|
The Myth of Homology
Anyone who studies the different living species
in the world may observe that there are some similar organs and features among
these species. The first person to draw materialistic conclusions from this fact,
which has attracted scientists' attention since the eighteenth century, was Charles
Darwin. Darwin thought that creatures with similar (homologous) organs had
an evolutionary relationship with each other, and that these organs must have
been inherited from a common ancestor. According to his assumption, both pigeons
and eagles had wings; therefore, pigeons, eagles and indeed all other birds with
wings were supposed to have evolved from a common ancestor. Homology is
a tautological argument, advanced on the basis of no other evidence than an apparent
physical resemblance. This argument has never once been verified by a single concrete
discovery in all the years since Darwin's day. Nowhere in the world has anyone
come up with a fossil remain of the imaginary common ancestor of creatures with
homologous structures. Furthermore, the following issues make it clear that homology
provides no evidence that evolution ever occurred. 1. One finds homologous
organs in creatures belonging to completely different phyla, among which evolutionists
have not been able to establish any sort of evolutionary relationship; 2.
The genetic codes of some creatures that have homologous organs are completely
different from one another. 3. The embryological development of homologous
organs in different creatures is completely different. Let us now examine
each of these points one by one.
The Invalidity of Morphological Homology
The homology thesis of the evolutionists
is based on the logic of building an evolutionary link between all living things
with similar morphologies (structures), whereas there are a number of homologous
organs shared by different groups that are completely unrelated to each other.
Wings are one example. In addition to birds, we find wings on bats, which are
mammals, and on insects and even on some dinosaurs, which are extinct reptiles.
Not even evolutionists posit an evolutionary relationship or kinship among those
four different groups of animals. Another striking example is
the amazing resemblance and the structural similarity observed in the eyes of
different creatures. For example, the octopus and man are two extremely different
species, between which no evolutionary relationship is likely even to be proposed,
yet the eyes of both are very much alike in terms of their structure and function.
Not even evolutionists try to account for the similarity of the eyes of the octopus
and man by positing a common ancestor In response, evolutionists
say that these organs are not "homologous" (in other words, from a common ancestor),
but that they are "analogous" (very similar to each other, although there is no
evolutionary connection between them). For example, in their view, the human eye
and the octopus eye are analogous organs. However, the question of which category
they will put an organ into, homologous or analogous, is answered totally in line
with the theory of evolution's preconceptions. And this shows that the evolutionist
claim based on resemblances is completely unscientific. The only thing evolutionists
do is to try to interpret new discoveries in accordance with a dogmatic evolutionary
preconception.
According to the "tree of life" proposed by evolutionists,
octopuses are some of the remotest creatures from man. But the octopus eye has
exactly the same structure as ours. This is an indication that similarity of structure
is no evidence for evolution. | However,
the interpretation they put forward is completely invalid. Because organs which
they have to consider "analogous" sometimes bear such close resemblance to one
another, despite being exceedingly complex structures, that it is totally inconsistent
to propose that this similarity was brought about thanks to coincidental mutations.
If an octopus eye emerged completely by coincidence, as evolutionists claim, then
how is it that vertebrates' eyes can emerge by the very same coincidences? The
famous evolutionist Frank Salisbury, who got dizzy from thinking about this question,
writes: Even something as complex as the
eye has appeared several times; for example, in the squid, the vertebrates, and
the arthropods. It's bad enough accounting for the origin of such things once,
but the thought of producing them several times according to the modern synthetic
theory makes my head swim.282
The wings of a flying reptile, a bird, and a bat. These
wings, between which no evolutionary relationship can be established, possess
similar structures. | According to
the theory of evolution, wings emerged independently of each other four times:
in insects, flying reptiles, birds, and flying mammals (bats). The fact that wing
with very similar structures developed four times-which cannot be explained by
the mechanisms of natural selection/mutation-is yet another headache for evolutionary
biologists. One of the most concrete examples
of such an obstacle in the path of evolutionary theory can be seen in mammals.
