So, recently, myself and Davide Pisani wrote a perspective article for the journal Science and in that paper we wrote about the current move away from using a tree diagram to depict the evolutionary history of life on the planet. It is my opinion, having looked at the data, that a network or web is a more appropriate metaphor for how evolution has occurred for the greater part of life’s history.

This is not a new idea, however, now that we have genomic data, we have a clearer picture of evolution. We have known for more than 60 years that genes can be transferred across the species boundaries in bacteria, however, until recently we have not had enough data to be able to say how pervasive this phenomenon has been.

We now know that it has been a very powerful force in the history of prokaryotes and hence our article where we talk about modifying Darwin’s ideas about descent with modification (Darwin’s term for what we now call evolution).

So far, so good. However, it seems that just about every creationist nutjob has taken up this paper as proof that evolution does not occur.

Naturally, they understand the paper well enough, but they then pass this on to the more gullible crowd that don’t take the time to read the paper and in doing so, they corrupt as much as possible what was said and they selectively choose quotations to support their idiocy. So, here is what the latest bunch of crazies have to say about our paper:

Tree Network of life: Lateral gene transfer scrambles any hope of finding a Darwinian tree of common descent in genetic studies, admitted James McInerney and Davide Pisani in Science.⁵ “The role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution has raised fierce debate about the relevance of the Tree of Life,” they said. Yet the Tree of Life, coming from the single illustration in The Origin of Species, is Darwin’s most-famous icon of evolution. They concluded with a new paradigm, “When eukaryotes are included in our considerations of evolution, the phylogeny of life seems better represented by a network than a tree, making any core genes-based argument in favor of the Tree of Life essentially irrelevant.”

First of all, it wasn’t Darwin’s idea. The tree of life metaphor was in circulation at least at the time of Lamarck. Prior to the tree of life hypothesis, there was the Scala Naturae, or ladder of life.

Anyway, that doesn’t matter.

Here is their editorial conclusion.

This is just a sampling of fundamental questions that have the Darwinists stumped after nearly a century and a half. It’s clear that their victory speeches are mere bluffing, because the unknowns overpower the knowns, and the knowns are not well known. How much longer do you want to give the materialistic crowd time to pursue their metaphysical research program? They‘re like the dog in the manger; can’t eat the hay, but won’t let those with the stomach for it get a bite.

Bleeding nutcases. If you are reading this - Please cite me correctly and please have the courtesy to accurately report the implications of the work.

The moronic website where I found this particular gem is here. Don’t bother to read it, every single commentary that I read (OK, so I got bored after reading two) was a deliberate corruption of what was reported in the peer-reviewed and published papers. Whoever is writing this nonsense really needs to look at their conscience.

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