How do Creationists explain the vestigial structures in whales?

[Wiccan_Child]

It's funny. You say that Pakicetids are cetaceans because they share "morphological features", then say that rats, cats and lions aren't related just because they look alike. You do realize the "morphological features" is just a fancy way of saying "they look alike, don't you?

Your implication was that simply looking roughly similar (like a rat, cat, and lion) is enough - it's not. The level of similarity between a rat, cat, and lion, is enough to place them in the same class - Mammalia - but that's it. By contrast, the level of similarity between the fossils is sufficient to place them within the same order - Cetacea.

Quibble semantics all you want, the fact remains that the pakicetids are cetaceans.

 

[NailsII]

At least you're willing to admit that evos are betting theres more.

I said I was willing to bet that there are a lot more yet to be found.
I don't speak for other people.

Is that why they only show four in pictures showing it's evolution? If I were going to make such audacious claims, I think I would provide more proof than four.

Off the top of my head, (please correct me if I'm wrong on this), I make more than four:
Indohydus
Pakicetus
Ambulocitus
Remingtonocetus
Protocetus
Basilosaurus
Dorudontus

The claim is not really audacious, even if there was no fossils of whale ancestors - just looking at a whale or dolphin skeleton tells you that it is very similar to a land mammal, completely unlike fish.

If you would have read my whole post I stated that I believe some of the reason God made some of those strange animals that go against the claims and ideas of evolution, is to just mess with their minds and their precious theory.

The theory isn't precious, if it is proved wrong then a new theory will take its place.
It's not really a big deal.
You can believe what you want, but don't expect anyone to respect your ideas when you offer no evidence whatsoever.

Right, cuz it's crazy to assume an almighty God created everything with a perfect design and function, but it's perfectly normal to assume that given enough time a lizard will grow feathers and fly away. Sure.

I am sure you know that animals are not perfect.
They get ill, some have genetic defects and die.
Read up on feral species and you will find that your god made animals that struggle in their own environment, yet when they are accidently released into a new environment they flourish and decimate the local populations.
Some pefect design, eh.

 

[Naraoia]

I said I was willing to bet that there are a lot more yet to be found.
I don't speak for other people.


Off the top of my head, (please correct me if I'm wrong on this), I make more than four:

List of extinct cetaceans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

... is about twelve pages of extinct cetacean genera if you try to print it out. Yeah, a bit more than four. Granted, not all of them sit along the same lineage, but even if you only took the ones that fall between the ancestral land-dwellers and any individual cetacean family living today, there would be well over four of them.

Aetiocetus deserves special mention for this. (Also featured on Laelaps) A baleen whale with teeth AND baleen, and nostrils halfway up its snout.

 

[good brother]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

 

[Guy1]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

You're not really saying anything here you know. The fact that it sounds ridiculous to you has no bearing on it's validity. If we judged theories and the like by how ridiculous they sound to us then quantum mechanics would never have come to be.

 

[Davian]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

What would you provide as a falsifiable hypothesis for the data that has been presented?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

Your argument style is so well known we even have a name for it. We call it an argument from personal incredulity. Go look it up.

 

[NailsII]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

Have you got a better explaination as to how a whale, which resembles a land-dwelling mammal in so many of its features, ended up living in the sea?
It can't breathe underwater so it certainly was designed to live in the water!
The fosssil account isn't imagined, they are real bones that have been uncovered and examined. They have been dated and were deposited before whales (as we know them today) ever existed - so how is it ridiculous?

Your argument style is so well known we even have a name for it. We call it an argument from personal incredulity. Go look it up.

Very apt

 

[Split Rock]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

Yet, you beleive that a talking snake fooled a woman made from a rib into eating magical fruit which gave her instantaneous knowlege that she was naked. Please don't talk to us about what is ridiculous.

The fossils are real. You explain them. Go ahead, put your money where your mouth is.

 

[Naraoia]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

You really see no irony in posting the above in a completely fact-free rant?

Since I brought up the baleen whales/Aetiocetus study, would you care to "look at the claims" and point out your specific reasons they don't stand? Please do better than "God works in mysterious ways". If you want details on any of the claims the study makes, I have full-text access and I can quote it for you within reasonable limits, or try to explain what's in there if a direct quote would be too long.

