[quote]pushharder wrote:
You’re a smart guy.
[/quote]
As are you push. Your level of intelligence suggests to me that there’s probably quite a lot of cognitive dissonance at play. But I’m not going to try to convince you. I think it’s something you’ve decided to believe rather than just believe.
There’s such a wealth of evidence for evolution in general already that an “alternative explanation” for this particular experiment would not change anything.
What does the creationist have to say about the filamentous protofeathers linking Sinosauropteryx as a transition between theropod dinosaurs and birds?
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
And I would respond that the Archeopteryx lost its place at the base of the evolutionary tree after the older Xiaotingia zhengi was found. It’s not even apparent they had feathers. X. Xu et al., ?An Archaeopteryx-Like Theropod from China and the Origin of Avialae,? Nature 475: 467. They will probably be classified as Deinonychosauria as recently proposed.[/quote]
“Despite only tentative statistical support, this result challenges the centrality of Archaeopteryx in the transition to birds.”
I appreciate how confidently you equate “tentative” with “probable.”
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Faithful presuppositions.
This is the foundation for ANY model of origins.
How the evidence is viewed depends on the above.[/quote]
Yeah, but for TOE there’s not only evidence, but an overwhelming amount of it. There isn’t a modicum of evidence to support the creation account given by Genesis.
Not all faith, and not all supposition, is equal.
(Not that this really needs to be said, because we all know it.)
All knowledge of history supposes a vanishingly small likelihood of mass and inexplicable deception. This is not a defense of silly and groundless non-history. It is not a defense of the claim that Eli Manning was the first POTUS.
There are accounts in competition. The evidence for one account is added to, and bettered, every week. As for the evidence for the other account – its proponents won’t even acknowledge that you’ve asked them the question. Instead they’ll do things like cite outdated and/or misleadingly cherry-picked sources in appeals to authority and then, one step further along in the debate, impugn the authority and timeliness of the very same sources to whose authority they have just finished appealing. Which is the logical equivalent of eating one’s own head.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
There’s such a wealth of evidence for evolution in general already that an “alternative explanation” for this particular experiment would not change anything.
[/quote]
Weak sauce again. C’mon man, that was downright pathetic. Don’t ever play your “I’m such an objective thinker” card with me again.
There’s actually a wealth of evidence, yes, depending on your “cognitively dissonant” and faithful presuppositions.
Now you cite the Daily Mail?
LOL
Strike three.[/quote]
The Daily Mail is merely reporting the experiment. They did not fabricate this experiment nor did they falsify the results or convey any misleading information. The “source” I’m referencing is the scientists themselves and the results of their experiment. If you’re reduced to dismissing the experiment on the grounds that it was reported in the Daily Mail then you clearly don’t have any serious response to evidence.
[quote]Bismark wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Faithful presuppositions.
This is the foundation for ANY model of origins.
How the evidence is viewed depends on the above.[/quote]
Yeah, but for TOE there’s not only evidence, but an overwhelming amount of it. There isn’t a modicum of evidence to support the creation account given by Genesis.[/quote]
Which Genesis account? There are two different and conflicting accounts of the creation story which is yet another reason why a literal interpretation is ridiculous.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
The Daily Mail is merely reporting the experiment. They did not fabricate this experiment nor did they falsify the results or convey any misleading information. The “source” I’m referencing is the scientists themselves and the results of their experiment. If you’re reduced to dismissing the experiment on the grounds that it was reported in the Daily Mail then you clearly don’t have any serious response to evidence.
[/quote]
Yes indeed. It’s what this debate is, really: One side grasping at every possible straw, as furiously as possible.
The publication:
“Two developmental modules establish 3D beak-shape variation in Darwin’s finches.”
Ricardo Mallarino, Peter R. Grant, B. Rosemary Grant, Anthony Herrel, Winston
P. Kuo, Arhat Abzhanov and Marc W. Kirschner. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
Vol. 108, No. 10 (March 8, 2011), pp. 4057-4062
So about those fuel efficient cars and recycling…
Just kidding guys, busting some balls.
[quote]countingbeans wrote:
So about those fuel efficient cars and recycling…
Just kidding guys, busting some balls. [/quote]
Oh I get it. Evolution caused global warming. So humans evolved to use natural resources in a particular way that introduced a preponderance CO2 in to the atmosphere that have raise global temperatures above the mean. Where as the way we used natural resources before introduced less CO2 and would not have caused CO2 levels to rise as much?
I think the real answer is we don’t actually know. I don’t think we know what the mean should actually be. Given the population of the Earth as it is now, based on how we use natural resources now vs. how we would have used them if we never industrialized we don’t know the impact nor what the mean should be based on the same variables sans industrialization. 7 billion people eking out an existence on the planet is bound to have an impact no matter how we managed to do it. The question is how much more impact does existing industrialized have on environment vs. simply existing and using natural resources to exist. Couple that with the millions of factors involved with climate and I don’t think we can know that. Humans, indeed all mammals alone are a mother load of greenhouse gas generators. We exhale CO2, we fart methane, and even our corpses put out an inordinate amount of CO2.
As far as evolution goes, it’s a solid theory, but the gaps in macro evolution are a huge problem. I don’t think it makes evolutionary theory false by any stretch, in fact we know creatures adapt we have good evidence for that so it is at least in part a scientific fact. The problems in macro evolution does indicate that we don’t understand it totally, or we lack the evidence to establish the link. It simply means that we don’t understand either how it works fully, or that something else, yet undiscovered, is in play. I think we need to be open to that possibility that maybe evolution isn’t the whole story. It is part of it, but we need more evidence for macro evolution or we need to strive to find out how these creatures got here if not by evolution alone. We really have very little data compared to how much data exists. We need more info.
