> Home

> Origin of the Universe (Cosmology)
Science or Pseudo-Science?

> Origin of Life (Abiogenesis)
Science or Pseudo-Science?

> Common Descent (Darwinism)
Science or Pseudo-Science?

> How Does Evolution
Supposedly Work?

> Genetics

> Mutations

> Genetic Recombination

> Gene Duplication

> Natural Selection

> Fossil Evidence

> Stasis

> “Junk” DNA – The Biggest Blunder of Evolutionary-Based Science

> Endogenous Retroviruses

	"Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another ... Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms." Alan H. Linton, University of Bristol bacteriologist, in an April, 2001 article entitled "Scant Search for the Maker" Times Higher Education Supplement, 2001. http://www.jodkowski.pl/ke/ ALinton.html “Darwinian scenarios, either for building mousetraps or biochemical systems, are very easy to believe if we aren’t willing or able to scrutinize the smallest details, or to ask for experimental evidence. They invite us to admire the intelligence of natural selection. But the intelligence we are admiring is our own.” –Robert M. Brosh, Jr. Nature 456, 453-454 (27 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/456453a; Published online 26 November 2008 http://www.nature.com/ nature/journal/v456/n7221 /full/456453a.html

Common Descent (Darwinism)–Science or Pseudoscience?

Genetic variations produce observable changes in organisms (microevolution), but there is no observable and/or empirical evidence for evolution producing new features or traits in existing organisms:

“In each of these pivotal nexuses in life's history, the principal "types" seem to appear rapidly and fully equipped with the signature features of the respective new level of biological organization. No intermediate "grades" or intermediate forms between different types are detectable.”
“The Biological Big Bang model for the major transitions in evolution,” Eugene V Koonin, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, in Biology Direct 2007, 2:21.
http://www.biology-direct.com/content/2/1/21

REVIEW HOW COMMON DESCENT (MACROEVOLUTION) HOLDS UP WHEN USING THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD OF TESTING AN HYPOTHESIS:

1. Make observations.
   
2. Form a testable, unifying hypothesis to explain these observations:
   “By 'testable,' we mean the predictions must include examples of what is likely be observed if the hypothesis is true and of what is unlikely to be observed if the hypothesis is true. A hypothesis that can explain all possible data equally well is not testable, nor is it scientific. A good scientific hypothesis must rule out some conceivable possibilities, at least in principle.”
   
3. Deduce predictions from the hypothesis.
   
4. Search for confirmations of the predictions; if the predictions are contradicted by empirical observation, go back to step (2).
   (From: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/sciproof.html)

1. Observations:

There is NO direct observation of common descent:

• “It is not necessarily easy to "see" macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using multiple lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms.”
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/evoscales_05
  

2 & 3. There are NO testable, unifying hypotheses because there are NO exclusive and consistent predictions:

a. Evolution predicted that, over time, new genes arose that produced more complex organisms. However, it has been discovered that lower forms of life already possessed the same ‘fundamental genes’ that create more complex features found in much higher forms of life:

• “A popular view among evolutionary biologists that fundamental genes do not acquire new functions was challenged this week by a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences …
  "The evolution of novel features does not require the evolution of novel genes," Moczek said. "A lot of innovation can grow from within the organism's genetic toolbox."”
  http://pda.physorg.com/genes-development-evolutionarybiologists_news161280793.html
  
• “"Evolution has a 'toolkit' and when it needs to do a particular job, such as see light, it uses the same toolkit again and again," explains lead author Margaret McFall-Ngai, a professor of medical microbiology and immunology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH). "In this case, the light organ, which comes from different tissues than the eye during development, uses the same proteins as the eye to see light."”
  University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Not Just Through The Eyes: Squid 'Sight' Offers Insight Into Treating Human Eye Diseases,” June 3, 2009, ScienceDaily Website.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090601182828.htm
  
