Brannon Howse: Christianest Jerk Ever?
I recently read this post on David W. Irish’s blog. Basically, David tried to comment on an article about evolution written by Ray Comfort on Worldview Weekend, an ultra-fundamentalist crazy conservative Christian (they claim) website. Ray’s article claimed that there are no transitional fossils, which, if evolution were true, there should be plenty. Unfortunately for Ray, the truth (not that he cares) is that there most certainly are tons of transitional fossils.
David’s comment, which you can read on his blog, was thoughtful and talked about several specific transitional fossils. To his surprise and dismay, a few hours after submitting his comment, David recieved this email:
Brannon@worldviewweekend.com”
1:20 pm (15 minutes ago)
to priscus.forem@gmail.com
date Apr 15, 2008 1:20 PM
subject your feedbackyour feedback was rejected because it was soooo lame.
If you really think there is even one transitional fossil then you should go find it and put it on E-bay because the leading evolutionist have admitted they do not have even one. I could send you their quotes and the books in which they wrote this if you really wanted to be educated…but I don’t think you are interested in being educated but in repeating lies so you can keep believing lies.
Very sad.
Next time you offer feedback try not to write fairy tales and it might get accepted.
Thank you.
Well holy cow. Sounds like someone is afraid of facts.
More than a little angered by this, I went to the same article and tried to leave a comment along the lines of, “I would gladly list some transitional fossils here, but we’ve already seen that the administrators of this website are afraid of the truth. I’m looking at you, Brannon!” A little acerbic, I admit.
Today, I got this email:
from Brannon@worldviewweekend.com
to jason@jeffthefish.com,
date Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 9:50 AM
subject your feedbackhide details 9:50 AM (5 hours ago)
Reply
your feedback was rejected because it was soooo lame.
If you really think there is even one transitional fossil then you should go find it and put it on E-bay because the leading evolutionist have admitted they do not have even one. I could send you their quotes and the books in which they wrote this if you really wanted to be educated…but I don’t think you are interested in being educated but in repeating lies so you can keep believing lies.
Very sad.
Next time you offer feedback try not to write fairy tales and it might get accepted.
Thank you.
Huh. Interesting. A little miffed, I sent this reply:
Brannon, you should be ashamed of yourself. I will be praying for you. You need to grow up. I was always under the impression that Christians had an obligation to the truth. You, apparently, have the opposite obligation.
And if this is your official rejection email, your organization also has a lot of growing up to do. I know I am not the first person to get this exact same email response from you:
http://priscusforem.blogspot.com/2008/04/email-reply-from-christian-worldview.html
I also went to the Worldview Weekend homepage to look for a general contact address. I thought, as David W. Irish did, that perhaps Brannon was some punk kid stepping out of his bounds and being a poor representation of his organization, not to mention poor Jesus! The email address I found was info@worldviewweekend.
Then I got this email from Brannon:
to Jason J Brunet jason@jeffthefish.com,
date Wed, Apr 16, 2008 at 10:20 AM
subject Re: your feedbackReply
tough…deal with it…it is my site, I built it, I run it and I will do whatever I please with it. Don’t like it then don’t come to my site, start your own site for the 2 people that would come to read it.
I don’t have to print your fairy tales about anything if I don’t want to. If you want to confuse people with your lies about transitional fossils then do it on your own site.
BTW, I like how you still have not answered the question. Tell me where there is even one transitional fossil? Who holds it, where is it kept, where is a picture of it? In what publication is this transitional fossil written about? Remember a transitional fossil is one kind changing into another. Not mico-evolution. (Are you keeping up with me here on the terms? I don’t want to go over your head. Here is a little information for you from one of my books.
Dr. Colin Patterson, an evolutionist with the British Museum of Natural History, wrote a book but did not include a single picture of a transitional fossil. When someone wrote him to ask why this was the case, Dr. Patterson responded:
I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualize such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic license, would that not mislead the reader? . . . As a paleontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type of organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.40
Stephen Jay Gould is perhaps one of the most well-known evolutionists, and he, too, recognizes the problem: “The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.”41 Gould also states, “I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.”42
Wah wah wee wah! What a prick! This is how I found out he owns the website and the company. I think he may be a one man operation. His ego is certainly big enough.
