News you won't see in controlled mainstream media.

Dawkin's once said (in a book review in New York Times in 1989):

He expanded on this assertion in an on-line article, Ignorance Is No Crime, where he states that ignorance can be cured:

He concludes:

To my mind, the word that best describes this added category is deluded, which covers a spectrum from simply being mislead (being told false information by someone you trust), to the level of clinical delusion (which gets into his category of insane). Like ignorance, being mislead can also be cured by presenting one so deluded with the real information.

It would be a good idea for any creationist to read this article, and try to suppress any emotional response that they feel, to read what is actually said, and to ask themselves if the information that they have been taught about evolution - no matter the source (yes public schools can be a poor source of information) - is true.

My purpose on these threads is to reach those that are ignorant of the truth about evolution or who have been mislead by false information about evolution. The main point for this thread is that any discussion using a definition that differs from the scientific usage is not discussing biological evolution, but something else, a definition that, perhaps, is ignorant, stupid, deluded, insane, or wicked.

Evolution is discussed on several threads, but one that presents definitions as used in science is Evolution and the BIG LIE, where I concluded:

Eventually, and by using relatively neutral language a consensus of sorts was reached that:

It was also noted that these processes hold true whether creationism were true or not.

If you want to discuss this further please respond on the Evolution and the BIG LIE thread.

In another thread, Evolution Theory Explains Diversity, I expanded on this discussion to show that the diversity of life could be explained by these two biological processes:

And in that thread I suggested a simple metric for judging the amount of change in hereditary traits that could be contained in a single species:

Curiously, no creationist took up the challenge to look at the diversity of life on this basis.

In a recent discussion with CTD he stated:

Which is another common misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what evolution, the theory of evolution and the science of evolution talk about.

Because the other thread was getting cluttered with other issues, I have decided to shift part of my answer here and to focus a single thread on the concept of transitionals, building on the scientific usage of terms as summarized above. A more common cut and paste version of this commonly repeated creationist lie (in this case from Creation Evidence - The Great Debate of Origins) is:

Notice that Darwin said "intermediate varieties" rather than the commonly used "transitionals" term. In other words there should be fossils intermediate in time and form between those that came before and those that came after the "transitional" fossil. Transitions can and do span many generations, with many intermediates in between.

According to a proper definition of evolution, the process of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, evolution is constantly occurring, and this means that every fossil is part of the transition from one life form to another, and every fossil thus is a "transitional" fossil. Every fossil lineage shows such change over time occurring, with intermediate age fossils being intermediate in form from previous ages and forms to later ages and forms. This is what the theory of evolution predicts we should find in the fossil record: intermediate forms at intermediated ages in the lineages. This is what we do find.

Again, this betrays a false understanding of evolution and what evolution proposes for the diversity of life. This is a standard creationist straw man misrepresentation, one that is easily dispelled by any real fact checking with evolutionary biologists, studies, books, etc etc etc.

Creationists keep trying to compress generations of accumulated evolution into single generation events and to propose obviously ridiculous scenarios (a dog giving birth to a cat), and this just is not the way evolution occurs.

There are intermediates between dinosaurs and birds, of which Archaeopteryx is but one, just as there are intermediates between fish and amphibian, of which Tiktaalik rosea is but one ... ignoring the reality does not make it go away, and nature and reality are both curiously unaffected by such ignorance.

This picture shows several intermediate forms between australopithicus and Homo sapiens

Each one of these skulls is a transitional fossil because it is intermediate between the one before and the one after. Furthermore, each of the species represented by a skull has numerous fossils associated with that species, and these fossils also show change in hereditary traits from generation to generation, with the early ones being similar to the previous species and the later ones being similar to later species. Many times there are controversies over which species some of the fossils found belong to because they lie between the existing (arbitrary) species classifications.

In addition, evolution predicts that IF the theory is true, that THEN intermediate forms will be found between any two closely related species separated by time: that every hereditary lineage that is known will be filled in by more intermediates. This is what they did with Tiktaalik rosea, where they predicted that an intermediate form of organism in the transition from fish to tetrapod would be found in the area that had the right age sedimentary deposits and the right environment for such an intermediate.

This image from Transitions: the Evolution of life, "Tiktaalik roseae[/i] and the Origins of Tetrapods" shows the intermediate form of Tiktaalik as part of the transition from fish to tetrapod:


This image from Transitions: the Evolution of life, "Dinosaurs Among Us" shows the intermediate form of [i]Archaeopteryx as part of the transition from dinosaur to bird:

Wikipedia also discusses the various feathered Dromaeosaurids that show development of feathers before flight, and from egg laying dinosaurs.

Curiously more transitional forms are found every year, from amphibians in Iowa and Pennsylvania and "Frogamanders" in Texas to feathered non-flying dinosaurs in China and elsewhere.

Anyone who claims there are few transitionals either does not understand what a transitional is, or, perhaps, is ignorant, stupid, deluded, insane, or wicked.

Creationists are not allowed to cherry pick some comments about some transitions and then ignore ones about transitions in the fossil record, particularly when made by the same evolutionist, as that is not confronting all the evidence. Such selection of evidence is just one more example of the logical fallacy of hasty generalization. It's also called a lie of omission.

Gould for one, specifically states that there are transitional forms, for example, but you wouldn't know that from reading creationist sites that quote his evidence for "Punctuated Equilibrium" speciations as if it was a universal condition.

There are many other transitions that are known from the fossil record, all of them involving several intermediate forms from beginning to end, none of them occurring in a single generation. All the intermediates show the same degree of change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation that we see in the example of dogs as descendants of wolves, none of them show sudden or grotesque (half fish half bird) transformations. If you are expecting something else, you have been mislead.

Enjoy.

And you claim evolution isn't a religion?

Well, to be fair I don't see anything religious in this post.

There are massive articles discussing things like string theory on wikipedia but I wouldn't call those religion either. I'd call it physics. And in this particular post I'd call it evolution. Algebra falls under the category of mathematics, participle clauses goes under grammar and the belief in God under religion.

I've written about tiktaalik in this forum also, as you can see here. It's a good example of how accurate predictions can be made based on the theory of evolution. I'm not sure how this could be construed as religious.

M: Well, to be fair I don't see anything religious in this post.
J: not my point.

Linda Lou, please keep in touch with me. I think I'll be unsubscribing. (can you get my private email off the list?)

Well, Jeanie, what IS your point?

I don't see any definition of religion that applies to science, there is no divine power here, there is no faith (belief not founded on evidence), there is no dogma.

There is evidence, millions of fossils, there are facts of objective reality (each of those fossils actually exists, they are not fantasy), evolution and speciation are also recognized facts, there is theory based on facts (scientific theory) and there is the possibility of invalidation and correction of falsified information.

Enjoy.

which, RAZD, you use for a complete belief system from my understanding. You've actually said there is no evidence for religion (so why believe in it?) which denies the very essence of it being about faith. I realize and understand you and CTD have been on this pointless circle of an argument for some time and that he has insinuated insults toward you, but those you've just made are pretty blatantly forthcoming. And you're pretty much stating that you agree with this author that anyone who doesn't believe in evolution is stupid, or deluded or any of the other choice compliments? Tell us how you REALLY feel. Personally I'm not feeling like holding back anymore either..... (Its a full moon tomorrow). I just thought you were above such things. You could deny it by stating that you were quoting someone else except you pretty much just blatantly said it directly to him, too. Don't get me wrong, I don't think people like Alia have any right to call homosexuals subhuman either (and yes, I'm guilty of even bringing up the subject and did apologize and am no longer thinking along those lines toward Mordren)....but sheesh. I don't believe anyone is denying the fact that fossils exist. And that speciation occurs as well as some evolution WITHIN SPECIES occurs. However, the further conjectures are still theories. THEORIES. (I'm sure you know what that means). Which means a belief system. It may not sound like a normal religion, but in my view, you make it one as do many. You think it rules out religion. Its your mantra....what you guide your life by so to speak, even to the point of arguing day in and out with a stranger...or trying to "enlighten" the world on it. But the truth is, you have no respect for those who don't accept it. So what do you care if we believe it? You don't care about us as humans. Because you're too intellectually superior in your mind. More evolved if you will : ) Right? CTD has been onto you all along.

Well Jeanie,

Stupid, ignorant, deluded, insane or wicked. Can you think of any other reasons for not understanding the truth? 1 + 1 = 2. If someone disagrees, what do you think? On what basis could they disagree and not be included in those classification? I keep asking for others, just to keep the book open.

Evolution - the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation - occurs every day in every living species, and it is an observed fact. Do you disagree? On what basis do you disagree with the observed facts?

Speciation - the division of populations into genetically isolated sub-populations - also occurs and is an observed fact. Do you disagree? On what basis do you disagree with the observed facts?

Yes, I have no respect for anyone whose first resort is to insults and mockery instead of dealing with the issues. I have started a thread to deal with him.

Yes, they mean several things: to the general public they can mean hypothetical guesses, such as the ad hoc claim that the decay rates have changed in the past, guesses founded on an absence of evidence and a preponderance of wishful thinking.

To science though, theory means conclusions based on evidence that explain the evidence, conclusions that say "if this is true then this happens", so they make predictions that can test the theories for validity.

There are no pieces of evidence that contradict the theory that evolution/speciation can explain the diversity of life as we know it, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record, from genetics, not one.

In addition the theory of evolution is massively validated by thousands of experiments and observations, testing over the last 150 years that has yet to show a weak link anywhere in the theory.

Absolutely false. What it means is that you have concepts that you can test for validity to see if they do in fact reflect reality. Every theory can be falsified by new information, and thus they are always treated as tentative statements: IF this is true then that happens.

Can the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and the diversification that follows the division of populations into genetically isolated subpopulations explain the full diversity of life we know from life today, from history, from prehistory, from the fossil record and from genetics?

Let's find out.

That's not belief, it is curiosity and a desire to find the truth.

Wrong. It does not rule out faith nor religion: Millions of people demonstrate that this is false.

It is curious that you seem to be unable to discuss facts of objective reality without casting some mystic aura onto it. Reality exists. There is nothing mystical about a rock.

Now.

The issue of this thread is transitions - say the transition from ape to human as shown by the several intermediate fossils of hominids that we have discovered, with the thousands of fossils that show (a) evolution within species and (b) speciation, and where the difference from one to the next is less than the difference we see in dogs, dogs that we know have evolved from wolves by (a) evolution within populations and (b) genetic isolation of subpopulations.

Can you show that the variations you see here:



is less than the variation from wolf to dogs:



We can start with Lucy:



She correlates with skull B above, two of many fossils for Australopiticus afarensis.

Enjoy.

How do you know Lucy just isn't an ape...(or some such monkey...). I know - the pelvic girdle, right? Educate me.

Looking at the skulls those are some odd looking people in the beginning, but how do you know its just not cause they're so old? (Which contradicts myself???) No, seriously - I see some pretty odd looking folk every day. I think about that. I see some serious ledges on some folks (foreheads) and different shaped heads. I've made those points before. I don't know how these things are classified more specifically, but you could say the human bones found were just as variable as the dogs! (I suppose they're considered newer? I know, of course, we do breed them, too).

Just FYI, I don't see religion as mystic. I have my mysteries pretty filled in. Maybe I'm missing some puzzle pieces with some of that, but I guess my point is that you, too, are missing some puzzle pieces as far as the really big picture. Which is a lot bigger than how life began. How do you see our evolution and progression through eternity? Say after we die??????? Answer THAT one (again : ) For the fifth time.

K - I'm not stupid...I'm a little ignorant but more stubborn, not deluded, and not insane (most of the time) or wicked... So that blows that theory!!!

I get your points. It does make it seem more approachable the way you've explained it. At least if nothing else I'll come away understanding it all better. But, yes, I still have a problem with us evolving from apes. For one thing, why are there still apes if we evolved from them? (Are you screaming??? : ) Sorry - just kind of having fun now....I guess we're cousins? Could you explain how you explain that? So do you think humans are more or less evolved than eachother? Obviously there are different levels of intelligence, talent, etc. etc.

But what happens when we die? In the end, quite literally, that is going to matter more than our "ape" ancestry. I mean I'm into genealogy, but this is rediculous as am I being. Its time for me to go nigh night. I have enjoyed....

But we've talked about this before, Jeanie. Humans and apes diverged from a common ancestor about 13 million years ago. How do we know? Fossil evidence and dating methods. There are also people called paleoanthropologists who dedicate their lives to studying these fossil remains. Australopithecine bones are very different from those of modern humans in some key ways, they're not just "different-looking humans." But I'll let RAZD fill in the details there, he can tell you what we've learned about Lucy.



The human race is one species, homo sapiens. You seem to be asking whether any of us are racists or eugenecists. These prejudices don't have anything to do with the science of evolution.

LL: The human race is one species, homo sapiens. You seem to be asking whether any of us are racists or eugenecists. These prejudices don't have anything to do with the science of evolution.

Jeanie: No, just meant literally. Not trying to tie in anything at all.... (Hadn't occurred to me actually).

My question on the other quote though was why would there still be apes if we have evolved from them? That is what my husband always asked. (IF we evolved from them, why are they still here?)

Hi Jeanie

why would there still be apes if we have evolved from them?

