quote:

---

The natural selection theory pushes statistical probability to the breaking point, time and time again. And where have we ever seen randomness create vast amounts of new and complex info?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paulos23

Bill, Bill, Bill,

I thought we went over this with you before about fossilization. Read up on it in these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossils
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199801/0164.html
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1998/spriggs.htm

Fossils are rare things only happens under set conditions. It is very consevable that there are scpecies that are/where on this earth that never got fossiled.

Your quote of Charles Darwin clearly shows Darwin's lack of knowlage about fossilization. If he knew then what we know now about fossilization he would retract that statement.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill scott

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paulos23

Fossils are rare things only happens under set conditions. It is very consevable that there are scpecies that are/where on this earth that never got fossiled.

Your quote of Charles Darwin clearly shows Darwin's lack of knowlage about fossilization. If he knew then what we know now about fossilization he would retract that statement.

---

Oh, I see, now you are going to speak for Charles Darwin. Well then, so will I. If Charles Darwin knew then what we know now he would have abandoned the theory all togather...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by R.Wreck:

Bill, you have spent countless words here in a lame, vain, attempt to counter the theory of evolution. You have failed not least because you don't know nearly enough about it to mount any kind of a challenge. (By the way, have you ever even stepped foot into a natural history museum?).

Be that as it may, you have also failed to offer any kind of plausible alternative to evolution. It's time to put up or shut up, Bill. Tell us your explanation for the diversity of life on planet Earth. With details. Please remember it needs to be supported by all the available evidence. And references would help.

Let's hear it Bill. Here's your chance to tell it like you see it.

---

quote:

---

DESIGN

<snipped lenghty quotemining>

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by R.Wreck:

Who's the designer, Bill? Could it be a martian? What mechanism did it use to design and implement life as we know it?

And why such incompetence? Why do we have an appendix? Why are there blind fish with eyes? What about spina bifida? Or phenylketonuria How about Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis? A friend of mine died of ALS, and it's a real bitch of a disease. It slowly wastes your body, but leaves your mind perfectly healthy so you know what's happening and what's coming. And it's 100% fatal.

Your designer sucks, Bill.

---

quote:

---

Yet man, in all his self-absorbed glory, can not duplicate the creation of bringing matter into existence from nothing, and then turn this matter into complex life. Heck, not only can man not duplicate it, he can't even come up with a plausible hypothesis on how it was done. Calamities on mars, which send the missing molecules for life from mars to earth on a cosmic asteroid shuttle system, is not plausible, but rather laughable. And evidence of your desperation for even a hypothesis for abiogenesis....

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by trogdor

quote:

---

Originally posted by Paulos23

Bill, Bill, Bill,

I thought we went over this with you before about fossilization. Read up on it in these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossils
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199801/0164.html
http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1998/spriggs.htm

Fossils are rare things only happens under set conditions. It is very consevable that there are scpecies that are/where on this earth that never got fossiled.

Your quote of Charles Darwin clearly shows Darwin's lack of knowlage about fossilization. If he knew then what we know now about fossilization he would retract that statement.

---

nope. Darwin knew his shit. Bill is just quote mining. Darwin had an entire chapter on the problems with the fossil record. the quote is just an intro.

---

quote:

---

[i]Originally posted by R.Wreck.

---

quote:

---

Again with the non-sequiturs, Bill.

Please try to address the question. If you think the evidence supports design, then you must address the numerous examples of incompetent, bordering on malicious, design.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by trogdor

I have been looking at collages for the past couple days and I haven't finished reading this thread.

but Bill, I can't stand it when you spew the "no transitional fossils" bullshit. when you first came here I answered your request for 5 transitional fossilshere.I even gave you the beginning of a great paper written by people who study transitional fossils.(they are the 2 and 3 posts down. Yet you did not respond. why the cold shoulder?

You don't understand what a rare occasion it is when a bone is fossilized. Let me show you...

less than 0.00001% of animals that die will be fossilized. you have to be deposited in the right place. only 15% of rocks hold fossils. then you have to survive a trip through time. the Earth does not go easy on it's rocks. they are pushed, pulled, crushed and folded. If you survive, you are a fossil.

The odds are close to one in a billion. Of every human in the U.S. right now, all of your bones, all of my bones and all of the 55,620,000,000 other bones that are walking and talking in this country, only 50 some bones, about a quarter of a skeleton, will ever be fossilized for future civilizations to find.

