Evolution vs. Creation: hovind debate

[Blayz]

The fossil records are your best proof? Carbon dating and reference layers?

sure. mr. teacher... I have the misconception that the shells of -still living- mollusks and snails have been carbon dated at tens of thousands of years old and that two bones from the same mammoth have been dated thousands of years apart... Why should I still trust carbon dating?

You forgot that bit of fossilized wood that carbon dating got horribly wrong.

In 1959 the journal radiocarbon was founded. The very first issue reported 14 C14 experiments, 2006 saw 51

Since I do not have the time to check all the volumes in between, nor do I have the time to look at other journals that publish C14 data, lets go with the grossly conservative estimate of 14 publications per year for the last 38 years.

That's 532 publications.

The fundy set give the same three examples of C14 gone wrong over and over again: that bit of wood; the mammoth (ok so it was two mammoths but lets ignore that); and the snails.

So that's 529 right out of 532

That's an accuracy rate of 99.44%


Looks like a trustworthy number to me.

 

[TheBear]

1: Why is carbon dating trusted when living snails have been carbon dated as having died 26,000 years ago?

The fact that carbon dating remains trusted by scientists, ought to tell you something. And the fact that different radiometric dating methods, each with their own set of properties, all pointing to the same age of a given specimen, ought to tell you something. Tree rings and ice core samples offer further confirmation. That ought to tell you something.

Scientists have a pretty good understanding of how atoms work -

Also -


As snail shells form, minerals and sediment from the water or soil, collect in the shell layers, and become part of the shell structure. The sediment itself can be very old.

At the time of the dating, shell structure sediments were not considered. That was in 1963.

It's an oldie and goody for Hovind and his ilk, but science has squarely addressed it, and has since moved on, continuing to trust carbon dating.






One more thing.

It wasn't "Creation Scientists" who dated the shell, it wasn't "Creation Scientists" who researched why the shell dated so old, and it wasn't "Creation Scientists" who discovered the sediment collection in snail shells.

 

[Belfry]

You forgot that bit of fossilized wood that carbon dating got horribly wrong.

In 1959 the journal radiocarbon was founded. The very first issue reported 14 C14 experiments, 2006 saw 51

Since I do not have the time to check all the volumes in between, nor do I have the time to look at other journals that publish C14 data, lets go with the grossly conservative estimate of 14 publications per year for the last 38 years.

That's 532 publications.

The fundy set give the same three examples of C14 gone wrong over and over again: that bit of wood; the mammoth (ok so it was two mammoths but lets ignore that); and the snails.

So that's 529 right out of 532

That's an accuracy rate of 99.44%


Looks like a trustworthy number to me.

There's also the fact that radiocarbon dating is not reliable in samples older than about 50,000 years, so it's not used for such samples. Other radioisotopes are used.

Regarding the snail - scientists understand why it happened, and they test for the same effect when dating objects. See here.

Edit: Gah, I see TheBear beat me to it.

Gregorian, although you claim to be well-read on the subject, your badly misconstrued concept of what evolutionary theory is, and the many PRATTs you recite indicate that it has been purely from creationist sources. I would suggest that you do some reading from a scientific background instead. Also, you might want to take a long walk through www.talkorigins.org. Nearly all of the PRATTs you've brought up are debunked in the archives there, often by scientists and always with references from the scientific literature.

Also, you replied to my short posts, but I put a fair amount of thought into the longer one. Any chance of a response?

 

[The Gregorian]

I think I found the one I missed belfry. I try to hit everything, but if I miss stuff, feel free to point it out to me and I'll gladely go back.

Not at all, and in fact birds are considered to be theropod dinosaurs. Not sharks, though, and not crocodilians, although examples from both of these groups were around when non-avian dinosaurs were prevalent. As far as nessy goes - well, of course it is highly dubious that she and similar legends are real, but supposedly they would be plesiosaurs, which were also not dinosaurs.

well... now you'll have to define dinosaur. (And ... yea... the nessy thing's far fetched).

In any case, you're quite right, I misspoke - it's not coexistence with humans itself that is absurd, but that he thinks humans were always present, for as long as all of the dinosaurs in the fossil record were around. After the 6th day, that is. In addition to the "probably breathed fire" thing, he also says that if a T. rex attacked a human, the human could easily defeat him by pulling off one of his weakly-attached arms, after which the dino would bleed to death. Seriously!

Another thing I'm glad you brought up: I said Hovind makes quite a few good points... I disagree with a lot of what he says though. I haven't heard him say anything about T-rex's breathing fire... that's retarded. But I disagree with the "6 literal days" thing he defends so much. In 1 day, aparently Adam was born, named all the animals in the world, his wife was born, and they were married? nuh uh. They were 6 "periods of time." One may have been 100 billion years... another may have been instantanious. To say he created light in one revolution of the earth he hadn't made yet is stupid. And a human could not pull off the arm of a live T-rex.

They MAY have lived together... my religious beliefs allows me to think it's POSSIBLE that SOME dinosaurs co-existed with mankind until the flood. But I do believe the earth was around more than a week before we were.

Such as?

(this was referring to my statement that evidence that had long since been disproven is still being taught in text books).

Embryology. I forget the guy's name who made it famous, but he drew a bunch of pictures of forming embryos to show how similar they are. About ... what? 140 years ago it was exposed that he knew the embryos looked very little like his drawings. Specifically the differences between fish and any of the mammals.

evolutionary trees AKA "trees of life." Have been admitted to be nothing more than an inferance. according to the associated press in 1996. Also professor Gould from harvard university said in 1977 (yes, I had help finding this quote) "The evolutionary trees that adorn out textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." i.e. "we know that fossils don't indicate this sort of organization, but we say that it does anyway because it makes sense that way."

Now question for you: Termites. They eat wood... but cannot digest it. Smaller symbiotic creatures live no where else in the world, but inside the termite's stomach. Those creatures digest the wood and translate it into digestable glucose. Termites can't live without their symbiotic helpers... who can't live without the termites... who came first?

Also, would you mind commenting on the european green woodpecker? Every time someone does get around to commenting on it, they send me to a page telling all about how the red bellied woodpecker's tongue can be explained because it's anchored to the top of their head, goes down into their throat and out their mouth... which is similar to how some bird's tongues are anchored at the base of their skull... not around their head... but still back there.