To this I replied:
Yeah, don’t worry. This will all be going on my website where both people can see the kind of people Creationists are.
To answer your question: Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus. That’s three. Also, every therapsid. That’s hundreds.
The rest of the email exchange went as follows:
Brannon: great..thanks for the promotion.
Jason: Don’t mention it. You have one of the most entertaining sites on the web
Brannon: dude, I own the company…who do you think is going to stop me?
Jason: I didn’t know you owned the company until you responded to my complaint to the info address. I don’t think anyone is going to stop you. I’m certainly not trying to. I’m just trying to educate people.
Brannon: nothing wrong with that..it is a free country.
So there you have it. Brannon Howse is a tremendous jerk. His website claims to teach people to think and live like a Christian. How would he know where to start? I think it’s more likely that Brannon is a huckster and a fraud who just wants to make some money on the backs of the true believers. And now there are two more people in the world who have seen him for what he is. Not to mention poor Jesus.
EDIT: I forgot to point out that Brannon ignored the fact that I provided examples of transitional fossils.
Stumble it!
April 16th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
as one of the two people who will ever read this, i feel obligated to respond.
you weren’t kidding when you mentioned a big ego. first thing you notice when you go to his website is “click here to download my picture.” second thing you notice is that my mom could probably throw together a better looking website than him.
putting that aside, transitional fossils is a highschool science class subject.
finally, coming from the christian perspective, wouldn’t it be more christ-like to say something along the lines of “i respectfully disagree with your opinion on this one matter, but the more important thing is that you believe jesus died for your sins…”? that’s pretty much where we stand anyway being that there are so many protestant denominations which disagree on everything except that jesus’ sacrifice is the way to heaven.
he’s right though. it’s a free country. he has a constitutional right to be wrong as much as he chooses.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
It’s people like that Brannon Howse that convinced me to leave Christianity…it’s people like you that keep my mind open to coming back.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
You have a pretty big user base already don’t you?
meh. Bring on the education Jason. I sure do enjoy reading it.
April 17th, 2008 at 6:09 am
Thanks guys!
Yeah, why would anyone want to download his picture? Ugh.
Thank you Taisha. That means a lot to me.
Kevin, I’m not sure how big my user base is. It’s more than two people, for sure. And I love educating you.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:04 am
[…] www.jeffthefish.com The Official Website of Baby Rats « Brannon Howse: Christianest Jerk Ever? […]
April 17th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Jason, can you tell me how to get rid of transitional fossils? I have the opposite problem as this Brandon guy. I keep tripping over them there are so many in my apartment! JEEZ!
April 17th, 2008 at 7:25 am
Geoff,
You’d have to talk to Brannon or Ray about that one.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:26 am
Geoff: Apparently there is a market for them on ebay.
April 17th, 2008 at 9:29 am
I forgot about that! Here you go, Geoff:
http://search.ebay.com/transitional-fossils_W0QQfrppZ50QQfsopZ1QQmaxrecordsreturnedZ300
April 17th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Ha. Awesome. I forgot about that Worldview Weekend Site. I went there once and the pure ugliness of the site kept me from going back. Nevermind the ridiculous content.
Besides it takes up enough time to refute Ray’s nonsense on his own website. Have you had an exhange with Terry Burton yet? What a whack-job that guy is.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Yeah, I completely gave up on Terry. It’s pointless even to talk to him, and it seems obvious that the guy is not in his right mind.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:21 am
[…] who else learned that Brannon Howse is a jerk through reading my […]
April 18th, 2008 at 10:01 am
[…] Brannon Howse is a jerk. Stumble […]
April 20th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
[…] Brannon Howse is wrong about everything. […]
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm
I found your blog while doing some digging of my own after reading some unbelievable reactionary tripe of Howse’s someone quoted on a UK newspaper blog.
