Letter to Nature on Karyotype Evolution in Mammals

Editing: I sent the post in three and a half years ago. It did not enter. I left the post as such untouched so as to make sure if they took it in it would be exactly the same as what I sent them. They are however not doing that and very probably are defending the decision by some policy banning publication of text sent on blog post links. This policy in its turn is also - though not legally binding on publishers - being imposed on so many that it ruins my options of getting my blogs printed in more than one quarter, one is even trying to impose it on me as a necessity. Do not participate in this scam, but do use the options I gave on the conditions, if you like the content of this or other posts of mine: hglwrites : A little note on further use conditions:* https://hglwrites.wordpress.com/a-little-note-on-further-use-conditions/ *Taken straight from conditions on my main blog on blogger. deretour :A little note on further use conditions http://hglundahlsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/de-retour.html#furtherusenote Deretour was my main blog and has been succeeded by two other such - conditions remain valid./HGL

I thought I had very clearly proven evolution impossible or so highly improbable as to be less credible than creation, except to atheist prejudice, here are my articles:

[This blog, as the following ones] Karyogrammata
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2009/08/karyogrammata.html

I had a dream one night ...
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-had-dream-one-night.html

Another possibility
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/06/another-possibility.html

However, first one of these - a composite one - quotes to refute a post by P Z Myers, and I found at last that I should comment on it, this short link gives you comment #210, my first in this series: http://o-x.fr/30jp [url burner was first disabled and then reenabled - with the short links I had made taken off since back then.] - and there I found such a support of chromosome splits occurring and being viable, that I thought you guys might like to offer up that link so the thread of discussion can be peer reviewed by you!

Have they found people who have actually one chromosome pair more by split chromosome in common ancestor, cousin marriage and the split chromosome of each parent being transmitted to child?

As far as I understood the link about 1982 publication by Janke D., entitled "Centric fission of chromosome nr. 7 in three generations", it is in each generation only one of the pair 7, but the link gives no actual text or summary, only the bare reference, and I have not checked it:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7076262

So, have I still a chance of having disproven possibility of mammals having common ancestor (alternatively of evolution being sth that can't be proven, see my third essay), should I have counted on first mammal being tetraploid 4n=96 and simplifying to diploid (2n=48) in some cases (that might give less immunity reaction than other way round, where polyploidy is a cause of spontaneous abortion) and in others diversifying each pair to two different ones (2n=96)? But if so, why are there mammals with more than 48 chromosomes in diverse genera, like both primates (lemurians) and whatever is the genus of rhinoceros? Again, a scenario in which parallel developments would be occurring after species or even genus diversification, thereby invalidating the assumption "common trait implies common ancestor".

Do publish, I am afraid of leaving their arguments about chromosome splits without peer reviews! At least in the form of debate.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Paris/France
7-11-2011

Planetary Evolution. Supposed such.

Latest news from the hobby philosophers who think they reason better than the rest of us because they own the telescopes, a k a astronomers, is that Jupiter once was as close to the Sun as Mars or Asteroid belt is now, and Saturn was just behind. That squeezed the small planets together, explaining why Mars got smaller than Earth. When Jupiter withdrew, and Saturn too, the orbits of telluric planets widened and got elliptic. That explains five out of six mysteries, the one left is how Jupiter and Saturn themselves formed.

Whoppee!

Even with for each an orbit of completely stable form, it is a bit belief staggering that planets keep in orbits merely for the balance between solar gravitation and their own previous speed, circle after circle, ellipse after ellipse. No God to keep them there, no angels to run them as men run bicycles, only two forces, mainly, and still the orbit works after billions of turn.

But with orbits changing positions due to other orbits being closer or further ... well, I think there might be something fishy with the reasoning of the scientists. Not necessarily the calculations, but the thinking before you set out to check with calculations, and the thinking of how facts are translated into maths.

The few weeks (back in last millennium) that I did teach mathematics, one guy who had one problem had it not because of any fault in his additions, subtractions, multiplications or divisions, but because he was wrong in a very elementary way of what was to be calculated (it was a realistic, thus fact related, math problem).

In less elementary ways (maybe) this could also be the case with scientists. When it comes to those thinking dating methods are proofs against a young earth, it is the case even in a very elementary way.

This news about "how solar system formed (without a creator)" makes the theories about it being very old and established by brute forces without any creator less worth believing than before, to my mind.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Beauvais
25-IX-2011

vs Evolution or vs Traducion?

One can actually be a creationist in two senses.

If you believe not only that God created Heaven and Earth, but also each species on earth without needing or otherwise using evolution to make the big differences like between a cat and a dog or a man and a monkey (possibly not yet between horse and donkey or dog and wolf, but I am not sure), you are a Creationist as opposed to an Evolutionist.

