concludes this episode with another tribute to his mentor and predecessor:

In Carl Sagan's original Cosmos serial, he traced the unbroken thread that stretches directly from the one-celled organisms of nigh iv billion years ago to you. Four billion years in [a slide-show of] 40 seconds. From creatures who had yet to discern day from night to beings who are exploring the creation. Those are some of the things that molecules exercise given four billion years of development.

Dimetrodon
Credit: Wikipedia.org

It matters non that fifty-fifty evolutionists deny that a number of the creatures depicted were in the line leading to human. E.g. the slide-show distinctly showed a Dimetrodon, a carnivorous mammal-similar reptile up to 5 m long with a distinctive 'sheet' on its back, at present not thought to be ancestral to mammals. Simply this fact-complimentary slide testify is designed to create an impression that evolution is a well-documented fact. This is in line with Tyson'southward religious applause earlier in the episode:

Some claim that evolution is only a theory, equally if it were merely an opinion [but come across our Arguments we think creationists should Non use—JS]. The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact. Evolution actually happened. Accepting our kinship with all life on World is not only solid science. In my view, it'due south also a soaring spiritual experience.

This the crux of the whole serial. Goo-to-you evolution is actually a pseudo-intellectual crutch for the bullheaded religion of disbelief, or in the words of the Apostle of Antitheism, Richard Dawkins, "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."³⁷

The evolutionary worldview from which Dr Tyson draws his "soaring spiritual feel" is one which is based on death in the past, death in the present, and which offers nothing just death across the grave. We invite him and all who share his faith to meet the Creator. His name is Jesus Christ. His death on the cross paid the penalty for our sin, and He is the Mode, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6). He is also the Resurrection and the Life. As such he offers non only truthful life here and now, but also beyond the grave. The Bible invites us all to choose (Deuteronomy 30:19).

