Turtule in China

[Dave G]

I heard on NPR today that a turtle fossil, I believe 220 million years or so, was found to only have a bottom shell. It didn't have a top shell. And it had teeth. The hypothesis made was that at the time, being aquatic, more predators would be attacking from below if it stayed submerged for longer periods of time.

[rogue06]

You mean this guy?


A half-shell turtle species that swam in China's coastal waters 220 million years ago is the oldest turtle known to date, a new analysis of fossils reveals.

The turtle had a belly shell, but its back was basically bare of armor.



Source (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27929375/)


National Geographic covers it HERE (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081126-oldest-turtle.html)

I haven’t read them yet (dinner time), but thanks for the head’s up.

[Vigilante]

Well it's a good thing they were smart enough to grow some shells. After watching their buddies get eaten to death so many times, enough is enough, they just HAD to evolve some shells on their kids!

[Dr.GH]

There is an item on this at Panda's Thumb as well. (http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/11/odontochelys-a.html#comments)

[Jet Black]

What's particularly interesting about this is the prediction that Paula Weston of AiG bade back in 1999:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i2/turtles.asp

in which she states quite specifically that no such fossils should be found.



The biblical account of Creation in Genesis 1—animals created to reproduce after their kinds—would mean that turtles should be instantly recognizable as turtles, with the shell and other unique features fully formed from the start,7 and no series of ‘pre-turtle ancestors’ should be found. It is obvious that the fossil record of turtles gives powerful support to biblical Creation, and stands opposed to the idea of evolution.

having now been found does this lend support to evolution and present problems for the genesis account, since according to her, the genesis account predicts that no such fossils should be found.

(also in Evolution: The Fossils Still Say NO!, pp. 112–115) though I don't have the book, if someone else could quote the relevant passages.

[Cyrus Johnson]

What's particularly interesting about this is the prediction that Paula Weston of AiG bade back in 1999:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i2/turtles.asp

in which she states quite specifically that no such fossils should be found.



having now been found does this lend support to evolution and present problems for the genesis account, since according to her, the genesis account predicts that no such fossils should be found.

(also in Evolution: The Fossils Still Say NO!, pp. 112–115) though I don't have the book, if someone else could quote the relevant passages.

Not a problem at all JB. Since it apparently only has half a shell, it must not be a turtle. What they want to know, is where in the fossil record can we find turtles with half a shell? You evolutionists and your non-existant transitional forms. :smile:

[rogue06]

What's particularly interesting about this is the prediction that Paula Weston of AiG bade back in 1999:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i2/turtles.asp

in which she states quite specifically that no such fossils should be found.



having now been found does this lend support to evolution and present problems for the genesis account, since according to her, the genesis account predicts that no such fossils should be found.

(also in Evolution: The Fossils Still Say NO!, pp. 112–115) though I don't have the book, if someone else could quote the relevant passages.
First a transitional bat, then a transitional flatfish, and now a bunch of transitional turtles. The lack of such intermediaries for these has long been cited as evidence that animals appeared "fully formed" and didn't evolve. This hasn't been a good year for YECs :teeth:



ETA: I don’t have the book any more, but how about this from Jonathan Sarfati, from his “Refuting Evolution”?:


Turtles are a well designed and specialized group of reptiles, with a distinctive shell protecting the body’s vital organs. However, evolutionists admit ‘Intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs, the primitive reptiles from which [evolutionists believe] turtles probably sprang, are entirely lacking.’ They can’t plead an incomplete fossil record because ‘turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates.’7 The ‘oldest known sea turtle’ was a fully formed turtle, not at all transitional. It had a fully developed system for excreting salt, without which a marine reptile would quickly dehydrate. This is shown by skull cavities which would have held large salt-excreting glands around the eyes.8


Source (http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/3832)

[Jorge]

Well it's a good thing they were smart enough to grow some shells.
After watching their buddies get eaten to death so many times, enough is enough, they just HAD
to evolve some shells on their kids!

*****************************************************************************

That's right! They had a "turtle meeting on the half-shell" and decided that from then on their kids
would be fully shelled. That's how it happened -- National Geographic said so (or was it Science?).

Jorge

[rogue06]

*****************************************************************************

That's right! They had a "turtle meeting on the half-shell" and decided that from then on their kids
would be fully shelled. That's how it happened -- National Geographic said so (or was it Science?).

Jorge
Once again Jorge demonstrates the depths of his understanding on what the ToE says :hehe:

[Cyrus Johnson]

First a transitional bat, then a transitional flatfish, and now a bunch of transitional turtles. The lack of such intermediaries for these has long been cited as evidence that animals appeared "fully formed" and didn't evolve. This hasn't been a good year for YECs :teeth:

One more gap! One more gap! :smile:


ETA: I don’t have the book any more, but how about this from Jonathan Sarfati, from his “Refuting Evolution”?:


Turtles are a well designed and specialized group of reptiles, with a distinctive shell protecting the body’s vital organs. However, evolutionists admit ‘Intermediates between turtles and cotylosaurs, the primitive reptiles from which [evolutionists believe] turtles probably sprang, are entirely lacking.’ They can’t plead an incomplete fossil record because ‘turtles leave more and better fossil remains than do other vertebrates.’7 The ‘oldest known sea turtle’ was a fully formed turtle, not at all transitional. It had a fully developed system for excreting salt, without which a marine reptile would quickly dehydrate. This is shown by skull cavities which would have held large salt-excreting glands around the eyes.8


Source (http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/3832)

Right up there with Behe talking about how no precursers to whale fossils existed, right before they were found. :lol:

O.K., time to move them goalposts on to another animal. What are some others that don't have good fossil precursers yet?

[Johnny MacManky]

. . . O.K., time to move them goalposts on to another animal. What are some others that don't have good fossil precursers yet?

Anyone found any fossils of the intermediates between a monkey, Jorge and a human being yet? :teeth:

(Jest teasin' ya Jorge. ... and I trust everything will go well on the 18th. :hug:)

[NeilUnreal]

They should start looking for whatever predator caused it to grow the bottom shell; that would be an interesting find.

-Neil

[Crow]

They should start looking for whatever predator caused it to grow the bottom shell; that would be an interesting find.

-Neil

Yup. Or it could be something totally different. I could picture a critter living in shallow coastal waters benefiting from a little protection on the underside if there were sharp corals. If it was dining on corals, shellfish, or crustaceans, I could see where selection could eventually favor a beakier snout as well.

It would be nice to know more about it's environment.

[rogue06]

Yup. Or it could be something totally different. I could picture a critter living in shallow coastal waters benefiting from a little protection on the underside if there were sharp corals. If it was dining on corals, shellfish, or crustaceans, I could see where selection could eventually favor a beakier snout as well.

It would be nice to know more about it's environment.

Perhaps he was totally rad and used it as a skim or surf board.

[Vigilante]

They should start looking for whatever predator caused it to grow the bottom shell; that would be an interesting find.

-Neil

But here is the problem with this theory. Predators don't "cause" shells to grow. The shell would have to magically appear randomly right at a good lucky time for it to be useful to keep it alive. Hey howdy hey, what a convenient random mutation at such a convenient random time!

Where is the proof this is a "transitional" anyway? Arbitrary labels of being transitional with no proof. I guess it just sounds good to say it was. It has a half a shell, so heck, it must be transitional right? Cause regular turtles have two shells you know. Couldn't just be any kind of turtle, couldn't just be some other rare animal, nope, we label it a transitional and wave it in front of YECs as if it means something.

Might as well label your mom a transitional and then maybe YECs would really be scared. :lol:

[Dave G]

Predators don't cause mutations, they just eat all the organisms that don't have sufficient protection. And with the amount of time we're talking about (220 million), they could even have had different mutations that protected them from certain predators at various times. And if you think labels of transitional are arbitrary, I don't think you know what the word arbitrary means.

[wattsr1]

But here is the problem with this theory. Predators don't "cause" shells to grow. The shell would have to magically appear randomly right at a good lucky time for it to be useful to keep it alive. Hey howdy hey, what a convenient random mutation at such a convenient random time!


It is worth asking - a predator appears, what underlying genetic mechanisms should cause the turtle to grow its shell using your version of evolution? Presumably you can explain this at the genetic level and at what point it breaks down and why it breaks down - such that turtle shell evolution is impossible.


Where is the proof this is a "transitional" anyway? Arbitrary labels of being transitional with no proof. I guess it just sounds good to say it was. It has a half a shell, so heck, it must be transitional right?

Wrong.

Because it has half a shell does not make it a transitional. What makes you think it necessarily does?


Regards, Roland

[Vigilante]

It is worth asking - a predator appears, what underlying genetic mechanisms should cause the turtle to grow its shell using your version of evolution? Presumably you can explain this at the genetic level and at what point it breaks down and why it breaks down - such that turtle shell evolution is impossible.
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying mutations are random and so the appearance of a predator has zilch to do with the sudden appearance of a shell.
A random mutation would have to appear first so THEN external environmental pressures can lead to the mutation being favored.
It seems like people were saying, because there was a predator, the fish grew itself a shell as if mutations and genetic morphological advances were merely pragmatic choices.
Like, because your kid gets flicked in the back of the head all day by bullies, he'll just decide one day to grow a hard plate back there with poisonous barbs to ward off bullies. But, if I understand correctly, things don't evolve just cause they are needed. Rather things are selected because they are favorable. The appearance of the feature in the first place, however, doesn't have to do with the needs of the creature. So just because fish are getting eaten, doesn't mean they will grow themselves a shell. The shell would appear completely randomly, and it would just happen to be at a time where it is useful to survive.


Because it has half a shell does not make it a transitional. What makes you think it necessarily does?
I'm not the one saying it's a transitional.


Peace

[rogue06]

I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm saying mutations are random and so the appearance of a predator has zilch to do with the sudden appearance of a shell.
A random mutation would have to appear first so THEN external environmental pressures can lead to the mutation being favored.
It seems like people were saying, because there was a predator, the fish grew itself a shell as if mutations and genetic morphological advances were merely pragmatic choices.
Like, because your kid gets flicked in the back of the head all day by bullies, he'll just decide one day to grow a hard plate back there with poisonous barbs to ward off bullies. But, if I understand correctly, things don't evolve just cause they are needed. Rather things are selected because they are favorable. The appearance of the feature in the first place, however, doesn't have to do with the needs of the creature. So just because fish are getting eaten, doesn't mean they will grow themselves a shell. The shell would appear completely randomly, and it would just happen to be at a time where it is useful to survive.


I'm not the one saying it's a transitional.


Peace

Hi V.

The predators could be already present and then the mutation arose randomly and was selected for as it proved beneficial. If there weren’t predators already involved (assuming predation is why this adaption was selected for) then this mutation would have probably been more deleterious than beneficial. And no, your son wouldn’t grow a hard plate. If such a mutation arose and proved truly beneficial (I can’t imagine such a growth enhancing chances with the opposite sex and hence breeding) it would arise in a generation yet to be born. Nobody expects evolutionary change at such a pace. Well, maybe the YECs at the Creation Museum who says it happened at an incredible pace (speciation every generation or so) in order to account for the wide variety of life we have since the Flood. The same guys who teach that evolution is the root of all evil, rely on a “superhyperfragilisticmicromacroevolution” when it suits their needs.

[Vigilante]

The predators could be already present and then the mutation arose randomly and was selected for as it proved beneficial.
That's what I've been saying.


And if you want to talk about people making up stories to suit their desires, talk to the evolutionists.



Peace

[Faid]

Yup, they have heard (and refuted) creationist tales so many times, they know them better than the creos themselves.

[Dr.GH]

That's what I've been saying.
And if you want to talk about people making up stories to suit their desires, talk to the evolutionists.


Speculation about the source of a selective pressure is just speculation. The theory of evolution merely predicts that between the unarmored primitive tetrapods, and modern turtles there would have been a partially shelled critter.

We found it.

The creationists deny such a critter could have ever existed. They were wrong again. Evolution was correct again.

This is the typical result.

:highfive:

[Jorge]

But here is the problem with this theory. Predators don't "cause" shells to grow. The shell would have to magically appear randomly right at a good lucky time for it to be useful to keep it alive. Hey howdy hey, what a convenient random mutation at such a convenient random time!

Clearly, Vigilante, you are an ignoramus that doesn't understand the ToE.

That's exactly how it works. Predators 'cause' a need and then the 'magic wand' of evolution
produces the answer. For instance, to get away from predators certain species took to the
air -- voila, evolution gave them wings. To get away from aquatic predators certain species took to the
ground -- voila, evolution gave them lungs. Most predators are dumb brutes that just want a meal --
voila, evolution gave them bigger brains. See how it works? Need --------> answer magically 'evolves'.
Evolution would be totally useless if things didn't magically appear exactly when they're needed, right?

Of course, that doesn't explain the emergence of the biggest predators of all, namely, lawyers,
government and corporate crooks that have screwed us all royally. But that's another subject.

Jorge

[Faid]

Clearly, Vigilante, you are an ignoramus that doesn't understand the ToE.

That's exactly how it works. Predators 'cause' a need and then the 'magic wand' of evolution
produces the answer. For instance, to get away from predators certain species took to the
air -- voila, evolution gave them wings. To get away from aquatic predators certain species took to the
ground -- voila, evolution gave them lungs. Most predators are dumb brutes that just want a meal --
voila, evolution gave them bigger brains. See how it works? Need --------> answer magically 'evolves'.
Evolution would be totally useless if things didn't magically appear exactly when they're needed, right?

Of course, that doesn't explain the emergence of the biggest predators of all, namely, lawyers,
government and corporate crooks that have screwed us all royally. But that's another subject.

JorgeI take back what I said before, jorge. You truly have forgotten more about science than I'll ever know. Not only that, you probably know more about science than I could even dream after a bad LSD trip.

[Jorge]

I take back what I said before, jorge. You truly have forgotten more about science than I'll ever know. Not only that, you probably know more about science than I could even dream after a bad LSD trip.

*****************************************************************************************

I'm delighted to hear that you've finally come to your senses. Go and sin no more. :lmbo:

Jorge

[Faid]

*****************************************************************************************

I'm delighted to hear that you've finally come to your senses. Go and sin no more. :lmbo:

Jorge...But even that immense scientific knowledge of yours fades, I see, compared to your ability to detect sarcasm.

[Jorge]

...But even that immense scientific knowledge of yours fades, I see, compared to your ability to detect sarcasm.

***************************************************************************************

Oh come now, Your Dumbness, do you really believe I didn't "detect the sarcasm" in your post?
If so then you're gone far beyond anything I would have imagined possible. I was merely playing along. :no:

Jorge

[Faid]

***************************************************************************************

Oh come now, Your Dumbness, do you really believe I didn't "detect the sarcasm" in your post?
If so then you're gone far beyond anything I would have imagined possible. I was merely playing along. :no:

JorgeAs was I, Your Dodoness.

*Hint: Now you're supposed to accuse me of copying your jokes, of course- but you must do it in the style of the previous comments; that's how you "play along".

Come on, don't tell me you forgot the rules from your elementary shool verbal brawls? So soon?

[Jorge]

Now you're supposed to accuse me of copying your jokes ...

*******************************************************************************

I do not need to tell you what you already know so well.

You couldn't come up with something original if your life depended on it. Sad ... so sad! :no:

Jorge

[Vigilante]

Speculation about the source of a selective pressure is just speculation. The theory of evolution merely predicts that between the unarmored primitive tetrapods, and modern turtles there would have been a partially shelled critter.
So you're saying evolution now predicts transitionals? I thought EVERY critter was a transitional? If you now need transitionals, you've only got, like, 50 trillion more to find to make evo theories somewhat believable.


We found it.
A creature with a tummy shell was found, everything else you assume about it is speculation. A "just so" story made to sound intelligent and therefore true.


The creationists deny such a critter could have ever existed. They were wrong again. Evolution was correct again.
I don't deny any creature could exist.


This is the typical result.
What is? Some interesting creature is found and the evos run around making up stories about how it's a transitional to some other creature with no proof? Yes, pretty typical.

I suppose if you dug up a fossil of a one armed humanoid, you'd assume it was the transitional to two-armed humanoids. Hey, sounds good and evolutionary though so it must be true!


Peace

[Faid]

*******************************************************************************

I do not need to tell you what you already know so well.

You couldn't come up with something original if your life depended on it. Sad ... so sad! :no:

JorgeDuuuuude... No. You were supposed to say something like "It seems like your acid dreams managed to at least give you my sense of humour- or rather, copy it". And I'd say "Yeah I know, sanity had proved an obstacle in reaching your level of knowledge in that regard". And you'd say...

Oh, forget it. You're no fun.

[Faid]

So you're saying evolution now predicts transitionals? I thought EVERY critter was a transitional? If you now need transitionals, you've only got, like, 50 trillion more to find to make evo theories somewhat believable.The reason "evo theories" will never be believable to creos have nothing to do with the amount of transitionals found. And yes, every "critter" is, in fact, a "transitional"- but the line of transitional extends from the beginning of life to the present, so various transitional forms will be found in the fossil record. That is a prediction of ToE, and a well-fulfilled one, if I may add.



A creature with a tummy shell was found, everything else you assume about it is speculation. A "just so" story made to sound intelligent and therefore true.If I had a cent for every time I heard the phrase "just-so story"... No, ToE is not just "speculation". It is a scientific theory, that explains the diversification of life in a consistent, coherent and well supported way... And its predictions are being validated by observation time and time and time and time and time again.



I don't deny any creature could exist.Of course not: "Common Design" can accomodate for any prediction whatsoever in the fossil record, including its exact opposite. That's why, unlike Common Descent, it's unfalsifiable.



What is? Some interesting creature is found and the evos run around making up stories about how it's a transitional to some other creature with no proof? Yes, pretty typical.Define 'proof'. Because "I do not think it means what you think it means".


I suppose if you dug up a fossil of a one armed humanoid, you'd assume it was the transitional to two-armed humanoids. Hey, sounds good and evolutionary though so it must be true!Ouch. Are you trying to be funny here? It's not working. It just shows that you don't know much about ToE.

[rogue06]

So you're saying evolution now predicts transitionals? I thought EVERY critter was a transitional? If you now need transitionals, you've only got, like, 50 trillion more to find to make evo theories somewhat believable.
Transitionals were predicted by Darwin in his “Origin of Species” (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html) so it certainly isn’t that anyone is “now” predicting them. The first transitional discovered was Archaeopteryx, and it was unearthed a two years after Darwin made that prediction.


A creature with a tummy shell was found, everything else you assume about it is speculation. A "just so" story made to sound intelligent and therefore true.
No. It wasn’t just “a creature” with a tummy shell, it was an early turtle with a tummy shell. YECs have long claimed that a turtle with a partial shell never existed because they were created with complete shells. Unfortunately for them this isn’t the only early primitive turtle that has just been discovered with a partial shell as you can see HERE (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14892-fossil-reveals-how-the-turtle-got-its-shell.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news4_head_dn14892)


I don't deny any creature could exist.
But others have. AiG, for instance, uses the old discarded “What-good-is-half-a-...” argument to mock the idea of a turtle with a partial shell and dismiss the possibility of one ever existing on these grounds.


What is? Some interesting creature is found and the evos run around making up stories about how it's a transitional to some other creature with no proof? Yes, pretty typical.

I suppose if you dug up a fossil of a one armed humanoid, you'd assume it was the transitional to two-armed humanoids. Hey, sounds good and evolutionary though so it must be true!

Peace
No. IIRC, what we had were a few fossilized remains of turtles from the Triassic without shells. Then some fossils from the Late Jurassic of turtles with fully formed shells. Now we have at least two examples from the time between those groups that show turtles caught in the act of evolving shells (i.e., possessing partial shells). It really is that simple.



Now, as to your complaint about the number of transitionals seen in the fossil record at the start of your post... If you’ll humor me here I’m going to re-post something I wrote concerning this on another thread:



Often when it is demonstrated that there are indeed a lot of transitionals in the fossil record, it is followed by the complaint that it is incorrect to state that there are a lot of transitionals because they only represent a small percentage of the total number of fossils found.

The fact of the matter is that this is one of those times that you can say that there are many examples of as well as say that there are few examples of – and be correct. Both are correct. It all depends on the context. To clarify: when someone claims that there are absolutely no transitionals it would be absolutely accurate to say that this is false and that there are many examples. On the flip side, when talking about the number of clear, obvious transitionals compared to the number of different fossil creatures found it would be accurate to say there are few transitionals.

