Snowflakes - Spontaneous Complexity and Order?

Creationists just love to point at examples of biological information (quaternary proteins, DNA, enzymes, etc.) and ask evolutionists how information could have formed spontaneously in an uncontrolled, hazardous environment? After all, primeval earth was a dangerous place for amino acids and other delicate constructs – volcanoes, fierce UV rays, a harsh atmosphere, and the like. Evolutionists respond by pointing out that information and beauty forms on its own all around us all the time, all over the globe. When asked what they could possibly mean, the evolutionists point at – a humble snowflake. They ask, how can you explain that? Spontaneous information, beautiful patterns (insert more lyrical praise here), all found in every sub-zero area on the planet. And each one is unique, they cry, no two are truly alike! If this is not information, then what is?

Before we go into the importance of this point, I feel like I need to provide you with a deeper understanding of what a snowflake really is. A snowflake, in brief, is a freezing water molecule that's latched onto a pollen or dust particle high up in the atmosphere. They are always hexagonal, due to the shape of the water that makes them. They are not, contrary to popular belief, completely symmetrical - your average snowflake will have specks of dust marring one side, or hairline cracks on another. Nonetheless, the six "legs" of the snowflake, as seen above, are pretty similar to each other. This is due to the fact that when a snowflake is influenced by temperature, humidity and pressure, every leg is affected equally and so, every leg changes. Snowflake formation is a dynamic process, and every variable that a snowflake encounters could potentially change its shape. It's this unpredictable aspect of snowflake formation that has led to the well-known fact that snowflakes are unique.

The six sided symmetrical form of snowflakes is due entirely to the unique form of the water molecule - if the oxygen didn't form a 109.5° bond with it's two hydrogen components, snowflakes wouldn't form hexagonally, and would be entirely random. The formation of a snowflake is somewhat analogous to a a speck of dust, or a rock rolling down a hill - the dust speck is certainly unique, as is the rock. You'll never find another rock with the same chips and bumps the rock has, nor a dust speck with the same dips and curls. The only important difference between a snowflake and the rock/dust speck is the hydrogen bonds in the water molecule that allow the symmetry that's admired so frequently. They're both just random processes, one of which is (by intelligent design in the water molecule) able to replicate the same changes on six sides, creating the illusion of information.

Darwin's Finches - Not Going Anywhere

Darwin's Finches. We've all heard of the birds of subfamily Geospinozae, renowned for being the catalysts that galvanized Darwin's brilliant mind into connecting the dots and formulating the Theory of Evolution. But were these birds worthy examples of evolution? While it remains uncontested that the fifteen-odd types of finches found by Darwin have different shapes of beaks (and are incidentally not related to true finches), a 30-plus year study seems to show that evolution is not really taking place on the Galapagos Islands.

Large ground finch, Medium ground finch, Small tree finch, Green warbler-finch

Peter and Rosemary Grant are a persistent and dedicated couple who've been regularly visiting the Galapagos Islands for six months every year to check on the weight of the birds, their diet, their locations, their beak size, and the weather (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_and_Rosemary_Grant). They discovered a frankly fascinating thing - the beak shape of the birds wasn't a continuous evolutionary progression, like it should have been for true Evolution to take place. However, what we've seen is, frankly speaking, a circle. The PBS paper on the couple says, "The Grants found that the offspring of the birds that survived the 1977 drought tended to be larger, with bigger beaks. So the adaptation to a changed environment led to a larger-beaked finch population in the following generation...as the Grants later found, unusually rainy weather in 1984-85 resulted in more small, soft seeds on the menu and fewer of the large, tough ones. Sure enough, the birds best adapted to eat those seeds because of their smaller beaks were the ones that survived and produced the most offspring." (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/6/l_016_01.html)

The graph fails to show the 1984-85 shift of beak depth that occurred later, bringing the beak size back to the median

Does this seem rather odd to anyone? I mean, evolution is all about going forward, changing from a shrew to a higher mammal and such, and here we have an article in PBS saying proudly in the conclusion that "evolution has reversed itself". And that too, in regard to Darwin's finches - one of the most widely accepted Icons of Evolution to be found! What we've seen instead is behavior uncannily similar to that predicted by creationists - that kind reproduces with kind, and that those kinds stay distinct from one another.