The green woodpecker is the only one I'm aware of who's tongue starts in their throat, going down their throat, around their head and then through the top of their beak... for an illustration on the tongue path go here, specifically starting at 3:50:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrbK1kujH0
(although it is a creationist making the video, so, yes it is biased).

 

[Mumbo]

The credo of this reply is that a good PRATT deserves a good talkorigins page.

Embryology. I forget the guy's name who made it famous, but he drew a bunch of pictures of forming embryos to show how similar they are. About ... what? 140 years ago it was exposed that he knew the embryos looked very little like his drawings. Specifically the differences between fish and any of the mammals.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB701.html
Summary: So what? Do you think that embryologists still base their work upon 150-year-old drawings?

evolutionary trees AKA "trees of life." Have been admitted to be nothing more than an inferance. according to the associated press in 1996. Also professor Gould from harvard university said in 1977 (yes, I had help finding this quote) "The evolutionary trees that adorn out textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." i.e. "we know that fossils don't indicate this sort of organization, but we say that it does anyway because it makes sense that way."

This is absolutely true, but it doesn't matter much. Fossils provide a very good baseline, but you can't exactly predict a fossil's relatedness to other organisms, living or dead. For example, the fossils touted as belonging to mankind's ancestors could very well all belong to evolutionary dead-ends. What's important is that the organisms that they represent can be assumed to be closely related to creatures that actually were our ancestors, judging by their features.

Now question for you: Termites. They eat wood... but cannot digest it. Smaller symbiotic creatures live no where else in the world, but inside the termite's stomach. Those creatures digest the wood and translate it into digestable glucose. Termites can't live without their symbiotic helpers... who can't live without the termites... who came first?

A current-day termite probably couldn't survive without the wood-digesting microorganisms, but the termite's ancestors could. The microorganisms and the termites evolved together, and the two developed a codependency.

Termite guts harbor not just one organism, but a complex and diverse community of dozens of species. The termite ancestors likely lived by eating detritus from the forest floor, as many cockroaches do today. They would have ingested many microorganisms in the process. Some of those evolved to live full-time in termite guts. As the termites evolved, their gut communities evolved along with them.

Also, would you mind commenting on the european green woodpecker? Every time someone does get around to commenting on it, they send me to a page telling all about how the red bellied woodpecker's tongue can be explained because it's anchored to the top of their head, goes down into their throat and out their mouth... which is similar to how some bird's tongues are anchored at the base of their skull... not around their head... but still back there. The green woodpecker is the only one I'm aware of who's tongue starts in their throat, going down their throat, around their head and then through the top of their beak... for an illustration on the tongue path go here, specifically starting at 3:50:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrbK1kujH0
(although it is a creationist making the video, so, yes it is biased).

Not only biased, but incorrect.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodpecker/woodpecker.html
Summary: Creationists got their anatomy wrong, and the evolution of the woodpecker's tongue is fairly simple to explain.

 

[Blayz]

(this was referring to my statement that evidence that had long since been disproven is still being taught in text books).

Embryology. I forget the guy's name who made it famous, but he drew a bunch of pictures of forming embryos to show how similar they are. About ... what? 140 years ago it was exposed that he knew the embryos looked very little like his drawings. Specifically the differences between fish and any of the mammals.

Any chance you could remember his name, and cite currently used textbooks that use his data, and then go on to explain how out-of-date material in schools is evidence against evolution?

evolutionary trees AKA "trees of life." Have been admitted to be nothing more than an inferance.

"admitted to be nothing more" riiight. Like is was a big dark secret that the field of phylogenetic inference used inference as its primary tool until it was announced. You might not like tools like pasimony, maximum likelihood and neighbor-joining, but if you are going to discredit them could you do so directly, rather than doing the equivalent of throwing the word "just" between "evolution" and "theory". Using language to discredit science doesn't actually discredit it, you know.

Now question for you: Termites. They eat wood... but cannot digest it.

Except, of course, many of them can, but lets not let facts get in the way.

Smaller symbiotic creatures live no where else in the world, but inside the termite's stomach.

Except for the evolutionary relationship of the symbiont to the entero-parasite Giardia, and the relationship between termites and wood-eating cockroaches. Seriously though, if only you had dug a bit further. The relationship between termites and Trichonympha spp. is a lot less interesting than the one between the protozoa and its endosymbiotes.

Why oh why do creaationists trot out these tired old excuses for anti-evolutionary propaganda over and over again? It's like being stuck in GroundHog Day. If you got off your fearful ignorant backsides and actually did some independent research, you'd find a whole host of current biological science that threatens to tear a gaping hole in evolution. Chimpanzee/human synteny, transcriptional regulation, "junk" DNA, the puffer fish, the ribosome, all of these things show up glaring problems in the ToE, and none of them have trite responses on talkorigins.

 

[Belfry]

well... now you'll have to define dinosaur. (And ... yea... the nessy thing's far fetched).

Well, like "bird," "crocodilian," or "shark," "dinosaur" is a term referring to a taxonomic group. The are classified based on shared morphological features (and by extension, by phylogenic relatedness). See here.

Another thing I'm glad you brought up: I said Hovind makes quite a few good points... I disagree with a lot of what he says though. I haven't heard him say anything about T-rex's breathing fire... that's retarded. But I disagree with the "6 literal days" thing he defends so much. In 1 day, aparently Adam was born, named all the animals in the world, his wife was born, and they were married? nuh uh. They were 6 "periods of time." One may have been 100 billion years... another may have been instantanious. To say he created light in one revolution of the earth he hadn't made yet is stupid. And a human could not pull off the arm of a live T-rex.

Very good. There are problems with day-age concordism, as well, but that might be a topic for another thread.

They MAY have lived together... my religious beliefs allows me to think it's POSSIBLE that SOME dinosaurs co-existed with mankind until the flood. But I do believe the earth was around more than a week before we were.

...and there are many more problems with the Flood narrative, but again, we've got enough balls in the air, here.

(this was referring to my statement that evidence that had long since been disproven is still being taught in text books).
Embryology. I forget the guy's name who made it famous, but he drew a bunch of pictures of forming embryos to show how similar they are. About ... what? 140 years ago it was exposed that he knew the embryos looked very little like his drawings. Specifically the differences between fish and any of the mammals.

I will remind you of what you said, which I was replying to:

similar to the admittedly faked fossils given to certain magazines. Said fossels were exposed as hoaxes, yet still cited as proof for evolution in later text books?

Now, Haeckel had nothing to do with faked fossils. I suspect that you were getting your PRATTs mixed up, but no matter.