You may have noticed that I specified "clear, obvious transitionals." This is because it may be very easy to miss spotting some transitionals in the fossil record because only the most obvious differences can be seen by examining the hard parts (like shells, teeth and bones), which is usually all we have left to examine. For example, experts are hard pressed to distinguish between a skull from a modern tiger and a skull from a modern lion. While they are both big cats, I think we both can agree that they are very different. And that difference is far more than just appearance. Tigers are solitary hunters preferring to strike from ambush. Lions prefer to belong to a pride which usually go out together and run down prey. The male lion rarely backs away from a conflict, whereas a tiger usually will. Yet, looking at the skulls it takes an expert to tell them apart. IIRC, it is even a bit difficult to distinguish the rest of the body from skeletal remains as well even though tiger are usually stronger in the hind legs and lions usually stronger in the front legs. I imagine it would be even more of a challenge with animals you've never seen alive and the bones of which are often damaged and incomplete. And since most evolution seems to happen in the soft tissues (primarily because there is more of it than hard parts like bone), which are rarely preserved as fossils, it would seem to be highly likely that we've got many, many more transitionals but aren't able to recognize them.

All of this is compounded by a lack of trained paleontologists and taxonomists, for it can take a decade's labor to prepare and analyze the material for just one lineage. Not to mention that the description of fossils has been mostly restricted to professional literature and doesn't get seen by those outside the field (though this is thankfully changing due to the internet). As the fossils that we already have get examined by trained experts we'll surely see many more transitionals emerge from museum back rooms.

[Vigilante]

The reason "evo theories" will never be believable to creos have nothing to do with the amount of transitionals found. And yes, every "critter" is, in fact, a "transitional"- but the line of transitional extends from the beginning of life to the present, so various transitional forms will be found in the fossil record. That is a prediction of ToE, and a well-fulfilled one, if I may add.
Well fulfilled? Riiiiiiiiight.


If I had a cent for every time I heard the phrase "just-so story"... No, ToE is not just "speculation". It is a scientific theory, that explains the diversification of life in a consistent, coherent and well supported way... And its predictions are being validated by observation time and time and time and time and time again.
So somebody "observed" this half-shell critter become a modern turtle? If you say so. In fact, not much of ANY of evo theories have been observed in any meaningful sense. NO so-called "transitional" was ever observed becoming a more modern creature. Like you said, it's a theory that "explains". The problem is, it has little proof and little observation to back it up.


Of course not: "Common Design" can accomodate for any prediction whatsoever in the fossil record, including its exact opposite. That's why, unlike Common Descent, it's unfalsifiable.
Evo is the most unfalsifiable thing I've ever come across. If one just-so story doesn't work, well just make up another one. After all it happened a zillion years ago, nobody can prove it, so whatever story sounds good must be true.


Define 'proof'. Because "I do not think it means what you think it means".
Proof means more than "we made up a story and it fits with evo theories, therefore it must be true."


Peace

[Vigilante]

Transitionals were predicted by Darwin in his “Origin of Species” (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html) so it certainly isn’t that anyone is “now” predicting them. The first transitional discovered was Archaeopteryx, and it was unearthed a two years after Darwin made that prediction.
Archaeopteryx isn't a transitional either. I am not convinced simply because people say so and then agree with themselves.


No. It wasn’t just “a creature” with a tummy shell, it was an early turtle with a tummy shell. YECs have long claimed that a turtle with a partial shell never existed because they were created with complete shells. Unfortunately for them this isn’t the only early primitive turtle that has just been discovered with a partial shell as you can see HERE (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14892-fossil-reveals-how-the-turtle-got-its-shell.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news4_head_dn14892)
This does nothing for me. It's another story made up that sounds good fitting in an evo framework. See, while you just spout "early turtle", I just say, some other animal. I don't just assume it's an "early" anything, I don't call it a transitional, nobody has any proof it "turned" into anything else. It's a creature, it died out, we dug up the fossils.
Even their image is useless, an artist's rendering with two of them being "hypothetical ancestors" to boot. A completely made up image with a made up story to back it up. But as long as it fits the evo framework and they make it sound intelligent, it must be true.


But others have. AiG, for instance, uses the old discarded “What-good-is-half-a-...” argument to mock the idea of a turtle with a partial shell and dismiss the possibility of one ever existing on these grounds.
Go argue with them then.


No. IIRC, what we had were a few fossilized remains of turtles from the Triassic without shells. Then some fossils from the Late Jurassic of turtles with fully formed shells. Now we have at least two examples from the time between those groups that show turtles caught in the act of evolving shells (i.e., possessing partial shells). It really is that simple.
The one-armed man first, then the two armed men. Got it.
We think it came first, therefore it surely must have "turned in to" what we think came later. There couldn't possibly be different animals living at different times, no they must be turning in to each other by the power of evo.

[/QUOTE]Now, as to your complaint about the number of transitionals seen in the fossil record at the start of your post... If you’ll humor me here I’m going to re-post something I wrote concerning this on another thread:[/QUOTE]
Nice but doesn't prove anything.

If somebody were to ask me, "what WOULD be a transitional to you?" I'd have to say, nothing really could be. It's not just because somebody says so. It's not just because it came earlier than some other similar-looking critter. It's not just because it seems to have "half" of what some other critter has. It's not just because it has some of this and some of that feature. It certainly can't be because it was observed or proved in any empirical way. To me there just isn't any way to know something was a transitional. It's a belief, not a fact. It's a belief based on its fitting in the evo framework and jiving with its theories.


Peace

[Cyrus Johnson]

Well fulfilled? Riiiiiiiiight.

BAM! What an argument. I was doubtful after the third 'i', but by the sixth, you had me convinced.


So somebody "observed" this half-shell critter become a modern turtle?

No, nobody observed this half-shelled creature become a moden creature. It lived its whole life as a perfectly happy, fully formed 'half-shell' creature. Individuals do not evolve, populations do. That you seem to not understand this most basic of concepts is unfortunate, but not too surprising.


say so. In fact, not much of ANY of evo theories have been observed in any meaningful sense. NO so-called "transitional" was ever observed becoming a more modern creature.

Same mistake.


Like you said, it's a theory that "explains". The problem is, it has little proof and little observation to back it up.

Of course theories explain. That's what they are, explanations.


Evo is the most unfalsifiable thing I've ever come across. If one just-so story doesn't work, well just make up another one. After all it happened a zillion years ago, nobody can prove it, so whatever story sounds good must be true.

What about the atomic theory of matter? Name one instance of anyone observing electrons orbitting about a nucleus of protons and neutrons.


Proof means more than "we made up a story and it fits with evo theories, therefore it must be true."

No, the theory must be testable. That's the key to any science. And you test it by making predictions of potential observations that flow from your theory, and then going out and making those observations to see if your theory is supported or not. In this case we know of modern forms with top and bottom shells, and we knew of more ancient reptilian forms from which turtles evolved but with no shells (and that explains the teeth), so the theory predicts there should exist forms intermediate between those endmembers. This fossil is a confirmation of that. It's still only a point, and more fossils will flesh out the sequence of events better.


Peace

Knowledge.

[Cyrus Johnson]

If somebody were to ask me, "what WOULD be a transitional to you?" I'd have to say, nothing really could be. It's not just because somebody says so. It's not just because it came earlier than some other similar-looking critter. It's not just because it seems to have "half" of what some other critter has. It's not just because it has some of this and some of that feature. It certainly can't be because it was observed or proved in any empirical way. To me there just isn't any way to know something was a transitional. It's a belief, not a fact. It's a belief based on its fitting in the evo framework and jiving with its theories.


Peace

You are confusing a transitional form with a direct ascendent/descendent relationship.

[Vigilante]

Individuals do not evolve, populations do. That you seem to not understand this most basic of concepts is unfortunate, but not too surprising.
OK, so you observed a "population" of half-shelled turtles become modern turtles. Glad to know it.




Peace

[Vigilante]

You are confusing a transitional form with a direct ascendent/descendent relationship.

Neither are proved in this case. It's guesswork, as most of evo pontifications are.

[Faid]

OK, so you observed a "population" of half-shelled turtles become modern turtles. Glad to know it.




PeaceObservation here does not refer to the actual event occuring, Vigilante. It has to do with the effects of this event, and the methods to detect them. Please read Cyrus' post carfully, he explained it better than I would.

[Faid]

Neither are proved in this case. It's guesswork, as most of evo pontifications are.It's not "proof". Proofs are for math. But it's not guesswork either.


How do you know your father is really your father? Did we "observe" his sperm cell entering the egg cell that would become you? What would we do to determine your relationship?

[Steviepinhead]

It's not just a creature with a funny shell. They know it's related to extant and extinct turtles based on many other unique features.

And, no, just because it was an ocean-going proto-turtle, doesn't mean that it was any kind of "fish."

...

[Cyrus Johnson]

OK, so you observed a "population" of half-shelled turtles become modern turtles. Glad to know it.

Peace

No, that is not what I said.

And you ignored the rest. Has anyone ever observed in any meaningful sense (to use your phrase) electrons orbitting about an atomic nucleus? If not, how can we possibly have any confidence at all in the atomic theory of matter? Isn't that also then just a story?

[Cyrus Johnson]

Observation here does not refer to the actual event occuring, Vigilante. It has to do with the effects of this event, and the methods to detect them. Please read Cyrus' post carfully, he explained it better than I would.

One can explain till the cows come home how observation in science refers to observing the evidence left behind by events, not to the events themselves, but it wil have little effect. I think it was Twain who said you can't make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

[Vigilante]

No, that is not what I said.

And you ignored the rest. Has anyone ever observed in any meaningful sense (to use your phrase) electrons orbitting about an atomic nucleus? If not, how can we possibly have any confidence at all in the atomic theory of matter? Isn't that also then just a story?

Why should I have confidence in the atomic theory of matter? It's a theory. What's your point?

[Vigilante]

One can explain till the cows come home how observation in science refers to observing the evidence left behind by events, not to the events themselves, but it wil have little effect. I think it was Twain who said you can't make a man understand something when his paycheck depends on him not understanding it.

Where is the evidence "left behind" that this one fossil was part of a population of half-shelled turtles that became modern turtles? Or is that guesswork?

Also there is a difference between understanding something, and that something actually being true.
I can understand how aliens might have planted life on this planet, that doesn't make it true. And you can try all you want to make me understand your evolutionary stories, but that doesn't make them true either. Sometimes I think people believe this stuff for no other reason than it sounds complex and makes them feel smart.
Rogue has offered, so far, the only bit of evidence we have, this half-shelled critter seems to have come "before" other modern turtles.
That's nice, Al Gore was also born before the Internet, but that doesn't mean he invented it.

Tell me why I must believe this critter "became" and "evolved" into modern turtles, rather than simply believe it is yet another creature roaming around that died out and had its time.


Peace

[Cyrus Johnson]

Why should I have confidence in the atomic theory of matter? It's a theory. What's your point?

I'm asking you. Do you? If so, why? If not, then little I can say will make a difference.

[rogue06]

Tell me why I must believe this critter "became" and "evolved" into modern turtles, rather than simply believe it is yet another creature roaming around that died out and had its time.


Peace
You don't. It could have been an evolutionary dead-end. But it most definitely shows that turtles did evolve shells.

[Cyrus Johnson]

Where is the evidence "left behind" that this one fossil was part of a population of half-shelled turtles that became modern turtles? Or is that guesswork?

Are you suggesting that this animal was a one-of-a-kind specimen that just happened to be fossilized and found? No, of course it was part of a population. Besides, had you bothered to pay any attention at all you'd know there are several fossils of the same species. The paper itself lists 3 specimens, IVPP V 15639, IVPP V 13240 and IVPP V 15653. Unless you want to say now that there were only ever 3 of them?


Also there is a difference between understanding something, and that something actually being true.

Yes, I know.


I can understand how aliens might have planted life on this planet, that doesn't make it true. And you can try all you want to make me understand your evolutionary stories, but that doesn't make them true either. Sometimes I think people believe this stuff for no other reason than it sounds complex and makes them feel smart.

I cannot "make" you understand anything, nor would I even try. I can however provide information for others who might be interested. What you do with it is your business.


Rogue has offered, so far, the only bit of evidence we have, this half-shelled critter seems to have come "before" other modern turtles.
That's nice, Al Gore was also born before the Internet, but that doesn't mean he invented it.

But that is a prediction of that hypotheses. We can predcit (or hypothesize) that Al Gore must pre-date the invention of the Internet, given our theory that he did. We can test this hypothesis and confirm it. This supports the theory, but of course is not alone sufficient to accept the theory, since other alternative theories are also consitent with this test. That's why we need more tests, like scientific theories need many tests before we accept them. The more tests they pass, the better our confidence is in them.

And not to be too pedantic, but Gore never said he invented the Internet. What he said was that he took the political initiatives that created the Internet. And that is exactly correct, as several of the scientists who did the actual technical work to invent the key componants of the Internet later attested to.


Tell me why I must believe this critter "became" and "evolved" into modern turtles, rather than simply believe it is yet another creature roaming around that died out and had its time.

I'm not asking you to believe anything. You can believe its a fossilized wood nymph for all I care. I'm just underlining where you're mistaken.

[Cyrus Johnson]

You don't. It could have been an evolutionary dead-end. But it most definitely shows that turtles did evolve shells.

Indeed. It could represent not a member of the actual lineage, but a close cousin. That of course does not make it less of a transitional form thereby.

We already knew that turtles evolved shells. After all, they came from reptiles, who didn't have shells. The problem was the oldest fossil turtles we had till now already had modern looking top and bottom shells, or highly derived as the biologists say, so we didn't know if for example the top shell evolved first, then the bottom, or the bottom, then the top, or both together. There was some clues from embryology that suggested the bottom shell evolved first, since that's the first one laid down in the embryonic form. This new discovery lends support to that idea, since this TRANSITIONAL form has a bottom shell and widened ribs, but not a fully developed top shell. It is still possible as you say that this actual species is a cousin and an evolutionary dead end, and that some other similar species is the actual forerunner to the modern turtles. It's even possible that top shells did evolve first, and this species represents some kind of regression from that. Although the evidence we have now suggests that is not the case.

[Vigilante]

You don't. It could have been an evolutionary dead-end. But it most definitely shows that turtles did evolve shells.

It doesn't "definitely" show anything. It's a fossil.
It would be like saying, hey we found a bird with feathers, so therefore it "most definitely" shows that bird feathers evolved. Huh?
They found a critter with half a shell, that doesn't automatically mean the shell evolved. It's a perfectly nice little tummy shell, it says nothing about how it got there.

[Vigilante]

Are you suggesting that this animal was a one-of-a-kind specimen that just happened to be fossilized and found? No, of course it was part of a population. Besides, had you bothered to pay any attention at all you'd know there are several fossils of the same species. The paper itself lists 3 specimens, IVPP V 15639, IVPP V 13240 and IVPP V 15653. Unless you want to say now that there were only ever 3 of them?
You're avoiding the issue. You keep talking about observing things, and I'm saying nobody observed anything about this turtle, or it's population, or where it came from, or where or how or if it evolved, or how it got its shell.


But that is a prediction of that hypotheses.
An extremely weak one. Obviously evo predicts such a time line, that's nothing to write home about, nor helps prove much. After all, supposedly extinct creatures and plants that lived millions of years ago still being found today on occasion.


That's why we need more tests, like scientific theories need many tests before we accept them. The more tests they pass, the better our confidence is in them.
Tests are fine to explain what is going on today and how stuff works right now. But I don't see what "test" will show you this shell evolved and then this population evolved into modern turtles. That doesn't even make sense. There is no test, it's just a fossil.


I'm not asking you to believe anything. You can believe its a fossilized wood nymph for all I care. I'm just underlining where you're mistaken.
Sorry but I'm not mistaken simply because you choose to believe a different story than I do. You can assert your correctness on the matter but that doesn't make you right.


Peace

[Cyrus Johnson]

You're avoiding the issue. You keep talking about observing things, and I'm saying nobody observed anything about this turtle, or it's population, or where it came from, or where or how or if it evolved, or how it got its shell.

No. I'm not avoiding it. You continue to believe in a false view of evolution and science in general. I am under no obligation to accept your false views and to go from there.


An extremely weak one. Obviously evo predicts such a time line, that's nothing to write home about, nor helps prove much. After all, supposedly extinct creatures and plants that lived millions of years ago still being found today on occasion.

Even a "weak" prediction like this is a vast improvement on what Creationism and Intelligent Design have to offer. At least this prediction is testable and puts the theory at risk. And this prediction is not at all "weak". The fossil record could have been strewn about randomly in time, which would have been extreamly damaging to the theory. However, it is not. And supposedly extinct creatures showing up do not falsify evolution, since that theory does not claim we have a complete fossil record. Nor does it claim that when we believe some organism is extinct, that it actually is. IOW, evolution is not the basis for making those claims, so if they turn out to be incorrect, it has nothing to do with evolution.


Tests are fine to explain what is going on today and how stuff works right now. But I don't see what "test" will show you this shell evolved and then this population evolved into modern turtles. That doesn't even make sense. There is no test, it's just a fossil.

No, tests are used to look at the past too. Look at astronomy, where looking at any star is to look into the past. As for fossils, the test is the structure of the fossil itself. How the bones are arranged, their shape, their proportions, That is what we observe. We can test if the structure is such that which we could predict, if evolution were correct.

If you look at the paper you will see that no-one ever says that this population evolved into the modern population we see today. I never say this. Only that it is transitional. It could have been this population. Or it could have been a different population for which we don't have any fossils yet.


Sorry but I'm not mistaken simply because you choose to believe a different story than I do. You can assert your correctness on the matter but that doesn't make you right.

You can choose to believe all you like. Sorry, but you're still mistaken.

And you still haven't answered the question about atomic theory.

Do you accept any scientific theories at all? On what grounds?

[Vigilante]

No. I'm not avoiding it. You continue to believe in a false view of evolution and science in general. I am under no obligation to accept your false views and to go from there.
Maybe I am under no obligation to accept your false views either.


Even a "weak" prediction like this is a vast improvement on what Creationism and Intelligent Design have to offer. At least this prediction is testable and puts the theory at risk.
Evo is not at risk. People who undermine it are ridiculed and academically destroyed, their reputations smeared and their credentials vilified. They have such a stranglehold that I can hardly see how you could label it at "risk" in any meaningful way. No matter WHAT is dug out of the ground, no matter WHAT complaint is levied, the talking heads will invent evolutionary stories to explain it away. Evo is like a worldview, nothing can be explained any more unless it's explained in evolutionary terms.
At this point in time, it is not falsifiable, there is no test for failure or inadequacy. All questions are answered with another invented story and as long as it sounds good, it must be true.
This is what I've seen.
You speak as though evo were still being tried for truth value, but we are far beyond that point. Evo is treated as solid truth no more at risk than the theory of gravity. So label any random fossil a transitional to any other random animal and nobody can stop you, it sounds good and evolutionary, and that is our worldview, our "theory of everything", so therefore it must be true.
Whenever I read these long-winded, academic-sounding, clever articles all about exactly how something happened millions of years ago (based only on a bone or a fossil) I just have to smile. Because the whole article is just a story, but as long as it fits with evolutionary principles, it has to be true. Every question has an evolutionary answer. Where did the idea of marriage come from? Ah well, see, ape women a long time ago were weak and needed protection from being raped and hurt so they traded sexual favors with one male in exchange for protection. Bla bla bla. As long as somebody invents a good evolutionary story that sounds clever, it must be true. And I've heard a lot of the stories. They weave all the way through traditions, sociology, physiology, psychology, religion, health and hygiene, the family. All of it, with a cute evolutionary story to explain it all away.
There is no test. The only test is whether the story comes from a person with an acronym after their name, and that the story is approved by other talking heads, and that it fits the evo framework. That is the only test I've ever seen.
Here we have the same thing, we dig up a creature with a belly-shell, and out of the blue evo stories start pouring out about how it's a transitional and the shell evolved and this creature (or like it) turned in to modern turtles. The stories just come flying out. Nobody can just let the creature be a creature. No it has to fit some evo story to be explained. It had to evolve, it had to become something else. But I don't buy it, not just cause some article made up the story and says so.


No, tests are used to look at the past too. Look at astronomy, where looking at any star is to look into the past.
False analogy. In the case of a star, if that's true, you are looking at the "actual" event. Not a million years old, decrepit, fossilized shadow of an event that is missing all the other pieces to the story.


As for fossils, the test is the structure of the fossil itself. How the bones are arranged, their shape, their proportions, That is what we observe. We can test if the structure is such that which we could predict, if evolution were correct.
So basically, make some predictions after you find things.
Something tells me, evolutionary story-tellers will ALWAYS have a story to explain the findings, no matter what they are. And the "predictions" will always be right.


Or it could have been a different population for which we don't have any fossils yet.
Or this could be one animal, and turtles could be another animal, and the one has nothing to do with the other?


You can choose to believe all you like. Sorry, but you're still mistaken.
Thanks for the tip.


And you still haven't answered the question about atomic theory.
What about it? It's a theory too, but we aren't inventing a "theory of everything" worldview around it, so it just doesn't compare.


Do you accept any scientific theories at all? On what grounds?
On the grounds that any opposition to such theories is not crucified and silenced and vilified. On the grounds that the theory isn't monopolizing freedom of inquiry and is being indoctrinated into children. On the grounds that the theory is always being questioned and ready to be changed or dropped if found inadequate. On the grounds that it is actually verifiable in some way, or observed, or truly tested. On the grounds that it isn't based merely on stories that are made up but sound good according to the theory. On the grounds that the theory doesn't become like a religious world view dogmatically defended with closed ears.

