Entries by Rudis

I was recently pointed to a hilariously absurd article called Scientists find Extraterrestrial genes in Human DNA. It saddens me that the site hosting this nonsense is associating itself with my favorite country.

Anyway, I'm sure most people would recognize this particular article for the idiotic drivel that it is (even most of the believer sites that I found referencing it seem to discuss it with an air of incredulity), but I thought it would be fun to analyze it in detail regardless. Let's look at the opening statement:

A group of researchers working at the Human Genome Project indicate that they made an astonishing scientific discovery: They believe so-called 97% non-coding sequences in human DNA is no less than genetic code of extraterrestrial life forms.

The non-coding sequences are common to all living organisms on Earth, from moulds to fish to humans. In human DNA, they constitute larger part of the total genome, says Prof. Sam Chang, the group leader. Non-coding sequences, originally known as "junk DNA", were discovered years ago, and their function remained a mystery. The overwhelming majority of Human DNA is "Off-world" in origin. The apparent "extraterrestrial junk genes" merely "enjoy the ride" with hard working active genes, passed from generation to generation.

Look at the wording of the first paragraph. It's written to imply that the astonishing discovery is that there is alien code in human DNA, but if you actually read what it's saying, the astonishing discovery is that they believe that there is alien code in human DNA. I wonder if that was intentional. Hmmmmmmmm.

They are talking about Junk DNA here. There are a lot of hypotheses as to what it is and how it formed--and I bet they are all a lot more credible than Sam Chang's "discovered" belief that it was planted there by aliens. Speaking of Prof. Chang, I did a search for his name at the Human Genome Project website, and there was nary a Chang to be found. I also checked their list of publications and, surprise, there was nothing there with any mention of extraterrestrials. A few PubMed searches showed many papers attributed to various S Changs, but none that talk about extraterrestrial origins of non-coding DNA.

Let's just think for a minute about what process would be required to scientifically test for the presence of extraterrestrial information in human DNA. The first (seemingly insurmountable) obstacle that must be overcome would be that you must know what extraterrestrial information in the human genome would look like. No problem, right? Just head on down to your local branch of Area 51 and ask the men in black for some sample data. Uh huh. Let's see how Chang approached this issue:

After comprehensive analysis with the assistance of other scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians, and other learned scholars, Professor Chang had wondered if the apparently "junk Human DNA" was created by some kind of "extraterrestrial programmer".

This paints a pretty clear picture for me. I can see the exchange now (doodity doo doodity doo doodity doo (those are the sounds of transition to a fantasy sequence in the TV show of my mind)):

Chang: I have done a comprehensive analysis of the human genome. I have called you all here to assist me.
Scientist: Who are you?
Computer programmer: You said there would be free donuts... But I don't see any...
Mathematician: Why are wee meeting in your mom's basement?
Chang: Hmmm. I bet this "junk DNA" stuff was made by aliens!
Other learned scholars: This is gay. We're leaving.

The article just gets more bizarre from there. Chang's grand hypothesis is that an alien race was working on coding an ultimate human race, the code for which is in our non-coding DNA. Due, however, to time restrictions from the alien programmers' bosses (or whatever), the aliens were forced to scrap the large code base for the ultimate humans, and release a stripped down basic version of their DNA program (ie., our coding DNA sequences). Since our "basic" version of DNA isn't as powerful as the scrapped version stored in our non-coding DNA, we are not immune to cancer (as we would be had the aliens' bosses given them an extension on the "Earth project"). The article also states in various places that this is all "verified fact" and that there is "absolute proof" to support this theory. Right.

So, let's recap:

1. Chang is probably not even a real person, and even if he is, he is grossly misrepresented in the article.


2. The article claims to be about science, but is in reality just a bunch of poorly thought-out childish fantasies.


3. The website hosting it is called The Canadian.


4. The Canadian also has articles titled AIDS is bio-terrorism created to kill billions some doctors and scientists say, Testimony claims crop circles made by "alien allies" of humanity, and Global Warming reveals that Stephen Harper and George Bush are not Christians.

