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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
 Posted - 04/18/2006 : 12:24:58 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
(bill) Oh that is not true. Since gradualism is not supported in the fossil record, and many evolutionists have stopped denying this fact, they will just dream up more just-so stories as to how it was all just so.
This depends entirely on how you choose to define "gradualism".
Since mutations occur all the time, from generation to generation, and genes get mixed by sexual reproduction from generation to generation, all species are always in a state of flux. They are always gradually changing.
The thing is, a stable environment favours small changes compared to large changes. Species fluctuate around an area with equlibrium, where small phylogneic changes does not impact the survivability. Gradually changing, but in baby-steps.
Then an big shift in the environment causes great strain on the species, and they have to adapt to the new environment in order to survive.
Here's where sexual recombination of genes have a specific advantage: in relatively few generations, huge changes in the species can occur due to environmental pressures. The breeding of dogs is a great example (though artificial) of how much a species can change. Most of the differences between a chow-chow and a Grand Danois compared to their wolf-like ancestor 5'000-10'000 years ago is thanks to the recombination of their already present genes. Since no selfrespecting dog-breeder would cross-breed those two races, they can now be considered reproductively separated. What happens now is that breeders will keep them separated, and the slower adaptation process of DNA-mutation is going to start working on the different breeds. Eventually the mutations in the genome will also disallow sexual crossbreeding of the two breeds, and we will have to start thinking about re-classifying them as separate species.
This is a great example of the principle of Punctuated Equilibrium. The mutation rate is constant and works on the long terms, and the benefits of sexual recombination of genes works as bumpers, absorbing the blows of unstable environments by fast adaptations.
quote:
Once gradualism was rebuffed by the fossil record they just moved on to the next fairytale in their arsenal of stories.
If you refer to gradualism as a constant phylogenic change, and punctuated equilibrium as a stop-and-go changes with long periods of no mutation at all (like Intelligent Designer-people like to think) then you are setting up a straw-man.
quote:
They begin their worldview with the notion that naturalism is all there is and then they conform the evidence and their observation to match their preconceived ideas.
Well, you need to start with some kind of reference point.
In the case of Methodological Naturalism, the reference point is the assumption that there is an objective reality, and that it can be discovered by us.
Everything that science have found and established so far is thanks to that. The scientific method and peer-reviews are there to filter out biases.
It's a pity that your own bias inhibits you from seing the benefits of that.
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Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3
"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse
Support American Troops in Iraq:
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 12:31:31 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
Hyracotherium
quote:
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
Not as messy as all the BS you wade in... |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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trogdor
Skeptic Friend
198 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 15:50:45 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
quote:
Originally posted by filthy
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
Hyracotherium
quote:
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
Not as messy as all the BS you wade in...
[b] Bill[b] filthy has giver you a lot of links (and pretty pictures) about various transitional forms. why haven't you responded to them? I'm sure he's not posting those for his health... |
all eyes were on Ford Prefect. some of them were on stalks.
-Douglas Adams |
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Siberia
SFN Addict
Brazil
2322 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 16:02:02 [Permalink]
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| Ah! The Hyracotherium. Fascinating creatures; the best known example of a creature's evolution. Nature is truly wonderful. |
"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa
"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 16:02:57 [Permalink]
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quote:
filthy has giver you a lot of links (and pretty pictures) about various transitional forms. why haven't you responded to them? I'm sure he's not posting those for his health...
The phrase "pearls before swine" pops into my head... |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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trogdor
Skeptic Friend
198 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 16:04:35 [Permalink]
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quote:
quote:
How do they differ from transitional fossils at the family or order level if at all?
(bill) TF's at the species level exist, while TF's at the family or order level do not.
Not at all? have you looked at the many pics and links that filthy has posted? have you seen the many great examples on the "favorite transitional fossil" thread?
stop saying things that are not true! |
all eyes were on Ford Prefect. some of them were on stalks.
-Douglas Adams |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 16:40:06 [Permalink]
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quote:
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
quote:
Not as messy as all the BS you wade in...
Ah, but my BS is backed up with scientific reference from the people who actually devoted years to their studies and suffered through a harsh peer review of their findings every time they published. And others in the field of research who might well have conducted those peer reviews. They did not take the work of others and spin it to suit their purposes.