If somebody proposed a different atomic theory, do you think they'd lose their job? Or get their tenure taken away? Be pressured to quit? Be ridiculed and lambasted by the religious priests of the current theory? No I think not. If somebody proposed the idea of letting kids in school learn about alternate theories and showing them the problems with the current theory, that they'd be taken to court? Sued and pressured to leave? If somebody put a note in a textbook explaining that the current atomic theory is just a theory and kids should have an open mind and study diligently, that they'd be taken to court over it? If any mention of any alternate theory immediately gets people guffawing at you and talking about a flat earth or astrology and basically tries to force your view into such ridiculous categories without even so much as a debate, then I take issue.
So do I accept other theories? Sure, I accept the theories, it's interesting, but I don't build a worldview on it. I don't make it my theory of everything. I don't fill the opposition with lead at the mere mention of an alternate idea. I don't try to explain every piece of data on the planet in terms of the theory. I don't treat the theory like a religious doctrine and go on holy war against everybody who thinks otherwise. I don't attempt to take a stranglehold of the question and monopolize education to make sure just MY theory is the only thing kids learn. Where is the open debate? Where is the freedom of inquiry? Where is the ability to question dogmas? Kids are openly ridiculed in school for even suggesting something like creationism. I've heard of professors making it their goal to destroy beliefs of their students and force on them his own secular views.

So ya, do I "believe" evolutionary theory? Sure, many parts. But not all parts. I especially dislike its all-to-quick method of inventing stories to explain data, and such stories becoming the solid truth simply because they fit the theory.

Look, I'm not demanding that this thing did NOT turn into turtles. I'm just questioning the method by which we come to that conclusion, which is, we said so cause it fits evo theories. That's why it evolved into turtles, cause the story sounds good according to the theory. But really, what science is going on there? Where is the test? What is the observation? Where is the repeatable event? Where is the evidence? That's all I'm saying.


Peace

[Faid]

Vigilante, the discovery of the fossil IS the observation. And it is another prediction of ToE confirmed. Sorry you don't like it, but that does not change things.

Sure, you may choose to believe that it is just some animal, that just happens to look like a transitional form in the linage that led to turtles. That it just happens to have all the characteristics found in the specific phlogeny, including a stage in the formation of the shell. And then, you can claim the same for Archaeopteryx. Or Rhodocetus. Or Tiktaalik. You can claim that the entire distinct pattern of common descent, obvious and easily demonstrated by the fossil record, and corroborated by molecular biology and genetics, just appears that way, because... Well, because God wanted to make it look that way.

But please don't pretend that it's the scientific side that's unfalsifiable.

And BTW, noone's "indoctrinating" children with ToE, anymore than thwy're "idoctrinating" them with Physics pr Geology or Astronomy. People like Ken Ham are the only ones doing the indoctrination, when they claim that "if the data is in disagreement with Sripture, the data is wrong" and subtly poison their minds with the idea of a massive atheist conspiracy.

[Vigilante]

Vigilante, the discovery of the fossil IS the observation.
The only "observation" is that some creature existed and we have some kind of faint idea of of what it might have looked like.


And it is another prediction of ToE confirmed.
I don't remember any such prediction.


Sure, you may choose to believe that it is just some animal, that just happens to look like a transitional form in the linage that led to turtles.
Looks are deceiving.


That it just happens to have all the characteristics found in the specific phlogeny, including a stage in the formation of the shell.
It is part of a turtle-like class of creatures, sure.


And then, you can claim the same for Archaeopteryx. Or Rhodocetus. Or Tiktaalik.
Interesting creatures as well.


You can claim that the entire distinct pattern of common descent, obvious and easily demonstrated by the fossil record, and corroborated by molecular biology and genetics, just appears that way, because... Well, because God wanted to make it look that way.
God made different classes of creatures, they "descended" as such in their classes. It's not much different, only I don't say fishes become mammals become reptiles become birds become.........


But please don't pretend that it's the scientific side that's unfalsifiable.
If by "scientific" you mean "consensus" amongst the heads that the stories are true, then yes I do.


And BTW, noone's "indoctrinating" children with ToE, anymore than thwy're "idoctrinating" them with Physics pr Geology or Astronomy. People like Ken Ham are the only ones doing the indoctrination, when they claim that "if the data is in disagreement with Sripture, the data is wrong" and subtly poison their minds with the idea of a massive atheist conspiracy.
There is no conspiracy, cause they do it blatantly out in the open. And yes it is indoctrination, because all opposition is silenced, questioning is forbidden, and open minded, free thought is squelched.
I kinda wonder why it's so darned important for kids to be indoctrinated in evolutionary thinking, as if it actually means something or has any usefulness in life. Why is it SO important to make kids believe they are evolved apes with biology that makes them no more important on earth or worthy of life than a cabbage? People like Dawkins act as though no child on earth should ever be without a firm understanding and belief in evolution. It's just totally religious any more, I don't get it.

Oh well.


Peace

[Cyrus Johnson]

Unfortunately my original response was eaten by my computer, so I'll hit the highlights here.


Evo is not at risk.

All scientific theories are at risk. All are tentative.


People who undermine it are ridiculed and academically destroyed, their reputations smeared and their credentials vilified. They have such a stranglehold that I can hardly see how you could label it at "risk" in any meaningful way. No matter WHAT is dug out of the ground, no matter WHAT complaint is levied, the talking heads will invent evolutionary stories to explain it away. Evo is like a worldview, nothing can be explained any more unless it's explained in evolutionary terms.

It's a scientific theory for the diversity of life. That's how I'm treating it. If people say nonsense things, they will called on it.


At this point in time, it is not falsifiable, there is no test for failure or inadequacy. All questions are answered with another invented story and as long as it sounds good, it must be true.
This is what I've seen.

Look harder. 29+ Evidences (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/) lists many tests, and the confirmation of those tests.


You speak as though evo were still being tried for truth value, but we are far beyond that point. Evo is treated as solid truth no more at risk than the theory of gravity.

Yes, both are at the same risk. But both have a massive amount of evidence behind them, so both are pretty solid. But neither is absolute.


So label any random fossil a transitional to any other random animal and nobody can stop you, it sounds good and evolutionary, and that is our worldview, our "theory of everything", so therefore it must be true.

It's not done randomly. Its done based on primitive and advanced characteristics.


Whenever I read these long-winded, academic-sounding, clever articles all about exactly how something happened millions of years ago (based only on a bone or a fossil) I just have to smile. Because the whole article is just a story, but as long as it fits with evolutionary principles, it has to be true. Every question has an evolutionary answer. Where did the idea of marriage come from? Ah well, see, ape women a long time ago were weak and needed protection from being raped and hurt so they traded sexual favors with one male in exchange for protection. Bla bla bla. As long as somebody invents a good evolutionary story that sounds clever, it must be true. And I've heard a lot of the stories. They weave all the way through traditions, sociology, physiology, psychology, religion, health and hygiene, the family. All of it, with a cute evolutionary story to explain it all away.

Turtle fossils don't tell us much about marriage. I make no claims that they do.


There is no test. The only test is whether the story comes from a person with an acronym after their name, and that the story is approved by other talking heads, and that it fits the evo framework. That is the only test I've ever seen.

See above link for tests.


Here we have the same thing, we dig up a creature with a belly-shell, and out of the blue evo stories start pouring out about how it's a transitional and the shell evolved and this creature (or like it) turned in to modern turtles. The stories just come flying out. Nobody can just let the creature be a creature. No it has to fit some evo story to be explained. It had to evolve, it had to become something else. But I don't buy it, not just cause some article made up the story and says so.

Well Creationists keep demanding transitional fossils. We show them one, and they try to dismiss it. Let me guess, tomorrow they'll be back to demanding where the transitionals are? :smile:


False analogy. In the case of a star, if that's true, you are looking at the "actual" event. Not a million years old, decrepit, fossilized shadow of an event that is missing all the other pieces to the story.

No, you're looking at photons that have travelled for years. You can infer the event from the observation of the evidence. That's exactly what biologists do.


So basically, make some predictions after you find things.
Something tells me, evolutionary story-tellers will ALWAYS have a story to explain the findings, no matter what they are. And the "predictions" will always be right.

See above link for tests.


Or this could be one animal, and turtles could be another animal, and the one has nothing to do with the other?

And evolution explains this diversity. There is no other scientific theory.


What about it? It's a theory too, but we aren't inventing a "theory of everything" worldview around it, so it just doesn't compare.

So it's not the science at all. It's the politicizing you don't like?


On the grounds that any opposition to such theories is not crucified and silenced and vilified. On the grounds that the theory isn't monopolizing freedom of inquiry and is being indoctrinated into children. On the grounds that the theory is always being questioned and ready to be changed or dropped if found inadequate. On the grounds that it is actually verifiable in some way, or observed, or truly tested. On the grounds that it isn't based merely on stories that are made up but sound good according to the theory. On the grounds that the theory doesn't become like a religious world view dogmatically defended with closed ears.

Evolution is tested (see link). And it has been changed in response to actual scientific challenges...see evo-devo, epigenesis, neutral theory, endosymbiosis.


If somebody proposed a different atomic theory, do you think they'd lose their job?

Depends. If their alternative was not a scientific theory at all, but religious apologetic, then maybe.


Or get their tenure taken away?

Who do ytou refer to here?


Be pressured to quit?

You mean like Christine Comer was pressured to quit merely for mentioning a talk by Barbara Forrest?


Be ridiculed and lambasted by the religious priests of the current theory? No I think not. If somebody proposed the idea of letting kids in school learn about alternate theories and showing them the problems with the current theory, that they'd be taken to court? Sued and pressured to leave? If somebody put a note in a textbook explaining that the current atomic theory is just a theory and kids should have an open mind and study diligently, that they'd be taken to court over it? If any mention of any alternate theory immediately gets people guffawing at you and talking about a flat earth or astrology and basically tries to force your view into such ridiculous categories without even so much as a debate, then I take issue.

If there were no alternative theory, and there is not. If the alternatives were instead religious apologetic and non-science they deserved to be criticised and stopped.


So do I accept other theories? Sure, I accept the theories, it's interesting, but I don't build a worldview on it. I don't make it my theory of everything. I don't fill the opposition with lead at the mere mention of an alternate idea. I don't try to explain every piece of data on the planet in terms of the theory. I don't treat the theory like a religious doctrine and go on holy war against everybody who thinks otherwise. I don't attempt to take a stranglehold of the question and monopolize education to make sure just MY theory is the only thing kids learn. Where is the open debate? Where is the freedom of inquiry? Where is the ability to question dogmas? Kids are openly ridiculed in school for even suggesting something like creationism. I've heard of professors making it their goal to destroy beliefs of their students and force on them his own secular views.

Where is the science?

Until you can propose an actual testable sceintific theory, there's nothing to put in the classroom.


So ya, do I "believe" evolutionary theory? Sure, many parts. But not all parts. I especially dislike its all-to-quick method of inventing stories to explain data, and such stories becoming the solid truth simply because they fit the theory.

Look, I'm not demanding that this thing did NOT turn into turtles. I'm just questioning the method by which we come to that conclusion, which is, we said so cause it fits evo theories. That's why it evolved into turtles, cause the story sounds good according to the theory. But really, what science is going on there? Where is the test? What is the observation? Where is the repeatable event? Where is the evidence? That's all I'm saying.


Peace

You're still unfortunately sticking with your errant view of how science works. But for the lurkers, here's how it works in this case.

The test is the transitional nature of the fossil itself (evolution predicts transitional forma), the observation is observing the fossil, and this can be repeated by other researchers. Science is about reproducing observations, not reproducing events. Events leave behind evidence, and the evidence is what is observed repeatably.

[Cyrus Johnson]

If by "scientific" you mean "consensus" amongst the heads that the stories are true, then yes I do.

Consensus arises because something is probably correct. Something is not considered probably correct because there is a consensus.


There is no conspiracy, cause they do it blatantly out in the open. And yes it is indoctrination, because all opposition is silenced, questioning is forbidden, and open minded, free thought is squelched.

Scientific questioning is welcomed. Religious apologetic pretending to be science is not.


I kinda wonder why it's so darned important for kids to be indoctrinated in evolutionary thinking, as if it actually means something or has any usefulness in life.

Because that's the best explanation for the diversity of living things. Whether or not its "useful" is an irrelevant standard. It's useful in explaining the diversity of life.


Why is it SO important to make kids believe they are evolved apes with biology that makes them no more important on earth or worthy of life than a cabbage?

The science only says that apes and humans share a common ancestory. That's what the facts point to. What that 'means' is not a scientific issue. I'm not sure how that's supposed to make life less worthy.


People like Dawkins act as though no child on earth should ever be without a firm understanding and belief in evolution. It's just totally religious any more, I don't get it.

Oh well.


Peace

I don't always agree with Dawkins, but I do agree that evolution is a convincing scientific theory for the diversity of life. In fact, it's the only scientific theory.

[Faid]

The only "observation" is that some creature existed and we have some kind of faint idea of of what it might have looked like.That is the only observation you can come up with: However, a paleontologist will also observe a large number of morphological characteristics, that place that animal well in the turtle lineage. Sorry if you don't like it, but don't pretend scientists are making stuff up.


I don't remember any such prediction.'Remember'? Well, you have to know a few things about ToE first. :)
A prediction of ToE is that intermediate forms in the fossil record should exist. The same goes for turtles.



Looks are deceiving.
Sure. And who does the"deceiving" in this case? God?


It is part of a turtle-like class of creatures, sure.That just happen to form a discinct pattern of temporal lineage. Right?



Interesting creatures as well.And VERY interesting inferences to be made by their characteristics- but all that are just how God wanted to make them, according to you.
So why is God "deceiving" us, Vigilante?



God made different classes of creatures, they "descended" as such in their classes. It's not much different, only I don't say fishes become mammals become reptiles become birds become.........Which "class" is Archaeopteryx? Which "class" is Tiktaalik (or Acanthostega, for that matter)?



If by "scientific" you mean "consensus" amongst the heads that the stories are true, then yes I do. I mean "consensus" based on the overwhelming amount of corroborating and consilient evidence. Which is what we truly have. There is NO conspiracy, Vigilante.



There is no conspiracy, cause they do it blatantly out in the open. And yes it is indoctrination, because all opposition is silenced, questioning is forbidden, and open minded, free thought is squelched.Nonsense. Free thought is what science does. Science thrives through dissent, Vigilante. Scientists LOVE to question authority: It's the way to a Nobel prize. Only problem is, the questioning should be supported with evidence. This is the basic principle of the scientific method: Attempt to explain the physical events and phenomenae around us, by proposing testable theories and gathering evidence for them.
NO scientific theory has ever (and I mean EVER) sought to enforce itself through education and politics fist, bypassing the scientific metohd. And that includes ToE. The only theories that tried to do so were pseudoscientific ones: Say, Stalin's Lysenkoism, or ID. And they tried to do that because they simply couldn't compete in the actual scientific field.

I kinda wonder why it's so darned important for kids to be indoctrinated in evolutionary thinking, as if it actually means something or has any usefulness in life. Why is it SO important to make kids believe they are evolved apes with biology that makes them no more important on earth or worthy of life than a cabbage? People like Dawkins act as though no child on earth should ever be without a firm understanding and belief in evolution. It's just totally religious any more, I don't get it.And here we go with the "usefullness" story again. Why is it important for kids to know they are made of atoms? Will that get them a job? Why is it so crucial for kids to be "indoctrinated" that the sun is powered by nuclear fusion, or that the radius of the Earth is x million miles? Why do they need to know about black holes, the Doppler effect, electromagnetism, Lorentz's equations, the Pythagorean theorem? Gee, I never used any of that in my job!
Sometimes humans try to find out things, Vigilante. And, believe it or not, that's what brought us where we are today.

[Vigilante]

All scientific theories are at risk. All are tentative.
Wouldn't that be nice.


It's a scientific theory for the diversity of life. That's how I'm treating it. If people say nonsense things, they will called on it.
Would be nice to treat it that way, but that's not how it's treated. It's treated as a theory of everything. Not one characteristic of life, existence, the universe, this planet, sociological or psychological phenomenon can be explained without evolutionary language. ALL things must now be explained in evolutionary language.
How did X get here, well let's deconstruct it down to its evolutionary beginnings. And X means absolutely any question under the sun.


Look harder. 29+ Evidences (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/) lists many tests, and the confirmation of those tests.
When I get the time. But I think I've scanned that before.


Well Creationists keep demanding transitional fossils. We show them one, and they try to dismiss it. Let me guess, tomorrow they'll be back to demanding where the transitionals are? :smile:
I mentioned before the difficultly of a valid transitional. I'm not "dismissing" anything, I just see a perfectly complete little creature, that's all. The arbitrary label of transitional is what I question. My house cat may be roughly half the size of a Bobcat or Lynx, and the Lynx maybe be roughly half the size of a Tiger, but I don't then conclude the house cat evolved into a Lynx who evolved into a Tiger. The whole "this critter has half of what this other critter has, therefore the one evolved in to the other" argument doesn't work well for me.
Even if I grant you some transitionals, a few fish, a bird or two, a couple land animals and maybe a reptile, that hardly proves much, really. It would be like "proving" America and all her cities, farms, towns exist because you found a leaf, a blade of grass, a brick, and a tree branch. It hardly seems conclusive, and such evidence is hardly "overwhelming".


No, you're looking at photons that have travelled for years. You can infer the event from the observation of the evidence. That's exactly what biologists do.
The two are nothing alike. You saying a photon travels for years and therefore becomes a minuscule decrepit shadow of the event? When we see a supernova we are only looking at a faint shadow of a blurry event that may or may not really be what we're seeing? When we see a supernova, it's just a theory that it's a supernova because the event is so faint? And what does biology have to do with scratching shapes of bones out of rock?


And evolution explains this diversity. There is no other scientific theory.
Creation. Intelligent Design. Panspermia. I don't know, there are other theories.


So it's not the science at all. It's the politicizing you don't like?
I don't like the stranglehold, I don't like the militant behavior, I don't like the suppression of free inquiry and thought and questioning.


Depends. If their alternative was not a scientific theory at all, but religious apologetic, then maybe.
Why? Who gets to decide that just because something is religious it's automatically false? And besides, it's the evolutionists that are beginning to sound like the religious these days. Utterly dogmatic and close-minded to any questioning.


If there were no alternative theory, and there is not. If the alternatives were instead religious apologetic and non-science they deserved to be criticized and stopped.
Why? Who says? Religions take us back to the very beginning of human history, they probably have more insight into our origins than anybody. Why do you equate "religious" with "non-science"? You do know there is a cult-like movement called Scientism right? Just because people have faith in things or are labeled religious doesn't make them wrong automatically. People hold Darwinism with religious fervor. People hold to Naturalism or materialism with religious zeal. Science itself holds religiously to metaphysical beliefs as part of its definition. Yet you don't automatically dismiss all those things just because they are believed religiously or because the view is dogmatic.
This is the conundrum ID finds itself in. They can't compete in the scientific community NOT because it isn't science or they have no good points or arguments, but because their opponents ignorantly, dogmatically, violently continue to try and associate it with religion so that it can be dismissed without debate or argument. If only we can label ID part of a religious idea, THEN it can just be dismissed because THEN it would obviously be untrue by definition since it's part of religion, and we all know that ideas that are part of religion are false by definition. But no, I don't just say that religion automatically means dismissible and untrue. I don't just declare things religious and therefore should not be given any merit. I don't just equate religious with "non-science" as a way to dismiss alternate ideas. It's called having an open mind.


Until you can propose an actual testable sceintific theory, there's nothing to put in the classroom.
False evolutionary ideas and lies have been foisted on kids over and over again in the classroom. Just look at some older biology books, just look at the clever drawings of fake ape men, look at Haeckel's ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny or what have you. I once heard a biologist who, kind of for fun, went through his own grade school text books and found the majority of it to be wrong.
Simply having a "testable scientific theory" is not enough to earn status of teaching it to kids as truth. Any valid theory that is held by respectable learned men and women should be able to be discussed by students without being berated for it.


The test is the transitional nature of the fossil itself (evolution predicts transitional forma), the observation is observing the fossil, and this can be repeated by other researchers.
But don't you see how lame this is? You didn't say what the test actually is. The "transitional nature of the fossil" isn't a "test", that's the conclusion we're trying to reach. What is the test? How is "observing" the fossil any kind of test OR observation? Observe the fossil doing what? There is nothing to observe, it's shapes in a rock. The only thing we can get by observing that is a rough idea of what it might look like, to give to an artist who will attempt to draw it for us.


Science is about reproducing observations, not reproducing events.
Science is about reproducing events, so the events can be studied and observed. You trying to tell me in laboratories around the world, no scientist repeats events? What do they do, close their eyes while the event happens so they can come back later to "observe" the evidence left after the event occurs? Come now. Science is about observing repeatable events.