What conclusions can we draw from this information? It's simple: Canadians, myself included, are full of shit, and you should never believe anything we say. Ever. Especially if it's on the Interweb.

What would it mean if The Secret were true, and there really was a Law of Attraction? Let's brainstorm!^*

• Over 800 million starving people around the world simply don't want food badly enough.



Behold the power of The Secret™.



• Millions of people who die from AIDS and cancer every year, didn't think about staying alive hard enough.



If only she knew The Secret™.



• Every two and a half minutes, someone somewhere in America wanted to be sexually assaulted.



He can come for you, too, if you know The Secret™.



• It didn't cross the minds of over six million Jews to think about not being slaughtered during the Holocaust.



Looks like they didn't know The Secret™.



• Hundreds of thousands of people in New Orleans were wishing that their houses and lives would be devastated by Hurricane Katrina.



The Secret™ strikes again!



• Thousands of soldiers in Iraq are dead because they didn't think enough anti-bullet and anti-explosion thoughts.



^** The infidels must never learn The Secret™, or we shall surely perish.



• Not enough of the thousands of people who died on 9/11 were concentrating strongly enough on the buildings not collapsing.



If only the movie about The Secret™ had come out a few years earlier.



• Let's not forget about Steve Irwin.



The Secret™: Not just for humans any more!

It's called blame the victims, folks. Oprah does it, so it can't be wrong! If you'll excuse me now, I'm going to go visualize me up some french fries and gravy. Yum!

^* Yes, I realize that this post is in incredibly poor taste. Hopefully it conveys how amazingly fucking stupid I think The Secret is.
Special thanks to Tombstone Generator and The Newspaper Clipping Generator.

The claim is often made by creationists that the lack of "transitional forms" in the fossil record proves that evolution is false. There are obvious problems with this claim. First of all, even if you accept this premise, the lack of proof for evolution is not the same as proof for creationism. Disproving one theory is not sufficient to prove an alternate theory--the alternate theory needs to be proved on its own merits and evidence. It must make predictions (like the theory of evolution does), and then confirm those predictions by finding or demonstrating further evidence (like the theory of evolution does).

Second of all, the statement is based on a poor understanding of evolution and the fossilization process in general. The conditions under which fossils are formed are very rare, and the likelihood that any given organism will become a fossil is vastly low. The "transitional" species (for example, fish evolving the ability to walk on land, dinosaurs evolving some bird-like traits but still retaining dinosaur traits, etc.) would be confined to a small geographic location, and (relatively speaking) short time period, so the likelihood of the right conditions for fossilization coming together for of a member of one of those "transitional" species would be particularly low. There are undoubtedly countless species that have lived and evolved that we will never know about, just due to the fact that fossilization is so rare. If we never found any "transitional" fossils, the rarity of fossils in general could easily explain it.

Thirdly, the statement is false anyway--there are "transitional" species in the fossil record. Technically, since evolution is an ongoing process, all species are transitional, but we even have examples when using the definition set up by creationists. Archaeopteryx, many species in the evolutionary lineage that lead up to modern day horses, Ambulocetus (the "walking whale"), Tikaalik, various proto-humans in our own evolutionary lineage, and many, many more. Did I mention there are many more?

Not convinced? Have excuses for why each of these fossils does not actually, as common sense and science would have us believe, represent a transitional species? That's OK, because fortunately there is plenty of independent evidence that also supports evolution.

Molecular Evidence

Around this time last year, Dr. Zachary Moore started a series of episodes in his fantastic Evolution 101 blog and podcast that explained the molecular evidence for evolution in detail. His source was primarily Dr. Douglas Theobald's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, which he "dumbed-down" into less technical terms. I won't bother reproducing Dr. Zach's detailed descriptions, instead I'll use what information I gleaned from both sources to further "dumb" them down into shorter and more concise summaries.