Congratulations on digging up the info about Howse’s set-up and letting him confirm (as if there was any doubt) that he is indeed a jerk of the first water.
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:51 pm
Thanks Gus! The thing that’s great about Howse is that, like Ray Comfort, he can unite Christians and atheists in a battle against a common enemy. The thing I don’t like about Howse is everything else.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:11 am
[…] you remember Brannon Howse, the jerkwad who sparked a firestorm of people sending me photos of themselves reading […]
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:27 am
When you have about a week (or 5 minutes) of free time, check out this site in detail: AnswersInGenesis.org
July 22nd, 2008 at 6:29 am
That’s a good one too, if you don’t like facts or anything.
November 18th, 2008 at 7:02 am
[…] you may remember Brannon Howse from the time he was such a jerk. You maybe didn’t know that he was running for mayor of a […]
January 19th, 2009 at 9:28 am
If you would like to learn with an open mind look at this. Politics of personal destruction on either side does not educate the populace and arrive at the truth.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v27/i2/whale.asp
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:07 am
Hi
Too bad you can’t keep the emotions out of the argument, but answersin genesis.org is very good. I don’t think bashing anyone is acceptable. We are to love our neighbors whether we agree or not. Who is our neighbor?
A person really can’t believe in Darwinian Evolution (life comes from non life) if they believe the Bible and what Christ did for us.
Heather
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:11 am
“Too bad you can’t keep the emotions out of the argument…”
It depends who I’m talking to.
“…but answersin genesis.org is very good.”
I strongly disagree.
“A person really can’t believe in Darwinian Evolution (life comes from non life) if they believe the Bible and what Christ did for us.”
Many people do. I’m leaning towards not believing the Bible though.
Also, you seem to equate “Darwinian” evolution with life coming from nonlife. They are related but separate questions. You can easily believe that God created the first simple self-replicating molecules, and it would not touch the evidence in favor of evolution.
February 23rd, 2009 at 9:12 am
Also, thanks for commenting, Heather. I really, really appreciate it!
February 26th, 2009 at 10:52 am
Jason, you could not educate a frog. Your the pot calling the kettle black. So your a Darwin evolution supporter, are you racist also?? You might as well swallow the whole camel.
February 26th, 2009 at 10:54 am
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
February 26th, 2009 at 11:05 am
[…] has left this comment on an old post: Jason, you could not educate a frog. Your [sic] the pot calling the kettle black. […]
February 26th, 2009 at 11:07 am
JW:
http://jeffthefish.com/2009/02/26/jw-wants-to-know-if-im-a-racist/
February 27th, 2009 at 2:52 am
Jason, if you believe in Darwin Evolution, then you must also believe in eating giant rheas. HE ATE GIANT RHEAS, JASON. Potentially rare ones! What kind of sicko ARE you, anyway? Might as well swallow the whole giant rhea.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Hey guys, how do you eat a giant rhea?
ONE BITE AT A TIME AMIRIGHT???
March 7th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
Actually if you read through all the responses from Jason and Brannon, you both sound pretty arrogant to me. Both of you just let it go. There is NOTHING constructive going to come from this grade school exchange. What a waste of bandwidth.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Eleven months ago.
March 8th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Oh ouch !!!!
March 11th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Darwin even refuted what today is preached as Darwinianism
March 11th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
1. What is “Darwinianism”?
2. Assuming that by “Darwinianism” you really meant to say “the theory of evolution”, where exactly did Darwin refute it?
3. Assuming that Darwin did refute it, why should I care? His opinion is worthless compared to the vast amount of evidence we’ve accumulated since he published.
4. How the hell are all you people finding this site?
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:33 am
Does anybody know how to get a hold of Brannon Howse? I ordered something through his online store in mid Feb and still have yet to receive it. I am about to take legal action if I do not receive my products soon. Personally, I hate the man and wish I never bought anything from him.
