Evidence for macroevolution

[randman]

Evolutionists appear not to comprehend "hard data." If they find a species similar in some fashion to a species they think came along later, they say, lookee, this one came from that one. They think that is hard data.

Of course, as you pointed out about Archy, if they find species which predate the prior assumed ancestors of a transitional, they just call it a different line, as if they are cousins or something. It couldn't just be that they were wrong. Impossible!

Heck, Neanderthal has been our direct ancestor, PRESENTED AS FACT, and then the same species, and now another sister-line of evolution, all in the space of about 50 years.

Good grief! Everytime too, they present it as fact. The real truth is that Neanderthals are simply an ethnic tribe of regular ole people. They had religion, buried their people, had all the same kinds of things as regular people.

Heck, if aborigInes weren't around today, their fossils would be front-page news, MISSING LINK FOUND.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by randman
The real truth is that Neanderthals are simply an ethnic tribe of regular ole people. They had religion, buried their people, had all the same kinds of things as regular people.

So having "religion" and burying their dead is what defines "regular people." I can sure find many extant humans today that don't fit that criteria. What does that imply?

The differences in Neanderthals are substantally different than what we see between human ethnic groups.

Heck, if aborigInes weren't around today, their fossils would be front-page news, MISSING LINK FOUND.

Please provide us some evidence from australian aborigine anatomy with which one could claim that they are anything but completely modern humans. Otherwise, your comments are nothing more than worthless rhetoric.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by randman
"Can anyone explain to me, without using evolution, why do we have body hair, and why do we get goose bumps when we're cold?"

The same reason the sky is blue, and earth is round.

It is part of a Design, but which is fallen.

The thing most evolutionists don't take into account when they ask why isn't the world perfect is that the Bible explains it quite clearly.

Except that the Bible is not a scientific textbook.

Creationists can't have it both ways: the world is either perfect in its design or imprefect. It can't change depending on what thread you are on. I expect a little more consistancy than:

Creationist Rosenkrantz: "The eye is perfect, God did it."
Creationist Guildenstern: "The eye is imperfect, The Fall did it."

Which one are you today?

 

[randman]

Aborigines's skulls are similar to Neanderthals. This is pretty common knowledge. Please show some data comparing the ethnic differences in anatomy as far as bones, and then we can talk.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by npetreley

Now there's an inviting straight line if ever I saw one.

Anyway, that's a pretty picture someone drew. If that person can draw all the other intermediate stages, then does that mean I'll have to give up and admit evolution is right?

That depends. If the pictures correspond closely to fossil evidence, then failure to concede this particular point, at least, would be evidence of intellectual dishonesty.

Certainly, there's a certain amount of arbitrariness in saying "this one has a trunk, this one doesn't", looking at large mammals with big noses.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by randman
Aborigines's skulls are similar to Neanderthals. This is pretty common knowledge. Please show some data comparing the ethnic differences in anatomy as far as bones, and then we can talk.

You made the original contention of similarity. You back it up.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus

Creationist Rosenkrantz: "The eye is perfect, God did it."
Creationist Guildenstern: "The eye is imperfect, The Fall did it."

Where in the world do you get your rhetoric from? Who ever said the eye is perfect? I've heard creationists say it's irreducibly complex, but I've never heard that it or anything else was perfect.

If you want to debate imaginary creationists, be my guest. Enjoy your imaginary argument, and I hope for your sake that you win.

 

[Joe V.]

+++
"Can anyone explain to me, without using evolution, why do we have body hair, and why do we get goose bumps when we're cold?"

The same reason the sky is blue, and earth is round.

It is part of a Design, but which is fallen.

The thing most evolutionists don't take into account when they ask why isn't the world perfect is that the Bible explains it quite clearly.

I think a better question is whether history is even linear.
---

So goosebumps are the result of the Fall? You've got to be kidding me. I always thought that the Fall resulted in bad things. What's so bad about goosebumps? Your logic eludes me.