Archaeopteryx - Missing Link or Tanshemeth?

We've all heard of the fossil Archaeopteryx - it's a fabled Icon of Evolution, a strong point for all those who wish to find a transition fossil for those pesky doubters that just won't keep quiet. After all, this fossil has feathers (obviously a bird trait), teeth (reptilian - I mean, who's ever seen a toothed bird?), a long tail (definitely lizard), a furcula ("wishbone", a feature of birds) and three claws on each wing. Much has been made of this apparent hodge-podge of features, and Archaeopteryx has been firmly placed in evolutionary phylogeny as one of the earliest forerunners of the modern bird.

Early image of what Archaeopteryx looked like. Later images have a less reptilian head, in keeping with recent findings

However, it's unclear whether merely sharing the characteristics of two major phyla is enough to prove that any creature is not an individual species of it's own. What do I mean by this statement? Well, take a look at the platypus - my favorite marsupial around. It has webbed feet (amphibian?), a rubbery beak (bird?), venomous ankle spurs (reptile?), lays eggs (bird?), and is...a mammal! Wow! The point of this apparently pointless list was to highlight something I believe is ignored too often - just because a creature shares the characteristics of other creatures from different phyla, said creature does not has to be a mix between them, or even related to them! The platypus has never been called a missing link, and yet I feel that if it had been extinct, it's fossils, much like the coelacanth's, would have been heralded as intermediate forms. On the flip side, this is not an apt comparison, as the Archaeopteryx's features are completely unique - no living bird has claws on it's wing's, no? And no bird has teeth - so Archaeopteryx is unique in an entirely different way, right? Cue the hoatzin.

The hoatzin - a flashy looker

This lovely looking bird is extant in the Amazon rain forest and the Orinoco delta of South America. It inhabits swamps and is a strict herbivore, fermenting the greens it eats in it's belly much like more popular bovines (no relation). The pungent odor emanating from the digesting food in it's crop gives rise to it's second, more colloquial, name - the stinkbird. One other interesting feature of this bird is that newly hatched chicks actually have claws on their wings when young, although the claws shrink away and even disappear as the bird grows older. Other examples of clawed birds include the entire order of Anseriformes, which has two spikes on their carpometacarpus (wrist), and the species Plectopterus gambensis, more commonly known as the spur-winged goose, which has a sharp spike on it's wings that is an extension of the radiale. So, birds having spikes on their wing-tips are not quite as rare as they would seem to be. And regarding birds with teeth; as odd as it may sound, some birds today do have teeth, or at least have calciferous serrations running along their mandibles. The Graylag Goose comes to mind, as does the Tooth-Billed Bowerbird - both of which are still living today.

The glorious Graylag Goose, complete with grin

So, the Archaeopteryx may not have been that remarkable after all. In fact, there is a theory postulating that the Bible does mention the Archaeopteryx, and even billed it as unfit to eat in Leviticus! I know that I've promised to stick to science on this blog, but I just have to mention this. If, however, you are not a Christian and don't believe the Bible is the Word of God, feel free to skip, ignore, and even deride the rest of this paragraph. In Leviticus 11:18, when the Israelites are being given the list of animals not to be consumed, the "white owl" is mentioned as unfit for consumption - the word used was "tanshemeth". However, in Leviticus 11:30, a few verses later, the same word "tanshemeth" reappears, this time used as a "chameleon"! This dichotomy can be explained by a fringe hypothesis that postulate that perhaps the Bible was referring to a creature that appeared to be a cross of reptiles and birds - the Archaeopteryx! Of course, there are other interpretations and explanations, but I felt that I should at least mention this for any Christians out there. Comment any questions, and I'll get back to you.

