Evolution 101

reply to post by SevenThunders


No, you're incorrect. Archaeopteryx is clearly a transitional form of dinosaurs evolving into birds.

Similar in shape to a European Magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, Archaeopteryx could grow to about 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) in length. Despite its small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx has more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than it does with modern birds. In particular, it shares the following features with the deinonychosaurs (dromaeosaurs and troodontids): jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest homeothermy), and various skeletal features.

So, you can see that it is consider a dinosaur, but it is also an early ancestor of modern birds we see today.

Wikipedia article
Picture Source

I wouldn't doubt scientist have admitted there have mistakes and frauds. But of course science is not religion and will change with correct information.

reply to post by SevenThunders

No, it points out the absurdity of the evolution argument, when viewed in totality.

This is still a strawman argument and, further, you're still making the basic mistake of conflating abiogenesis and evolution. They are two separate concepts -- abiogenesis is concerned with how life got here, evolution with what life does once it already exists.

You actually believe that something infinitely more complex than an Ipad appeared by accident, yet any third grader would be able to tell you that an Ipad was manufactured.

Yes, because even a third grader could go to an iPad factory and observe one being manufactured. While abiogenesis is still a hypothesis, it has significant evidence supporting it. The simple compounds that were present in our primordial atmosphere about four billion years ago readily assemble into amino acids, nucleotides, etc. These building blocks of all life on this planet will readily self-assemble into polypeptide chains and nucleic acids. This is why your iPad argument is invalid. No chemical mechanism exists for the materials in an iPad to self-assemble.

Complexity, form and function to an end are evident in the Ipad, yet we are to suspend our logic and believe that life and humans in particular all happened by sheer accident. What an amazing accident it truly was.

When the laws of physics that govern chemical reactions allow the reactions to form all of the building blocks of life to occur, why should it be called an accident?

In this context, it means a mechanism that runs autonomously, without a designer, due to whatever forces or chaotic structure the universe may bring to bear.

So processes that run and are governed by a set of laws that are determinable are "random chance"? That's a peculiar definition of "random chance".

Seriously? It was not exposed as a fraud for over 40 years. It is still in many textbooks and was received quite enthusiastically by some evolutionists such as, Dawson and Sir Arthur Smith Woodward. For those 40 years it was considered scientific fact. Again this is a bias brought on by wishful thinking, not true science.

Scientific fact? Hardly. It was met with skepticism immediately upon being revealed. Less than a year after it was officially presented, and keep in mind this was before the information age, David Waterston concluded that it was a human skull and an ape jawbone. More scientists over the years, like Boule and Weidenreich, concluded the same. An analytical test that could verify whether or not the skull was relatively recent was finally developed in the early 1940's, but then that pesky World War II broke out and it couldn't actually be performed until the late 40's. You can keep flogging it all you want, but it was a fraud perpetrated by a non-scientist and exposed by scientists. Science is self-correcting.

True but it is my personal observation that those who most desperately want to believe in evolution, seem to be those who are some of the most anti-god atheists.

The case could also be made that those who most desperately don't want to accept evolution -- that those who are most likely to deny, obfuscate, and outright lie about the facts surrounding both the phenomenon and theory of evolution -- are the most anti-science theists, and that they are only doing so because they feel it conflicts with their book.

Originally posted by iterationzero
reply to post by SevenThunders

 

This is still a strawman argument and, further, you're still making the basic mistake of conflating abiogenesis and evolution. They are two separate concepts -- abiogenesis is concerned with how life got here, evolution with what life does once it already exists.

It is not a strawman argument and I am certainly able to differentiate between the impossible leap from inanimate matter to life, and the impossible leap from a single celled organism to a human. Both require matter to self organize in ways that we never observe in nature.

That self organization is why this is not a straw man argument. The burden of proof lies on the evolutionist who dares to assert a magical process, independent of a designer, that creates complexity from simplicity. You must provide a powerful proof to overcome the difficulties such an assertion presents. For your assertion is in fact more amazing than observing an ipad form randomly from a heap of sand, due to the sheer complexity and functionality of the life forms involved, which dwarf the complexity of an ipad.

By the way, when you really start to get down into the nitty gritty. The actual chemistry behind the evolutionary process, more than one high level, top chemist has no idea how evolution could possibly work. This man, Dr Tour, who ranks in the top 10 based on scholarly citations, will give you a sandwich if you can prove it to him.
www.youtube.com...

