Creationism=religious philosophy, evolution=science

[Loudmouth]

The nested hierarchy was actually around a long time prior to ToE.

I would hope so, since Darwin was attempting to explain how life evolved prior to him penning his theory. Darwin is famous because he discovered the natural process that produced the nested hierarchies we observe in living and fossil species.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I know what your beliefs are. I am asking for evidence, not beliefs.



I think many biologists would agree, however that doesn't change the theory that mammals evolved from reptiles. There are many fossil intermediates that have a mixture of reptilian and mammalian features, most notably transitionals that have bones acting as both jaw and middle ear bones, the exact transitionals that we would expect to see. Whether a specific clade is directly ancestral is always up for debate.



Actually, the Bible says that.



Again, I understand what your beliefs are. I am more interested in the evidence that backs your claims. You do understand the difference between beliefs and evidence, do you not?

Well we are not talking about my beliefs, I only felt like it would be beneficial for you to know my stance. If it wasn't sobeit.

 

[Chalnoth]

I believe in the universal design of all living things. I don't believe that there is conclusive evidence to support that humans evolved from chimps.

Well, humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are a modern species. They are our cousins, not our ancestors.

God said that life began in the sea. I just don't think that evolution explains the diversity and mechanisms that are needed for life as we know it.

Um, it also says in the Bible that the fish and the birds were created at the same time, which is patently false. It also says that the other animals were created after men, which disagrees with the earlier statement, and is also patently false. No matter how you slice it, the creation account laid down in the first few chapters of Genesis does not describe reality.

 

[Chalnoth]

The nested hierarchy was actually around a long time prior to ToE.

Yes. The theory of evolution explains why there is a nested hierarchy.

 

[Chalnoth]

Don't talk down to me Chalnoth. I do know the lineages of mammalian evolution.

Then why did you ask for clarification?

 

[Oncedeceived]

Um, the evidence of precursors to Cambrian forms in the pre-Cambrian. You're just trying to wave it away with your mythical extinction of all life.

More curiously, all major stages in organizing animal life's multicellular architecture then occurred in a short period beginning less than 600 million years ago and ending by about 530 million years ago - and the steps within this sequence are also discontinuous and episodic, not gradually accumulative. The first fauna, called Ediacaran to honor the Australian locality of its initial discovery but now known from rocks on all continents, consists of highly flattened fronds, sheets and circlets composed of numerous slender segments quilted together. The nature of the Ediacaran fauna is now a subject of intense discussion. These creatures do not seem to be simple precursors of later forms. They may constitute a separate and failed experiment in animal life, or they may represent a full range of diploblastic (two-layered) organization, of which the modern phylum Cnidaria (corals, jellyfishes and their allies) remains as a small and much altered remnant.

In any case, they apparently died out well before the Cambrian biota evolved. The Cambrian then began with an assemblage of bits and pieces, frustratingly difficult to interpret, called the "small shelly fauna." The subsequent main pulse, starting about 530 million years ago, constitutes the famous Cambrian explosion, during which all but one modern phylum of animal ]ife made a first appearance in the fossil record. ( Geologists had previously allowed up to 40 million years for this event, but an elegant study, published in 1993, clearly restricts this period of phyletic flowering to a mere five million years.) The Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives.

Source

But besides the fossils of soft bodies, Vendian rocks contain trace fossils, probably made by wormlike animals slithering over mud. The Vendian rocks thus give us a good look at the first animals to live on Earth. The Ediacaran hey-day predates by a distinct interval of perhaps 20 million years or more, the so-called "Cambrian Explosion". Although some scientists believe that many of these Ediacara fauna might have survived into the Cambrian period, they had vanished without a trace from later fossil records. Other scientists have suggested that the Ediacaran fauna were "failed experiments" in the evolution of multicellular animals. Unlike the Cambrian organisms, these odd designs left no descendants. A novel explanation suggests that the Ediacaran fossils weren't animals at all. Rather, they were probably lichens. Whatever the interpretation, it seems that the appearance of the Ediacaran fauna and the Cambrian biota are two separate events, and both flourished suddenly in a "complete state".
Emphasis mine.

source

I've provided data that says this and yet you refuse to believe it. HUM???

 

[Greg1234]

Yes. The theory of evolution explains why there is a nested hierarchy.