1. Protein Functional Redundancy (Dr. Theobald / Dr. Zach)

The idea here is that there are certain proteins that are encoded in DNA that all living things have, because they are necessary for life. Humans have them, horses have them, flies have them, fungi have them, bugs have them, bacteria have them--every living thing has them. They are called ubiquitous proteins. There are, for all intents and purposes, an infinite number of possible ways these proteins could be constructed to carry out their function. Let's consider the two possible scenarios that I'm addressing here, and what they would predict about these proteins.

Evolution says that all living things evolved from a common ancestor. It would predict that these ubiquitous proteins are more similar in closely related species (for example between humans and chimps) than in less related species (for example between humans and yeast).

Creationism might predict either a) that these proteins would be identical in all living things (God's blueprint), or b) that these proteins would be different in each species (perhaps specifically tailored for maximum efficiency in each one).

When we look at the data, it overwhelmingly supports evolution. As evolution predicted, the similarity of these proteins very closely correlates with how related the species are (identical or very similar in closely related species, and more and more different as you go to species that are less and less related).

But wait a second, how do we know that this isn't just a result of prediction b) that creationism may make above (ie., that God has not simply tweaked his protein design to better accommodate each species' specific requirements)? Well, scientists have tried swapping these proteins between very distantly related species (for example, humans and yeast). The results show that the proteins function equally well, regardless of how they are constructed. This means that there is no reasonable explanation why God would have made them differently in the two different species (and, furthermore, to make them different in a way that would exactly correlate with how natural evolution would predict them to be).

2. DNA Coding Redundancy (Dr. Theobald / Dr. Zach)

This is related to point 1. above. Basically, the patterns for constructing the ubiquitous proteins are stored in an organism's DNA. I mentioned before that there are essentially an infinite number of ways you could construct the proteins to achieve their function. There is also an essentially infinite number of different DNA sequences that could code any given protein. When we look at the proteins in humans and chimps, we see that they are very similar or identical, in contrast with less similarity between less related species (despite there being no functional reason for the differences). Since this is also true for the DNA sequences that code the proteins (again, with no functional reason for them to be similar or different between any species), it reinforces and supports the protein evidence for evolution for the same reasons mentioned above.

The only way that creationists can explain this evidence is to say that God designed the proteins and their DNA coding sequences this way for reasons that we can't possibly understand. I would posit that there really is only one reason that God could possibly have to design things this way, assuming that he did. That would be to ensure that anybody with the capability to investigate this evidence would unquestionably arrive at the conclusion that evolution and common ancestry is true, thus damning himself to Hell for all eternity. Boy, if God did create us, he sure is a dick!

3. Transposons (Dr. Theobald / Dr. Zach)
4. Redundant Pseudogenes (Dr. Theobald / Dr. Zach)
5. Endogenous Retroviruses (Dr. Theobald / Dr. Zach)

I'm grouping these final three points together, because they are basically describing three different things that support evolution in the same way. The previous two points described how similarities and differences between the coding parts of DNA strongly support evolutionary theory. These last three points describe how certain aspects of the non-coding part of DNA (or "Junk DNA") also provides strong evidence in support of evolution.

Transposons are "mobile" chunks of DNA code that can move around within the genome, pseudogenes are vestigial genes that no longer have any function in the DNA, and endogenous retroviruses are pretty much what they sound like--viruses that infect DNA and get passed on to the organism's offspring in the genome (and eventually, over multiple generations, mutate into inactive "fingerprints" in the DNA of a species). The insertion or creation of each of these things into an organism's genome is controlled by completely random circumstances, and each one is passed on genetically to offspring. What this means is, if two separate organisms have identical or very similar copies of these "fingerprints" in their genome, it means that they are almost certainly genetically related (since the chance that the same random fingerprint would arise in both independently is astronomically low). It is the same concept that is used in paternity tests (looking at similarities in DNA that can only be explained by genetic relationships). So, essentially, using the same concepts that allow us to look at the DNA of two brothers and determine that they had the same parents, we should be able to look at the DNA of members from two different species to determine if they had a common ancestor.