You pretty much answered the question in your initial post when you said “I guess we're cousins?”. There are two basic ways species can change over time to form new species. One is that the species simply changes over time to keep up with their niche and they become a distinct species such that if you could take one back in time to meet it’s distant relatives of many generations before they would not recognize them and would not be able to breed with them. The other common mechanism is division of an existing species into two separate populations who don’t interbreed. This can occur in place as the extreme’s of the species specialize on different foods for example. This has been observed in birds under certain conditions in which a small beaked variety and a large beaked variety form to take advantage of food that the original intermediate form could not use. As they diverge they get to the point where the extremes don’t recognize each other and will not mate with them. Another mechanism is geographic isolation, as sea levels rise (or whatever change it is) the population on one side of a divide can’t reach the population on the other side anymore and so again they are reproductively isolated. However it happens the point is that once isolation has occurred the two groups are no longer genetically tied together and changes in their DNA will accumulate separately. For reproduction to be possible the DNA has to be very similar so over time these two populations may well diverge to the point where they will not or even cannot interbreed if they ever meet again and two species have arisen from one progenitor species.

So back to your question, it is not exactly true to say that we evolved from apes, apes and humans shared a common ancestor that was somewhat ape like and somewhat human like. Due to isolation two distinct groups of this creature appeared and evolved off in different directions one leading to us and the other leading to the great apes thus today we have apes and humans.

Does that clear it up Jeanie?

All the best

Russell

Thanks again, Jeanie.

Old geologically or individually old?

If the former, then we know by comparing them with other fossils of the same ages (say dogs) that do not show the same kind of changes in skull size compared to body size.

If the later, then we know the ages of many fossils by the imprint of different stages of development that is left on the bones. We know that some are children and some are very old - for their species (almost 35 years old) - and some that are in between, just as we know that some are male and some are female from the bones.

We also have multiple samples of different species, so we can rule out the argument that the one in question was deformed or diseased.

Well, you do live in the south ... (joke).

What you see is the amazing amount of natural variation that can occur in a species, possibly augmented by (a) the thousands of ecologies that humans have adapted to and (b) the propensity of humans to adapt nature to themselves, and thus preserve traits that may not otherwise be beneficial.

Let me see if a graphic helps here:



Notice that each of the horizontal dark lines are populations of fossils, showing the variation in each population. Notice that each of the populations shown is intermediate between the one before (below) and the one after (above) with a high degree of overlap in the characteristics of each population.

Notice that Pelycodus ralstoni evolves into Pelycodus trigonodus which evolves into Pelycodus jarrovii by gradual change in the hereditary traits in the populations from generation to generation. These species classifications are fairly arbitrary, as they are just a way of saying that P. trigonodus is different from P. ralstoni, however then we have the non-arbitrary speciation event where P. jarrovii evolves into two separate populations, Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus.

You can see that there is overlap between P. jarrovii and the daughter population, N. nunienus and that N. nunienus evolved from P. jarrovii by gradual change in the hereditary traits in the populations from generation to generation.

You can also see that there is overlap between P. jarrovii and the daughter population, N. venticolus and that N. venticolus evolved from P. jarrovii by gradual change in the hereditary traits in the populations from generation to generation.

Finally, you can see that Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus diverge to a point where there is no overlap between their respective populations, and that they are no longer sharing genetic information, but evolving different hereditary traits in their respective populations (and if you read the article you will see that they diverge further in later (higher) layers, one forming a new genus).

So to answer your question, the evolution of Notharctus nunienus from Pelycodus jarrovii does not prevent the evolution of Notharctus venticolus from Pelycodus jarrovii. Yes, they are siblings, their offspring will be cousins, and their offspring will be second cousins, etc.

Is Notharctus nunienus more or less evolved than Notharctus venticolus? No: at any time at any place, any two organisms are equally evolved from their common ancestor.

Bacteria evolve faster than humans (because they have shorter generations): does this mean that they are "more evolved" than humans? The terms "more evolved" and "higher evolved" are meaningless in evolution, as evolution is only concerned if and when evolution occurs.

If you want to know if one species, or one variety of species is special (however you use the term) compared to others, then you will need to look at philosophy and religion.

I hope that helps. Show this to your husband and see if he still has a problem with apes living today.

Meanwhile, thanks for the opportunity to introduce another set of intermediate fossils that show an evolutionary transition from Pelycodus ralstoni to Notharctus nunienus and Notharctus venticolus, a transition that has hundreds of intermediate fossils at many different stages along the transition.

Are there gaps in this fossil record? Yes, however not enough to cause a problem, because there is still sufficient overlap to show the hereditary relationship between one population to the next. One can also predict that if new fossils are found in the right time and ecology to match those gaps that you will find more intermediate fossils.

Enjoy.

Actually, if you apply some of the newer definitions of 'species' to humans, there are quite a few. Wouldn't be politically correct, of course, so I understand why this isn't mentioned.

How long do evolutionists intend to apply one definition to humans, and other definitions to other lifeforms? Or is that a cult secret?

The differences between apes and humans is so significant, that human beings reject ALL ape parts, yet not all pig parts. Many people are walking around our world with pig parts inside them. Some even take pig thyroid extract. Pig heart valves etc. If we indeed shared a common ancestor with the apes, one must wonder why pigs are the preferred and safer option when it comes to medical reality Perhaps we share a common ancestor with the pig?

Now I realise some people maybe compared to monkeys and pigs on occassion, but must we take it literally? The apes don't tend to take it literally, the surgeons and doctors obviously don't and apparently neither does Mother Nature. The only ones struggling with it are the evolutionists. Would they be so brave if it came to testing their theory out medically?

We can fit any species into being human or ape (or other animals) if we find any fossil that happens to have resemblences and at times hard to distinguish which it may belong to, but it still doesn't prove that we come from a common ancestor. We don't know enough to state it's a missing link, since it could quite easily be an unrecognised species. The God of the bible is quite capable of creating many different varieties of creatures, and sharing common traits may not equal common ancestor. Either way, they'll keep closing the gaps where and when it suits them, because evolution is so easily manipulated and moulded (I'd compare it to playdough).

Still no bat ancestors, I see. Perhaps in all the jibber-jabber, they've been overlooked? Surely someone's found some teeth at least, from which a series can be reconstructed.

Recently, the oldest bat fossil to date has been found in Wyoming.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/13/bat.evolution?gusrc=rss&feed=science

This bat did not fly by echolocation.

Why does the validity of the whole theory of evolution seem to hinge for you on the discovery of one transitional fossil? Does this mean you think you can now claim the ToE invalid because of the absence of another transitional -- until one is found -- ad infinitum?

I haven't read the posts which follow yet so this may have been addressed, and probably more adroitly than I can manage. But I see this statement crop up a lot from people who are either laymen in the field of evolution or simply know nothing about it (and that isn't meant to be offensive to you, Jeanie - there are lots of subjects which I am ignorant to and, consequently, sometimes ask ignorant questions about: like computers, which I am embarrassingly illiterate with, heh!).

Anyway. Imagine we have a species of animal called X and they live in the desert with a biological makeup suited for the desert. A group of them (read: not all, a group of them) migrate to further grounds in search of food, which eventually leads them to a different climate. After spending tens of thousands of years that generation (we'll call them X.2) has evolved to match its new environtment. Given enough time to evolve they may look remarkably different from their original counterparts but their original counterparts (group X) has not needed to change very much since there have been fewer changes in their climate.

One may as well ask why alligators haven't changed if evolution proves they are related to the chicken. I think the more reasonable question is: why wouldn't other primates exist if we evolved from/with/alongside them? We cannot think of evolution as one single line. This is precisely why there are multiple species of monkeys (and many other animals)

Hi Bex

The differences between apes and humans is so significant, that human beings reject ALL ape parts, yet not all pig parts.

That is simply not true. Baboon livers have been used experimentally as xenotransplants but this has largely been dropped for the very simple reason that we are so genetically similar to the great apes that diseases that can affect apes can also affect humans. Given the genetic separation between humans and pigs this is much less of a concern as diseases are far less capable of affecting both organisms given the genetic divergence that has occurred since our common ancestor with pigs. Further pigs are easier and cheaper to breed in large numbers, have large litters and don’t raise so many concerns about our treatment of such intelligent creatures as apes do. Currently only inert, dead, pig tissues are used in transplants, heart valves for instance which are killed and sterilized first while the Baboon livers were transplanted live and active into humans. This has not been successfully done with pig organs as yet though with more genetic manipulation it may well be possible in the future. So it’s simply not true to say that humans reject all ape parts and it is not true to say that we are more compatible with pigs in fact the opposite is true and our compatibility with apes in disease organisms is the largest reason why we do not use ape’s as organ donors at this time.

Animal organs for human transplantation: how close are we?
Marlon F. Levy, MD - Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent). 2000 January; 13(1): 3–6. PMCID: PMC1312205

Now I realise some people maybe compared to monkeys and pigs on occassion, but must we take it literally?

If we wish to face the truth as revealed by the evidence then yes we must seriously consider this possibility especially given the very very extensive list of evidence in support of this idea.

Would they be so brave if it came to testing their theory out medically?

For very obvious reasons, opposite to the claims you are making, it would probably not be a good idea at this stage to use ape organs because we are too closely related to them for our own safety. Rejection is less of a problem with unmodified ape organs than with pigs but genetic engineering may be able to solve that issue.

We can fit any species into being human or ape (or other animals) if we find any fossil that happens to have resemblences and at times hard to distinguish which it may belong to, but it still doesn't prove that we come from a common ancestor.

You really need to read up on the literature on this point, what you are saying is, as for the point above on transplantation, simply wrong. Read the stuff that RazD has been posting and see if you can understand the sorts of evidence that these findings are based on and why your last statement is so profoundly wrong.

We don't know enough to state it's a missing link, since it could quite easily be an unrecognised species.

The science behind this is very solid, we have a huge list of fossil evidence on which the stated lineages are based and the data is mathematical not just aesthetic. We don’t just say, that one looks a bit more human than tha tone so it must be an ancestor it takes a great many very detailed measurements of intricate features of the bones and of the dating information from the site it was found to put together a picture of what is related to who.

Either way, they'll keep closing the gaps where and when it suits them, because evolution is so easily manipulated and moulded (I'd compare it to playdough).

That last statement suggests strongly that you understand very little about ToE or human anthropology. That's not an insult, none of us was born knowing this stuff, we all have to learn it. Are you interested in learning how it works and why these findings are virtually universally accepted by scientists and even by religious leaders around the world? Do you wonder why it is only such a small minority or christians who reject these findings? The Pope, leader of the largest single christian sect has come out clearly supporting these scientific findings. Do you wonder why?

All the best Bex.

Russell

Thanks LindaLou,

An excellent example of an "intermediate variety" (to use Darwin's definition of a transitional fossil), one that shows hereditary traits intermediate between modern bats and traits that are associated with non-flying species.

Enjoy.

Hello Bex,

Look at the diagram in message #41888 again.

This is the pattern of common ancestry that is seen in the fossil record again and again.

We also look at the genetic records of organisms and see the same pattern of relationships by the mutations that are common to the different branches, and different from different branches.

Why do chimpanzees and? humans share exactly the same mutation in exactly the same DNA sequence that disables our ability to form vitamin C?

Enjoy.

The "fossil record" is yet another missing link in the foundation of the unobserved faith of evolution.

Kent Hovind does a great job of explaining the myth of the "fossil record" in this video:

Lies In The Textbooks

Hi Russ

LOL you are scrapping the bottom of the barrel now aren’t you. Kent Hovind (Dr Dino), the convicted tax cheat, claims to hold a masters degree and a doctorate from Patriot University a diploma mill accredited by an unaccredited, pay for service accreditation organization. Patriot University charges around $20 per credit and lists no faculty. In other words he has no credentials in any relevant fields and he holds the ‘honour’ to have many of his arguments, including most of those in this video, listed on the YEC website Answers In Genesis’ list of “arguments we should not use”. His arguments are so flawed that even the YEC movement has disowned him to a large extent.

If you care to present the particular arguments that you find compelling in this video we can discuss them but, given his track record and lack of any expertise or credentials at all other than as a showman I don’t think it would be worth anyone’s time or effort to watch the video.

In Reason

Russell

Hi Russell



Thanks for the correction Russell. I had not heard of this. However, my statements were not as "simply not true" as you have suggested. And here is why I was not far off the mark.

The quote you gave me was helpful.

The article tells us that the apes/monkeys would have been ideal, because they have resistance to many of the deadly viruses that humans are suseptible to (HIV and hepatitis B). But this again emphasises how different they are, regardless of how "ideal" it might have been. Unlike human beings, apes appear to be resistent to certain human viruses. This contradicts our apparent close relationship to the apes.

But there is more. Instead of the risk of passing on human disease, they can instead pass on a monkey virus called "Herpes 8" which is deadly to human beings and can kill them in a matter of 7 days. Reminds me a little of the bird flu. Certainly it seems that virsues caught from animals are almost lethal to human beings, but not always to the animals themselves.

If it was also a case of discontinuing the transplants because of such close genetic relationship, then we would surely not be using transplants from fellow human beings. Clearly, though we share similar physical traits to the apes/monkeys, we are also clearly different and that differences appear to outweigh the similarities dramatically enough to be lethal. Perhaps far more than the evolutionists are willing to admit.

Such genetic closeness to the apes, if it existed would be ideal and would prevent alot of the crying out for organ donors from other human beings. This is why it is far safer to get a brother or a sister donating one of their own organs to their sibling because of the higher likelihood that their body will accept it. The closer the relationship, even amongst our own, the better. Apparently apes don't come close.

You've mentioned it being safer from pigs because of being further apart in genetic similarity? Since the human body is designed to protect itself and recognise foreign material so that it can assert itself against it, I can't quite figure out how this fits in completely. Medically, it is preferable that organ donors come from the same family to reduce the risks of rejection. Pigs are obviously more similar to human beings in particular parts of their anatomy and seem to be the most compatible as far as animals are concerned.

