The Deception of Evolution and the Fossil Sequence

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Justatruthseeker

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This is just more of your assertions that you re almost never willing to back up.

And here are more of your assertions you can not back up.

"A perfect 100% complete fossil record would show a fine gradation,"

You can't even get past the fact you have no graduation at all. That a T-Rex is a T-Rex from the oldest fossil found the the youngest - and the same for every one you care to name. Then you continue to ignore that 2 of every 3 classified is in error.

Evolutionists simply start making excuses why the evidence doesn't support their theory so they can ignore the evidence and make claims anyways.

Only in the realm of the mind is evolution viable. All real world experimentation and observation has falsified it over and over.
 
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Loudmouth

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Perhaps he'll clarify, but I assume he was asking you to provide any support for the assertion that we should see a record that is so finely graded that it is impossible to make any conclusions about their lineages.

Actually, I am referring to living species. Lifepsyop is arguing that there should be fine gradations between living species, if I am understanding his argument correctly. This would require several things to happen:

1. No lineage ever goes extinct.
2. The rate of speciation stays constant and high.
3. Natural selection causes the same rate of morphological change in every single lineage.

None of those things are necessary for evolution. There is no expectation that there should be fine gradations between every single living species.

I would assume by "objective hierarchy" Loudmouth means one derived from a the best statistically supported analysis. Just because it is possible to produce different phylogenies doesn't make them all equally well-supported. While Feduccia's phylogeny is fundamentally different, it is not as well-supported.

It has to do with whether or not there are characteristics that are more important in the phylogeny than others. For example, in the phylogeny of animals the presence or absence of a backbone (or more accurately a notochord) is a more heavily weighted characteristic than the presence or absence of mammary glands. Here is a more lengthy description from talkorigins:

Although it is trivial to classify anything subjectively in a hierarchical manner, only certain things can be classified objectively in a consistent, unique nested hierarchy. The difference drawn here between "subjective" and "objective" is crucial and requires some elaboration, and it is best illustrated by example. Different models of cars certainly could be classified hierarchically—perhaps one could classify cars first by color, then within each color by number of wheels, then within each wheel number by manufacturer, etc. However, another individual may classify the same cars first by manufacturer, then by size, then by year, then by color, etc. The particular classification scheme chosen for the cars is subjective. In contrast, human languages, which have common ancestors and are derived by descent with modification, generally can be classified in objective nested hierarchies (Pei 1949; Ringe 1999). Nobody would reasonably argue that Spanish should be categorized with German instead of with Portugese.

The difference between classifying cars and classifying languages lies in the fact that, with cars, certain characters (for example, color or manufacturer) must be considered more important than other characters in order for the classification to work. Which types of car characters are more important depends upon the personal preference of the individual who is performing the classification. In other words, certain types of characters must be weighted subjectively in order to classify cars in nested hierarchies; cars do not fall into natural, unique, objective nested hierarchies.

Because of these facts, a cladistic analysis of cars will not produce a unique, consistent, well-supported tree that displays nested hierarchies. A cladistic analysis of cars (or, alternatively, a cladistic analysis of imaginary organisms with randomly assigned characters) will of course result in a phylogeny, but there will be a very large number of other phylogenies, many of them with very different topologies, that are as well-supported by the same data. In contrast, a cladistic analysis of organisms or languages will generally result in a well-supported nested hierarchy, without arbitrarily weighting certain characters (Ringe 1999). Cladistic analysis of a true genealogical process produces one or relatively few phylogenetic trees that are much more well-supported by the data than the other possible trees.

Interestingly, Linnaeus, who originally discovered the objective hierarchical classification of living organisms, also tried to classify rocks and minerals hierarchically. However, his classification for non-living objects eventually failed, as it was found to be very subjective. Hierarchical classifications for inanimate objects don't work for the very reason that unlike organisms, rocks and minerals do not evolve by descent with modification from common ancestors.