But will they be found? probably not. Those 50 bones will be spread over 3.6 million square miles. you can do the math. Also, very very little of that land will ever be turned over. have you ever wondered why archaeologists rarely look for fossils in forests or prairies? it's not because there are no fossils there. there are. But they would have no idea where to look. only in deserts, where the rock is exposed, is there any chance of finding fossils.

Any fossil is a rare and fantastic thing. Each one has played a game of chance with the earth and won. the fact that there are transitional fossils is a miracle. and yet there are.when you say that "there are no transitional fossils" you spit in the face of all those who spend their lives finding bones. you show an ignorance of basic science that is regularly dished out at public high schools.( I'm a high school student)

you should be ashamed.



all info on fossilization is from Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly everything

sorry about the anger at the end. Ignore it and respond.

---

quote:

---

I have been looking at collages for the past couple days and I haven't finished reading this thread.

---

quote:

---

but Bill, I can't stand it when you spew the "no transitional fossils" bullshit. when you first came here I answered your request for 5 transitional fossilshere <http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5392&whichpage=9>.I even gave you the beginning of a great paper written by people who study transitional fossils.(they are the 2 and 3 posts down. Yet you did not respond. why the cold shoulder?

---

quote:

---

You don't understand what a rare occasion it is when a bone is fossilized. Let me show you...

less than 0.00001% of animals that die will be fossilized. you have to be deposited in the right place. only 15% of rocks hold fossils. then you have to survive a trip through time. the Earth does not go easy on it's rocks. they are pushed, pulled, crushed and folded. If you survive, you are a fossil.

The odds are close to one in a billion. Of every human in the U.S. right now, all of your bones, all of my bones and all of the 55,620,000,000 other bones that are walking and talking in this country, only 50 some bones, about a quarter of a skeleton, will ever be fossilized for future civilizations to find.

But will they be found? probably not. Those 50 bones will be spread over 3.6 million square miles. you can do the math. Also, very very little of that land will ever be turned over. have you ever wondered why archaeologists rarely look for fossils in forests or prairies? it's not because there are no fossils there. there are. But they would have no idea where to look. only in deserts, where the rock is exposed, is there any chance of finding fossils.

Any fossil is a rare and fantastic thing. Each one has played a game of chance with the earth and won. the fact that there are transitional fossils is a miracle. and yet there are. <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=pakistani protocetids&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&btnG=Search>when you say that "there are no transitional fossils" you spit in the face of all those who spend their lives finding bones. you show an ignorance of basic science that is regularly dished out at public high schools.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by trogdor

quote:

---

The natural selection theory pushes statistical probability to the breaking point, time and time again. And where have we ever seen randomness create vast amounts of new and complex info?

---

Here Bill read it. before you make another rediculas assumtion read it.

I also made a thread about this.Here.

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

The natural selection theory pushes statistical probability to the breaking point, time and time again. And where have we ever seen randomness create vast amounts of new and complex info?

---

Here Bill <http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-05/cover/>

read it. before you make another rediculas assumtion read it.

---

quote:

---

Digital organisms that breed thousands of times faster than common bacteria are beginning to shed light on some of the biggest unanswered questions of evolution

---

quote:

---

By Carl Zimmer

DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 02 | February 2005


After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life. “More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off,” says Robert Pennock, a philosopher at Michigan State and a member of the Avida team. “Does this, does that, does this. Metabolism? Maybe not quite yet, but getting pretty close.”

---

quote:

---

One thing the digital organisms do particularly well is evolve. “Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it,” Pennock says. “All the core parts of the Darwinian process are there. These things replicate, they mutate, they are competing with one another. The very process of natural selection is happening there. If that's central to the definition of life, then these things count.”

---

quote:

---

It may seem strange to talk about a chunk of computer code in the same way you talk about a cherry tree or a dolphin. But the more biologists thin

quote:

---

(bill) No cold shoulder. I just don't have the time to directly answer every post directed at me. Thank you for your understanding.

---

quote:

---

(bill) Interesting. Let me ask you a question if I may as I would like to understand your perspective. I understand that fossilization is not a common fate for all carcasses. The British Museum of Natural History boast of having one of the biggest fossil collections on the planet. It I recall, it is well over a million or more in house. Now of these million+ fossils how many are intermittent fossils vs. how many of them show us a creature it it's current state, as we see the critter today? I just find it hard to imagine that Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, would make the statement that he knows of no transitions fossils to exist, when he has access to over a million fossils, if numerous intermediate fossils did in fact exist. Of the millions of dead carcasses that did turn into fossils none were a intermediate fossil that he could use as an example for macroevolution?