I REALLY don't like the Fall argument to explain away the world's problems either. Everything can be explained by it, hatred, murder, war, volcanoes, starvation. All this because somebody bit into an apple? You might as well be worshipping Roman gods to explain the lightning in the sky.

Moreover, such a belief ultimately seems fatalistic. If the world's problems all resulted from the Fall, why do anything to fix the world's problems? Why seek any answers to what actually causes these things? There are answers and there are solutions to the world's problems, and if we all really really wanted to, we could solve those problems together.

And believe it or not, there is a reason why the sky is blue and the Earth is round, and it's not because some designer wanted it that way.

- Joe

 

[Jerry Smith]

The same reason the sky is blue, and earth is round.

So you reject the idea that the sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters longer wavelength light more so than shorter? Or you think that for some things there can be both a natural explanation without it contravening God's creative powers?

 

[Jerry Smith]

LFOD posted this link originally, but here is a bit of evidence for macroevolution. As predicted, there are transitional forms between fish and terrestrial vertebrates. This is one of them:

http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Acanthostega&contgroup=Terrestrial_Vertebrates

 

[Jerry Smith]

This 1998 fossil find is fairly unique:

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/1998/012898/FishFingers.html

 

[Jerry Smith]

I am going to throw a big piece into the mix now: Evidence from the mammal to reptile transition, with thanks to TalkOrigins and the author of their transitional vertebrate FAQ, Kathleen Hunt, who spent so much time digging through the original research to present the data to us in such an accessible form.

I think it is best to start with one very big gap:
We have a four BILLION year gap in the fossil record with no fossils of mammals. Only for about three billion years of that time was there certainly life on earth. There are obviously living mammals today. Was the mammal group created specially sometime after the reptile group, or did it evolve - one characteristic at a time, from the reptiles that were already living?

About 500 million years ago, we see the reptiles (themselves having only been around a few million years, diverge into a group that had a few mammal-like charcteristics. The evidence is from the fossil transitions, not from my conclusions about them. We know that the mammals didn't exist, and over a period of geological time, newer fossils show more mammalian characteristics as time goes by. After about 250 million years (from the time the fossil transition began), we see organisms that we can better classify as mammals than reptiles. We find newer fossils, that have even more traits unique to modern mammals, and different from the reptiles that preceded them. About 60 million years ago, a few groups of primitive mammals began to diversify.

I cannot list the mammal transitions and the features that each newer one acquired making it more mammal-like and less reptile like. I can only refer you to the Kathleen Hunt's TalkOrigins FAQ, where this topic is discussed in fair detail:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1b.html#mamm

Common descent requires that such transitional forms exist, and in fair abnundance. It does not require that transitional series as detailed as this one will be found representing the divergence of every class.

Other evidence exists in the fossil record apart from transitional forms - biogeographical and geochronological predictions are born out routinely and without significant exception. Furthermore, the fossil record provides only a part of the data that confirms evolution.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by npetreley
Where in the world do you get your rhetoric from? Who ever said the eye is perfect? I've heard creationists say it's irreducibly complex, but I've never heard that it or anything else was perfect.

Creationists have been claiming for over a century that the eye was so perfect that evolution couldn't have accomplished it. "Irreducibly complexity" is new twist on the tired argument. It still relies on the same old Darwin quote-mining.

You might not consider the eye (or the rest of our bodies) to be perfect, but other creationists do.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus

Creationists have been claiming for over a century that the eye was so perfect that evolution couldn't have accomplished it. "Irreducibly complexity" is new twist on the tired argument. It still relies on the same old Darwin quote-mining.

You might not consider the eye (or the rest of our bodies) to be perfect, but other creationists do.

Source? Show me that the argument not only exists, but is a popular one. Or is this yet another straw man?

Irreducible complexity is not in any way equal to perfection.

 

[Morat]

The Galation, on Baptist Boards has been discussing IC lately. Specifically, he's been talking alot about the IC pathway they watched evolve in E. Coli.

That's just what Hall's work on E. coli demonstrated.

"Evolution on a Petri Dish : The evolved B-galactosidase system as a model for studying acquisitive evolution in the lab", Barry G Hall, Evolutionary Biology (1982) #15, pg 85-150.