I have info@worldviewweekend.com and a cell phone number listed on his website, but it goes straight to a message saying their voicemail box is full.
April 3rd, 2009 at 7:29 am
I don’t have anything, sorry Brad. Let us know how it turns out though if you decide to take legal action.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
It takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation. It is impossible to look around and not see intelligent design. Take the human body for example, how many evolutionary changes to get it right? C’mon think about it! For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20(northern lights, seasons, stars, planets, sun and moon in perfect unison, plants and trees that go dormant, metamorphis, thunderstorms and the list goes on and on. How many failures through evolution to get it right-impossible!
May 7th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
You don’t understand the theory of evolution.
Also, you are making an argument from personal incredulity: I can’t imagine how X could have evolved naturally, therefore X couldn’t have evolved naturally. This is a logical fallacy.
Can you provide any positive evidence for creationism?
July 16th, 2009 at 6:28 am
“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth His handiwork.”
Psalm 19:1
Science teaches us that design, complexity and order never happen by chance. When you look at a building you don’t need any additional evidence there was a builder….the building is proof enough. No one would ever look at a beautiful painting and believe that it just happened. They would logically conclude if there is a painting then there is a painter.
Micro-evolution which is simply small adaptions within a species is just one more proof that there is a designer. Macro- evolution which says all life came from one single celled organism is foolishness. If there is a creation then we know from science then there is a Creator.
Jason,
You imply by your comments that you are speaking as a Christian or a follower of Jesus Christ. That is not honest. Write whatever you want and I wish you the best on your website, but please leave Jesus out of it.
Sincerely,
Jim
July 16th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Jim,
You haven’t demonstrated that the universe is a creation.
At the time I wrote this, I was a Christian. I was not being dishonest. I would also ask that you believe whatever you want, but please leave science out of it.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Jason,
do you not know that the truth found in true science screams out for the intelligent designer? You need to think about what God’s Word says to you
The Designer of your soul loves you!
August 25th, 2009 at 11:43 am
I’ve heard people make that claim, but I haven’t heard anyone ever back it up with evidence, as much as I wish it were true.
August 31st, 2009 at 8:40 pm
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/natural_history_2_15.html
September 1st, 2009 at 2:23 am
Oh dear Lord, why do you do this to me? Why?
September 16th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
CMI’s response to PBS-TV series Evolution
Episode 2: Great Transformations
by Jonathan Sarfati
This episode tries to prove the ‘big picture’ of evolution, i.e. the ‘General Theory of Evolution’, i.e. particles to people. Of course, no experimental evidence can be offered, only inference. The experimental ‘evidence’ adduced in the series for ‘evolution’ is purely for change that doesn’t increase information content, and so actually has nothing to do with the ‘big picture’.
The program also made a revealing comment: ‘The evidence for evolution is all around us, if we choose to look for it.’ Revealing not because I think the evidence really supports evolution, but because of an important point inadvertently made. That is, creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence (‘facts’), but we interpret it differently because of our different axioms (starting assumptions). In reality, evolutionists have a materialistic bias, where a common designer is rejected a priori (see Lewontin’s admission), and this applies even to evolutionists who believe in ‘God’. Therefore any facts are interpreted as evidence for evolution. This would probably explain why a lot of the science in the series is not even directly stated as evidence for evolution, but is shown as if it is. It also explains why fragmentary remains are interpreted as an important transitional form. Conversely, creationists do not dispute the facts, since we have the same facts, although as shown we will frequently dispute assertions claimed to be facts when they are certainly not!
