Did a fish become a philosopher?

[BobRyan]

But, but, but... How did life exist in superheated flatulence? And who, what or where did this indigestion come from? You really can get something from nothing, Right? So it always existed, then someone lit a match? Where did it exist prior to the gastroenteritis? The universe really did explode from a giants small intestines. a wormhole, a naked singularity?
Ok
So solid matter. Introduction of living stones.
Two rocks, male and female, (Don't ask me why or how.) found themselves ensconced at the edge of a very high, yet lovely cliff. The male glanced over at the female winked and uttered in a stony cool voice, 'I think we would make beautiful babies.' After countless eons of attempts she softened up enough to turn and question, Bu, bu, bu, bu, but, huh, huh, huh, how?
'We roll off the cliff together, he eager to begin smiled.' we will have small pieces of us for children.'
With the level of cognition endowed in a stone, and countless more eons of erosion the cliff gave way and down they went laughing in amazement and screaming in terror.
Are they alive, eons later she inquired? they're not moving and I don't want to go through that again. Birthing really hurts.

I think I'll quit there. I believe I have it figured out. There really must be a God. And however He did it, He did it.
In Christ

Yes, you're correct. I think the evidences of evolution in natural history make the idea of evolution a fact.

However, my conclusion is drawn by inference from what little I know

By contrast to inference and lots of guess work -- we have the infinite Creator God telling us about it outright - if we choose to read His Word.

As for Punctuated Equilibrium, I'm going to go by what both Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge have said

Or take God's Word for it.

about their own perspective on the theory. I can't say that it's contradictory to the Theory of Evolution since......well....they have both been secular Evolutionists and simply offer a modified explanation of the pacing of evolution. And if there are punctuated points in the pacing and direction of the natural history of evolution

They need "punctuation" because of the lack of transitional fossils to support the guesswork.

Of course, God could have directed it all all along, but even if He did, that doesn't mean we'd necessarily see clearly identifiable evidence of design

Except for the fact that He stated that all life on earth came about in a seven day week which is the same length of time as the 7 day week at Sinai according to Ex 20:8-11 legal code (not poetry, symbolism, allegory, metaphor...)

Rejecting that - we still have "hopefully we can imagine that dust, rocks, gas and water will come up with a rabbit or an Einstein given enough mass, time chance and sunlight". So that is something no science experiment shows as fact. In fact no science experiment show that dust , gas and rocks will come up with bacteria given enough mass, time, chance and artificial manipulation.

What is even worse - there is no science experiment that shows that a bacteria (prokaryote of your pick) will come up with an amoeba (eukaryote of your pick) given 80,000 generations of direct observation.

 

[BobRyan]

"Never in history did a fish give birth to anything other than a fish"
Can you dispute that?

Can't dispute it.
No science experiment can dispute it either.

To dispute it - one needs lots of guesswork, some just-so-stories, lots of inference, a great imagination. IE all the standard tools that have been used over time to replace the Word of God with the fictions of man.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

"

Yes, you're correct. I think the evidences of evolution in natural history make the idea of evolution a fact."
I NEVER said that nor insinuated it.

I think you simply misunderstood the context to which I was replying when I said, "Yes, you're correct." In that response, I was specifically responding to your brief statement above where you told me, "...becasue you hold that 'it happened'."

Here's something that might help. "Never in history did a fish give birth to anything other than a fish"
Can you dispute that?

No. I can't dispute what's noticeable from the evidences, in reflection of what I already stated above: that the record in Natural History is fragmentary, like so much of history is.

However, simply saying that we don't find evidence from our scientific inquiries doesn't mean that the following is an automatic corollary:

"Never in the actual past did a fish give birth to an exact copy of itself." ... the truth is, we don't know one way or the other for sure whether a fish ever did do such a thing.

So, the typical accounts of the evolution taking fish to man still stand as scientific facts, made by inferences gleaned from the evidences, what few there may be:

​

How a 380-Million-Year-Old Fish Gave Us Fingers

A remarkable fossil reveals that the digits in our hands evolved before vertebrates emerged from the water to colonize land

www.scientificamerican.com

​

And again, please note, I'm not here to tell you or anyone else "how" you have to think about evolution. If you want to reject it, be my guest.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

By contrast to inference and lots of guess work -- we have the infinite Creator God telling us about it outright - if we choose to read His Word.

Or take God's Word for it.

They need "punctuation" because of the lack of transitional fossils to support the guesswork.

Except for the fact that He stated that all life on earth came about in a seven day week which is the same length of time as the 7 day week at Sinai according to Ex 20:8-11 legal code (not poetry, symbolism, allegory, metaphor...)

Rejecting that - we still have "hopefully we can imagine that dust, rocks, gas and water will come up with a rabbit or an Einstein given enough mass, time chance and sunlight". So that is something no science experiment shows as fact. In fact no science experiment show that dust , gas and rocks will come up with bacteria given enough mass, time, chance and artificial manipulation.

What is even worse - there is no science experiment that shows that a bacteria (prokaryote of your pick) will come up with an amoeba (eukaryote of your pick) given 80,000 generations of direct observation.