Sources
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/birds/archaeopteryx.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/06/30/clubs-spurs-spikes-and-claws/

Miller-Urey Follow-up

Despite the fact that the Stanley-Miller experiment is struggling as far as icons go (even Wikipedia admits that the 1953 experiment was flawed and inaccurate), textbooks today give absolutely no indication that anything is wrong. I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist ranting on about "secret societies" and such, but look at the passage I took out of my Princeton Review AP Biology Exam 2013 book just this afternoon.

Magloire, Kim. Cracking the AP Biology Exam. Random House: New York, 2013. Reproduced without permission.

Read it carefully. If you looked at my last post (see below if you haven't), you'd know that Wikipedia, the Scientific American and Stanley Miller himself admitted that his 1953 trial was worthless to the abiogenesis movement. He re-did the experiment himself in 1983, and found that if he used the correct elements in his setup, he wound up with a worthless (biologically speaking) brown sludge. Of course, there are theories to explain this away - but why are they not presented in the text above? Why do the authors (willfully or intentionally) avoid this rather large problem with their example? Note the phrasing - "They put the gases theorized to be abundant" - even though we now know that methane and ammonia were hardly present at the time of the primordial soup! Miller acted on the prevalent theory of his time - so why does the textbook fail to mention this? Did the author think it unimportant?

"But how do we make the leap from simple organic molecule to more complex compounds and life as we know it? Since no one was around to witness the process (italics mine), no one knows for sure how (or when) it occurred."

 If we don't know how or when it occurred, and no one was around to witness it, how can we be confident it occurred in the first place? (And they are so confident, the writer didn't even see a need to mention these potential problems, however trifling they may be). The next line is also important:

Complex organic compounds (such as proteins) must have formed via dehydration synthesis.

 They must have? The logic here is: since evolution is true and humans are here today, complex organic compounds must have formed spontaneously, an occurrence that has never been reproduced even in  controlled laboratory setting. The author, unknowingly perhaps, automatically precludes any other origin theories in this sentence. And this, folks, is the AP Biology Prep book - it's like a Bible to all the aspiring Bio students out there (including me). They might spend 3-4 months poring over every page, memorizing every fact - including this one, regarding the Miller-Urey experiment (I have to do the same myself). But who will tell those people that the information is faulty?

In the words of Sherlock Holmes, "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." If evolution is false, the only alternate solution (unless you buy into all that "am I a man dreaming I'm a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man" stuff) is special creation by a deity. It's important to note that I'm not saying that the authors and the publishers of the Princeton Review (and any other textbook out there) are trying to brainwash you - no, they may be unaware of what they do themselves. I'm just warning the reader not to take anything they read at face value, especially when it deals with matters of the soul, as evolution inevitably does. For if evolution is true, all is meaningless; but if it is false, the human soul is eternal (almost all religions agree upon that, at least). To close, I'll just close with some words from Adolf Hitler (don't take them the wrong way, please!):

"Let me control the textbooks, and I will control the state."

The Miller-Urey Experiment

In 1953, in the University of Chicago, two bright young men performed an experiment that would later become the landmark moment in the history of experimental abiogenesis, aka, "life in a test tube". Stanley Miller and Harold Urey created, from the hypothetical primordial soup, actual amino acids, the building blocks of life. This was hailed as a huge step forward for the Theory of Evolution, and is still printed in many science textbooks (Apex, Technical Lab Systems, etc.) as the experiment that proved life could form on early earth. But is this experiment really so effective? And if it is, what does it mean for creationists? The Wikipedia page for this experiment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment) was chock-full of jargon, pulling in words like "racemic mixture" and "optical isomers" with casual abandon. But dissecting this page and going further into the history of this setup tells a very different story.

First off, lets examine the gases found in the "primitive atmosphere" mentioned in the diagram. Miller and Urey sealed water, methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃) and hydrogen (H₂) into the sterilized circuit depicted above, then left the setup for regularly applying shocks to the mixture. Within a day, the mixture had turned pinkish in color, and after two weeks, analysis showed that around twenty different amino acids had formed in the solution. Ten percent of the carbon turned into organic material (not surprising, seeing as “An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon” [Wikipedia]), and eighteen percent of the methane turned into bio-molecules, which are “any molecule that is produced by a living organism”. Seeing as the body contains over fifty elements and a far greater number of molecules (simple and complex), that is not a very valid claim. But even now, we have yet to touch upon the greater problem faced by Miller and Urey – the actual proposed composition of the early earth atmosphere.