Haeckel's drawings were indeed faked, and it was discovered and exposed BY SCIENTISTS. Haeckel's "biogenic law" (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) was falsified and rejected - again, by scientists. Unfortunately, some textbooks did still feature Haeckel's drawings after that point, but there really wasn't much confusion in the scientific community itself. The biogenic law and the "evidence" for it was openly and harshly criticized in the literature as early as 1894, and often after that.

However, some very important lines of evidence for evolutionary theory still come from embryology. Vertebrate embryos are very similar at early stages of development, and the way that regulatory genes (Hox genes) act during development explain a lot about how relatively minor mutations can lead to large differences in morphology.

I recommend that you read this page.

evolutionary trees AKA "trees of life." Have been admitted to be nothing more than an inferance. according to the associated press in 1996. Also professor Gould from harvard university said in 1977 (yes, I had help finding this quote) "The evolutionary trees that adorn out textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." i.e. "we know that fossils don't indicate this sort of organization, but we say that it does anyway because it makes sense that way."

No, your paraphrase does not capture the meaning of the quote. The fossils and existing species really do fit nicely into a nested heirarchy (they do indicate that sort of organization), but we recognize that we don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle as you get closer to the "trunk" of the tree. So, we may redraw organization of the "branches" as we get more information, but it's still a tree.

Now question for you: Termites. They eat wood... but cannot digest it. Smaller symbiotic creatures live no where else in the world, but inside the termite's stomach. Those creatures digest the wood and translate it into digestable glucose. Termites can't live without their symbiotic helpers... who can't live without the termites... who came first?

Ah, you've asked the right person! I work with insects that affect woody plants. More with beetles than termites, but I've done some reading on termites, and I'm very familiar with the evolution of symbiosis. In fact, I've answered this question before over at evcforum.net. Since this isn't a thread on that topic specifically, I'm reluctant to give the entire long explanation again here, so the short answer is that the relationship evolved over time, and both termites and their symbiotic gut organisms evolved from a state at which they were not dependent on each other, but both benefited from the interaction. BTW, as Blayze poitned out, not all termite species require gut microorganisms to digest cellulose (I go into that in my evcforum posts, too). You can go here and especially here (two different posts in the same thread) for my complete explanation, including citations and diagrams.

Also, would you mind commenting on the european green woodpecker? Every time someone does get around to commenting on it, they send me to a page telling all about how the red bellied woodpecker's tongue can be explained because it's anchored to the top of their head, goes down into their throat and out their mouth... which is similar to how some bird's tongues are anchored at the base of their skull... not around their head... but still back there

The green woodpecker is the only one I'm aware of who's tongue starts in their throat, going down their throat, around their head and then through the top of their beak... for an illustration on the tongue path go here, specifically starting at 3:50:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrbK1kujH0
(although it is a creationist making the video, so, yes it is biased).

I'm not an ornithologist, but I suspect that the description of the green woodpecker's anatomy is simply false. Do you have any non-creationists sources that corroborate the description?

 

[Baggins]

Woodpecker PRATT exploded:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodpecker/woodpecker.html

 

[The Gregorian]

The credo of this reply is that a good PRATT deserves a good talkorigins page.

[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth], the scientists totally already said Evolution wuz tru! You can't say it's not, because they said it was tru ATT! wo0t.

... ::link to closed minded fundamentalist web page that does indeed refute some points... of course not the points I'm making::

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB701.html
Summary: So what? Do you think that embryologists still base their work upon 150-year-old drawings?

I agree... let the embryos speak for themselves:

wow... look how similar those are. They're all small... all facing the left... Probably all pink. They're even mostly in a kind of "U" shape all curled up... The must have evolved from a common ancestor.

How scientific is that anyway? "See... those partially formed blobs kinda look the same... so they must be related." Just like "Hey... that cloud looks like a bunny... bunnys must have evolved from clouds! Plus, they're both fluffy!" Wo0t. I are a scientist too now.

This is absolutely true, but it doesn't matter much. Fossils provide a very good baseline

Aye... we still have INDEX FOSSILS! We know that if we find bones in the same strata as Graptolites... it's approximately 410 million years old. Right? ... and the fact that Graptolites can be found... alive... today... is irrelevant? We can date the layer of strata by the index fossils it contains... correct? Of course we only know the age of the fossils by what layer it's in. So we know the age of on is right, because it's coincides by the age of the other which is defined by the age of what we're trying to date.

but you can't exactly predict a fossil's relatedness to other organisms, living or dead. For example, the fossils touted as belonging to mankind's ancestors could very well all belong to evolutionary dead-ends.

another good point.

What's important is that the organisms that they represent can be assumed to be closely related to creatures that actually were our ancestors, judging by their features.

So similar things can be assumed to come from one another? If two things are related, which came from which? Of course, you'll answer they both came from a common ancestor. So... what's the common ancestor of a grape and a kitten?

We know they come from the same thing because they have common traits, right?

Seriously... please list the commonalities between grapes and kittens. Other than "they're alive" and "they're multicellular."

A current-day termite probably couldn't survive without the wood-digesting microorganisms, but the termite's ancestors could. The microorganisms and the termites evolved together, and the two developed a codependency.

They... developed codependancy? So... if the termites only eat wood... how did the microorganisms get in their stomach? Maybe they were already in the wood and the termites at the wood with the organisms on 'em? So... why did they stop living on the wood? How would a microorganism suited for life and replication with the environment of "wood" Adapt to living inside a termite? If it was adapted to "wood" and it was eaten by a termite... it would most likely die. If it survived being passed through the termite, it would continue living in the wood... unless you think it "liked it in there" and "looked for another termite to eat it" and suggested to it's kids that they find such termites as well.

More importantly... what proof do you have of termites that function like no termite that has ever been observed?

Speculation is find... there COULD have been such termites. But the speculation of "It COULD happen given hundreds of billions of years" is not evidence for a law of nature that should be taught with my tax dollars as absolute irrefutable fact.

Assuming evolution is a natural part of planetary growth, it's logical to assume alians COULD exist. If it happened here, it's statistically impossible that it didn't happen on any one of any of the planets or planetoids around any of the billions of stars in any of the billions of galexies in the universe (of course, there are more than "billions"... but I don't feel like looking up the average star count per galaxies or the most current info on how many galaxies we've observed).