The simple compounds that were present in our primordial atmosphere about four billion years ago readily assemble into amino acids, nucleotides, etc. These building blocks of all life on this planet will readily self-assemble into polypeptide chains and nucleic acids.

Really? Do you understand the complexity of a single celled organism and how many mutually coupled systems there are even at that level? e.g. the function of the dna and the function of a cell membrane rely on each other. Dr. Tour will disagree with your argument. If you have the answer to how this could really happen, there is a free sandwich in it for you.

Complexity, form and function to an end are evident in the Ipad, yet we are to suspend our logic and believe that life and humans in particular all happened by sheer accident.
What an amazing accident it truly was.
--

When the laws of physics that govern chemical reactions allow the reactions to form all of the building blocks of life to occur, why should it be called an accident?
--

In this context, it means a mechanism that runs autonomously, without a designer, due to whatever forces or chaotic structure the universe may bring to bear.
--
So processes that run and are governed by a set of laws that are determinable are "random chance"? That's a peculiar definition of "random chance".

Well its not peculiar. Most random systems follow this process. Take something simple like a Markov chain. You have a state and that state 'evolves' to a new state based on a set of truly random inputs. This can ultimately be described as a set of discrete probabilities for transitioning to each of the next possible states. Thus there is a presumed structure that constrains the state transitions. But the transitions are truly random inasmuch as we do not know apriori what transition will take place and we presume such transitions are dependent only on the current state and nothing else.

Markov chains, by the way, are one of the lynchpins for understanding most random processes, though things can get nonlinear and very complex.

Scientific fact? Hardly. It was met with skepticism immediately upon being revealed. Less than a year after it was officially presented, and keep in mind this was before the information age, David Waterston concluded that it was a human skull and an ape jawbone. More scientists over the years, like Boule and Weidenreich, concluded the same. An analytical test that could verify whether or not the skull was relatively recent was finally developed in the early 1940's, but then that pesky World War II broke out and it couldn't actually be performed until the late 40's. You can keep flogging it all you want, but it was a fraud perpetrated by a non-scientist and exposed by scientists. Science is self-correcting.

It was a fraud perpetrated by a scientist and apparently it was 'convincing' enough to enter our textbooks. There were Nature articles, the premiere journal of science, that declared, that Piltdown man was an improvement on Darwin and as late as 1950, nature published this article, "New Evidence on the Antiquity of Piltdown Man"
www.americanthinker.com...

Originally posted by Phoenix267
reply to post by SevenThunders

 

No, you're incorrect. Archaeopteryx is clearly a transitional form of dinosaurs evolving into birds.

Similar in shape to a European Magpie, with the largest individuals possibly attaining the size of a raven, Archaeopteryx could grow to about 0.5 m (1 ft 8 in) in length. Despite its small size, broad wings, and inferred ability to fly or glide, Archaeopteryx has more in common with other small Mesozoic dinosaurs than it does with modern birds. In particular, it shares the following features with the deinonychosaurs (dromaeosaurs and troodontids): jaws with sharp teeth, three fingers with claws, a long bony tail, hyperextensible second toes ("killing claw"), feathers (which also suggest homeothermy), and various skeletal features.

So, you can see that it is consider a dinosaur, but it is also an early ancestor of modern birds we see today.

I wouldn't doubt scientist have admitted there have mistakes and frauds. But of course science is not religion and will change with correct information.

Sorry it's not so clear cut. There are evolutionists who disagree as my previous link demonstrated. See this recent analysis says it's just a bird.
www.guardian.co.uk...

These analysis suffer from a presumptive bias, namely that evolution is real. So again they look for forms to fit their bias.

On a different note, I argue that actually science is primarily practiced as a religion these days. At the highest levels, the gatekeepers are no different than the catholic church fathers during the time of Galileo or the Sanhedrin during the time of Jesus.

It is human nature to oppose new ideas that threaten your status quo. I can cite so many different cases to support this but it's off topic and probably deserves it's own thread. I will throw out one example.