Mutation produced an entirely new way of utilizing a food source, and then made it irreducibly complex by adding a regulator. Now the system can't work unless both are present. Since Behe declared that to be irreducible complexity, we now have undeniable evidence that IC evolves

IC structures do evolve. This has been known a long time. To get one, all you need is a structure that isn't IC, but knocking out a part makes it IC. If that part is redudant, then knocking it out leaves you your IC pathway.

 

[npetreley]

What? No sources of creationists arguing that life is perfect? What a surprise!

Originally posted by Morat
IC structures do evolve. This has been known a long time. To get one, all you need is a structure that isn't IC, but knocking out a part makes it IC.

Sigh - how many times are you folks going to point to that same example? See Behe's objections (and not just the ones this fellow chooses to excerpt).

Oh, and a "LONG TIME"? Again, source? What do you consider to be a long time?

 

[Jerry Smith]

Originally posted by npetreley
What? No sources of creationists arguing that life is perfect? What a surprise!



Sigh - how many times are you folks going to point to that same example? See Behe's objections (and not just the ones this fellow chooses to excerpt).

Oh, and a "LONG TIME"? Again, source? What do you consider to be a long time?

What, Rufus isn't logged on and its been 10 minutes and he didn't magically hear your request for references, boot up the box & get those references out to you already?

I'm switching sides!

 

[seebs]

Oh, come on, Nick. You know that the "argument from perfection" was popular for a long time. One still sees it occasionally around here.

 

[npetreley]

Originally posted by seebs
Oh, come on, Nick. You know that the "argument from perfection" was popular for a long time. One still sees it occasionally around here.

I don't *know* anything of the sort. It may be true, but I certainly never heard of it. If you could provide some sources perhaps I'd find out it was true. If you don't, perhaps we'll all find out that you guys just make it up as you go, or pull out ancient arguments that nobody ever uses anymore.

 

[Morat]

Sigh - how many times are you folks going to point to that same example? See Behe's objections (and not just the ones this fellow chooses to excerpt).

Only one is needed. "IC structures can't evolve". Um, yes. This IC structure evolved.

Frankly, I'd take Behe with a grain of salt. A really large one entitled "Behe apparantly doesn't know how to use the "search" facility for PubMed".

He makes a lot of false claims concerning the state of research into the evolution of biochemical pathways.

A nice List of such papers.

Or a nice article devoted to Behe's claims on the blood clotting cascade.

Would you like more? IC system's aren't. So far, every system he's called IC isn't. Was he mistaken?

Another of his favorites:

Another one of Michael Behe's claims, the principal claim that
he
makes, is that the cell is filled with these complex biochemical
machines
with multiple parts, and we know, he says, that they could not have
evolved,
and the reason we know that is because those parts by themselves have
absolutely no function. It's an interesting statement. It's also a
testable
statement. And it turns out to be false. Let's take his favorite
example,
everybody's favorite actually -- the bacterial flagella -- which is
this
wonderful little rotary engine that has about 40 different parts in
it, 40
different proteins. He says that's irreducibly complex, the parts
aren't
good for anything.

Well, it turns out that in 1999, scientists were investigating a
group of
about 10 proteins -- it's called the Type-III secretory system --
that pumps
proteins out of a bacterium into one of the cells in our body. It's a
nasty
little thing. It's like a syringe. The bacterium that causes bubonic
plague,
Yersinia pestis, has one of these guys.
"Well, the people investigating the structure, when they got the DNA
sequences of the proteins, suddenly discovered, My God, these 10
proteins
are almost exactly the same as 10 proteins in the bacterial flagellum
of all
things.

So, in other words, despite Behe's claims that the parts are useless
by
themselves, here's a little assembly of about 10 parts that is
perfectly
useful to the bacterium in terms of producing this secretory
apparatus. So
that means that the central claim, which is all the parts have to be
together before you get function is wrong. And it turns out that
there are
other examples as well.

From the Galatian's post...