Dr. Colin Patterson:

I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it… Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils… It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.

I mean a critter in transition from one species to a next is a process that would take millions up on millions of years to transpire. In effect that would be millions and millions of years of carcass be laid down of the critter in a intermediate state. But yet the critter in it's new and current state would be maybe a few hundred thousand years of the critter being laid down in it's current state. So we have millions of years worth of dead carcass with the critter in transition from one species to another while maybe a few hundred thousand years of a carcass being laid down by the critter in it's current state. But yet of the millions of fossils in captivity at the British Museum of Natural History none can be found to show macroevolution, according to their senior paleontologist?!?! Why such an over whelming display of fossils that show current critters vs. fossils of intermediate critters? Especially when you consider the amount of critters in transition that have been laid down would have exceeded the amount of critters in a current state by an overwhelming proportion. Very strange indeed...


Here is what Harvard professor Stephen J. Gould said:


The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

Did you notice he said the extreme rarity of transitional fossils and not the rarity of fossils? Stephen J. Gould could see the transitions were lacking in a big time way.

---

quote:

---

(bill) Of what?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill scott

quote:

---

Originally posted by trogdor

quote:

---

The natural selection theory pushes statistical probability to the breaking point, time and time again. And where have we ever seen randomness create vast amounts of new and complex info?

---

Here Bill read it. before you make another ridiculous assumption read it.

I also made a thread about this.Here.

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

The natural selection theory pushes statistical probability to the breaking point, time and time again. And where have we ever seen randomness create vast amounts of new and complex info?

---

Here Bill <http://www.discover.com/issues/feb-05/cover/>

read it. before you make another ridiculous assumption read it.

---

quote:

---

Digital organisms that breed thousands of times faster than common bacteria are beginning to shed light on some of the biggest unanswered questions of evolution

---

(bill) This should be good.

quote:

---

By Carl Zimmer

DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 02 | February 2005


After more than a decade of development, Avida's digital organisms are now getting close to fulfilling the definition of biological life. “More and more of the features that biologists have said were necessary for life we can check off,” says Robert Pennock, a philosopher at Michigan State and a member of the Avida team. “Does this, does that, does this. Metabolism? Maybe not quite yet, but getting pretty close.”

---

(bill) The biologists did not create life nor does he even know how it was formed. So therefore he is completely assuming what is completely required to form life and how it all happened. So the experiment begins with assumptions already in place.

quote:

---

One thing the digital organisms do particularly well is evolve. “Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it,” Pennock says. “All the core parts of the Darwinian process are there. These things replicate, they mutate, they are competing with one another. The very process of natural selection is happening there. If that's central to the definition of life, then these things count.”

---

(bill) This is going on inside a computer. It is not effected by outside sources which make it an example of digital evolution, not biological.

quote:

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by trogdor

quote:

---

(bill) No cold shoulder. I just don't have the time to directly answer every post directed at me. Thank you for your understanding.

---

I understand why you didn't respond. I was pissed because you continued to talk about the "lack of transitional fossils" even after I told you about why they are rare.

quote:

---

(bill) Interesting. Let me ask you a question if I may as I would like to understand your perspective. I understand that fossilization is not a common fate for all carcasses. The British Museum of Natural History boast of having one of the biggest fossil collections on the planet. It I recall, it is well over a million or more in house. Now of these million+ fossils how many are intermittent fossils vs. how many of them show us a creature it it's current state, as we see the critter today? I just find it hard to imagine that Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, would make the statement that he knows of no transitions fossils to exist, when he has access to over a million fossils, if numerous intermediate fossils did in fact exist. Of the millions of dead carcasses that did turn into fossils none were a intermediate fossil that he could use as an example for macroevolution?

Dr. Colin Patterson:

I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be used to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it… Gradualism is a concept I believe in, not just because of Darwin's authority, but because my understanding of genetics seems to demand it. Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say there are no transitional fossils… It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test.