First, the narrator asserts that all living organisms come from a single source, and we can now trace branches and roots. They fail to explain how non-living chemicals could form a living cell by time and chance, despite the insuperable chemical hurdles (see Q&A: Origin of Life). Interestingly, the producer Richard Hutton, on this Washington Post online forum, answered the question ‘What are some of the larger questions which are still unanswered by evolutionary theory?’ as follows:
‘ There are open questions and controversies, and the fights can be fierce. Just a few of them:
The origin of life. There is no consensus at all here — lots of theories, little science. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t cover it in the series. The evidence wasn’t very good.’ …
No, it certainly isn’t, but of course he couldn’t have the viewers knowing that! I.e. the very roots of the alleged evolutionary tree are in very bad shape. So they gloss over the problems, assert that there really is a well-documented tree, and then move on to finding similarities between organisms and claiming that this proves a common ancestor.
Deep time
Neil Shubin, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago, is a key star of this show. He claimed that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and to show how insignificant humans are, he scaled this time to one hour. Then, he claimed, animals existed only in the last 10 minutes, while humans appeared only in the last 100th of a second.
Despite the series’ claim to be respectful of Christianity, this is one of many examples of the contradiction of evolution/billions of years with Christ’s teachings. Jesus says in Mark 10:6, ‘But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.’ This is consistent with His belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis, where the Earth was created about 4000 years before He spoke those words, and Adam and Eve created on Day 6, which on the scale of 4000 years is almost indistinguishable from the beginning. But it’s diametrically opposed to Shubin’s illustration, which has man appearing almost at the end, not the beginning–and has about 4.5 billion years without humans at all. There are also many scientific problems with any assertions about dating the Earth. The conflicts between billions of years with both Christ and true science are well outlined in The earth: how old does it look?
Whale evolution?
This was a tricky problem for Darwin, but nevertheless he still had faith that whales evolved from land mammals. The paleontologist Phil Gingerich of the University of Michigan agrees that ‘it’s a real puzzle how whales originally evolved.’ But on this episode, he gives the impression that his fossil finds have gone a long way towards solving this puzzle.
Pakicetus
Left: Gingerich’s Pakicetus reconstruction
Right: Actual bones found (stippled).
Note: nothing below skull.
Gingerich discovered in Pakistan a few skull fragments of a wolf-like creature that allegedly had an inner ear like a whale’s. But this is far from conclusive. There wasn’t any post-cranial skeleton found, so we haven’t the faintest idea how it moved. However, this didn’t stop Gingerich from writing an article for schoolteachers with an illustration of an animal swimming and catching fish, and looking convincingly like an intermediate between land animals and whales. He also claimed, ‘In time and in its morphology, Pakicetus is perfectly intermediate, a missing link between earlier land mammals and later, full-fledged whales.’1 The diagram (left) shows the glaring contrast between reconstruction and reality.
New research since this series was produced has blown away this reconstruction. This demonstrates an oft-repeated phenomenon in evolutionary paleontology. Many of the alleged transitional forms are based on fragmentary remains, which are therefore open to several interpretations, based on one’s axioms. Evolutionary bias means that such remains are often likely to be interpreted as transitional, as with Gingerich, and is also prevalent in ape-man claims. But when more bones are discovered, then the fossils nearly always fit one type or another, and are no longer plausible as transitional. It’s also notable that alleged intermediate forms are often trumpeted in the media, while retractions are usually muted or unpublicized.
Pakicetus … eight years on. Illustration: Carl Buell
A prominent whale expert, Thewissen, and colleagues unearthed some more bones of Pakicetus, and published their work in the journal Nature.2 The commentary on this paper in the same issue3 says, ‘All the postcranial bones indicate that pakicetids were land mammals, and … indicate that the animals were runners, with only their feet touching the ground.’ (See illustration, left) This is very different from Gingerich’s picture of an aquatic animal! But the evolutionary bias is still clear, describing Pakicetus as a ‘terrestrial cetacean’ and saying, ‘The first whales were fully terrestrial, and were even efficient runners.’ But the term ‘whale’ becomes meaningless if it can describe land mammals, and it provides no insight into how true marine whales supposedly evolved.
Also, ‘solid anatomical data’ contradict previous theories of whale ancestry. The news article Fossil Finds Show Whales Related to Early Pigs says:
‘Until now paleontologists thought whales had evolved from mesonychians, an extinct group of land-dwelling carnivores, while molecular scientists studying DNA were convinced they descended from artiodactyls [even-toed ungulates].