So do families of consciousness in Creationism. It also explains why we can use a nested hierarchy as this requires a general cessation of the creative process. Adaptation, being intelligent, disabling the necessity of a long-term wait.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Well, humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. Chimpanzees are a modern species. They are our cousins, not our ancestors.

Yes, I know. I misspoke I know it is some unknown African ape ancestory.

Um, it also says in the Bible that the fish and the birds were created at the same time, which is patently false. It also says that the other animals were created after men, which disagrees with the earlier statement, and is also patently false. No matter how you slice it, the creation account laid down in the first few chapters of Genesis does not describe reality.

It doesn't say that animals were created after man. I don't know where you get this stuff. I gave you the run down on this. Birds were the last thing listed prior to the current time period.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Chalnoth, I am still waiting for you to supply the quote of me saying that evolution is only a theory.

 

[Nostromo]

I'm still waiting for a lot of answers.

I provided the sources in the thread.

I didn't see any peer-reviewed articles.

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

Yes, I know. I misspoke I know it is some unknown African ape ancestory.



It doesn't say that animals were created after man. I don't know where you get this stuff. I gave you the run down on this. Birds were the last thing listed prior to the current time period.

I have a small question in regards to this.

Do you believe no birds were created after that current time period then?

 

[Exiledoomsayer]

So I have been saying evolution relies on a plethora of non plausible scenarios to keep it alive and you agree with me. Thanks

I'm saying they are non plausible BECAUSE evolution is most likely true.

It would be perfectly plausible in your world view(were evolution is false), a winged rat should be just as plausible as a bat.

I am asking you that if evolution is false, why would it be non-plausible to find a winged rat in your opinion?

I possit that you can not find any reason why a winged rat would be non-plausible without using the nested hierarchy of evolution.(which is exactly what it would be disproven if you found that winged rat.)

 

[Chalnoth]

I've provided data that says this and yet you refuse to believe it. HUM???

1. This isn't an extinction of all life. It's an apparent extinction of some life. And your source isn't a scientific source anyway.
2. The fossil record is incomplete, so it is very difficult to demonstrate extinction. That is doubly-difficult when none of the organisms have hard shells and so don't preserve well.
3. An extinction of some life, even most, would be expected with the advent of eyes, which would allow serious predation.

 

[Chalnoth]

So do families of consciousness in Creationism. It also explains why we can use a nested hierarchy as this requires a general cessation of the creative process. Adaptation, being intelligent, disabling the necessity of a long-term wait.

Nope. It doesn't explain it, because it isn't a necessary consequence. A theory can only explain something if that something necessarily follows from the theory and other possibilities are excluded. You can't exclude other possibilities when you invoke a god, because a god could do whatever it wanted.

 

[Chalnoth]

It doesn't say that animals were created after man. I don't know where you get this stuff. I gave you the run down on this. Birds were the last thing listed prior to the current time period.

And birds were very late to arrive on the scene relative to most land animal groups, being even younger than mammals. So on no account does this remotely work.

But yes, the Bible also says that the animals were created after man:

Genesis 2:18-20:

18The LORD God said, "It isn't good for the man to live alone. I need to make a suitable partner for him." 19-20So the LORD took some soil and made animals and birds. He brought them to the man to see what names he would give each of them. Then the man named the tame animals and the birds and the wild animals. That's how they got their names.

None of these was the right kind of partner for the man.

 

[Greg1234]

Nope. It doesn't explain it, because it isn't a necessary consequence. A theory can only explain something if that something necessarily follows from the theory and other possibilities are excluded. You can't exclude other possibilities when you invoke a god, because a god could do whatever it wanted.

Darwinian mechanisms could do whatever it wanted.


Darwinism does not predict a nested hierarchy and has no parameters.

a. For one, anything can can evolve anything. There is no predictable outcome in a random mutation in Darwinism.

b. Any ancestor is applicable to any line. If fish came from a parrot it will be classified not, with a parrot as an ancestor but with the organism it shares the most characteristics with (fish). Then an ancestor will be chosen accordingly.

c. Any constraint that supposedly developed is abolished due to the uncontainable Darwinian ability to group organisms anywhere.

With these three parameters, anything goes. There is no constraint. Furthermore, the creative process has to be stopped so that demarcation lines can be drawn.