I mean a critter in transition from one species to a next is a process that would take millions up on millions of years to transpire. In effect that would be millions and millions of years of carcass be laid down of the critter in a intermediate state. But yet the critter in it's new and current state would be maybe a few hundred thousand years of the critter being laid down in it's current state. So we have millions of years worth of dead carcass with the critter in transition from one species to another while maybe a few hundred thousand years of a carcass being laid down by the critter in it's current state. But yet of the millions of fossils in captivity at the British Museum of Natural History none can be found to show macroevolution, according to their senior paleontologist?!?! Why such an over whelming display of fossils that show current critters vs. fossils of intermediate critters? Especially when you consider the amount of critters in transition that have been laid down would have exceeded the amount of critters in a current state by an overwhelming proportion. Very strange indeed...


Here is what Harvard professor Stephen J. Gould said:


The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.

Did you notice he said the extreme rarity of transitional fossils and not the rarity of fossils? Stephen J. Gould could see the transitions were lacking in a big time way.

---

I cannot speak for anyone else, but if you tell me the book and page # of these quotes, I can find them and figure out what the author was trying to say. they might be quotes out of context like the Darwin quote that you used earlier.

quote:

---

(bill) Of what?

---

Bill, when you say that there are no transitional fossils, you do insult those who dedicate their lives to finding fossils. it's as though you told a cook that there were no examples of souffles. It's mean.

---

quote:

---

QUESTION #1: WHAT GOOD IS HALF AN EYE?



If life today is the result of evolution by natural selection, Darwin realized, then even the most complex systems in biology must have emerged gradually from simple precursors, like someone crossing a river using stepping-stones. But consider the human eye, which is made of many different parts—lens, iris, jelly, retina, optic nerve—and will not work if even one part is missing. If the eye evolved in a piecemeal fashion, how was it of any use to our ancestors? Darwin argued that even a simpler version of today's eyes could have helped animals survive. Early eyes might have been nothing more than a patch of photosensitive cells that could tell an animal if it was in light or shadow. If that patch then evolved into a pit, it might also have been able to detect the direction of the light. Gradually, the eye could have taken on new functions, until at last it could produce full-blown images. Even today, you can find these sorts of proto-eyes in flatworms and other animals. Darwin declared that the belief that natural selection cannot produce a complex organ “can hardly be considered real.”



Digital organisms don't have complex organs such as eyes, but they can process information in complex ways. In order to add two numbers together, for example, a digital organism needs to carry out a lot of simpler operations, such as reading the numbers and holding pieces of those numbers in its memory. Knock out the commands that let a digital organism do one of these simple operations and it may not be able to add. The Avida team realized that by watching a complex organism evolve, they might learn some lessons about how complexity evolves in general.



The researchers set up an experiment to document how one particularly complex operation evolved. The operation, known as equals, consists of comparing pairs of binary numbers, bit by bit, and recording whether each pair of digits is the same. It's a standard operation found in software, but it's not a simple one. The shortest equals program Ofria could write is 19 lines long. The chances that random mutations alone could produce it are about one in a thousand trillion trillion.



To test Darwin's idea that complex systems evolve from simpler precursors, the Avida team set up rewards for simpler operations and bigger rewards for more complex ones. The researchers set up an experiment in which organisms replicate for 16,000 generations. They then repeated the experiment 50 times.



Avida beat the odds. In 23 of the 50 trials, evolution produced organisms that could carry out the equals operation. And when the researchers took away rewards for simpler operations, the organisms never evolved an equals program. “When we looked at the 23 tests, they were all done in completely different ways,” adds Ofria. He was reminded of how Darwin pointed out that many evolutionary paths can produce the same complex organ. A fly and an octopus can both produce an image with their eyes, but their eyes are dramatically different from ours. “Darwin was right on that—there are many different ways of evolving the same function,” says Ofria.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Bill scott

quote:

---

[i]Originally posted by R.Wreck.

---

quote:

---

Again with the non-sequiturs, Bill.

Please try to address the question. If you think the evidence supports design, then you must address the numerous examples of incompetent, bordering on malicious, design.

---

(bill) Sure, Wreck, I will answer your question as soon as you have answered mine. Where did Darwin's "simple Primordial Entities" come from and can you give me a basic description of them, before they began to evolve that is? Also, did these "simple life entities", that came about by chance, pop into existence with information already preprogrammed for natural and cumulative selection to use and if so who programmed them? Or did they pop into existence with no information at all for natural and cumulative selection to use?

---