Evolution has taught us that we come from a common ancestor, yet these differences become suddenly apparent when reality hits home that there are definite boundaries between us and them, that even medical intervention cannot seem to overcome. Perhaps oneday they will find a way, but either way, I am of the belief that we do indeed share a common designer, but I don't agree that we share a common ancestor.



The science behind this is solid? Yes we are told this over and over again, including "we have truckloads of evidence". Personally I've seen alot of assumptions and manipulation and excuses. But I'm willing to look into it more if I get the time. I would imagine it takes quite a bit of reading and study and making sure one gets the information from both sides of the arguments before coming to any conclusions.

PS. As far as I'm aware, Pope Benedict is a believer in creation. I am aware that Pope John Paul II did suggest that evolution maybe involved in God's creation. But again, many people are of this belief because of what they are being told. This is a big thing for people to bring the Pope into it, but the Pope is human also. We are all being told this by the science arena. The fact the Pope (or any other Pope), may consider it possible, doesn't make it a reality. It is certainly not mentioned in the bible or the Catholic Catechism, so therefore it becomes an opinion, rather than a foundation belief of our church.

Thanks Russ.

Curiously, reality is not affected in any way by your assertions.

Here's another small sample of what the fossil record holds:

The Foram Fossils: a Classic Tale of Transition


No missing links, and in many cases no missing fossils. But that is not all:

As we saw with Pelycodus a branching in the fossil record of a population into two different subpopulations is a non-arbitrary speciation event, and this is what is observed in the fossil record of the foraminifera again and again and again, with complete links between populations, links that are intermediate between the old population species and the new population species.

Millions of years of millions of fossils of "intermediate variations" (to use Darwin's words again) showing the transition of life from one form to another. Once again we see the pattern of common ancestry, a pattern that is repeated in the fossil record again and again.

Again we see that each branch, each population of morphologically distinct forms, undergoes changes in hereditary traits from generation to generation, and, like the Pelycodus, we see that each branching is through intermediates that also show changes in hereditary traits in their populations from generation to generation.

We have barely begun to touch the surface of the fossil record, and already we have millions of transitionals, millions of fossils of intermediate variations.

And all of these examples are explained simply by the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and by the divergence of reproductively isolated populations.

That's evolution.

Enjoy.

Hi Bex

Even some humans are resistant to HIV and Hepatitis B so you don’t have to be very far removed for this to be a factor. Most viruses are very host specific though there are exceptions such as the bird flu though even that is specific to a couple of species only. We share more diseases with the great apes than with any other species known and the compatibility goes both ways, some human diseases are deadly to apes.

Pigs on the other hand share very few viruses with us due to our greater separation from them. This is a good thing for transplantation. The down side of it is that, due to their greater separation rejection is a bigger issue. Human – Human donations carry the greatest disease risk of all but on the up side the lowest rejection risk and humans as a rule are fairly disease free due to our modern medicines and hygiene practices which significantly mitigates this risk. Rejection is to date an insurmountable problem in human to pig transplantation of live/active organs, it is a big though at least surmountable problem with ape to human transplantation as that article mentioned and it is a relatively easily dealt with issue in human to human transplants with our modern medical protocols of tissue matching and anti rejection drugs.

So in short the picture looks like this.

Disease compatibility
Human to Human – maximum disease risk as virtually all diseases are compatible with the recipient
Apt to Human – intermediate disease risk as only a small though significant minority of diseases are intracompatible. Due to our genetic differences some diseases from one species are fatal to the other.
Pig to Human – very low disease risk as virtually no diseases are intra-compatible.

Rejection
Human to Human – lowest risk due to the very high degree of natural compatibility though this is an issue which must be dealt with in every case.
Ape to Human – higher risk due to reduced similarity but live organ transplantation has been successfully tested.
Pig to Human – greatest risk, no live tissue transplants have ever successfully been achieved. Rejection is controllable in inert (dead) tissue transplants such as heart valves and some hormone extracts which don’t carry a rejection risk as they have no proteins expressed by which the immune system could be triggered.

Which is exactly in line with what you would expect if ToE were true and not what you would expect if creation were true. The pattern is simply this, rejection is a greater risk the further you get from our lineage according to the standard relationships that come out of ToE. Disease is a greater risk the closer to our lineage you go according to the standard relationships that come out of ToE.

Is this really what you’d expect if creation were true? Why would god make us susceptible to ape diseases more than any others? Why would he make us compatible with their organs with difficulty and not at all with life pig organs which are for many reasons better candidates? Why not make us immune to all disease or at least to diseases of other animals. Why not make us compatible with all animals as this would alleviate a great deal of suffering?

Certainly it seems that virsues caught from animals are almost lethal to human beings, but not always to the animals themselves.

That’s not true that animal diseases are lethal to humans. The vast majority of viruses that animals carry are incapable of doing any damage to humans what so ever and vice versa. There are a few notable exceptions with the highest number coming from the great apes our apparent closest relatives and the number falls as you move further from our lineage as ToE explains.

Today all live animal organs are fatal to humans with the single known exception of Baboons, our apparent close relative according to ToE. Our close relationship with them explains our greater problems of shared diseases and our lesser issue with Pigs and the opposite relationship for rejection with Baboons having the lowest rejection risk and pigs the highest for live organs.

Medically, it is preferable that organ donors come from the same family to reduce the risks of rejection. Pigs are obviously more similar to human beings in particular parts of their anatomy and seem to be the most compatible as far as animals are concerned.

Physical compatibility is a mechanical question not a genetic question. Pigs are similar in size and structure to humans and are readily and cheaply available. Live organs from pigs are incompatible to humans because that becomes a genetic issue, genetically they are incompatible beyond the abilities of medical science today. Baboons are genetically compatible within the abilities of our science though with difficulties. They are the closest known genetic match for humans exactly as predicted by ToE.

Personally I've seen alot of assumptions and manipulation and excuses. But I'm willing to look into it more if I get the time.

That sounds like a very good idea. RazD’s posts have recently included some detailed information that might be a good starting point for you.

I would imagine it takes quite a bit of reading and study and making sure one gets the information from both sides of the arguments before coming to any conclusions.

Indeed it does though its best, if you want to actually come to an understanding of it, to avoid the loony fringe and focus on those who’ve actually got some credentials and study behind their words. There are an awful lot of people out there who have no real understanding of ToE or paleontology yet they spruke their ignorance very loudly indeed. Try to find people who’ve really studied this stuff as your information sources.

PS. As far as I'm aware, Pope Benedict is a believer in creation.

Yes Benedict has back peddled marginally though I believe both popes believed in creation just not in the literal description of it contained in genesis.

The fact the Pope (or any other Pope), may consider it possible, doesn't make it a reality.

True but it suggests that those who believe that you can’t be a christian and accept ToE are wrong.

It is certainly not mentioned in the bible or the Catholic Catechism, so therefore it becomes an opinion, rather than a foundation belief of our church.

My impression is that the catholic church explicitly accepts ToE with a few small provisos relating to the addition of souls to us. Their acceptance of it is on the basis that they have more important truths to learn from the bible and the exact details of this part of the story can be left up to the scientist who have done an ‘astonishing’ job in the John Paul’s words. So no it’s not in the catechism, your salvation does not hang on it so they have more important things to focus on. As for the bible it is very clearly wrong on this question. The bible does touch indirectly on ToE in a number of passages and it is wrong in its statements in virtually every case.

All the best Bex

Russell

Hi RAZD,

If one takes a look at the photographs, you'll find alterations in shape, but I'm still trying to figure out how this proves the theory of single celled organisms becoming complex fully formed machines.

Curious about the pictures you've presented here...How do you know the top is a more advanced state than the bottom, even if the age is different? Since we know that there is variety within the same kind and certain adaptive qualities that can occur in certain environments - I can hardly see how anybody can confidentally claim this as evidence the whole evolutionary senario.

This is the same as we've seen with the ancient fossils presented on this forum. If this was the painstaking and lengthy effort of two evolutionists, one wonders, if in the face of the millions of examples evolution apparently has, that these guys had to go to so much trouble over a marine organism? When all they have proven is - it started as a marine organism and looks like it's remained one too.....so once again, they have failed to give any solid evidence for anything else. We've seen the same with birds, fish, goats, tigers, frogs/reptiles, etc etc. Ancient fossils, dated according to evolution, still show they are the same creatures then, and remained the same to this day. Adaptions, variations, still haven't managed to change them into anything else.

Haven't yet seen the evidence for a simple celled organism's evolution into a fully formed human being or any other creature. Looks like the fossil history doesn't show it ever happened either. Believing it did, may not make it anymore a reality.

Interestingly enough, there has been very little presented by you as evidence of millions of examples of transitional forms on this forum. Alot of words, charts and drawings, but I've yet to see the proof that it happened in the way it's been stated. Nor have I seen the visible proof of preserved fossils showing any such senario. All the ones I gave pretty much showed the animals that exist now, still show they are much the same then. However much evolution you want to pin on them, their appearance sure isn't reflecting it. And certainly, even if there was such significant changes going on, they still didn't become anything else and the changes are not significant enough to prove simplicity became complexity over billions of years.

Interesting that you would stoop to character assassination. LindaLou really hates that.

Can you show me the law that requires one to pay income tax?

Here are a couple of clues:

Tom Cryer Speaks About His Aquittal in His Case Against the IRS
http://urlbam.com/ha/szz

No Law: Not Guilty!
http://urlbam.com/ha/rzz

You probably still live with the conventional crowd that believes that most vaccines have been proven safe and effective. If I told you that this was not what the medical literature says, would you believe me? What about if a doctor said that this is not what the medical literature says?

You would do well to review this:
Vaccines: The Risks, The Benefits, The Choices

Here are a couple of interesting things to ponder as well.

U.S. Constitution, Art. I Sec 9
No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

—Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (1788 - 1860)

Finally, consider this:

(1) The Emperor's New Clothes
(2) The Tomato Effect

You see Russell2, most heroes are initially condemned as tyrants, rebels, or frauds until the truth can no longer be withheld. Then they are revealed as visionaries and leaders.

I know you don't like Kent Hovind. I would assume it is because the things he says oppose your faith in evolution. Nevertheless, his statements about the fossil-record hoax are true, and more and more people are realizing how ridiculous evolution really is.

Review:

Lies In The Textbooks:
http://urlbam.com/ha/K


Evolution is a social control. If you believe it, you are controlled.


"The over-riding supremacy of the myth [of evolution] has created a widespread illusion that the theory of evolution was all but proved one hundred years ago and that all subsequent biological research—paleontological, zoological and in the newer branches of genetics and molecular biology—has provided ever-increasing evidence for Darwinian ideas. Nothing could be further from the truth."

—Charles Darwin, quoted in *N.C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (1979), p. 2 [University of Chicago book].

Russell2 said...



"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance."

—Albert Einstein

Russ, from what I've seen with Hovind, there is a lot of hate against him. An awful lot of anti hovind comments on the worldwide web. I take many comments about him with a large grain of salt and am always interested to hear his side of it. Since they are just waiting to tear him down and any opportunity possible is jumped on.

The funny thing is, they make all kinds of claims about him, but true or not, they seem to have a problem facing him and debating him live.

Now, if it's about truth/evidence, one wonders why they don't take the time or effort to debate him and expose him for being the apparent "idiot" they seem to think he is. If in fact he's unqualified goof posing as an academic and doesn't know what he's talking about, why is it the "qualified" tend to avoid him, instead of clearing up the matter and wiping the floor with him in a fair debate? This should easiliy show up his lack of apparent "credentials and knowledge". In fact, he should be a push-over. The debate by the way has nothing to do with personal insults, it's about presentation/material and evidence. So why on earth don't more debate him? The invitation is always there.

Why do they instead take refuge in anti Hovind websites and comments? With their truckloads of evidence for evolution, they'd run him over easily. They continually resort to character assassination, his lack of credentials and tax evasion. If he makes a mistake? It's capitalised on and that "mistake" will continually be brought up.

I have in fact noticed that instead their anti hovind comments putting you off, you seem unaffected by them. Why? Because it's about the material itself is it not? not so much the "person". I am not saying Kent Hovind is full proof. Nobody is. But the material is presented clearly, matter a factly, with no lofty terminlogy to confuse or intimidate. It doesn't have to. In fact Kent Hovind is simply asking the tough questions and exposing long since disproven lies that continue to turn up in textbooks...I hardly see the issue with doing this and I wonder how he'd get away with it, since most of the science field are evolutionists? They should be able to get on there and easily defend their theory. That has yet to be done.

Hi Russ

Interesting that you would stoop to character assassination.

Sorry was I assassinating his character? Did I say anything that was not the absolute truth about the man?

Can you show me the law that requires one to pay income tax?

Did I ever say that there was a law requiring anyone to pay income tax? I said only that he was a convicted tax cheat which is the truth. The validity of the law under which he was convicted on, what was it 56 counts, is a separate question and one that I can’t really comment on. I’m not an American and know little about the details of your laws. The fact is he was convicted just as I said and that is all that I said on the question.

It was also true that he claims high credentials including a doctorate but they were obtained from an unaccredited college which charges around $20 per credit and awards diplomas based on your statement that you have learned the appropriate material. For laughs I too have a doctorate from a similar organization yet I would never claim it gave me any credibility in a discussion, its good for laughs and that’s all. Hovind claims that his purchased credentials give him authority to speak on subjects he clearly knows little about.

You see Russell2, most heroes are initially condemned as tyrants, rebels, or frauds until the truth can no longer be withheld.

Of course for every true hero of scientific knowledge there are at least a thousand quacks who think they are the hero but actually know very little about the subjects they profess to be experts in. They make grandiose but unsupported claims against the current paradigms, claims that are unsupported by evidence, claims which are invariably false and in so doing they cause much harm to those who accept their unfounded rubbish. It’s a dangerous game.