Considering the time frame of "since the big bang" it's likely that we are not the most advanced race the universe has ever seen (whether they're still alive or not). And of those races, it's likely that at least ONE of them would be capable of space travel to earth. Given not only the billions of years of this planet but the very long period of time of the existance of the universe... it COULD happen. If they could make it here some of them COULD abduct at least one life form on earth.

Do you want your kids being taught in science classes that "flying saucers are real, and they visit earth, and they abduct people." And anyone who didn't believe in alien abduction would be labeled a religious fundamentalist nut who DISAGREED WITH SCIENCE!

... It's possible that somewhere out there aliens may exist. Evolution is observable and logical to the extent of selecting traits from within a species, so the exaggeration into the realm of wild speculation is an interesting theory. Interesting theory is not fact and it should not be taught as such.

Not only biased, but incorrect.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodpecker/woodpecker.html
Summary: Creationists got their anatomy wrong, and the evolution of the woodpecker's tongue is fairly simple to explain.

WOW. ... just wow. After specifying "NOT MOST WOODPECKERS"... specifically the European green woodpecker.

Yes... MOST woodpeckers have tongues shaped as illustrated on the site. The european green woodpecker's tongue is the opposite of that.

Don't just type "Fundamental Evolutionist woodpecker rebuttal" into google and expect that to be an acceptable replacement for your own thought process.

Read up on the -european green woodpecker- ... not the red bellied woodpecker... not any other woodpecker. Any other bird has a tongue as you suggested... which is exactly the point. No other bird (that I know of) has a tongue shaped like the european green woodpecker. You can't refute the fact that it's tongue could not have evolved in intermittent steps with the speculation of how a COMPLETELY different tongue may have evolved.



(sorry... more work on the house today... I got through the hot sun with 1 too many monster energy drinks... kind of in a strange mood.)

ALSO: Although I'm fervantly disagreeing with you guys... I am sincerely enjoying the fact that you are actually making -points-... actually rebutting some of what I say and not doing the normal "No, you're wrong... my text book says we did too evolve" thing. I'm enjoying the conversation more than I disagree (which is a lot).

 

[The Gregorian]

Any chance you could remember his name, and cite currently used textbooks that use his data, and then go on to explain how out-of-date material in schools is evidence against evolution?

Haeckel, 1870's... confessed he drew his drawings from memory... they were.. kinda all little and pink and looked to the left, so he just drew the sameish thing one right after the other without even going back to look at which one was which. Convicted by the university that funded him as a fraud. Common picture in text books today:

Comparison between what he drew and actual photos of embryos at such an age:

sufficient?

"admitted to be nothing more" riiight. Like is was a big dark secret that the field of phylogenetic inference used inference as its primary tool until it was announced. You might not like tools like pasimony, maximum likelihood and neighbor-joining, but if you are going to discredit them could you do so directly, rather than doing the equivalent of throwing the word "just" between "evolution" and "theory". Using language to discredit science doesn't actually discredit it, you know.

Not a big difference to you... but it says VERY different things to 15 year olds learning about evolution.

If you are 15 and your teacher says "Billions of years ago this happened. Memorize it for your test." followed by any suggestions that a creation is even plausable being mocked and discarded as meaningless mythology... You will consider it pretty hard fact.

If your teacher says: "Many scientists speculate we may have all evolved from a common ancestor. We have no idea how such a being got here, that question leaves the scientific realm and enters religion, which we won't go into here." Simple... to the point. You can still teach the -THEORY- of evolution as -one possible- theory.

I guess one problem here is the separation between the arts and the sciences. Most interested in science don't necessarily realize the importance of proper wording. Or staying away from helicopters. Helicopters are evil deathtraps designed by communists. They do not fly... instead they vibrate so violently the earth rejects them.

Except, of course, many of them can, but lets not let facts get in the way.

Many termites can survive without the microorganisms, or many of the kind of microorganism found in termites live outside of said termites? I'm not a bug expert... my reading of symbiotic relationships simply mentioned "Termites"... saying that they can't live without such a microorganism. Please enlighten me to which species can and cannot.

Why oh why do creaationists trot out these tired old excuses for anti-evolutionary propaganda over and over again? It's like being stuck in GroundHog Day. If you got off your fearful ignorant backsides and actually did some independent research, you'd find a whole host of current biological science that threatens to tear a gaping hole in evolution. Chimpanzee/human synteny, transcriptional regulation, "junk" DNA, the puffer fish, the ribosome, all of these things show up glaring problems in the ToE, and none of them have trite responses on talkorigins.

Reply number 62: "No, there's not. There's a boatload of evidence for and no evidence against it."

Well, I'm glad you at least admit there are snags in the theory. That's all I ask is that it's portrayed as a theory that you may personally hold near and dear... but portrayed so that people like Dannager wouldn't say thing like "No, there's not. There's a boatload of evidence for and no evidence against it."

I'm not saying evolution is anti-biblical or evil or that it shouldn't be taught as a possibility. I do think dannager's quote beautifully illustrates how such a theory is overestimated and counterevidence as listed by blayz is not only ignored but thought not to exist.vbmenu_register("postmenu_36916080", true);

since you were kind enough to post your own counterpoints, here's an interesting tidbit many non-evolutionists don't like to admit:

No matter how big of a boat Noah built... he did NOT bring 2 of every variation of finch and dog and brazilian river otter on his boat. He probably brought a "small bird" and a "big bird" and a "dog." Assuming the story to be true, and the interpretation of the flood being global as opposed to a flooding of the valley now known as the Mediterranean Sea which would have seemed as though it were all the world.... he did not bring both a chihuahua and a Yorkshire terrier. He brought a "dog" and the poor thing was bred into such useless beasts. I.e. the bible supports macroevolution... even a cumulation of macroevolution. So long as the traits being selected are there to be selected. Those dogs have bred all kinds of dogs... but they're still dogs. As many generations as there are, no descendant of a dog will ever be a lizard. There has been no such observation and the best explanation is the speculation of "it could happen after billions and billions of years."

Again, speculation is interesting to consider... plasuable theory... not fact.

 

[ranmaonehalf]

....
Evolution can be disproved. If you ever find a winged horse, you have disproved evolution.

i dont think that would even disprove it. all it would mean is that that creature did not form due to evolution. "if somehow i could engineer my own winged horses"

 

[Blayz]

Haeckel, 1870's... confessed he drew his drawings from memory...
[images snipped]

sufficient?

Sufficient? hmm, lets see what I actually asked...

Any chance you could remember his name, and cite currently used textbooks that use his data, and then go on to explain how out-of-date material in schools is evidence against evolution?