According to the accepted view of modern biology, all mammals belong to one of
three basic categories: placentals, marsupials and monotremes. Evolutionists consider
this distinction to have come about when mammals first appeared, and that each
group lived its own evolutionary history totally independent of the other. But
it is interesting that there are "pairs" in placentals and marsupials which are
nearly the same. Placental wolves, cats, squirrels, anteaters, moles and mice
all have their marsupial counterparts with closely similar morphologies.283 In
other words, according to the theory of evolution, mutations completely independent
of each other must have produced these creatures "by chance" twice! This reality
is a question that will give evolutionists problems even worse than dizzy spells.
|
| Starting
with kangaroos, all mammals in the continent of Australia belong to the "pouched"
or marsupial subclass. According to evolutionists, they have no evolutionary relationship
with placental mammals in the other regions of the world. | One
of the interesting similarities between placental and marsupial mammals is that
between the North American wolf and the Tasmanian wolf. The former belongs to
the placental class, the latter to the marsupials. Evolutionary biologists believe
that these two different species have completely separate evolutionary histories.284
(Since the continent of Australia and the islands around it split off from Gondwanaland
(the supercontinent that is supposed to be the originator of Africa, Antarctica,
Australia, and South America) the link between placental and marsupial mammals
is considered to have been broken, and at that time there were no wolves). But
the interesting thing is that the skeletal structure of the Tasmanian wolf is
nearly identical to that of the North American wolf. Their skulls in particular,
as shown on the next page, bear an extraordinary degree of resemblance to each
other. Extraordinary resemblances and similar organs like these,
which evolutionary biologists cannot accept as examples of "homology," show that
homology does not constitute any evidence for the thesis of evolution from a common
ancestor. What is even more interesting is that the exact opposite situation is
to be observed in other living things. In other words, there are living things,
some of whose organs have completely different structures, even though they are
considered to be close relatives by evolutionists. For example, most crustaceans
have eye structures of the "refracting lens" type. In only two species of crustacean-the
lobster and the shrimp-is the completely different "reflecting" type of eye seen.
(See the chapter on Irreducible Complexity.)
The Genetic and Embryological Impasse of Homology
The discovery which really
overthrew homology is that organs accepted as "homologous" are almost all controlled
by very different genetic codes. As we know, the theory of evolution proposes
that living things developed through small, chance changes in their genes, in
other words, mutations. For this reason, the genetic structures of living things
which are seen as close evolutionary relatives should resemble each other. And,
in particular, similar organs should be controlled by similar genetic structures.
However, in point of fact, genetic researchers have made discoveries which conflict
totally with this evolutionary thesis. Similar organs are usually
governed by very different genetic (DNA) codes. Furthermore, similar genetic codes
in the DNA of different creatures are often associated with completely different
organs. The chapter titled "The Failure of Homology" in Michael Denton's book,
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, gives several examples of this, and sums the
subject up in this way: Homologous
structures are often specified by non-homologous genetic systems and the concept
of homology can seldom be extended back into embryology.285
This genetic question has also been raised by the well-known evolutionary biologist
Gavin de Beer. In his book Homology: An Unsolved Problem, published in 1971, de
Beer put forward a very wide-ranging analysis of this subject. He sums up why
homology is a problem for the theory of evolution as follows:
What mechanism can it be that results in
the production of homologous organs, the same 'patterns', in spite of their not
being controlled by the same genes? I asked this question in 1938, and it has
not been answered.286 Although
some 30 years have passed since de Beer wrote those words, they have still received
no answer. A third proof which undermines
the homology claim is the question of embryological development, which we mentioned
at the start. In order for the evolutionary thesis regarding homology to be taken
seriously, the periods of similar structures' embryological development-in other
words, the stages of development in the egg or the mother's womb-would need to
be parallel, whereas, in reality, these embryological periods for similar structures
are quite different from each other in every living creature. Pere Alberch, an
eminent developmental biologist, noted, it is "the rule rather than the exception"
that "homologous structures form from distinctly dissimilar initial states."287 The
emergence of similar structures as the result of totally dissimilar processes
is frequently seen in the latter stages of the development phase. As we know,
many species of animal go through a stage known as "indirect development" (in
other words the larva stage), on their way to adulthood. For instance, most frogs
begin life as swimming tadpoles and turn into four-legged animals at the last
stage of metamorphosis. But alongside this there are several species of frog which
skip the larva stage and develop directly. But the adults of most of these species
that develop directly are practically indistinguishable from those species which
pass through the tadpole stage. The same phenomenon is to be seen in water chestnuts
and some other similar species.288 To conclude,
we can say that genetic and embryological research has proven that the concept
of homology defined by Darwin as "evidence of the evolution of living things from
a common ancestor" can by no means be regarded as any evidence at all. The inconsistency
of homology, which looks quite convincing on the surface, is clearly revealed
when examined more closely.
