Are there transitional fossils?

[xianghua]

Mammals can't evolve twice

so eyes also cant evolved twice. so you dont believe in convergent evolution then. good to know.

 

[xianghua]

Now if you can prove that the same DNA was modified, you would have something, but as we no longer have surviving DNA of the Ichty, you will never prove that.

so why you believe it's the result of convergent evolution then? if you dont have the DNA of ichty then you cant know if its the result of a convergent mutations.

The Dolphin and Ichty are different creatures that came from different evolutionary path.

its just a belief.

 

[USincognito]

so eyes also cant evolved twice. so you dont believe in convergent evolution then. good to know.

So's Law and mammals =/= eyes.

No wonder you don't understand evolution. You can't grasp that a characteristic in not the same as a taxon.

 

[mark kennedy]

No, you're wrong. It's you and only you who are trying to turn evolution in to a philosophy when the rest of us are talking about science.
Also, your definition of evolution is begging the question because of three simple words: "developed at creation". It is the use of those three words that shows that you are the one is not talking about evolution scientifically since you're the one who is bringing religion in to it.

Then define 'evolution' or 'science' or maybe try a little background reading before you pontificate meanings you obviously know nothing about. Instant expert, just sign on and hurl highly emotive insults at creationists because that's so scientific.

Science as we know it was crafted in the seventeenth century as an epistemology. Francis Bacon was the first to propose an inductive approach, both Descarte and Newton wrote books on the 'First Philosophy'.

Evolution was define during the modern synthesis as the change of alleles in populations over time. It's also an a priori assumption of universal common ancestry. But don't bother yourself with real meaning or background reading. All you have to be is Darwinian and you automatically embody the empirical life sciences.

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

Then define 'evolution' or 'science' or maybe try a little background reading before you pontificate meanings you obviously know nothing about. Instant expert, just sign on and hurl highly emotive insults at creationists because that's so scientific.

Evolution = the change in alleles in a population due to changes in environment or environmental pressure.
Science = the study of the natural world.

Science as we know it was crafted in the seventeenth century as an epistemology. Francis Bacon was the first to propose an inductive approach, both Descarte and Newton wrote books on the 'First Philosophy'.

And?

Evolution was define during the modern synthesis as the change of alleles in populations over time. It's also an a priori assumption of universal common ancestry. But don't bother yourself with real meaning or background reading. All you have to be is Darwinian and you automatically embody the empirical life sciences.

The only thing this whole text post of yours shows me is that you are insanely arrogant about your own intelligence and your views regarding those who accept evolution.

 

[doubtingmerle]

its just a belief.

No, it is not just a belief that the dolphin and Ichty came through different evolutionary paths. Dolphins, like other mammals, have hair, mammary glands, single boned lower jaw, one time tooth replacement, three bones in the middle ear, warm blooded metabolism, a diaphragm, and a four chambered heart. Itchy, as far as we know, had none of these. So no Ichty, and Dolphins are not built the same way. See These Eight Traits Separate Mammals From Other Vertebrates .

Mammals are a later development. We don't see anything close to mammals in the fossil record until after there was a long sequence of mammal-like reptiles. The skeletons of these creatures incrementally transformed into the mammal form over many millions of years. After the process was done, then we see many animals with the mammal pattern. See Evolution of mammals - Wikipedia .

So how do you explain that? For millions of years animals like Ichty had skeletons that were distinctly different from mammals. Then, after that transition period of the mammal-like reptiles, we see many variations of mammals that all have the same skeletal features that had never existed before the mammal like reptiles. How do you explain that if the mammal-like reptiles were not transitionals?

 

[pitabread]

It's also an a priori assumption of universal common ancestry.

No, this would be the conclusion based on, well, pretty much everything regarding the scientific study of biological organisms.

The only people who reject this do so purely for ideological reasons.

 

[mark kennedy]

No, this would be the conclusion based on, well, pretty much everything regarding the scientific study of biological organisms.

No it's based on Lamarck and Darwin:

In these works he upholds the doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. He (Lamarck) first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)​

The only people who reject this do so purely for ideological reasons.