Oh, Bob. I wish the Bible was written in and delivered out of an actual vacuum so folks like you and me didn't have to argue over it all it and we could just focus on Jesus and our salvation in Him. But, the world is what it is, and the Bible is what it is, too................

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

I think you simply misunderstood the context to which I was replying when I said, "Yes, you're correct." In that response, I was specifically responding to your brief statement above where you told me, "...becasue you hold that 'it happened'."


No. I can't dispute what's noticeable from the evidences, in reflection of what I already stated above: that the record in Natural History is fragmentary, like so much of history is.

However, simply saying that we don't find evidence from our scientific inquiries doesn't mean that the following is an automatic corollary:

"Never in the actual past did a fish give birth to an exact copy of itself." ... the truth is, we don't know one way or the other for sure whether a fish ever did do such a thing.

So, the typical accounts of the evolution taking fish to man still stand as scientific facts, made by inferences gleaned from the evidences, what few there may be:

​

How a 380-Million-Year-Old Fish Gave Us Fingers

A remarkable fossil reveals that the digits in our hands evolved before vertebrates emerged from the water to colonize land

www.scientificamerican.com

​

And again, please note, I'm not here to tell you or anyone else "how" you have to think about evolution. If you want to reject it, be my guest.

If fish only give birth to other fish, then pray tell what happened one day when something other than a fish was born from it's mother fish?
what did it look like? not an exact copy but was it not a fish?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

If fish only give birth to other fish, then pray tell what happened one day when something other than a fish was born from it's mother fish?

... please forgive me, but I'm not understanding your question. From my understanding about evolution, I wouldn't expect any individual organism, fish or otherwise, to give birth to another species. That's not how evolution works.

what did it look like? not an exact copy but was it not a fish?

What did it look like? You're asking me what the young of some fish which reproduced millions of years ago looked like? I couldn't tell you that any more than I could tell you what the children of King Solomon looked like

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

... please forgive me, but I'm not understanding your question. From my understanding about evolution, I wouldn't expect any individual organism, fish or otherwise, to give birth to another species. That's not how evolution works.


What did it look like? You're asking me what the young of some fish which reproduced millions of years ago looked like? I couldn't tell you that any more than I could tell you what the children of King Solomon looked like

Wow, evasive answer, invoking the facial likeness of king Solomon's children. ( which has NOTHING to do w what I'm asking.)
I will give you the benefit of reasking it becasue I do not put much stock in your reading comprehension.
HERE GOES: What did it look like? not an exact copy but was it not a fish?
key in on this part: was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Wow, evasive answer, invoking the facial likeness of king Solomon's children. ( which has NOTHING to do w what I'm asking.)

Facial likeness? I didn't say anything regarding a specific characteristics King Solomon's children.

I will give you the benefit of reasking it becasue I do not put much stock in your reading comprehension.

You're right. My reading comprehesion hasn't been fully developed.

HERE GOES: What did it look like? not an exact copy but was it not a fish?
key in on this part: was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?was it not a fish?

I'd assume that since parents don't produce offspring with MACRO level jumps, we'd expect a fish from millions of years ago to hatch a bunch of young that are, from what we'd measure by today's taxonomic classifications, still the same fish.

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

Facial likeness? I didn't say anything regarding a specific characteristics King Solomon's children.

You're right. My reading comprehesion hasn't been fully developed.


I'd assume that since parents don't produce offspring with MACRO level jumps, we'd expect a fish from millions of years ago to hatch a bunch of young that are, from what we'd measure by today's taxonomic classifications, still the same fish.

ok then, so how did a fish eventually become a human philosopher if just fish were born to all fish?

 

[sfs]

Is it still true that we humans started out as fish and transformed into humans(over time).

Yes.

How did this scenario play out, a fish swam onto the shore, got food stayed there and died, or retreated back into the water?

There is an abundance of information readily available on this subject (e.g. here and here). What have you read so far?

Did it wait for the correct mutations that allowed for it to stay on land longer and walk around and find a home there?

Organisms don't wait for mutations.

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

Yes.

There is an abundance of information readily available on this subject (e.g. here and here). What have you read so far?

Organisms don't wait for mutations.

So when did a fish give birth to something other then a fish, if what you say is correct?

 

[sfs]

So when did a fish give birth to something other then a fish, if what you say is correct?

You didn't answer my question: what have you already read or watched about this subject? If you're actually interested in learning about it, there's tons of information sitting out there, in much more detail than you're going to be able to get here, from people who have more expertise than anyone here -- and it doesn't require anyone to spend hours typing it all out again.

At present, your question suggests you don't understand evolution at all. It makes as much sense as asking who the first speaker of English talked to.

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

You didn't answer my question: what have you already read or watched about this subject? If you're actually interested in learning about it, there's tons of information sitting out there, in much more detail than you're going to be able to get here, from people who have more expertise than anyone here -- and it doesn't require anyone to spend hours typing it all out again.

At present, your question suggests you don't understand evolution at all. It makes as much sense as asking who the first speaker of English talked to.

Oh I understand that micro changes, in your mind, lead to macro changes. No proof of that however. But there had to be a day when a fish gave birth to something other then the species that it is. Perhaps the offspring was a little larger then normal, had better gills, perhaps a slightly diff color but it was STILL A FISH!!!