So...you got his name...and, nope, that's it. 1/3. 33%. Think I will rate that an insufficient.

Not a big difference to you... but it says VERY different things to 15 year olds learning about evolution.

So just to clarify...when a 15 year old learns that phylogenetic inference involves inference, it comes as a shock? Weird.

If you are 15 and your teacher says "Billions of years ago this happened. Memorize it for your test." followed by any suggestions that a creation is even plausable being mocked and discarded as meaningless mythology... You will consider it pretty hard fact.

Agreed. Utterly irrelevant to the point at hand, but agreed.

Many termites can survive without the microorganisms, or many of the kind of microorganism found in termites live outside of said termites? I'm not a bug expert... my reading of symbiotic relationships simply mentioned "Termites"... saying that they can't live without such a microorganism. Please enlighten me to which species can and cannot.

Many termites can digest cellulose. From wiki "Most so called "higher termites", especially in the Family Termitidae can produce their own cellulase enzymes"

Well, I'm glad you at least admit there are snags in the theory. That's all I ask is that it's portrayed as a theory that you may personally hold near and dear... but portrayed so that people like Dannager wouldn't say thing like "No, there's not. There's a boatload of evidence for and no evidence against it."

And here we superficially agree. We have evidence which various aspects of the current ToE do not explain. However, it remains the only useful model which best fits the observable facts

Key word here, "useful". The Ptolemaic geocentric view of the universe was, quite clearly, wrong. it was, however, a useful model. It could be used to predict the motion of the planets and stars. That it did not reflect the physical reality did not subtract from its applicability. We have discarded it now, we have come up with better models, which it so happens better reflect reality. Its not even taught anymore, except as a footnote in the occasional history class. We found something better. We moved on.

So why oh why would you want us to take not one but half a dozen steps back to a theory which not only has no supporting evidence at all, but is for all practical and predictive purposes utterly useless?

And just for background, I come into work each day, sit down at my desk, and look for ways to design novel therapeutics against various diseases. There is rarely a point in my day when I am not utilising some aspect of the predictive power of the ToE. So I will make you a deal. Come up with something...anything even remotely of use in medical research that involves creationism, and I will embrace it whole-heartedly. You come up with a model that is a better fit for the observable facts and/or has better predictive power, and I will drop evolution like a hot potato and not even glance back.

 

[The Gregorian]

Well, like "bird," "crocodilian," or "shark," "dinosaur" is a term referring to a taxonomic group. The are classified based on shared morphological features (and by extension, by phylogenic relatedness). See here.

Put into said group based on whether or not they're extinct. With all morphology in mind, if crocodiles were extinct and thought to live 65 million years ago, they would certainly be catagorized as a dinosaur. [SIZE=-1][/SIZE]

Now, Haeckel had nothing to do with faked fossils. I suspect that you were getting your PRATTs mixed up, but no matter.

Would you please do me the favor of kindly removing your head from where it doesn't belong? It's not condusive to a semi-productive conversation. Evolution has been refuted a thousand times, Carbon dating has not only been refuted, but I can site at least half a dozen GROSS errors, as recently as 1999. For example, the woodpecker thing... yes... People bring up the european green woodpecker... and a thousand times, it will be refuted by pointing out how the red bellied woodpecker can be partially explained. Avoided does not equal logically rebutted.

Haeckel's drawings were indeed faked, and it was discovered and exposed BY SCIENTISTS. Haeckel's "biogenic law" (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) was falsified and rejected - again, by scientists. Unfortunately, some textbooks did still feature Haeckel's drawings after that point, but there really wasn't much confusion in the scientific community itself. The biogenic law and the "evidence" for it was openly and harshly criticized in the literature as early as 1894, and often after that.

And why is it still given as 'very strong evidence for evolution' in textbooks today? over 100 years later? That's what Hovind was getting at... why is a PRATT from 100 years ago still being used to indoctrinate kids taking highschool biology. While their minds are potentially open, we make sure to shut it to any other possibilities by saying "We know for a fact this is how things work, and if you disagree you fail the class and get held back and get kicked off the soccer team... so if you want to keep your friends, you must submit to our interpretation." Isn't that why we don't want religion in schools?

here's a challange. Give a highschool student in a biology class learning about evolution a camera. In class, ask him to disagree with the theory of evolution... see what happens. The fact that "scientists don't really believe it" doesn't change the fact that our children's minds are being closed off from any other possibility... over something that was proven wrong a century ago.

However, some very important lines of evidence for evolutionary theory still come from embryology. Vertebrate embryos are very similar at early stages of development, and the way that regulatory genes (Hox genes) act during development explain a lot about how relatively minor mutations can lead to large differences in morphology.

I recommend that you read this page.

I recomment you not use fundamentalist religious web sites. "exploring the controversy of evolution vs. creationism."
Click on the Evolution link... all "why you should believe evolution."
Click on the Creationism link... "Arguements against creationism."

There is no two sides. That's the problem. Creationists don't want evolution to never be mentioned again... parts of the theory are valuable even assuming it's not right. They just want it listed as a -theory- that some subscribe to with evidence and counter-evidence... i.e. not a dogmatic law.

Evolutionists want to keep their theology in schools taught as irrefutable fact, and have contrary arguments banned from schools.

Do you see any problem with that at all? Stalin doesn't go through your head for even a second? Anything to be taught as fact... should actually be a fact. Anything known to be a theory that many disagree with, with known holes (such as "we evolved from a common ancestor but have no explanation as to how it got there") should be taught as exactly that.

No, your paraphrase does not capture the meaning of the quote. The fossils and existing species really do fit nicely into a nested heirarchy (they do indicate that sort of organization), but we recognize that we don't have all of the pieces of the puzzle as you get closer to the "trunk" of the tree. So, we may redraw organization of the "branches" as we get more information, but it's still a tree.

Now we're going back to fossils being the best evidence for evolution? Fossils demonstrate gradual change over billions of years? Yet "intermediary fossils" is still a curse word? We still have no missing links that haven't been

If anything's a PRATT, it's fossils being used to illustrate the gradual change in species. Example: We think birds come from dinosaurs, specifically raptors... Talk about a missing link! The best we have is the archeopterix... which is dated about 65 million years back... the mix between all birds and reptiles.... yet fully formed birds have been found which date 50 million years BEFORE the archeopterix (what it evolved from).

