Thanks Bex.
Do assumptions and bias interpretations equal evidence for transitional forms? Attempting to make out that the problems you're having with the bat evolution, is negated by all the other "evidences" you've apparently given is really relying on people believing it's a "done deal".
But I'm not having problems with earlier bat evolution - I don't have evidence to have problems with. Absence of evidence one way or the other means that we don't know. If you want to assume otherwise based on your biases you are free to do so, but I would not call it honest or scientific.
... is negated by all the other "evidences" you've apparently given is really relying on people believing it's a "done deal".
No, it is just the claim that there are only a few handfuls of transitionals that is falsified by the millions of transitionals that have been presented. These millions of fossils exist and they aptly demonstrate transition over generations and generations of change in hereditary traits, and all of those intermediates are
BY DEFINITION transitionals per Darwin's original statement. They are intermediate varieties, they are between those that came before and those that come after, in time and in traits.
To pretend that the lack of evidence of earlier bat fossils - a lack that neither confirms nor negates bat evolution - negates all this existing evidence of transition after transition after transition, is not dealing with the evidence.
Ignoring it won't make it go away.
... we have actually already addressed and debated the other examples of transitional forms you've set up here earlier on this forum. ... Hence why CTD must continually refer people to using the scroll bar and reading the older posts on this forum.
Yes, and it was shown that your examples are not as similar as you you make out, that not one of your fossils represents a species living today.
Nor, it was pointed out, does the lack of extreme change over time mean that there was NO change over time. The Coelacanth was discussed in detail, for example, and it was pointed out that not one of the 3 modern species is a member of the same genus as any of the 120 or so ancient species.
NOR, it was pointed out, does apparent stasis negate evolution IN ANY WAY. There are many examples of stasis, and there are many examples of non-stasis, transition over time. All evolution does is use the available variation in traits in populations to react to environment, and the relative success of some members of a population to survive and breed means that they pass on their traits to following generations to a higher degree than those not so successful. If the environment doesn't change and the population stays in the same place there is no evolutionary pressure to change.
Yet even then, the populations do change through genetic drift, and the species changes over time in gradual steps.
The fact that this happens means that stasis does not contradict evolution NOR does it mean that transitions do not occur.
Curious that you do not remember this. Perhaps you need to "scroll up" to the relevant passages.
One needs to consider that the fossil record shows the animals that we still have to this day (the ones that have not become extinct) are the same as they were then.
So show me a fossil of a mammal that is 100 million years old, one for each type of mammal alive today, together with documentation of age, sedimentary strata and species. That is not long in terms of the geological record, so it should be a snap eh?
Show me a fossil of a
Homo sapiens that is older than 3 million years by geological time. If you can't find one, then don't talk to me about bat fossils.
Those whom have become extinct, should not automatically = transitional forms, simply because they're lost to our past.
Strangely they don't. They become transitional because they show change from previous forms, not because they are fossils.
Those with similar traits and appearance should not have to succumb to the same labelling tactics either, ...
Strangely this too is false. It is not just similarity, but the links of shared characteristics together with space and time, and especially with characteristics that are of a fine but specific detail showing relationships. There is a difference between analogous features and homologous features that taxonomists use.
There are numerous creatures today that share very similar qualities/appearance with others!
And not all of them are related. This too has been discussed before.
See
Similarities and differences: understanding homology and analogy (there are 10 pages and a short test at the end), for an explanation of the differences.
Should any of those have been extinct, and were not observed in our times, you can guarantee they would have been placed into the same transitonal evolutionary senario as though they were primitive/inbetween one and the other, but on the way to the "modern day" versions of today.
Nope. The traits that are used for classifications are homologous traits, not analogous traits, and yes, taxonomists can tell the difference.
Can you imagine what the Platypus would have done to an evolutionist had it become extinct before we had observed it living alongside the many creatures it shares traits with? If shared/similar traits in one creature with others, means it is a transitonal form. Then what would they have attributed to the Platypus? Consider the following: It has a bill and webbed feet like a duck for swimming, claws for digging, lays eggs like a snake/bird, eggs like a reptile, has milk glands like a mammal, has fur and tail like a beaver, yet unlike most mammals, it keeps its testes safely inside its abdomen. I think this creature is like God's wink to evolutionists
You forgot the poisonous spur on the males hind legs.
