Kolbe Report 9/14/24

From 2000 to 2013, five skulls were recovered at the Dmanisi site in Georgia. The skulls were dated 1.8 to 1.85 mya. The five skulls vary enormously in morphology (see the photos in Figure 12-2). Depending on the skull, the Dmanisi fossils can be described as resembling H. habilis, H. erectus, or H. rudolfensis. Since all five skulls, from the same site and time period would be of the same species, the question for the discovery team was how to classify the fossils.

In 2013, the discovery team concluded that there is “growing evidence that…variation in…fossil hominids tends to be misinterpreted as species diversity, especially when single fossil specimens from different localities are compared…” Extending this conclusion to African fossils, the article stated “morphological diversity in the African fossil Homo record around 1.8 [mya] probably reflects variation between…a single evolving lineage; which is appropriate named H. erectus” and concluded that, most probably, “H. habilis and H. rudolfensis belong to a single evolving Homo lineage.”  While the article names the single lineage H. erectus, it has been explained that H. erectus should be sunk into H. sapiens.

Again, in 2017, an article in the Journal of Human Evolution concluded:

We propose that H. habilis, the Dmanisi population, and H. erectus constitute segments of a single evolutionary lineage. “Bushy” versions of phylogeny [evolutionary histories] postulating an early radiation [branching] within Homo and subsequent coexistence of three or more species in eastern Africa, may be unnecessarily complex and are difficult to justify on morphological grounds.

While the variety in size and shape of the five Dmanisi fossils baffled evolutionists, the diversity of fossils from the same site is not surprising when the impact of small population inbreeding is rightly understood. Explaining this crucial consideration, Rupe and Sanford state in Contested Bones:

…large brow ridges, sloping foreheads, and small cranial capacities—are characteristics of most Erectus specimens …However, it is important to realize there is considerable variation in the skulls assigned to this species. Leading paleo-experts have pointed out that Erectus includes highly variable skull types that look significantly different from the [Java Man] type specimen…many Erectus skulls appear deformed and asymmetrical, even after correcting for post-mortem fossil damage. This is consistent with the idea that these individuals suffered from pathologies…(bold added)

In other words, the variation observed in the skulls is not the result of any kind of evolution.  It is evidence of DEVOLUTION as a result of inbreeding, malnutrition, and disease.  This is consistent with the overwhelming evidence presented by Dr. John Sanford et al that the entire human race is devolving through genetic entropy from a much more highly-ordered state of genetic integrity that our first parents enjoyed less than ten thousand years ago!  

Dr. Kenneth Miller assures his audience that the crux of the argument for the intelligent design of living things is the idea of irreducible complexity, and that this idea is fundamentally incorrect.  He uses the bacterial flagellum as an example, and this is not the first place that he has made this argument. In his Dover trial testimony, his book Only a Theory, and in other writings, Dr. Miller argues that the irreducible complexity of the flagellum is refuted because about 10 flagellar proteins can also be used to construct a toxin-injection machine (called the Type-III Secretory System, or T3SS) that some bacteria use to kill other cells. At the Dover trial, Judge Jones cited Miller when he stated that the T3SS explained how the bacterial flagellum could evolve:

...[W]ith regard to the bacterial flagellum, Dr. Miller pointed to peer-reviewed studies that identified a possible precursor to the bacterial flagellum, a subsystem that was fully functional, namely the Type-III Secretory System.

In reality, however, even evolutionary biologists reject Miller’s speculative scenario.  In 2008 an article in New Scientist pointed out that the evidence favored the view that the Type III Secretory System was actually a degenerate form of a bacterium with a flagellum and came after it, not before:

One fact in favour of the flagellum-first view is that bacteria would have needed propulsion before they needed T3SSS, which are used to attack cells that evolved later than bacteria. Also, flagella are found in a more diverse range of bacterial species than T3SSs. ‘The most parsimonious explanation is that the T3SS arose later,’ says biochemist Howard Ochman at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Indeed, how and why would a bacterium “evolve” a mechanism to attack cells before it had even evolved a mechanism to move itself around so that it could launch an attack in the first place?  Moreover, Miller’s claim that a functional part of the flagellum disproves the irreducible complexity of the whole system is illogical.  Just because a fan can function independently of an automobile engine does not prove that the automobile engine is not irreducibly complex and that it does not need a certain number of specific interdependent parts to function (of which the fan is only one—and a relatively unimportant one). Scott Minnich is an expert in the bacterial flagellum, and he developed an accurate test of the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum that refutes Miller’s simplistic and inadequate argument.  As Minnich explained on the Dover witness stand:

One mutation, one part knock out, it can't swim. Put that single gene back in we restore motility. … knock out one part, put a good copy of the gene back in, and they can swim. By definition the system is irreducibly complex. We've done that with all 35 components of the flagellum, and we get the same effect.

Indeed, a peer-reviewed journal article the following year admitted that “the flagellar research community has scarcely begun to consider how these systems have evolved.” So, the Dover decision to deny students the right to critically evaluate evolutionary claims rested in large part on Dr. Miller’s masterful misrepresentation of the evidence regarding the possible evolutionary origin of the flagellum. In essence, his faulty argument is that since some of the parts can work together to have a function, then it is conceivable that evolution could have produced them in a slow, step-wise, just-so fashion. To his credit, Miller himself admits, “that’s not evidence – that’s just an argument.”

Indeed, no plausible scenario has been offered by Dr. Miller or by anyone else for how the components of the bacterial flagellum could be produced through a purely naturalistic mechanism like lateral gene transfer or mutation and natural selection. These are the only possibilities available to “Darwin’s god” (to use Miller’s phrase) to create all the life that exists, and they do not hold up to rigorous scientific testing. As Dr. John Sanford and others have demonstrated elsewhere, genetic mutations degrade genetic information, and therefore cannot produce new complex functions or organs, only scaled-back and stripped-down versions of existing complex functions or organs, as we see with the T3SS.