 

[sfs]

Oh I understand that micro changes, in your mind, lead to macro changes. No proof of that however. But there had to be a day when a fish gave birth to something other then the species that it is. Perhaps the offspring was a little larger then normal, had better gills, perhaps a slightly diff color but it was STILL A FISH!!!

No, there did not have to be a day when a fish gave birth to something in another species than itself. ('Fish' is not a species.) Every generation of fish was very similar to the generation before, similar enough that it could readily breed with it (which is what we mean by 'species' most of the time.) And every generation (or every few hundred generations), the new fish had slightly larger lungs, slightly more limb-like fins, and a slightly more flexible neck, and they spent a little longer outside the water. You can stop calling them fish at whatever point in the process you like -- that had no bearing on what was happening.

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

No, there did not have to be a day when a fish gave birth to something in another species than itself. ('Fish' is not a species.) Every generation of fish was very similar to the generation before, similar enough that it could readily breed with it (which is what we mean by 'species' most of the time.) And every generation (or every few hundred generations), the new fish had slightly larger lungs, slightly more limb-like fins, and a slightly more flexible neck, and they spent a little longer outside the water. You can stop calling them fish at whatever point in the process you like -- that had no bearing on what was happening.

You said " every generation of fish was very similar to the generation before"
With that said, at what point was it NOT similar to the one before? I'm all ears.
You do realize you are falling into your own trap.

 

[sfs]

You said " every generation of fish was very similar to the generation before"
With that said, at what point was it NOT similar to the one before?

Never. That's why I said that every generation was similar to the one before -- because I meant that every generation was similar to the one before.

You do realize you are falling into your own trap.

Why don't you do everyone a favor and explain why you think one generation had to be very dissimilar to the previous generation?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Oh I understand that micro changes, in your mind, lead to macro changes. No proof of that however. But there had to be a day when a fish gave birth to something other then the species that it is. Perhaps the offspring was a little larger then normal, had better gills, perhaps a slightly diff color but it was STILL A FISH!!!

One thing to keep in mind is that macro evolution takes place on the level of populations of species through long swaths of time; it's not merely through the accumulation of micro mutations and/or epigenetic changes on a generation by generation level.

You seem to be under the impression that the process of evolution is only individual, immediate and linear, and thus it seems you end up saying something like "there had to be a day when a fish gave birth to something other then the species that it is." This isn't the case, really,
... and by saying this repeatedly, you indicate that you're not yet understanding all that is involved in the Theory of Evolution.

My guess is that you've been subject to confirmation bias by only engaging source material from some place like Answers in Genesis, with the following video being representative of their form of interpretation about microevolution:

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

Never. That's why I said that every generation was similar to the one before -- because I meant that every generation was similar to the one before.

Why don't you do everyone a favor and explain why you think one generation had to be very dissimilar to the previous generation?

YOU: "Never. That's why I said that every generation was similar to the one before -- because I meant that every generation was similar to the one before."

How similar? There has to be a point when a fish stops giving birth to a fish if macro evolution is true. . You refuse to admit this, instead you perpetuate the lie that somehow gradual changes/ mutations will cause a kind to turn into another. After all, a fish is not human.

 

[sfs]

How similar?

Nearly but not identical in form and function.

There has to be a point when a fish stops giving birth to a fish if macro evolution is true

As I have already said, exactly what point you pick is arbitrary. If a child grow up to be an adult, there has to be a first day when he wakes up as an adult. According to you, that means he's not similar on that day to what he was the day before. Does that argument seem reasonable to you?

You refuse to admit this, instead you perpetuate the lie that somehow gradual changes/ mutations will cause a kind to turn into another. After all, a fish is not human.

And a child is not an adult. You have yet to offer any reason whatsoever that each succeeding generation can't have fewer and fewer fish-like characteristics and more and more tetrapod-like characteristics, until what started out as a population of fish is now clearly a population of tetrapods, with the dividing line between 'fish' and 'tetrapod' an arbitrary choice.

I thought you were going to offer an argument against the possibility of fish evolving into humans. So far, you haven't made any coherent argument.

 

[Thurston-howell-III]

Nearly but not identical in form and function.

As I have already said, exactly what point you pick is arbitrary. If a child grow up to be an adult, there has to be a first day when he wakes up as an adult. According to you, that means he's not similar on that day to what he was the day before. Does that argument seem reasonable to you?

And a child is not an adult. You have yet to offer any reason whatsoever that each succeeding generation can't have fewer and fewer fish-like characteristics and more and more tetrapod-like characteristics, until what started out as a population of fish is now clearly a population of tetrapods, with the dividing line between 'fish' and 'tetrapod' an arbitrary choice.

I thought you were going to offer an argument against the possibility of fish evolving into humans. So far, you haven't made any coherent argument.

"A child is not an adult?"
That is a distinction w out a difference BECAUSE THE CHILD IS STILL A HUMAN BEING-- JUST LIKE IT'S PARENT!
I want to know when an offspring is not the same kind as it's parent. Give me ONE EXAMPLE!!!!