For the purpose of this discussion I will assume that by hierarchy you mean a holarchy. They are generally the same but slightly different and you people seem to jump freely between the two without notice. To note,

Hierarchies and Holarchies

The trinity is comprised of three parts which are distinct yet one. Your hand and your foot are distinct yet they are one insofar I'm referring to you, the aggregate of all your features.

The trinity sounds like,

Which is basically,

The tripartite nature of man is the same thing with, in its basic form, the spirit transcending the yet containing the soul, the soul transcending yet containing the body.

For example, "The great chain"

"Mind Body spirit as Hierarchy"

"Body, mind, spirit Holarchy"

We see the same thing with nested chains of command

In more general systems

In 1 Cor 15 the earth, birds, beasts, fish and man are given. Within these are even smaller sets though they are not given. And within these sets are even smaller sets and so on. For example, man is given and not the races of man but the races of man did not evolve.

Where the classification of the seeds mimic the nested pattern of God, the nested pattern of the tripartite nature of man mimics the nested pattern of God, and the "seeds" mimicking the made to mimic the nested pattern of the tripartite nature, we only have the physical creation mimicking the higher order of seeds from which they are created. Similar to what Plato said. "He asserted that there is realm of Forms or Ideas, which exist independently of anyone who may have thought of these ideas. Material things are then imperfect and transient reflections or instantiations of the perfect and unchanging ideas."



This classification would be based on a spiritual source rather than matter. Hence it would be closer to this

 

[Chalnoth]

Darwinian mechanisms could do whatever it wanted.

*sigh* No, not remotely. Darwinian mechanisms cannot produce any organization of organisms other than a nested hierarchy. Evolution cannot produce an animal with both mammary glands and feathers, for instance. It cannot produce an animal with a cephalapod eye and a spine.

Quoting one person being flippant does not change this remotely.

For the purpose of this discussion I will assume that by hierarchy you mean a holarchy. They are generally the same but slightly different and you people seem to jump freely between the two without notice.

No, I mean nested hierarchy. The distinction you are claiming is about power/algorithmic structures and has basically nothing to do with biology.

The rest of your post is just gobbledygook and not worth responding to.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

What are you talking about it? Finches remain finches.

Of course they do. Who says they should become anything else? If they did become anything else, then evolution would be disproven. My point, which you seems to have flown over your head, is that common ancestry and nested hierarchies are indeed supported by the evidence (contrary to Astridhere's post). No one said anything about finches becoming non-finches - something that evolution prohibits.

 

[Oncedeceived]

1. This isn't an extinction of all life. It's an apparent extinction of some life. And your source isn't a scientific source anyway.

What? Both are scientific sources. Stephen Gould was one of Science's top Paleontologist. The other is a educational site http://www.ccsf.edu/Departments/History_of_Time_and_Life/PDFs/EdiacaranGarden36x36.pdf

Talk about hand waving.

2. The fossil record is incomplete, so it is very difficult to demonstrate extinction. That is doubly-difficult when none of the organisms have hard shells and so don't preserve well.

That was a good story in Darwin's time but not now. There was no fossil evidence for 20 million years Chalnoth.

3. An extinction of some life, even most, would be expected with the advent of eyes, which would allow serious predation.

What do you tell me...empirical evidence is all that matters and if you can't deliver it then it doesn't matter at all. There is no evidence that any...any life survived from the precambrian. There was a 20 million year gap between those life forms and the Cambrian Fauna. Could be and maybe are not evidence.

 

[Chalnoth]

What? Both are scientific sources. Stephen Gould was one of Science's top Paleontologist. The other is a educational site http://www.ccsf.edu/Departments/History_of_Time_and_Life/PDFs/EdiacaranGarden36x36.pdf

Try finding a peer-reviewed article, or at least something that (honestly) links to peer-reviewed articles for support. That would be a scientific source.

And Gould, by the way, has been criticized many times for exaggerating, and has always been a controversial figure within the biology community.

That was a good story in Darwin's time but not now. There was no fossil evidence for 20 million years Chalnoth.

You haven't supported this claim yet.

What do you tell me...empirical evidence is all that matters and if you can't deliver it then it doesn't matter at all. There is no evidence that any...any life survived from the precambrian. There was a 20 million year gap between those life forms and the Cambrian Fauna. Could be and maybe are not evidence.

Um, yes there is. It's called the life we see in the Cambrian.