Events leave behind evidence, and the evidence is what is observed repeatably.
One can "observe" the evidence until one is blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything. I can observe the flood of water on my floor all day long, heck I can even have 3000 other people observe the flood of water on my floor, but that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out where the water came from. Evidence is what it is, but it does not tell us its own history. Evidence has to be interpreted according to theories. The theory that my toilet overflowed might explain the evidence of the water, or the theory that my tub or my sink or even a hose was left on, are theories that explain the observed evidence. But simply observing evidence does not tell us anything in isolation. Observing evidence is one thing, forming theories that best explain the evidence is another thing, THEN forming repeatable tests (yes, events) to prove the theory is another thing.

So again, what is the "test" that this is a transitional turtle? The "well they look kinda similar" test? The "he came before the other one" test? The "does it jive with the evo framework" test?

I'm not trying to be hostile here, but I'm not so enamored by poetic evolutionary language as to be suckered into believing things based on nothing but clever stories. To say that "observing" the fossil over and over is the "test" that "proves" this is a transitional turtle, is rather pathetic to me.



Peace

[Tiggy]

(lots of Viggy-speak)


You really don't have the faintest clue about the actual Theory of Evolution, do you Vigs? :smile:

- T

[Cyrus Johnson]

Wouldn't that be nice.

It is nice


Would be nice to treat it that way, but that's not how it's treated. It's treated as a theory of everything. Not one characteristic of life, existence, the universe, this planet, sociological or psychological phenomenon can be explained without evolutionary language. ALL things must now be explained in evolutionary language.
How did X get here, well let's deconstruct it down to its evolutionary beginnings. And X means absolutely any question under the sun.

I'm only talking about turtles here.


I mentioned before the difficultly of a valid transitional. I'm not "dismissing" anything, I just see a perfectly complete little creature, that's all. The arbitrary label of transitional is what I question. My house cat may be roughly half the size of a Bobcat or Lynx, and the Lynx maybe be roughly half the size of a Tiger, but I don't then conclude the house cat evolved into a Lynx who evolved into a Tiger. The whole "this critter has half of what this other critter has, therefore the one evolved in to the other" argument doesn't work well for me.
Even if I grant you some transitionals, a few fish, a bird or two, a couple land animals and maybe a reptile, that hardly proves much, really. It would be like "proving" America and all her cities, farms, towns exist because you found a leaf, a blade of grass, a brick, and a tree branch. It hardly seems conclusive, and such evidence is hardly "overwhelming".

If evolution were true, we would expect transitional forms. It's really that simple. That these forms exist confirm the theory. But of course that is not the only confirmational evidence.


The two are nothing alike. You saying a photon travels for years and therefore becomes a minuscule decrepit shadow of the event? When we see a supernova we are only looking at a faint shadow of a blurry event that may or may not really be what we're seeing? When we see a supernova, it's just a theory that it's a supernova because the event is so faint? And what does biology have to do with scratching shapes of bones out of rock?

No, I'm saying the photon is a result of the event, an event which happened in the past, sometimes in the distant past. Events leave behind evidence and we can infer past events based on that evidence. Its a straightforward concept. We can recognize when a forest has burned down without seeing the fire itself, and without setting another forest ablaze to "reproduce" it. We can know that Pluto orbits the Sun, even if that event hasn't even happened since the discovery of that Planetoid.


Creation. Intelligent Design. Panspermia. I don't know, there are other theories.

With the possible exception of the last, those are not theories.


I don't like the stranglehold, I don't like the militant behavior, I don't like the suppression of free inquiry and thought and questioning.

There is no suppression. Free think away. But don't expect any willy-nilly ideas whatsoever to be treated as valid scientific notions just because you want them to be.


Why? Who gets to decide that just because something is religious it's automatically false?

I'm not saying its false, I'm saying it isn';t science.


And besides, it's the evolutionists that are beginning to sound like the religious these days. Utterly dogmatic and close-minded to any questioning

Except to those things like I already listed..


Why? Who says? Religions take us back to the very beginning of human history, they probably have more insight into our origins than anybody. Why do you equate "religious" with "non-science"?

Because they aren't. It's like asking why equate being a circle with not being a square. Because it isn't.


You do know there is a cult-like movement called Scientism right? Just because people have faith in things or are labeled religious doesn't make them wrong automatically. People hold Darwinism with religious fervor

I hold it with the same fervor I hold the atomic theory of matter, the theory of relativity, and the germ theory of disease. Are all those religions too?


People hold to Naturalism or materialism with religious zeal. Science itself holds religiously to metaphysical beliefs as part of its definition. Yet you don't automatically dismiss all those things just because they are believed religiously or because the view is dogmatic.
This is the conundrum ID finds itself in. They can't compete in the scientific community NOT because it isn't science or they have no good points or arguments, but because their opponents ignorantly, dogmatically, violently continue to try and associate it with religion so that it can be dismissed without debate or argument.

There is no difference between ID arguments and Creationist arguments. ID is nothing more than a subset of Creationist arguments repackaged with a new label. There is no science. There is no theory. No tests have been done. ID has given us absolutely nothing, it has not advanced our understanding of nature one iota. It has certainly not given us things you might call "useful".


If only we can label ID part of a religious idea, THEN it can just be dismissed because THEN it would obviously be untrue by definition since it's part of religion, and we all know that ideas that are part of religion are false by definition.

It is religious not because I say so, but because the ID advocates themselves say so. Did you not see the Dover ruling?


But no, I don't just say that religion automatically means dismissible and untrue. I don't just declare things religious and therefore should not be given any merit. I don't just equate religious with "non-science" as a way to dismiss alternate ideas. It's called having an open mind.

Religion means not science. It doesn't mean, not true.


False evolutionary ideas and lies have been foisted on kids over and over again in the classroom. Just look at some older biology books, just look at the clever drawings of fake ape men, look at Haeckel's ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny or what have you.

An idea rejected by evolutionists themselves.


I once heard a biologist who, kind of for fun, went through his own grade school text books and found the majority of it to be wrong.

Go through any grade-school science textbook and you'll probably find much the same thing. They are generally not written by professional scientists.


Simply having a "testable scientific theory" is not enough to earn status of teaching it to kids as truth. Any valid theory that is held by respectable learned men and women should be able to be discussed by students without being berated for it.

No, you need to also test it. And it needs to pass the tests. And what if I as a student were to say that hydrogen has 6 protons and I'm marked wrong. So I say it again and again...at which point should my teacher agree that hydrogen does have 6 protons? After all, isn't it just like a religion to insist it has 1, and isn't he just berating me if I keep on insisting it has 6 and he keeps saying no? Where is my freedom?


But don't you see how lame this is? You didn't say what the test actually is. The "transitional nature of the fossil" isn't a "test", that's the conclusion we're trying to reach. What is the test? How is "observing" the fossil any kind of test OR observation? Observe the fossil doing what? There is nothing to observe, it's shapes in a rock. The only thing we can get by observing that is a rough idea of what it might look like, to give to an artist who will attempt to draw it for us.

Then titrations are just colors in liquids so there no way you can titrate acids with bases and learn anything about chemistry. Thew only thing lame is your understanding of the scientific method.


Science is about reproducing events, so the events can be studied and observed. You trying to tell me in laboratories around the world, no scientist repeats events? What do they do, close their eyes while the event happens so they can come back later to "observe" the evidence left after the event occurs? Come now. Science is about observing repeatable events.

No, science isn't about reproducing events. It's about reproducing observations. Some things can be manipulated by scientists, but many cannot. That does not preclude their study. Geologists cannot reproduce mountains building or eroding, astronomers can't make stars explode, oceanographers can't replicate the Gulf Stream in their lab.


One can "observe" the evidence until one is blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything. I can observe the flood of water on my floor all day long, heck I can even have 3000 other people observe the flood of water on my floor, but that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out where the water came from. Evidence is what it is, but it does not tell us its own history. Evidence has to be interpreted according to theories.

Yes! That's the best thing you said in a while. Of course evidence needs to be interpreted according to a theory. That's what I've been saying all along.


The theory that my toilet overflowed might explain the evidence of the water, or the theory that my tub or my sink or even a hose was left on, are theories that explain the observed evidence. But simply observing evidence does not tell us anything in isolation. Observing evidence is one thing, forming theories that best explain the evidence is another thing, THEN forming repeatable tests (yes, events) to prove the theory is another thing.

But you made predictions, or hypothesis, that it might be your toilet, and then you can go observe your toilet to see if it indeed is overflowing. I can replicate that same observational test.


So again, what is the "test" that this is a transitional turtle? The "well they look kinda similar" test? The "he came before the other one" test? The "does it jive with the evo framework" test?

I'm not trying to be hostile here, but I'm not so enamored by poetic evolutionary language as to be suckered into believing things based on nothing but clever stories. To say that "observing" the fossil over and over is the "test" that "proves" this is a transitional turtle, is rather pathetic to me.

Peace

You keep repeating the same nonsense over and over.

[Dave G]

One can "observe" the evidence until one is blue in the face, but it doesn't mean anything. I can observe the flood of water on my floor all day long, heck I can even have 3000 other people observe the flood of water on my floor, but that doesn't get us any closer to figuring out where the water came from. Evidence is what it is, but it does not tell us its own history. Evidence has to be interpreted according to theories. The theory that my toilet overflowed might explain the evidence of the water, or the theory that my tub or my sink or even a hose was left on, are theories that explain the observed evidence. But simply observing evidence does not tell us anything in isolation. Observing evidence is one thing, forming theories that best explain the evidence is another thing, THEN forming repeatable tests (yes, events) to prove the theory is another thing.

So again, what is the "test" that this is a transitional turtle? The "well they look kinda similar" test? The "he came before the other one" test? The "does it jive with the evo framework" test?

I'm not trying to be hostile here, but I'm not so enamored by poetic evolutionary language as to be suckered into believing things based on nothing but clever stories. To say that "observing" the fossil over and over is the "test" that "proves" this is a transitional turtle, is rather pathetic to me.



Peace
Woops, Vig. How do you ascertain the resurrection, then?

[oxmixmudd]

The two are nothing alike. You saying a photon travels for years and therefore becomes a minuscule decrepit shadow of the event? When we see a supernova we are only looking at a faint shadow of a blurry event that may or may not really be what we're seeing? When we see a supernova, it's just a theory that it's a supernova because the event is so faint? And what does biology have to do with scratching shapes of bones out of rock?

Actually, Vig, it is an excellent example. Those photons from the supernova event is not the event itself, they are something produced by the event which we can examine today and from which we can infer the event itself. They contain a great deal of information about the event itself, but all reconstructions of the actual event created from observation of the photons are based on the application of known physical laws to the measured state of the photons. Those photons have basically one and only one potential source for their current configuration. Those photons contain information about the timing of the event, it's strengh, the chemical composition of the star etc etc - but only by applying the known current physcial properties to the analysis of those photons are we able to extract that information.

This is just like digging up fossils. The fossil is not the animal, it is what is left when an animal dies and is preserved in a certain way. But it contains a great deal of information about what the animal was, for only a very limited range of animals can leave behind what the fossil is. The rocks it is in contain relative and absolute timing information about when the animal lived. And its form tells us a good deal about what said animal looked like when it was on the Earth.

The issue of transitionals you continue to seriously misunderstand. Although I am sure many have tried to set you straight, I'll give it another go myself. A transitional will never, ever, ever, be some half functional animal. It will be a functional animal perfectly capable of survival within its environment, but it will have (at least) two defining characteristics:

1) It will be morphologically between at least two other species of animal also preserved in the fossil record (or perhaps currently living today)

2) It will be positioned temporally between the known time of existence of the above two species.

Now, this is what ToE predicts, and this is what we find - often.

They are called transitionals because the meet the above criteria (and more), not because someone can prove species A directly evolved to B which directly evolved to C. And they especially are not transitionals because they are some failed halfling that couldn't survive 10 minutes on the face of the Earth.

They are evidence of evolution because that is what evolution predicts. This is how theories are confirmed. The theory explains some evidence, makes predictions about other evidence, and then those predictions are confirmed or falsified. ToE predicts animals meeting the above criteria will have existed and some very small percentage of them will have left behind fossil evidence for their existence.

ToE also makes other predictions, especially in the area of genetics. And that is where additional and HUGE prediction/confirmation cycles are seen.

For the most part, the predictions of ToE have been and are being continually confirmed, over and over again. And as with any theory, where the predictions fail in some small way, the theory is refined. And if it ever failed in some major way, it would be discarded and a new theory sought.

So try to wrap your mind around what it going on here, and then construct your arguments for or against in an informed way from what is actually going on, and not some ignorant strawman understanding.


Jim

[Vigilante]

Much of this conversation is now useless bantering and I really don't feel like carrying on bantering with 5 people at once, so I'm going to try and shorten this to as few points as possible.


If evolution were true, we would expect transitional forms.
And then the evolutionists say every creature and fossil is a transitional.
Some prediction.
"We predict there will be transitional fossils."
-"What are transitional fossils?"
"Well ALL fossils are transitional fossils."
Ahhh, makes sense.


With the possible exception of the last, those are not theories.
Yes they are. Creatures evolved, maybe; creatures created, maybe. End of story.


I'm not saying its false, I'm saying it isn';t science.
No, what you're saying is, "as long as it fits with materialistic, evolutionary thinking, it's science".


There is no difference between ID arguments and Creationist arguments. ID is nothing more than a subset of Creationist arguments repackaged with a new label.
I rest my case. ID, uh, oh ID is just creationism, and, uh, creationism is in the Bible, so, uh, it's religious, and so, uh, all religious things are false by definition. So therefore nobody has to think about ID or talk about it or debate it or argue, cause you know, it's religious, so false, and we can dismiss it now.
Yes, very scientific way of dealing with questions and theories that go against pop science.
ID is not religious, but it does support some religious beliefs. So now instead of saying anything religious is false automatically, now we have to say that everything which seems to lend support to religious ideas is ALSO false by definition.
If it's religious, it's false; if it even supports a religious idea, it's also false. Nice tactic.


Religion means not science. It doesn't mean, not true.
So a religion couldn't say anything scientifically true even if they tried. Very nice.


And what if I as a student were to say that hydrogen has 6 protons and I'm marked wrong. So I say it again and again...at which point should my teacher agree that hydrogen does have 6 protons?
When you back up your theory with some kind of data to support it.


Then titrations are just colors in liquids so there no way you can titrate acids with bases and learn anything about chemistry. Thew only thing lame is your understanding of the scientific method.
What the crap are you talking about? I think you are the one confused about the scientific method here.


No, science isn't about reproducing events.
Yes it is. You reproduce an event to see if the event creates the same type of result (or evidence), that you observe about something else. It's not rocket science ;)
Often the event is on a smaller scale, or even within a hypothetical computer model or hidden in a mathematical formula. Nevertheless, we reproduce the type of event we theorized, in order to see if our event creates the same type of evidence we observed in the field.


It's about reproducing observations.
In other words, events that you then observe the results of. Producing observations doesn't even make sense, you don't reproduce observations. You reproduce events that create something that can be observed over and over. You change the variables in the experiment in order to create different events and observe different outcomes to see what matches what is observed in the field.


Geologists cannot reproduce mountains building or eroding, astronomers can't make stars explode, oceanographers can't replicate the Gulf Stream in their lab.
But they can build models, input different variables, try to find the variables that create the same evidence observed in the field.


But you made predictions, or hypothesis, that it might be your toilet, and then you can go observe your toilet to see if it indeed is overflowing. I can replicate that same observational test.
Not if the event happened in the past and is not still current. Then I'd have to run tests or build models to see which theory is more likely. I can run my hose, and observe that the water actually runs away from where the flood was, and rule out that theory. I can test the sink and tub, and notice they have alternate drains that prevent them from overflowing, and rule those out. And I can see that if my toilet clogged, the water would overflow with no other escape, and that would be the most likely theory.
This is not concluded by walking in the room and "observing" the water on the floor over and over. It's concluded by running experiments and models of actual events in my theory to see if they pan out to create the same type of outcome.


You keep repeating the same nonsense over and over.
And you continue to not provide any answer to the question. What TEST proves this creature evolved into modern turtles? What test PROVES this creature "evolved" some tummy armor that later became the top and bottom shells of turtles? And don't tell me it's proved by continually "observing" the fossil, that doesn't even mean anything. The fossil doesn't tell us where it got its shell, it certainly does not tell us that its population, in the FUTURE, eventually became other types of turtles and shells. This is not a test or an observation, it's not even objective. It's just the theory.
So mr. scientific method, what repeatable test, event, model, observation shows that?
Well, you see, some peppered moths died because they were the wrong color, so only dark moths survived, hence, this half-shelled creature became a modern turtle. Sorry, no good.
Well, you see, some bees evolved an immunity to poisons and so they survived and soon the whole colony was immune, so you see, this critter obviously evolved its shell and became a turtle later.
I might as well run tests on my bicycle for the purpose of learning how a Corvette will perform. It would be about the same difference.
This creature didn't evolve its tummy shell because somebody ran a test to prove it, it evolved its tummy shell because that's what the evolutionary theory SAYS it did. And since science=evolution, it must be true. We can't argue with it, because if we do, we're just not scientific people then.

Oh well.



Peace

[Vigilante]

Woops, Vig. How do you ascertain the resurrection, then?

I believe the testimony in the recorded history of the event, and find support in the lives and testimonies of those who lived and died for it at the time.
Also I see the real power of God in the changed lives of those around me, that the promises of Jesus are true. I see the historical evidence and believe the resurrection "theory" to be the best answer to the data. And I see its truth in my own life.


Peace

[Vigilante]

Actually, Vig, it is an excellent example. Those photons from the supernova event is not the event itself, they are something produced by the event which we can examine today and from which we can infer the event itself. They contain a great deal of information about the event itself, but all reconstructions of the actual event created from observation of the photons are based on the application of known physical laws to the measured state of the photons. Those photons have basically one and only one potential source for their current configuration. Those photons contain information about the timing of the event, it's strengh, the chemical composition of the star etc etc - but only by applying the known current physcial properties to the analysis of those photons are we able to extract that information.
You are getting very pedantic and overly semantically here. Everything we see is photons bouncing around. You only see your wife because of how she reflects photons back in your eyes. So yes, the photons from stars contain the same info photons in your house do. You see it, and it looks like something is happening.


This is just like digging up fossils.
Sorry but I think the two are nothing alike.
Watching the stars is kind of like watching a movie (perhaps at poor quality) of an event recorded on the video decades earlier. Even if it's poor quality, it's still the movie. Digging up fossils would be more like finding some bone fragments of two of the actors and then trying to put together the whole movie from the bones.


A transitional will never, ever, ever, be some half functional animal. It will be a functional animal perfectly capable of survival within its environment...
So basically, fully functioning morphological "equipment" just mutates out of nowhere. Like here you are, but then your child is born with giant wings and hollow bones and takes off in flight at 13 years old to live in a tree and build a nest. Just like that. No "half-way" points, no "almost done with it" mutating. That's pretty convenient really. Some creature under water is suddenly born with the pipes that breath above water cause out of the blue his gills no longer work, instead he breaths open air and crawls out on land just like that.
Why would there NOT be half-way, useless features? Why would their NOT be halflings with partially mutated somethings growing on them which don't seem to have a purpose? THAT is a prediction I think ToE would make. But of course they don't make that prediction, because that's not what they find. They only predict things they find, which is pretty clever.


So try to wrap your mind around what it going on here, and then construct your arguments for or against in an informed way from what is actually going on, and not some ignorant strawman understanding.
Sorry Jim, no can do. Your criteria is basically "we date it to before another creature" and "this one kinda looks like the other".
Color me unimpressed with that "prediction". But I understand it must be a biggie for the evolutionists. That's OK.


Peace

[Tickle Me Mercury]

So basically, fully functioning morphological "equipment" just mutates out of nowhere. Like here you are, but then your child is born with giant wings and hollow bones and takes off in flight at 13 years old to live in a tree and build a nest. Just like that. No "half-way" points, no "almost done with it" mutating. That's pretty convenient really. Some creature under water is suddenly born with the pipes that breath above water cause out of the blue his gills no longer work, instead he breaths open air and crawls out on land just like that.

I'm not sure where this comes from. The only time I've ever seen predictions like this is on the lips of creationists who feel that they can intuitively dismiss a theory that has undergone the same crucible of peer review that every other functional theory has with a hand wave. Such predictions certainly don't exist in any current working evolutionary model.


Why would there NOT be half-way, useless features? Why would their NOT be halflings with partially mutated somethings growing on them which don't seem to have a purpose? THAT is a prediction I think ToE would make. But of course they don't make that prediction, because that's not what they find.

That depends on how you define "half-way" or "half-useless." Both of which are misinformed descriptions of the features of any creature within the evolutionary paradigm.

