Celebrate Darwin Day with a Phylum Feast

Today, February 12 2009, marks the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, and this year is also the 150th anniversary of the publication of his 'On the Origin of Species'. As such, there are events around the world celebrating Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution.

Darwin, during his travels on the Beagle, collected specimens for gastronomic - as well as scientific - purposes. While at Cambridge University he was a member of the "Gourmet Club", a group whose goal was to sample animals not normally found on menus. In South America, he supped on armadillo, as he describes in the 3rd volume of 'Voyages of the Adventure and Beagle'

We found the Beagle had not arrived, and consequently set out on our return, but the horses soon tiring, we were obliged to bivouac on the plain. In the morning we had caught an armadillo, which, although a most excellent dish when roasted in its shell, did not make a very substantial breakfast and dinner for two hungry men.

Elsewhere in his Beagle Diaries, Darwin describes feasting on puma comparing it to veal:

At supper I was suddenly struck with horror that I was eating one of the very favourite dishes of the country, viz a half formed calf long before its time of birth. — It turned out to be the Lion or Puma; the flesh is very white & remarkably like Veal in its taste. — Dr Shaw was laughed at for stating that "the flesh of the Lion (of Africa) is in great esteem, having no small affinity with veal, both in colour, taste & flavour". — Yet the Puma & Lion are not, I believe, closer allied than any other two of the Cat genus. — The Gouchos differ much whether the Jaguar is good eating; but all agree that the Cat is excellent.

Ever the scientist, Darwin was even able to salvage important specimens even after having consumed the animal. While searching Patagonia for the rare lesser rhea (Rhea darwinii), an ostrich was shot and eaten. It was in fact not an ostrich, but the mistake wasn't realized until afterwards:

When at the Rio Negro, in Northern Patagonia, I repeatedly heard the Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz Petise. They described it as being less than the common ostrich (which is there abundant), but with a very close general resemblance. They said its colour was dark and mottled, and that its legs were shorter, and feathered lower down than those of the common ostrich. [...] When at Port Desire, in Patagonia (lat. 48°), Mr. Martens shot an ostrich; and I looked at it, forgetting at the moment, in the most unaccountable manner, the whole subject of the Petises, and thought it was a two-third grown one of the common sort. The bird was cooked and eaten before my memory returned. Fortunately the head, neck, legs, wings, many of the larger feathers, and a large part of the skin, had been preserved. From these a very nearly perfect specimen has been put together, and is now exhibited in the museum of the Zoological Society.

Darwin and his shipmates also reportedly developed a taste for tortoise meat, bringing several specimens on board only to eat them and discard the shells overboard.

Darwin's gastronomic adventures have given birth to the Phylum Feast - a Darwin Day tradition conisisting of a meal with food from as many different species as possible. The tradition may even have Canadian roots. While I doubt armadillo or puma are on the menu, it's no surprise that some of today's Darwin Day events include Phylum Feast meals.

Darwin conspiracy

Wow this might be the stupidest set of arguments I have ever seen listed. Epic fail.

1-Mathematical formulae make up the VERIFICATION LANGUAGE of science. Formulae are the only reliable way to test a theory. Every scientific theory has a formula, except the Theory of Evolution. Darwinists have never been able to derive a working Evolution Formula because Evolution theory does not work.

2-Darwinists claim we evolved from the simplest form of bacterial life to ever more complex forms of life. The most basic bacteria had less than 500 genes; man has over 22 thousand. In order for bacteria to evolve into man, organisms would have to be able to add genes. But there is no genetic mechanism that adds a gene. (Mutations change an existing gene but never add a gene.) This means there is no mechanism for Darwinian Evolution and this is a fatal flaw in the Theory of Evolution.

3-The Theory of Evolution in a nutshell is "Survival of the fittest." But most mammals and birds give birth to helpless babies - instead of strong and fit ones. Neither Darwinism nor Neo-Darwinism can explain infantile helplessness. Every baby that is born contradicts Evolution Theory and this is a fatal flaw.

4-?