The fact that almost all land-dwelling
vertebrates have a five-toed or "pentadactyl" bone structure in their hands and
feet has for years been presented as "strong evidence for Darwinism" in evolutionist
publications. However, recent research has revealed that these bone structures
are governed by quite different genes. For this reason, the "homology of pentadactylism"
assumption has today collapsed. |
The Fall of the Homology in Tetrapod Limbs
We have already examined
homology's morphological claim-in other words the invalidity of the evolutionist
claim based on similarities of form in living things-but it will be useful to
examine one well-known example of this subject a little more closely. This is
the "fore- and hindlimbs of quadrupeds," presented as a clear proof of homology
in almost all books on evolution. Quadrupeds, i.e., land-living
vertebrates, have five digits on their fore- and hindlimbs. Although these may
not always look like fingers or toes, they are all counted as "pentadactyl" (five-digit)
due to their bone structure. The hands and feet of a frog, a lizard, a squirrel,
or a monkey all have this same structure. Even the bone structures of birds and
bats conform to this basic design. Evolutionists claim that
all living things descended from a common ancestor, and they have long cited pentadactyl
limb as evidence of this. But they know that this claim actually possesses no
scientific validity. Even today, evolutionists
accept the feature of pentadactylism in living things among which they have been
able to establish no evolutionary link. For example, in two separate scientific
papers published in 1991 and 1996, evolutionary biologist M. Coates reveals that
pentadactylism emerged two separate times, each independently of the other. According
to Coates, the pentadactyl structure emerged independently in anthracosaurs and
amphibians.289 This discovery is a sign that
pentadactylism is no evidence for a "common ancestor." Another
matter which creates difficulties for the evolutionist thesis in this respect
is that these creatures have five digits on both their fore- and hindlimbs. It
is not proposed in evolutionist literature that fore- and hindlimb descended from
a "common limb"; rather, it is assumed that they developed separately. For this
reason, it should be expected that the structure of the fore- and hindlimbs should
be different, the result of different, chance mutations. Michael Denton has this
to say on the subject: [T]he
forelimbs of all terrestrial vertebrates are constructed according to the same
pentadactyl design, and this is attributed by evolutionary biologists as showing
that all have been derived from a common ancestral source. But the hindlimbs of
all vertebrates also conform to the pentadactyl pattern and are strikingly similar
to the forelimbs in bone structure and in their detailed embryological development.