I know you don't like Kent Hovind. I would assume it is because the things he says oppose your faith in evolution. Nevertheless, his statements about the fossil-record hoax are true, and more and more people are realizing how ridiculous evolution really is.

Then you would assume wrongly again. My real problem with Dr Dino is that he goes on spruking debunked rubbish years and years after it was pointed out to him that he had no idea what he was talking about. Even the YEC community has recognised this and has published a list of his claims that they believe should never be used by YEC’s because they give the movement a bad name because they are clearly false. People who deliberately lie to people are, IMHO, unworthy of our respect and so no I don’t respect Kent.

Again I ask you, if you find any of the claims Kent makes in that video compelling raise them here and we can discuss them. Take just the very best of his arguments and let’s air them here and see how they stand up to scrutiny.



You cited this passage before. I pointed out last time that it was false, that it was not Charles Darwin who said these words but N.C.Gillespie. The false quote was created by taking a passage from Gillespie’s book which did contain a quote from Darwin and dropping Darwin’s words from the middle of it while retaining Gillespie’s words and the citation giving the false impression that Darwin said or thought any such thing. Once your errors have been pointed out to you it is very dishonest to continue to make the same claims. It is for doing exactly that that I do not respect Mr Kent Hovind. It if for this exact transgression among others that I believe we should all reject in its entirety the arguments of Mr Kent Hovind. Once someone has been proven to be a deliberate and repeated liar it’s hard to take anything else they say seriously and Kent has been clearly proven so on a number of occasions.

In reason.

Russell

P.S. I've seen Hovind's video before, I've watched quite a few of them over the years, I don't discount it out of hand but out of the knowledge that it contains rubbish and not substance. Still as I said, if you find some part of it compelling raise it here and lets examine it in detail.

Hi Bex

It’s true that the ideas should stand or fall on their own, forget the character of the person making the claims but when that person stoops to parading fraudulenty credentials to make himself sound like an authority I think that fact is worthy of attention.

The next question is how do you setup a fair debate with the likes of Hovind? I’ve actually listend to a couple of such debates and Hovind lost but that’s not the sort of debate he favours. Hovind wasn’t an open debate with equal time to each side but that’s not how science works and that’s not how best to convey it to an audience. It takes only a moment for Kent to throw out 10 or so unfounded claims about the falsity of this or that scientific theory but it will take a scientist many hours to explain enough of the background to a lay audience so that they can understand why he is wrong. In an equal time debate it is not possible to accurately convey what science undersands and why so Kent wins. But science is not decided in debates for exactly this reason. I listend to a Hovind debate that was run point for point. No one was allowed to raise more than one subject at a time until the other side had had time to answer. In this format Kent got to say very little as there’s little substance to his claims and the scientist, Dr. Massimo Pigliucci (yes a real scientist with real credentials) I think it was, easily dealt with his claims. Hovind was very humble and polite throughout this discussion which said a lot for his character but he clearly lost when the debate was arranged such that he could not throw out tones of one liners to the faithful and actually had to stand up in detail for what he was claiming.

As you said Hovind also explains things in lay language which appeals to a lay audience but it does not allow you to discuss many scientific concepts. There is no lay language to describe many deep and complex scientific concepts. The scientist may speak the perfect truth and cut Hovind’s arguments to pieces with a technical description of what is really going on and why he’s wrong but the lay audience can’t keep up so it goes over their heads. That’s another reason why Hovind win’s open, equal time public debates. To explain without the lingo takes longer than the debate allows and to do it with the lingo goes over people’s heads.

I suspect that because of his failure in this debate he will no longer get involved with point/counterpoint debates, I’ve never heard of him doing another one. The inherent fairness of this form of debating does not suit his style.

If you find any of Kent’s material compelling then please bring it to this forum so we can discuss it. Lets see the very best he has to offer here. Can you do that for me Bex? Russ?

In Reason

Russell

Thanks Bex,

Perhaps because "the theory of single celled organisms becoming complex fully formed machines" is not the theory of evolution, and not a theory. Rather it is an observation based on the natural history contained in the fossil record.

There is evidence of simple single cells, prokaryotes, becoming complex single cells, eukaryotes, but evolution doesn't require that this happens.

There is also evidence of single cell organisms forming colonies when attacked by a larger predator single cell organism, which allows them to survive and reproduce instead of being consumed.

But evolution does not proceed towards a "more advanced state" or any goals other than survival and reproductive success. What you see is the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation. There is no up/down or higher/lower to evolution (it's an equal opportunity employer).

Why does it need to be anything more than evidence of the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation and the diversification of reproductively isolated populations?

That is all there is to evolution.

Foramins are not a single organism, nor even a single species, but a Phylum in taxonomy. That's the same taxonomic level of "macroevolution" as the phylum Chordata, that includes classes such as mammals, which includes orders such as primates, which includes families such as apes, which includes genera such as Homo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foraminifera

Fish have also remained marine organisms. In each case what "remains" is not a left-over of evolution, but a result of it: they are still organisms that are adapted to the ecology in question. Fish are better adapted to live in marine ecologies than humans, for instance.

Did forams ever evolve into something else? Curiously when you only look at foram fossils all you will see are foram fossils, and thus a study of the different kinds of foram fossils will not include non-foram fossils.

Possibly because that's not the way it happened.

Possibly because you aren't looking at the whole picture. The process of evolution from single cell to multicell life, from multicell to chordate, from chordate to fish, from fish to quadraped, from quadraped to mammal, from mammal to primate, from primate to ape, and from ape to human, all in all spans millions of years. Each of these stages is also accompanied by equally important evolution of other phylum, classes, mammals, primates, apes, and genera to humans, each of them resulting in species just as important in evolution as humans.

Curiously evolution doesn't need to prove that complexity must occur, it just needs to explain the complexity that has occurred, along with the continued existence of all life that succeeds at survival and reproduction in all the various ecologies in the world.

Each of these "stages" in evolution that are in the fossil record and that are part of the natural history of the evoltuion of life that happens to have resulted in human beings are also demonstrated by transitional fossils.

For instance we have the evolution of mammals from reptiles, from The Therapsid - Mammal Transitional Series:

All of these skeletal differences are seen to evolve in the transitional series of synapsids through therapsids through cynodonts to mammals, a transition that covers millions of years and hundreds of fossils, each with intermediate variations.

As part of the evolution of mammal from reptile the three bone jaw and single bone ear of reptiles change from generation to generation to generation to generation until we have a single bone jaw and three bone ear in mammals, and at one stage of this evolutionary transition there are - not one but - several intermediate fossils that have double hinged jaws, one at the "reptile" location and one at the new "mammal" location, a fully functional jaw with extra articulation:

As noted, there are many intermediate stages in this transition from reptile to mammal, each of them intermediate in form between the older and the younger forms, and each of them developing through changes in hereditary traits in their populations from generation to generation.

You can also see many of these forms and their transitional stages on Therapsida: Overview with links to before and after stages.

As one can see, not only are there millions of examples of intermediate varieties in the fossil record, there are also examples of intermediate varieties in transitions for many taxonomic classifications.

Enjoy.

Yes, I would dearly like to see this addressed. I have the unforuntate suspicion that it will go unresponded to, unacknowledged, though it is simply a matter of editing one's quotation for all future posts. The question is, Russ Tanner, are you man enough to recognize the error and do something about it or will you continue to misuse the quotation (and thus misrepresent creationism)?

I don't know who Kent Hovind is but I'd like to throw out my two cent's worth after I've dug up some of the facts.

Hello Bex,

Just a quick note on the ape-human-disease issue:

First off, even with humans you get rejection of transplanted organs, the risk is just lower the closer the DNA matches. If you get a transplant you will be taking medication to quell rejection for the rest of your life.

Second, when the Europeans invaded America they killed more indians with disease than with guns. There are many places where whole villages were wiped out by diseases such as small pox, diseases that did not kill the europeans because they had evolved immunity to the diseases, immunity that the indians did not have.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indigenous_peoples

A sad part of history.

And this "ancestor of bats" was... Rather than honestly investigate this bat, we get evohype.
There's a suborder (Megachiroptera) of bats right now that fly just fine without echolocation. But acknowledging this would spoil the propaganda value, wouldn't it.

The other difference your article mentioned was that the newly discovered fossil appears to have had more claws on its wings. Losing claws over time is consistent with what we know about genetics and mutation. But hype it as best you can.

What we really have is a case of "extinctions prove evolution". Any kind of creature that went extinct will be portrayed as a "missing link" on the simple basis that it differs from those we find today. Those that don't differ, well, they get different names anyhow, and... on and on it goes.

I'm not the one who said these things must be found, in case you didn't notice. I'm just pointing out that they haven't been found.

This means those evolutionists who claim the ancestors must be found are out of luck. They'll talk their trash about "falsification", but they're fully prepared to settle for imaginary "transitionals". ...Just like your fully content with your imaginary Öort cloud.

Since when are observations based upon conclusions? What manner of dopey methodology is this?

Hi Russell,

Excuse the lateness of some of my replies, that require a bit more indepth response. I cannot often catch up to it all, so I hope nobody thinks I'm ignoring their responses. I read them all, but may not have time or energy to respond in more depth.




True, some are carriers. But if what you say is true and we share more diseases with the great apes than any other animal and there really is very little differences in their handling of these diseases (compatiblity goes both ways), then there should be no issue with using their organs and no unpleasant surprises. But we know this isn't so. This continues to be THE issue here. Should they find a way of surmounting this, it still does not prove anything either way. Even if a particular animal might share more characteristics with humans than others, may not be enough to bridge such a gap that even medical intervention struggles to achieve. Apes/monkeys do not even have a capacity for speech, yet parrots do. There are other animals out there that may share certain traits closer to humans even than primates. Again, does not mean we share a common ancestor.



Regardless, it hasn't proven surmountable and the risk and obvious difficulties remain. Many people (even some on this forum) use pig thyroid extracts, but I know of nobody using or even considering the idea of ape/monkey thyroid extracts.....so it still gets confusing Russell. The closest relationship with apes/monkeys out of all the animals?.... Yet still can't quite bridge the gap regardless.



Certain similarities between creatures exists everywhere. Certain traits with some animals and humans are not limited to the primates or even creatures themselves. The fact that nature is compatible in many ways, is necessary for survival in diet and in ways for human beings to find answers in nature to help us medically and elsewhere. I see this as reflecting the mind of the creator, rather than a series of chances/process all responsible for such forethought that is necessary for all these things to come together.

E.g. the speech of a parrot etc. This does not mean that humans evolved from birds, but supports that there are some striking traits within animals that are hard to ignore. This again appears to support common design within nature, rather than evolution. If it were evolution responsible, then one must wonder why parrots have the capacity for speech, yet our own apparently closest relatives really do not. However much they are trained to utter a sound that sounds like a word, it's a struggle, even with much rewards/treats at the end of it.

Evolutionists seem to ignore the common traits of other animals associated with human beings and prefer instead to focus on primates. It is true that we are most similar to primates in appearance and would expect this to be reflected genetically also, moreso than other creatures, but the differences are often ignored or played down and that is a mistake, because significant differences do indeed exist and ignoring them I think causes us to miss the big picture. We require compatibility within nature for survival - e.g. fruits, vegetables etc which are designed specifically to nourish us and other creatures bodies. We also share meat eating with the carnivals. Primates, as a rule, (for the most part) do not tend to go after other animals for food. They can out of desperation or attack, but it's not part of their general diet (thank goodness).

In fact, out of desperation, squirrels have attacked other animals for food on the rare occasion (a dog is one such example that was killed by a gang of squirrels). This is the exception, rather than the rule. Humans however, many indeed eat meat as part of their daily diet and once hunted for meat. Can anybody point out a primate who goes about hunting for meat? Making spears and other tools to do so? As far as I know, they stick to the same diet they're accustomed to and don't seem to deviate from it. Some people do go vegetarian, but that is a choice also. The meat eating is something we have more common with the carniverous animals, than primates.

Even a small percentage of difference in DNA can make for a significant difference. Considering that the information contained with DNA itself has been compared with the information contained within MANY encylopedias. This apparent "small" difference then becomes significant and if that were not so, then we would indeed have much more in common with primates than we'd care to admit and bananas wouldn't be far off either. Yet the similarity allows us to consume them and gain nourishment, since they are designed for us and are biochemically compatible. The DNA differences are significant enough between us and primates that it is not a criminal offense to "cage" our "cousins". Thankfully, the similarities in DNA give us the common feature of coming from the same designer and living on the same planet, but not equal or we'd really be in trouble. The differences in DNA percentage, however small, are what make us unique from the other and are significant when you look at the whole picture.

One must also ask about our apparent "common ancestor" and whether they had the capacity for speech and why did this capacity turn up in us and not the primates? Yet still we are claimed to be from the same ancestor.

Yet somehow parrots have the capacity for speech and even ability to put words into sentences and make meaning out of them. Masters of imitation of both us and nature. But evenso the structure that allows them to produce such sounds still differs from humans; yet the fact they have the intelligence and ability is "ignored" by evolutionists in preference to keep waving the "ape to man" flag. Why? Evolutionists don't consider common design within nature, because this points to a common designer. They are looking to compartmentise everything into the evolutionary box and pin on particular labels. But if one looks at the big picture, there are problems.

If indeed there really is a "common ancestor" then from where did they come and how? And where is the proof of their evolutionary arrival on the stage?