Are we, perhaps, getting carried away with imaginationary scenarios based on a total lack of knowledge about how science works? Nothing like a good straw man argument putting concepts into imaginary peoples mouths eh? Curiously the first reaction to the platypus was that it was a hoax. Since that time they have been put in their place on the evolutionary tree, not by comparison with other creatures living today, but based on their homologous relations to the fossils in question.
You've given one example of an ancient bat which you've then assigned the word "primitive" to it, due to it having longer limbs and more claws.
These traits MUST be "primitive" to the evolutionist, because the bat is older.
Nope. Not because it is older but because it is less
derived. Looks like we need to go into the actual scientific language here.
To learn something about how scientists actually do this kind of work (rather than making stuff up), and the terms they actually use, see
Cladistics (wiki) for a
simple explanation (although it contains a lot of information, the concept is really simple).
Notice that it talks about "primitive" and "derived" and prefers the terms "plesiomorphic" and "apomorphic"
* A characteristic that is present in both the outgroups and in the ancestors is called a plesiomorphy (meaning "close form", also called an ancestral state).
* A characteristic that occurs only in later descendants is called an apomorphy (meaning "separate form", also called a "derived" state) for that group. Note: The adjectives plesiomorphic and apomorphic are used instead of "primitive" and "advanced" to avoid placing value-judgments on the evolution of the character states, since both may be advantageous in different circumstances.
(color for emphasis)
I didn't want to confuse you with new terminology, but this is also why I had the terms in quotes (Note that this also explains why "primitive" is not preferred terminology).
The characteristics that scientist use to put the bat in a lineage having a common ancestor with shrews and moles are the plesiomorphies they share in spite of the apomorphic wings and ears of the modern bats. The ears of this bat and the longer legs (and many other bone structures) are more plesiomorphic with shrews and moles. And yes, you can do cladistics to place organisms in trees of relationships in spite of having missing representatives, because you can still compare traits to find the best match, and that works as a testable theory until the next fossil is found.
An example of the difference between using
plesiomorphic and
apomorphic rather than "primitive" and "derived" would be the confusion of what is "primitive" in the evolution of whales and the transitions they underwent as they moved from land back into the sea.
Evolution library - Whale EvolutionSome details remain fuzzy and under investigation. But we know for certain that this back-to-the-water evolution did occur, thanks to a profusion of intermediate fossils that have been uncovered over the past two decades.
In 1978, paleontologist Phil Gingerich discovered a 52-million-year-old skull in Pakistan that resembled fossils of creodonts -- wolf-sized carnivores that lived between 60 and 37 million years ago, in the early Eocene epoch. But the skull also had characteristics in common with the Archaeocetes, the oldest known whales. The new bones, dubbed Pakicetus, proved to have key features that were transitional between terrestrial mammals and the earliest true whales. One of the most interesting was the ear region of the skull. In whales, it is extensively modified for directional hearing underwater. In Pakicetus, the ear region is intermediate between that of terrestrial and fully aquatic animals.
Notice that the source of all whales covering the earth come from one place in Pakistan, and that until that fossil was found that we had as much "trouble" with the lineages of whales as you currently think we have with bats - and for the same reason: the evolved species was able to spread from one small area to cover the earth, so where do you look for the ancestors? Curiously the whale evolution, and the "profusion of intermediate fossils" show that such "trouble" does not mean that evolution is falsified by such absences from the fossil record.
Since there are different species of bats around (some 900 species), how can you be certain it's not another species of bat?
By Cladistics.
Here is a fossilised bat - 50 millions years old (according to old age dating methods).
And here, approximately 54 millions years old:
Here is a modern day depiction of a bat skeleton:
No doubting the ancient fossil bats are as batty as their modern day counterpart
And if you were going to do an
honest and scientific comparison of each of these bats and all the modern species, you would do this with cladistics and not with pictures, especially with pictures from known falsehood purveyor Harun Yahya (whom we have also previously discussed and shown to be dishonest in his quotes of Stephen Jay Gould among others -- scroll back if you don't remember). With cladistics you compare all the features and their relative differences and simiarities.
Let's take a look at ancient mammal and reptile fossils and see why there is not only no sign of transition occuring from one to the other, but they were STILL existing around the same time period fully formed and recognisable as they are today.
83 million year old Antelope skull:
80 million year old Bear skull:
95 million year old fox skull:
75 million year old Rhinosaurus skull:
80 million year old tiger skull:
With no documentation of age or species. You realize, of course, that he could just fake the pictures and the dates - how would you know?