The degree to which a given phylogeny displays a unique, well-supported, objective nested hierarchy can be rigorously quantified. Several different statistical tests have been developed for determining whether a phylogeny has a subjective or objective nested hierarchy, or whether a given nested hierarchy could have been generated by a chance process instead of a genealogical process (Swofford 1996, p. 504). These tests measure the degree of "cladistic hierarchical structure" (also known as the "phylogenetic signal") in a phylogeny, and phylogenies based upon true genealogical processes give high values of hierarchical structure, whereas subjective phylogenies that have only apparent hierarchical structure (like a phylogeny of cars, for example) give low values (Archie 1989; Faith and Cranston 1991; Farris 1989; Felsenstein 1985; Hillis 1991; Hillis and Huelsenbeck 1992; Huelsenbeck et al. 2001; Klassen et al. 1991).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#nested_hierarchy





And yet, as has been pointed out, neither you nor really any other creationists are willing to do this[/QUOTE]
 
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Loudmouth

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And here are more of your assertions you can not back up.

"A perfect 100% complete fossil record would show a fine gradation,"

You can't even get past the fact you have no graduation at all.

toskulls2.jpg
 
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Atheos canadensis

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And here are more of your assertions you can not back up.

"A perfect 100% complete fossil record would show a fine gradation,"

You can't even get past the fact you have no graduation at all. That a T-Rex is a T-Rex from the oldest fossil found the the youngest - and the same for every one you care to name. Then you continue to ignore that 2 of every 3 classified is in error.

Evolutionists simply start making excuses why the evidence doesn't support their theory so they can ignore the evidence and make claims anyways.

Only in the realm of the mind is evolution viable. All real world experimentation and observation has falsified it over and over.

I guarantee that you cannot produce a quote from that video that says 2 of every 3 fossils (or dinosaurs specifically, if that's what you mean) are identified erroneously. I know you have been corrected on this already. Will you produce the quote as I challenge you to do, or will you continue to repost this video ad nauseum asif it supports your claim?
 
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lifepsyop

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He has been shown to be wrong. He refuses to accept it.

We are still waiting for that single objective phylogeny for cars. Is it coming any time soon?

I wrote a short paragraph. You couldn't respond to it could you? I wonder why? Here it is again.

Feduccia can't be "proven wrong". There is simply an agreement that he is wrong. No evolutionist can demonstrate objectively that their Bird Evolution model is correct and Feduccia's model is wrong since each model makes its own assumptions. That is why your claim of a "single OBJECTIVE nested hierarchy" is so obviously wrong. You're just in denial and can't accept it.

I understand that you cannot admit you are wrong about this, no matter how obvious it is.
 
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lifepsyop

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I would assume by "objective hierarchy" Loudmouth means one derived from a the best statistically supported analysis. Just because it is possible to produce different phylogenies doesn't make them all equally well-supported. While Feduccia's phylogeny is fundamentally different, it is not as well-supported.

I doubt that Loudmouth really understands what he means. Though he can't describe how, he clearly believes that Feduccia's bird evolution model was somehow objectively disproven even though there is only a consensus that Feduccia's assumptions are wrong and that prevailing assumptions are correct. This is a terrible mishandling of the term "objective".

Furthermore, the best "statistical supported analysis" cannot check for unknown levels of homoplasy (convergent evolution), nor can it check for false signals in the stratigraphic sequence of fossils, (i.e. primitive character states only fossilizing after advanced ones.) Thus even the best statistical phylogenetic models are still based on some fundamental assumptions and are not truly objective. Therefore there is no single objective hierarchy of life.

Even most evolutionists would admit that more fossil data coming to light may potentially nest certain animals in completely different groups. That is only possible if the current nested hierarchies rest upon some measure of subjective assessment.

Perhaps you can shed some light on this issue Atheos, as Loudmouth has his head firmly buried in the sand at this point.
 
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The Cadet

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I realize I'm a little late to this one, and this point has probably been made already, but @lifepsyop , we're constantly digging up new fossils. Every time a new fossil is found, the theory is tested. If the fossil does not fit the model, we have a problem. If we were to, say, find a rabbit fossil from the precambrian that dated back billions of years, there would be a real problem with the theory of evolution, one we'd have to resolve or abandon the theory. Not only because it would contradict the existing fossil evidence, throwing its validity into question, but because it would contradict the evidence from genetics. This would be a real, serious problem for evolution, one that would not be easily resolved. We've built our model on evidence, and now we have new evidence that does not fit in the model. The model must be revised or abandoned.

In the case of your example in the OP, it's not that simple. Yeah, we would have modeled the theory around the fossil evidence we had found, but when genetics came around in the 50s, we would have found a huge disconnect between the fossil record and what genetics showed, and we would have had a similar problem. We'd need to find a new model to explain how this conflicting evidence came about.