Yet no evolutionist claims that the hindlimb evolved from the forelimb, or that
hindlimbs and forelimbs evolved from a common source… Invariably, as biological
knowledge has grown, common genealogy as an explanation for similarity has tended
to grow ever more tenuous… Like so much of the other circumstantial "evidence"
for evolution, that drawn from homology is not convincing because it
entails too many anomalies, too many counter-instances, far too many phenomena
which simply do not fit easily into the orthodox picture.290 But
the real blow dealt to the evolutionist claim of the homology of pentadactylism
came from molecular biology. The assumption of "the homology of pentadactylism,"
which was long maintained in evolutionist publications, was overturned when it
was realized that the limb structures were controlled by totally different genes
in different creatures possessing this pentadactyl structure. Evolutionary biologist
William Fix describes the collapse of the evolutionist thesis regarding pentadactylism
in this way: The older textbooks
on evolution make much of the idea of homology, pointing out the obvious resemblances
between the skeletons of the limbs of different animals. Thus the `pentadactyl'
[five bone] limb pattern is found in the arm of a man, the wing of a bird, and
flipper of a whale, and this is held to indicate their common origin. Now if
these various structures were transmitted by the same gene couples, varied from
time to time by mutations and acted upon by environmental selection, the theory
would make good sense. Unfortunately this is not the case. Homologous
organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the
different species. The concept of homology in terms of similar genes handed on
from a common ancestor has broken down.291 On
closer examination, William Fix is saying that evolutionist claims regarding "pentadactylism
homology" appeared in old textbooks, but that the claim was abandoned after molecular
evidence emerged. But, unfortunately, some evolutionist sources still continue
to put it forward as major evidence for evolution.
The Invalidity of Molecular Homology
Evolutionists' advancement
of homology as evidence for evolution is invalid not only at the morphological
level, but also at the molecular level. Evolutionists say that the DNA codes,
or the corresponding protein structures, of different living species are similar,
and that this similarity is evidence that these living species have evolved from
common ancestors, or else from each other. For example, it is regularly stated
in the evolutionist literature that "there is a great similarity between the DNA
of a human and that of an ape," and this similarity is presented as a proof for
the evolutionist claim that there is an evolutionary relationship between
man and ape. We must make it clear from the start that
it is no surprise that living creatures on the earth should possess very similar
DNA structures. Living things' basic life processes are the same, and since human
beings possess a living body, they cannot be expected to have a different DNA
structure to other creatures. Like other creatures, human beings develop by consuming
carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins, oxygen circulates through the blood in their
bodies, and energy is produced every second in each of their cells by the use
of this oxygen. For this reason, the fact that living things
possess genetic similarities is no proof of the evolutionist claim that they evolved
from a common ancestor. If evolutionists want to prove their theory of evolution
from a common ancestor, then they have to show that creatures alleged to be each
other's common ancestors have a direct line of descent in their molecular structures;
in fact, however, as we shall shortly be examining, there have been no concrete
discoveries showing any such thing. Let us first of all take
the matter of "the similarity between human and chimpanzee DNA." The latest studies
on this issue have revealed that evolutionist propaganda about a "98 %" or "99
%" similarity between man and chimp is totally erroneous. If
a slightly wider study is made of this subject, it can be seen that the DNA of
much more surprising creatures resembles that of man. One of these similarities
is between man and worms of the nematode phylum. For example, genetic analyses
published in New Scientist have revealed that "nearly 75% of human genes
have some counterpart in nematodes-millimeter-long soil-dwelling worms."292
This definitely does not mean that there is only a 25% difference between man
and these worms! According to the family tree made by evolutionists, the Chordata
phylum, in which man is included, and the Nematoda phylum were different
to each other even 530 million years ago. This situation clearly
reveals that the similarity between the DNA strands of these two different categories
of life is no evidence for the claim that these creatures evolved from a common
ancestor.
THE MYTH OF HUMAN-CHIMP
SIMILARITY IS DEAD For
a very long time, the evolutionist choir had been propagating the unsubstantiated
thesis that there is very little genetic difference between humans and chimps.
In every piece of evolutionist literature you could read sentences like "we are
99 percent equal to chimps" or "there is only 1 percent of DNA that makes us human."
