Friday, October 11, 2024

Creation Moment 10/12/2024 - DNA Clock Is Broken

Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools....
Romans 1:22

Genomics Joins Geology in Search for Evolutionary Ancestors 10/05/2001
The Astrobiology Institute posted a popular-level article about how molecular biologists are piecing together evolutionary family trees by studying proteins, and how they expect to correlate their data with those of geologists and paleontologists who piece together evolutionary relationships with bones and rocks. Stephen Benner and colleagues are using a new search engine and database of proteins called DARWIN (Data Analysis and Retrieval With Indexed Nucleic-acid-peptide sequences) to compare proteins from distant organisms and find evidence of ancestry.

The article is mostly bluff, with a lot of positive-sounding claims about evolution being evident in the genes and proteins, when in fact we have been reporting frequently that it is not, and that the molecular evidence does not match the paleontological evidence. On October 1 [see below] for instance, we relayed a story about how 
-----the DNA clock method for dating evolutionary changes was
found unreliable. 
-----The same applies to any alleged protein clock, since proteins are encoded by genes. 
-----One cannot draw relationships between diverse animals without first believing evolution to be true, so it becomes a case of question-begging to get the data to fit preconceived notions. If you read this article with that in mind, you can find circular reasoning, extrapolation, and faith in evolution all built up on very little actual evidence. 

DNA Clock Is Broken 10/01/2001
or rather, never worked to begin with
Molecular biologists are unhappy to hear that a dating technique they have relied on for decades is unreliable
---Based on a claim in 1965, they have built their evolutionary trees on the assumption that mutations accumulate at a constant rate. 
---Now, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences summarized in a news report in Science, researchers at the University of California in Irvine have found “vastly different mutation rates, even for closely related species . . . Molecular clocks in general are much more ‘erratic’ than previously thought, and practically useless to keep accurate evolutionary time, the researchers conclude.”

---Molecular dating is flawed, and now evolutionists must cast away another worthless clock. Creationists believed all along that the DNA clock was built on circular reasoning and therefore unreliable

 This 1998 article shows that doubts about molecular clocks have been around for some time, but no matter what the fossils or the molecules show, the story will be adjusted to fit Darwinism:
"Is it then justified to test the accuracy of the fossil record using the molecular clock hypothesis, when this requires extrapolation between groups with scarce fossil data? Can we even use the rates calculated within a group of organisms to infer the origin of this group? Can we exclude the possibility that rates of evolution change over time? Specifically, what if the emergence of a group of organisms coincides with an initial acceleration of substitution rates followed by a slowdown or period of molecular stasis? . . . . Perhaps we should consider the possibility that there have been significant changes in the rates of nucleotide substitution in taxa with remote origins before sending palaeontologists out to fill perceived gaps in the fossil record."

Evolutionists will argue about which evidence supports Darwinism better, but Darwinism itself, like American foreign policy with the Taliban, is not open to negotiation or discussion." 
CEH