ecord.
In addition, the biochemists C. Schwabe and G. W. Warr state that their analyses of relaxin (a hormone secreted in the final days of pregnancy) are not compatible with the "evolutionary clock model."54
The DNA analyses by the researchers L. Vawter and W. M. Brown produced results that were totally outside evolutionists' expectations; as a result, these researchers call for the molecular clock hypothesis to be totally abandoned:
[The] disparity in relative rates of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA divergence suggests that the controls and constraints under which the mitochondrial and nuclear genomes operate are evolving independently, and provides evidence that is independent of fossil dating for a robust rejection of a generalized molecular clock hypothesis of DNA evolution. 55
Even evolutionist researchers thus accept that the results obtained from the molecular clock are not trustworthy.
Another reason why the molecular clock hypothesis is not to be trusted is that the techniques used to measure the molecular distance between living species are not accurate. Professor James S. Farris of the Swedish Museum of Natural History states:
It seems that the only general conclusion one can draw is that nothing about present techniques for analyzing molecular distance data is satisfactory . . . None of the known measures of genetic distance seems able to provide a logically defensible method, and it appears that some altogether different approach will have to be adopted for analyzing electrophoretic data.56
Farris's criticisms of the techniques in question are widely respected because he himself developed one of the most frequently employed techniques for measuring genetic distance.
Professor Siegfried Scherer, director of the Institute of Microbiology at the Technical University of Munich, emphasizes the unreliability of the molecular clock in these terms:
Considering the strong demands usually applied in experimental biology, it is hard to understand why the [molecular clock] concept survived such a long period at all. It can neither be used as a tool for dating phylogenetic splits nor as reliable supportive evidence for any particular phylogenetic hypothesis. . . . A reliable molecular clock with respect to protein sequences seems not to exist. . . . It is concluded that the protein molecular clock hypothesis should be rejected.57
In short, the evolutionists' molecular clock does not work. According to Denton, the concept of the molecular clock consists of "apologetic tautologies." Denton criticizes the theory of evolution in these terms:
The hold of the evolutionary paradigm is so powerful that an idea which is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious twentieth-century scientific theory has become a reality for evolutionary biologists.58
No matter how much the concept of the molecular clock is given an extraordinary scientific and technical gloss, it is still, as Denton has made clear, the product of circular reasoning and actually explains nothing. That is because in order to construct a molecular clock, one must first accept the claim that living things descended from a common ancestor. Evolutionists first construct molecular clocks on the basis of their preconception, and then use them, just as the NAS authors do, as proof of descent from a common ancestor. Phillip Johnson describes how evolutionists seek to impress people with this theory, which may look very scientific, but is in reality an empty shell:
Darwinists regularly cite the molecular clock findings as the decisive proof that "evolution is a fact." The clock is just the kind of thing that intimidates non-scientists: it is forbiddingly technical, it seems to work like magic, and it gives impressively precise numerical figures. It comes from a new branch of science unknown to Darwin, or even to the founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and the scientists say that it confirms independently what they have been telling us all along. The show of high-tech precision distracts attention from the fact that the molecular clock hypothesis assumes t