"Half-way" indicates that there is a "full-way" goal that previously exists. As though a turtle precursor was distinctly "on it's way" to becoming a modern turtle. It wasn't, and though we often use such language in relaxed conversation regarding fossils, none of them were "on their way" to becoming anything else. Features were adaptations which allowed the animal to survive (or not!) in it's current environment and whether or not they were to become the features we see today depended entirely on the environmental pressures the populations faced.

"Half-useless" makes less sense. To what use? The only use any feature truly has is to allow the animal to survive long enough to procreate. Any features we observe in the fossil record might seem "half-done" if we view them in the light of their modern contemporaries, but at the time, they were complete creatures.


They only predict things they find, which is pretty clever.


So, are you accusing the majority of the scientific community of blatant fraud?

[Faid]

Much of this conversation is now useless bantering and I really don't feel like carrying on bantering with 5 people at once, so I'm going to try and shorten this to as few points as possible.hopefully that does not mean "respond with handwaving content-free one-liners". Anyway, I won't do so.



And then the evolutionists say every creature and fossil is a transitional.
Some prediction.
"We predict there will be transitional fossils."
-"What are transitional fossils?"
"Well ALL fossils are transitional fossils."
Ahhh, makes sense.Ugh. No.
ToE predicts transitional fossils indeed. And all fossils so far confirm this: They are all transitional in the formation of a specific pattern: Common Descent.
That does not mean you couldn't have fossils that do not fin in that pattern. In fact, the scientific nature of the theory demands that such a discovery should be possible: Rabbits in the precambrian. Mammals with feathers. Echinoderms with a uterus. All these would falsify common descent, if they were found- but none has found any so far.
That does not make Common Descent unfalsifiable; it simply makes it true.


Yes they are. Creatures evolved, maybe; creatures created, maybe. End of story.Except all evidence makes creatures appear like they evolved. Either that, or a Deceiving God made it look that way.



No, what you're saying is, "as long as it fits with materialistic, evolutionary thinking, it's science". No. Perhaps that is easier for you to think, but that is not what science says. Science follows the evidence where it leads; sorry if it leads where you don't want to be.



I rest my case. ID, uh, oh ID is just creationism, and, uh, creationism is in the Bible, so, uh, it's religious, and so, uh, all religious things are false by definition. So therefore nobody has to think about ID or talk about it or debate it or argue, cause you know, it's religious, so false, and we can dismiss it now.No, religious things are not 'false' by definition: they are unscientific by definition, because they do not follow the scientific method- they do not try to find the naturalistic causes of all the phenomena around us. And if you think we shouldn't be doing that, think what feeds, clothes and keeps you warm, what keeps darkness away at night, what gets you from one place to the other, what helps you communicate in the method you are communicating now. How do you think it was discovered?


ID is not religious, but it does support some religious beliefs. So now instead of saying anything religious is false automatically, now we have to say that everything which seems to lend support to religious ideas is ALSO false by definition.
If it's religious, it's false; if it even supports a religious idea, it's also false. Nice tactic.Noone is saying that, all we are saying is that failure to follow the scientific method cannot lead to any productive research and increase our knowledge of the world. That has been thoroughly proved by the fruits of the scientific method so far.



So a religion couldn't say anything scientifically true even if they tried. Very nice.No. A religion can say something science agrees with, we simply can't rely on what it says, and accept it as the Truth(TM).



When you back up your theory with some kind of data to support it.Like the TONS of data ToE has, you mean?



What the crap are you talking about? I think you are the one confused about the scientific method here.No, Vigilante. You are. Sorry. The scientific method, by definition, excludes supernatural explanations, not because they are wrong, but because they are without merit. Saying "lightning is caused by Thor", or "Neptune causes earthquakes with his Trident" cannot lead to any useful research, or help us increase our knowledge. Same for ID.



Yes it is. You reproduce an event to see if the event creates the same type of result (or evidence), that you observe about something else. It's not rocket science ;)Once again, you do not reproduce the event. Some events are unique: Galaxies colliding, stars forming, nuclear fusion inside the sun, Earthquakes happen, hurricanes form, asteroids fall, children are born, diseases spread, Colonel Mustard does it in the conservatory with the candlestick.
All these events are not themselves repeatable by us: but we can (and do) observe the effects those events have, and the observations we make constitute our basis for scientific inquiry.

Often the event is on a smaller scale, or even within a hypothetical computer model or hidden in a mathematical formula. Nevertheless, we reproduce the type of event we theorized, in order to see if our event creates the same type of evidence we observed in the field.Do we reproduce the situation in the heart of the sun? Can we even observe it? How about a supernova? How about the Barringer crater? Or the Tunguska event? How about the death of JFK, or Diana?



Producing observations doesn't even make sense, you don't reproduce observations. You reproduce events that create something that can be observed over and over. When I unearth a roman coin in a British field? Which event do I reproduce? The soldier or merchant that hid it or lost it? When I measure the perihelion of Mercury, do I reproduce the planet's orbit?



You change the variables in the experiment in order to create different events and observe different outcomes to see what matches what is observed in the field.You said it yourself- "what is observed in the field" That can take many forms: From measuring the actual number of neutrinos that fall on the surface, to measuring the intensity of solar flares from 1998 to 2005, to examining a burned building for signs of arson, to digging up a fossil. The observations happen in the present, Vigilante, regardless of the time the causal event occured.



But they can build models, input different variables, try to find the variables that create the same evidence observed in the field.And the same goes for ToE, believe it or not. Biologists build models, run them, and see if the results match the observations we make in the biosphere today, as well as in the fossil record.



Not if the event happened in the past and is not still current. Then I'd have to run tests or build models to see which theory is more likely. I can run my hose, and observe that the water actually runs away from where the flood was, and rule out that theory. I can test the sink and tub, and notice they have alternate drains that prevent them from overflowing, and rule those out. And I can see that if my toilet clogged, the water would overflow with no other escape, and that would be the most likely theory.
This is not concluded by walking in the room and "observing" the water on the floor over and over. It's concluded by running experiments and models of actual events in my theory to see if they pan out to create the same type of outcome.Again, the same goes for ToE. Imagine a plumber that does not just "observe the water on the floor": They observe the pipes, the walls, the hydraulic plans if they have them, the pattern of the leak, the way it soaks the walls, and they can point to the leakage in the plumbing without having to actually see it through the wall. You can do it; You just have to be a good plumber. :)



And you continue to not provide any answer to the question. What TEST proves this creature evolved into modern turtles? What test PROVES this creature "evolved" some tummy armor that later became the top and bottom shells of turtles? And don't tell me it's proved by continually "observing" the fossil, that doesn't even mean anything. The fossil doesn't tell us where it got its shell, it certainly does not tell us that its population, in the FUTURE, eventually became other types of turtles and shells. This is not a test or an observation, it's not even objective. It's just the theory.
So mr. scientific method, what repeatable test, event, model, observation shows that?Vigilante, essentially a "test" is an observation. It refers to discovering and evaluating data and make inferences from them. Think of another 'test': DNA testing for paternity. Now what does this test do? Does it "repeat the event" of A giving birth to B?
Of course not. It is, essentially, an observation: A detection of a specific pattern. Is it not scientific because of that, is it not valid? I think courts around the world would disagree.
It is the same with all kinds of sciences. Measuring the perihelion shift of Mercury is an observation; it is also an excellent test for Einstein's ToR. Using an MRI to look for an arrowhead inside a mummified early bronze-age hunter is an observation; It is also a test for the theory of the reasons of his death. Digging up, reconstructing and examining a fossil (or getting it through a CT scan, or using radiometric dating on rocks near it to set some boundaries for its age) is a test, in the same way: a test to see if the theory of common descent matches the observations.
And all those tests have been successful so far.


Well, you see, some peppered moths died because they were the wrong color, so only dark moths survived, hence, this half-shelled creature became a modern turtle. Sorry, no good.
Well, you see, some bees evolved an immunity to poisons and so they survived and soon the whole colony was immune, so you see, this critter obviously evolved its shell and became a turtle later.
I might as well run tests on my bicycle for the purpose of learning how a Corvette will perform. It would be about the same difference.Actually, understanding how a bicycle prforms is, in some very basic ways, essential in understanding how a corvette will perform. You may laugh, but it would be no laughing matter, if you tried to drive a Corvette and took the outside of a curve at 65mph... Whoops! Should have asked a biker. :)
You see, what those examples you mentioned (and many more) do, is help us understand the rules that are in effect here. Understanding those rules help us, in turn, to make predictions about the behavior of analogous systemd, in larger scales.

This creature didn't evolve its tummy shell because somebody ran a test to prove it, it evolved its tummy shell because that's what the evolutionary theory SAYS it did. And since science=evolution, it must be true. We can't argue with it, because if we do, we're just not scientific people then.It evolved its tummy shell because it is consistent with the amazing amount of corroborating and consilient evidence from dofferent scientific diciplines, that all point to the validity of ToE. It's that simple.

Please try to think beyond what you want and don't want to be true, and understand our point.

[Cyrus Johnson]

Much of this conversation is now useless bantering and I really don't feel like carrying on bantering with 5 people at once, so I'm going to try and shorten this to as few points as possible.

I'm getting rather bored myself.


And then the evolutionists say every creature and fossil is a transitional.
Some prediction.
"We predict there will be transitional fossils."
-"What are transitional fossils?"
"Well ALL fossils are transitional fossils."
Ahhh, makes sense.

We explained several times what transitional forms are. You still cling to your errors.


Yes they are. Creatures evolved, maybe; creatures created, maybe. End of story.

No they aren't. Since you disagree, please tell us the scientific theory of Creationism or the scientific theory of ID. Jeeze man, even ID advocates admit they don't have a scientific theory.


No, what you're saying is, "as long as it fits with materialistic, evolutionary thinking, it's science".
'
No, I'm not.


I rest my case. ID, uh, oh ID is just creationism, and, uh, creationism is in the Bible, so, uh, it's religious, and so, uh, all religious things are false by definition. So therefore nobody has to think about ID or talk about it or debate it or argue, cause you know, it's religious, so false, and we can dismiss it now.

:lol: Yeah, that's what I said. And people have considered it. I love how ID advocates pretend nobody has ever even considered their ideas.


Yes, very scientific way of dealing with questions and theories that go against pop science.
ID is not religious, but it does support some religious beliefs. So now instead of saying anything religious is false automatically, now we have to say that everything which seems to lend support to religious ideas is ALSO false by definition.
If it's religious, it's false; if it even supports a religious idea, it's also false. Nice tactic.

I see it doesn't matter what I actually say.


When you back up your theory with some kind of data to support it.

Oh, so now suddenly the data is important? What happened to freedom? Are you saying if the data doesn't support some theory (or something that calls itself a theory), its OK to reject it?


What the crap are you talking about? I think you are the one confused about the scientific method here.

I was merely doing the same sort of nonsense handwaving you were doing.

The rest was handled by Faid, so I shant bother.

[Cyrus Johnson]

John Pieret (http://dododreams.blogspot.com/) writes an interesting post entitled Practical Science. He quotes from Richard Hofstadter's book Anti-intellectualism in America, written back in the mid 60's. Even then, Hofstadter had insights that resonate right here today in this thread.

The case against intellect is founded upon a set of fictional and wholly abstract antagonisms. Intellect is pitted against feeling, on the ground that it is somehow inconsistent with warm emotion. It is pitted against character, because it is widely believed that intellect stands for mere cleverness, which transmutes easily into the sly or the diabolical. It is pitted against practicality, since theory is held to be opposed to practice, and the purely" theoretical mind is so much disesteemed. It is pitted against democracy, since intellect is felt to be a form of distinction that defies egalitarianism. Once the validity of these antagonisms is accepted, then the case for intellect, and by extension for the intellectual, is lost. Who cares to risk sacrificing warmth of emotion, solidity of character, practical capacity, or democratic sentiment in order to pay deference to a type of man who at best is deemed to be merely clever and at worst may even be dangerous?

Sound familiar? He could have been reading directly Vigilante's posts.

[oxmixmudd]

You are getting very pedantic and overly semantically here. Everything we see is photons bouncing around. You only see your wife because of how she reflects photons back in your eyes. So yes, the photons from stars contain the same info photons in your house do. You see it, and it looks like something is happening.

Well yes, everything we see is the result of photons hitting our retina. That is, shall we say, obvious. However, those photons carry with them information about events in the past. And in some cases (if they have not been reflected to many times) they carry information about the event that created them. But that would not be my point.

My point is that the advancing wave front that is the light history of the supernova event is a remnant of the event, not then event itself. It is part of the changed and changing state of the universe that was the result of that event. As such, it serves to record what occured. In that sense the advancing wave front is like the fossil. It is what remains. The actual star and the supernova event are long gone. Likewise the animal is long gone, the majority of the material that made the animal are gone. What is left is the fossil remnant. The advancing wave front then is a 'fossil' of the supernova, like the rock 'image' is the fossil of the animal. Both tell us about actual things in the past that no longer exist.

Indeed any 'recording' of an event is essentially roughly equivalent to a fossil. It is a change in state in some media brought about by the existence of something else. And such 'records' in nature tell us about the past. They generally have very limited and unique constraints on what could have created the record, and so they are useful in giving us information about the past. This encompasses everything from our memories to movies to tape recordings to fossils to mountains to light waves.





Sorry but I think the two are nothing alike.
Watching the stars is kind of like watching a movie (perhaps at poor quality) of an event recorded on the video decades earlier. Even if it's poor quality, it's still the movie. Digging up fossils would be more like finding some bone fragments of two of the actors and then trying to put together the whole movie from the bones.

You almost get it, but you can't quite bridge the gap. Let me help you: the movie is the result left behind in a medium as a result of light that was focussed upon it. The movie film is then the 'fossil' that resulted from the light which in turn had reflected off of the actors. And what is recorded there tells us a great deal about certain events in history - the event associated with what the actors were doing in those moments. Now, ignoring the wonderful possibilities for creating false records using film, in nature when an event has an effect on something else that leaves a premanent alteration of the state of that thing, we generally do not have to worry about the record being 'false'. What is recorded there will be what resulted naturally as a result of said event. Some records contain marginal information, some quite a bit of information.

Actual rock fossils can contiain a lot of information about the animal that left that 'record' of itself. And they also often contain good information about the relative timeframe said animal lived and died.

The point is, if we understand the processes creating the record, we can derive a great deal of information about what was being recorded. And by piecing together the information available in multiple recordings (fossils) made over the entire history of the Earth, we can create a 'movie' of what life's history has been like on the Earth - just as multiple still pictures of events can be pieced together to form a movie of what was occuring in front of said movie camera.



So basically, fully functioning morphological "equipment" just mutates out of nowhere. Like here you are, but then your child is born with giant wings and hollow bones and takes off in flight at 13 years old to live in a tree and build a nest. Just like that. No "half-way" points, no "almost done with it" mutating. That's pretty convenient really. Some creature under water is suddenly born with the pipes that breath above water cause out of the blue his gills no longer work, instead he breaths open air and crawls out on land just like that.

V, nowhere did I imply this. If one fossil is found that dates to 200 mya, and another 180 mya, and another 160 mya, there is ample time for a very gradual progression from one form to another. Nothing need 'pop' out fully formed. As we have seen over and over, animals find an advantage in some modification, which eventually may open the door to some other modification or use of the original modification and so on. It is a gradual process, and each form along the way is fully functional within its environment. And due to the rarity of fossilization, we get a coarse grained set of 'snapshots' of the process over deep time.



Why would there NOT be half-way, useless features? Why would their NOT be halflings with partially mutated somethings growing on them which don't seem to have a purpose? THAT is a prediction I think ToE would make. But of course they don't make that prediction, because that's not what they find. They only predict things they find, which is pretty clever.

I actually wasn't trying to imply there would not be some apparently useless or halfway features. What I said was that any animal along the way will be an animal well adapted to its environment. So an animal with a 'half -wing' will not have said half-wing hanging out as a hindrence to its survival. There would need to be some overall advantage or otherwise neutral use for that half-wing, else it would not be able to come to sufficient prominence in the genetic landscape of the species to beome fixed into the population.

And no, they don't 'only predict what they find'. But the do often find what they predict. There is a significant difference. But you will have to do better than you have so far to catch the difference.



Sorry Jim, no can do. Your criteria is basically "we date it to before another creature" and "this one kinda looks like the other".

You are oversimplifying, purposefully so. But I don't think you are of a mind to even try to understand why the process and what has been found out in the last 150 years is significant. You are of a mind to mock without understanding, and as such there is little point in trying to enlighten you.



Color me unimpressed with that "prediction". But I understand it must be a biggie for the evolutionists. That's OK.


Peace

You mock what you do not understand. That is not a hard thing to do. Anybody can mock what they do not understand. Indeed, it is a sign of ignorace when one is in an art museum and some dodo walks up and says "well gee, what is so special about THAT!"

That's what you are doing here Vig. You walked into the room and said 'Well gee, I don't get why THAT means anything special, and there ain't none of ya's can convince me otherwise!".

Such is the world of the ignorant.


Jim

[Vigilante]

Anybody can mock what they do not understand. Indeed, it is a sign of ignorace when one is in an art museum and some dodo walks up and says "well gee, what is so special about THAT!"
I guess that explains why the evos are so hostile to YECs or ID folks. Must be because they are ignorant and don't understand. Thanks for the tip.


That's what you are doing here Vig. You walked into the room and said 'Well gee, I don't get why THAT means anything special, and there ain't none of ya's can convince me otherwise!".
Maybe I'm just too smart to swallow BS stories that have zero evidence to back them up?


Such is the world of the ignorant.
Actually I rather enjoy having an open mind and criticizing nonsense fed to me like it's solid fact.

People here have spent pages trying to force some kind of reason why I should believe the stories regarding this creature, and have failed miserably because they really don't have any such evidence. It's a story, it fits their evolutionary theory, so therefore it must be true. That's about it.

Call it the world of the ignorant if you like, I call it the world of the free mind.


Peace

[Jorge]

I guess that explains why the evos are so hostile to YECs or ID folks. Must be because they are ignorant and don't understand. Thanks for the tip.


Maybe I'm just too smart to swallow BS stories that have zero evidence to back them up?


Actually I rather enjoy having an open mind and criticizing nonsense fed to me like it's solid fact.

People here have spent pages trying to force some kind of reason why I should believe the stories regarding this creature, and have failed miserably because they really don't have any such evidence. It's a story, it fits their evolutionary theory, so therefore it must be true. That's about it.

Call it the world of the ignorant if you like, I call it the world of the free mind.

Peace

**********************************************************************************************

Vigilante, this is probably just more old news to you but, what the heck : in another
thread (involving 'Expelled') I quote P. Z. Myers (an ardent Atheist and evolutionist Apostle)
where he also labels us a "ignorant" and for the same reasons as you were done here.

It seems to be a mantra for these people -- if you don't accept their beliefs, if you don't
subscribe to their evolutionary religion, then you are, as per their dictionary, "ignorant".
You must be ignorant (they say). Why? Well, because you don't accept evolution.
IOW, for them it's a mathematical equation : evolution not accepted = person is ignorant.

If I had a dollar for every time that we Creationists have been called "ignorant", I could
single-handedly bail-out GM, Ford and Chrysler (not that I necessarily would). These
people don't realize it, but they're looking more and more like the rear end of a jackass.

Jorge

[Faid]

OK then, one-liners it will be.
I guess that explains why the evos are so hostile to YECs or ID folks. Must be because they are ignorant and don't understand. Thanks for the tip.And because they want to force their ignorance into the educational system, bypassing the science test.



Maybe I'm just too smart to swallow BS stories that have zero evidence to back them up?Or maybe you're just too ignorant, and indoctrination filled the gaps in your knowledge. It happens.



Actually I rather enjoy having an open mind and criticizing nonsense fed to me like it's solid fact.Except you only 'criticize' the things you don't want to be true, and simply handwave away counterarguments. "Open mind"? Right.


People here have spent pages trying to force some kind of reason why I should believe the stories regarding this creature, and have failed miserably because they really don't have any such evidence. They have failed because you don't even try to listen:You just resort to handwaving and superficial mocking dismissals.



It's a story, it fits their evolutionary theory, so therefore it must be true. That's about it.You can cry that out untill the next Ice Age, but as long as you refuse to address the arguments against it, this discussion will tell a different story.


Call it the world of the ignorant if you like, I call it the world of the free mind.What you demonstrate, however, is the world of the shallow mind.

[Faid]

Let's see.. How does that work? Oh yes-

Apply post #75 to yourself, jorge. :lol:

[oxmixmudd]

I guess that explains why the evos are so hostile to YECs or ID folks. Must be because they are ignorant and don't understand. Thanks for the tip.

V - your continued mis-statements of what the ToE is, how it works, what is expected etc. etc are the confirmation you do not have a clue. I do not assume you don't understand ToE because you are against it. I conclude you don't understand it because you can't formulate one correct description of what the theory states or requires. If you can come up with a serious objection that actually appears to be based on a correct understanding of the theory, we'd have something to talk about.



Maybe I'm just too smart to swallow BS stories that have zero evidence to back them up?