• “Now for one little problem: The bat Prx1 and mouse Prx1 genes are almost identical! There are only two amino-acid differences between the two proteins, and neither of those alterations is located in regions of the protein that have significant binding activity. This suggests that the two genes do exactly the same thing, but that they are regulated differently — that there is variation in the parts of the genome that turn mouse and bat Prx1 on and off. It's key, then, to look at regions of DNA in the neighborhood of the protein-coding portion of Prx1 and find the switches that control it. That is where we expect to see a difference.”
  http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/08/wing_of_bat_and_mouses_leg.php
• "It is the underlying genetic tool kit that is similar amongst these basal animals. Placozoa have all of the tools in their genome to make a nervous system, but they just don't do it."
  http://www.physorg.com/news152259480.html
• “Another fascinating fact is sea urchins don't have eyes, ears or a nose, but they have the genes humans have for vision, hearing and smelling …
  Despite having no eyes, nose, or ears, the creature has genes involved in vision, hearing and smell in humans.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0304-sea_urchins_reveal_medical_mysteries.htm
  
• “The findings reported in the August 21 online edition of the journal Nature show that while Trichoplax has one of the smallest nuclear genomes found in a multi-cellular creature, it contains signature sequences for gene regulation found in more complex animals and humans.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903172419.htm
  
• “Another surprise came from a complexity of components of the immune system in sea urchin. In addition to an extremely well developed system of the innate immunity, these animals possess genes encoding major components of the adaptive immune response … Yet, sea urchin does not have antibodies, and possibly lacks adaptive immunity in general. Genes that are seemingly useless in sea urchin but are very useful in higher taxons exemplify excessive genetic information in lower taxons.”
  http://www.machanaim.org/philosof/nauka-rel/universal_genome.htm
  
• “Long before animals with limbs (tetrapods) came onto the scene about 365 million years ago, fish already possessed the genes associated with helping to grow hands and feet (autopods) report University of Chicago researchers …
  The capability of building limbs with fingers and toes existed for a long period of time, but it took a set of environmental triggers to make use of that capability…
  “It had the tools,' he said, “but it needed the opportunity as well.””
  http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/new_genetic_data_overturns_
  long_held_theory_of_limb_development
  
• “Despite being developmentally simple–with no organs or many specialized cells–the placozoan has counterparts of the transcription factors that more complex organisms need to make their many body parts and tissues. It also has genes for many of the proteins, such as membrane proteins, needed for specialized cells to coordinate their function. “Many genes viewed as having particular ‘functions’ in bilaterians or mammals turn out to have much deeper evolutionary history than expected, raising questions about why they evolved,” says Douglas Erwin, an evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C.”
  http://darwiniana.com/2008/09/20/%E2%80%98simple%E2%80%99-animal%
  E2%80%99s-genome-proves-unexpectedly-complex/
• “We suggest that ancient toolkit gene products, most predating the emergence of multicellularity, assumed novel morphogenetic functions due to change in the scale and context inherent to multicellularity. We show that DPMs, acting individually and in concert with each other, constitute a 'pattern language' capable of generating all metazoan body plans and organ forms … This perspective also solves the apparent 'molecular homology-analogy paradox', whereby widely divergent modern animal types utilize the same molecular toolkit during development by proposing, in contrast to the Neo-Darwinian principle, that phenotypic disparity early in evolution occurred in advance of, rather than closely tracked, genotypic change.”
  http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/1478-3975/5/1/015008

b. Evolution predicts that life began as simple organisms, but complexity has been rule, not exception, in the earliest known fossils:

• “The Cambrian Explosion is widely regarded as one of the most relevant episodes in the history of life on Earth, when the vast majority of animal phyla first appear in the fossil record.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091016224153.htm
• “One of the most interesting challenges facing paleobiologists is explaining the Cambrian explosion, the dramatic appearance of most metazoan animal phyla in the Early Cambrian, and the subsequent stability of these body plans over the ensuing 530 million years.”
  Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich, Mark A. McPeek, “MicroRNAs and macroevolution: insights into canalization, complexity, and the Cambrian Explosion,” (Hypothesis) Department of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College. (See PDF)
  
• “Two paleontologists studying ancient fossils they excavated in the South Australian outback argue that Earth's ecosystem has been complex for hundreds of millions of years - … Until now, the dominant paradigm in the field of paleobiology has been that the earliest multicellular animals were simple, and that strategies organisms use today to survive, reproduce and grow in numbers have arisen over time due to several factors … "How Funisia appears in the fossils clearly shows that ecosystems were complex very early in the history of animals on Earth – “”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080320150025.htm
  

c. There are NO predictions or explanations for the appearance of a molecular structure called a primary cilium, which projects from the surface of most, if not all cells. It acts as a radio antenna that sends precise and essential instructions to the inner cell via frequency modified vibrations, i.e. sound waves.
How they originated and where the instructions come from (God) is impossible to address through secular science. Evolutionists have yet to propose a reasonable explanation:

• “Despite the impressive amount of progress made over the past decade, we are left with even more challenging and critical questions. These questions include how extracellular stimuli perceived by the cilia result in changes in cell behavior and physiology …”
  http://ajprenal.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/289/6/F1159
  
• “The primary cilium, the solitary, antenna-like structure that studs the outer surfaces of virtually all human cells, orient cells to move in the right direction and at the speed needed to heal wounds, much like a Global Positioning System helps ships navigate to their destinations.”
  http://www.physorg.com/news148742058.html
  
• “In addition to sensing odorants and light, cilia can sense movement … In Drosophila, two TRP channels mediate reception of sound vibrations at the antenna.”
  “The Primary Cilium as the Cell’s Antenna: Signaling at the Sensory Organelle” Veena Single, et al. Science 313,629 (2006) DOI: 10.1126/science.1124534 (See PDF)
  
• “The puzzle of how higher animals develop – how a mass of undifferentiated cells organise themselves into specialised, functioning tissues, organs, and organisms – could now be solved – and the clue has been right under our noses for over a century.
  Every mammalian cell has a single primary cilium. This structure sticks out from the cell membrane like a cellphone aerial. First noticed by 19th Century microscopists, it was thought to be a useless, vestigial structure like the appendix. But recent discoveries show it is absolutely pivotal in cell differentiation and maintenance of tissue and organ structure and function.”
  http://scimednet.blogspot.com/2008/06/primary-cilium-antenna-for-organising.html
  
• “Each mature ciliated cell has up to 200 cilia, which have to co-ordinate their movements to orient their effective stroke in the same direction as their cellmates and all the cilia on neighboring cells …
  And although a lot is known about the structural details of cilia, the mechanism through which ciliated epithelia coordinate the direction of their strokes remained unknown.”
  http://www.physorg.com/news96518076.html
  
• “Almost every vertebrate cell has a specialized cell surface projection called a primary cilium. Although these structures were first described more than a century ago, the full scope of their functions remains poorly understood. Here, we review emerging evidence that in addition to their well-established roles in sight, smell, and mechanosensation, primary cilia are key participants in intercellular signaling.”
  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5787/629

d. There are NO predictions or explanations for the appearance of highly complex regulatory networks and control systems:

• “Molecular motors, the little engines that power cell mobility and the ability of cells to transport internal cargo, work together and in close coordination, according to a new finding by researchers at the University of Virginia …
  The new University of Virginia study provides strong evidence that the motors are indeed working in coordination, all pulling in one direction, as if under command, or in the opposite direction — again, as if under strict instruction.”
  University of Virginia, “Molecular Motors In Cells Work Together, Study Shows,” February 25, 2009. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090213161043.htm
  
• “The genome of complex organisms is stashed away inside each cell's nucleus, a little like a sovereign shielded from the threatening world outside. The genome cannot govern from its protective chamber, however, without knowing what's going on in the realm beyond and having the ability to project power there. Guarding access to the nuclear chamber is the job of large, intimidating gatekeepers known as nuclear pore complexes (NPCs), which stud the nuclear membrane, filtering all of the biochemical information passing in or out …
  Kampmann is applying the EM approach to other subunits in hopes of fleshing out the overall picture of one of the most mysterious machines in molecular biology.”
  Rockefeller University, “Research identifies 3-D structure of key nuclear pore building block,” June 7th, 2009.
  http://www.physorg.com/news163599774.html
  
• “FANTOM4 has shown that instead of having one or a few 'master regulator' genes that control growth and development, there is a sophisticated network of regulatory elements that subtly influence the ways in which genes are expressed in different cells in the body," Professor John Mattick said.
  University of Queensland, “Study Challenges Notions Of How Genes Are Controlled In Mammals,” April 23, 2009. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090420103549.htm
  