Evolution is not one thing but two things and virtually everyone who seriously thinks about this realizes that core fact. It's a phenomenon in nature and also a philosophy of natural history:

Evolution is the process of heritable change in populations of organisms over multiple generations. Evolutionary biology is the study of this process, which can occur through mechanisms including natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift. (Nature Magazine)

Evolutionary biology is a subdiscipline of the biological sciences concerned with the origin of life and the diversification and adaptation of life forms over time. (Nature Magazine)
​

That's not some creationist website, that's Nature Magazine telling you what evolution and evolutionary biology are in the simplest scientific terms. Evolution is a term that can be very broadly or more specifically, depending on what your trying to convey. It's a natural phenomenon and a philosophy of natural history and there is no rational argument to the contrary:

Modern synthesis

Between 1937 and 1947, neo-Darwinism or the modern evolutionary synthesis integrated Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance, and mathematical population genetics. This was one of the most significant, overall developments in evolutionary biology since the time of Darwin. Bowler (1988) stated that there is "a sense in which the emergence of the modern synthetic theory can be seen as the first real triumph of Darwinism."​

Essentially, neo-Darwinism introduced the connection between two important discoveries: the units of evolution (genes) with the mechanism of evolution (natural selection). By melding classical Darwinism with the rediscovered Mendelian genetics, Darwin's ideas were recast in terms of changes in allele frequencies. Neo-Darwinism thus fused two very different and formerly divided research traditions, the Darwinian naturalists and the experimental geneticists. (Ernst Mayr, New World Encylopeida)
​

Darwinism was popularized by Charles Darwin who was a naturalist, he believed in a gradual accumulation of traits, thus gradualism. Lamarck had written in, 'Philosophie Zoologique', in 1809 that all living things including man had descended from other, generally less evolved species. Mendel, now considered the father of modern genetics, published a paper on inheritance patterns of pea plants yielding a mathematical ratio of dominant to recessive traits. His work would be rediscovered in the early 20th century and in the 30s and 40s Darwin and Mendel were blended into what has become known as the, 'Modern Synthesis'.

I'm not making this up off the top of my head, this is the history of evolutionary biology and how it came to define the phenomenon and the philosophy of natural history. Mendel was developing methods for creating hybrids but ran into a barrier that Darwin discusses at length, see my signature:

Sterility has been said to be the bane of horticulture; but on this view we owe variability to the same cause which produces sterility; and variability is the source of all the choicest productions of the garden. (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species)​

None of this is contrary to Creationist or Darwinian thought, it's just the history and philosophy behind the exploration of evolution as a phenomenon and a philosophy of natural history. The problem is that Darwinism never contributed anything to the rise of Mendelian Genetics and Mendelian Genetics is what has propelled this kind of research ahead by leaps and bounds to this day:

The rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity in the opening weeks of the 20th century sparked a scientific quest to understand the nature and content of genetic information that has propelled biology for the last hundred years. The scientific progress made falls naturally into four main phases, corresponding roughly to the four quarters of the century.

• The first established the cellular basis of heredity: the chromosomes.
  
• The second defined the molecular basis of heredity: the DNA double helix.
  
• The third unlocked the informational basis of heredity, with the discovery of the biological mechanism by which cells read the information contained in genes and with the invention of the recombinant DNA technologies of cloning and sequencing by which scientists can do the same.
• The last quarter of a century has been marked by a relentless drive to decipher first genes and then entire genomes, spawning the field of genomics. (The Initial Sequence of the Human Genome, Nature 2001)

Creationists do not differ from Darwinian thinking except at the point of origin. Now when I say Darwinian thought contributed nothing I mean with regards to practical methodology of Genetics. Genetics had this problem, the geneticist knew what the external traits (alleles) were and the molecular biologist could define what the physical elements were, at least learned to over the first half of the 20th century. They did not bridge that gap between the cause (molecular basis) and effect (alleles) until Crick, Watson and their colleagues came up with the DNA double helix model. Francis Crick, arguably, came up with the key insight into how this happens by analyzing how protein coding genes work.

I could elaborate for pages on this, citing a great deal of source material before we even got down to the problem Darwinians and Creationists struggle with, mostly, apart from science and theology. Science is, first and foremost an epistemology (theory of knowledge), that is, the kind of knowledge that comes from a study of natural phenomenon.

I said all of that to tell you this, Darwinian thinking contributed something important to the development of Genetics. When the geneticists and the molecular biologists were having so much trouble bridging the gap between the molecular cause and the physical traits which were the effect. Darwinism provided a unified theory of biology. Just as the world saw the birth of inductive science and the rise of modern physics in the seventeenth century the world saw that birth of Genetics with the unveiling of the DNA double helix model in the 1950s.