It is always possible you are simply being obstinate and are purposefully phrasing your objections so as to feign gross ignorance, but I do not think that is likely. Would you like to prove me wrong? If so - show us what you really know by throwing off the 'cloak of ignorance' for a few posts.



Actually I rather enjoy having an open mind and criticizing nonsense fed to me like it's solid fact.

Your mind is not open V. An open mind will listen to and try to understand both sides of an argument. You do not appear to even try to understand the ToE side of the argument - and frankly, I doubt you understand the YEC side very well either. You believe what you want to and mock everything else.



People here have spent pages trying to force some kind of reason why I should believe the stories regarding this creature, and have failed miserably because they really don't have any such evidence. It's a story, it fits their evolutionary theory, so therefore it must be true. That's about it.

Call it the world of the ignorant if you like, I call it the world of the free mind.


Peace

You know Vig, a free mind is not one that will only accept the ideas they like, even though the majority hold different views. A free mind is one that will evaluate without prejudice all ideas and chose the best of them without prejudice or fear of majority opinion. There is a subtle, but significant difference there. Can you tell what it is?


Jim

[Vigilante]

V - your continued mis-statements of what the ToE is, how it works, what is expected etc. etc are the confirmation you do not have a clue. I do not assume you don't understand ToE because you are against it.
With all the conversations I've been in about ToE and all the links people keep sending me to, if I still don't understand it, it's hardly my fault. Perhaps it can't be explained? Perhaps it's just a belief one has to accept? Being indoctrinated through school is a good way to build this faith. Accepting Naturalism is a good start as well. Holding to materialism also helps.


I conclude you don't understand it because you can't formulate one correct description of what the theory states or requires.
My descriptions come when I weed out the bottom line of what people tell me. When I weed out all the fancy poetic language meant to impress and awe me and just look at what's really being said, that is what is left. You can "explain" it all you want to, heck you can even write a 200 page dissertation, but at the bottom line it will still say "it kinda looks turtleish, and it came before other turtles, therefore it evolved its shell and evolved into turtles."


If you can come up with a serious objection that actually appears to be based on a correct understanding of the theory, we'd have something to talk about.
My "objection" (sticking with the OP story), is that the only "test" is whether or not somebody invents a story that fits with the evo theory, and NOT that it was objectively tested to be true, which THEN just happens to coincide with the theory, thus supporting it.
It's a matter of order. Step one, observe something and figure it out. Step two, see if what was figured out supports one theory or another.
Instead I see it backwards. Step one, observe something and explain it in light of theory. Step two, assume theory is truth, make observation jive with theory, then declare the story must be true now that it jives with theory.


If so - show us what you really know by throwing off the 'cloak of ignorance' for a few posts.
Show you WHAT? I can know all about the intricate details of every hair on the fairies head, the web of veins through her wings, her precise weight and composition, her social habits and dietary concerns, but that won't mean fairies exist. Some people know every detail about Middle Earth, its history and origins, its characters and cities, and some people know nothing about Middle Earth, but it makes no difference, the place still doesn't exist, no matter how much somebody understands it.

There seems to be this idea amongst evos that if only people know more and more and more about it, every last big word and fancy description, that this will make them believe it. There is a difference between understanding things, and those things being true or not. So stop acting like just understanding evo more will make someone a believer, it takes more than that.
If the truth value of something directly corresponds to how greatly its understood, then we're in trouble. I've read enough about it to know what I need to know. I've seen the videos, read the papers, discussed with people, seen the charts, heard the assertions. I know enough to know it's a fairy, it's Middle Earth, and knowing even more won't make it any more true. But you're welcome to try.


Your mind is not open V. An open mind will listen to and try to understand both sides of an argument. You do not appear to even try to understand the ToE side of the argument - and frankly, I doubt you understand the YEC side very well either. You believe what you want to and mock everything else.
Yes I try to understand, and because it's still nonsense, I mock. You think I've never been mocked? Two can play that game. YECs are the most mocked people around here, so don't even try to act offended.


You know Vig, a free mind is not one that will only accept the ideas they like, even though the majority hold different views. A free mind is one that will evaluate without prejudice all ideas and chose the best of them without prejudice or fear of majority opinion. There is a subtle, but significant difference there. Can you tell what it is?
I have chosen the best idea. I accept ideas that make more sense to me than other ideas.
And then what I see hidden in that statement is:
If you accept evolution goo-to-zoo, you're smart and intelligent and open-minded and objective, if you reject evolution goo-to-zoo, you're dumb, ignorant, don't understand, close-minded, prejudice, and apparently fearful too.
Don't you see, even the smartest, Ph.D'd long time professors, authors, teachers, field operators can reject evolution and they are STILL just labeled ignorant, prejudiced, religious perhaps, fearful conspiracy wackos.
Nobody escapes that, name me one person who rejects evolution that you respect and feel that they reject it on perfectly valid, intelligent, objective, open-minded grounds?

Can't think of anybody that hasn't been mocked, ridiculed, labeled and ad hom attacked? Me neither, so I really don't know what you expect out of me that not even long-time seasoned professors and scientists can't even escape. I rest my case, believe evolution=smart and objective. Reject evolution=ignorant, indoctrinated fool.

If I ever see that it is treated otherwise, I'll die of shock.


Peace

[Tickle Me Mercury]

Actually I rather enjoy having an open mind and criticizing nonsense fed to me like it's solid fact.

People here have spent pages trying to force some kind of reason why I should believe the stories regarding this creature, and have failed miserably because they really don't have any such evidence. It's a story, it fits their evolutionary theory, so therefore it must be true. That's about it.

Call it the world of the ignorant if you like, I call it the world of the free mind.


Peace

Vig, no one is trying to force anyone to believe anything. Not that I've seen.

The thing is, I have yet to see you accurately describe the arguments being present for evolution regarding this fossil. You can praise yourself for your "open, free mind" all you wish, but until you can at least repeat back what people are saying to you with some degree of understanding, then the observations of that "free mind" are not any that anyone can, or should bother to, take very seriously.

Science needs skepticism. It needs people who doubt the consensus, who question even the most lengthy, detailed, and researched conclusions. Without people asking those questions and an environment which invites such questions, then science is reduced to the intellectual equivalent of a mystery religion.

You have, in this thread and I would assume several others, given long, many-amened soliloquies about how the science man is keepin' you down, about how people are shunned if they dare question the ToE. Even in this post you refer to people trying to "force" you to believe the hypotheses regarding the latest fossil. This "oppression" story has been growing and growing ever since creation science failed to live up to peer review.

No one is trying to "force" you to accept or believe anything. What I would like, and I think what other would like as well, is for you to at least understand the actual argument being presented, then critique that as you will. You are a smart enough guy, Vig, that you are certainly not incapable of understanding the theory as it currently stands, so the only other option I see is that you are unwilling. And, quite frankly, besides being very frustrating to deal with, it is in some ways downright discourteous.

Picture this: I am a skeptic, a non-Christian. If I were to start or enter an Apologetics thread and present an argument against Christianity that went something like this: "Christianity is ridiculous because you're just supposed to live up to some standard, and hope you are 'good enough' for God to let you into heaven." How would the resident Christian apologists treat such an argument? Would they debate me on those points, or would they emphatically explain that I have a fundamental misunderstanding about what Christianity says? Doubtless I would be regaled with post after post about how I do not understand how faith in Christ is what saves people and there are none that is good, etc. etc. If I were to then respond by repeating my assessment of Christianity and saying "you can't fool me with those stories because I've got a free mind" how much validity would you ascribe to my critique of Christianity then?

You don't have to believe anything. But you could at least have the respect to try and accurately understand what others are saying. To absolutely refuse to examine people's arguments, and then say that you do so because of your free and open mind, is ironic to the highest degree.

[Cyrus Johnson]

Don't you see, even the smartest, Ph.D'd long time professors, authors, teachers, field operators can reject evolution and they are STILL just labeled ignorant, prejudiced, religious perhaps, fearful conspiracy wackos.

Aren't you doing exactly that to far more of the smartest, Ph.D'd long time professors, authors, teachers, field operators who accept evolution? And without any apparent benefit of being one yourself.


Nobody escapes that, name me one person who rejects evolution that you respect and feel that they reject it on perfectly valid, intelligent, objective, open-minded grounds?

Wouldn't that then be like asking for the names of respectable Sasquatch researchers or esteemed Loch Ness Monsterologists?

What if there isn't any perfectly valid, intelligent, objective, open-minded grounds to reject evolution in toto? If there were, wouldn't the person you're asking the question to reject it themselves?

Certainly many people have rejected important notions of it. Like Lynn Margulis. Her arguments were challenged as any scientific argument gets challenged. But she won the day with the data. i bring up this example in particular because one of my old biology professors provided evidence to support her thesis.

then there's Motoo Kimura, whose neutral theory added an entirely new dimension to the mix. This set off a huge debate between the selectionists and the mutationists. And again, the evidence prevailed and the theory changed.

Or there are those I disagree with but respect anyway. I disagree with Jim obviously on matters of faith, and I recall we tussled over the boundaries of liberty with regards to criticising/mocking religion. But that doesn't mean i don't respect him. His posts are uniformly excellent. I disagree with Glenn Morton and Shadowmaster on AGW, but that doesn't mean I don't respect their arguments. There are even a few folks who identify themselves as Young Earth Creationists that I respect.

[Tiggy]

With all the conversations I've been in about ToE and all the links people keep sending me to, if I still don't understand it, it's hardly my fault.
Actually Vigs, it is your fault.

No one can force you to learn if you don't want to learn.

No one can cure your willful ignorance if you chose to remain willfully ignorant.

You whine and whine about 'big words' and 'fancy language' but guess what Vigs - the biological sciences are a difficult, complicated subject to fully understand. If you want to really know what is going on, you need to learn at least a bit of the technical language. Sure, we can dumb it down to the simplest level for crybabies, but you then miss all the nuances that make it so powerful and show its validity.

You've had any number of people offering to explain some of the more difficult concepts, and go over the technical details with you, but you refused their help. It's easier for you to bitch and moan about the evil scientists that it is to get off your lazy butt and try to educate yourself.

You're woefully ignorant on ToE all of your own accord Vigs - don't blame anyone else for your intellectual laziness.

- T

[oxmixmudd]

With all the conversations I've been in about ToE and all the links people keep sending me to, if I still don't understand it, it's hardly my fault.

No - it still can be your fault. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Your criticisms of the theory still show gross misconceptions about it. That is a good indication you have not learned even though you've been sent a lot of info on the theory. If your objections did not show misconceptions, you'd get a different response.



Perhaps it can't be explained?

Well that is not the case. Many people understand it quite well, and the questions they ask about it reflect that understanding.



Perhaps it's just a belief one has to accept? Being indoctrinated through school is a good way to build this faith. Accepting Naturalism is a good start as well. Holding to materialism also helps.

See - now there you go again. This is the closed mind you have. You believe something about ToE, and there is nothing that can convince you otherwise it seems. One does not need to accept Naturalism (the philosophy) to believe the ToE is a good scientific explanation of the evidence. I and Rogue and others are evidence of that. Neither materialism, for the same reason, as I, nor Rogue, nor others are materialists either.



My descriptions come when I weed out the bottom line of what people tell me.

Let;s look at this a bit. When you 'weed out to the bottom line', you are in effect 'simplifying' what has been said. When you simplify something, you are trying to remove information that really doesn't contribute to the overall understanding of a concept. It is, in essence, a kind of compression of information.

Now, I am sure you are aware of MP3's - right? These are 'simplified' representations of the full data CD image of a song. How does this simplification work? Data that is deemed 'extra' (the goal is to only remove inaudible information) is removed and only the most important pieces remain. However. the more you remove, the more audible the result of the simplification becomes. Eventually, if you 'simplify it' too much, the end result is hardly even listenable. The trick then is to pick the right amount of simplification to give you a good enough copy to enjoy listening to without taking up too much disk space.

So, in the case of how you 'simplify' evolutionary concepts, you tend to remove information that to you is superfluous, but to the rest of us is critical to a correct understanding. And just as if you were comfortable with a horribly distorted low bit rate MP3 it would point to a hearing problem or deficiency in your playback equipment (such that you could not tell the difference between the MP3 and the original CD), your oversimplifications of ToE ideas point to gross misunderstandings on your part of what the ToE is saying.





When I weed out all the fancy poetic language meant to impress and awe me and just look at what's really being said, that is what is left.

Again, that languge is not just 'fancy poetic language', and it certainly is not meant to imress or awe you. In the above MP3 analogy, It is the part of the signal you just don't hear because of your faulty ears or playback equipment but that is important to a faithful reproduction of the original. Back to ToE, this 'fancy poetic language' as your hear it is gibberish to you because you don't really understand the theory. If you did, you'd understand why it is being used, and why you can't just remove it with your 'simplication'.



You can "explain" it all you want to, heck you can even write a 200 page dissertation, but at the bottom line it will still say "it kinda looks turtleish, and it came before other turtles, therefore it evolved its shell and evolved into turtles."

And again, your simplification has left out key points and show you just don't understand.



My "objection" (sticking with the OP story), is that the only "test" is whether or not somebody invents a story that fits with the evo theory, and NOT that it was objectively tested to be true, which THEN just happens to coincide with the theory, thus supporting it.
It's a matter of order. Step one, observe something and figure it out. Step two, see if what was figured out supports one theory or another.
Instead I see it backwards. Step one, observe something and explain it in light of theory. Step two, assume theory is truth, make observation jive with theory, then declare the story must be true now that it jives with theory.

Clearly you do not understand. No one is making an observation jive with a theory. Turtles appear in the fossil record at around 215 million years ago (wikipedea - 'turtle'). Before that, we just don't see turtles. Now, since we have quadropeds before turtles and turtles appearing around 215 million years ago, the ToE predicts that sometime before 215 million years ago there should have existed some kind of creature that does not have a full turtle shell, but that shared other characteristics of both turtles and some predecessor.

What has been found is just such a creature. Prior to this find, (YE)Creationists were saying that because no such creature had been found, yet was predicted by ToE, that it could be evidence for a different history for the turtle that what ToE predicts (specifically, fiat creation as is). What this find shows is that there is a creature before the turtle that is like what the ToE predicts should have existed before the turtle. This undermines the (YE)Creationist argument, and provides yet another data point which supports ToE.



Show you WHAT? I can know all about the intricate details of every hair on the fairies head, the web of veins through her wings, her precise weight and composition, her social habits and dietary concerns, but that won't mean fairies exist. Some people know every detail about Middle Earth, its history and origins, its characters and cities, and some people know nothing about Middle Earth, but it makes no difference, the place still doesn't exist, no matter how much somebody understands it.

Strawman. We are not talking about knowing about fantasy stories and made up creatures. We are talking about real creatures that lived and left us their fossils in time correlated rock layers, and a theory that explains why the creatures are sorted morphologically and temporally in the rocks. One measure of the success of that theory is how closely what we find in the rocks matches what that theory predicts we will find there.



There seems to be this idea amongst evos that if only people know more and more and more about it, every last big word and fancy description, that this will make them believe it. There is a difference between understanding things, and those things being true or not. So stop acting like just understanding evo more will make someone a believer, it takes more than that.
If the truth value of something directly corresponds to how greatly its understood, then we're in trouble. I've read enough about it to know what I need to know. I've seen the videos, read the papers, discussed with people, seen the charts, heard the assertions. I know enough to know it's a fairy, it's Middle Earth, and knowing even more won't make it any more true. But you're welcome to try.

The 'truth' value of a theory is how well it predicts what we find in reality. It is that simple. ToE has been very good at predicting what we will find in the fossil record, and what we will find in the genome. Now, you say you know all about it but you just don't accept it as valid. That is actually ok, except that whenever you try to explain why you don't accept it, you put up a reason that reflects a misunderstanding of the theory. That tends to indicate that what you don't accept is not really the ToE, but a misunderstanding of it. So, if you can produce a reason for not accepting ToE that actually reflects what the ToE is, you might get more traction.



Yes I try to understand, and because it's still nonsense, I mock. You think I've never been mocked? Two can play that game. YECs are the most mocked people around here, so don't even try to act offended.

I wasn't offended. I just think you look a bit silly mocking something you don't really appear to understand.



I have chosen the best idea. I accept ideas that make more sense to me than other ideas.
And then what I see hidden in that statement is:
If you accept evolution goo-to-zoo, you're smart and intelligent and open-minded and objective, if you reject evolution goo-to-zoo, you're dumb, ignorant, don't understand, close-minded, prejudice, and apparently fearful too.
Don't you see, even the smartest, Ph.D'd long time professors, authors, teachers, field operators can reject evolution and they are STILL just labeled ignorant, prejudiced, religious perhaps, fearful conspiracy wackos.
Nobody escapes that, name me one person who rejects evolution that you respect and feel that they reject it on perfectly valid, intelligent, objective, open-minded grounds?

Can't think of anybody that hasn't been mocked, ridiculed, labeled and ad hom attacked? Me neither, so I really don't know what you expect out of me that not even long-time seasoned professors and scientists can't even escape. I rest my case, believe evolution=smart and objective. Reject evolution=ignorant, indoctrinated fool.

If I ever see that it is treated otherwise, I'll die of shock.


Peace


Well now, lets see. Are you smart and open minded if you reject the idea the Earth is a spheriod? Does the fact you don't go along with the status quo on that indicate you really are an intelligent free thinker? Or does it indicate you are a bit ignorant of the facts? The issue here is that:

1) you can't put together an objection that indicates you understand the theory
2) the majority of those who do understand the theory also find it persuasive.

So - perhaps it would be good for you to first try to understand what the theory actually says, then present your objections in a way that shows understanding, yet raises legitimate issues.

But you do have quite a bit to overcome. For when saying you don't accept evolution, it is a bit like saying you believe in geocentrism. So you'd better have good case or you will get laughed out of the room. The mistake you make is really the inverse of what you think is happening to you. You think the only reason most intelligent people who have studied the issue accept ToE is because they are indoctrinated and ideologically predisposed to accept it. And that is a BIG mistake. The reason most intelligent people who have studied the issue is because the data and the theory are in signifciant agreement - because it makes sense. So perhaps you should spend a little more time trying to figure out what it is you are missing, since so many, even those more intelligent than yourself, do think it makes sense.


Jim

[Vigilante]

Actually Vigs, it is your fault.
Naw.


You whine and whine about 'big words' and 'fancy language' but guess what Vigs - the biological sciences are a difficult, complicated subject to fully understand. If you want to really know what is going on, you need to learn at least a bit of the technical language. Sure, we can dumb it down to the simplest level for crybabies, but you then miss all the nuances that make it so powerful and show its validity.
Right, it's true cause it sound fancy and complex. Like I said.

[Faid]

Naw.Yup.



Right, it's true cause it sound fancy and complex. Like I said.You should make us a list of all the words you find "fancy" and "complex", Vigilante. We really don't want to dazzle and confuse you by mistake.

[Vigilante]

No - it still can be your fault. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Bla bla bla, same old nonsense, everybody who doesn't believe evolution is stupid, bla bla bla. Everybody who refuses to accept it is an ignorant dolt, bla bla bla. It gets pretty old Jim.


Your criticisms of the theory still show gross misconceptions about it. That is a good indication you have not learned even though you've been sent a lot of info on the theory.
If I learned more about Middle Earth, maybe that would suddenly be true as well?


Let;s look at this a bit. When you 'weed out to the bottom line', you are in effect 'simplifying' what has been said. When you simplify something, you are trying to remove information that really doesn't contribute to the overall understanding of a concept. It is, in essence, a kind of compression of information.
Something like that, superfluous complexity for the sake of intellectual intimidation is annoying.


And just as if you were comfortable with a horribly distorted low bit rate MP3 it would point to a hearing problem or deficiency in your playback equipment (such that you could not tell the difference between the MP3 and the original CD), your oversimplifications of ToE ideas point to gross misunderstandings on your part of what the ToE is saying.
But if my nasty MP3 is Richard Dawkins trying to explain his philosophy on religions, it is still garbage no matter how good the quality. :lol:


Back to ToE, this 'fancy poetic language' as your hear it is gibberish to you because you don't really understand the theory. If you did, you'd understand why it is being used, and why you can't just remove it with your 'simplication'.
What's that you say? I just don't understand enough cause then I'd believe it? Just tell me, do you think there is a necessary correlation between believing evolution and one's understanding of it? If one doesn't believe, well then they just don't understand enough. Is that true?
The point is, it's tiring, very tiring. As long as I reject evo, I will never understand enough. It's only when I finally say "yeah it's all true!" that I will finally understand enough. That is the message I'm getting.

Besides, that is starting to sound more like a religious evolutionary doctrine. When people don't believe what we believe, it's obviously because they just don't understand enough. Obviously NOBODY could ever exist who understands it full well and STILL rejects it. Impossible!


This undermines the (YE)Creationist argument, and provides yet another data point which supports ToE.
It's not my argument. You must be talking about this old AiG article somebody mentioned.