Although no conclusive comparison between human and chimp genomes has been made,
Darwinist ideology led them to assume that there is very little difference between
the two species. A study in October
2002 revealed that the evolutionist propaganda on this issue, like many others,
is completely false. Humans and chimps are not "99% similar" as the evolutionist
fairy tale would have it. Genetic similarity turns out to be less than 95%. A
news story reported by CNN.com, entitled "Humans, chimps more different than thought,"
reports the following: There
are more differences between a chimpanzee and a human being than once believed,
according to a new genetic study.
Biologists have long held that the genes of chimps and humans are about 98.5 percent
identical. But Roy Britten, a biologist at the California Institute of Technology,
said in a study published this week that a new way of comparing the genes shows
that the human and chimp genetic similarity is only about 95 percent.
Britten based this on a computer program that compared 780,000 of the 3 billion
base pairs in the human DNA helix with those of the chimp. He found more mismatches
than earlier researchers had, and concluded that at least 3.9 percent of the DNA
bases were different.
This led him to conclude that there is a fundamental genetic difference between
the species of about 5 percent.1
New Scientist, a leading science magazine
and a strong supporter of Darwinism, reported the following on the same subject
in an article titled "Human-chimp DNA difference trebled":
We are more unique than
previously thought, according to new comparisons of human and chimpanzee DNA.
It has long been held that we share 98.5 per cent of our genetic material with
our closest relatives. That now appears to be wrong. In fact, we share less than
95 per cent of our genetic material, a three-fold increase in the variation between
us and chimps. 2 Biologist
Boy Britten and other evolutionists continue to assess the result in terms of
evolutionary theory, but in fact there is no scientific reason to do so. The theory
of evolution is supported neither by the fossil record nor by genetic or biochemical
data. On the contrary, the evidence shows that different life forms on Earth appeared
quite abruptly without any evolutionary ancestors and that their complex systems
prove the existence of an "intelligent design."
1. http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/24/humans.chimps.ap/index.html
2. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992833 |
In fact, when the results of DNA analyses from different
species and classes are compared, it is seen that the sequences clearly do not
agree with any evolutionist family tree. According to the evolutionist thesis,
living things must have undergone a progressive increase in complexity, and, parallel
to this, it is to be expected that the number of genes, which make up their genetic
data, should also gradually increase. But the data obtained show that this thesis
is the work of fantasy. The Russian scientist Theodosius Dobzhansky,
one of the best-known theoreticians of evolution, once stated that this irregular
relationship between living things and their DNA is a great problem that evolution
cannot explain: More complex organisms generally
have more DNA per cell than do simpler ones, but this rule has conspicuous exceptions.
Man is nowhere near the top of the list, being exceeded by Amphiuma (an amphibian),
Protopterus (a lungfish), and even ordinary frogs and toads. Why this should be
so has long been a puzzle.293
Comparisons of chromosome
numbers and DNA structures show that there is no evolutionary relationship between
different living species. | Other
comparisons on the molecular level produce other examples of inconsistency which
render evolutionist views meaningless. When the protein strands of various living
things are analysed in a laboratory, results emerge which are totally unexpected
from the evolutionists' point of view, and some of which are utterly astounding.
For example, the cytochrome-C protein in man differs by 14 amino acids from that
in a horse, but by only eight from that in a kangaroo. When the same strand is
examined, turtles appear closer to man than to a reptile such as the rattlesnake.
When this situation is viewed from the evolutionist point of view, a meaningless
result will emerge, such as that turtles are more closely related to man than
they are to snakes. For instance, chickens and sea snakes differ
by 17 amino acids in 100 codons and horses and sharks by 16, which is a greater
difference than that between dogs and worm flies, which belong to different phyla
even, and which differ by only 15 amino acids. Similar
facts have been discovered with respect to hemoglobin. The hemoglobin protein
found in human beings differs from that found in lemurs by 20 amino acids, but
from that in pigs by only 14. The situation is more or less the same for other
proteins.294 This being the case, evolutionists
should arrive at the conclusion that, in evolutionary terms, man is more closely
related to the kangaroo than to the horse, or to the pig than to the lemur. But
these results conflict with all the "evolutionary family tree" plans that have
so far been accepted. Protein similarities continue to produce astounding surprises.