5-profit

The Gosepl According to Darwin III

In this week's Gospel reading, the great prophet tells how the hands of our magnificent Creator have worked upon functionally duplicitous organs to give rise to new structures with new functions, in all their wonder and perfection. Indeed, this is revealed as the very mechanism that He used to carefully craft the swimbladders of our fish ancestors into the perfect yet peculiar structure of the human lungs, and provides us with an explanation for the mystery of the gill slits of the human embryo. Not only this, but Darwin in his infinite wisdom also foreshadows the discovery that our genes themselves are created by this very same process of duplication and refinement, made over a century later by the Disciples of molecular biology.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case... We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind...

Again, two distinct organs, or the same organ under two very different forms, may simultaneously perform in the same individual the same function, and this is an extremely important means of transition: to give one instance, -there are fish with gills or branchiae that breathe the air dissolved in the water, at the same time that they breathe free air in their swimbladders, this latter organ being divided by highly vascular partitions and having a ductus pneumaticus for the supply of air...In all such cases one of the two organs might readily be modified and perfected as to perform all the work, being aided during the progress of modification by the other organ; and then this other organ might be modified for some other and quite distinct purpose, or be wholly obliterated.

The illustration of the swimbladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely, flotation, may be converted into one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. The swimbladder has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain fishes. All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is homologous, or "ideally similar" in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals: hence there is no reason to doubt that the swimbladder has actually been converted into lungs, or an organ used exclusively for respiration.

According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals with true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient and unknown prototype, which was furnished with a floating apparatus or swimbladder. We can thus, as I infer from Owen's interesting descriptions of these parts, understand the strange fact that every particle of food and drink which we swallow has to pass over the orifice of the trachea, with some risk of falling into the lungs, notwithstanding the beautiful contrivance by which the glottis is closed. In the higher Vertebrate the branchiae have wholly disappeared-but in the embryo the slits on the sides of the neck and the loop-like course of the arteries still mark their former position. But it is conceivable that the now utterly lost branchiae might have been gradually worked in by natural selection for some distinct purpose: for instance, Landois has shown that the wings of insects are developed from the tracheae; it is therefore highly probable that in this great class organs which once served for respiration have been actually converted into organs for flight."

A Reading from The Book of Darwin

- Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle For Life, Chapter VI - Difficulties of the Theory. Modes of Transition

The Gospel According to Darwin II

On this, the holiest of days, the birthday of our prophet Charles Darwin, we celebrate with a reading from the divine scriptures. In today's Gospel reading it is revealed how the tool of natural selection was patiently wielded by the almighty Creator to sculpt the perfect structures of life.

"It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye with a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man? If we must compare the eye to an optical instrument, we ought in imagination to take a thick layer of transparent tissue, with spaces filled with fluid, and with a nerve sensitive to light beneath, and then suppose every part of this layer to be continually changing slowly in density, so as to separate into layers of different densities and thicknesses, placed at different distances from each other, and with the surfaces of each layer slowly changing in form. Further we must suppose that there is a power, represented by natural selection or the survival of the fittest, always intently watching each slight alteration in the transparent layers; and carefully preserving each which, under varied circumstances, in any way or in any degree, tends to produce a distincter image. We must suppose each new state of the instrument to be multiplied by the million; each to be preserved until a better one is produced, and then the old ones to be all destroyed. In living bodies, variation will cause the slight alterations, generation will multiply them almost infinitely, and natural selection will pick out with unerring skill each improvement. Let this process go on for millions of years; and may we not believe that a living optical instrument might thus be formed as superior to one of glass, as the works of the Creator are to those of man?"

- Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species. Chapter VI - Difficulties of the Theory. Organs of extreme Perfection and Complication.

Happy Birthday Charles.

The Gospel According to Darwin

Lest our minds become preoccupied with the tribulations of the laboratory, and should our consciousness perchance stray from the great path of wisdom that hast been lain out afore us by the prophet Darwin, let us reflect upon this week's reading from the Scriptures of biology:

"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility."

A Reading from the Book of Darwin.

- Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species. Chapter VI - Difficulties of the Theory. Organs of extreme Perfection and Complication.