Darwinians and Creationists want to wrangle over ideology before the real issues are even brought to light. What gets buried in these highly contentious debates is this fascinating world of genomic science. What I like to do is to compare the divergence and suggest that highly conserved genes, brain related genes specifically, show a burden of proof requiring a molecular mechanism presently unknown to science. I'm not trying to disparage science, I simply want to explore the research and discuss how divergence translates into tangible, practical pathways where the three fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes becomes viable.

If you say the accumulation of mutations your wrong, there has to be another explanation or there is no explanation. I would suggest a little background reading might prove enlightening and there is an abundance of research on the subject to work with. These pedantic one liners isn't going to get us anywhere, perhaps you would be better served learning a little something about how key terms are defined and what both the evidence and substantive arguments include.

May the truth prevail,
Mark

 

[Warden_of_the_Storm]

No it's based on Lamarck and Darwin:

In these works he upholds the doctrine that species, including man, are descended from other species. He (Lamarck) first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. (Darwin, On the Origin of Species)​

Evolution is not one thing but two things and virtually everyone who seriously thinks about this realizes that core fact. It's a phenomenon in nature and also a philosophy of natural history:

Evolution is the process of heritable change in populations of organisms over multiple generations. Evolutionary biology is the study of this process, which can occur through mechanisms including natural selection, sexual selection and genetic drift. (Nature Magazine)

Evolutionary biology is a subdiscipline of the biological sciences concerned with the origin of life and the diversification and adaptation of life forms over time. (Nature Magazine)
​

That's not some creationist website, that's Nature Magazine telling you what evolution and evolutionary biology are in the simplest scientific terms. Evolution is a term that can be very broadly or more specifically, depending on what your trying to convey. It's a natural phenomenon and a philosophy of natural history and there is no rational argument to the contrary:

Modern synthesis

Between 1937 and 1947, neo-Darwinism or the modern evolutionary synthesis integrated Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics as the basis for biological inheritance, and mathematical population genetics. This was one of the most significant, overall developments in evolutionary biology since the time of Darwin. Bowler (1988) stated that there is "a sense in which the emergence of the modern synthetic theory can be seen as the first real triumph of Darwinism."​

Essentially, neo-Darwinism introduced the connection between two important discoveries: the units of evolution (genes) with the mechanism of evolution (natural selection). By melding classical Darwinism with the rediscovered Mendelian genetics, Darwin's ideas were recast in terms of changes in allele frequencies. Neo-Darwinism thus fused two very different and formerly divided research traditions, the Darwinian naturalists and the experimental geneticists. (Ernst Mayr, New World Encylopeida)
​

Darwinism was popularized by Charles Darwin who was a naturalist, he believed in a gradual accumulation of traits, thus gradualism. Lamarck had written in, 'Philosophie Zoologique', in 1809 that all living things including man had descended from other, generally less evolved species. Mendel, now considered the father of modern genetics, published a paper on inheritance patterns of pea plants yielding a mathematical ratio of dominant to recessive traits. His work would be rediscovered in the early 20th century and in the 30s and 40s Darwin and Mendel were blended into what has become known as the, 'Modern Synthesis'.

I'm not making this up off the top of my head, this is the history of evolutionary biology and how it came to define the phenomenon and the philosophy of natural history. Mendel was developing methods for creating hybrids but ran into a barrier that Darwin discusses at length, see my signature:

Sterility has been said to be the bane of horticulture; but on this view we owe variability to the same cause which produces sterility; and variability is the source of all the choicest productions of the garden. (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species)​

None of this is contrary to Creationist or Darwinian thought, it's just the history and philosophy behind the exploration of evolution as a phenomenon and a philosophy of natural history. The problem is that Darwinism never contributed anything to the rise of Mendelian Genetics and Mendelian Genetics is what has propelled this kind of research ahead by leaps and bounds to this day:

The rediscovery of Mendel's laws of heredity in the opening weeks of the 20th century sparked a scientific quest to understand the nature and content of genetic information that has propelled biology for the last hundred years. The scientific progress made falls naturally into four main phases, corresponding roughly to the four quarters of the century.

• The first established the cellular basis of heredity: the chromosomes.
  
• The second defined the molecular basis of heredity: the DNA double helix.
  