Genetics could have overthrown evolution. It could have shown us that everything we knew was wrong. But it didn't. It confirmed it, and provided strong, concordant evidence that the model was correct.
 
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The Cadet

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That's an overtly simplified look at the homology of dogs. And yes, while it is fair to say that the human skull lineage is oversimplifying it, it makes the point pretty well. The issue being that the overall morphology of the human lineage shows an astounding homology - they're incredibly similar to each other, showing a clear lineage. We never look at just one body part for homology. That's how Of Pandas And People makes the error of comparing a Tasmanian Wolf to wolves and dogs - while the jaw of the Tasmanian Wolf is similar, the rest of the body is incredibly different.

What's more, in the case of dogs, we have hundreds of years of highly specified selective inbreeding - not so much natural selection to fit in an environment as artificial selection to fit in a handbag. This will lead to the kind of variance you see above. That said, it is not representative of their overall homology, whereas the full skeleton of various human ancestors are.
 
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lifepsyop

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That's an overtly simplified look at the homology of dogs. And yes, while it is fair to say that the human skull lineage is oversimplifying it, it makes the point pretty well. The issue being that the overall morphology of the human lineage shows an astounding homology - they're incredibly similar to each other, showing a clear lineage. We never look at just one body part for homology...

What's more, in the case of dogs, we have hundreds of years of highly specified selective inbreeding - not so much natural selection to fit in an environment as artificial selection to fit in a handbag.

You've just admitted that we can infer from the "hominid" skulls that most of them could simply be the product of reproductively isolated human populations.

We see far more variation in dogs that have only been subject to inbreeding for several centuries. Yet we know such extreme variation in morphology is only the result of changes in expression levels of genetic traits that were already present. No "Evolution" of anything.

This shows how evolutionists just equivocate any change at all with their Darwinian creation mysticism.
 
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Atheos canadensis

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I doubt that Loudmouth really understands what he means. Though he can't describe how, he clearly believes that Feduccia's bird evolution model was somehow objectively disproven even though there is only a consensus that Feduccia's assumptions are wrong and that prevailing assumptions are correct. This is a terrible mishandling of the term "objective".

Furthermore, the best "statistical supported analysis" cannot check for unknown levels of homoplasy (convergent evolution), nor can it check for false signals in the stratigraphic sequence of fossils, (i.e. primitive character states only fossilizing after advanced ones.) Thus even the best statistical phylogenetic models are still based on some fundamental assumptions and are not truly objective. Therefore there is no single objective hierarchy of life.

Even most evolutionists would admit that more fossil data coming to light may potentially nest certain animals in completely different groups. That is only possible if the current nested hierarchies rest upon some measure of subjective assessment.

Perhaps you can shed some light on this issue Atheos, as Loudmouth has his head firmly buried in the sand at this point.

I think Loudmouth's reply to me makes it clear that he was using objective in the way I suggested, i.e. that there is not one single irrefutably correct phylogeny, merely that there is a phylogeny that has the best mathematical support. Homoplasy and the incompleteness of the fossil record can complicate matters, but these serve to weaken a potential phylogenetic signal, not prevent analyses from producing one or two trees that are both supported with statistical significance and supported more than any other configuration. I agree that "objective" is a word likely to cause unnecessary diversions as we have just seen, but contextually it means no more than "mathematically supported" or "best supported". And when you have the morphologcially derived tree of life agreeing so closely with the molecular tree of life, it is a safe assumption that sources of error like you mention have not significantly altered the phylogenetic signal. And before you do your "similar creatures are similar bit", please note that observation shows us that similar morphology or function need not be reflected by similar molecules.

Also, I'm still waiting for you to defend your earlier point by explaining why plate tectonics is a bad theory because, were the rock record different than we actually observe, it could have accommodated Australia being part of North America as easily as it accommodates Australia being formerly part of Antarctica.
 
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StormanNorman

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You've just admitted that we can infer from the "hominid" skulls that most of them could simply be the product of reproductively isolated human populations.

We see far more variation in dogs that have only been subject to inbreeding for several centuries. Yet we know such extreme variation in morphology is only the result of changes in expression levels of genetic traits that were already present. No "Evolution" of anything.

This shows how evolutionists just equivocate any change at all with their Darwinian creation mysticism.

Here is a graphic showing hominid cranial capacities vs. the measured age of the fossil. What are the odds that your isolated human population theory would produce such a graphic? And, of course, we see far more variation in dogs; it's called artificial selection.
 