In order to convince the medical world that ulcers were caused by a bacteria, an MD had to infect himself with said bacteria. That was the only way to get past the gatekeepers. Many more never get past.

reply to post by SevenThunders


I would have to respectfully disagree with your comment. It is easy to be confused about science, I admit I'm still learning too, from media articles and bad sources. But from reading the article you linked and others it seems with the finding of more common fossils they're trying to class Archaeopteryx from the avian class to the Deinonychosauria clade which are dinosaurs with bird like characteristics than birds themselves. I'll have to do further research with the claims because I need to understand more about these fossils and how it all fits together. I need a better mental picture since new evidence will change how everything is looked at and it becomes very confusing to explain. Thanks for encouraging me to be more skeptical. I accept evolution, but I enjoy improving my knowledge on evolution and learning about what different people think about evolution.
Live Science article

reply to post by Phoenix267


The problem is, all we have are their bones. We can only infer so much from that information. Coelacanth should teach us the dangers of extrapolation with fossil records. It is too early, even for an evolutionist to be dogmatic about it IMHO.

My problem with evolution is actually less of a religious problem but an actual logical one. It actually seems farfetched to me, despite it's current status as the prevailing paradigm. There are christians who believe that God simply used evolution as his creation engine for lifeforms.

I find it simply too big a leap to imagine that a random process could produce the complexity and diversity of all of life. As I argued earlier it's more plausible that a beach of silicon sand produced an Intel I7 microprocessor, than the random process of evolution producing a human from primordial mud, or even from some kind of primitive single celled organism.

I speculate that in time scientists will adopt some sort of panspermia hypothesis to pass the buck so to speak, for some of the logical problems of evolution.

Originally posted by Phoenix267
reply to post by NihilistSanta

 

Well, a good example would be archaeopteryx. Which is a genus of early bird that shows the transition of feathered dinosaurs to modern birds. This a great example of a species evolving into a different species. Pakicetus is another good example of transitional forms. The early ancestors of modern day whales.
Archaeopteryx
Pakicetus

Pakicetus
A Quadrupedal Forced to be the ‘Ancestor of the Whale’
evolutionfactormyth.blogspot.com...

Originally posted by Anonymousman
Pakicetus
A Quadrupedal Forced to be the ‘Ancestor of the Whale’
evolutionfactormyth.blogspot.com...

Regardless of the exact ancestry of whales, it's pretty obvious their ancestors were land-dwellers at some point, from whale anatomy such as vestigal limbs, isn't it?

warforscience.wordpress.com...

Vestigial structures are one of the strongest evidence for evolution. A vestigial structure is a homologous structure that is underdeveloped and useless or adapted for different uses. There are plenty of vestigial structures found in organisms, be it extinct or alive. A vestigial structure suggests that the environment the species lived in no longer had selection pressures on that structure, and could focus on other parts.

A lot of skeletons show traits of vestigiality, such as wings on flightless birds, the coccyx of apes etc. The best example is the hind limbs of whales and other cetaceans. The appearance of vestigial pentadactyl limbs in cetaceans is strong evidence that whales were not simply created, but evolved from a earlier tetrapod that lost functionality for its legs. As Douglas Futuyma said, vestigial structures do not make sense without evolution. Why would a creator create such structures cannot be explained by creationists.

The source you posted is skirting about the real issue, which is described here, and it provides no rebuttal to this.

I am not going to argue over anything. If you knew that a dog evolved to whales, it's ok then but reading this is highly recommended & you will find answer for your question here:
evolutionfactormyth.blogspot.com...

The so called vetigial hip is used as sexual and reproductive clasper.
(Gingerich, P. D., B. H. Smith, and E. L. Simons. 1990. Hind limbs of Eocene Basilosaurus isis: evidence of feet in whales. Science, 249: 154-157')

This is recommended too to understand the vestigiality concept:
evolutionfactormyth.blogspot.com...

I found this cool and creative video about whale evolution. It introduces the various species of animals that inevitably evolved into whales. I would have to check to see how accurate this video is. But it looks pretty cool to watch regardless.

reply to post by Anonymousman

Oh, I got this one. Okay so it rained on rocks for 'millions and millions' of years. A long while before that absolutely nothing exploded. And that is what evolutionists believe happened

reply to post by topsecret305

reply to post by rhinoceros


Well, that is pretty informant. Thanks for sharing!
Second line needed.

reply to post by Phoenix267


It's cool and funny one, we need to watch it in the light of this one: