Over at PhysOrg there’s an article on a new tree of life study. This caught my attention because it hits on one of the many failures of evolution. It begins by stating that researchers from Temple University have assembled the largest, most accurate tree of life. Really?

It seems that the old tree of life has finally been disbanded because it didn’t represent reality. Creationists have always been at odds with the depiction of Darwin’s Tree of Life, and it would seem that the criticism has been justified.

However, as I fully expected, evolutionists haven’t given up. Despite the failed predictions, they have developed a new, radically different tree of life- depicted as a spiral galaxy, and they claim that it is the largest and most accurate tree of life.

That’s all well and good. If it’s better and improved over the previous version, then such a claim may be justified in the minds of evolutionists. But not so fast… According to the article, there were some surprises- they believe their new tree of life reveals that life has been expanding at a constant rate. And why is that a surprise? Because it indicates “that the ecological niches of life are not being filled up and saturated,” according to Temple professor S. Blair Hedges. He says the popular model predicts a slowing down of diversification as niches are populated with species, but this isn’t what they find.

To evolutionists, they’re attempting to improve upon their models, but what they’re doing is undermining the credibility of evolution as real science. Real science involves the ability to make accurate predictions about a particular theory or hypothesis, and if those predictions fail, then the theory or hypothesis is rightly rejected. But with evolution, that never happens; the belief is never questioned or abandoned. It’s just assumed to be true. Despite the inability to make accurate predictions, evolution blindly continues, and that’s why many consider it a form of faith.

The article highlights how impressive the new tree research is. The tree contains over 50,000 species and consists of data from 2,274 molecular studies, and it was compiled with new algorithms and tools to synthesize their collection. Cool. But it can’t escape the fact that the whole tree is built upon unprovable assumptions. If the entire concept is based on an incorrect understanding of life, then the new model is baseless; it will eventually have to be abandoned as well, or it must be tweaked and constantly modified in order to adapt to future surprises. The assumption they’re relying on is the belief that all life has evolved from a single common ancestor some 3.5 billion years ago. But that’s not what we see.

According to creationists, the earth is relatively young, and God created animals to reproduce after their kind, which would mean that all living organisms are not related to a single common ancestor, but were created kinds, and they have speciated and diversified over time to what we see today. And I would contend that the creationist model accurately represents what we observe. And what’s interesting is, if you take a close look at the new model, you’ll see many abrupt and definitive barriers separating one kind of organism from another. There’s no smooth, gradual transition showing evolution as I would have expected. Evolution is only inferred from the new model. Instead it shows organisms within their own kind diversifying, which is more consistent with the creationist model of an orchard with many separate trees representing the speciation of animals over time. So I actually think this new model is closer to a creationist model than evolutionists would like. A creationist could simply unravel the spiral and separate each of the groups and have a workable model.

Another point to note is that the study “challenges” the conventional view of adaptation being the principal force driving species diversification. Researchers now believe that random genetic events and geographic isolation has a more important role than previously thought, and they say it takes an average of 2 million years for new species to emerge. And according to Hedges, their findings indicate that “speciation is more clock-like than people have thought.”

Once again evolutionists must admit that their predictions were wrong, but instead of rejecting evolution outright, they just take a new approach to understanding it in a different way. Of course I take issue with the conjecture that it takes about 2 million years for a new species to emerge. I think we have plenty of evidence that new species emerge very quickly. But evolutionists need millions and billions of years in order to make their theory work, so they must ignore how quickly animals speciate in order to maintain some kind of consistency. From time to time they do recognize rapid speciation, but contend that it is rare.

The main point is that evolution isn’t the scientific fact that it’s made out to be. Any deviation from it is considered anti-science, and that characterization is a political tool meant to keep others from rejecting it if they want to be respected. But if we examine the evidence wherever it leads, we see that evolution isn’t really science in the normal sense. Because it relies on unprovable assumptions about the past, it is rightly described as historical or forensic science. Real science occurs when predictions are made, experiments are conducted, and observations are made, resulting in conclusions that can be tested and confirmed. And that’s why we can have technology that work, like planes, computers and medicine. Evolution doesn’t satisfy the criteria because none of its conclusions can be tested and confirmed. No one can test to see if any or all life originated from a single common ancestor. This claim must be believed by faith alone.

The creationist model still represents the most accurate model of life as it’s observed. God created organisms to reproduce after their kind, and this is exactly what we see.