Again, the evidence strongly supports the theory of evolution and common ancestry--related species have many of these DNA "fingerprints" in common with each other. For example, chimpanzees and humans have several in common, indicating that we have a common ancestor. Evolutionary theory would also predict that less related species would have less of these fingerprints in common, and this is also the case. For example, DNA fingerprints that are shared between hippos and whales (which evolution predicts are closely related) are not shared with other, less related mammals (such as pigs and camels). Again, this data can only be explained by accepting that these species evolved from common ancestors.

Since we can actually watch these processes take place in a science lab (see these "fingerprints" created in the genome, and get passed along to offspring), it means that creationists must accept that God also created this process--again apparently with no good reason other than to "trick" scientists by making it look like evolution and common ancestry is true.

Biological/Anatomical Evidence - Vestigial Structures

Penguins have hollow bones and wings like other birds do, but can't fly. Blind mole rats have eyes like other animals do, but can't see with them. Whales have leg bones, but no legs. Dandelions produce petals and pollen, but don't use them for reproduction like other flowers. Humans get goosebumps like other fur-covered mammals, yet don't have any fur to raise. Pythons have pelvis bones, but no legs. There are countless other examples of structures in organisms (even at the molecular level) that either perform no function, or completely different and lesser functions than similar structures in other closely related organisms. These are structures that are clearly meant for a particular function (as can be observed by their working counterparts in other species), but do not.

This evidence can be perfectly explained by evolution and common ancestry. And, again, evolution can make predictions about vestigial structures, which are supported by the evidence. Using phylogenies constructed using independent evolutionary evidence, any vestigial structures in a species should have working counterparts in other closely related species, and must necessarily derive from a working structure in a previous ancestor. As it turns out, this is absolutely the case.

Any competing theory (for example, creationism) should also be able to explain the existence of vestigial structures--not only occurring in individual species, but in entire groups of species (which evolution says evolved from a common ancestor), and should also address their structural similarity to working structures in other species. For example, vestigial veriform appendixes in both humans and chimpanzees, which are non-functioning versions of cecums in other herbivorous species. One could argue that these vestigial structures do perform some minor secondary function, and thus are not vestigial (even though complete non-functioning is not a requirement for a structure to be considered vestigial), but it still does not address the issue that they closely resemble and are obviously derived from working counterparts in related organisms or ancestors. Additionally, evolution can account for the alternative functioning of these vestigial structures (ie., they evolved to perform the new function after their primary function was no longer necessary for the organism's survival).

So What Does It All Mean?

I've only covered a few of the many kinds of non-fossil evidence that support evolution--there is a lot more that is covered in great detail elsewhere on the web and in books (I recommend Dr. Theobald's essay on TalkOrigins.org). It really is not possible to deny the fact that evolution occurs, and that all species share common ancestors with other species, without completely ignoring the incredibly overwhelming evidence.

Sure, creationists also have "explanations" for all of the evidence presented here and elsewhere (generally, "God did it that way--I don't know why, but He did.") As I said before, if you believe that, then you are basically saying that God is a jerk who wants evolution to seem absolutely true. If you believe God created everything, then you believe that he did so in a way so as to perfectly remove any trace of his existence from the equation--as though he wants us to come to the inescapable conclusion that he didn't have anything to do with it, thus ultimately damning anyone who is actually curious enough to check the evidence out for themselves to eternal damnation.

What a prick!



Other References:
http://www.harunyahya.com/articles/20evolution01.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitional_fossil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil#Rarity_of_fossils
http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1a.asp
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/camp.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#morphological_vestiges
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestigial_structure
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v3/i1/appendix.asp