ETA: The reason I posted the link to the list of extinct cetaceans is because you kept going on about how the story of whale evolution is supposedly based on just four fossil links. No, it's not. The four in your picture were presumably picked for clarity of illustration. They're only a hugely simplified illustration distilled from the data palaeontologists actually work with. (You go on and try to cram all the dozens of fossil whales, with all their key features, into a similar figure while still keeping it clear and manageable.)

 

[Split Rock]

You really see no irony in posting the above in a completely fact-free rant?

Since I brought up the baleen whales/Aetiocetus study, would you care to "look at the claims" and point out your specific reasons they don't stand? Please do better than "God works in mysterious ways". If you want details on any of the claims the study makes, I have full-text access and I can quote it for you within reasonable limits, or try to explain what's in there if a direct quote would be too long.

Wow, this is a great link, thanks for posting it! Funny how more and more evidence builds up for evolution, yet the creationists here keep shouting that there isn't any....

 

[Naraoia]

Wow, this is a great link, thanks for posting it! Funny how more and more evidence builds up for evolution, yet the creationists here keep shouting that there isn't any....

I remembered it from my Laelaps-reading days because a whale with baleen and teeth was so nerdgasmically awesome

 

[Wiccan_Child]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

So no actual refutation based in fact or evidence, just a string of poorly executed ad hominems. This does nothing but paint yourself in the light of the uneducated buffoon, showing us by contrast to be the civil intellectuals who stick to discussing the actual facts - so, thanks for the unintended compliment

 

[NailsII]

"Perhaps sometimes God just likes to show he has a sense of humor. How else can we explain a platypus?"

100 million years ago a platypus would not have looked so ridiculous.
Indeed, it is a nice example of an animal which displays features of reptiles and mammals - some would call it a transitional species even.

Yet, you beleive that a talking snake fooled a woman made from a rib into eating magical fruit which gave her instantaneous knowlege that she was naked. Please don't talk to us about what is ridiculous. .

Don't forget how we are all paying for this sin nowadays, but I imagine that Adam is presumed innocent on the basis of his non-existance.

 

[MostlyLurking]

You evos crack me up! You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE and yet you will defend it to no end. Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it. You all claim this imagined fossil account actually attests to a cow (like creature) becoming a whale. It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land of TOE that anyone who questions it is the supposed crack pot!

In Christ, GB

This rant has been quoted so often in the replies that it probably represents some kind of record, or at least, GB's "personal best".

It truly is an interested posting. He's so new the concepts of evolution (because he's never studied them), that he seems to think that everyone else is as baffled by them.

But what amazes me most is that he can say "You have never really examined the claims for yourselves that are being put forth by the TOE" to professional biologists on this forum. It kind of makes one wonder how he imagines university degree programs to operate. And does he assume that biologist simply got together at a conference and all agreed, "Let's pretend that this makes sense and spin it to the public like this........"

And when he asks, "Have any of you actually looked at the claims? Honestly? I mean like really looked at it?", does he think that the biologists here are thinking to themselves, "Yea, my course load was so heavy that I just never had time for thinking about it. And after I graduated, I was too busy looking for a job." and "Well when you put it like that, no, I never ever thought about it. I took entire semester-long grad-level courses on evolution and got top grades in it, but no I never ever thought about it."

And when someone who believes the earth is 6,000 years old and Noah's Ark held all of the world's animals complains, "Have you ever actually thought about it?" and "It is ridiculous! It boggles my mind that someone could be so caught up in this imagination land...", does he ever wonder how that makes him sound?

 

[MostlyLurking]

Verysincere, before you depart for good I'd love it if you posted a thread about your experiences as a creationist and what eventually changed your mind. I've picked up pieces, but it sounds like you've got an interesting story and a unique perspective.

Jro:

I made contact with Verysincere's former Teaching Assistant. He agreed to contact Verysincere about posting a thread about how he became an ex- Young Earth Creationist.

 

[NailsII]

Jro:

I made contact with Verysincere's former Teaching Assistant. He agreed to contact Verysincere about posting a thread about how he became an ex- Young Earth Creationist.

That would probably be very interesting.

I enjoyed conversing with VS, even though I got slated a couple of times....

 

[MostlyLurking]

That would probably be very interesting.

I enjoyed conversing with VS, even though I got slated a couple of times....

I'm not familiar with that term: "slated." Is that slang in the UK perhaps?