• “Cells in plants, fungi, and animals—including those in the human body—divide through mitosis, during which the DNA-containing chromosomes separate between the resulting daughter cells. Forces in a structure called the mitotic spindle guide the replicated chromosomes to opposing sides as one cell eventually becomes two …
  "One of the really important fundamental questions in biology is how do chromosomes get properly segregated when cells divide. What are the forces that move chromosomes around during this process? Where do they come from and what guides the movements?"”
  University of Michigan, “Slicing Chromosomes Leads To New Insights Into Cell Division,” June 2, 2009.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090529183252.htm
  
• “Had Amin Rustom not messed up, he would not have stumbled upon one of the biggest discoveries in biology of recent times …
  Using video microscopy, they watched adjacent cells reach out to each other with antenna-like projections, establish contact and then build the tubular connections. The connections were not just between pairs of cells. Cells can send out several nanotubes, forming an intricate and transient network of linked cells lasting anything from minutes to hours.
  … Nothing in his experience could explain the phenomenon.”
  “Tunnelling nanotubes: Life's secret network,” New Scientist, November 18, 2008.
  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026821.400-tunnelling-nanotubes-lifes-secret-network.html
  
• “The genes cooperate by signaling each other, telling cells when to grow, when to make tubes, when to turn on pumps or perform other critical functions, said Bruce Aronow, Ph.D., study co-author and scientific director of the Center for Computational Medicine at Cincinnati Children's. The study also makes new headway into identifying different transcription factors – "boss" genes that regulate the activity of other genes – and the target genes they may activate or repress.”
  Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, “Slicing Chromosomes Leads To New Insights Into Cell Division,” November 10, 2008.
  http://www.physorg.com/news145543215.html
  
• “The scientists found out that the new electrical signal they called "system potential" was induced and even modulated by wounding. If a plant leaf is wounded, the signal strength can be different and can be measured over long distances in unwounded leaves, depending on the kind and concentration of added cations (e.g. calcium, potassium, or magnesium). It is not the transport of ions across cell membranes that causes the observed changes in voltage transmitted from leaf to shoot and then to the next leaf, but the activation of so-called proton pumps.”
  Justus Liebig University of Gießen and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena,“Novel Electric Signals In Plants Induced By Wounding Plant,” March 10, 2009.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090309105030.htm
  
• "The control system that determines how development of an animal occurs in each species is encoded in the genome, and the physical location of the sequences where this code is resident is being revealed in a new area of systems biology--the study of gene regulatory networks," says Davidson. Gene regulatory networks are the complex networks of gene interactions that direct the development of any given species …
  "These networks lie at the heart of the regulatory apparatus, and they consist of genes that encode proteins that regulate other genes, and the DNA sequences which control when and where they are expressed," says Davidson, who authored a paper in the special feature about a gene regulatory network found in sea urchin embryos.”
  California Institute of Technology (Caltech), “Researchers Help Unlock The Secrets Of Gene Regulatory Networks,” February 4, 2009.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090203142521.htm
  
• “Anyone who studied biology 10 or 15 years ago will not have learned about microRNA. These short RNA strands were only discovered 10 years ago. Since then, research has discovered significant new biological mechanisms. Within a short period biologists identified, among other things, all of the genes that encode microRNAs. These RNAs regulate not just individual genes, but as many as 50 to 100 genes at the same time.”
  ETH Zurich, “Diabetes: MicroRNA Protects Beta Cells,” May 2, 2009.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090425203534.htm
  
• “Providing another tool to help to understand gene regulation on a global scale, a nationwide research team has identified and mapped 55,000 enhancers, short regions of DNA that act to enhance or boost the expression of genes … Enhancers are one of several types of regulatory elements, along with promoters and insulators, which are scattered across the genome and act to assemble proteins that regulate the transcription of individual genes.”
  University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, “What's Driving Specific Patterns Of Gene Expression Among Cell Types?” March 27, 2009.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090318140518.htm
  
• “The p53 protein, which exists in all the cells of the body, is commonly called the "guardian of the genome", since it detects harmful DNA changes and prevents them from being transmitted further into the body. p53 activates genetic programmes that arrest the division and growth of damaged cells or trigger their apoptosis. In half of all cancer tumours, the gene for p53 is damaged, and the scientists believe that the protein has been rendered dysfunctional in all cancer tumours.”
  Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, “New research on the ‘guardian of the genome,’"May 12, 2009, PhyOrg.com website.
  http://www.physorg.com/news161360881.html

e. Evolution predicts that organisms become more complex throughout time, but some become less complex, and some never change at all:

• “A new and comprehensive analysis confirms that the evolutionary relationships among animals are not as simple as previously thought. The traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from simple to complex—from sponge to chordate—meets a dramatic exception in the metazoan tree of life.”
  http://www.physorg.com/news152259480.html
• “If you start with the simplest possible animal body, then there’s only one direction to evolve in – you have to become more complex, …”
  http://www.physorg.com/news124992599.html
  
• “The second is that the sponge evolved its simpler form from the more complex form. This second possibility underscores the fact that "evolution is not necessarily just a march towards increased complexity," Dunn said.””
  http://www.livescience.com/animals/080410-first-animal.html
  
• "Just as tetrapods went off and did something crazy with their fin by adding to it, zebrafish went off and did something crazy by losing part of their fin.”
  http://www.scientificblogging.com/news/new_genetic_data_overturns_
  long_held_theory_of_limb_development
  
• “Coelacanths are well known from the fossil record of 75 million to 400 million years ago … Coelacanths fascinate because of their unusual appearance and evolutionary importance. They have remained virtually unchanged morphologically for millions of years, leading some to call them “living fossils.””
  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.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091016224153.htm

f. Evolution predicts that accumulations of genetic modification will eventually produce profound changes that create other ‘kinds’ of organisms. However, inheritable genetic alterations have never created more complexity because most copying errors are ‘re-written’ by miniscule machines, and alterations that do proceed to the next generation most often produce less fit organisms:

• “Research published in 2007 showed the importance of the nuclear protein UHRF1 in ensuring that the epigenetic code is accurately copied …
  The key element of UHRF1 involved in this "proofreading" process is known as the Set and Ring Associated (SRA) domain, but the exact mechanisms by which the SRA domain accomplishes this task were unclear.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080903134159.htm
  
• “But the mechanisms of DNA replication and repair are so accurate that even where no such selection operates – at the many sites in the DNA where a change of nucleotide has no effect on the fitness of the organism – the genetic message is faithfully preserved over tens of millions of years.”
  “Essential Cell Biology” textbook, Second Edition, Section 6:20, 2003 Garland Science (See PDF)
  
• “A mathematical analysis of the experiments showed that the proteins themselves acted to correct any imbalance imposed on them through artificial mutations and restored the chain to working order …
  The authors sought to identify the underlying cause for this self-correcting behavior in the observed protein chains. Standard evolutionary theory offered no clues … The scientists are working on formulating a new general theory based on this finding they are calling "evolutionary control."”
  http://www.physorg.com/news145549897.html
• “In short, the notion that molecules of germ cells … are in states of perpetual change is not, in our present understanding of cell biology, tenable. This doesn’t mean that “molecular change” does not occur; only that mechanisms provoking such change in germ cells are likely instantaneous and stochastic and probably often lethal (Maresca and Schwartz 2006) – which will preclude their persistence into future generations.”
  http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/biot.2006.1.4.357
  
• “Alterations in the normal recombination pattern are often associated with errors in chromosome segregation in humans, and these errors are a major cause of spontaneous abortions and congenital birth defects, including mental retardation.”
  (Go to “Meiotic Recombination Does Not Occur at Random Throughout the Genome”)
  http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.
  pbio.0050333&ct=1&SESSID=a273f04ca1957b1da05dfd35ba0c418a
  
• “In fact, crossing over has to be sufficiently precise that not a single nucleotide is lost or added at the crossover point if it occurs within a gene. Otherwise a frameshift would result and the resulting gene would produce a defective product or, more likely, no product at all …
  Any failure that is detected stops the process and usually causes the cell to self-destruct by apoptosis.”
  http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/M/Meiosis.html
  
• “No nucleotide sequences are altered at the site of exchange; the cleavage and rejoining event occur so precisely that not a single nucleotide is lost or gained.”
  "Essential Cell Biology” textbook, Second Edition, Section 6:21, 2003 Garland Science (See PDF)
  