‘“The paleontologists, and I am one of them, were wrong,” Gingerich said.’
Such candor is commendable, and it shows the fallacy of trusting alleged ‘proofs’ of evolution. Pity that Gingerich is still committed to materialistic evolutionism.
Ambulocetus
Top: Ambulocetus skeleton, as drawn in Miller’s book
Middle: Ambulocetus reconstruction, as drawn in Miller‘s book
Bottom: Actual bones found (Yellow). Note missing pelvic girdle.
This was mentioned fairly briefly in this episode, but it features prominently in the anti-creationist book Finding Darwin’s God, by Kenneth Miller who starred in Episode 1 (see rebuttal). On p. 265, Miller claimed, ‘the animal could move easily both on land and in water’, and contained a drawing of a complete skeleton and a reconstructed animal. But this is misleading, bordering on deceitful, and indicative of Miller’s unreliability, because there was no indication of the fact that far fewer bones were actually found than appear in his diagram. Crucially, the all-important pelvic girdle was not found (see diagram, right). Without this, it’s presumptuous for Miller to make that proclamation. His fellow evolutionist Annalisa Berta pointed out:
‘… since the pelvic girdle is not preserved, there is no direct evidence in Ambulocetus for a connection between the hind limbs and the axial skeleton. This hinders interpretations of locomotion in this animal, since many of the muscles that support and move the hindlimb originate on the pelvis.’4
See also A Whale of a Tale?, including the addendum addressing claims of subsequent Ambulocetus bones and their (ir)relevance to evolution.
Basilosaurus
This serpentine and fully aquatic mammal has been known since the 19th century, but Gingerich discovered something new in some specimens in the Sahara Desert. The narrator pointed out that this area was under water once, and described a 100-mile stretch of layered sandstone called the ‘valley of the whales’, and allegedly 40 million years old. They theorize that it was a protected bay where whales came to give birth and to die. Gingerich discovered what he alleged were a pelvis, leg bones and a knee cap, so was evidence of ‘functioning legs’ and ‘dramatic proof that whales were once fully four-legged mammals.’
But this contradicts other evolutionists, including Gingerich himself! E.g. the National Academy of Science’s Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science claimed, ‘they were thought to be non-functional’ (p. 18), and Gingerich himself said elsewhere ‘it seems to me that they could only have been some kind of sexual and reproductive clasper’.5 So these bones can be explained as a design feature, while the interpretation as ‘legs’ reflects evolutionary wishful thinking. (The article The strange tale of the leg on the whale refutes another urban myth about whales being found with legs).
Alleged sequence of land-mammal to whale transition, after Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science
Whale evolutionary sequence?
The program claims that there is a series including Ambulocetus, Rhodocetus, etc., where the nostrils supposedly migrate to the back of the head. Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science contains a diagram (left) on p. 18. But when the series is examined, the sequence is not as smooth as they imply. E.g. this diagram failed to indicate that Basilosaurus is actually about 10 times longer than Ambulocetus, and the fragmentary nature of the remains has been discussed already.
Another problem is that Basilosaurus has a number of features that mean it could not possibly have been ancestral to modern whales, e.g. body shape, skull structure and tooth shape.
There is certainly no support for the program’s claim, ‘front legs became fins, rear legs disappeared, bodies lost fur and took on their familiar streamlined shape’. Waving the magic wand of mutation/selection is hardly sufficient without an observable mechanism that would effect these changes.
Locomotion
The program also claims support for a transition from the way they move. Marine mammals move through the water with vertical undulating movements of the spine, just as many fast-running mammals do on land. Fish move with sideways undulations instead. But this could be another common design feature of mammals, like milk or hair. It’s also doubtful whether this is a unique prediction of evolution; if whales used side-to-side movements, evolutionists could presumably have ‘predicted’ this because the tails of land animals also swish sideways.