For these are fakes, demonstrating again that Harun Yahya is a liar and a fraud.
For amusement I did a google on "Harum Yahya fraud" and found these articles:
Richard Dawkins and the falsehoods of Harun Yahya"Harun Yahya" sentenced to prison ... for fraud, so it looks like he shares a common trait with Hovind, but then ...
who is Harun Yahya, an Islamic Creationist Cult or an Islamic Recreational Sex Cult)
The discoveries at the houses and testimony of the group members were shocking. Under the mask of promoting Islam and scientific facts, the group members had been found to engage in extensive criminal activity. These crimes included blackmail, possession of unlicensed weapons and sexual intercourse with individuals under age 18. The head of the group, Adnan Oktar (recorded by police cameras, leaked and shown on Turkish TV channels such as Kanal D, ATV, Star) confessed to blackmailing people who they regarded as an obstacle to their enterprises. These people included the reporters for the newspaper Hurriyet, Emin Colasan, and Fatih Altayli, after they questioned some of Harun Yahya’s activities such as bribing the municipality of Ankara.
In his testimony, Oktar claimed that he had committed no crime as the intercourse was consensual, allowed under Turkish law. Further, Oktar insisted that this intercourse was also religiously permissible under Islam because he and his followers did not have a ‘real sexual intercourse with these girls’. He and his followers claimed that they had only engaged in ‘anal and oral’ sex. They preferred this kinds of sexual intercourse since according to Koran, he claimed, these acts are not impermissible outside of marriage.
I guess Hovind has a ways to go yet before reaching that level of behavior, but I really have to wonder if this is the kind of person you trust to be honest.
37-23 million year old turtle:
120 million year old turtle:
50 million year old snake
65 million year old Crocodile:
144-65 million year old Crocodile:
100 million year old Crocodile:
40 million year old frog:
Notice that even with this likely faked information, the crocodile and turtle are older than any of the mammals ... I don't see any (fake) mammal fossils over 100 million years old ...
And yet this
STILL does not change the fact that the intermediate varieties shown on other posts with transitions from one form to another
exist in profusion, that the evidence of transitions clearly show stages easily taken by the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and this change is no more than the kind of change we see in dogs and their evolution from wolves.
And strangely, I see no 70 million year old
Homo sapiens ... I guess that can't be faked eh?
Expect many excuses for why these ancient fossils defy the expected signs of evolutionary change/transition. (here are some examples of their kind of excuses)
"you do not understand Evolution"
"you just don't understand how evolution works"
"the pictures only show the man who stayed at home, not the man who walked around the world (analogy to prove some evolved, some didn't. Or at different rates etc and that it's just coincidence that all the fossils we see that haven't changed (much if at all) and were the ones that "stayed at home")
"they have evolved significantly, just because they don't show obvious external signs"
"They evolve at different rates"
"Evolution doesn't happen in the way you might imagine"
You forgot to include the highly likely reply that they are frauds, a hoax, based on the demonstrated fact that the Harun Yahya is a liar and a fraud ... as well as a pervert.
But even if there
were true you would still not have a case that evolution does not happen, because you are ignoring the evidence of transitions.
Oh look water in this pot sitting on the table does not boil (ignore that one on the stove boiling away) this
proves that water does not boil.
To put it bluntly, and as noted previously in the referenced discussions (see "scrolling up" by scrolling up ... ), the oldest known life on earth is a
cyanobacteria similar to ones living today:
http://www.wmnh.com/wmel0000.htmStromatolites are the oldest known fossils, dating back more than 3 billion years. They are colonial structures formed by photosynthesizing cyannobacteria and other microbes. Stromatolites are prokaryotes(primitive organisms lacking a cellular nucleus) that thrived in warm aquatic environments and built reefs much the same way as coral does today. Cyannobacteria were likely responsible for the creation of earth's oxygen atmosphere. They were the dominant lifeform on Earth for over 2 billion years. Today they are nearly extinct, living a precarious existence in only a few localities worldwide.
Quite apart from proving that evolution has not occurred, these fossils show that at that time there were only simple single cell life forms, and that since that time life has diversified, evolved.
All you have is a false argument (ie - not logically sound) and some incredibly (to be polite)
doubtful pictures from an immensely questionable (to say the least) source with exactly zero substantiation for a single claim,
and it still leaves every single transition discussed above (including the new ones on the thread) unchallenged.
The evidence for transitions keeps adding up.
Enjoy.
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