If however you believe that unlike each body, conceived from a part of the father's and a part of the mother's seminal cells in the seminal fluids, each soul is created originally and directly by God, you are a creationist. If you believe that each human souls excepting Adam's and possibly Eve's comes from a soul aspect or soul part in one's parents, then you are a Traducianist.

From Latin verb tra-ducere, lead over, lead across.

I am of course a Creationist in both senses. And I believe atheist Evolutionism with materialism to be the ultimate parodic form of Traducianism. If the mind is only an aspect of biology, obviously its qualities would be inherited with other such through the DNA and RNA.

Also, Traducianism in both Christian (mainly Protestant) and Atheist forms tends to overdo the capacity of parents to empathise with children or even their rights over children irrespective of empathy, meaning Traducianism is less likely than Creationism (in this sense) to leave children sufficiently free.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Beauvais
25-IX-2011

"If men evolved from apes, why are there still apes" ...

I like to argue correctly even against evolution, and therefore do not use that argument.

It is also known as "if land animals evolved from Coelocanths, why are there still Coelocanths"?

Evolution as understood by Darwinists does not mean every example of unevolved species as is must everywhere be extinct as ousted by more developed form. It means they were ousted by more developed form in one particular place. So even if every Coelocanth in one particular place - they have also been called Crossopterygians - was ousted by coelocanths with firmer fins or more lunglike gills, and that evolved form is ancestor of land animals, it does not mean coelocanths were ousted by them all through the seven seas - for obviously not every population of coelocanths had one strain that mutated on way to land animals. Even if more than one had, it does not mean for land animals to exist on evolutionary basis they had to oust the more classical coelocanths in every one of the populations. One population where they did suffices for Darwinism to be plausible on this account.

Likewise even if in one place every ramapithecus of original setup was ousted by a ramapithecus slightly closer to australopithecus, it does not mean there were not other places where they were not ousted by ramapithecuses closer to gorillas rather than to australopithecuses.

That part of mechanism of evolution is not the problem.

Nor is it a problem that Crossopterygians were thought extinct but found out as surviving in Coelocanths. Tarzan lives in a fictional place close to Opar were dinosaurs were never extinct, and he lives in as Darwinian a universe as Sherlock Holmes (not meaning Sherlock's method of deduction is Darwinian, but Arthur Conan Doyle actually made each crime an illustration of some aspect of Darwinism).

All this would have been quite acceptable, scientifically speaking, if we had not known about chromosomes. They are what makes evolution, specifically of mammals from one common ancestor into every different species, impossible. Here is what I previously wrote about it:

Karyogrammata
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2009/08/karyogrammata.html
I had a dream one night
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2010/11/i-had-dream-one-night.html

Even this is not the cardinal difficulty against our presumed descent from Ramapithecus - presumed by Darwinists. Other supposed descendants of Ramapithecus, Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orang Utangs, all have 48 chromosomes, which might be the original count of mammals, if they had one common ancestor. And man has 46, and gowing down is not the major difficulty.

But for man to descend from Ramapithecus with Chimpanzees, either man's reason and language would have to be products of evolution, or Chimpanzees' lack of them - smartness but no reason, gestures of emotion but no words of discourse - as a deterioration of evolutionary origin.

Derek Bickerton in Adam's Language openly teaches that language is a product of evolution and reason a by-product of language. He is wrong - but the argument is not about extinct or non-extinct ancestor species, nor about chromosome numbers: between apes and us it is about reason not being reducible to an epiphenomenon of language.

Because, when Bickerton calls language and reason products of evolution, he starts out calling them illusory products of synapses. But our experience cannot be an illusion, it must be real, even if our experience of this or that exterior thing is an illusory experience as regards the real thing. Bickerton starts out presuming sun moving in the sky and earth resting below our feet are illusory experiences of earth turning with us and sun resting where it is. Even if he were right - I think he is very wrong even there - it does not prove mind is in an illusion about itself. If synapses were all that were real about our minds, before "what observer" or before "what observing entity in observer" would thought and language - and argument! - be an illusory version of them? Before synapses themselves? But presumably they do not set out to observe.

There is a consciousness that thinks.
There are synapses that do not think.
If thought occurs, it is not because of synapses.
If consciousness occurs, it is not because of synapses.
If thought and consciousness are illusions - that illusion cannot be due to mere synapses, but only due to the supposedly illusory consciousness.
Ergo, consciousness is a primary reality, and it is not due to synapses.

That is the good argument against the evolutionary view of man.

As to whether frogs descend from coelocanths, it is less important. Obviously they do not, since each parent couple produces offspring after its kind, in its image, and frogs are not the image of coelocanths. But even if they could have been, that would not have left man with his consciousness and reason as evolved from beasts without reason and matter without consciousness. Nor would the mammals with more than 48 chromosomes - some of which are in the supposed line of our evolutionary descent, like lemurs - be explicably caused by sexual and gestational generation as known.