For example: Adrian Friday
and Martin Bishop of Cambridge have analyzed the available protein sequence data
for tetrapods… To their surprise, in nearly all cases, man (the mammal)
and chicken (the bird) were paired off as closest relatives, with the
crocodile as next nearest relative…295 Again,
when these similarities are approached from the point of view of evolutionist
logic, they lead us to the ridiculous conclusion that man's closest evolutionary
relative is the chicken. Paul Erbrich stresses the fact that molecular analyses
produce results that show very different groups of living thing to be closely
related in this way: Proteins
with nearly the same structure and function (homologous proteins) are found in
increasing numbers in phylogenetically different, even very distinct taxa (e.g.,hemoglobins
in vertebrates, in some invertebrates, and even in certain plants).296 Dr.
Christian Schwabe, a biochemical researcher from the University of South Carolina's
Faculty of Medicine, is a scientist who spent years trying to find evidence for
evolution in the molecular field. He first tried to establish evolutionary relationships
between living things by carrying out studies on proteins such as insulin and
relaxin. But Schwabe has several times been forced to admit that he has not been
able to come by any evidence for evolution in his studies. He says the following
in an article in Science: Molecular
evolution is about to be accepted as a method superior to paleontology for the
discovery of evolutionary relationships. As a molecular evolutionist I should
be elated. Instead it seems disconcerting that many exceptions exist to
the orderly progression of species as determined by molecular homologies:
so many in fact that I think the exception, the quirks, may carry the more important
message.297 Schwabe's studies
on relaxins produced rather interesting results: Against
this background of high variability between relaxins from purportedly closely
related species, the relaxins of pig and whale are all but identical.
The molecules derived from rats, guinea-pigs, man and pigs are as distant from
each other (approximately 55%) as all are from the elasmobranch's relaxin. ...Insulin,
however, brings man and pig phylogenetically closer together than chimpanzee
and man.298
On the molecular level no organism is the "ancestor"
of another, or more "primitive" or "advanced" than another. |
Schwabe was faced by the same realities when he compared the arrangements
of other proteins besides insulin and relaxin. Schwabe has this to say about these
other proteins that constitute exceptions to the orderly molecular development
proposed by evolutionists: The
relaxin and insulin families do not stand alone as exceptions to the orderly interpretation
of molecular evolution in conventional monophyletic terms. It is instructive to
look at additional examples of purportedly anomalous protein evolution
and note that the explanations permissible under the molecular clock theories
cover a range of ad hoc explanations apparently limited only by imagination.299 Schwabe
reveals that the comparison of the arrangement of lysosomes, cytochromes, and
many hormones and amino acids show "unexpected results and anomalies" from the
evolutionary point of view. Based on all this evidence, Schwabe maintains that
all proteins had their present forms right from the start, undergoing no evolution,
and that no intermediate form has been found between molecules, in the same way
as with fossils. Concerning these findings in the field of molecular
biology, Dr. Michael Denton comments: Each
class at a molecular level is unique, isolated and unlinked by intermediates.
Thus, molecules, like fossils, have failed to provide the elusive intermediates
so long sought by evolutionary biology… At a molecular level, no organism
is "ancestral" or "primitive" or "advanced" compared with its relatives…
There is little doubt that if this molecular evidence had been available a century
ago… the idea of organic evolution might never have been accepted.300
The "Tree of Life" is Collapsing
In the 1990s, research into the
genetic codes of living things worsened the quandary faced by the theory of evolution
in this regard. In these experiments, instead of the earlier comparisons that
were limited to protein sequences, "ribosomal RNA" (rRNA) sequences were compared.