• “Meiotic cells possess a surveillance mechanism referred to as the ‘pachytene’ checkpoint or the meiotic recombination checkpoint that monitors these critical meiosis-specific events … In response to defects in recombination that lead to accumulation of unrepaired DSBs and/or other recombination intermediates, the pachytene checkpoint triggers meiotic cell cycle arrest or delay to prevent meiotic chromosome missegregation (Roeder and Bailis, 2000)."
  http://jcs.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/116/2/259

g. Evolution predicted that once genetic changes were ‘fixed’ in populations, previous DNA would not arise again. However, it has been shown that organisms can miraculously restore DNA up to 8 generations AFTER a feature has disappeared:

• “Here we show that Arabidopsis plants homozygous for recessive mutant alleles of the organ fusion gene HOTHEAD5 (HTH) can inherit allele-specific DNA sequence information hat was not present in the chromosomal genome of their parents but was present in previous generations. This previously undescribed process is shown to occur at all DNA sequence polymorphisms examined and therefore seems to be a general mechanism for extra-genomic inheritance of DNA sequence information. We postulate that these genetic restoration events are the result of a template-directed process that makes use of an ancestral RNA-sequence cache.”
  http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7032/abs/nature03380.html
  
• “Here, we show that a rice triploid and diploid hybridization resulted in stable diploid progenies, both in genotypes and phenotypes, through gene homozygosity. Furthermore, their gene homozygosity can be inherited through 8 generations, and they can convert DNA sequences of other rice varieties into their own. Molecular-marker examination confirmed that this type of genome-wide gene conversion occurred at a very high frequency. Possible mechanisms, including RNA-templated repair of double-strand DNA, are discussed.”
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17502903?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.
  PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA

h. Evolution predicts that related organisms will share the same genes and similar features (homology), but unrelated organisms share the same genes and possess almost identical features (convergent evolution):

• “Biologists have shown that independent but similar molecular changes turned a harmless digestive enzyme into a toxin in two unrelated species -- a shrew and a lizard -- giving each a venomous bite.
  … "It's remarkable that the same types of changes have independently promoted the same toxic end product."”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091029125532.htm
• “They discovered that certain groups of organisms previously shown by molecular analyses to lie within the annelid family, such as mollusks and peanut worms, could not have evolved from the same branch of the evolutionary tree as the rest of the annelids.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090909122108.htm
• “Animals that seem identical may belong to completely different species. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who have used DNA analyses to discover that one of our most common segmented worms is actually two types of worm. The result is one of many suggesting that the variety of species on the earth could be considerably larger than we thought …
  But when the researchers examined the worms using advanced methods for DNA analysis, they discovered that they were in fact two different species. Both species of worm differ in one of the examined genes by 17 percent, which is twice as much as the equivalent difference between humans and chimpanzees.”
  http://www.physorg.com/news159631527.html
• “This means that the nervous system, once thought to have arisen once, must have evolved twice from the DNA that coded for these complex systems (keeping in mind that while Placozoans and sponges do not have nervous systems, many of the taxa related to them do.)
  DeSalle agrees. "It is the underlying genetic tool kit that is similar amongst these basal animals. Placozoa have all of the tools in their genome to make a nervous system, but they just don't do it."”
  http://www.physorg.com/news152259480.html
• “Neo-Darwinism accounts for the phenomenon by supposing that evolutionary options are often severely restricted by circumstances. "Convergences keep happening because organisms keep wanting to do similar things, and there are only so many ways of doing them," says molecular biologist Rudolf A. Raff of Indiana University. So the phenomenon has been named "the principle of convergence" or "convergent evolution." But naming the problem doesn't mean it has been explained. The renowned Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould believes that slight differences in the course of evolution should lead to totally different outcomes. If so, convergence is baffling. A discerning witness is justified in wondering if neo-Darwinism adequately explains convergence, or if another theory might account for it better.”
  http://panspermia.com/neodarw.htm
  
• “The researchers were surprised to find that placental and marsupial mammals have largely the same set of genes for making proteins. Instead, much of the difference lies in the controls that turn genes on and off.”
  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070510-opossum-dna.html
  
• “Flying squirrels and sugar gliders are only distantly related. So why do they look so similar then? Their gliding "wings" and big eyes are analogous structures. Natural selection independently adapted both lineages for similar lifestyles: leaping from treetops (hence, the gliding "wings") and foraging at night (hence, the big eyes).”
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/analogy_02
  