Nor is there any proof of there having been enough time for coelocanths to evolve into frogs and salamanders, and reptiles - preturtles, prebirds, premammals - to evolve from them, and later mammals from premammals, lemurs from early mammals, monkeys from lemurs, apes from monkeys, starting with Ramapithecus, Australopithecus with Lucy from Rampithecus, and so on:

Why so shy about creationist pov on C14?
http://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2011/07/why-so-shy-about-creationist-pov-on-c14.html

It is even not probably in an atheistic universe, since it is not probable that earth is kept orbitation after orbitation in same orbit by a balance of two powers neither of which dominates into flying off at tangent or falling down into sun. Stone on string is a very clear non-parallel, since string is not a mere equal power in other direction to centrifugal force, but a superior solidity posing an outer limit to the orbitations*. Even Newton and Napoleon, though accepting mere gravitation and inertia as usual current causations of any planetary orbit, at least could not find it probable that this continued to work even the 6000 years - thus orbitations - of history they accorded earth without any setting right of out-orbit or in-orbit deviations of movement made by God or his angels. An atheist who accepts Newtonian Heliocentrism but denies superior powers to put orbits right and assumes orbit has been used for 400+ millions of orbitations does show a certain inferiority to their power of imagination and logical grasp of probabilities.

Arguing against evolution is good. Arguing against evolution with bad arguments is not good. It exposes arguer and all his side to ridicule from those who know the answers and on top of that accustoms arguer and his side to bad logic - or at best bad fact checking. And bad logic cannot be counted on as serving truth tomorrow, just because it serves truth - in a bad way - today. Bad logic ensues when following the logic of the ones arguing for falsehood to closely - to closely in answering it, not in apprehending it - and by being too opportunistic about finding an answer that respects as much as possible of the beliefs of an atheistic, mind-is-brain-synapses, heliocentric, Darwinian.

Step out of their philosophic rigmarole, use all of their facts, but none of their prejudices or bad guesses, when arguing. And of course not what you merely presume to be their method, even if it is not, like saying or arguing as if Darwinians meant that species from which another evolves must be extinct by the time the new one is there.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou of
Beaubourg, Paris
Sunday 28-VIII-2011

*Orbitation may be my coinage, I mean cycles around an orbit.

Why so shy about creationist pov on C14?

Religious Tolerance is a site supporting deism.

Here is their take on why creationists reject Carbon 14 dating:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/c14datc.htm

ChristianAnswers.net states: "Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the 14C clock is not possible."

This was true back in the 1950s. A team of researchers, headed by Willard F. Libby calibrated the C-14 measuring technique by comparing the measured age of samples from ancient Egypt with their known date. For example, they tested a piece of wood from Pharaoh Zoser's tomb with the known tomb date, which was known to be circa 2700 to 2600 BCE. The agreement was excellent. Since then, extended calibration checks have been made using U.S. bristlecone pine, German and Irish oak, and other species of trees. That work pushed the calibration back well beyond recorded history to 10,000 BP (years before the present.) Other correlations have extended that to 26,000 years BP. It may eventually go back as far as 45,000 years, which is the approximate limit of the C-14 technique. 6

Right.

Not really. And this is a key issue according to the site:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_disp.htm

The foundational observations which support evolution are the ordered fossil record and radiometric analysis of the dates of rocks.

• If the radiometric analysis of the age of rocks is valid, then two main beliefs of young-earth creation scientists are disproved.
  
  • The rock layers were deposited over billions of years, not during the 150 days of Noah's flood.
    
  • That the earth is on the order of 4.6 billion years old, not many thousands of years old.

Still, if some convincing proof were discovered that the radiometric analyses are in error by about a factor of 500,000 or so, and that the earth is fewer than 10,000 years of age, then evolution would be disproved. There simply would not have been sufficient time for all of the new species to have evolved. Six specialists in geology, geochemistry and physics have formed the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) research group. They have been working since 1997 to disprove radiometric dating, to prove that the earth is young, and thereby disprove evolution. 8

The site fails to mention a pretty standard creationist point of view in more words than the forequoted: "Outside the range of recorded history, calibration of the ¹⁴C clock is not possible" - from Christian Answers.

C14 is not an invariant per se in the athmosphere, it is more or less invariant - some variations are recorded - due to two opposing dynamics:

• cosmic rays build up C14, exposure times exposable original isotope
  
• radioactive decay tears down C14 to non-radioactive isotope, in a ratio to what amount of C14 there is already.

This means when there is little or none C14, the build up exceeds the tear down. This means that a young earth scenario implies the possibility of C14 not yet fully built up to equilibrial level, either even now or at least recently.

Now, that, in turn, does imply if not proof of fact as such at least a very clear possibility of datings being wrong at very high ratios. Not so much the C14 datings - we will return to other ones - but even those can be wrong by high ratios. A sample without any C14 - is it from 45.000 before present or older or from the day after Adam tasted the apple, the first plant or beast that died as a consequence of human sin, at a time when there was no C14?