If you're trying to support evolution... you may not want to mention "fossil records" and "gradual mutation over billions of years" on the same... thread.

If you're going to say "Man evolved from apes" and I ask "Why are there still apes?" And you say "man didn't evolve from apes, we have evidence, they both evolved from an ape-like species." and I ask "If you know that said ape-like species evolved into two seperate species (something we cannot simulate in any laboratory)... you know that it did something we've never seen before, where are the fossils to prove it even existed, let alone intermediary fossils to prove that it gradually changed into not one but two seperate species at the same time... also how can something gradually evolve over a long period of time into two seperate species in the same geographic location? While they were similar enough to mate, would they not interbreed and become one species again? Which again raises the question: If humans and apes evolved from the same ape-like being... why are there still both humans... and apes?
... I just made that paragraph up... but BOY, I like it. Saving that one for later.

Ah, you've asked the right person! I work with insects that affect woody plants. More with beetles than termites, but I've done some reading on termites, and I'm very familiar with the evolution of symbiosis. In fact, I've answered this question before over at evcforum.net. Since this isn't a thread on that topic specifically, I'm reluctant to give the entire long explanation again here, so the short answer is that the relationship evolved over time, and both termites and their symbiotic gut organisms evolved from a state at which they were not dependent on each other, but both benefited from the interaction. BTW, as Blayze poitned out, not all termite species require gut microorganisms to digest cellulose (I go into that in my evcforum posts, too). You can go here and especially here (two different posts in the same thread) for my complete explanation, including citations and diagrams.

Still, if we know they both evolved from particular species, where is our evidence of that species? We know they evolved from it because they exist, which we know existed because they exist? Therefore our evidence for their having evolved from something else is that something that isn't what we're looking for exists? Fat men exist. Old fat men... with beards. Some of them dress up like santa. We can observe people who appear very similar to santa... did they evolve from santa, indicating that not only did he exist... but is the ancestor of all old fat men? My grandfather kind of looked like santa... Is that conclusive evidence that not only did/does santa exist, but did I evolve from him because my family members tend to look like him? Or are they just old and fat?

On another note: I read through your posts, and it was informative. There were quite a few things in there I didn't know, and I look forward to having a more in depth conversation with you 1 on 1 when I have some time.

I'm not an ornithologist, but I suspect that the description of the green woodpecker's anatomy is simply false. Do you have any non-creationists sources that corroborate the description?

It's been a while and I certainly don't remember the title of the book, but it was one of those illustrated anatomy "look at these spiffy graphics" types. I'll try to find it.

 

[The Gregorian]

Any chance you could remember his name, and cite currently used textbooks that use his data, and then go on to explain how out-of-date material in schools is evidence against evolution? So...you got his name...and, nope, that's it. 1/3. 33%. Think I will rate that an insufficient.

1: name was covered.
2: Unfortunately I haven't taken a biology book in quite some time... if I still have the book, it's probably in storage somewhere. The ones used at West Valley High School in Yakima, WA around 2001... when I was taking animal bio the books had those. Teacher's name was Teski, I believe... you'll have to ask her for the name. I'll be driving by the college tomorrow and I'll see if I can find it in the biology books there. No, I can not give the name of the book or ISBN number off the top of my head... but the schools around here have them, and they're relatively new books.
3: It's not evidence for anything except the existance of fraudulent information. Nothing is disproved by it, but known false information should not be used to indoctrinate children with an idea. Suggest the idea all you want... but not as an irrefutable fact with those pictures as evidence for it's infallibility.

So just to clarify...when a 15 year old learns that phylogenetic inference involves inference, it comes as a shock? Weird.

15 year olds are shown phylogenetic trees and told that it is a representation of fact. Fact that will be tested, and the memorization of such fact will be graded and will haunt them permanently. Many 15 year olds are more worried about getting a good grade on the test and memorizing whatever is necessary to pass the class than getting in a philosophical disagreement with his teachers.

I wasn't one of those. When I saw something that didn't look right... I questioned things. When the only answer they could give was circular reasoning I pointed it out, and got a free year of college by getting kicked out of too many classes for questioning the infallibility of the textbooks.

And here we superficially agree. We have evidence which various aspects of the current ToE do not explain. However, it remains the only useful model which best fits the observable facts

"We know it's wrong, but we have nothing with which to replace it, so we teach it as fact anyway"

You'll probably say "we don't teach it as fact, it is a theory"

And I'll point to reply #62 "No, there's not. There's a boatload of evidence for and no evidence against it." <-That is the kind of ignorance I'm afraid of. I'm NOT saying teach christianity in school. I'm saying "If you don't have a theory that you think is right... don't teach it." If students ask where people came from... don't answer with something you know to be false just because you don't have anything else to answer with... just say "I don't know, that's what religion's for." Just like "Why are we here" or "What happens after we die?"... until you have a workable, observable, rational theory... leave "Where did we come from" to religion.

So why oh why would you want us to take not one but half a dozen steps back to a theory which not only has no supporting evidence at all, but is for all practical and predictive purposes utterly useless?

The fact that you call not only christianity but all religions and all theologies in the world "utterly useless" shows how overwhelmingly blind you are. I'm sorry for your ignorance, and hope that some day you gain the opportunity to open your eyes.

Many meaningful achievements in science comes or benefits from observing nature. Submarines from dolphins, brain surgery benefits from woodpeckers. I don't think CF would want me posting videos, but go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAAB0dbc3Es
Obviously the whole "chi" thing is questionable, but even if it isn't what john chang says it is, finding the scientific explanation for the energy he has could be very useful in many applications. I think the chop stick through the table thing was a gimpy magic trick (of course, I'm not sure how he does it since it wasn't a table he chose, and therefore not likely a rigged table... but... what I was trying to point out is his ability to shock people and light LEDs.)

And just for background, I come into work each day, sit down at my desk, and look for ways to design novel therapeutics against various diseases. There is rarely a point in my day when I am not utilising some aspect of the predictive power of the ToE. So I will make you a deal. Come up with something...anything even remotely of use in medical research that involves creationism, and I will embrace it whole-heartedly. You come up with a model that is a better fit for the observable facts and/or has better predictive power, and I will drop evolution like a hot potato and not even glance back.

Really? You use ToE in the medical field? please, enlighten me as to how.

It's common practice to use bacteria or whatnot for a multitude of purposes including splicing parts of DNA in and out for all sorts of uses.... not Evolution at all...direct cutting into DNA.