The 'truth' value of a theory is how well it predicts what we find in reality. It is that simple. ToE has been very good at predicting what we will find in the fossil record, and what we will find in the genome.
Easy to say. Then I turn around and hear the nay-sayers saying the fossil record doesn't support evolution.


So, if you can produce a reason for not accepting ToE that actually reflects what the ToE is, you might get more traction.
I've given a reason why I don't accept the assertions about this creature.


Well now, lets see. Are you smart and open minded if you reject the idea the Earth is a spheriod? Does the fact you don't go along with the status quo on that indicate you really are an intelligent free thinker? Or does it indicate you are a bit ignorant of the facts? The issue here is that:
Hardly a close analogy. Evo is hardly as factual as the general shape of earth. The shape of the earth isn't a theory.


For when saying you don't accept evolution, it is a bit like saying you believe in geocentrism.
Ehem. See above.


And that is a BIG mistake. The reason most intelligent people who have studied the issue is because the data and the theory are in signifciant agreement - because it makes sense.
It's because they went to university and learned it and nothing else and were told if you doubt this then you are an unintelligent dolt. If you want to be smart and accepted and intelligent and part of the brainy elite, you best believe all this.


So who do you know that has rejected evolution and understands it better than average and is not accused of intellectual weakness and misunderstanding? I can't think of anybody. If no such people exist, then I don't know why you're getting on my case, there would be no hope for me, as I could NEVER reach the status of "knowing" enough about evolution and STILL rejecting it.



Peace

[Tiggy]

Bla bla bla, same old nonsense, everybody who doesn't believe evolution is stupid, bla bla bla. Everybody who refuses to accept it is an ignorant dolt, bla bla bla. It gets pretty old Jim.
What he should have said is, "you can lead a creationist to science, but you can't make him think." :wink:


If I learned more about Middle Earth, maybe that would suddenly be true as well?
No, but if you devoted some time into learning about Middle Earth you'd be able to intelligently discuss it instead of just blowing smoke. Same with ToE.


Something like that, superfluous complexity for the sake of intellectual intimidation is annoying.
Except it's not superfluous, it's absolutely necessary to adequately describe a very complex subject. You can play a Brahms symphony on a kazoo too but it wouldn't be quite the same.



But if my nasty MP3 is Richard Dawkins trying to explain his philosophy on religions, it is still garbage no matter how good the quality. :lol:
Dawkins' opinions on religion have nothing to do with the veracity of ToE.



What's that you say? I just don't understand enough cause then I'd believe it? Just tell me, do you think there is a necessary correlation between believing evolution and one's understanding of it? If one doesn't believe, well then they just don't understand enough. Is that true?
The point is, it's tiring, very tiring. As long as I reject evo, I will never understand enough. It's only when I finally say "yeah it's all true!" that I will finally understand enough. That is the message I'm getting.
There's definitely a correlation between understanding it and being able to intelligently discuss it. Right now you do neither.


Besides, that is starting to sound more like a religious evolutionary doctrine. When people don't believe what we believe, it's obviously because they just don't understand enough. Obviously NOBODY could ever exist who understands it full well and STILL rejects it. Impossible!
You don't understand it enough to make a qualified judgment one way or the other.


It's because they went to university and learned it and nothing else and were told if you doubt this then you are an unintelligent dolt. If you want to be smart and accepted and intelligent and part of the brainy elite, you best believe all this.
No, you learn it so you can intelligently discuss and if necessary critique it. That's what brainy people do. The unintelligent dolts pass judgment without having a flipping clue as to what they're attacking.


So who do you know that has rejected evolution and understands it better than average and is not accused of intellectual weakness and misunderstanding? I can't think of anybody. If no such people exist, then I don't know why you're getting on my case, there would be no hope for me, as I could NEVER reach the status of "knowing" enough about evolution and STILL rejecting it.
I know plenty of folks who reject it based solely on religious grounds. I can't think of a single person that has rejected ToE on valid scientific grounds. Can you?

- T

[Steviepinhead]

Well, I'm sure this has been tried before, but let's try to make things really simple.

Let's skip abiogenesis. If you want that to be a miracle or divine spark until we know much more about it, fine.

So now we've got "goo." Little single-celled critters that can divide and replicate, making almost exact copies of themselves. They don't live in fantasy land, they live in a real world somewhere, with finite rather than infinite resources, for which the little critters must in some sense compete.

Some of the slightly-variant offspring do a little bit better in a given environment, some do a little bit worse. In terms of, you know, harvesting the less-than-infinite resources and competing with their fellow goo-critters to live long enough to divide and replicate again.

On average, over the goo-populace, the offspring with the more-fit variations in their little goo-qualities tend to outcompete the less-fit variants. As each goo-generation goes by, the better-adapted goo-critters come to dominate over the less well adapted.

But the environment (which includes increasingly better-adapted goo-critters) changes too, due to climate, exhaustion of the available resources (now mobility is an advantage, or the ability to ingest some new and different nutrient or energy source...), geological changes (you do see that meteors strike and volcanos blow and earthquakes occur and, yep, even floods...!)...

So the li'l goo-critters have to keep coming up with new tricks.

How do they "come up with 'new' tricks"? It's that imprecise reproduction yielding inexact copies thingy.

And around and around the cycle goes.

Maybe on some very placid planets, goo-volution doesn't precede much past a bunch of goo-critters sitting in quiet ponds and floating on sunlit seas and hiding in rock crevices and such...

Maybe on hundreds of planets, that's all that happens, because the environment doesn't change much, or the climate gets locked into a narrow range, or the elements and chemicals available in the protostellar cloud were impoverished or the core cools and tectonic processes halt (or never got started) or the asteroid and comet bombardment is unceasing or ...

Whatever.

But it's a big universe. Lots of different galaxies, stars, planets... Unthinkably lots!

How, on a planet with sufficiently abundant resources and an environment that never ceases changing, would this simple cycle -- variation - sorting through various modes of competition - inexact replication ==> more variation, more selection, more reproduction -- NOT produce more and more complicated, tricksier little goo-critters?

What would stop the goo-critters in one reproductive line from perhaps engulfing some other goo-critter with a different handy bag of tricks, such that they combine the best of both worlds?

What would stop some of the li'l goo-critters from sticking to each other to form pairs, and clumps, and colonies? Maybe as a result of incomplete separation after reproductive division.. Or maybe by utilizing the "sticky" surface trick, variations of which the goo-critters use to grasp the surface they dwell upon, or to engulf nutrients, or to grapple prey?

Etc. How do you stop such a cycle, on such a planet, once it gets started, from throwing up nigh-endless variants over sufficient time?

Do you agree that the critters you see around you on earth reproduce or replicate with slight variation? You're different from your parents, right? The pups in a litter are different in certain respects from each other, right?

Do you agree that some of these differences may be helpful in survival and mating and reproduction? Faster running after prey, or being more attractive to the opposite sex, or being smarter, or more frugal, or bigger, or (in other circumstances) smaller, higher fertility vs. impaired fertility (surely you've noticed that some couples aren't able to conceive despite their best efforts?) or ...

Over time, on average, in a given environment with given pressures and demands and opportunities (sneaky predators, hotter temperatures, higher altitude, more or less rain, or more or less fertile soil, or more or less nutrient-rich water...), some variants will thrive, while others will waste away...

Rinse, repeat.

Which of these premises do you not see manifest in the world around you? Do you find our planet too small and staid? Do you find the variation within and among creatures too small? Do you think all creatures are invariant clones of all other creatures? Do you think there hasn't been enough time?

What, specifically, are your problems?

Which parts of this simple-at-bottom rinse-and-repeat variation-selection-replication cycle do you challenge?

What aspects of it do you find incredible, unfeasible, obviously impossible?

***************

Or, cycling somewhat closer to the OP, In what ways, specifically, does the proto-turtle (heck, maybe in those days they did spell it "turtule," languages 'evolve' too!) not exhibit the other characteristics of turtle-kind-to-be? Would you be able to tell a turtle from other kinds of reptiles based on their bony anatomy?

What if, in every other respect except for the missing top shell, the proto-turtle conforms to turtle anatomy, and differs from the other reptiles that it otherwise most closely resembles? I mean, Vig, do you really think that the paleontologists are basing the asserted turtle-relationship on just some grab-bag of resemblances and differences? That there's not a system, a method to what you regard as their madness?

Here's the reaction of a grad school paleontologist/systematist, dlx2, to this find on another forum, TalkRational:

[L]ook at that thing's quadratojugal.

Well, we now know what turtles are. [Meaning what other group of non-turtle animals they can be seen to be most closely related to--- And then later:]

This thing is definitively a turtle, but we can pin it to a modern group.

I'm nor surprised that they didn't note the phylogenetic relationships outside of turtles, though. This thing is going to make waves, especially after a few weird triassic things get published in the next year or so.

So, based on the fossil's quadratojugal -- whatever the heck that is! -- and it's other characteristics, this budding paleontologist can tell, not only that "this thing is definitively a turtle," but he thinks he sees a basis for uniting turtles as a group with another known group of non-turtle animals. Of course, we've long known that they fall within a certain larger group of reptiles, but he's thinking he can now nail the exact relationship down much more closely.

Now, maybe he's right, and maybe he's wrong. But at least it's obvious that he knows a lot more about what he's looking at, and what to look for, when he looks at this animal than either you or I do.

You'd have to agree, right? I mean, unless you can tell a quadratojugal from a hole in the wall.

Until you know those kinds of things, how can you just presume that these scientists don't have a pretty good notion of what they're talking about?

********************

It's certainly possible, but only more or less by pure chance, that you might be right about something despite your ignorance of the subject matter.

But it's also possible you might be wrong, er, right?

Until you really do know the subject matter, you're more or less just shooting blind. Once you DO learn the subject matter, then your determination of right/wrong becomes something more than just a stab in the dark.

[oxmixmudd]

Bla bla bla, same old nonsense, everybody who doesn't believe evolution is stupid, bla bla bla. Everybody who refuses to accept it is an ignorant dolt, bla bla bla. It gets pretty old Jim.

Not what I was saying. Example 1 of why you still do not understand evolution. You do not listen.



If I learned more about Middle Earth, maybe that would suddenly be true as well?

Absolutely uncorrelated with what I was saying. Example 2 of why you still do not understand evolution.



Something like that, superfluous complexity for the sake of intellectual intimidation is annoying.

It is almost as if you purposefully ignored the entire statement - as the point I was making is that it is NOT superfluous complexity for the sake of intellectual intimidation. Exampe 3 of why you still do not understand evolution.



But if my nasty MP3 is Richard Dawkins trying to explain his philosophy on religions, it is still garbage no matter how good the quality. :lol:

Example 4: pick something you can make a joke about, make the joke, miss the point.



What's that you say? I just don't understand enough cause then I'd believe it? Just tell me, do you think there is a necessary correlation between believing evolution and one's understanding of it? If one doesn't believe, well then they just don't understand enough. Is that true?
The point is, it's tiring, very tiring. As long as I reject evo, I will never understand enough. It's only when I finally say "yeah it's all true!" that I will finally understand enough. That is the message I'm getting.

Repeating a previous point without processing the response to the first time you made the same point. Example 5.



Besides, that is starting to sound more like a religious evolutionary doctrine. When people don't believe what we believe, it's obviously because they just don't understand enough. Obviously NOBODY could ever exist who understands it full well and STILL rejects it. Impossible!

Example 6: expounding/exaggerating the very same point, still not listening to or responding to the respose given.



It's not my argument. You must be talking about this old AiG article somebody mentioned.

Example 7: diversion to some other issue rather than processing the information given.



Easy to say. Then I turn around and hear the nay-sayers saying the fossil record doesn't support evolution.

And you believe them without question, but spend all your time avoiding processing the information given as to why the majority of scientists accept it. Example 8.



I've given a reason why I don't accept the assertions about this creature.

Without listening to why those reasons reflect a faulty understanding of evolutionary theory. Example 9




Hardly a close analogy. Evo is hardly as factual as the general shape of earth. The shape of the earth isn't a theory.

Actually it is. Just ask the flat earthers.



Ehem. See above.

Even more so - just ask the geocentrists. Even more so V, go try to show a serious Geocentrist why they are wrong. It's a lot harder than you think. And they generally understand what they disagree with a lot better than you understand evolution.



It's because they went to university and learned it and nothing else and were told if you doubt this then you are an unintelligent dolt. If you want to be smart and accepted and intelligent and part of the brainy elite, you best believe all this.

Back to the same old drivel. This is a point you have expressed as an axiom. And even when shown it is false (I am a perfect example), you still repeat it. I do NOT accept ToE because of the above. I have looked at the evidence as a major skeptic and find it convincing. And the truth is, that is true of MOST who have examined the data. That is why YEC's will tell you not to read talk.origins. That is why Jorge will not discuss science. They know that if a person is exposed to the actual data which supports the theory, only those ideologically predisposed to reject it to the nth degree will not be convinced by it.



So who do you know that has rejected evolution and understands it better than average and is not accused of intellectual weakness and misunderstanding? I can't think of anybody. If no such people exist, then I don't know why you're getting on my case, there would be no hope for me, as I could NEVER reach the status of "knowing" enough about evolution and STILL rejecting it.



Peace

The truth is V, you resist knowing enough to know if it makes sense. But I can tell you this, it is obvious to all why you do not find evolution convincing. It is because you refuse to allow yourself to evaluate it objectively. Now that does not mean if you evaluate it objectively you will be convinced. But one thing will change once you do. Whatever side you come out on, for or against, you will be able to at least discuss what the theory says - pro or con - without making gross errors like you do now.


Jim

[Vigilante]

Not what I was saying. Example 1 of why you still do not understand evolution. You do not listen.
I listen when there is something besides insults and ridicule to listen to. Forgive me if I don't absorb like a child in awe your character attacks about my behavior.


It is almost as if you purposefully ignored the entire statement - as the point I was making is that it is NOT superfluous complexity for the sake of intellectual intimidation. Exampe 3 of why you still do not understand evolution.
Or maybe you are too enamored by the language to see the light?


Example 4: pick something you can make a joke about, make the joke, miss the point.
When there is no point, a joke is a fun alternative response.


Example 7: diversion to some other issue rather than processing the information given.
You mean I don't just automatically accept everything everybody tells me as the truth? For shame! Give all the information you want, doesn't mean it's true. You think just because you speak, I'm supposed to believe it?


And you believe them without question, but spend all your time avoiding processing the information given as to why the majority of scientists accept it. Example 8.
Ah yes, the majority thing. OK, impressive.


Even more so - just ask the geocentrists. Even more so V, go try to show a serious Geocentrist why they are wrong. It's a lot harder than you think. And they generally understand what they disagree with a lot better than you understand evolution.
I'd be happy to hear them discuss their view. I'm not hostile against them, I don't make character attacks and tell them they are dumb cause they just don't understand MY view enough. It is not my goal and purpose in life to make people believe the right trivia. But Darwinists have this religious zeal to evangelize the world, and attack all other views, and force people to believe their doctrines. It's kind of weird really.


Back to the same old drivel. This is a point you have expressed as an axiom. And even when shown it is false (I am a perfect example), you still repeat it. I do NOT accept ToE because of the above. I have looked at the evidence as a major skeptic and find it convincing. And the truth is, that is true of MOST who have examined the data. That is why YEC's will tell you not to read talk.origins. That is why Jorge will not discuss science. They know that if a person is exposed to the actual data which supports the theory, only those ideologically predisposed to reject it to the nth degree will not be convinced by it.
Talking about "same old drivel". Are we ever going to get past the "you just don't understand enough, cause if you did you'd believe it too!"
Is it possible to understand it full well and still reject it Jim? Can you name one person who has?


The truth is V, you resist knowing enough to know if it makes sense. But I can tell you this, it is obvious to all why you do not find evolution convincing. It is because you refuse to allow yourself to evaluate it objectively. Now that does not mean if you evaluate it objectively you will be convinced. But one thing will change once you do. Whatever side you come out on, for or against, you will be able to at least discuss what the theory says - pro or con - without making gross errors like you do now.
I have made zero errors. I have been pressing people to support assertions made, and nobody can. All they can do is attack me and tell me how I don't understand. All they can do is repeat the assertions of the theory of evolution itself, as if this were supporting data for the assertion.
This is an evolving turtle!
Why?
Well because evolution says it has to evolve a little at a time!
How do you know this is evolving?
Cause evolution says it happens gradually!
But what supports the assertion that this turtle thing evolved into modern turtles?
Well evolution predicts transitionals!
Um but how is this a transitional?
Cause evolution predicts it!
But how do you know this is a transitional and it evolved into modern turtles?
Cause evolution says things change slowly over time!
OK, um so why exactly is this thing evolved and became turtles?
Cause evolution says that's how it happened!
But how do you know it happened that way?
Cause evolution makes sense to explain it!
*sigh*

My head spins. Evolution doesn't have the answers. It has stories, guesswork, speculation, theories. It just gives a framework that one either accepts or doesn't. How do you know ANY creature evolved that we dig up? You don't. You just make up the story that fits the evo theory. Say it happened a gazillion years ago, and tell people to believe it because nobody can verify the truth of it anyway. And because the alternate is some kind of creation, it makes it REAL easy to swallow for skeptics of religion. Either that or you're a young kid who wants to rebel against everything and chooses to believe cause his professors promised it will make him magically an intelligent person. Yes Jim that may not be YOUR reason, but I'm talking generally.

Well what are you going to do? Just keep living and quit the crusade. Go play with your kids, go take your wife to dinner. What's the big deal anyway? Talking to evolutionists is kind of like talking to Mormons or JWs at your door, you just can't get them to go away, nothing you say will stop them from trying to convince you of something. It's like, arggg! Go away! The difference is, I know why Mormons and JWs think their information is so important, I don't know why evos do, as if making everybody believe it does something important in one's life. I suppose it can be enlightening to know you are a smart ape and biologically equal to cabbage and have no more rights to live and use this planet than a beetle. But frankly I don't think that knowledge is really all that beneficial or important.




Peace

[Tiggy]

Sigh...it's just a shame you choose to remain willfully ignorant and keep repeating the same dumb falsehoods Vigs.

No one has tried to force you to accept evolution.

No one has insulted you or called you an unintelligent clod for not giving up your literal religious views

We have taken you to task for being too damn lazy to learn about the theory you are attacking. If you want to level withering critiques against evolution, fine, but you need to learn what the theory actually says first. All you've been doing is running around tilting at some clown cartoon version of ToE from your own imagination.

You'll never get anything but ridicule if you keep ranting and raving against something that doesn't exist. Don't you think you've flaunted your ignorance enough by now? It's getting pretty embarrassing.

- T

[rogue06]

V,

I’ve been staying out of this as others have already been making the points I would have raised, and quite well. Still I would like to comment on your skepticism concerning transitional being predicted.

Maybe the example of Tiktaalik, my avatar (the one you say looks like a dried turd), can help demonstrate what is meant when it is said that a transitional fossil was predicted. First Shubin and his colleagues predicted that a creature like Tiktaalik would be discovered since such a fossil form had to exist in order to provide the link between fish and amphibians, and that it would be found in deposits dated as being from roughly 375 mya in the Devonian. After finding what they thought was a suitable freshwater Devonian aged deposit up on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, they spent a couple years digging and uncovering several specimens of Tiktaalik – a creature that exactly matched their prediction based on evolution. A fishapod. An excellent morphological transitional between fish and amphibians.

Now whether you agree or not that Tiktaalik is an example of being a transitional (and I know you don’t), you have to think it’s more than just a little odd that a fossil creature with its exact characteristics were found precisely where some paleontologists said such a creature would be found if it existed.

[Faid]

OK, enough with this nonsense. Here is how the 'discussion' really went so far:

People get into the trouble to eplain how ToE works, and the evidence for it. They also try to explain to you the meaning of the scientific method, of observations and testable predictions.

You ignore it all, and simply repeat your assertions and accusations, without even bothering to address our explanations. When we point out that you have not understood what we are trying to explain, you accuse us of deliberately using "fancy and complex "words to confuse you.

When we explain that those "fancy" words represent valid terms in science, that you simply must try and understand, to comprehend ToE, you reply by accusing us of engaging in ad hominems (by calling you ignorant of ToE, apparently), and at the same time proclaim that just because one is ignorant about ToE does not mean he can't be right to dismiss it.

And when, rather flustrated, we tell you that this is no form of a discussion, if you simply handwave everything and ignore our arguments, you say it doesn't matter, because apparently you know it in your gut you're right, and you accuse us of being like JW or Mormons.

Oh brother.

You ask us why this "crusade" (what crusade? the "crusade is against science, science is in the defense here) is important to us. It's reason that's important to us, V: What's important to us is that people use evidence and scientific research to search for the truth, not political influence and legal tricks to hijack education. What's important to us is that everyone uses reasoning, arguments and rational exchanges to have productive discussions.

Apparently, you never learned that, and are not willing to. So, why are you here?Just to whine? What is the purpose of engaging in a serious internet forum, if all you intent to do is rant about how you know you are right, and how silly are all those who say otherwise?

