Behe (1998, p. 192) notes: “No one has ever published a paper in the professional science literature that explains in a detailed fashion how DNA replication in toto or any of its parts might have been produced in a Darwinian, step-by-step fashion.” The same is true of thousands of other complex biomolecular structures and processes found in humans and other living things.
Neural Connections in the Brain
J. Travis (2000c) says, “The developing human brain . . . must make sure that its billions of nerve cells correctly establish trillions of connec-
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tions among themselves.” Since scientists say that all conscious functions are products of brain activity, these connections assume a lot of importance. Aside from some vague speculations about “guidance molecules,” and an all abiding faith that it must have happened by evolution, scientists have offered no detailed explanation of how the connections are made. On the basis of experiments with fruit flies, scientists say they have discovered a gene that looks like it codes for 38,000 different “guidance molecules.” Even if true, this creates a huge problem for evolutionists. How could one gene be responsible for so many guidance molecules? How are those 38,000 different “guidance molecules” distributed in the proper way to make the required connections among the nerve cells in the fly brain? And even assuming one could figure this out, then how would one go from there to another more complicated brain, simply by random mutations in DNA and natural selection?
The Placenta
Another problem for evolutionists is the origin of the placenta in mammals. The DNA of a fetus is a combination of DNA from both the mother and father. It is therefore different from that of the mother. The immune system of the mother should normally reject the fetus as foreign tissue. The placenta isolates the fetus from direct contact with the mother’s immune system. The placenta also supplies the fetus with nutrients and expels wastes from the fetus. Harvey J. Kliman, a reproductive biologist at Yale University, says, “In many ways, the placenta is the SCUBA system for the fetus, while at the same time being the Houston Control Center guiding the mother through pregnancy.” According to evolutionists, before the placental mammals came into existence, all land animals reproduced by laying eggs. In a report in Science news, John Travis (2000d, p. 318) says, “As with many evolutionary adaptations, the origins of the placenta remain shrouded in mystery. That hasn’t kept biologists from speculating, however.” But speculations are not real scientific explanations. And the real scientific explanations just are not there.
“In the past ten years,” says Behe (1998, p. 183), “Journal of molecular evolution has published more than a thousand papers. . . . There were zero papers discussing detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures. This is not a peculiarity of Jme. No papers are to be found that discuss detailed models for intermediates in the development of complex biomolecular structures, whether in the Proceedings of the national academy of Science, nature, Science, the Journal of molecular Biology or, to my knowledge, any science journal.”
Similarity of apes and Humans
Physical anthropologists and other scientists have tried to use genetics to clarify the supposed evolutionary relationships between humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. Are humans closer to chimps or gorillas? Are chimps and gorillas closer to each other than either of them is to humans? Different kinds of studies yield different results. According to Marks (1994), some researchers say chromosome structure links humans and gorillas, while others say it links humans and chimps, while yet others say it links chimps and gorillas. Mitochondrial DNA evidence show that humans, chimps, and gorillas are equally close to each other. Evidence for nuclear DNA is “discordant,” with the X chromosome evidence making chimps closest to gorillas and the Y chromosome evidence making chimps closest to humans. As far as skeletal evidence is concerned, the cranium links humans and chimps, but the rest of the skeleton links chimps and gorillas (Marks 1994, pp. 65–66).
In sorting out this confusing and contradictory set of conclusions, many scientists act on the belief that genetic evidence is superior to other kinds of evidence. But Marks (1994, p. 65) questions this belief: “Molecular studies bearing on problems of anthropological systematics, it seems, have often suffered from [poor] quality control, rash generalizations, belligerent conclusions, and the gratuitous assumption that if two bodies of work yield different conclusions, the genetic work is more trustworthy.”
Sibley and Ahlquist (1984, p. 11) claimed to have used molecular methods (DNA hybridization) to reconstruct the phylogeny of chimps, gorillas, and humans. They said the genetic evidence showed that first chimps diverged from gorillas, and then humans diverged from chimps. But Marks (1994, p. 65) pointed out: “The conclusion here was derived by 1) moving correlated points into a regression line and recalculating their values; 2) substituting controls across experiments; and 3) making precise alterations on the basis of a variable that was not actually measured.” To put it more plainly, the study by Sibley and Ahlquist was flawed by artificial manipulation of the experimental data. Marks (1994, p. 66) noted: “That these manipulations are not part of the general canon of scientific protocols, however, is not complemented by the fact that they were not mentioned in the original reports, and were discovered serendipitously by others. . . . These revelations stood to make the researchers themselves look less than honest and to make public advocates of the work look less than wise.”
The study of Sibley and Ahlquist was flawed not only by these technical lapses, but also by the incorrectness of the study’s fundamental
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assumptions. According to Marks (1994, p. 69), these assumptions were (1) that humans came from either chimps or gorillas by a two-step process (i.e. chimps from gorillas, then humans from chimps; or gorillas from chimps, and then humans from gorillas) and (2) that this process is “discernible with genetic data and theory as they currently exist.” Marks (1994, p. 69) explained, “These assumptions are pernicious because . . . they misrepresent the literature. In the first place, it must be appreciated that we do not know there were in fact two sequential divergences, and not a single trifurcation.” That is to say, it is quite possible that humans, chimps, and gorillas all came from an unknown common ancestor. The evidence might even be seen as consistent with creation of all three by God in nearly their present forms.
Evolutionists have for many years said that the DNA of humans and chimps is 97% identical. They have claimed that this proves an evolutionary connection between the two species. There are several things wrong with this kind of reasoning. First, of all, the claimed 97% identity was derived from crude DNA hybridization techniques (Sibley and Alhquist 1987). Researchers broke human DNA into little parts in test tubes and then observed how much of it recombined with pieces of chimp DNA. Three percent did not recombine. But no one really knows how similar humans and chimps really are on the actual genetic level. The human genome has only recently been sequenced. This sequencing merely gives the order of the roughly 3 billion nucleotide bases in the DNA molecules that make up the human genome. It is like having the sequence of letters that makes up a book in a foreign language. To read the book, you have to break the sequence of letters into words and sentences and understand their meaning. This has not happened yet with DNA. According to current understanding, ninety-seven percent of the bases in the human genome do not make up genes. They are called junk DNA. Sorting out the sequences that represent actual genes instead of junk DNA could take decades. The chimp genome has not even been sequenced, and it is not likely to be sequenced for years to come. So at the present moment there is no real basis for making any truly scientific comparison between the human genome and the chimp genome. We cannot at this point say, “Here are all the chimp genes, and here all are the human genes,” and talk about how similar or different they really are in total.