I know that viruses can become resistant to things like insulin just like bugs can become resistant to pesticides... but that's not a gain in resistance, that's a loss of the genetic information for the receptor sites for such chemicals. This loss of information is natural selection... existing traits disappearing and mutating... not new ones forming let alone the translation from one domain of life to another.

So... other than splicing in your own genetic code and promoting the loss of information (i.e. loss of receptor sites=resistance to all sorts of things)... how do you use ToE in medicine?

Maybe I'm just tired and not thinking of it.

 

[Blayz]

first bit snipped

I get it now. Part of your problem is the teaching of theory as fact, for some reason you concentrate on ToE and ignore this process in every other high school class, but lets just say I am in total agreement. Students should be taught critical thinking and not learn by rote.

As for the textbook, I really would be interested in getting details.

"If you don't have a theory that you think is right... don't teach it."

Fair enough. But what if I have a theory that is mostly right, or a theory that is partly right, but the only theory on offer?

As an anlogy, lets say you sit a spot quiz with 10 questions. The teachers is marking your paper and sees you got the first question wrong. Is the correct response to say

1) Well, he got the first one wrong, the entire test must be wrong. 0/10!

or

2) I think I will treat each question independently, and score each independently, and then total the marks to give a score.

Evolution is not the bible. Its not a monolithic thing that is either all correct, or all incorrect. Like all of the large scientific theories, it has bits we have a lot of confidence in, bits we are hesitant about, and bits that are just plain wrong. There is no need to revisit the "how it is taught in class" thing, as I said, I agree. But any sentence that starts "evolution is wrong" or "evolution is disproved because of fact X" is fundamentally missing the point. You can get a question or two wrong and still score an A+

Your comment about carbon dating suffers the same flaw. Being able to cite 6 examples of carbon dating gone wrong does not prove that carbon dating itself is incorrect. For every incorrect example you cite, I can site 100 that went "right". Carbon dating is getting it right 99/100

The fact that you call not only christianity but all religions and all theologies in the world "utterly useless" shows how overwhelmingly blind you are. I'm sorry for your ignorance, and hope that some day you gain the opportunity to open your eyes.

Now now, we have been having a reasonably polite conversation so far. See, I have refrained from calling you a fundy nutjob, haven't I? It should have been quite clear from my context that I meant from a practical view point, and even more specifically as relates to science and science research.

Many meaningful achievements in science comes or benefits from observing nature

This is a bit left field. I'd say just about all meaningful achievements in science come from empirical observation, be it nature, an experiment, or indeed anything else.

Really? You use ToE in the medical field? please, enlighten me as to how.

response at the bottom, gotta address some misunderstandings first...

It's common practice to use bacteria or whatnot for a multitude of purposes including splicing parts of DNA in and out for all sorts of uses.... not Evolution at all...direct cutting into DNA.

mmkay, and what, exactly, am I splicing in? How is the decision made to put whatever it is I put into the bacteria?

I know that viruses can become resistant to things like insulin just like bugs can become resistant to pesticides... but that's not a gain in resistance, that's a loss of the genetic information for the receptor sites for such chemicals.

? If this is the pap you were taught in high school, then I agree you schooling was criminally negligent. However, lets take a small example that actually makes sense. Bacterial resistance to penicillin is caused by gaining an enzyme which specifically cleaves penicillin, its a gain in genetic information, not a loss. Has little to do with (but is not entirely divorced from) evolution, but then neither do your examples. Dishing up a range of techniques which don't involve the ToE in no way counters those that do.


You also seem to think that natural selection, the slow accumulation of mutations, this thing that creationists hijacked the term "micro evolution" to explain is somehow not a part of evolution. Why is that? Evolution is a continuum.

Anyway, to the question. I cannot give specifics since the real data is proprietary, so I will have to be somewhat general.

The wet-bench guys find a cellular gene which plays an important role in the regulation of the HIV integrase (the proetin that inserts the HIV cDNA into the chromsosme). They hypothesise that some HIV encoded element is causing transcriptional up regulation of the gene, and they ask me to locate the transcriptional binding sites so they can design some more experiments to find evidencary support (or lack thereof) for the hypothesis. There is only one problem, this is a gene that has not been studied before, and they have absolutely no idea what transcriptional elements are important, where the binding sites are, or how many of them there are.

At this point, I have 2 options

1) I can proclaim goddidit, hand in my resignation, and find another job

2) I can look for homologous, hopefully orthologous, sequences in other organisms. I might start with closely related organisms such as the Rhesus monkey or Chimpanzee, but chances are I am going to need to widen my search to other mammals, most notably the model organisms that have been heavily studied, such as mouse and rat.

The ToE tells me that conservation => function, so I hoik the orthologous regions out of the database, and align them. I run algortihms of varying complexity, from simple primary sequence comparators to bayesian net/trained transcription binding search programs, to find those regions upstream of the coding region. Luckily, I have a reasonable confidence model of the molecular clock of both organisms since their split, so can factor in relative levels of mutation for binding sites to isolate those regions that show conservation. I then go back to the mouse and look for evidence that the resolved regions are binding sites for known murine factors, and go back to the database to see if I can locate the human orthologues.

Having found my factors and binding sites purely based on the predictive power of the ToE, I hand my findings back to the bench scientists.

 

[Quantic]

The wet-bench guys find a cellular gene which plays an important role in the regulation of the HIV integrase (the proetin that inserts the HIV cDNA into the chromsosme). They hypothesise that some HIV encoded element is causing transcriptional up regulation of the gene, and they ask me to locate the transcriptional binding sites so they can design some more experiments to find evidencary support (or lack thereof) for the hypothesis. There is only one problem, this is a gene that has not been studied before, and they have absolutely no idea what transcriptional elements are important, where the binding sites are, or how many of them there are.

At this point, I have 2 options

1) I can proclaim goddidit, hand in my resignation, and find another job

2) I can look for homologous, hopefully orthologous, sequences in other organisms. I might start with closely related organisms such as the Rhesus monkey or Chimpanzee, but chances are I am going to need to widen my search to other mammals, most notably the model organisms that have been heavily studied, such as mouse and rat.

The ToE tells me that conservation => function, so I hoik the orthologous regions out of the database, and align them. I run algortihms of varying complexity, from simple primary sequence comparators to bayesian net/trained transcription binding search programs, to find those regions upstream of the coding region. Luckily, I have a reasonable confidence model of the molecular clock of both organisms since their split, so can factor in relative levels of mutation for binding sites to isolate those regions that show conservation. I then go back to the mouse and look for evidence that the resolved regions are binding sites for known murine factors, and go back to the database to see if I can locate the human orthologues.