• The third unlocked the informational basis of heredity, with the discovery of the biological mechanism by which cells read the information contained in genes and with the invention of the recombinant DNA technologies of cloning and sequencing by which scientists can do the same.
• The last quarter of a century has been marked by a relentless drive to decipher first genes and then entire genomes, spawning the field of genomics. (The Initial Sequence of the Human Genome, Nature 2001)

Creationists do not differ from Darwinian thinking except at the point of origin. Now when I say Darwinian thought contributed nothing I mean with regards to practical methodology of Genetics. Genetics had this problem, the geneticist knew what the external traits (alleles) were and the molecular biologist could define what the physical elements were, at least learned to over the first half of the 20th century. They did not bridge that gap between the cause (molecular basis) and effect (alleles) until Crick, Watson and their colleagues came up with the DNA double helix model. Francis Crick, arguably, came up with the key insight into how this happens by analyzing how protein coding genes work.

I could elaborate for pages on this, citing a great deal of source material before we even got down to the problem Darwinians and Creationists struggle with, mostly, apart from science and theology. Science is, first and foremost an epistemology (theory of knowledge), that is, the kind of knowledge that comes from a study of natural phenomenon.

I said all of that to tell you this, Darwinian thinking contributed something important to the development of Genetics. When the geneticists and the molecular biologists were having so much trouble bridging the gap between the molecular cause and the physical traits which were the effect. Darwinism provided a unified theory of biology. Just as the world saw the birth of inductive science and the rise of modern physics in the seventeenth century the world saw that birth of Genetics with the unveiling of the DNA double helix model in the 1950s.

Darwinians and Creationists want to wrangle over ideology before the real issues are even brought to light. What gets buried in these highly contentious debates is this fascinating world of genomic science. What I like to do is to compare the divergence and suggest that highly conserved genes, brain related genes specifically, show a burden of proof requiring a molecular mechanism presently unknown to science. I'm not trying to disparage science, I simply want to explore the research and discuss how divergence translates into tangible, practical pathways where the three fold expansion of the human brain from that of apes becomes viable.

If you say the accumulation of mutations your wrong, there has to be another explanation or there is no explanation. I would suggest a little background reading might prove enlightening and there is an abundance of research on the subject to work with. These pedantic one liners isn't going to get us anywhere, perhaps you would be better served learning a little something about how key terms are defined and what both the evidence and substantive arguments include.

May the truth prevail,
Mark

And this rankles you so much... why exactly?

 

[mark kennedy]

And this rankles you so much... why exactly?

It doesn't bother me, it tells me something that you know nothing about something you pretend to defend.

 

[Speedwell]

It doesn't bother me, it tells me something that you know nothing about something you pretend to defend.

Did you actually read that stuff you posted? What part of it are you accusing us of knowing nothing about?

 

[xianghua]

No, it is not just a belief that the dolphin and Ichty came through different evolutionary paths.

you assume that evolution is true and therefore they have a different history. but again: its just a belief. you cant prove it.

So how do you explain that? For millions of years animals like Ichty had skeletons that were distinctly different from mammals. Then, after that transition period of the mammal-like reptiles, we see many variations of mammals that all have the same skeletal features that had never existed before the mammal like reptiles. How do you explain that if the mammal-like reptiles were not transitionals?

its easy. first: what about similar species that arent close at all? those creatures contradict your suppose hierarchy. fossa and cat for instance.

sceondly: we can arrange also vehicle in hierarchy: a car--> a commercial car--> a t ruck. but it doesnt prove any evolution. even if they was self replicating.

 

[Jimmy D]

its easy. first: what about similar species that arent close at all? those creatures contradict your suppose hierarchy. fossa and cat for instance.

How so?

sceondly: we can arrange also vehicle in hierarchy: a car--> a commercial car--> a t ruck. but it doesnt prove any evolution. even if they was self replicating.

Irrelevant.

 

[pitabread]

<snips giant wall of text>

What gets buried in these highly contentious debates is this fascinating world of genomic science.

Which is why I find it so interesting that you apparently don't know how a lot of these comparative genomic studies are actually done (i.e. the methodologies behind them). It seems to me you'll happily latch on the results of the work, without realizing that the basis for some of those results is the very science you appear to be rejecting.

It's surreal.

 

[mark kennedy]

Did you actually read that stuff you posted? What part of it are you accusing us of knowing nothing about?

