soL English

An antievolutionist news issued a few days ago on TRT (Turkish Radio - Television Corporation) demonstrated that the creationism bigotry of antievolutionists infiltrated to the corporation.

An antievolutionist news titled “The fish sapping Darwin” was issued in the Habere Doğru program on TRT, the state television, last week. In the news supposed to be prepared depending on the assumption “ there is no evolution, the living creatures come to present day without a change” which has been suggested by the antievolutionist creationist hypothesis tried to be universalized by Harun Yahya in our country, it was asserted that a fish found in Indonesian waters has not changed for 400 million years.

There were many scientific biases and ungrounded information in the news announced by TRT as the fish succeed to come to present day without a change for 400 million years.

The most conspicuous of these was the statement “One of the personifications that saps Darwin’s evolution theory has been visualised in the Indonesian waters”. This living belonging to a species named Latimeria has been first discovered in 1997 in Indonesian waters and recorded by Indonesian Institute of Sciences with the name Latimeria menadoensis. It was known that other samples have been obtained also from various regions of the world since 1938.

Coelacanths, known as one of the important intermediate-forms that proves the transition from water to land belong to the Coelacanthidae family, the lobe-finned fishes supported by bones, the first fossil record of which appeared in the Middle Devonian 410 million years ago. But coelacanths had suffered a complete extinction in the Cretaceous Period 80 million years ago.

Two distinct coelacanth species are known to belong to current coelacanth family. But this living which has been put forward as “living fossil” in the antievolutionist publications, resembling to coelacanths and belonging to another family does not have a fossil record. They do not have noteworthy differences from the coelacanths that had lived 410 million years ago although they come out of the water and make aerobic respiration in a short time.

That’s to say, the statement “living fossil” is clearly a bias.

Another point attracting attention in the news is that the fish claimed to be visualized in Indonesia belongs to the species that have seen around Kenya, Tanzania and Madagascar. The species living in Indonesia is brown in color; not blue as stated in the news. Merely this yet creates important question marks about the accuracy and the reliability of the news.

It is known that a description “there are living creatures since such years without a change, so there is no evolution” is unrealistic. Besides the fact that this kind of news is yellow journalism, since the antievolutionists do not have a chart as “ this living creature evolves in such years”, they cannot make predictions because evolution theory does not claim every living creature should evolve.

Evolution rate of each living creature is different from each other and it is determined by many factors like environmental conditions and nutritive facilities. For instance, the evolution goes slowly in the deep sea environment where competition is very low but this process can go very fast for the organisms reproducing rapidly hence mutating more easily like influenza virus.

(soL - News Desk)