• “Elephant shrews were originally classified as shrews (Soricidae) because of a superficial resemblance. However, in the late 1990s, when biologists began using detailed information on genetic sequences to reconstruct the family tree of mammals, the results were surprising. Elephant shrews were not closely related to shrews or to other mammal groups like rabbits, with which they had sometimes been lumped. Instead, the elephant shrew twig sprang from an unexpected branch of the tree: the aardvark, manatee, and elephant lineage!”
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/080301_elephantshrew

i. Evolution predicts that DNA sequencing would establish firm branches in family trees, but it has only added more confusion:

• “When full DNA sequences opened the way to comparing many different genes in different organisms, the comparisons proved confounding. Rather than clarifying the tree that seeks to show how life evolved, they often produced new trees that differ from the traditional tree and conflict with each other as well.”
  http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/284/5418/1305
  
• "So can the disparities between molecular and morphological trees ever be resolved? Some proponents of the molecular approach claim there is no need. The solution, they say, is to throw out morphology, and accept their version of the truth.”
  Trisha Gura, “Bones, Molecules or Both,” Nature, Vol. 406, p. 230-233. July 20, 2000.
  
• “Today's computational tools use sequence similarity, assuming that genes with similar sequences indicate common ancestry … But Durand's tests showed that this assumption often does not hold. Her team found disturbing results when they compared sequence similarity to their Neighborhood Correlation method in evaluating the 20 gene families with established histories. The sequence similarity method actually yielded false ancestral associations and missed true ancestral relationships.”
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080515205640.htm

j. Evolution predicts that fossils can be accurately dated, but new research shows the inconsistency of dating techniques:

• “The precise timing of the origin of life on Earth and the changes in life during the past 4.5 billion years has been a subject of great controversy for the past century. The principal indicator of the amount of organic carbon produced by biological activity traditionally used is the ratio of the less abundant isotope of carbon, 13C, to the more abundant isotope, 12C.
  It appears that records related to carbonate platforms which are often used throughout the early history of the Earth are not good recorders of the 13C/12C ratio in the open oceans. Hence, the work presented suggests that assumptions made previously about changes in the 13C/12C ratios of carbonate sediments in the geological record are incorrect.”
  http://www.physorg.com/news140266859.html
  
• “But in biological systems, there is a small bias in the use of each isotope (called "fractionation") which results in biological tissues having a different ratio of 12C to 13C than the 'wild' carbon floating around, say, in the atmosphere …
  It turns out that a study of these different depositional environments, in the paper by Swart, indicates that the two data sources behave differently and the non-ocean bottom deposits cannot be used as they previously were. As a result of this, our understanding of the history of the Earth's carbon cycle has gone all topsy-turvy and now needs to be re-examined.”
  http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2008/09/warning_will_robinson_warning.php

k. Evolution predicts that molecular and fossil dating will be consistent, but inconsistencies are the rule, not the exception:

• “Therefore, we conclude that dating ages of origin of taxa with molecular phylogenetic trees where fossils are used as calibration points, is, at best, ambiguous (e.g, Sanderson 1997: Thorne & Kishino 2002).”
  “Temporal paralogy, cladograms, and the quality of the fossil record” Publications Scientifiques du Museum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris, Geodiversitas, 2004, 26 (3) (See PDF)
  
• “In line with our model, molecular evolution trees often do not fit a morphology-based evolution tree.”
  http://www.machanaim.org/philosof/nauka-rel/universal_genome.htm

l. Evolution predicts that fossils can be dated by their position within layers of the earth (strata), but layers do not reflect a uniform geological column. In fact, marine fossil remains (limestone) have been found on top of EVERY mountain range in the world:

• "I hope I have convinced you that the sedimentary record is largely a record of episodic events rather than being uniformly continuous. My message is that episodicity is the rule, not the exception…. We need to shed those lingering subconscious constraints of old uniformitarian thinking."
  (Emeritus) Professor Robert Dott, Sedimentary Geology, UW Madison, "The Rule", Presidential Address To Society of Economic Paleontologists & Mineralogists, Geotimes, Nov. 1982, p.16 Dott is a co-author of a leading textbook of earth history, Evolution of the Earth (McGraw-Hill), which is now in its 7th edition. In 1995, he received the Geological Society of America's History of Geology Division Award.
  
