You claimed those two articles constitute evidence that should cause one to reject evolution. I read them, and being a biologist, understood them. What I didn't understand is why you cited them as somehow being contrary to evolution. So I asked you to explain why you think that. Since then you've done everything you can to avoid answering/explaining.
If you don't know and can't explain, man up and just say so.
I guess I'm not surprised that you, being a[n evolutionary] biologist, would understand them. What I am surprised about is that you, being an intelligent human being, can't understand what I'm saying about the articles. What I said is that the articles themselves are illustrating the contradiction of evolutionary thought with scientific results. The articles are doing this. They do it in the titles, and they do it in the text. The authors of the study are doing this, too. I don't have to, because they are doing it. If you want, we can go through the articles, but I'm convinced that you won't be convinced. Sorry for such pessimistic skepticism, but I've got to tell you what I see in your posts.
So let's start with this one:
ScienceDaily: The Tree of Life may be more like a bush?
Let's first note the title. You understand, I'm sure, that the idea of the tree of life is that as organisms propagate, they have offspring that is dissimilar enough to the parent that they can be called a different species. This may take a good number of generations, but eventually the offspring are different enough. As this happens over and over to a particular starting organism, its offspring can continue to diversify. Thus, for any one starting organism (or pair of organisms, if necessary), it's descendants ascend (irony intended) to different and better capabilities. This is illustrated by a single trunk of a "tree" branching out into many branches. Like a tree. That's what "tree of life" means. Do you understand that, Mr. Biologist?
Ok.
Let's move on to the first paragraph:
| New species evolve whenever a lineage splits off into several. Because of this, the kinship between species is often described in terms of a 'tree of life', where every branch constitutes a species. Now, researchers at Uppsala University have found that evolution is more complex than this model would have it, and that the tree is actually more akin to a bush. |
What this is saying is that the tree of life concept predicts that species will bring forth other species in a linear fashion--with each branch separately branching off further. But Uppsala researchers have found something that doesn't hold to the simple tree of life concept. They distinguish this new concept by claiming it's more of a "bush of life". Are we still doing ok, Mr. Biologist, or is this getting too tedious for you, too?
Second paragraph:
| Less than a year ago, a consortium of some hundred researchers reported that the relationship between all major bird clades had been mapped out by analysing the complete genome of around 50 bird species. This included the exact order in which the various lineages had diverged. |
This paragraph explains how a bunch ("consortium") of scientists mapped out the order of evolution of 50 bird species with respect to one another, including the "exact order" they had diverged in. They did this using the genome (pronounced "GEE nohm"), along with an assumption of how things diverge, which came from their understanding of how organisms evolve in a tree-like fashion. We can call that assumption a "premise"--which is a presumed or previously proved supposition.
We might take a minute here to talk about premises and conclusions (see how tedious this is getting?) If logic is faithfully applied, true premises lead to correct conclusions. The converse (not the shoe type! stay with me) is that if a conclusion is false, and the logic is faithful, the premise must be false.
Let's move on to paragraph 3:
| Since then, two of the members of the consortium, Alexander Suh and Hans Ellegren at the Uppsala University Evolutionary Biology Centre, have expanded upon this model by analysing the avian genome through a new method, which hinges on so-called 'jumping genes'. Their results paint a partially contrasting picture of the kinship between the various species. |
Two members of the original bunch ("consortium") have looked at the 50 species in another way ("method") which tells a different story ("partially contrasting picture") about how these species are interrelated ("kinship").
Paragraph 4:
| 'We can see that the very rapid rate at which various bird species started evolving once the dinosaurs went extinct, i.e. around 65 million years ago, meant that the genome failed to split into separate lineages during the process of speciation', Hans Ellegren says. |
Here our buddy Hans says that things didn't go as originally thought ("
failed to split into separate lineages"). This is the author of a follow-up study saying the first consensus was really a faulty conclusion.
Remember our little talk about faulty conclusions? Now we have one, at least according to the Uppsala guys. Let's assume for a moment that the consortium's logic was impeccable. That would mean that there was a faulty premise that lead to the faulty conclusion. What was that faulty premise? That life diverges like a tree branching.
They go on to give their solution to the puzzle--jumping genes. This is an interesting concept that brings to light another failed evolutionary concept, since jumping genes were at one time considered junk DNA. Now they use their conclusion to falsify (if it hadn't already been falsified) the junk DNA status of transposable elements. You probably remember that junk DNA was a prediction of many evolutionists. Or do you, as a biologist, also "understand" how massive amounts of junk DNA could be predicted, and falsified, and yet still have absolutely no bearing on the veracity of the theory of evolution?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch...
Jumping genes are the supposed solution to the conundrum that "for instance, a cuckoo can be more closely related to a hummingbird than a pigeon in a certain part of its genome, while the opposite holds true in another part." In other words, the cuckoo looks like it descended from a hummingbird (or vice versa) if you look at one part of the genome, and from a pigeon (or vice versa) when you look at another part, BECAUSE that's what the genome says! Which can't be if species descend in a linear branching pattern. Thus the authors say the "tree" looks more like a "bush". Jumping genes allow us to consider that species are descended from a single progenitor through a tangled mess of relationships where branches reconnect and divide again. And "transposable elements" go back and forth, thus needing the prefix "retro" added on.
Oh yeah, that brings up another prediction of evolution--that it only goes one way. I think it's called Dollo's law: "An organism is unable to return, even partially, to a previous stage already realized in the ranks of its ancestors."—*Dollo, quoted in "Ammonites, Indicates Reversal," in Nature, March 21, 1970. (which I quoted from a google search)
Remember that genetics was the savior of Darwin's theory, becoming the foundation of the "modern synthesis" of the theory of evolution. But now, as we see in the article, scientists have to use words like "incomplete lineage sorting" to express a concept that says the genetics aren't obeying the theory.
Does that make you happy? I'm so glad! Now I'll sit back and let you tell me how wrong I am, and how evolution wasn't damaged at all by the results of the article's subject study, and how all these missed predictions were really successful predictions of science.
