Stasis
Why don’t we see just ONE isolated population making a break for it and evolve some entirely new feature?
Instead of searching for fossils, shouldn’t we be able to point to at least ONE live transitional or intermediate
form that actually displays a partially formed NEW bone growing, new appendage beginning, or new valve
forming?(Refer to cecal valves towards the end of http://whoisyourcreator.com/how_does_evolution_work.html )
If evolution is true, everything should be in perpetual state of transition and we should see a hodge-podge of
everything – No defined trees, flowers, insects, fish, amphibians, mammals, birds, etc. By evolution’s own
definition, changes should be perpetually creating something beyond just another specie.
On the other hand, why are some organisms that exist today virtually no different from fossils of organisms that are supposedly 450 million years-old?
- “Until 1938, scientists thought that coelacanths went extinct 80 million years ago. But in 1938, scientists
discovered a living coelacanth from a population in the Indian Ocean that looked very similar to its fossil
ancestors.”
University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education, Evolution 101:
‘Patterns in Macroevolution’ page.
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/InNews/fossil2004.html - “These simply organized organisms do not have specialized muscle or nerve cells and nevertheless survived
the last 500 million years almost unchanged and are considered a link between the single-cell dominated
Precambrian and later multicellular organisms.”
Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, “Novel Evolutionary Theory for The Explosion of Life,” October 16,
2009, ScienceDaily.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091016224153.htm
Evolutionary-based science has an answer for this – Stasis.
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/ridley/a-z/Stasis.asp
Stasis is NOT a mechanism, but rather the acknowledgment that some organisms haven’t changed throughout
time:
“Although the fossil is distinct from today’s splay-footed crickets, its general features differ very little, Heads
said, revealing that the genus has been in a period of ‘evolutionary stasis’ for at least the last 100 million
years.”
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Rare insect fossil reveals 100 Million years of evolutionary
stasis,”February 3, 2011, Physorg.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-rare-insect-fossil-reveals-million.html
But the claim that there is a Molecular Clock directly conflicts with Stasis:
“Since its proposal in the 1960s, the molecular clock has become an essential tool in many areas of evolutionary
biology, including systematics, molecular ecology, and conservation genetics. The molecular clock hypothesis
states that DNA and protein sequences evolve at a rate that is relatively constant over time and among different
organisms. A direct consequence of this constancy is that the genetic difference between any two species is
proportional to the time since these species last shared a common ancestor.”
Scitable by Nature Education, “The Molecular Clock and Estimating Species Divergence,” 2008.
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-molecular-clock-and-estimating-species-divergence-41971
So, what is it. Change or no change?
- Stasis claims that some organisms don’t change over time.
- The molecular clock premise states that mutations occur at a constant rate, enough that it is considered an
“essential tool” (above quote) for establishing a last common ancestor.
Yes, evolutionary-based science covers any and all possible conditions – Change or no change. To cover this
schizophrenia, there is even another claim that Stasis ‘selectively’ occurs when terrains, climate change, and
the filling of niches inhibit evolution.
But, since populations constantly go up and down in number, and climate change is perpetual, Stasis is nothing
but another fanciful story compliments of Darwinism.
“Major questions posed by zoologists cannot be answered from inside the neo-Darwinian straitjacket. Such questions include, for example, ‘How do new structures arise in evolution?’ ‘Why, given so much environmental change, is stasis so prevalent in evolution as seen in the fossil record?’ ‘How did one group of organisms or set of macromolecules evolve from another?’ The importance of these questions is not at issue; it is just that neo-Darwinians, restricted by their presuppositions, cannot answer them.” —Lynn Margulis |