Well first of all the scientific definition of evolution and evolutionary biology generally agreed on in scientific circles for nearly a hundred years. Then there is the molecular basis for adaptive evolution along side the normative Mendelian laws of inheritance during meiosis and mitosis.

Simply contradicting creationists isn't being scientific and pedantic taunts and fallacious rhetoric is an affront to the logic of the inductive approach to an exploration of natural phenomenon.

All anyone is defending here is the a priori (without prior) assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic causes. That's not science, that's the core presupposition of atheistic materialism. My thing is expositions and they are the result of years of study and debate. Did I read it? I've been a writing it for ten years now.

 

[Speedwell]

All anyone is defending here is the a priori (without prior) assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic causes. That's not science, that's the core presupposition of atheistic materialism. My thing is expositions and they are the result of years of study and debate. Did I read it? I've been a fitting it for ten years now.

And here is your assumption: that a naturalistic abiogenesis precludes any divine intention or causality and is exclusively the belief of atheistic materialists.

 

[mark kennedy]

Which is why I find it so interesting that you apparently don't know how a lot of these comparative genomic studies are actually done (i.e. the methodologies behind them). It seems to me you'll happily latch on the results of the work, without realizing that the basis for some of those results is the very science you appear to be rejecting.

It's surreal.

Ok your the guy who talks about the methodology of comparative genomics and has nothing to say about the methodology or the comparison. Yes, I can imagine that would be surrealistic.

 

[USincognito]

its easy. first: what about similar species that arent close at all? those creatures contradict your suppose hierarchy. fossa and cat for instance.

sceondly: we can arrange also vehicle in hierarchy: a car--> a commercial car--> a t ruck. but it doesnt prove any evolution. even if they was self replicating.

1. How do "fossa and cat" violate the nested hierarchy?
2. No, just no... the early 80s VW Golf, Jetta, Sirocco, Caddy were chimeras that violate a nested hierarchy by sharing identical parts. As always, you don't know what you're talking about.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Well first of all the scientific definition of evolution and evolutionary biology generally agreed on in scientific circles for nearly a hundred years.

-_- even though human DNA was first completely sequenced in my short, 22 year lifetime, and the first genome sequenced at all was in the same year I was born. Not only that, but the significance of various aspects of natural selection and other basic principles of evolution have been amended much within the past 100 years, and there isn't complete universal agreement, even among evolution supporters. But I guess you think humanity has been sitting with its collective thumb up its butt for the past 100 years on the matter, regardless as to what has actually happened in that time.

Then there is the molecular basis for adaptive evolution along side the normative Mendelian laws of inheritance during meiosis and mitosis.

Yeah, Mendel's ideas applied well to pea plants, but pea plant inheritance happens to be abnormally simple. It's good for teaching the basic concept, but not in application to but a few traits in most species.

Simply contradicting creationists isn't being scientific and pedantic taunts and fallacious rhetoric is an affront to the logic of the inductive approach to an exploration of natural phenomenon.

You can defeat a person's position faster by disproving their points than by just out-doing their evidence with evidence for your own position. Since this is a debate forum and people don't have the time to type out every bit of evidence for their position possible (a problem for either side), such is the logical approach. People most certainly could be nicer while they do it, as I agree that the insult flinging gets us nowhere.

All anyone is defending here is the a priori (without prior) assumption of universal common descent by exclusively naturalistic causes.

-_- I don't. I personally view it as plausible that life arose independently more than once that was similar enough to give the illusion of a universal common ancestor, so I never defend the idea of universal common ancestry.

That's not science, that's the core presupposition of atheistic materialism. My thing is expositions and they are the result of years of study and debate. Did I read it? I've been a fitting it for ten years now.

I don't even view my support of evolution as connected with the fact that I am an atheist. Evolution is not a perfect theory, and I don't think anyone claims that it is, but being imperfect does not equate to "entirely wrong", and it certainly doesn't make creationism right. Heck, disproving evolution wouldn't even make creationism its replacement unless the evidence that disproved evolution strongly supported creationism.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Ok your the guy who talks about the methodology of comparative genomics and has nothing to say about the methodology or the comparison. Yes, I can imagine that would be surrealistic.

I'm literally separating DNA from living cells and sequencing it this week. I'd be glad to post the method behind it on request. It's a bit of an outdated one, sure, but my college has limited machinery.