No matter how much evolution one throws on everything, animals have remained animals and there is a clear difference between all animals/creatures and human beings. We are fully aware of them and pretending one believes we are equal is lying. If in fact we are all equal, then how is it we have rights to retain/contain them, cage them, shoot them, eat them, ride them, use them, choose them as pets, use them in different areas of work depending on their suitability, do experiments on them, etc.....There is no doubt that even if you believe in evolution, man is the only creature that stands out and above every other creature. It seems to me that evolution had a particlar 'creature' in mind to esteem above all others, because it certainly didn't go any further withthe rest as far as human qualities/gifts are concerned. Unless you can think of an animal that designs aeroplanes, conducts an orchestras, writes and presents a theisis, teaches a class of others, gives speeches, debates oneanother, considers the future, makes specific plans, uses his/her imagination, etc etc.

Your comments regarding the Pope, still have no reflection on the evolution theory being a fact. Whether he changes his mind or not, which all humans are subject to do and have the right to changes in opinion if more evidence (or what they feel is evidence) comes to light. It still does not change the biblical word or the Catechsim. It's quite possible the Pope had not heard much of the creation science side, just as I once didn't either. His apparent back-peddling as you call it, is possibly changes of opinion due to more information.

Either way, the statements still don't do anything to prove evolution. So I'm not sure why it's necessary to keep talking about the Pope on this issue.

Yes, a person can be a Christian and believe that God used evolution. Since I very much doubt that Christ witholds the saving grace of his blood from anybody who sincerely asks for forgiveness and is baptised in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!

You could take a statement out of the bible and try and interpret it as meaning evolution I suppose, if you are really determined. I've seen some heroic attempts and at times amazing efforts to turn something into what it clearly hasn't said. I'd be interested however in what areas of the bible (quote and verse) that you interpret as referring to evolution?

All the best Russell

Hi RAZD,



Yes, and this is what I stated earlier. That even in humans, the ideal transplant is within the same family. The closer, the better. Thanks for clarifying it again.

And your example, is also met by many others when europeans visited other places and pretty much killed many of the natives with diseases they had never encountered before. When one is exposed, eventually (if you don't die), you develop immunity to it. You call it evolution period, but I refer to this kind of evolution as as the inbuilt adaption/variation qualities provided by a designer.

Humans can easily spread disease to eachother, because we are the same kind, but not so much with animals. It appears that primates are resistant to the deadly diseases that have potential to kill humans, but it doesn't seem that we are resistant to theirs. And it seems they don't pass the diseases in the same way as humans do to eachother. An organ transplant exposure from a primate, is a little different than how the natives died from the the europeans exposure!

I've not heard yet of europeans visiting an area of primates and wiping them out by new and different diseases, nor the other way around. So I cannot quite compare these two senarios as being the same.

But yes, it is a very sad story. But it is part of life and death and something each and every one of us is going to face at some point, one way or the other. Unless we can evolve our way of reversing the ageing processs. I sure wish we could. Even if we did eventually do this and evolved to resist disease and other disorders, we'll never evolve a way out of being hit by a bus or other accident on impact . Just as a fly will never develop immunity to a fly swatt if indeed evolution is a reality, doesn't seem capable of turning us into anything we are not. Hence why we continually require imitating nature in our designs. We don't rely on evolution, but rather our god given brains and talents and ability to imitate and emulate. What better to imitate than the example God has given in nature to help us improve on our day to day life, travel and other areas of design. We want to fly and soar like the birds and gain faster travel, we design the aeroplane. We want to communicate overseas, we design devices to do so. Evolution/chance/process are not responsible for this. Our use of our minds with thought, planning and intention are. It is our mind that also sets us aside from every other animal.

It's ironic that we can all recognise and accept the mind behind the imitative designs of nature, but refuse to acknowledge or recognise the genuis mind behind nature itself, which gave the example in the first place.

Hello Bex,

No, because not only do they have different diseases, they have evolved antigens to those diseases that we do not have and vice versa. This is why the indians died in such numbers after the americas were discovered by europeans: they did not have the antigens to the diseases that the europeans carried.

There is even less difference (Homo sapien european to Homo sapien indian) than between Homo sapien and chimp, but it was deadly.

When you transplant an organ, you can transplant a disease, but not the antigens to fight it. The antigens come from your own white cell system and they will not recognize foreign antigens as friends, nor will you have any way to reproduce those antigens. If you do a bone marrow transplant and replace the immune system with cells from another person, and then turn out to be incompatible, the immune system will reject you.

That would be a trait that evolved after the two populations diverged from the common ancestor population. Evolution continues in each and every population, even after speciation has occurred. It doesn't stop because there are two reproductively isolated populations.

No, there is not a clear difference, there are differences of degree, but not of whole different categories. Yes, it becomes difficult to look at baby apes playing with snowballs ...
http://majorlycool.com/media/1/snow-monkeys/japanese-macaque-with-snowball.jpg
(more from google images)
... and not feel kinship.

Or that there are equally striking traits in other animals.

And that is the great part of science - asking questions and then seeing if you can find the answers.

For instance we can compare the DNA of humans and chimps (both have been sequenced) and we find curious things, like the fact that both have the same mutation in the same spot on the same gene that disables our ability to make our own vitamin C. Other primates that evolved from earlier common ancestors have this gene without the mutation. By using this kind of genetic information you can create a phylogenic tree that shows who is related to who and when, relatively, they branched off from the various common ancestors.

If there is no common ancestor relationship then there is no reason for these similar traits (the same damaged gene in exactly the same spot).

The curious thing is that when the geneticists started doing these comparisons, time and again they matched the phylogenic trees that had been developed since Lineaus (before Darwin) and based on the visible hereditary traits in the skeletons.

Two independent methods, same result.

And these phylogenic trees have intermediates.

Enjoy.

Sounds like the kind of answer one gets from someone who doesn't have the answer.

Strange what they say about folks who don't believe in the "common ancestor", this being the case. Stranger still, that it should be required to teach this to innocent children, and prohibited to inform them that there is uncertainty involved in the story.

I've been meaning to ask which one out of all those skulls is agreed by the evolutionist experts to be the common ancestor of man and chimp. After all this time, they should have reached agreement on such a fundamental issue, after all.
Nothing like a common Designer, common surroundings containing common chemicals for eating and breathing, common gravity, common temperatures... well, none of these things would be a reason for similar traits to exist if you don't want them to.

Wow CTD, your contempt for scientists knows no bounds. You seem to have convinced yourself that they are all evil conspirators. While this really speaks for itself, I would also ask you to learn more about what you are sneering at before you sneer at it.

In the case of Onychonycteris, there are several details about it which make it a good transitional. Apart from the extra claws (modern bats have two at most), it has hind limbs which are long in proportion to its forelimbs, unlike modern bats in which the situation is reversed. This is a trait the fossil species shares with climbing animals. While Onychonycteris has a keeled breast bone, similar to those that allow modern bats and birds to fly rather than glide, its wings were broad and short. This combination of traits is likely evidence that this bat ancestor alternated to some degree between gliding and flapping. That in itself is a pretty good qualifier to call this a transitional form.

We've also had conversations about other transitional forms, such as those of horses and whales. You have yet to explain why, if all of these forms were created by God in one instant, they all have ended up in strata in such a way that a more primitive-seeming form is bottom-most, with a slightly different form just above, and a slightly more different form just above, and so on. Was he just trying to fool us?

So, have you looked deeper into your religion and found answers? In the past, you didn't know what "primitive" meant. Will you be sharing?

Answer the question please.

The question contains an undefined term and an unsubstantiated assertion. Don't think I know how to spot such tricks by now? Don't kid yourself.

But regardless of what nonsensical method one chooses to employ in order to misinterpret the evidence, the fact remains: God told us what happened. So any garbage about deception is repeated in vain.

Unlike which modern bats? They said the lack of echolocation was unlike modern bats, but their vision was demonstrably selective.

How many gliding birds can you name that have broad, short wings; as opposed to longer, narrower wings? (I won't even mention aircraft, lest some poor reader be caught sipping a beverage.)

You target the wrong audience.

Hey LindaLou.

You're expecting someone who can't deal honestly with reality in math to deal with honestly reality in science?

For instance he asks:

When the question he should have asked is how many gliding animals have broad short wings as opposed to longer narrower wings.

Here are two:





Curiously they also have their wings between their front legs and their back legs.

Birds of course have evolved for flight, not gliding, and they evolved wings from single arms, not from skin between front and back legs (there is one that has feathers on both front and back legs), so using birds is a false analogy to bats, just as substituting an interest rate formula for a decay formula misrepresents decay.

Enjoy.

Hi Bex

True, some are carriers.
Some are carriers, some are sufferers some are immune to a greater or lesser extent.

But if what you say is true and we share more diseases with the great apes than any other animal and there really is very little differences in their handling of these diseases (compatiblity goes both ways), then there should be no issue with using their organs and no unpleasant surprises.
Why? Obviously humans are more closely related to humans than other animals yet we see wide variations in the susceptibility to diseases even among humans. In humans the best tissue donors are close relatives despite the closeness of our relationships with all humans. Now if we follow this to Apes we should expect to find that cross susceptibility is reduced for host specific disease but for those diseases that can cross from ape to human (or vice verca) we should expect to find they are particularly damaging as humans have very little exposure and so very little chance to develop resistance to ape diseases. As for compatibility we should expect, and indeed do find, that apes fall outside the normal range for human compatibility. Any human will be a better tissue donor than the most compatible ape and indeed this is why the ape xenotransplantion experiments have not continued.

Now as we move further from humans to pigs for example the disease risk drops further but so does the compatibility just as you would expect if ToE were true. In apes some live transplants have been done though with limited success, in pigs there has never been a successful live organ transplant exactly as ToE predicts. Of course with genetic engineering it is hoped that we can create pigs without the cell surface proteins that trigger an immune response so they will be compatible. If this can be done they are ideal candidates due to the low disease risk but, more importantly, availability. They are cheap to raise, grow fast and they are the right size for human transplantation.

But we know this isn't so. This continues to be THE issue here. Should they find a way of surmounting this, it still does not prove anything either way. Even if a particular animal might share more characteristics with humans than others, may not be enough to bridge such a gap that even medical intervention struggles to achieve. Apes/monkeys do not even have a capacity for speech, yet parrots do. There are other animals out there that may share certain traits closer to humans even than primates. Again, does not mean we share a common ancestor.
Sure you can pick and chose through all sorts of odd details and build a very confused picture of who may be related to whom or you can do the sort of detailed work that scientists have done and work out what the true picture is by considering all of the available information. Did you know for example that guinea pigs can’t produce Vitamin C either? Now if you take the naive view this sounds like a good counter to my claims for ape/human relatedness based in this shared defect but you have to look at the details. The change in DNA in guinea pigs is a totally different one to that which apes and humans share suggesting that they are not closely related to us exactly as all the other evidence suggests.

Apes can’t talk though some have been taught sign language and they show much greater linguistic abilities than birds if you look purely at what they say rather than how they say it. Alex was an amazing bird, he showed reasoning abilities beyond anything humans believed birds capable off before he came along but he could not rival the abilities of apes who show far more human like abilities than any other creature exactly as you would expect if ToE were true.

And that’s what it comes down to time and again. You have to look at the whole story, don’t just pick and chose. If you take a nieve view you could come to the conclusion that guinea pigs are close relatives because we share an inability to produce vitamin C but the details tell a totally different story. You have to examine the details not just skim over the top and cherry pick the bits that suit your preconceptions.

Many people (even some on this forum) use pig thyroid extracts, but I know of nobody using or even considering the idea of ape/monkey thyroid extracts.....so it still gets confusing Russell.
Sure but again you have to consider the details. Why don’t people use ape thyroid extract? Do you know? It’s a crucial question to understand considering the point you are trying to make. The answer is very simple, there are no compatibility issues with Thyroid extract, it’s a chemical not a living tissue and it carries no proteins that could trigger an immune reaction. Thyroid extract is inert to the immune system. In short there’s no reason to choose pigs over apes from a compatibility perspective but there is a very good reason to choose pigs as a source for this chemical because they are cheap and easy to raise in large numbers unlike apes.

The closest relationship with apes/monkeys out of all the animals?.... Yet still can't quite bridge the gap regardless.
Exactly, and your point is. We have come closer with less work to achieving this with apes than with any other species exactly as you would expect if ToE were true. Have you notice that, time and again, when you look at the full details of this it points to ToE being true? Detail after detail paints the same picture when you look at all of them and don’t just cherry pick the bits that seem to support your preconceptions.

I see this as reflecting the mind of the creator, rather than a series of chances/process all responsible for such forethought that is necessary for all these things to come together.
I’m sure you do but look at the bigger picture. By far the greatest number of similarities exist between apes and humans. This is true at every level from enzymes, proteins, physical characteristics, mental characteristics etc etc. As we move further from our ‘closest relatives’ the number of similarities drops. But that is a gross picture and not terribly informative you have to look at the fine detail if you want to work out what’s going on. Don’t just notice that guinea pigs, humans and apes can’t produce Vitamin C rather look at why not. The former approach gives a very messy view of the relations between organisms and has proven to be worthless. The latter approach gives one single picture that is very well defined and well supported by evidence from a whole range of scientific disciplines which is exactly what you would expect if ToE were true and not at all what you would expect if creation were true.

Evolutionists seem to ignore the common traits of other animals associated with human beings and prefer instead to focus on primates. It is true that we are most similar to primates in appearance and would expect this to be reflected genetically also
Actually that’s not true. There are many creatures that look very similar and occupy similar niches but which are not genetically similar. Convergent evolution produces many such. Porcupines and echidnas are similar in lifestyle and in body design yet genetically they have very little in common. LOL we even have a spiny ant eating lizard in Australia. So similarity of appearance does not suggest similarity of DNA. Now if you look at the fine details of the body you will find that apes share more than just a superficial resemblance to us and they in fact share most of our DNA including, very tellingly, some of our genetic defects and this last is a most telling point. Again it’s all in the details.