To say we know it’s all evolution without sufficient data to explain the macro evolutionary phenomenon is really just an act of faith. I think evolution is more or less correct and it may be the whole story, it maybe most of the story or it may be part of the story. We won’t know until we can solve the puzzle of macro evolution.
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’m not getting why someone would cite Archeopteryx as a transitional species when the scientific community which you obviously adore as your priests and priestesses have rapidly motored away from the cotton-pickin’ bird as fast as they can unless they don’t really understand what it is they are debating.
You’re not getting that, are you?
[/quote]
One of the two of us doesn’t know what’s going on here. Big time.[/quote]
He thinks he won the debate because one of the sources I used who said there are no transitional organisms in the fossil record later claimed there were. Neither one of them have actually produced the fossil of a transitional organism of which there is little debate among evolutionists as to the validity of. One would think that of the literally billions of fossils found, there would be thousands of examples of these. You would think one fossil would have been found of a fish with limbs and fins together. You know, as if it were in transition.
How about this gem: “Haikouichthys was one of the first organisms to have a distinct backbone and head, making it a notable Transitional form in the transition from invertebrates to fish.[1] It arose during the Cambrian explosion around 530 million years ago. Though it was likely not a direct ancestor of fishes, it is often referred to as one.[2][3] Its backbone was a notochord, that is, a cartilaginous rod running down its back, and it had gill slits, as with all other primitive chordates.” Rationalwiki.
So it’s held as a transitional form between invertebrates and fish yet not an ancestor of fish? Oh I get it, it looks like one of the unknown transitional forms of an early ancestor of fish (maybe the metaspriggina) that evolved separately and uniquely alongside this one. We just haven’t found that one yet in the billions and billions of fossils located. Maybe they will find a metaspriggina with some partially formed fins. It’s also held as a possible transitional form, also found during the Cambrian era.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’m not getting why someone would cite Archeopteryx as a transitional species when the scientific community which you obviously adore as your priests and priestesses have rapidly motored away from the cotton-pickin’ bird as fast as they can unless they don’t really understand what it is they are debating.
You’re not getting that, are you?
[/quote]
One of the two of us doesn’t know what’s going on here. Big time.[/quote]
He thinks he won the debate because one of the sources I used who said there are no transitional organisms in the fossil record later claimed there were.[/quote]
I have explained this a few times now.
I think I won the debate because you made an argument from authority, built of sources cited exclusively for and because of their authority (i.e., there was no justification for their inclusion aside from their respective names), and then I baited you, a single step later, into turning around and impugning the authority and timeliness of the very same – i.e., your own – sources.
I was able to do this because of a structural failure in creationist tactics, which also happens to be central and definitional to them: They rely on cherry picking, on evidence gathered not for its quality or its importance or its centrality or its timeliness, but only for its ability to be used or, more often, twisted to fit an unscientific and facile model of human origin.
In other words, this was, as you put it a while back, “the philosophy bullshit.” The thing about the philosophy bullshit, though, is that you can’t run from it. I don’t need to offer you any links. There is nothing for you to twist. You appealed to authority and then attacked your own argument – you chewed your own legs off. You did my job for me.
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
[quote]smh_23 wrote:
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I’m not getting why someone would cite Archeopteryx as a transitional species when the scientific community which you obviously adore as your priests and priestesses have rapidly motored away from the cotton-pickin’ bird as fast as they can unless they don’t really understand what it is they are debating.
You’re not getting that, are you?
[/quote]
One of the two of us doesn’t know what’s going on here. Big time.[/quote]
He thinks he won the debate because one of the sources I used who said there are no transitional organisms in the fossil record later claimed there were. Neither one of them have actually produced the fossil of a transitional organism of which there is little debate among evolutionists as to the validity of. One would think that of the literally billions of fossils found, there would be thousands of examples of these. You would think one fossil would have been found of a fish with limbs and fins together. You know, as if it were in transition.
How about this gem: “Haikouichthys was one of the first organisms to have a distinct backbone and head, making it a notable Transitional form in the transition from invertebrates to fish.[1] It arose during the Cambrian explosion around 530 million years ago. Though it was likely not a direct ancestor of fishes, it is often referred to as one.[2][3] Its backbone was a notochord, that is, a cartilaginous rod running down its back, and it had gill slits, as with all other primitive chordates.” Rationalwiki.
So it’s held as a transitional form between invertebrates and fish yet not an ancestor of fish? Oh I get it, it looks like one of the unknown transitional forms of an early ancestor of fish (maybe the metaspriggina) that evolved separately and uniquely alongside this one. We just haven’t found that one yet in the billions and billions of fossils located. Maybe they will find a metaspriggina with some partially formed fins. It’s also held as a possible transitional form, also found during the Cambrian era. [/quote]
It is a problem. Far from a death knell for evolution, but it is a problem. Based on current understanding you should find a lot of transitional critters and there are very few borderline ones. Maybe we haven’t turned over right rock, or maybe something else is in play. I am not saying evolution is wrong by any stretch. I am saying the lack of evidence for transitional creatures is a problem in need of either more evidence or a different solution.