Evolution is not evidenced simply by similarity

[Hoghead1]

Are they father-son related?

If so, all you have is a multiple-generation picture.

You don't have something daisy-chained from one genus to another genus.

Kent Hovind said it well:

You can't prove any fossil had a child.That's because you're expected to connect-the-dots on paper.

Of course, Hovind says things very well. Before his 58 felony convictions and ten-year jail term, he received his Ph.D. from Patriot Bible College, a nonaccredited school. He claimed his dissertation was on the harmful effects of teaching evolution. For a time, Patriot University would not show the dissertation to the public. That's very odd, since most dissertations are on public display. Finally, a copy was obtained, which I think is now in the possession of teh National Science Academy. What a joke, no page numbers, loads of misspellings, taped in pictures, and nothing really on the harmful effects of teaching evolution. You can easily go online and read major portions of it, if you want. Ah, yes, he sure says things well, indeed.

 

[Ophiolite]

The web metaphor is often used to describe our essential relatedness, that fact that everything is related to everything else. Reality is like a spider's web, you tweek it here and it wiggles way over there.

The web analogy makes me uncomfortable, since it depicts frequent reconvergence of separate lines. In practice this would be rare above the species level and is thus misleading. I come back to the bush as the more realistic description.

 

[Hoghead1]

The web analogy makes me uncomfortable, since it depicts frequent reconvergence of separate lines. In practice this would be rare above the species level and is thus misleading. I come back to the bush as the more realistic description.

Yes, but I am talking abut more than just the descent of the species. I am talking about the whole of reality. I am view the universe as an organism, no part or process goes on wholly independently of all the others.

 

[PsychoSarah]

The web analogy makes me uncomfortable, since it depicts frequent reconvergence of separate lines. In practice this would be rare above the species level and is thus misleading. I come back to the bush as the more realistic description.

Fair enough, both work in their own right, though I was thinking of a more basic web diagram, like this http://www.expertlearners.com/images/webdiagram.gif

 

[Ophiolite]

Fair enough, both work in their own right, though I was thinking of a more basic web diagram, like this http://www.expertlearners.com/images/webdiagram.gif

I have moved us off-topic into debate on semantics and lexicography. My final point would be that the referenced web diagram is not a web but a bush. However, none of this debate reduces by even a single quark the evidence for evolution.

 

[Loudmouth]

Ok, now that is rather unfortunate in format, given that it resembles family trees, and there is no way of having any reasonable degree of certainty that any of these evolved from each other.

Nor do we need to know that in order to create the daisy chain of morphology.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Nor do we need to know that in order to create the daisy chain of morphology.

Except it isn't a daisy chain of morphology either; could you figuratively look me in the eye and say every morphological transition of significant note between the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is represented in the fossil record? I'm not talking every 1,000 generations or some nonsense, I am talking about morphological differences on a scale of about 5% for each body structure. And human evolution in the fossil record is one of the more complete ones; let's not even get started on birds or whales or the platypus, etc.

But hey, not that it would be accurately represented as a chain anyways, given the overlap of morphology in species, and the species that coexisted.

 

[Loudmouth]

Except it isn't a daisy chain of morphology either; could you figuratively look me in the eye and say every morphological transition of significant note between the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is represented in the fossil record?

Yes, I could. The significant transitions are the cranium and pelvis, all of which are covered by multiple fossils. Here is a line up of cranium size to body weight, showing a nice transition over time.

I'm not talking every 1,000 generations or some nonsense, I am talking about morphological differences on a scale of about 5% for each body structure.

That's an completely arbitrary percentage. All you need for a daisy chain is a single fossil that spans the beginning and end.