Icthyostega
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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| Edited by - filthy on 04/18/2006 17:16:03 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2006 : 19:57:54 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
TF's at the species level exist, while TF's at the family or order level do not.
Gee, Bill, it looks like you've gotten the facts completely backwards. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 06:20:20 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by filthy
Bill, don't you find all of that ear wax stuck to your fingertips a little messy?
Hyracotherium
George Gaylord Simpson, world's foremost evolutionary paleontologist said, "The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers never happened in nature." (George G. Simpson, Life Of The Past, p.119)
Simpson, after stating that nowhere in the world is there any trace of a fossil that would close the considerable gap between Hyracotherium ("Eohippus"), which evolutionists assume was the first horse, and its supposed ancestral order Condylarthra, goes on to say "This is true of all the thirty-two orders of mammals…The earliest and most primitive known members of every order already have the basic ordinal characters, and in no case is an approximately continuous sequence from one order to another known. In most cases the break is so sharp and the gap so large that the origin of the order is speculative and much disputed." (Tempo and Mode in Evolution, G. G. Simpson, p 105)
"The first animal in the series, Hyracotherium (Eohippus) is so different from the modern horse and so different from the next one in the series that there is a big question concerning its right to a place in the series . . [It has] a slender face with the eyes midway along the side, the presence of canine teeth, and not much of a diastema (space between front teeth and back teeth), arched back and long tail."—H.G. Coffin, Creation: Accident or Design? pp. 194-195.
"The difference between Eohippus and the modern horse is relatively trivial, yet the two forms are separated by 60 million years and at least ten genera and a great number of species.. . . If the horse series is anything to go by their numbers must have been the 'infinitude' that Darwin imagined. If ten genera separate Eohippus from the modern horse then think of the uncountable myriads there must have been linking such diverse forms as land mammals and whales or mollusks and arthropods. Yet all these myriads of life forms have vanished mysteriously, without leaving so much as a trace of their existence in the fossil record" (M. Denton, p. 186).
This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists. It is true of almost all orders of all classes of animals, both vertibrate and invertibrate. A fortiori, it is also true of the classes, and of the major animal phylia,.. (Tempa and Mode in evolution, G. G. Simpson, p 107)
"...over the years fossil horses have been cited as a prime example of orthogenesis "straight-line evolution" ...it can no longer be considered a valid theory...we find that once a notion becomes part of accepted scientific knowledge, it is very difficult to modify or reject it" (Fossil Horses, Bruce MacFadden, FL Museum of Natural History & U. of FL, p.27 )
"Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded ...ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information." (Dr. David Raup, Curator, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology", Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50(1) p 25)
"There have been an |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 07:09:13 [Permalink]
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Didn't read the link, did ya Bill?
Bibliography
Ferguson, H. G., 1917. Placer Deposits of the Manhattan District Nevada. Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey 640:163-193.
Ferguson, H. G., 1924. Geology and Ore Deposits of the Manhattan District Nevada. Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey 723.
Hay, O. P., 1927. The Pleistocene of the western region of North America and its vertebrated animals. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Hay, O. P., 1930, Second Bibliography and Catalogue of the Fossil Vertebrata of North America, Volume 2. Washington: The Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Hitching, F., 1982. The Neck of the Giraffe. London: Pan Books Ltd.
MacFadden, B. J., 1992. Fossil Horses: Systematics, Paleobiology, and Evolution of the Family Equidae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Matthew, W. D., & Chubb, S. H, 1927. Evolution of the Horse. 5th ed. New York: American Museum of Natural History.
Rimmer, H., 1935. The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science. Grand Rapids Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Savage, D. E., 1951. Late Cenozoic Vertebrates of the San Francisco Bay Region. University of California Publications. Bulletin of the Department of Geological Sciences. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Science, 1930. Recent Deaths. Science 72:495
Winans, M. C., 1985. Revision of North American fossil species of the genus Equus (Mammalia: Perissodactyla: Equidae). Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
Winans, M. C., 1989. A quantitative study of the North American fossil species of the genus Equus. In The Evolution of Perissodactyls, ed. D.R. Prothero & R. M. Schoch, pp. 262-297. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Wysong, R. L., 1976. The Creation-Evolution Controversy. Midland, Michigan: Inquiry Press. (This book is sometimes entitled "Creation-Evolution: The Controversy")
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 10:07:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
TF's at the species level exist, while TF's at the family or order level do not.