The dating would be wrong, not due to any miscalculation on part of scientists, but due to misapplication of calculations, according to false presuppositions. For other dating methods, other presuppositions would be the wrong ones. But evolutionists would - for the very reason stated in second quote from Religious Tolerance site - tend to make precisely the assumptions that would give too high ages, not the ones that would give too low ones.

Thorium-Lead and Uranium-Lead methods repose not only on an assumption of very much slower radioactive decay (we know that Uranium at least sometimes decays very fast in nuclear chain reactions) but also the assumption that the lead isotopes associated with samples conatining either Uranium or Thorium (to be fair, they are two different isotopes!) all come from decay of Uranium and Thorium.

As for dendrochronology - important because Religious Tolerance site stated it has pushed calibration of C14 beyond 10.000 before present - the main reaction is: "we buy the dendrochronology of the living trees, but there have in taking the chain through dead ones been mismatches, there have been matchings were matches were not taken for best matches but for oldest datings". Basically, about the accuracy there is word against word, and we laymen cannot verify, because we have often not the time, and certainly nearly never the skill for testing match after match between sample pair after sample pair. Assuming one would get the access. And assuming variations in tree rings are globally consistent.

Now that is a point of view pretty common among young earth creationists. And it is not stated in so many words but instead the site choses the shortest possible quote and refutes it without bothering that the other side has already refuted their refutation. I will now highlight a part of the second quote:

Six specialists in geology, geochemistry and physics have formed the Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth (RATE) research group. They have been working since 1997 to disprove radiometric dating, to prove that the earth is young, and thereby disprove evolution.

So datings can either be proven right or proven wrong, but not simply argued to be not proven? Now that is a show of fairness and open mind, along with a real close mindedness. The possibility of datings being argued not proven is the classical young earth creationist take, and it was well known before 1997. If you do not know that, the RATE group seems to prove conventional science takes creationism seriously with an open mind. If you do know this, it staggers belief they left out from the mission statement "or argue that old datings are not proven, on the lines already suggested by creationists" or words to same effect.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BU de Beauvais
7-VII-2011

Did Noah suffer like Winston - undefeated?

1) Those REAL Old Jamborees ... , 2) Did Noah suffer like Winston - undefeated?, 3) Medieval Italian Neanderthal?

[11] And the earth was corrupted before God, and was filled with iniquity. [12] And when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth,) [13] He said to Noe: The end of all flesh is come before me, the earth is filled with iniquity through them, and I will destroy them with the earth.

Genesis, chapter 6, from Douay-Rheims Bible Online.

'It is impossible to found a civilisation on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.'
'Why not?'
'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.'
'Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we chose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we chose to quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death? The Party is immortal. ... We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. ...'

Nineteen Eighty-Four, pp. 281 f. with omissions marked ...

George Orwell is describing a terrorising intimidator called O'Brien describing to his victim Winston the kind of totalitarian rule he proposes to make his victim accept by total fear and total surrender.

People have faced such things in Roumania, I fear in Dachau too. And a young boy called Josef Wajsblat was in a gaz chamber, but saved in the last moment by irrational anger from none other than Doctor Mengele - a fine "room 101", if you like.

The ideology of O'Brien comes out as something which is very close to what may have been what happened before the flood. "All flesh had corrupted its way" - teen girls too? Babies too? Does it say they were evil and mean in their hearts? No, it says their flesh was corrupted.

Modern education and societies in practise force girls to:

• wait marrying till 18 (legal) or, further up you get in society more like 30 it gets (social pressure),
  
• attend schools with coeducation (legal many countries) till age 16 (legal) and where flirting is considered ok years before any kind of marriage (social pressure),
  
• where not only malthusian perversions and artificial means of achieving same result, but also abortion is taught as solutions respectively all right and in worst case possible (legal induction of social pressure)
  
• and there is an acceptation of hypnosis (social pressure)
  
• and a frowning on daily prayer and weekly fasting (social pressure, in some countries legal powers of persecution)
  
• - and after that you hope they stay chaste till marriage?

The ideology of O'Brien involves society evolving into a hive. I have already written about that in Beware of Meta Man. No, the title was even braver than I remembered: Resist Meta Man.

http://hglundahl.blogspot.com/2006/08/resist-meta-man-evolutionary.html

It is exactly what Chesterton feared Evolution leads to. There are even Catholic versions of it, like the Piltdown probable forger Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit Father of a sort. He dreamed of a noosphere. I have seen tendencies of moral evolutionism even in St Nicolas du Chardonnet, and also in Orthodox Church. A willingness to make a newcomer suffer and surrender. A willingness even to paint God in colours that remind me of O'Brien.