If that's the case, spare us. We already have the token YEC whiner in this forum.

[Jorge]

Right, it's true cause it sound fancy and complex. Like I said.

************************************************************************************************

Let's look once again at what these people commonly say,

"You whine and whine about 'big words' and 'fancy language' but guess what Vigs - the
biological sciences are a difficult, complicated subject to fully understand. If you want to really
know what is going on, you need to learn at least a bit of the technical language. Sure, we can
dumb it down to the simplest level for crybabies, but you then miss all the nuances that make it
so powerful and show its validity."

Just in case you need it, allow me to translate the above :

These are "difficult and complicated subjects". WE, of course, understand them; YOU do not.
Let us then tell you how it is - you need our help. You do not accept any of this stuff because,
unlike us, you do not understand any of it (if you did understand then you'd accept it - like we do).
To help you, we (intellectually gifted beings that we are) must "dumb down" the material, otherwise
you'd never be able to understand any of it. The reason that we understand it is because we
(the intellectually superior beings) catch all the "nuances that make it powerful and valid".


Yup, that's the essence of what Tiggy is saying.
So, Vig, are you going to let His Dumbness "educate" you or not?

Jorge

[Faid]

Like I said, V, we already have our resident whiner here. But if he moves a little to the side, I'm sure you'll find some room to fit on his Throne too.

Although you may have to complete some quests first- Handwave 5 different arguments in one post, insult 3 members in one sentence, Ignore 10 responses in one page, find 12 different creative uses of the word Dodo, practice your Font-colouring and Smiley skills to level 20... That sort of thing.

It's not easy, the Way of the Fraud.

[Jorge]

V,

I’ve been staying out of this as others have already been making the points I would have raised, and quite well. Still I would like to comment on your skepticism concerning transitional being predicted.

Maybe the example of Tiktaalik, my avatar (the one you say looks like a dried turd), can help demonstrate what is meant when it is said that a transitional fossil was predicted. First Shubin and his colleagues predicted that a creature like Tiktaalik would be discovered since such a fossil form had to exist in order to provide the link between fish and amphibians, and that it would be found in deposits dated as being from roughly 375 mya in the Devonian. After finding what they thought was a suitable freshwater Devonian aged deposit up on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic, they spent a couple years digging and uncovering several specimens of Tiktaalik – a creature that exactly matched their prediction based on evolution. A fishapod. An excellent morphological transitional between fish and amphibians.

Now whether you agree or not that Tiktaalik is an example of being a transitional (and I know you don’t), you have to think it’s more than just a little odd that a fossil creature with its exact characteristics were found precisely where some paleontologists said such a creature would be found if it existed.

**************************************************************************************

By now I should be 'over it', but I guess I'll never be able to accept how most people are
essentially giant walking parrots -- mindlessly repeating stuff with hardly a neuron firing.

Contrary to the popular and oft-parroted (more parroting!) myth that we Creationists "ignore"
the evidence, here's one rebuttal to the Tiktaalik 'evidence' for macroevolution :

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v1/n1/story-walking-fish

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/tiktaalik-fishy-fish


In addition, I've resigned myself to the fact that people like you do not possess the ability to
distinguish between 'fact' and 'interpretation' (perhaps in willful ignorance).

Try not to choke on it, rogue06.

Jorge

[Faid]

That "article" has been refuted all around the internet a dozen times, Fraud. But of course, AiG shares the same definition of 'discussion' with you: Post something where it can't be directly confronted, just to show you addressed the subject, then avoid responding to any criticism of it.

[Jorge]

That "article" has been refuted all around the internet a dozen times, Fraud. But of course, AiG shares the same definition of 'discussion' with you: Post something where it can't be directly confronted, just to show you addressed the subject, then avoid responding to any criticism of it.

******************************************************************************************

"Refuted"??? "A dozen times"??? Reeeeally???

Tell you what, Dodo, here is Dr. David Menton's email : DMenton@AnswersInGenesis.org.

Be a good boy, send him an email informing him that his article has been "refuted a dozen times",
provide the sources / details of those dozen refutations and then see what happens. Who knows,
if you do a good enough job they may even publish your email on their website (they regularly
publish and respond to questions / objections of people, even kooks like yourself).

Now go away, you bug me. :lol:

Jorge

[Cyrus Johnson]

So to sum it all up, Odontochelys semitestacea represents yet another beautiful transitional form of the kind Creationists say don't exist (or sometimes they say there aren't enough of them, coherent criticism not being a strong suit of theirs). Transitional forms like this are just the sort of thing predicted by the theory of evolution. We have many transitional fossil forms already But it's still nice to see more, especially in areas where the fossil record is sparse.

[Faid]

******************************************************************************************

"Refuted"??? "A dozen times"??? Reeeeally???

Tell you what, Dodo, here is Dr. David Menton's email : DMenton@AnswersInGenesis.org.

Be a good boy, send him an email informing him that his article has been "refuted a dozen times",
provide the sources / details of those dozen refutations and then see what happens. Who knows,
if you do a good enough job they may even publish your email on their website (they regularly
publish and respond to questions / objections of people, even kooks like yourself).

Now go away, you bug me. :lol:

JorgeSure, Fraud. As soon as you're "man" enough to mail Ken Miller yourself, and explain, links, sources, details and all, why you called him dishonest. And, unlike the bozos at AiG, there's an actual chance he will publish your letter, and his response.

Whatsa matter, too scared to apply your demands to yourself?

OK then, how about discussing the nonsense in the AiG Tiktaalik article here, with us?

Oh I forgot, you're jorge. Discussion just ain't your thing, is it?

And it's you who needs to go away. We're actually trying to prevent a young guy from turning like you, and your childish, content-free posts are in the way. Shoo.

[SteveF]

Sure, Fraud. As soon as you're "man" enough to mail Ken Miller yourself, and explain, links, sources, details and all, why you called him dishonest. And, unlike the bozos at AiG, there's an actual chance he will publish your letter, and his response.

Whatsa matter, too scared to apply your demands to yourself?

OK then, how about discussing the nonsense in the AiG Tiktaalik article here, with us?

Oh I forgot, you're jorge. Discussion just ain't your thing, is it?

And it's you who needs to go away. We're actually trying to prevent a young guy from turning like you, and your childish, content-free posts are in the way. Shoo.

Well, I was thinking that if Jorge was directing other people to speak to authorities (I use this term loosely in Mentons case), maybe we should point him towards a chat with Per and Martin. That could be fun.

[Faid]

You actually expect Teh Fraud to engage in a discussion with scientists? He can't engage in a discussion with a young kid, for crying out loud.

[rogue06]

******************************************************************************************

"Refuted"??? "A dozen times"??? Reeeeally???

Tell you what, Dodo, here is Dr. David Menton's email : DMenton@AnswersInGenesis.org.

Be a good boy, send him an email informing him that his article has been "refuted a dozen times",
provide the sources / details of those dozen refutations and then see what happens. Who knows,
if you do a good enough job they may even publish your email on their website (they regularly
publish and respond to questions / objections of people, even kooks like yourself).

Now go away, you bug me. :lol:

Jorge
And what sort of response could we expect? Over a year ago wattsr1, TheGreenMan and I sent separate emails to AiG asking for elaboration on their assertions concerning Tiktaalik's rear limbs (which have not been found). We're all still waiting.

A month later I sent an email to them requesting information on a different subject and still haven't heard back.

So just what sort of response could we expect?

[Faid]

Not to mention the famous Baboon Dogs... (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v4/i1/dog.asp)


Short spine

In this mutant, the entire backbone of the dog is shortened, but the legs and skull are normal. Such mutations kill most dogs, with an interesting exception being the female Baboon dog. The male Baboon dog dies before reaching maturity, so it should be obvious that this breed has not got much going for it.Many people (including, I believe, at least one YEC -afdave) have requested from AiG to support that claim (as if there could be any support for the existence of a dog species where the males die before sexual maturity :hehe:), or retract it.
As you can see, we're still waiting.

[Tickle Me Mercury]

************************************************************************************************

Let's look once again at what these people commonly say,

"You whine and whine about 'big words' and 'fancy language' but guess what Vigs - the
biological sciences are a difficult, complicated subject to fully understand. If you want to really
know what is going on, you need to learn at least a bit of the technical language. Sure, we can
dumb it down to the simplest level for crybabies, but you then miss all the nuances that make it
so powerful and show its validity."

Just in case you need it, allow me to translate the above :

These are "difficult and complicated subjects". WE, of course, understand them; YOU do not.
Let us then tell you how it is - you need our help. You do not accept any of this stuff because,
unlike us, you do not understand any of it (if you did understand then you'd accept it - like we do).
To help you, we (intellectually gifted beings that we are) must "dumb down" the material, otherwise
you'd never be able to understand any of it. The reason that we understand it is because we
(the intellectually superior beings) catch all the "nuances that make it powerful and valid".


Yup, that's the essence of what Tiggy is saying.
So, Vig, are you going to let His Dumbness "educate" you or not?

Jorge

Jorge,

Sometimes, if you take a group of people, some of them will be knowledgeable on a subject, some of them will not be. It is not arrogance for knowledgeable people to inform the others on the subject if need be, nor is it stupidity or weakness on the part of those unknowledgeable to open up their minds to what others are saying.

[Jorge]

Jorge,

Sometimes, if you take a group of people, some of them will be knowledgeable on a subject, some of them will not be. It is not arrogance for knowledgeable people to inform the others on the subject if need be, nor is it stupidity or weakness on the part of those unknowledgeable to open up their minds to what others are saying.

***********************************************************************************

Is that supposed to be some sort of 'revelation', TMM?

You need to 'walk in our shoes' for a few hundred miles to then be
able to comprehend my 'translation' in its fullness.

I accept the spirit of your message but trust me on this : it's mis-directed.

Jorge

[Tiggy]

***********************************************************************************

Is that supposed to be some sort of 'revelation', TMM?

You need to 'walk in our shoes' for a few hundred miles to then be
able to comprehend my 'translation' in its fullness.

I accept the spirit of your message but trust me on this : it's mis-directed.

Jorge
What Jorge means is, no one has been capable of dumbing down the concepts of ToE enough for Jorge's pea brain to understand them. :shrug:

- T

[Steviepinhead]

Vig, I'm looking in vain for any response to this, which I'm pretty darn sure didn't contain any assertions about your personality, pro or con.


Well, I'm sure this has been tried before, but let's try to make things really simple.

Let's skip abiogenesis. If you want that to be a miracle or divine spark until we know much more about it, fine.

So now we've got "goo." Little single-celled critters that can divide and replicate, making almost exact copies of themselves. They don't live in fantasy land, they live in a real world somewhere, with finite rather than infinite resources, for which the little critters must in some sense compete.

Some of the slightly-variant offspring do a little bit better in a given environment, some do a little bit worse. In terms of, you know, harvesting the less-than-infinite resources and competing with their fellow goo-critters to live long enough to divide and replicate again.

On average, over the goo-populace, the offspring with the more-fit variations in their little goo-qualities tend to outcompete the less-fit variants. As each goo-generation goes by, the better-adapted goo-critters come to dominate over the less well adapted.

But the environment (which includes increasingly better-adapted goo-critters) changes too, due to climate, exhaustion of the available resources (now mobility is an advantage, or the ability to ingest some new and different nutrient or energy source...), geological changes (you do see that meteors strike and volcanos blow and earthquakes occur and, yep, even floods...!)...

So the li'l goo-critters have to keep coming up with new tricks.

How do they "come up with 'new' tricks"? It's that imprecise reproduction yielding inexact copies thingy.

And around and around the cycle goes.

Maybe on some very placid planets, goo-volution doesn't precede much past a bunch of goo-critters sitting in quiet ponds and floating on sunlit seas and hiding in rock crevices and such...

Maybe on hundreds of planets, that's all that happens, because the environment doesn't change much, or the climate gets locked into a narrow range, or the elements and chemicals available in the protostellar cloud were impoverished or the core cools and tectonic processes halt (or never got started) or the asteroid and comet bombardment is unceasing or ...

Whatever.

But it's a big universe. Lots of different galaxies, stars, planets... Unthinkably lots!

How, on a planet with sufficiently abundant resources and an environment that never ceases changing, would this simple cycle -- variation - sorting through various modes of competition - inexact replication ==> more variation, more selection, more reproduction -- NOT produce more and more complicated, tricksier little goo-critters?

What would stop the goo-critters in one reproductive line from perhaps engulfing some other goo-critter with a different handy bag of tricks, such that they combine the best of both worlds?

What would stop some of the li'l goo-critters from sticking to each other to form pairs, and clumps, and colonies? Maybe as a result of incomplete separation after reproductive division.. Or maybe by utilizing the "sticky" surface trick, variations of which the goo-critters use to grasp the surface they dwell upon, or to engulf nutrients, or to grapple prey?

Etc. How do you stop such a cycle, on such a planet, once it gets started, from throwing up nigh-endless variants over sufficient time?

Do you agree that the critters you see around you on earth reproduce or replicate with slight variation? You're different from your parents, right? The pups in a litter are different in certain respects from each other, right?

Do you agree that some of these differences may be helpful in survival and mating and reproduction? Faster running after prey, or being more attractive to the opposite sex, or being smarter, or more frugal, or bigger, or (in other circumstances) smaller, higher fertility vs. impaired fertility (surely you've noticed that some couples aren't able to conceive despite their best efforts?) or ...

Over time, on average, in a given environment with given pressures and demands and opportunities (sneaky predators, hotter temperatures, higher altitude, more or less rain, or more or less fertile soil, or more or less nutrient-rich water...), some variants will thrive, while others will waste away...

Rinse, repeat.

Which of these premises do you not see manifest in the world around you? Do you find our planet too small and staid? Do you find the variation within and among creatures too small? Do you think all creatures are invariant clones of all other creatures? Do you think there hasn't been enough time?

What, specifically, are your problems?

Which parts of this simple-at-bottom rinse-and-repeat variation-selection-replication cycle do you challenge?

What aspects of it do you find incredible, unfeasible, obviously impossible?

***************

Or, cycling somewhat closer to the OP, In what ways, specifically, does the proto-turtle (heck, maybe in those days they did spell it "turtule," languages 'evolve' too!) not exhibit the other characteristics of turtle-kind-to-be? Would you be able to tell a turtle from other kinds of reptiles based on their bony anatomy?

What if, in every other respect except for the missing top shell, the proto-turtle conforms to turtle anatomy, and differs from the other reptiles that it otherwise most closely resembles? I mean, Vig, do you really think that the paleontologists are basing the asserted turtle-relationship on just some grab-bag of resemblances and differences? That there's not a system, a method to what you regard as their madness?

Here's the reaction of a grad school paleontologist/systematist, dlx2, to this find on another forum, TalkRational:

So, based on the fossil's quadratojugal -- whatever the heck that is! -- and it's other characteristics, this budding paleontologist can tell, not only that "this thing is definitively a turtle," but he thinks he sees a basis for uniting turtles as a group with another known group of non-turtle animals. Of course, we've long known that they fall within a certain larger group of reptiles, but he's thinking he can now nail the exact relationship down much more closely.

Now, maybe he's right, and maybe he's wrong. But at least it's obvious that he knows a lot more about what he's looking at, and what to look for, when he looks at this animal than either you or I do.

You'd have to agree, right? I mean, unless you can tell a quadratojugal from a hole in the wall.

Until you know those kinds of things, how can you just presume that these scientists don't have a pretty good notion of what they're talking about?

********************

It's certainly possible, but only more or less by pure chance, that you might be right about something despite your ignorance of the subject matter.

But it's also possible you might be wrong, er, right?

Until you really do know the subject matter, you're more or less just shooting blind. Once you DO learn the subject matter, then your determination of right/wrong becomes something more than just a stab in the dark.
If the evolutionary algorithm stuff isn't to your taste, maybe you could take on the quadratojugul part. I haven't googled it myself yet, but it would surprise me if this isn't a very discrete anatomical character of some kind. Any thoughts?

--Goodwill! Stevie

[oxmixmudd]

V,

It is hard to tell someone they don't understand something. Even harder when they are absolutely convinced they do. I am not interested in shaming you or insulting you, but at the same time your ego is so large you appear to refuse to consider the possibility you've missed something and actually listen to what is being said to you that points out where your errors are!

I promise you, any 'flowery' language I am using is NOT meant to confuse you. I am simply trying to explain what it is you are missing. You are claiming you understand the theory and how science works, so I am using its language to talk. If that is 'flowery' to you, then that is a good indication you actually do NOT understand the theory.

But if you simply ask what I mean, or clarify where I am losing you, it will not bother me in the least to expand on what I am saying.

My last post to you was an attempt to get you to see why you are missing the boat. You are not trying to understand what is being said. You are assuming it is hostile and assuming it is wrong and you are not parsing it to understand it. Rather, you are parsing it only for the purpose of defending your POV from it. So the jokes, the twisting of the statements, the rephrasing of concepts in childish ways that are gross misrepresentations of what was said, these are not anything but ways of avoiding discussing the problems with your understanding. They are self-defeating.

Maybe you don't want to know what the theory really is, perhaps that is how you protect yourself from having to deal with the implications thereof. I can't know why you behave this way, but you will never understand this stuff by dealing with it this way.


So lets try one more time. I am not trying to be hostile here. I am not trying to say you are dumb. I am just trying to get you to understand what a transitional is.

First lets look at the two major ideas floating around here in this thread:

1) God made everything basically as is, according to kind, 6000 years ago.

2a) Life has gradually evolved (changed) over great time. This is actually an observation. We do not find the same set of life in rocks 400 million years old that we do in rocks 200 million years old, nor do we find the same sets of life in rocks 200 million years old in rocks 100 million years old and so forth.

2b) The major theory explaining this change is ToE, which says that life forms gradually change over time, and that natural selection removes changes that are less likely to survive.


Now each of these ideas has predictions. 1) already is in trouble, because we can already observe there has been a very long history of life on earth, and the life has been very different here epoch to epoch. But one could salvage this with the idea God has made several different sets of life on the world over large periods of time for some unknown reason.

So basically, 1) says we really should not see any obvious connection between life in various epochs. life was made as is in each epoch, and any correlations between them would be primarily accidental (in the sense that they really aren't related to each other, but happen to look similar).

But 2) says that basically for each set of life we should see obvious, temporally connected migrations in form from the kind of life we see in one epoch to the kind of life we see in another epoch. Further, that we should see tree like relationship between the earlier forms and later forms as a creature at time X changes and diversifies into multiple creatures at time Y (X < Y).

Now the above is simplified - in both cases. And there is some overlap between each idea and what is expected.

But from a scientific standpoint we can now go out and make predictions about what we should find in the future relative to what we know today.

The creation idea essentially predicts that we should see some apparently similar animals in time X vs time Y, but these correlations really should be somewhat random. There is in fact no direct connection between the animals of time X and the animals in time Y. So while we might see some apparent connections, this should be just a subset of what we actually find.

The evolution idea says EVERTHING in time Y is related to X. That we should see obvious correlations between the animals of X and the animals of Y, with a definite direction, animals in Y should always appear to descend from X. We should also see in times between X and Y, Say B, animals that look sort of like animals in X, and also like those in Y, showing the same 'direction' of change.

Again, this is a simplification.

So, when we find an animal at time X and an animal at time Y that appear realated, ToE predicts there will be an animal in time B that looks more closely related to the Animal in X than the animal in time Y, but also appears to be more closely related to the animal in Y than the associated animal in X. This kind of animal is called a transitional.

So -when we find a shell-less but turtle like creature from 240 mya, and a fully shelled very much tutleish creature 200 million years ago, ToE predicts that in rocks somewhere between 240 mya and 200 mya we will find a creature with more turtle characteristics that he 240 my old species, but less turtleish than the one we find 200 mya. Specifically, we expect to see some kind of partial shell - because we really don't expect the complex turtle shell to just pop into existence.

The creation theory says that the resemblence between the 240my creature and the 200my turtle is accidental (not a real relationship) and there is no reason to expect some half shelled creature between 240my and 200my.

So, when we mind exactly what we expect to find per ToE, and at the time we expect to find it, this is a confirmation of ToE, and a challenge to the creation theory.

When we continue to find transitionals like this over and over again, as expected by ToE, it becomes more and more unlikely the correlations are simply random as per the Creation hypothesis. And so gradually, as more and more animals of the transitional kind are found per ToE predictions, the creation hypothesis loses ground to the ToE hypothesis.

Which brings us to this specific find. This one find does not undo creation. BUT, as more and more transitionals have been found, the creation side keeps having a harder and harder time claiming the 'transitionals' are simply accidental but unrelated similarities between created creatures.

And so creationists have tended to pick especially hard to find, but expected per ToE, transitionals as evidence these other transitionals are indeed just accidental by unrelated similarities and life really was created as is. Most notably, the bat, and the turtle.

But recently, even these have fallen to the expectations of ToE - specifically per this thread, the Turtle.



Jim