Can anybody point out a primate who goes about hunting for meat? Making spears and other tools to do so?
Meat eating is actually common among higher primates. Here’s one article that discusses it.

Spear-Wielding Chimps Seen Hunting Bush Babies by Ann Gibbons
Science 23 February 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5815, p. 1063 DOI: 10.1126/science.315.5815.1063

While the spear wielding part is unusual the hunting is not, it’s actually quite common behaviour, many of the larger apes are omnivores ranging from opportunistic to active hunters.

As far as I know, they stick to the same diet they're accustomed to and don't seem to deviate from it.
They will learn from each other, social knowledge transfer is another trait we share strongly with apes, so if one member of the group works out how to exploit a new food source or how to better exploit an old one it will teach the other members of its band the trick.

Some people do go vegetarian, but that is a choice also. The meat eating is something we have more common with the carniverous animals, than primates.
Actually we don’t really share this with carnivores, we have always been, naturally, omnivores with a leaning towards the vegetarian end of the scale. While we do eat meat just like the apes our natural diet is richer in plant derived foods just like the apes. Carnivors range from omnivores with a bias for meats such as dogs to obligate carnivores who must eat meat to thrive such as cats.

Even a small percentage of difference in DNA can make for a significant difference. Considering that the information contained with DNA itself has been compared with the information contained within MANY encylopedias. This apparent "small" difference then becomes significant and if that were not so, then we would indeed have much more in common with primates than we'd care to admit and bananas wouldn't be far off either.
Actually we are genetically far more similar to Primates than bananas, pigs are in the middle though much closer to apes than bananas. In fact if you compare DNA from species to specie you can build a tree of relatedness which looks virtually identical to the one you come up with by studying the find details of the anatomy of organisms.

Yet the similarity allows us to consume them and gain nourishment, since they are designed for us and are biochemically compatible.
Genetic similarity is not required for something to be nourishing to us, in fact many of the things that are very nourishing are a long way removed from us genetically while some highly similar things are not nutritious to us at all. Genetic similarity is not a measure of how nourishing an organism will be for us.

One must also ask about our apparent "common ancestor" and whether they had the capacity for speech and why did this capacity turn up in us and not the primates? Yet still we are claimed to be from the same ancestor.
I don’t think we know for sure but given their much smaller brain size than great apes or humans I doubt they could talk and their vocal apparatus is far less sophisticated. This lack of sophistication also explains why great apes can’t be taught to talk. They can of course be taught to communicate through computers or with sign language and once so trained they far outstrip the communication abilities of birds who may be able to make convincing speech sounds but with little understanding despite Alex’s amazing feats. In fact great apes who have learned sign language will use it to communicate with other apes and will teach it to their children unlike birds who only perform for their trainers and never seem to get the idea of using their abilities in any other setting.

Yet somehow parrots have the capacity for speech and even ability to put words into sentences and make meaning out of them. Masters of imitation of both us and nature. But even so the structure that allows them to produce such sounds still differs from humans; yet the fact they have the intelligence and ability is "ignored" by evolutionists in preference to keep waving the "ape to man" flag. Why?
Because, as I have explained, while birds are great mimics and have the vocal apparatus to produce quite convincing speech they string only a few sounds together into very primitive sentences without true syntax while apes taught sign language or to communicate through a computer are also capable of creating syntactic sentences, of teaching other apes language and of demonstrating quite complex abstract thought unlike birds who have never shown this ability.

Yet again I have to say that you can’t just cherry pick, if you want to understand these relationships you really have to look at the whole picture. Cherry picking shows you that birds ‘talk’ better than apes so maybe they are more closely related but a true look at all the evidence shows that apes are by far the better communicators even if their vocal cords are not up to producing speech. This is exactly in line with ToE yet again but only if you look at the whole story.

Evolutionists don't consider common design within nature, because this points to a common designer. They are looking to compartmentise everything into the evolutionary box and pin on particular labels. But if one looks at the big picture, there are problems.
Well there is one slight problem with including the idea of common design if you do so you then have to explain a god while evolutionists have to explain what, natural selection (we’ve observed that in action) random mutation (we’ve observed that happening) and what else? God is a very big presupposition. And, contrary to your statement if you look at the big picture and avoid cherry picking you get a very detailed picture that is fully consistent with ToE. I don’t believe it is reasonable to ignore lots and lots of evidence to support your view, cherry picking a very bad way to find the truth.

If indeed there really is a "common ancestor" then from where did they come and how? And where is the proof of their evolutionary arrival on the stage?
Are you asking about the original common ancestor to all life or the common ancestor to humans/great apes?

Darwin himself suggested that the original form or forms may have been crated by god and evolution continued on from there. DNA evidence suggest that there was at least a bottle neck during which all but one line died out so while life may have started with several origins all but one died out at some time since. We have only indirect evidence for this as single celled organisms don’t leave detailed fossil.

No matter how much evolution one throws on everything, animals have remained animals and there is a clear difference between all animals/creatures and human beings.
Actually we have some really good fossil and DNA evidence that shows that animals arose from a common ancestor with fungus and plants and that that ancestor along with the rest of the Eukaryotes branched off from the Achaea and further back from Bacteria and before that it leads all the way back to the original common ancestor which may as I have said been a group of organisms with all but one line dying out at some point before Bacteria and Achaea split. That line being the original common ancestor.

We are fully aware of them and pretending one believes we are equal is lying. If in fact we are all equal, then how is it we have rights to retain/contain them, cage them, shoot them, eat them, ride them, use them, choose them as pets, use them in different areas of work depending on their suitability, do experiments on them, etc.....
There’s no doubt that we are more intelligent than at least most of the other animals but it is a difference in quantity not quality. Other animals have consciousness, self awareness, emotions, a sense of morality, analytical minds, abstract thoughts pretty well everything we call human exists in other animals to some extent we just have more of these things all in one animal. We give ourselves the right to ride them, to kill them, to cage them and to experiment on them because we think it’s the right thing to do. I’m sure most of them would disagree. Why do we get the privilege to decide who among them is suitable to be ridden, caged, experimented on or killed?

There is no doubt that even if you believe in evolution, man is the only creature that stands out and above every other creature.
We are not the fastest runners, we are not the strongest, we are not the best flyers, we don’t have the best eyesight, we don’t have sonar, we can’t survive (without assistance) extreme cold or heat, we can’t survive under water yet animals can do all of these things and so much more. We are probably the smartest of all animals on earth but it is only a human centric view that sees that as the defining characteristic by which all creatures should be judged. A lion would claim to be superior if it were capable of thinking such thoughts because it is stronger and roars louder. A cheater would consider that we run too slowly, and eagle would say we can’t fly well enough etc etc. Humans consider themselves to be the best because we are good at being human. There is no objective reason to this.

It seems to me that evolution had a particlar 'creature' in mind to esteem above all others, because it certainly didn't go any further withthe rest as far as human qualities/gifts are concerned. Unless you can think of an animal that designs aeroplanes, conducts an orchestras, writes and presents a theisis, teaches a class of others, gives speeches, debates oneanother, considers the future, makes specific plans, uses his/her imagination, etc etc.
See what I mean? Do you even realize you are doing it? You are picking things that humans are good at and painting them as the most important things and so judging other creatures by those artificial standards.

Your comments regarding the Pope, still have no reflection on the evolution theory being a fact.
Sure but I never suggested that it did. If the Pope rejected it completely it would still be the best explanation we have for the observed facts of evolution the Pope would just be more wrong for doing so. I pointed it out, as I made clear at the time, to show that it was possible to be a christian and to accept evolution. That was to counter the idea expressed here that evolution equals atheism. The pope apparently disagrees and he’s pretty well versed in what it means to be a christian I would suggest.

You could take a statement out of the bible and try and interpret it as meaning evolution I suppose, if you are really determined. I've seen some heroic attempts and at times amazing efforts to turn something into what it clearly hasn't said. I'd be interested however in what areas of the bible (quote and verse) that you interpret as referring to evolution?
Genesis describes the order of appearance of life on earth and gets it totally wrong. Genesis details the order of creation of the earth, sun, moon and stars and again gets it totally wrong. There are more passages that touch on evolution though that was not their intent but these too get it wrong but we don’t really need to go beyond Genesis as the errors there are so profound and so clear.

All the best Bex

Russell

I note that two isn't a very large number. Still, it's quite the confession for RAZD, who previously claimed there couldn't be two of anything. Maybe there's hope he'll learn to count to even bigger numbers like 3 or 5.

I note that you claim birds didn't "evolve for" gliding. Sounds like heresy to me. This is in direct conflict with one of LindaLou's sources.
http://www.tuxxie.org/evolution/reptiles-to-birds.html
I added bold so folks can clearly see that both stories involve gliding. (Hopefully this explanation of bold letters will suffice.)

I don't think the analogy is false, but it's your fairytale. Weave your myth this way and that as suits your fancy. The sillier it gets, the less I expect it to sell.

I suppose you might as well claim sugargliders evolved into bats. Makes as much sense as anything else, although flying fish would make for a more entertaining story IMO.

Now if you'd offer something on-topic, you might point me to a missing link between bats and whatever you think they evolved from. 20 to 25 per cent of all mammalian species - that's a pretty big chunk to just hang out to dry, so to speak. Particularly after you stressed the importance of finding the fossils.So where are the critters that are intermediate between bats and their ancestors? Do you find them?

An evolutionist would have to answer the problem of how symmetrical features evolve, whether wings or flaps of skin.

Again, the mathematical probabilities of this occurring are not problematic. They are fundamentally absurd.



"As by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed. Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth? Why is not all nature in confusion [of halfway species] instead of being, as we see them, well-defined species?"

—Charles Darwin, quoted in H. Enoch, Evolution or Creation (1966), p. 139.

Exactly how absurd is it? 10^-10? 10^-203? 10^-654321?

What are the inputs to this probability function?

How many possible combinations?

What are the weighting factors and how were they derived?



I see that you continue to use skewed quotes even though you don't bother to check the context and have been told about this literary form used during Victorian times.

I await your reply which will insinuate that I am stupid because I don't understand a probability calculation that you refuse to supply.

What? You & RAZD getting bored? Wanna publish more crooked math?

I'm a bit curious to see the spin you'd put on some of it, but I'm confident the result would be fairly sickening as well.

I see you can't even agree on the problem with this quote. Why don't you guys get your stories straight?

You accuse me of spin when you have yet to show you have any understanding of the simple exponential equations of radioactive decay or compound interest accumulation. Well, your statement probably wasn't really for me. You have to keep your adoring fans erroneously thinking that you are actually rebutting anything that RAZD or I post here.


I believe this is a different quote from the one that was criticized before. I could be wrong about that though.
The literary style in much of the scientific literature of that era was to present potentially difficult questions and then reply to them. This was one such question. It is in Chapter 6 if you are that interested.

Still spreading shinola, CTD?

Yes, they are two different examples, examples that are not identical.

Curiously my original argument was that there were no two identical objects in reality, and I still have not seen any evidence of two identical objects. Thus "two" is an abstract concept, one that does not exist in reality, no matter how useful the abstract concept is to calculate things like decay rates.

Nor do I need to provide more examples when your question implied there were none. But there are MANY, and if you like, we also have gliding frogs ...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhacophorus_nigropalmatus
http://www.agpix.com/view_caption.php?image_id=44922&keyword=rainforest
http://www.cpbrestvankempen.com/paintingspc25.html

... and gliding snakes ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysopelea
This in spite of having exactly the opposite aspect ratio of airplane wings ...

To see videos of these snakes in flight see:
http://homepage.mac.com/j.socha/video/video.html

Many organisms have evolved ways to fly, float or glide through the air, from spiders, to fish, to frogs to snakes. Not all of them have aerodynamic wings, rather they have adapted the materials they have at hand to "try a hand" at flight. By the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.

Anyone paying attention will note that this is an insult intended to distract the reader from the fact that CTD did not say anything about his implication being falsified, nor anything about the fact that these, now several examples, as well as the bat fossil in question, show clear ways that such systems can evolve from existing equipment in existing organisms.

There is at least one more theory as well, that the proto-wings allowed the owners to climb steep slopes and trees by running up them while using their proto-wings to create "lift" holding them against the surface. Curiously young grouse do this before their wings are developed enough that they can fly:

Wing-Assisted Incline Running and the Evolution of FlightCuriously the wing beating pattern is different in juvenile birds than in flying adults:

That would be a transitional behavior between running and flying, one with a clear survival advantage, as well as one that is observed in existing birds as they develop from down covered arms to fully feathered wings. Curiously this behavior does not include trying to glide on the developing wings.

Such flapping while falling to control descent is seen in many young birds, Wood Ducks would be an example many could be familiar with.

It may seem like a step aside from the topic here, but modern swimmers have also learned that they can swim faster by spreading their fingers and waving their hands sideways to the stroke, creating a virtual hand "bigger" than the actual one. It creates extra drag on the hand, which translates into more push for the swimmer.

So yes, I believe that wings evolved for flight and not for gliding. Perhaps CTD can prove that I'm wrong by demonstrating how wings actually developed, with evidence and substantiation, and using a clear dependency on non-flapping gliding. Note that the old tree up and tree down do not rule out this flapping assisted behavior.

The good old, when everything else fails, god-of-the-gaps argument, eh?

http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/nmnh/batfacts.htm
So we don't know, and that means we don't know.

Meanwhile, astute readers will note that the existence of this gap in the fossil record does not remove the evidence of transitions -- intermediate varieties in Darwin's words -- that we have already seen in profusion, nor does it show that CTD's original claim of ...