It is not God who forces pregnant thirteen year olds to either abort or adopt but never even dream of simply starting a family. It is Newthink.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Georges Pompidou library of
Paris
16 - VI - 2011

PS, George Orwell made some funny allusions: O'Brien reminds me of Brian Borumha, the royal "Winston" who, like King Alfred did resist Vikings (you are more tired of victory than we are of defeat), the year 1984 is set as in Napoleon of Notting Hill where human nature does turn against totalitarianism, there is a Syme as in The Man Who was Thursday ... but here he is just a man concerned with dictionary writing (God made Tolkien a revenge for that slur on dictionary writers: a man who may yet prove more of a Gabriel Syme than a Dr Johnson drinking the usurper's health), and of course, in the pages quoted and their surroundings, Geocentric and Young Earth scenarios are set off as illogically as "2+2=5" because atheistically: in such a case it really is a kind of collective solipsism as O'Brien himself puts it. Geocentrism without Primum Movens to move outermost sphere and angels for the planets, Young Earth without Creation are obviously illogical. Kind of the funniest allusion, or most tragic, because it means the writer saw the judges of Galileo as O'Briens rather than as the courteous and logical St Robert Bellarmine in first process, the pious Urban VIII in the second./HGL

PPS, As a Geocentric I take offense at any comparison with O'Brien. I have given a method where distance or closeness of stars (which has nothing to do with navigation, practically) could be determined by watching parallax from Mars:

http://hglsfbwritings.blogspot.com/2011/04/cagasuamfobdis.html

Those who refuse that experiment are - heliocentrics, partly./HGL

Another possibility

A typical karyogram of a mammal is 2n=48.

A deviant form of karyogram will cause spontaneous abortion. At least I have verified this for humans. Trisomy can occur in chromosome pair 21, giving Downs syndrom, but trisomy in a really big chromosome like pair 1 or 3 gives spontaneous abortion. Except when it does not occur in every cell of foetus.

So what about higher karyograms, like 70 - 80 chromosomes or so, developing before this immunity reaction against deviant karyograms developed, and then after that the development of the immunity reaction?

Well, in that case the development of the immunity reaction would have happened independently in all different strands of mammals with higher, lower or same chromosome numbers. In that case, evolution might remain possible, but as with the missing link, less evidenced. Or, not evidenced at all.

This argument boils down to evolution being possible to have happened if it becomes impossible to prove: for one classic argument in favour of evolution is precisely that if two beings share the same trait, it must have developed at the latest in last common ancestor.

Here we have a deadlock for evolutionists. If immunity against deviant karyograms developed first, no chromosome numbers above that of 48 are possible. Which we know to be untrue about mammals. If karyograms above 48 developed first, and evolution somehow happened, that immunity came to develop after separation of different species, i e independently.

And if the same trait can develop without presence in last common ancestor, then community of traits is so very clearly not a proof for any common ancestor. And even if evolution were true, it would not be philosophically proven.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Boulogne-Billancourt
15 - VI - 2011

"Back when Genesis was written people could not understand concepts like millions of years" ...

Factoid.

A Christian believing Biblical story and Chronology and an Evolutionist whether Christian or not will have diverse opinions about what was too complex for people enumerated in genealogies before Noah or even whether they existed or not.

But not even evolutionists need suppose that Genesis comes from an age when man had no mental capacity for understanding a concept like "millions of years". Biblical Hebrew and its Greek translation does have expressions meaning millions. Like in Daniel ch. 7 verse 10:

A swift stream of fire issued forth from before him: thousands of thousands ministered to him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him: the judgment sat, and the books were opened.

Thousands of thousands = millions.
Ten thousand times a hundred thousand = 1000.000.000

Vedas and Mahabharata and Upanishads are pretty old literature too. Unlike Hebrew literature not in having the concept but in applying it to years. I am not sure which one of them - maybe more than just one - states this thing about Himalayas very slowly wearing down until the world is destroyed and recreated, but that too is very clearly pre-modern writing and shows pre-modern civilisations contained men capable of grasping the concept in question.

Silmarillion, though never meant to be factually believed, also states age of earth as very old, far far older than Genesis says. And the statements have nothing like modern scientist or rationalist sound, but clearly expresses the concept in a clearly pre-modern way. Which is enough of an answer to a statement like in the title.

In a Christian Evolutionist the statement is only erroneous. He may believe Genesis simplifies the view point of the Omniscient God to adapt to people who could not grasp a concept like "millions". This is not good theology, as it makes God a kind of wellmeaning liar. But at least it is comprehensible how they reason.

An Evolutionist who was an Atheist could not say such a thing. He would have to argue Hebrews shortened genealogies before they began writing or took them up again after a long break and then their mistake was sacralised by coming to be included in a sacred book. A position which is of course not at all acceptable to a Christian.

Since in last two essays I have stated I know about but do not believe Silmarillion, I do foresee one standard question from some atheist readers. How do I know the Gospels, let alone Genesis is not fiction like Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings? The short answer is: peoples (Hebrews and Christians) have accepted them as their earliest records. None has made such a mistake about Silmarillion. A more detailed answer is not given on this blog, since it is dedicated to the special debate between Genesis and Darwin believers, with author on the Genesis side, but on another of my blogs:

somewhere else

Enjoy the reading!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Versailles
19-V-2011

Another funny thing about mammal evolution as supposed ...

I am just watching a diagram in a book about language origin:

Aux Origines des langues
et du langage
Sous la direction de
Jean-Marie Hombert

On p. 52 we are dealing with an essay by Philippe Vernier, and he gives a phylogenetic tree of vertabrates. In fact two, the right one being a detailed tree of mammals, I transmit only the lest tree in a table, and I translate names as best I can (with a little help from wiki).

MYBP+/-*	(origin)**	first group	second group
*placed as if date of split, actually date of appearance of origin, **abbreviated if identic to second group of previous split
540	craniata	vertebrates with/	vertebrates without jaws
?	vertebrates without jaws	hagfish	lampreys
470	vertebrates with jaws	cartilaginous fishes	bone verterates
410	b. vert.	ray-finned fishes	tetrapodes
370	tetr.	amphibians	amniotes
340	amn.	mammalia	sauropsides
320	saur.	turtles	diapsides
300	diaps.	serpents, lizards	birds, crocodiles

Two funny things about this. One is: nearly every time, except for hagfish and lampreys and also except for serpent/lizard vs. bird/crocodile groups, where both emerging groups are identifiable specific types of genera, and except for first split were neither is, one is pretty particular, the other very general.

What I learned was that there were never any tetrapodes that were neither amphibians nor amniotes, but amphibians were simply the first amniotes. Never any bone vertebrates that were neither rayfinned fishes nor tetrapodes, but tetrapodes developed from rayfinned fishes. Never any amniotes that were neither ... wait a minute!

Here is the second funny thing: amniotes lead to either mammals or sauropsides. Ouch! Mammalians branching off as early as 340 million years before present! I had learned the mammals began their carreer after the demise of dinosaurs.

OK, some fossiles and datings in the eighties.

The branch-offs from amniotes which supposedly developed from amphibians are then, according to evolutionists, Anapsides, Synapsides, Diapsides, according to skull anatomy. Anapsides are supposed to have left us one branch, turtles, Synapsides also one branch, mammals, and Diapsides birds and non-turtle reptiles. Figures.

Early mammals sorry synapsides are supposed to include Dimetrodon, which counts as a Dinosaur. Sorry: Pelycosaur. Apart from Pelycosaurs there were other pre-mammalian synapsides, like therapsides, later developing into mammals. All according to recent "science".

Oh, and Reptiles is no longer a phylum. Synapsides, Anapsides and Diapsides are phyla, of which all Anapsides along with extinct Synapsides (non-extinct being non-reptilian mammals) and some but not all Diapsides count as "reptiles" which thus is a paraphylum.

Impressed?

In a way yes. Just as I am impressed by Tolkien's Silmarillion. Æsthetically and intellectually for the thought put into either of them.

Convinced?

No. Not by evolution, nor by Silmarillion. I did get curious about some ideas expressed in Silmarillion, found the spiritual as opposed to merely physical moving factors of sun and moon expressed in clear, Christian erudite non-fiction, totally predating Tolkien. And am thus a Geocentric. But I am not an evolutionist. As little as I am a silmarillionist.

There is of course ideas which I find true even in evolutionary thought: like the very probable fact that Dimetrodon existed and was according to scull anatomy a synapside. This does not prove it was ancestor of extant mammals. And since all non-soft parts are long since away, I cannot even be sure it was not a mammal, though some traits (leg anatomy) have been found or reconstructed as "reptilian". What we do not know either is when it lived. Dating methods are intellectually a hotch-potch of assumptions without proof. Make similar assumptions about diverse methods and they will tend to confirm each other, especially if you calibrate them (i e readjust datings) on each other, which I know is done between dendrochronology and Carbon 14.

English readers have easy access to Creationist sites criticising dating methods, for French readers there is at least my summary - making Carbon 14 an epitome of dating methods, well aware it is not the only one - in my essay here:

Atapuerca: 80.000 (ou encore 800.000) ans de vieux?

But, believing details found in Silmarillion because I find them confirmed by earlier Christian erudition and simple good sense does not make me a silmarillionist believer and believing details like existence of Dimetrodon does not make me a Darwinist.

My best criticism of Darwinism is not about its lack of proof, but about proof to the contrary. It is in effect as soon as there are mammals reproducing with amniotic sack joined to body of mother rather than in a shell and thus subject to immunity system of its mother. It has to do with chromosome numbers, centromeres, telomeres, geometry. In that order. All of which are real scientific data, verifiable every day in laboratories and microscopes. My essays about it are here:

Karyogrammata
I had a dream one night.
Citing, again, Ian Johnston.