The rather fanciful sketch above provides a good example of what most people believe occurred during the early stages of the earth – volcanoes quietly smoked in the background, while oceans fostered the developing forms of life that abounded. Wikipedia says (in the three lines that are given regarding the early earth) that when the earth was first accreting itself, there was plenty of hydrogen, water vapor, methane and ammonia – perfect conditions for Miller and Urey. However, it goes on to say that “as the solar nebula dissipated” – meaning when the earth actually formed from the rocks and materials thrown out when the sun came together – “these gases would have escaped, blown off by the solar wind”. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Earliest_atmosphere). When Miller and Urey found out about this, Miller tried to repeat the experiment using the new chemicals proffered (nitrogen, carbon-dioxide, inert gases, etc.). He got a colorless brew, with very few amino acids. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/primordial-soup-urey-miller-evolution-experiment-repeated/)

If you read the Scientific American article a bit further, you see a nice explanation to get around this – nitrites were formed concurrently with the former amino acids. Nitrites, as the article mentions, are extremely detrimental to amino acids, breaking them down rapidly. Of course, the scientist (named Bada) found a way around this – iron was capable of neutralizing the nitrites, and the element Fe had been found in various rockbeds said to be at the layer of primordial earth.  The only problem with thinking like this is that iron is a reducing agent, and is not like an anti-catalyst. An anti-catalyst can retard chemical reactions all day long, and remain unchanged for it, but a reducing agent (like the iron Bada proposed adding to the soup) loses an electron every time a reaction is halted (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reducing_agent). Considering the relatively small amount of iron present on the early earth’s surface (http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1400/atmos_origin.html), it is highly unlikely there was enough iron to neutralize all the nitrites that were forming everywhere.

I realize that this is a massive topic, and that I have barely scratched the surface of this controversy. If any reader has any questions or contradicting information, please comment or message me.

Animal Evidence #3 - The New Zealand Cave Weta

The New Zealand weta is part of a small branch of the insect world that consists of the some of the largest and heaviest insects of the face of the earth. They are an extraordinarily diverse group, inhabiting terrains ranging from caves to forests. Some are herbivores, others are omnivores, and some are scavengers capable of stalking and killing beetles and insects (although rumor says that have eaten small mammals as well). One captive weta was weighed at 70 grams (heavier than a sparrow) and the maximum recorded length was a whopping 200 millimeters, almost the length of a table tennis racket!

The really interesting species is the cave weta. The cave weta is differentiated from its cousins by its habitat, of course, it lives in caves. However, it's lifespan is also considerably longer, with some instances of weta living for three or four years (no small amount in the insect world). The antennae is also longer, extending for a distance of almost four times the cave weta's body. But the truly bizarre thing is when winter rolls around the high mountain caves where this creature makes its home. When the temperature drops below zero, and the ice begins to form on the roofs of the caves, the cave weta has nowhere to shelter. So it lies still, closes its eyes (if it had eyelids) and freezes solid for three whole months!

The cave weta's blood contains a chemical that allows it to survive when its frozen solid - no digestion, no respiration, just solid ice for three months. When the spring thaw comes around, this incredible insect just dries out and goes looking for food. Speaking from the viewpoint of evolution, the cave weta is absolutely impossible. This insect (and mind you, very few other insects have this chemical in their blood) happened to live in one of the coldest and barest climates in New Zealand and just happened to have the right chemical in it's blood to enable it to survive the winter chill. Of course, the first, un-evolved, weta ancestor that moved into the caves would die out entirely in a year if it didn't have this chemical in its body. The only alternative to special creation would be pure blind luck - an insect that lives in one of the coldest climates on the planet luckily manages to form a chemical that would enable it to survive the winter that it didn't know was coming! Clearly this is impossible, and is frankly insulting to the intellect. I leave the reader to consider his own alternative theories.