References and notes

1. Bowler, P.J., Evolution: The History of an Idea, Academy of California Printing, 2003. Prof. Peter Bowler was featured in the documentary The Voyage that Shook the World (2009). Return to text.
2. Total title: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Option, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, John Murray, London, 1859. Return to text.
3. Herbert, Sandra, in The Voyage that Shook the World (DVD), 2009. See likewise creation.com/motion picture-interviews. Prof. Herbert is author of Charles Darwin: Geologist, for which she was awarded the 2006 Suzanne J. Levinson Prize of the History of Science Society. Return to text.
4. Wilkins, J., An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, Sa. Gallibrand and John Martin, London, p. 164, 1668. Render to text.
5. Kircher, A., Arca Noë, 1675. Return to text.
6. Reilly, Conor, South.J., Male parent Athanasius Kircher, S.J.: Main of an Hundred Arts, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 44(176):457–468, Winter 1955. Return to text.
7. A term coined by leading evolutionist Ernst Mayr (1904–2005), from Greek állos ἄλλος (other) and patrís πατρίς (homeland). Return to text.
8. Lange, K., Development of dogs: wolf to woof, National Geographic, p. 5, Jan 2001. Render to text.
9. Junker, R. and Scherer, Due south., Evolution: Ein kritisches Lehrbuch, Weyel Lehrmittelverlag, Gießen, Germany, 4^th edition, p. 39, 1998. Return to text.
10. A dog called Jacksy, New Scientist 174(2343):19, 18 May 2002. Return to text.
11. van Gelder, R.G., Mammalian hybrids and generic limits by Richard K., American Museum novitates 2635, American Museum of Natural History, NY 1977; citing International Zoo Yearbook 5:347, 1975 (thanks to Dr Jean 1000. Lightner for pointing this out). Render to text.
12. Actually 2s/(i–eastward^–2sN), where s = selection coefficient and N is the population size. This asymptotically converges downwards to 2s where sN is large. And then it'south much harder for large populations to substitute beneficial mutations. Merely smaller populations have their own disadvantages, due east.g. they are less probable to produce whatever good mutations, and are vulnerable to the deleterious furnishings of inbreeding and genetic drift. This is explained in Spetner, Lee, Not Past Risk, The Judaica Press, Brooklyn, Due north, 1997. Return to text.
13. A phrase coined past Kenneth Hsü, The Keen Dying, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego, 1986. David Raup likewise argued for elements of luck in Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? WW Norton, NY, 1991. Return to text.
14. Sanford, J.C., Baumgardner, J.R. and Brewer, W.H., Selection threshold severely constrains capture of beneficial mutations, submitted for publication, 2010. Return to text.
15. Ey, L. and Batten, D., Weasel, a flexible program for investigating deterministic computer 'demonstrations' of development, J. Creation 16(2):84–88, 2002; creation.com/weasel. Return to text.
16. Sanford, J.C., Baumgardner, J.R., Brewer, W.H., Gibson, P. and ReMine, Westward.R., Mendel's Accountant: A biologically realistic forwards-fourth dimension population genetics program, Scalable Calculating: Practice and Experience eight(2):147–165, June 2007; http://193.201.164.120/vols/vol08/no2/SCPE_8_2_02.pdf. Return to text.
17. Sanford, J.C., Baumgardner, J.R., Brewer, W.H., Gibson, P. and ReMine, W.R., Using computer simulation to understand mutation accumulation dynamics and genetic load, in Y. Shi et al. (eds.), Computational Science—ICCS 2007, Part 2, Lecture Notes in Informatics 4488, Springer–Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, pages 386–392; www.springerlink.com/content/l636614g73322302. Return to text.
18. Polanyi, Grand., Life's irreducible construction, Science 160:1308, 1968. Render to text.
19. Come across too Sarfati, J., Dna: marvellous messages or generally mess? Creation 25(two):26–31, 2003; creation.com/message. Return to text.
20. Gibson, P., Baumgardner, J.R., Brewer, West.H., Sanford, J.C., Selection threshold severely constrains emptying of deleterious mutations, submitted for publication, 2010. They plant that the threshold is higher than expected, well-nigh 10^–three–10^–4. Render to text.
21. Sanford, J.C., Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome, Ivan Press, 2005; see review of the book and the interview with the author in Creation 30(iv):45–47, 2008. Return to text.
22. Kondrashov, A.S., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have nosotros non died 100 times over?, J. Theoret. Biol. 175:583–594, 1995. Render to text.
23. Kondrashov, personal advice to Sanford, cited in Genetic Entropy (Ref. 21). Return to text.
24. Scally, A., and Durbin, R., Revising the human mutation rate: implications for understanding homo evolution; Nature Reviews Genetics 13:745–753, October 2012 | doi:10.1038/nrg3295. (Erratum: Nature Reviews Genetics thirteen:824, November 2012 | doi:10.1038/nrg3353). Return to text.
25. Gibbons, A., Turning Back the Clock: Slowing the Pace of Prehistory: New work suggests that mutations arise more slowly in humans than previously thought, raising questions most the timetable of evolutionary events, Scientific discipline 338(6104):189–191, 12 Oct 2012 | doi:10.1126/science.338.6104.189. Return to text.
26. Despite some recent claims of a few creationists, the term 'natural selection' was never intended to personify nature. Leading evolutionists such equally Darwin himself, Dobzhansky, Dawkins, all intended it to hateful 'differential reproduction'. Nosotros likewise think it's futile to rename it something like 'programmed filling', since the renaming is a distinction without a difference, and would give the impression that creationists have no answer to a known process, every bit per polar bears. Render to text.
27. Martin, J.W., The Samurai Crab, Terra 31(iv):30–34, 1993. Render to text.
28. McAtee, Westward.L., The Effectiveness in Nature of the So-Called Protective Adaptations in the Animal Kingdom, Chiefly as Illustrated past the Food Habits of Nearctic Birds, Smithsonian Misc. Collection 85(seven):ane–201, 16 March, 1932. Return to text.
29. A gimmicky critic of McAtee, Ref. 28, faulted McAtee mainly for non offering an alternative to natural selection—to an evolutionist, this is the just game in town. Burt, W.H., Condor 34:196–198, July 1932, elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Condor/files/issues/v034n04/p0196-p0198.pdf. Return to text.
30. McAtee, W.L., Protective resemblances in insects—experiment and theory, Science 79(2051):361–363, xx April 1934 | DOI: ten.1126/science.79.2051.361 Return to text.
31. Behe, 1000.J., Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Claiming to Evolution, The Free Printing, New York, 1996. Render to text.
32. Boyle, A., Einstein and Darwin: A tale of two theories—Q&A with 'Origins' astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, nbcnews.com, ii May 2005. Render to text.
33. The eyes have it: globe's oldest predator institute, canberratimes.com.au, seven Dec 2011 (based on Paterson, J. et al., Nature 480:237–240, 2011). Render to text.
34. Chiliad. Towe, Trilobite eyes: calcified lenses, Science 179:1007–xi, 1973. Render to text.
35. Stammers, C., Trilobite technology: Incredible lens engineering in an 'early' creature, Creation 21(1):23, 1998, creation.com/trilobite. Return to text.
36. Copley, J., Indestructible, New Scientist 164(2209):45–46, 1999. Return to text.
37. Dawkins, C.R., The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin Books, London, England, p. 6, 1991. Return to text.

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Source: https://creation.com/cosmos-neil-degrasse-tyson-episode-2