So, enjoy the reading folks!

I suppose the reason French are so often attached to Evolution in general is not that they understand and believe heredity as known by Mendel and Chromosomes, but that they are very often Lamarckian while confessing to be Darwinist.

Meanwhile, making Silmarillion and Evolution parallels in this essay (which is not strictly science all way through, but a review on science) has a point: Tolkien did mean Silmarillion as a theory, though not a very realistic one, about background and beginnings of human history with explanation specifically of European mythology (Túrin story compares to Finnish Kullervo story and less in detail but more in seriousness to Greek Oedipous story) and some European but not Indoeuropean vocabulary (Quenya "ranka"="hand and arm", cf Lithuanian and Russian, Sindarin "alf"="swan", cf Icelandic "álft"). And he did modify it as new data or new light on old data came to hand. Precisely as scientists did modify the theory of how mammals evolved between back in my childhood when I learned about evolution and present when I read up on it again. That plus a wealth of detail, is not sufficient to prove either theory true or factual.

Oh, to get back to starting point: even if Silmarillion as a theory is not meant to be perfectly realistic, Tolkien did it for fun and aesthetic pleasure, when it comes to explaining why humans have speech, it clearly is less absurd than evolution. So, of course, is Genesis.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Versailles
19-V-2011

Iran heads last weeks readers here too:

Iran 13

Wonder why?

For other questions related to atheism - a new blog

somewhere else

To a man who called me "brother" today (and who reads this blog)

I leave to God whether we are brothers, both in the true Church or not.

When I was Roumanian Orthodox, I did not abjure Roman Catholicism, though I did not believe Papacy. When I went back to Roman Catholicism, I broke no oath. When Benedict XVI ended the supposed excommunication sentence of 1988, that gave me back some confidence Papacy or Tradition where the Popes are was not lost.

I say this to be neither before men, nor before God a liar, nor to be judged by your bishop, whoever he be, as such.

I still think, when we talk of bishops, that the Roumanian one fell short of truth in such a solemn moment as an Easter Pastoral back in 2008. Sin is sin. Temptation is temptation. Error is error. Madness is madness and idiocy is idiocy. Mixing the former three with the latter into a broad category like "sicknesses of the soul" which resembles too much the modern term "mental illness" did scandalise me then, and remains objectionable now.

But brothers or not, I bear you no grudge in your person. Being funny - unless at same time hurting me - and being charitable in a funny way does end grudges where I am concerned. Usually that is. Unless there is an arrière-pensée on your part.

St Thomas Aquinas, St Robert Bellarmine, pray for me, that I loose not my uprightness and Christian freedom to Orientals quicker to anger and error than to charity!

As for you, keep praying and fasting as well as you can, and if God gives you confidence in Papacy, so much the better.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Georges Pompidou
11-III-2011

PS: "brother" I hope to be taken in a general Christian sense. I am opposed to free masons and all their lodges, from Grand Orient to P2, and - despite what seem to me to be rumours to the contrary - I am most certainly not a monk.

Agassiz vs Gray

Louis Agassiz was a zoologist. Asa Gray was a botanist. They were Harvard professors in Darwin's day.

As I have already noted speciation by polyploidy is no problem for plants. Even in animals, variation within chromosomes keeping their number is no problem, but mammalian as well as plant species have differring chromosome numbers. And though slightly decreasing ones might just be feasible, increasing ones is a major problem if not an outright impossibility. I do not reckon there is a real feasible possibility for it. This message as well as this one deal with it.

You have guessed it, Louis Agassiz being a zoologist was anti-Darwin, his arguments are reused by Creationists to this day. Asa Gray, being a botanist was pro-Darwin.

Subsequent major Darwinists in the following decades were more Lamarckist than purely Darwinist not to mention Darwinist Mendelian. They did not come up as much with good explanations, as with mere discoveries -- I think the Dinosaurs were dealt with back then. Though their discoveries bolstered an impression of "once the fauna was different, so probably fauna, including its details the species has evolved", in explanatory and theoretical terms, they did not dare be fully Darwinist. Leaning too much on environment natural selection and adaption edge of the pair natural selection vs variation as they did is in reality saying, as Lamarck did, that adaptions made with a goal during an animals lifetime can be genetically transmitted. Which is an explanation that heredity has blown to pieces.

HGL

What about Dinosaurs?

