Grasshopper DNA

Access Excellence seeks to appeal to home schoolers, yet it is limited to a belief system that most home schoolers will reject. It is indeed an excellent way to access science news for young (and older) readers, but I also find it to contain excellent examples of evolutionary blinders in its Science News. In an article entitled, “Ancient Swarm of Locusts Made Trans-Atlantic Trip” it states that researchers have long wondered whether Schistocerca (grasshoppers) originated in North America or Africa, but recent mtDNA tests strongly suggest it originated in Africa. So far, so good. But the mtDNA consistency in America suggests that it was only one migration, and the conclusion is that the migration took place between three and five million years ago. The article says they are willing to believe this happened back then because a swarm of these locusts (grasshoppers) is documented to have made the 5,000 kilometer trek from Africa to the Caribbean in 1988. If they are willing to believe that it happened one time 5 million years ago because it happened in 1988, why would they not suspect it happened a few times in between? Or perhaps one time more recently than 3 million years ago? Because mtDNA research has been defined in such a way that millions of years are necessary to explain the variations that we find within the same genus. I do not intend this blog to delve heavily into apologetics, but I do want to point out that cultural world views can blind us from what would otherwise be obvious.As a side note, I find it interesting that even though they make an appeal to home schoolers, Access Excellence has chosen a name that, when run together in a web address, creates a word that will be blocked by most web blockers, sure to be installed by many home school parents.

This entry was posted on January 18, 2007 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Culture & society, Science and faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.