... has not been completely, utterly and totally falsified. We have several million intermediate fossils already posted on this thread, and the full amount of biological and fossil evidence for "intermediate varieties" has hardly been considered.

So, as far as the ability to "learn to count to even bigger numbers like 3 or 5" is concerned, CTD better evolve a few more fingers ...

Anyone want to bet that if an older fossil was found tomorrow in both a predicted more intermediate form between this bat fossil and some tree-climbing insectivorous shrew-like animal, that CTD would ask where the next intermediate is?

Meanwhile the issue remains unchallenged by CTD that this bat fossil does in fact show several characteristics that are intermediate between modern bats and what an ancestral mammal that did not have membranous wings would look like. Is this imagination? Or is it applying the evidence of life we have around us to develop working hypothesis that can be tested?

That IS what science does when it comes to a question where the answer is "we don't know" after all.

Enjoy.

(I won't even mention aircraft, lest some poor reader be caught sipping a beverage.)


LOL - (just sounded funny)

R2: Darwin himself suggested that the original form or forms may have been crated by god and evolution continued on from there.

Jeanie: Why? Why would God need to do that? And for what purpose?
Actually we have some really good fossil and DNA evidence that shows that animals arose from a common ancestor with fungus and plants and that that ancestor along with the rest of the Eukaryotes branched off from the Achaea and further back from Bacteria and before that it leads all the way back to the original common ancestor which may as I have said been a group of organisms with all but one line dying out at some point before Bacteria and Achaea split. That line being the original common ancestor.

Jeanie: Evidence? Like some relationship? You guys really stretch things. Maybe we are closely related to apes DNA wise, but we're also closely related to dolphins (if Dr. House was correct on tv : ). And, yah, they're smart! We are RELATED TO EVERYTHING. We have the same creator...... But the creator has enough smarts to code the DNA for all "kinds" to be separate. These transitions y'all have yourselves convinced are proof are just variances in the same kinds.
R2:

Just for clarity, the R2 at the bottom was supposed to go after my last word... purpose? The rest of that paragraph which I apparently didn't separate was his quote. (Starting with Actually).

Thanks Russ,

Not really: we can observe that symmetrical features exist, so the evolution of wings from existing symmetrical features does not depend on explaining symmetry.

And if you want to start a thread demonstrating the math of this assertion, I will be glad to show you what is wrong with the calculations. Math does not govern how reality behaves, it can only model, but the model is not reality, and if the model tells you, for instance, that hurricanes cannot occur south of the equator, then when a hurricane does occur south of the equator it is not reality that is wrong, but the mathematical model.

Again, though, when we look at existing features, the information needed to produce symmetry is simpler than non-symmetry, and indeed we see that duplication of features is a common aspect of biology, evident in some of the earliest organisms. We also see several different types of symmetry with starfish etc showing radial symmetry.

Red color mine to show that this is not part of the actual quotes from Darwin, but the insertion of H.Enoch, while the other colors show quotes from different sections, order, etc.. Thus the quote is not Charles Darwin but a fabrication by H.Enoch, and we don't have the reference from Enoch to read the REAL quote. Did you check them?

Is this where you get all your quotes from?
CREATION-EVOLUTION ENCYCLOPEDIA: SCIENTISTS SPEAK ABOUT EVOLUTION? It certainly seems to contain a lot of your favorites. You do realize, don't you, that when a site like this has been demonstrated to post false material that it becomes unreliable for any further reference, don't you? You should check your references and validate them, if you are going to be honest in your search for truth (assuming this is your purpose).

Here's a better source for quotes from Darwin:
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
Of course you may have to read the work to get to the quotes, but then you have the advantage of context.

They have a search feature too:

There are several editions noted with slight variations in the wording but not one of them continues with "Why is not all nature in confusion ..." after "Why do we not find them embedded in the crust of the earth?" (which also is not an accurate quote).

Curious that you need to quote an author, H.Enoch, who can't get the facts right in his own book. The quote by this esteemed author of yours also does not mention that Darwin goes on to explain the reason/s ("It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; ..."). Posing a question that you then answer does not make the question unanswered now does it?

Continuing with the search feature:
So the "quote" of Darwin is actually a fabrication of several small quotes and the insertion of "[of halfway species]" and rewriting the last phrase. It is an invention of H. Enoch, a misrepresentation of what Darwin said. A lie.

Let's see what Darwin really said there:

And he then goes on to explain each of the possible fatal arguments to show that they do not in fact prove fatal at all:

Purple for emphasis.

Note that he first discusses reproductively isolated but related species, each with distinct traits and no hybrid forms intermediate between them. Then he discusses the effect of geological isolation on the evolution of sub-populations, such that when reunited after sufficient time has passed that they have evolved differences, that they do not recognize the other populations as potential mates. Next he hypothesizes how populations can become reproductively isolated while inhabiting large but different areas while still having small hybrid zones with intermediate forms. Finally he notes that this pattern in time would result in small transitional populations between large established populations.

This in effect predicts both "punctuated equilibrium" and what actually we see in ring-species. In the The greenish warbler ring species we see this pattern of inter-relationships:

Thus we see precisely the pattern that Darwin said we should see: large areas dominated by each variety and small zones of overlap, zones that we call "hybrid zones" because rather than an intermediate variety we see a mix of traits between the two adjoining areas, so they don't qualify as a separate variety. We also see two isolated populations, and we see that in the final overlap between viridanus and plumbeitarsus varieties there is no hybrid zone, because there is no mating: each variety does not see the other variety as mate material, so they are reproductively isolated.

Not only do we see the intermediate varieties predicted by Darwin with small zones of intermediate (hybrid) forms between large areas of dominant varieties, but we see how geographic isolation of populations leads to reproductive isolation when they do overlap. Geographic isolation over time does indeed lead to reproductive isolation and the separation of a parent species into two (or more) independent and ever diverging species.

Thus - in spite of the false implications - what Darwin said involves an explanation of why there may be missing fossils, and how speciation can occur with geographical isolation. The astute reader will see that H. Enoch has put the quote from pg 190 before the quote from pg 189, changing the sequence of the argument, as well as inserting "[of halfway species]" in the middle, where no such thing was said and mixing up the last phrase.

But this irresponsible misrepresentation of reality, typical of creationist quote-mines, does not affect the fact that since Darwin's time we have found literally millions of intermediate varieties that fit his definition. Millions of species part way between an old species and a newer one.

Thus the evidence since Darwin's time validates his prediction. Again and again and again, as this thread has documented. Evolution is not stuck in the past, it grows every day with new added information that validates the process, the theory and the science.

As we learn more about evolution we see that populations are constantly changing from generation to generation, so we can look at a population of organisms over a series of generations and see a change in hereditary traits between each generation and that the traits in population 2 are intermediate between population 1 and 3, that the traits in population 3 are intermediate between population 2 and 4 and that the traits in population 4 are intermediate between population 3 and 5, that each of the populations 2, 3 and 4 are intermediate between 1 and 5.

Thus all organisms are transitional organisms, intermediate between parent and offspring organisms. Thus all fossils are transitional fossils.

Indeed when we look at the fossil record we see this: no species remains constant over time, it is just the rate of change that is different.

Even supposedly "fossil species" like the Coelacanth have evolved over the last 65 million years, with the (3) modern species not being found among all the ancient fossils species.

So we can add (hundreds of) Coelacanth fossils and (thousands of) Asian Greenish Warblers to the ever-growing list of transitional forms, with forms intermediate between older forms and the modern forms.

Enjoy.

Well, I see a lot of words, but no bat ancestors.

To the readers of this thread,

Note that CTD's original claim, quoted at the beginning of this thread:

Is reduced to:

With no mention nor acknowledgment that the "lots of words" in several posts on this thread present millions of intermediate varieties, fossils, species and living organisms, that are evidence of transition that have happened and transitions that are going on from the fossil record through to the diversity of life we know today.

Enjoy.

Hi RAZD,

Like CTD, I must have gotten lost in the words and forgot to spot the substance/evidence. I personally did not see the line up of transitional fossils for the bat evolution senario, let alone the millions of others. Would you please point me to where they have the actual fossil evidences for the bat, so we can view them?

Please do not point me to man-made charts/animated senarios. I am interested in the actual evidence. I just hope it's not some kind of extinct animal that is manipulated into being a transitional, when it is simply another species of bat. I am not interested in this, as we clearly see the same to this day with animals and variations within the same kind. I am asking you for the bat evolution senario presented in actual evidence, so we can look and see how the creature evolved and what it was like originally, through it's evolution and to what we observe today.

Cheers.

Thanks Bex,

Maybe you need to read the articles in all the links to see the actual evidence and if those are not enough then contact the authors for more. What is provided here is necessarily just a summary of the evidence.

So? Does the absence of one set of transitional fossils negate all the others? Of course not, all it means is that between (ancient shrew/mole-like tree climbing insectivore) and the intermediate bat fossil found we have a case of "we don't know" - which does not mean that it did not occur or that it did occur, but that we don't know. There will always be some gaps until we know everything eh? This does not mean that we don't know anything though does it?

What we DO see is that the bat fossil has more "primitive" traits compared to modern bats, such as claws on all fingers and longer hind legs, traits that would be found in a (shrew\mole-like tree climbing insectivore), and that in comparison to this fossil the modern bat traits are more "derived" - they have evolved since this early fossil to be more developed for bat life.

That is still a fact. This still makes this bat fossil an intermediate between a tree climbing insectivore and modern bats.

This bat is one of those along the "line up of transitional fossils for the bat evolution senario" whether there are earlier fossils or not.

And yet I have already provided evidence of this kind of transition with the therapsids, and the transition from reptile to mammal. One wonders why you ignore that evidence to focus on the bat fossils: this is a much larger transition than one mammal lineage.

Message 42059

Those links, particularly the last one, let you look at charts and images of the fossils involved, and you can go the their home page and find contact information so you can talk to actual scientists involved in studying these fossils, if that is what you need to do eh?

Then you will have to travel to museums and universities where the fossils are kept, and get access to the fossils (probably by becoming a grad student in paleontology or taxonomy or similar, to get credentials) and put your hands on the actual fossils and do the same kind of measurement after measurement after measurement that paleontologist and taxonomists do, so that you can compare the traits from fossil to fossil, from age to age.

Certainly the best you can reasonably expect on a web-blog or forum is pictures of fossils, "man-made charts" and quotes from scientific articles. Again, you may need to sign up and pay a fee to obtain access to scientific articles that talk first hand about things like this bat fossil if that is what you want.

If you want to look at pictures of fossils that form a lineage of transition from an early organism to a modern one, there are other transitions we can look at, even among the mammals. For instance we can look at the horse ancestors and their various intermediate stages from dog like animal to the modern horse we know today.

We can start with eohippus/hyracotherium:



Compare it to modern dog



And then compare it to modern horse



And then to each of the fossils known from the fossil record between eohippus and modern horse



Let me know if this is what you want to do and we will step through each fossil from eohippus to modern horse and see if you can point out where the evolution from one stage to the next exceeds the variation we see in dogs - the variation we know is possible within a species - or whether every stage is explained by the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation.

So the eohippus stays in the eohippus kind? Does that kind include dogs? Or does the horse kind include dog like omnivores that hunt in packs?

Are all mammals part of the reptile kind? What is a kind? All organisms reproduce "after their kind," that does not make them distinct forms of organisms, nor does it make their species special, it's just how nature works.

Does "kind" really mean anything different from variety, type, sort, group - a generic term?

And yet I believe each post I have made, including this one, on this thread has introduced one set of many instances of intermediate varieties on a transitional sequence, many of them number in the hundreds, some in the thousands and some numbering in the millions.

So if you are going to take the stance that these are not intermediate varieties then you are going to have to go back and read the information on each one and then detail why it is not an intermediate variety. Just denial won't work: detail why the traits are not changing along an overall trend as you progress in age from ancient to modern.

Enjoy.

Hi RAZD,

Thank you for your response and time/effort.



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". This is mistaken and we have actually already addressed and debated the other examples of transitional forms you've set up here earlier on this forum. But unfortunately, they get buried again under new posts and the issue is then revived as though it was never discussed. Hence why CTD must continually refer people to using the scroll bar and reading the older posts on this forum.

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. Those whom have become extinct, should not automatically = transitional forms, simply because they're lost to our past. But unfortunately, for evolution? they are. Those with similar traits and appearance should not have to succumb to the same labelling tactics either, but for evolution? They do! There are numerous creatures today that share very similar qualities/appearance with others! 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. 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

The evolutionist cannot and will not accept any creature for being what it is. So extinct animals are sitting ducks (excuse the pun).

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. However, since when does something older, means it was lesser/more primitive? Do longer legs and extra claws = more primitive? Bats put the claws and legs to good use when they cling to walls and hang upside down. Hardly primitive! But that's not the only problem. Since there are different species of bats around (some 900 species), how can you be certain it's not another species of bat?

E.g. (pictures below, please allow time to load).


Only 3 examples out of 900 alive today and RAZD thinks that a fossil of a bat with a few extras, means it's "more primitive"; without considering the MANY different species of that we have alive today, let alone how many there would be altogether (counting extinct).

http://fossil-museum.com/fossils/fosil.php?Id=410
Here is a fossilised bat - 50 millions years old (according to old age dating methods).

And here, approximately 54 millions years old:


http://visual.merriam-webster.com/animal-kingdom/flying-mammal/bat/skeleton-bat.php
Here is a modern day depiction of a bat skeleton:


No doubting the ancient fossil bats are as batty as their modern day counterparts



For anybody none the wiser? Here is the link provided in the post he's given above regarding his evidence for reptiles to mammals http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/therapsd.htm
Once again, what do we get when it comes to substance and clear evolutionary evidence? Not much more than a lot of words which are aimed at convincing the reader of their ideas/beliefs about our history, without substantial back-up. But how does this match up when it comes to the reality of the fossils themselves when you see them for what they were (and are), instead of a manipulated senario?