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StormanNorman

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I think Loudmouth's reply to me makes it clear that he was using objective in the way I suggested, i.e. that there is not one single irrefutably correct phylogeny, merely that there is a phylogeny that has the best mathematical support. Homoplasy and the incompleteness of the fossil record can complicate matters, but these serve to weaken a potential phylogenetic signal, not prevent analyses from producing one or two trees that are both supported with statistical significance and supported more than any other configuration. I agree that "objective" is a word likely to cause unnecessary diversions as we have just seen, but contextually it means no more than "mathematically supported" or "best supported". And when you have the morphologcially derived tree of life agreeing so closely with the molecular tree of life, it is a safe assumption that sources of error like you mention have not significantly altered the phylogenetic signal. And before you do your "similar creatures are similar bit", please note that observation shows us that similar morphology or function need not be reflected by similar molecules.

Also, I'm still waiting for you to defend your earlier point by explaining why plate tectonics is a bad theory because, were the rock record different than we actually observe, it could have accommodated Australia being part of North America as easily as it accommodates Australia being formerly part of Antarctica.

Or convicting people of murder based on forensic evidence; if the evidence were different and incriminated an entirely different person, then law enforcement and prosecution would have to formulate a different theory and, instead, pursue the latter suspect.
 
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The Cadet

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You've just admitted that we can infer from the "hominid" skulls that most of them could simply be the product of reproductively isolated human populations.

No. If all we had were those particular skulls, it might be a bit of a stretch. But that's not what we have. We have complete hominid skeletons that show rather extreme morphological differences (the shape of the skull is not nearly as meaningful as, say, whether or not the hips were set up for bipedal or quadrupedal movement. What's more, as I explained the variation within the dog skulls are a result of extremely specific selective breeding. Natural selection will virtually never result in this sort of rapid, extreme change within a species.

As for it being possible that they're simply the product of reproductively isolated human populations, I'm not sure that the morphology of fossils alone could allow for that conclusion, but I haven't found anything specifically contradicting it. This is where other important evidence, such as migratory patterns become more important. There are numerous lines of evidence that we use to piece together human evolution. I'll admit I'm a bit outside of my field when it comes to paleoanthropology. Maybe someone who knows better can chime in here - can we determine speciation based on morphology?

We see far more variation in dogs that have only been subject to inbreeding for several centuries. Yet we know such extreme variation in morphology is only the result of changes in expression levels of genetic traits that were already present. No "Evolution" of anything.

"We know that such an extreme variation in position is only the result of wheels turning and pistons pounding. No 'travel' of anything."

Not a great argument.
 
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lifepsyop

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Here is a graphic showing hominid cranial capacities vs. the measured age of the fossil. What are the odds that your isolated human population theory would produce such a graphic? And, of course, we see far more variation in dogs; it's called artificial selection.

Hello StormanNorman,

If I recall correctly, BoneDigger over at the EFF forums showed you how some of that skull morphology data is highly ambiguous. Evolutionary paleontologists are known for exaggerating the conclusiveness of their interpretations in order to make them fit better within a preferred evolutionary model. "Whale evolution" is a good example of this.

That some semblance of a trend in only particular traits is able to be extracted from the data does not surprise me, but at the same time, any features that do not show such a trend are simply ignored. There is a great deal of confirmation bias being imposed on the data to make a selected set of it seem more important than everything else. This is a common trap evolutionists fall into by obsessing so much over certain isolated body-parts to the exclusion of everything else. The "reptile-mammal jaw-bone transition" is another good example of this.

Let's not forget that if this human skull trend was instead disorder, evolutionists would simply assume the "brain capacity" trait was less informative about an evolutionary progression, or that the order of fossilization did not accurately reflect the order of evolution. So this can hardly be considered any test of evolution theory.
 
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crjmurray

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Hello StormanNorman,

If I recall correctly, BoneDigger over at the EFF forums showed you how some of that skull morphology data is highly ambiguous. Evolutionary paleontologists are known for exaggerating the conclusiveness of their interpretations in order to make them fit better within a preferred evolutionary model. "Whale evolution" is a good example of this.

That some semblance of a trend in only particular traits is able to be extracted from the data does not surprise me, but at the same time, any features that do not show such a trend are simply ignored. There is a great deal of confirmation bias being imposed on the data to make a selected set of it seem more important than everything else. This is a common trap evolutionists fall into by obsessing so much over certain isolated body-parts to the exclusion of everything else. The "reptile-mammal jaw-bone transition" is another good example of this.