My book Refuting Evolution, written to rebut Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, has a chapter on alleged whale evolution that covers all this section in more detail, with full documentation. It is available on the CD we produced in answer to the PBS series.
Tetrapod evolution?
Tetrapods are animals with four limbs, i.e. amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. In 1995, Neil Shubin and Ted Daeschler found in Pennsylvanian cliffs a shoulder bone of a tetrapod allegedly 370 million years old.
Cambridge University paleontologist Jenny Clack found an early tetrapod hand in Greenland, called Acanthostega. Supposedly this creature had gills, a fish-like tail, paddle-shaped fins, and a hand with fingers.
She said this refuted the usual textbook theory that fish evolved limbs for a selective advantage because they were being stranded in drying pools. Rather, the limbs evolved before they crawled on the land, while they were still aquatic. The selective advantage was the ability to escape the weird and wonderful predatory fish that lived during this time (called the Devonian Period).
Shubin stressed that ‘evolution wasn’t trying to do this’, and later the program said, ‘we’re here through chance coincidences’. This should make it clear that evolution, as believed by evolutionists, is not ‘progressive’ and shows no sign of a divine guiding hand (see again Darwin’s real message: have you missed it?).
Shubin also highlighted the common limb pattern between tetrapods, illustrated by fish and humans having the sequence one bone/two bones/small bones/rods (digits). But this fails to explain the totally different developmental sequence, as explained in this diagram of my rebuttal to Episode 1.
Cambrian Explosion
Cambridge University paleontologist Simon Conway Morris explained that this was ‘one of the greatest breakthroughs in the history of life.’ Essentially all the different animal phyla (major groups) appeared abruptly, without any known transitional forms preceding them. According to evolutionary dating methods, this was about 500 million years ago. Morris acknowledged that Darwin recognized this as a problem for his theory, with animals appearing out of nowhere. Morris said, ‘to a certain extent that is still a mystery.’ Darwin predicted that animals diverged gradually from a common pattern, so there should be fossil examples of this divergence, while instead we see that the major differences arose abruptly at the beginning. Again, this is according to the evolutionary time frame; Biblical creationists see the fossil record not as a time sequence but a sequence of burial by Noah’s Flood and its aftereffects.
Then the program shifted to the Burgess Shale, with lots of bizarre creatures, e.g. one with five eyes, another worm-like creature with large spines, and still another with prongs around its mouth. But none of this showed what the Cambrian animals could have evolved from. Supposedly the evidence shows that evolution tinkered with a few basic body plans, but provides no evidence for their origins.
Gene switches: means of Evolution?
The 19th century biologist William Bateson found that embryos sometimes grew body parts in the wrong place. From this he theorized that there are underlying controls of certain body parts, and other controls governing where they go.
Ed Lewis investigated and won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for discovering a small set of genes that affect different body parts (Hox or Homeobox–see Hox (homeobox) Genes: Evolution’s Saviour?). They act like ‘architects of the body’. Mutations in these can cause ‘dramatic’ changes, as the program says. Many experiments have been performed on fruit flies (Drosophila), where poisons and radiation induced mutations.
The problem is that they are always harmful. One famous case is Antennapedia, where legs grow where antennae should be. The program showed an extra pair of wings on a fly, but failed to mention that they were a hindrance to flying because there are no accompanying muscles. Both these flies would be eliminated by natural selection.
Walter Gehring of the University of Basel (Switzerland) replaced a gene needed for eye development in a fruit fly with the corresponding gene from a mouse. The fly developed normal fly eyes, i.e. compound eyes rather than lens/camera. This gene is called Eyeless, because absence of this gene means no eyes will form.
However, there is obviously more to the differences between different animals. Eyeless is a switch–it turns on the genetic information needed for eyes. But evolution requires some way of generating the new information that’s to be switched on. The information needed to build a compound eye is vastly different from that needed to build a lens/camera type of eye. By analogy, a switch on a power socket can turn on a light or a laptop, but this hardly proves that a light evolved into a laptop!
All the same, the program says that Eyeless is one of a small number of common genes that cause a common body organisation in many animals. The program illustrated this with diagrams. Supposedly all evolution needed to do was reshuffle packets of information into different combinations.
But as shown, known mutations in these genes cause monstrosities, and different switches are very distinct from what is switched on or off. Also, the embryo develops into its basic body plan before these genes start switching–obviously they can’t be the cause of the plan before they are activated! But the common genes make perfect sense given the existence of a single Creator.
Human Evolution?
Donald Johanson, the discoverer of the alleged missing link ‘Lucy’, featured here. Supposedly humans are part of evolution, despite our unique abilities to design and create works of art. Allegedly about 7 million years ago, our ancestors swung down from the trees and became bipedal. Then they could gather and carry food, and this food could be higher in energy. This fed bigger brains, which in turn helped food to be gathered more efficiently, in a positive feedback. But Johanson said that there are still differences in the skeletons of chimps and humans, e.g. differently shaped pelvis, a different angle where the spine meets the skull, and the way we walk with our knees together while apes walk with their legs far apart.
This episode offered little actual evidence. The fossil record is full of holes, and ‘missing link’ claims become boring after a while because they are so often discredited (e.g. see Time’s alleged ‘ape-man’ trips up (again)). The nearest thing to ‘evidence’ was Liza Shapiro, University of Texas, showing how flexible the lemur’s spine was. The lemur can move on all fours, but leap upright. But this doesn’t show how a quadruped can make all the transformations needed to turn it into a proper biped.
References
Gingerich, P., The Whales of Tethys, Natural History, p. 86, April 1994. Return to text.
Thewissen, J.G.M., Williams, E.M, Roe, L.J. and Hussain, S.T., Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to artiodactyls, Nature 413:277–281, 20 September 2001 (see PDF file). Return to text.
Muizon, C. de, Walking with whales, Nature 413:259–260, 20 September 2001 (see PDF file). Return to text.
Berta, A., What is a Whale? Science 263(5144):180–181, 1994; perspective on Thewissen, J.G.M., Hussain, S.T. and Arif, M., Fossil evidence for the origin of aquatic locomotion in Archeocete whales, same issue, pp. 210—212. Return to text.
The Press Enterprise, 1 July 1990, A-15. Return to text.
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September 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
OH WOW NOW I SEE HOW WRONG I AM THX BI
September 16th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THE US SEEMS TO BE ONLY RICH INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRY THAT SEEMS TO THINK THAT SCIENCE IS GOOD UNLESS THE SCIENCE IS BIOLOGY GET WITH THE PROGRAM EVOLUTION DOES NOT RULE OUT YOUR GOD AND IT IS DEMONSTRABLY OCCURRING AND HAS OCCURRED SORRY FOR THE ALL CAPS BUT I’M TYPING ON AN ALL RAGE KEYBOARD
I MEAN HELP ME OUT GUYS
IT’S A TRAP
AA
November 25th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Certainly you have more than 2 readers. Count me as perhaps the first from southamerica (more exactly, Colombia).
It’s nice to find other christians who are not nuts like Brannon Howse
February 27th, 2010 at 10:51 am
Just browing the internet. Heard Brannon for the first time. Don’t know if I believed him or not. Entered several websites of his detractors. Never read such vituperation. Where is the scholarly refutation? Was his evaluation of Saul Alinsky or Antonio Gramasci wrong — if taken from a Christian perspective. Do you hate Christianity too? What do you know about it, save from childhood recollections? or the quacking lady next door? You are not as informed or as tolerant as you think you are.
February 27th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I don’t remember claiming to be especially tolerant, so I’m not sure how you can know how tolerant I think I am.
As for informed, well, I spent most of my life seeking the Christian God, so yeah, I am pretty well informed about Christianity. Childhood recollections? Quacking lady next door? You are making things up.
No, I do not hate Christianity. But I’m no fan of it.