From these findings, evolutionist scientists sought to establish an "evolutionary
tree." However, they were disappointed by the results. According
to a 1999 article by French biologists Hervé Philippe and Patrick Forterre, "with
more and more sequences available, it turned out that most protein phylogenies
contradict each other as well as the rRNA tree."301 Besides
rRNA comparisons, the DNA codes in the genes of living things were also compared,
but the results have been the opposite of the "tree of life" presupposed by evolution.
Molecular biologists James A. Lake, Ravi Jain and Maria C. Rivera elaborated on
this in an article in 1999: …[S]cientists
started analyzing a variety of genes from different organisms and found that their
relationship to each other contradicted the evolutionary tree of life derived
from rRNA analysis alone.302 Neither
the comparisons that have been made of proteins, nor those of rRNAs or of genes,
confirm the premises of the theory of evolution. Carl Woese, a highly reputed
biologist from the University of Illinois, admits that the concept of "phylogeny"
has lost its meaning in the face of molecular findings in this way:
No consistent organismal phylogeny has emerged
from the many individual protein phylogenies so far produced. Phylogenetic incongruities
can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings
within and among the various [groups] to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.303 The
fact that results of molecular comparisons are not in favor of, but rather opposed
to, the theory of evolution is also admitted in an article called "Is it Time
to Uproot the Tree of Life?" published in Science in 1999. This article by Elizabeth
Pennisi states that the genetic analyses and comparisons carried out by Darwinist
biologists in order to shed light on the "tree of life" actually yielded directly
opposite results, and goes on to say that "new data are muddying the evolutionary
picture": A year ago, biologists
looking over newly sequenced genomes from more than a dozen microorganisms thought
these data might support the accepted plot lines of life's early history. But
what they saw confounded them. Comparisons of the genomes then available not only
didn't clarify the picture of how life's major groupings evolved, they confused
it. And now, with an additional eight microbial sequences in hand, the situation
has gotten even more confusing.... Many evolutionary biologists had thought they
could roughly see the beginnings of life's three kingdoms... When full DNA sequences
opened the way to comparing other kinds of genes, researchers expected that they
would simply add detail to this tree. But "nothing could be further from the truth,"
says Claire Fraser, head of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) in Rockville,
Maryland. Instead, the comparisons have yielded many versions of the tree of life
that differ from the rRNA tree and conflict with each other as well...304
|
Comparisons that have been made of
proteins, rRNA and genes reveal that creatures which are allegedly close relatives
according to the theory of evolution are actually totally distinct from each other.
Various studies grouped rabbits with primates instead of rodents, and cows with
whales instead of horses. |
In short,
as molecular biology advances, the homology concept loses more ground. Comparisons
that have been made of proteins, rRNAs and genes reveal that creatures which are
allegedly close relatives according to the theory of evolution are actually totally
distinct from each other. A 1996 study using 88 protein sequences grouped rabbits
with primates instead of rodents; a 1998 analysis of 13 genes in 19 animal species
placed sea urchins among the chordates; and another 1998 study based on 12 proteins
put cows closer to whales than to horses. As life is investigated
on a molecular basis, the homology hypotheses of the evolutionary theory collapse
one by one. Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells sums up the situation in 2000 in
this way: Inconsistencies
among trees based on different molecules, and the bizarre trees that result from
some molecular analyses, have now plunged molecular phylogeny into a crisis.305 But
in that case what kind of scientific explanation can be given for similar structures
in living things? The answer to that question was given before Darwin's theory
of evolution came to dominate the world of science. Men of science such as Carl
Linnaeus and Richard Owen, who first raised the question of similar organs in
living creatures, saw these organs as examples of "common design."
In other words, similar organs or similar genes resemble each other not because
they have evolved by chance from a common ancestor, but because they have been
designed deliberately to perform a particular function. Modern
scientific discoveries show that the claim that similarities in living things
are due to descent from a "common ancestor" is not valid, and that the only rational
explanation for such similarities is "common design." | 
