Scientific Evidence Supports Macroevolution

Protein Functional Redundancy Pro is arguing that having the same or similar cytochrome c sequence in two different species is evidence of common ancestry, and yet, if the sequences are very different, evolutionists simply increase the time of divergence between the two species, or even vary the mutation rate in order to account for such differences. It this case evolution doesn"t predict biologic universals, but merely accommodates them. If the absence of similar sequences can"t disprove evolution, neither can its presence prove it. Just because the similarity of cytochrome c in humans and apes isn"t by common descend doesn"t imply that it"s random, it merely suggest it came to be so by other means. But let me address Pro"s claim that "the more distantly related a particular species is, the more it gradually differs in the sequences which comprise its genes." If this were true, we should see greater levels of divergence of cytochrome from a common ancestor as we move up the evolutionary chain. But as we move from the bacteria Rhodospirillum to yeast, to plants, to insects, up to fish, then to amphibians, then to reptiles, to birds and finally to mammals, we find the degree of divergence from Rhodospirillum"s cytochrome to be quite uniform. The cytochrome c of the silkworm moth also shows a significantly uniform degree of divergence from organisms such as tuna, wheat, bullfrog, penguin, kangaroos and humans. (Wikipeda: cytochrome c and matrices in Brand, 157; Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Origins by Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon, 37.) Why would the degree of divergence of cytochrome c between bacteria and horses be the same as the divergence between bacteria and insects?" The evolutionary linage from cell to bacteria, cell to horse, and cell to insect, are radically different, crying out for different divergence rates. Again, rattlesnakes and turtles are more closely related on the evolutionary scale than they are to humans, seeing they are reptiles and we are mammals. Evolution therefore expects the rattlesnake"s cytochrome c to be more similar to the turtle"s than to the human"s. But this isn"t what we find. The cytochrome c of the rattlesnake varies in 22 places from that of the turtle but only in 14 places from that of a human." (See matrix in Brand, 134.) Atavism Pro claims that humans have grown tails, and uses this as proof of atavism, but what he calls a tail isn"t really a tail at all, but the caudal appendage " which bears none of the unique biological features of a tail. One example comes from the May 20, 1982 New England Journal of Medicine where a baby was born with a 2-inch long growth of skin on its back, but this wasn"t a tail as claimed by evolutionist. It didn"t have bones in it as a posterior extension of the vertebral column, nor did it have the necessary muscles associated with the vertebrae to facilitate its movement, nor was it even located in the right position on the back to be a tail. To extrapolate descent from a monkey-like ancestors from such trivial data as a mere outgrowth of skin sounds more like wishful thinking than science. When evolutionists don"t know the reason for a biological structure, they assume it must be vestigial, and so they assume the so-called tail that temporarily develops in human embryos is a vestigial remnant of when our ancestors had tails. But we now know from biology that the caudal appendage (or caudal eminence) isn"t vestigial, but quite necessary. In a 2004 study of 52 human embryos published in Cells Tissues Organs, it was found that "The eminence produces the caudal part of the notochord and, after closure of the caudal neuropore, all caudal structures, but it does not produce even a temporary "tail" in the human."# So the caudal eminence is important for developing the spinal cord and other caudal structures. "Further caudally, the spinal cord is formed by "secondary neurulation," which is the coalescence of chain vesicles that becomes continuous with the lumen of the neural tube about three weeks after the closure of the caudal neuropore. The vesicles are derived from the caudal eminence, a mass of pluripotent cells located dorsal to the developing coccyx."# Pluripotent cells are those cells which can become other types of cells depending on the instructions given to them. This means that the caudal appendage is the source of the cells used to produce vesicles which are necessary for the development of the spinal cord. That"s why it is a mass of pluripotent cells " it is the source of cells that develop into several structures. When the spinal cord and the other caudal structures are finally complete, the embryo no longer needs those pluripotent cells and that"s why it goes away. Sometimes abnormalities occur during pregnancy and the caudal appendage doesn"t go away, and the child is born with a mass of tissue extending from the posterior. But this is not a tail - it is simply an outgrowth of skin. The myth that humans have temporary tails during embryonic development is therefore an invention by the fertile imagination of evolutionists; even the so-called vestigial hind legs in whales are not useless remnants of an evolutionary past, but rather, are integral in strengthening the reproductive organs. Sperm whales are huge, growing up to 62 feet long. They have a 5.5 inch bump on its side, and under this skin is a 5-inch long bone bearing no resemblance to a leg. There is no photographic evidence of an atavistic leg dangling uselessly from the underbelly of whales; if Pro has such evidence I"d like to see it. Ontogeny The prediction that one"s evolutionary history is reflected in embryonic development seems too vague to be scientifically meaningful. In this regard I"d like to ask Pro for clarification on how this hypothesis is actually tested: First, how do you objectively measure similarities of various ontogenies? Second, what aspects of an organism"s evolutionary history will be reflected in its ontogeny, and why those aspects and not others? Third, is revising the phylogenies also an option? If there are no clear boundaries to such revision, it makes falsifiability a mere illusion - but unfalsifiable theories aren"t scientific. I admit that vertebrate embryos are similar at one stage in their development, but the earlier stages of cleavage and gastrulation are very different. The similarities are compatible with special creation, so its not like common descent is the only option. It takes only 20 minutes to a few hours for a new generation of bacteria to grow. There is much variation in bacteria and many mutations, but they never evolve into anything new. "They always remain bacteria. "Similarly, it only takes 9 days for fruit flies to mature from egg to adulthood; laboratory scientist have seen variation and mutation over many generations but they don"t turn into anything new " they always run into the limits of variation. One experiment bread fruit flies 20 times faster than normal for 35 years, and concluded that not only was macroevolution not happening, but that "The probability of fixation in wild populations should be even lower than its likelihood in these experiments."# Many years of study and experimentation on countless generations of bacteria and fruit flies all over the world shows that evolution is not happening today. If highly trained scientists are unable to produce new species by artificially inducing and selecting favorable mutations, is it likely that an unintelligent process would do a better job? If intelligent agents can"t accomplish macroevolution, what are the odds that blind chance could do it?