Gee, Bill, it looks like you've gotten the facts completely backwards.
It was an easy test. And even if Bill didn't agree with what scientists mean by the significance of transistionals and the species, family and order level, he was completely unable to state what those differences might be. Arguing science with someone who doesn't grasp the basics is a waste of time. I mean, for crying out loud, how can you argue against something you are not even willing to take the time to understand? Bill has his little quote books, and that is good enough for Bill. And so, as promised, I'm out of here… |
Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 10:37:13 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
It was an easy test. And even if Bill didn't agree with what scientists mean by the significance of transistionals and the species, family and order level, he was completely unable to state what those differences might be. Arguing science with someone who doesn't grasp the basics is a waste of time.
Well, there are the lurkers to think about...quote:
I mean, for crying out loud, how can you argue against something you are not even willing to take the time to understand? Bill has his little quote books, and that is good enough for Bill.
It's worse than that, as you know, Kil: when science disagrees with the Bible, then science must be wrong. Bill has no need to understand the science at all, he only needs to think that science conflicts with his faith in order to be sure that evolution is wholly incorrect. His little quote books only provide confirmation of his prejudice, they're not the ultimate source of his willful ignorance. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 10:39:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Kil
quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
quote:
Originally posted by Bill scott
TF's at the species level exist, while TF's at the family or order level do not.
Gee, Bill, it looks like you've gotten the facts completely backwards.
It was an easy test. And even if Bill didn't agree with what scientists mean by the significance of transistionals and the species, family and order level, he was completely unable to state what those differences might be. Arguing science with someone who doesn't grasp the basics is a waste of time. I mean, for crying out loud, how can you argue against something you are not even willing to take the time to understand? Bill has his little quote books, and that is good enough for Bill. And so, as promised, I'm out of here…
Maybe I need to make it a little more clear:
TF's at the species level exist, while transition between classes such as reptiles and birds do not.
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"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Bill scott
SFN Addict
USA
2103 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 10:45:38 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dave W.
quote:
Originally posted by Kil
It was an easy test. And even if Bill didn't agree with what scientists mean by the significance of transistionals and the species, family and order level, he was completely unable to state what those differences might be. Arguing science with someone who doesn't grasp the basics is a waste of time.
Well, there are the lurkers to think about...quote:
I mean, for crying out loud, how can you argue against something you are not even willing to take the time to understand? Bill has his little quote books, and that is good enough for Bill.
It's worse than that, as you know, Kil: when science disagrees with the Bible, then science must be wrong. Bill has no need to understand the science at all, he only needs to think that science conflicts with his faith in order to be sure that evolution is wholly incorrect. His little quote books only provide confirmation of his prejudice, they're not the ultimate source of his willful ignorance.
quote:
It's worse than that, as you know, Kil: when science disagrees with the Bible, then science must be wrong. Bill has no need to understand the science at all, he only needs to think that science conflicts with his faith in order to be sure that evolution is wholly incorrect. His little quote books only provide confirmation of his prejudice, they're not the ultimate source of his willful ignorance.
(bill) Of course then you have Dave and his prejudice against any evolutionists who might disagree with Dave's version of evolution. As well as his prejudice against any creationist who might quote one of these evolutionist who Dave has determined to be completely wrong... |
"Lets get one thing clear, Bill. Science does make some assumptions." -perrodetokio-
"In the end as skeptics we must realize that there is no real knowledge, there is only what is most reasonable to believe." -Coelacanth-
The fact that humans do science is what causes errors in science. -Dave W.-
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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2006 : 11:09:26 [Permalink]
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quote:
Bill:
Maybe I need to make it a little more clear:
TF's at the species level exist, while transition between classes such as reptiles and birds do not.
You were clear Bill. Your answer is not correct. I didn't ask you if they exist, I asked what the significance would be for these different kinds of transitionals. And by the way, when Gould is talking about the rarity of transitionals, he is talking about transitionals at the species level…
Bye bye…
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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