Convergence Evolution Myth In Nature

The 22 April 2004 edition of Nature magazine carried an article titled "Developmental Genetics: Bittersweet Evolution." (1) Written by Günter Theißen, the article reported a study by Beverley Glover and her colleagues on the tomato and bittersweet, which was published in the journal Gene. (2) The report revealed that these two plants are identical in terms of the appearance of the organ known as the anther, which produces the flower"s pollen, but that mutation research has shown that these developed by different pathways.

The 22 April 2004 edition of Nature magazine carried an article titled "Developmental Genetics: Bittersweet Evolution." (1) Written by Günter Theißen, the article reported a study by Beverley Glover and her colleagues on the tomato and bittersweet, which was published in the journal Gene. (2) The report revealed that these two plants are identical in terms of the appearance of the organ known as the anther, which produces the flower"s pollen, but that mutation research has shown that these developed by different pathways. This raises a question that evolutionists need to answer: How is it that these two plants, assumed to be descended from a common ancestor, came to develop the same structure by means of two different pathways? Theißen summed up the situation thus: 

Structures that occur in closely related organisms and that look the same are usually considered to be homologous - their similarity is taken to arise from their common ancestry. Common sense suggests that the more complex such structures are, the less likely they are to have evolved independently and the more valuable they should be for studying systematics. But what if "obviously" identical organs have arisen through two mutually exclusive developmental routes?

The evolutionists who carried out the research imagine themselves to have provided a reasonable answer to this puzzle and claim that "pepperpots [anthers] originated twice independently in the lineages that led to tomato and bittersweet." By telling a tale of convergent evolution they sought to give the impression that the puzzle had been solved. In truth, however, the facts that manifestly reject the claim of inheritance from a common ancestor were concealed.

At this point it will be useful to review the concept of convergent evolution. Evolutionists maintain that similarities between living things for which they are unable to establish any close ancestral link came about through convergent evolution. According to this claim, random mutations took place one after the other and in the same order, and under the effects of alleged similar environmental factors living things exposed to the same evolutionary pressure developed similar structures. In summary, the convergent evolution model is a concealing tactic employed to attach an "evolutionary" label to phenomena that cannot be "explained" by the theory of evolution.

To give an example, there is a very close resemblance between the skull of the Tasmanian wolf, now extinct, and the North American wolf. However, the Tasmanian wolf, which lived in Australia, is a member of the marsupial mammal group. The North American wolf, on the other hand, belongs to the placental mammal group. There are deep physiological differences between placental mammals and marsupials, and there is no close common ancestor that evolutionists can propose between the Tasmanian wolf and the North American wolf. The similarities between the two cannot thus be explained in terms of a common ancestor, in other words by the homology thesis.

However, there are also "reserve" evolutionist terms for similar structures that cannot be accounted for in terms of homology. These are known as "analogues." Analogous organs that cannot be explained by a common ancestor are regarded as the product of a convergent evolutionary process that took place in such a way as to produce similar structures from different branches. The true name for this dogmatic approach is not of course science, but the worship of chance under a scientific guise. The French zoologist Paul Grassé drew attention to this unscientific belief, saying that "...Chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped." (3)

Due to their materialist beliefs, evolutionists deny that living things, whose intelligent design is so obvious, were created by God. Instead they cling to the irrational belief that blind chance and aimless, unconscious natural phenomena could twice have produced the same structures. This model, known as convergent evolution, consists of an attempt to insist on an evolutionary explanation stemming from this belief. In this way, one way or another, the facts are interpreted in an evolutionary light and are adapted to fit the theory. This is a clear indication that scientists have adopted evolution as a scientific religion. The British scientist H.J. Lipson states:

In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists accepted it and many are prepared to "bend" their observations to fit in with it. (4)

Indeed, Theissen"s words in Nature magazine clearly reveal this "bending:"

Molecular systematic analysis confirms that tomato and bittersweet are closely related, and the traditional view would be that their pepperpot cones are obviously homologous. But genetic tinkering and mutant analysis show that they probably are not - that they are convergent, having taken different routes to the same end. Life"s potential to invent complex structures more than once may worry systematists, who depend on reliable characters to reconstruct relationships between organisms. But it will please anyone who admires nature"s innovative power.

As we have seen, Theißen is making a nonsensical act of faith by saying that this structure is definitely homologous but probably convergent, and is blindly interpreting this as the work of the so-called creative force of nature. To put it another way, he is stating his devotion to his own religion.

We call on Nature magazine to abandon its support for the scientific religion known as evolution and to put an end to blindly portraying convergent evolution scenarios as scientific.

Note: For further information about the invalidity of homology, see:
http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/myht_of_homology.html 

1 Günter Thei en, "Developmental genetics: Bittersweet evolution", Nature 428, 22 April 2004, p. 813
2 Gene 331, 1-7; 2004
3 Pierre-Paul Grassé, Evolution of Living Organisms, New York: Academic Press, 1977, p. 103
4 H.S. Lipson, A Physicist Looks at Evolution, Physics Bulletin, vol. 31, p.138 (1980)