• “Relative dating places fossils in a temporal sequence by noting their positions in layers of rocks, known as strata … Sometimes this method doesn't work, either because the layers weren't deposited horizontally to begin with, or because they have been overturned.”
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_10
  
• "Earth movements over extremely long periods of earth's history can lift limestone miles into the air. The summit of Mount Everest is limestone that started out on an ocean floor.”
  http://www.granitech.net/faq.htm

m. Evolution predicts that evolution is still occurring, but there are no isolated populations emerging that reflect new organs or body parts forming. Regardless of the excuses, documentation of observable macroevolution is non-existent:

• “It is not necessarily easy to "see" macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using multiple lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms.”
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0_0/evoscales_05

4. All predictions are contradictory, so none of the hypotheses of evolution are testable and, therefore, the hypothesis of common descent (macroevolution) cannot be confirmed.

REVIEW WHAT IS CONSIDERED ‘NATURALISTIC’ (SCIENTIFIC) BY EVOLUTIONARY STANDARDS:

• “In science, explanations must be based on naturally occurring phenomena. Natural causes are, in principle, reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others.”
  “Science, Evolution, and Creationism,” 2008, National Academy of Sciences (NAS), The National Academies Press, third edition, page 10.
  http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11876&page=10

1. Are there any mechanisms that have been proven to create new features or structures in existing organisms, as well as ones that are a “naturally occurring phenomena”?

a. See the inability of evolutionists to describe how common descent supposedly occurs:

• http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/1424646898/fetch/756950/
  
• http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/1424646898/fetch/748021/
  
• http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/1424646898/fetch/746941/
  
• http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/1424646898/fetch/730697/
  
• http://pub17.bravenet.com/forum/1424646898/fetch/730410/
  
• Also, go to http://www.whoisyourcreator.com/how_does_evolution_occur.html

b. See how evolutionists even openly admit to NOT knowing how evolution supposedly occurs:

• "Students should realize that although virtually all scientists accept the general concept of evolution of species, scientists do have different opinions on how fast and by what mechanisms evolution proceeds.”
  The American Association for the Advancement of Science, Educational Benchmarks, (F) Evolution of Life
  http://www.project2061.org/publications/bsl/online/ch5/ch5.htm#F
  
• “Scientists are still uncovering the specifics of how, when, and why evolution produced the life we see on Earth today."
  Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History
  http://www.nmnh.si.edu/paleo/geotime/main/foundation_life3.html
  
• “But they are trying to figure out how evolution happens, and that's not an easy job.”
  University of California Museum of Paleontology and the National Center for Science Education
  http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/evo_50
  
• “Precisely how and at what rates descent with modification occurs are areas of intense research. For example, much work is under way testing the significance of natural selection as the main driving force of evolution.”
  The American Geological Institute
  http://www.agiweb.org/news/evolution/mechanismforchange.html

2. Is common descent “reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others”?
With all the thousands of experiments with bacteria, fruit flies, and other organisms, scientists have yet to create or see any hint of common descent:

• "Throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another ...
  Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest
  forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms."
  Alan H. Linton, University of Bristol bacteriologist, in an April, 2001 article entitled "Scant Search for the Maker" Times Higher Education Supplement, 2001.
  http://www.jodkowski.pl/ke/ALinton.html
  
• "Despite a close watch, we have witnessed no new species emerge in the wild in recorded history. Also, most remarkably, we have seen no new animal species emerge in domestic breeding. That includes no new species of fruit flies in hundreds of millions of generations in fruit fly studies, where both soft and harsh pressures have been deliberately applied to the fly populations to induce speciation...we also clearly see that the limits of variation appear to be narrowly bounded, and often bounded within species."
  Kevin Kelly, Board Chair and founder of the ALL Species Foundation, in his book, “Out of Control”: The New Biology of Machines” 1994, Fourth Estate:London, 1995, reprint, p.475. ALL Species Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to the complete inventory, including describing and classifying, all of the species of life on Earth by 2025.

Results:
Since there is NO proof that common descent (macroevolution) is a “naturally occurring phenomena” or is “reproducible and therefore can be checked independently by others,” ALL existing evolutionary explanations for common descent (macroevolution) MUST be given the correct status of being supernatural, i.e. something attributed to a power that seems to violate or go beyond natural forces.