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Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Genome mapping: Oldest animals "more complex than thought"

In The Scientist, Melissa Lee Phillips writes:
The genome of the sea anemone, one of the oldest living animal species on Earth, shares a surprising degree of similarity with the genome of vertebrates, researchers report in this week's Science.

The study also found that these similarities were absent from fruit fly and nematode genomes, contradicting the widely held belief that organisms become more complex through evolution. The findings suggest that the ancestral animal genome was quite complex, and fly and worm genomes lost some of that intricacy as they evolved.

One really interesting example of the pervasiveness of Darwinism in academic culture is the inability (due to fear mainly, I should think) to spell out the implications of such findings except in a veiled way (the "more complex than thought" schtick).

Let's go over the argument: The Gospel according to Charles Darwin teaches that life originated and complexified by natural selection acting on random mutations over vast eons. In other words, there was a slow increase in complexity. As the item in The Scientist clearly spells out, in this case we actually see here huge complexity near the beginning of life, with losses among complex diversified species such as fruit flies. In other words, evolution meant reduced complexity. And the original complexity came from where, exactly?

No wonder there is an intelligent design controversy! It would actually be dangerous to a scientist's career to discuss these matters openly.
If you are interested in why there is an intelligent design controversy, and why it can't just go away, check out my book, By Design or by Chance?

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