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Reading Gish's garbage in another thread reminds me of one of the central lies of creationism. The idea that we never find "half fish and half chickens, half rabbit and half horses." There is no way that twisted old chimp could have believed he wasn't deliberately misrepresenting evolution with intent to deceive. He knew he was lying, and I think that was so obvious that his followers knew it too.
The premise he starts with, the idea that "transitional species...represent transition between two known, different types of life" -is already poisoning the well by assuming there to be different types of life in one evolutionary lineage. There aren't, nor could there ever be. Contrary to the so oft-recited claims of creationists, evolution never suggests that one thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different thing. Everything that ever evolved was just a modified version of whatever its ancestors were. Evolution -at every level- is just a matter of varying proportions in the superficial details, minor differences being added onto layers of fundamental commonalities. Everything is whatever its ancestors were, in addition to having some new defining trait too.
Now I wanna try to explain this in such a way that someone conditioned to knee-jerk reactions when he hears words like "evolution" or "liberal" or "ACLU" -will be able to understand this without seeing red. So its like this; cars are a kind of vehicle, and there are different kinds of cars. General Motors is an American car maker, and Cadillac is one of several companies within the parent company. Cadillac made the Eldorado, and one kind of Eldorado was the Seville, which originally came with "bat-wing" fins. Now saying "Cadillac Eldorado" isn't a lot different than saying "Homo sapiens". In both cases, the general group is listed first, and the specific division named after. And in both cases, we don't bother to list all the other groups the named subject still belongs to, such as;
Vehicles
.Cars
..American cars
...GM cars
....Cadillac
.....Eldorado
......Seville
So a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado bat-wing convertible is a kind within a kind within a kind within a kind. And with each kind, there are other kinds at the same level which then specialize into different directions. There is no half-Eldorado, half-Cadillac. Nor could there be any transition between a Cadillac and a car. Its no less silly when creationists ask for a half-bird, half-dinosaur. They may as well ask for a half-Ford and half-Shelby Cobra. When they ask for an "ape-man" its just like asking for a duck-bird.
All ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks. Evolutionists see ducks evolving from birds that weren't ducks, and anti-evolutionists whine that "its still a bird!" Well of course they are. How could they become anything that wasn't a bird if they descended from a bird? Then evolutionists see different kinds of ducks diversifying from a common ancestor. And the antievolutionists chant "But they're still ducks." Well, of course they are. And they are still dinosaurs too, just like we are still apes.
This is when it is important to understand what a clade is. Its hard to illustrate a concept, especially one that can't be photographed. And I realized the images I've created before still depend on one already having some understanding of what I was trying to explain. So I happened on another way to explain what a clade is, and I think I've found a way to illustrate it that should make sense to anyone who frequents computerized discussion forums.
In the systematic classification of life, clades are exactly like Windows Explorer file folders. You can open a series of folders within folders until you get to the files themselves. And they aren't just in the last folder you opened. They are still in every folder you had to open to get there.
Each folder below is a clade. And in this list, every folder that is open is a clade we humans still belong to. This isn't something we decided on. This system was determined by in-depth exhaustive detail analysis of all the similarities and variations found between everything that ever lived, and the types of shared traits or differences they were.
This isn't a lot different from an actual cladogram. As anyone who's seen this format knows, if you click on any of the other folders, you will get a whole other lineage branching off at that point. And that's what happens in nature too. I would have put all the folders in for every clade we descend from or are sisters to in the whole tree of life, but going from "molecules to man" requires a very big illustration because we have so many tiny incrimental steps along the way with almost no links still missing anywhere in our chain -despite what the snake-oil salesmen want you to believe.
So in this evolutionary scheme, should we expect our critics to shout that its not really evolution because men are still monkeys? Can you have a half-mammal, half-man?
The premise he starts with, the idea that "transitional species...represent transition between two known, different types of life" -is already poisoning the well by assuming there to be different types of life in one evolutionary lineage. There aren't, nor could there ever be. Contrary to the so oft-recited claims of creationists, evolution never suggests that one thing ever turned into another, fundamentally-different thing. Everything that ever evolved was just a modified version of whatever its ancestors were. Evolution -at every level- is just a matter of varying proportions in the superficial details, minor differences being added onto layers of fundamental commonalities. Everything is whatever its ancestors were, in addition to having some new defining trait too.
Now I wanna try to explain this in such a way that someone conditioned to knee-jerk reactions when he hears words like "evolution" or "liberal" or "ACLU" -will be able to understand this without seeing red. So its like this; cars are a kind of vehicle, and there are different kinds of cars. General Motors is an American car maker, and Cadillac is one of several companies within the parent company. Cadillac made the Eldorado, and one kind of Eldorado was the Seville, which originally came with "bat-wing" fins. Now saying "Cadillac Eldorado" isn't a lot different than saying "Homo sapiens". In both cases, the general group is listed first, and the specific division named after. And in both cases, we don't bother to list all the other groups the named subject still belongs to, such as;
Vehicles
.Cars
..American cars
...GM cars
....Cadillac
.....Eldorado
......Seville
So a 1956 Cadillac Eldorado bat-wing convertible is a kind within a kind within a kind within a kind. And with each kind, there are other kinds at the same level which then specialize into different directions. There is no half-Eldorado, half-Cadillac. Nor could there be any transition between a Cadillac and a car. Its no less silly when creationists ask for a half-bird, half-dinosaur. They may as well ask for a half-Ford and half-Shelby Cobra. When they ask for an "ape-man" its just like asking for a duck-bird.
All ducks are birds, but not all birds are ducks. Evolutionists see ducks evolving from birds that weren't ducks, and anti-evolutionists whine that "its still a bird!" Well of course they are. How could they become anything that wasn't a bird if they descended from a bird? Then evolutionists see different kinds of ducks diversifying from a common ancestor. And the antievolutionists chant "But they're still ducks." Well, of course they are. And they are still dinosaurs too, just like we are still apes.
This is when it is important to understand what a clade is. Its hard to illustrate a concept, especially one that can't be photographed. And I realized the images I've created before still depend on one already having some understanding of what I was trying to explain. So I happened on another way to explain what a clade is, and I think I've found a way to illustrate it that should make sense to anyone who frequents computerized discussion forums.
In the systematic classification of life, clades are exactly like Windows Explorer file folders. You can open a series of folders within folders until you get to the files themselves. And they aren't just in the last folder you opened. They are still in every folder you had to open to get there.
Each folder below is a clade. And in this list, every folder that is open is a clade we humans still belong to. This isn't something we decided on. This system was determined by in-depth exhaustive detail analysis of all the similarities and variations found between everything that ever lived, and the types of shared traits or differences they were.
This isn't a lot different from an actual cladogram. As anyone who's seen this format knows, if you click on any of the other folders, you will get a whole other lineage branching off at that point. And that's what happens in nature too. I would have put all the folders in for every clade we descend from or are sisters to in the whole tree of life, but going from "molecules to man" requires a very big illustration because we have so many tiny incrimental steps along the way with almost no links still missing anywhere in our chain -despite what the snake-oil salesmen want you to believe.
So in this evolutionary scheme, should we expect our critics to shout that its not really evolution because men are still monkeys? Can you have a half-mammal, half-man?