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. Both separate kinds! Still no sign one is becoming anything else - other than what it has always been. Note: (also include the bat fossils above as an example also): (pictures below will take time to load, be patient):

A few examples of ancient fossilised mammals
Note: (Dated according to old age dating - http://fossil-museum.com/fossils/).

83 million year old Antelope skull:

80 million year old Bear skull:

37-23 million year old Deer skull:
95 million year old fox skull:

75 million year old Rhinosaurus skull:

80 million year old tiger skull:

Examples of reptiles .(dated according to old age dating methods - http://fossil-museum.com/fossils/).

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:


And I'll throw in a frog for good measure. Just in case we get the amphibian senario too:
40 million year old frog:


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"

And you'll get more of the same. Even the excuses can differ from the other. Whatever excuse it takes to hopefully render one in a state of confusion and "maybe we just don't understand their theory". You will never understand a theory that continues to alter it's definitions according to the senarios. If they don't have their excuses what else do they have left? So the excuses continue and perhaps new ones will be added and improved upon.

If anybody wishes to go through the dinosaur to bird and horse evolution senarios with RAZD all over again, they are welcome. Since he was unable to prove any such senarios with dinosaur to bird and kept giving excuses when pictures of fossil birds (looking the same as the ones today) were given existing around the time as reptiles - with no signs of transition and existing just as they do today. No such luck and no such transitional has been found. Even the so-called transitional form they pull out, was existing around the sametime period as reptiles and fully formed birds that we see today. Still the excuses continued. Still can't prove skin/scales turned into feathers. They simply find similarities with a type of animal that shares traits with reptile and bird, therefore it MUST mean that birds came from reptiles. This animal will then become their "missing link". They do not even consider anything else.

Anybody else can go and do their own research and check out ancient fossil pictures and see for themselves. However, if you prefer the evolution tale, rather than the reality of our history? You're welcome to believe it.

The bible tell us:

Very well said Bex. Beautiful post too.

The fact is, even creatures that closely resemble others require structural changes and genetic alterations that are a mathematical absurdity by chance.

It's easy and desirable for evolutionists to ignore or belittle even "small" differences between species in order to make the math more "imaginable".

Unfortunately for them, the differences from a genetic point of view are still enormous and mathematically absurd by chance. Design always has and always will require intelligence.

Exactly the case! Note how RAZD showed that the eohippus can just as easily be used as a "transitional" ancestor for dogs. When one is working only from skeletons (partial skeletons in nearly all cases, and often merely teeth) one can essentially pretend any thing is similar to anything else. RAZD thinks this makes his argument stronger, and I'm content to let him believe it until the day he repents.

Speaking of living animals, Darwin claimed there were lots of examples of "living transitionals". I have noticed, however, that all the really, really important imaginary critters all seem to be extinct. There must have been an abundant supply of reptiles with hair or feathers, for example, on their way to becoming mammals & birds. But they all went extinct, every last one of them. Only the "more primitive" types of reptiles survived. Puts an odd twist on 'natural selection'.

The platypus is all anyone needs consider to dismiss evolutionism. Darwin had no excuses that could withstand scrutiny, and nobody's ever come up with any since.

Cracks me up how they love redefining terms, but won't touch "primitive" these days.

I suspect the "longer limbs" & the claim about the wings is are results of cherry-picking which extant bat(s) one compares the thing to, just as the echolocation hype was. But no, I won't waste my time verifying it. I see no evidence that anyone cares.

Indeed, with such a huge swing & miss on echolocation, one wonders how well they did their homework. Would anyone be surprised if it turned out this species is still alive? Anyone at all?

And none of these critters survived conditions that their "primitive relations" were able to handle.

Nice recap.

Hi Russ

An evolutionist would have to answer the problem of how symmetrical features evolve, whether wings or flaps of skin.

Of course if you understand how our bodies are built you will realize what an absurd complaint this is. As I explained the last time you made this claim our DNA contains a description of a hand (for example) and a description of how to build two of them mirror images of each other. Our DNA does not contain a separate description of our left hand and our right hand. This is not new information Russ, we’ve known this for a long time!

Again, the mathematical probabilities of this occurring are not problematic. They are fundamentally absurd.

True enough if you accept the straw man that Russ is painting. If you ignore the well proven existence of natural selection and of the HOX gene complex and it’s like in building our bodies you will indeed be faced with impossible odds for the natural formation of our bodies. Of course these long odds dissolve once you understand that Natural Selection is real and that our DNA is actually quite clever and does contain such genes as the HOX complex that form our bodies by duplication and mirroring of structures that are contained only once in our genome.


This is another of those quote mined items I have mentioned. At least this time it is correctly attributed though you failed to cite back to the original. Darwin said these words in Origin of species in the introduction to Chapter 6. Now the important point when quoting someone is to try hard to capture their true intent. Quote mining is a standard YEC tactic in which the intent and beliefs of the person are ignored in an attempt to mine quotes that say what YEC’s believe not what the person quoted believed. Darwin consistently in Origins opens his chapters with challenging statements such as this which he then goes on, in considerable detail, to answer. By ignoring the context, by actually hiding it as you have done by quoting from a quote of Darwin and not from the original source you are misrepresenting him in a very dishonest way.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter6.html

It’s considered very dishonest, when quoting someone, to quote from a quote as you have done here Russ. You should always quote back to the original source so your reader can easily see what the quoted person actually said. It suggests a reluctance on your part for your readers to actually know Darwin’s thinking on this which makes sense given how quote mined items are typically used. This exact passage has appeared on quite a few quote mine project websites as it’s a favourite out of context quote from YEC’s.

In Reason

Russell

Hi Jeanie

Jeanie: Why? Why would God need to do that? And for what purpose?

Why would god not create the perfect earth in the first place, why this imperfect temporary version? Why create imperfect humans who he must have known would fall when he could have created perfect yet free one’s if he is really all powerful. Who know’s the mind of god? Darwin’s point was simply that he did not know how life started but the evidence showed clearly that it evolved. It could just as easily have evolved from a natural origin as from a god supplied origin. That was his point. At this point we’ve never found anything to show that it was impossible for life to have arisen by natural means without god but we have no proof that god was not involved either so it’s an open question. Darwin pointed out that either was compatible with ToE.

Jeanie: Evidence? Like some relationship? You guys really stretch things. Maybe we are closely related to apes DNA wise, but we're also closely related to dolphins (if Dr. House was correct on tv : ). And, yah, they're smart! We are RELATED TO EVERYTHING. We have the same creator...... But the creator has enough smarts to code the DNA for all "kinds" to be separate. These transitions y'all have yourselves convinced are proof are just variances in the same kinds.

The evidence some from a number of sources and yes DNA evidence is one source. DNA evidence show us to be much more closely related to apes than dolphins and much more closely related to dolphins than fish and much more closely related to fish than to fungus and much more closely related to fungus than to plants etc, That’s all just simple mathematical analysis of DNA. In parallel to that are the comparative fields that examine extant life and fossil life to look at the similarities of structure. These fields independently build a picture of what is related to what and it looks virtually exactly the same as the one that DNA analysis came up with. That’s three sources but there are more. The important point is that they all agree in almost every detail which organism evolved from which. If you want to get into the details of this research each field will take you quite a lot of effort to understand but it’s really worth it believe me. There’s some fascinating evidence our there to get into and to understand. Are you interested in really getting into this Jeanie? I highly recommend it.

As for the idea that kinds are a limit to evolution there is no evidence for this claim. Have a look and see if you can find any factual limit to evolution that conforms with the idea of kinds? WE have observed species of birds evolve into separate species as we watched. Same with insects, fish, plants and bacteria. If you want to see transitions from non birds to birds or from land mammal to whale (for example) you have to go back further into the fossil record as that happened a long time ago and such transitions are relatively rare it appears. If you write off the fossil record as evidence then I can’t help you, you have written off the only source of knowledge we have of what happened in the distant past. You have, in effect, chosen ignorance over knowledge and that’s the end of this discussion.

All the best Jeanie

Russell

Thanks CTD and Russ for your comments/compliments. Here is something else to consider. Since they rely so much on the geologic column as proving evolution by the order of the fossils in the layers. Consider this:

Since we've seen an example of the fossils themselves, we've also seen that not only are the missing links "missing" (non existent), but even the ones they claim as "missing links" (e.g. dinosaur to bird - Archaeopteryx) were shown to exist around the sametime period as the very birds they had supposedly evolved into.

With this in mind, how then can the evolutionist excuse this by saying "this is possible, they can still exist around the sametime" and then explain their previous statements on the order of evolution dictated to us by the fossils in the layers? So in other words, the animals can mix together around the sametime period with their supposed missing links whilst alive, but they all died in a particular order....did they have some agreement with eachother over who was to die first? (perhaps they said it would be for the glory of evolution and therefore a good cause).

Note: Give time for the pictures below to load.

I'll give an example: (Archaeoptryx). Which is dated to be around 150 million years old - (according to old age dating).


Here are a couple of ancient bird examples (no different than today) dated around the sametime period (according to old age dating).




This is only one such example. Consider all the others they are claiming evolved and check out them existing around the sametime above. Reptiles, birds, mammals, etc etc.

I'll give an example of the horse evolution senario also. In case people are fooled to believing that horses came from the creatures RAZD is proposing: (I threw a donkey in here also)
Give pictures time to load.

Horse skull. 2,8 million years old


Asian horse skull. 33 million years old.


Wild horse skull. 45 million years old.


Tibetan wild donkey. 29 million years old.


Pony skull. 48 million years old.


Pony skull. 53 million years old.


Horses, ponies, donkeys, showing all existing around the sametime. The supposed horse evolution is an evolutionary myth. Not only does the horse show it hasn't evolved, but neither has the pony or donkey (subspecies). And no transitional forms.

Consider that different researchers have come up with completely different (20 or so) horse evolution scenarios. Gathering fossils belonging to extinct animals that existed at different times in India, South America, North America and Europe in order of size—from small-large to large-small. However, regardless of the jigsaw with fictitious family trees, all horse fossils ever discovered have proved that horses have always existed as horses, ponies as ponies, donkeys and donkeys and it looks like they still do. A different species or an extinct species, does not = a transitional form.

These are only a few examples. Consider all the others they are claiming evolved and check out them existing around the sametime above. Reptiles, birds, mammals, etc etc.

Hi Bex

Since we've seen an example of the fossils themselves, we've also seen that not only are the missing links "missing"

Well except for all the ones that we do have and there are lots of those. It’s only by defining each now transitional as the mid point between two new missing links that you gain the false impression that something essential is missing. This is a common YEC tactict but it’s worthess if you actually want to understand what’s going on, it’s only use is to confuse people. Is that what you are trying to do here Bex?

even the ones they claim as "missing links" were shown to exist around the sametime period as the very creatures they had supposedly evolved into.

I’m yet to see anyone explain why a transitional must only exist at the time of arrival of a new species. Species change character today as we watch them and species split into separate species today as we watch them. Why should we expect that it would be any different in the past? Just because a bird evolved from an intermediate like archaeopteryx (if that was how it happened) does not mean that archaeopteryx had to go extinct. The bird may well have been a refinement for a new niche while archaeopteryx still made a good living in it’s old niche. We see this happening today so why should we doubt that it would happen in the past. There is no reason that a transitional organism could not exist in parallel with the later form for some time and the fossil evidence shows this time and again and there is no reason to think that we will always have the oldest example of any given organism.

If we look at birds we see that feathers arose first on creatures who could not fly. After this archaeopteryx arose and some time later birds arose and later yet modern birds that we could recognize arose. That is what you would expect if ToE were true. Archaeopteryx coexisted with ancient birds for some time before dying out. No modern birds existed at this time in fact if we go back very far in the fossil record we quickly find that there are no modern species at all in the record. No species alive today was alive at the time of the dinosaurs though some similar species did exist and lead to modern forms. Go back to the Cambrian and no recognizable modern species existed at all. If we go back just a little further we find no animals at all though there are lots of fossils going back for several billion years before that point.

To ask if there was an agreement between them as to who would die out first shows a very profound misunderstanding of ToE. Creatures die out because they can’t make a living anymore quite often because they are replaced by more efficient forms who eat them out of house and home or even simply eat them. Agreement has nothing what so ever to do with it.

So in other words, the animals can mix together with their supposed missing links whilst alive, but they all died in a particular order.

Are you aware of the well observed phenomenon of isolation? It can be geographic or it can be genetic but organisms of the same species get split into separate, non interbreeding populations, all the time. Obviously once separated by whatever means each population will continued to evolve but it is free to do so on different directions from its estranged cousins. Existing at the same time does not mean that they were or could interbreed, we see this sort of isolation in action today so why should we doubt that it occurred historically, that’s a fallacy and is again one of the common YEC complaints designed to confuse those who don’t know much about these questions.

Here are a couple of ancient bird examples (no different than today).

This is actually wrong Bex. These are modern birds, modern in character and abilities, yes but they are not species that we could recognize. None of these species still exist today. All of these species have ling since died out.

All the best Bex

Russell

Thanks Bex.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Strangely they don't. They become transitional because they show change from previous forms, not because they are fossils.

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.

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.

Nope. The traits that are used for classifications are homologous traits, not analogous traits, and yes, taxonomists can tell the difference.

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.

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"

(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 Evolution

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.

By Cladistics.

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.

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)

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.

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?

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.htm
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.