My main theory about Tyrannosaurs Rex is that it was a mutation or genetical engineering product with far greater size than the ordinary samples of that species. A bit like this:

Papa Smurf tries to create a new fertilizer, but it transforms an ordinary flower into a smurfivore plant. After destroying the plant, two smurfs try to get rid of the fertilizer throwing it in a lonely place. However, a bird swallows it and becomes a huge, destructive monster named the "Howlibird". The Howlibird destroys the smurf village and the smurfs escape to an old tower.

quoted from wiki article

A few weeks or months ago, China had found fossiles of a species like T Rex, but one hundred times smaller. Here. What if T Rex is to this as the Howlibird? I mean, "More than 30 specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex have been identified, some of which are nearly complete skeletons." "More than 30"="less than 40" in language, though that is not quite so in Mathematics. "All three of these latter specimens are smaller than the first.". Nanotyrannus are by some counted as juvenile exemplars (two of them, first only one skull) of T Rex. What if they are right about species being same, but wrong about which is both normal and adult? Teratophoneus ... is known from an incomplete skull and postcranial skeleton recovered from the Kaiparowits Formation. "Alioramus is known from the holotypes of A. remotus and A. altai." A fuller quote from Daspletosaurus is in order:

The type specimen of Daspletosaurus torosus (CMN 8506) is a partial skeleton including the skull, the shoulder, a forelimb, the pelvis, a femur and all of the vertebrae from the neck, torso and hip, as well as the first eleven tail vertebrae. ... Aside from the type, there is only one other well-known specimen, a complete skeleton discovered in 2001. ... The Oldman Formation was deposited during the middle Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, from about 77 to 76 Ma (million years ago).

I quote the last bit, because I think it worth while to note that, as any other young earth creationist would say, I believe there is this Oldman Formation, I am more than doutful about "Campanian stage of Late Cretaceous", and in the 77 to 76 million years ago, I have no faith at all. The no longer living animal itself, of course, is dated from the rock it is found in and thus from this estimate about 77 to 76 million years ago.

Another problem: Spinosaurus:

On the basis of a photograph of the lower jaw and a photograph of the entire specimen as mounted, Smith concluded that Stromer's original 1915 drawings were slightly inaccurate. In 2003, Oliver Rauhut suggested that Stromer's Spinosaurus holotype was a chimera, composed of vertebrae and neural spines from a carcharodontosaurid similar to Acrocanthosaurus and a dentary from Baryonyx or Suchomimus.:35−36 This analysis was rejected in at least one subsequent paper.

All other specimens are partial only. One from leg, some from snout or teeth. I suspect that the rejection of the chimera theory in that subsequent paper was necessary to keep up Paleontology as an Academic and supposedly scientific theory.

I have already touched upon this problem earlier on.

As for this:
link, not image upload - am not into the share alike since my conditions are here - by Franko Fonseca, it seems the teeth are teeth, but I am not as sure the bone is bone.

You see, there are fossils and fossils. Petrified skeletons are one type. Oops. Petrification is not the only kind of fossilisation. There is also Permineralisation:

Permineralized fossils preserve original cell structure, which can help scientists study an organism at the cellular level. These are three-dimensional fossils, which create permanent molds of internal structures. The mineralization process itself helps prevent tissue compaction, which distorts the actual size of organs. A permineralized fossil will also reveal much about the environment an organism lived in and the substances found in it since it preserves soft body parts. This helps researchers investigate the plants, animals, and microbes of different time periods. Examples of permineralization (:) Most dinosaur bones are permineralized. (...)

OK. Seems it might not be an artefact after all then. At least not a human one. Which of course is no guarantee the beast itself was wholly natural in origin.

If modern day weapon developers are going to try to take a cue from what might be the work of pre-flood genetical scientists, let us study the art of dragon-killing, in such literature as we have, it might turn out useful.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Paris V, Buffon
(appropriately enough!)
22-II-2011

Martin Amis is bad even as evolutionists go.

Here is what he says.

Now, if evolution of society, more precisely medicine, has posed a "problem" like men living "too long", obviously evolution of diseases - resistent bacteria and global pandemies - might be more than he wishes for to deal with the "problem". And dealing with it in other ways - his ways: euthanasia, abortion, contraception, gay liberal agenda - will not help avoiding that klind of thing.

I wonder if people reasoned like that before the Flood of Noah*. After it, God shortened the lifespan of man, and to judge from when Set got his son, and so forth up to Noah, God also hurried puberty. Medicine will not enable us to live as long as Methusalem, and so neither saying puberty comes too soon or saying death comes too late will do any kind of "good" to society. Any kind that is, that God could agree with. It seems what God did was a grim poetic irony on what people weresaying before the Flood. And what Martin Amis seems set on repeating.

OK: the rainbow means there will not be another flood. But provocations like that to the author life ... well, reread Apocalypse* or some prophecy about the Great Chastisement, will you!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Bibl. Buffon, Paris V
18-I-2011

*I fear when these kind of naturalists read some supranatural disaster stories, it is more like Babylonic mis-representation of why flood happened (these idolaters thought one of their gods could not stand the hubbub of men, and caused disaster by going mad: God preserve us from idolaters acting like those gods!)