Let's not forget that if this human skull trend was instead disorder, evolutionists would simply assume the "brain capacity" trait was less informative about an evolutionary progression, or that the order of fossilization did not accurately reflect the order of evolution. So this can hardly be considered any test of evolution theory.

What's your problem with whales?
 
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Justatruthseeker

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How about having to desperately grab at virtually thin air to explain why chimpanzee's - our ancestors have never been found to be at near the age af man?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_chimp_teeth.html

And they did it with a plethora of evidence mind you - they had "Three teeth—a molar and two incisors—likely came from the same individual, a chimpanzee living about 545,000 years ago." Nothing else, but a few teeth found in the same area and bam - they got to go together.

Since hardly any chimpanzee evidence exists beyond a few thousand years, you would think a light bulb would go off and they would realize chimps are nothing but a recent breed withing the ape Kind. Like the Chinook is a recent breed within the canine Kind. A change that can occur in one single breeding.
 
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lifepsyop

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I think Loudmouth's reply to me makes it clear that he was using objective in the way I suggested, i.e. that there is not one single irrefutably correct phylogeny, merely that there is a phylogeny that has the best mathematical support. Homoplasy and the incompleteness of the fossil record can complicate matters, but these serve to weaken a potential phylogenetic signal, not prevent analyses from producing one or two trees that are both supported with statistical significance and supported more than any other configuration. I agree that "objective" is a word likely to cause unnecessary diversions as we have just seen, but contextually it means no more than "mathematically supported" or "best supported". And when you have the morphologcially derived tree of life agreeing so closely with the molecular tree of life, it is a safe assumption that sources of error like you mention have not significantly altered the phylogenetic signal.

But the mathematical equations cannot reconcile unknown values. You really don't know how severely the phylogenetic signal may be affected. In any case, the nested hierarchy is not free of some core assumptions.

And before you do your "similar creatures are similar bit", please note that observation shows us that similar morphology or function need not be reflected by similar molecules.

Well, most of this amazing "phylogenetic signal" really does come down to that simple concept... similar morphologies have similar molecules. This cannot reasonably be advanced as a strong confirmation of Evolution, (though that claim is made by evolutionists constantly, of course)

The way evolutionists try and get around this is by using a teleological argument. They imply that because God could have designed similar morphologies with dissimilar molecules, but Evolution is more likely constrained to similar and similar, this then is stronger support for Evolution. Again, this argument is teleological as it implies how God would or wouldn't be constrained in the creation of life. The evolutionist needs to admit that he is using teleology to defend his theory and I wonder how "scientific" that is in the first place.

But even the teleological argument has a major flaw when we use known intelligent designers as reference. For instance, it is certainly true that the same functions of computer programs can be performed by entirely different computer coding structures. However, if we consider a single human designer, he will typically copy similar program functions by copying the same or similar underlying coding structure. Likewise, the single human designer will tend to leave consistent patterns of his coding 'style' throughout the program. This is the natural consistent behavior of designers. Thus "similar animals are similar" is also an expectation from a single designer of life.



Also, I'm still waiting for you to defend your earlier point by explaining why plate tectonics is a bad theory because, were the rock record different than we actually observe, it could have accommodated Australia being part of North America as easily as it accommodates Australia being formerly part of Antarctica.

I don't know enough about plate tectonics theory to go into detail on it. But based on what you said, it would be totally irrational to claim the support of plate tectonics theory is based primarily on the relative position of continents... or that plate tectonics is a good theory because it could be falsified by Australia being part of North America. If the emerging plate tectonics theory could have accommodated those alternate findings then it would be silly to turn around and claim their absence as evidence.

Yet by analogy, the general order of the fossil record is usually the first thing evolutionists go running to as the strongest support for universal common descent, even though their theory could have accommodated countless other fossil orders.
 
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lifepsyop

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What's your problem with whales?

I don't have any problem with whales.... if you're referring to models of "whale evolution", here are a few interviews with the evolutionary paleontologists involved showing how they used ambiguous data or fabricated anatomical traits in order to push a more convincing picture of a fossil transitional sequence.




This shouldn't surprise anyone. Evolutionists are faithfully convicted in their belief of how animals evolved so they are going to tend to impose those beliefs onto the data.
 
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