Having found my factors and binding sites purely based on the predictive power of the ToE, I hand my findings back to the bench scientists.

Wow. This is a very good explanation of the use of evolution in the medical sciences. Thanks for writing it!

 

[Belfry]

Put into said group based on whether or not they're extinct. With all morphology in mind, if crocodiles were extinct and thought to live 65 million years ago, they would certainly be catagorized as a dinosaur.

Incorrect. As I said, it's based on morphology (morphology = shape and form), i.e. anatomical features of the skeleton. There are plenty of extinct groups from that time period that are not classified as dinosaurs, and dinosaurs aren't extinct - there is one dinosaur group remaining (birds). The inclusion of birds in this group is also based on morphological similarity (plus transitional fossils).

Would you please do me the favor of kindly removing your head from where it doesn't belong?

Consider this flame forgiven and forgotten.

Evolution has been refuted a thousand times,

This is your assertion, but you have not demonstrated it to be true. Furthermore, statements like "crocodilians would be categorized as dinosaurs if they were extinct" demonstrate that you don't know what you're talking about.

Carbon dating has not only been refuted, but I can site at least half a dozen GROSS errors, as recently as 1999.

And as you have already been told, Carbon dating isn't used for anything inorganic, nor older than 50,000 years. Within that time frame, the method has been validated using other measures, such as dendrochronolgy and varves. The limitations and factors that can throw off a measurement are known, and accounted for. Older rocks are dated using other radioisotopes.

People bring up the european green woodpecker... and a thousand times, it will be refuted by pointing out how the red bellied woodpecker can be partially explained. Avoided does not equal logically rebutted.

I would like to see a non-creationist source that backs up the green woodpecker claim.

And why is it still given as 'very strong evidence for evolution' in textbooks today? over 100 years later?

I doubt that it is used in any current versions of biology textbooks. Certainly, it was there for longer than it should have been.

That's what Hovind was getting at... why is a PRATT from 100 years ago still being used to indoctrinate kids taking highschool biology. While their minds are potentially open, we make sure to shut it to any other possibilities by saying "We know for a fact this is how things work, and if you disagree you fail the class and get held back and get kicked off the soccer team... so if you want to keep your friends, you must submit to our interpretation." Isn't that why we don't want religion in schools?

Show me an evolutionary biologist who thinks that Haeckels theory should be kept in textbooks, except as a cautionary tale about bad science. You won't find any.

here's a challange. Give a highschool student in a biology class learning about evolution a camera. In class, ask him to disagree with the theory of evolution... see what happens. The fact that "scientists don't really believe it" doesn't change the fact that our children's minds are being closed off from any other possibility... over something that was proven wrong a century ago.

Except that Haeckel's theory was never particularly important to the theory of evolution, and there's much more convincing evidence.

I recomment you not use fundamentalist religious web sites.

I don't. I recommend the same to you.

"exploring the controversy of evolution vs. creationism."
Click on the Evolution link... all "why you should believe evolution."
Click on the Creationism link... "Arguements against creationism."

Actually, if you took the time to read some pages in talkorigins, you'll see that they present the creationist arguments exactly as creationists give them, AND link to the creationists pages, and give reference to the creationists sources.

That's because there's nothing to fear from it, when you've got the evidence on your side to debunk the creationist claims.

There is no two sides. That's the problem. Creationists don't want evolution to never be mentioned again... parts of the theory are valuable even assuming it's not right. They just want it listed as a -theory- that some subscribe to with evidence and counter-evidence... i.e. not a dogmatic law.

Theories don't graduate into laws. Well-supported theories are as good as it gets in science.

We'd love to see this counter-evidence you speak of.

Evolutionists want to keep their theology in schools taught as irrefutable fact, and have contrary arguments banned from schools.

No, they want to keep science classes for science only. Let creation myths be taught in classes on religion or mythology.

Nothing in science is held as irrefutable.

Do you see any problem with that at all? Stalin doesn't go through your head for even a second? Anything to be taught as fact... should actually be a fact. Anything known to be a theory that many disagree with, with known holes (such as "we evolved from a common ancestor but have no explanation as to how it got there") should be taught as exactly that.

Again, abiogenesis is not part of evolutionary theory.
Evolution is both a fact and a theory. It's a fact that the fossil record demonstrates a progression of species over geological time. It's a fact that we see change in living things, and a pattern in morphology in genetics that suggests relatedness. Evolutionary theory explains these facts.

Now we're going back to fossils being the best evidence for evolution? Fossils demonstrate gradual change over billions of years? Yet "intermediary fossils" is still a curse word? We still have no missing links that haven't been

I never said the fossil record was the "best" evidence for evolution, but it's very strong evidence. With the "gradual change' thing, you're arguing against the expectation of phyletic gradualism, a concept which is out of date (in favor of punctuated equilibria), and in fact which Darwin himself suggested we should not expect to see in the fossil record.

The many transitional ("intermediary") fossils we have are also very strong evidence for common descent.

"We still have no missing links" -- I'm not sure what you even mean by that. We do have many transitional fossils that show the progression leading to most major animal groups. Considering that fossilization is rare and finding them is even rarer, it's quite remarkable how many we do have. If we have them, they're no longer missing, eh? Of course, there's the old joke that for a creationist, finding a transitional fossil just opens up two MORE gaps to either side of it.

If anything's a PRATT, it's fossils being used to illustrate the gradual change in species. Example: We think birds come from dinosaurs, specifically raptors... Talk about a missing link! The best we have is the archeopterix... which is dated about 65 million years back... the mix between all birds and reptiles...yet fully formed birds have been found which date 50 million years BEFORE the archeopterix (what it evolved from).

I'm sorry, but you're incorrect - Archeopteryx is dated at 150-155 million years ago. By "fully formed," I assume you mean indistiguishable from modern birds (archie was a "fully formed" creature). I believe you are mistaken that anatomically modern birds have been found that are dated older than Archeopteryx.

While it's true that archeopterix is one of the best examples of an early transitional form between non-avian dinosaurs and birds, it's not the only one. See here for a list of them, if you don't mind reading something that cites and links to scientific journal articles instead of the Bible.

Note that saying something is a "transitional form" between two taxa doesn't mean that it is the direct ancestor of either taxon. Common ancestry is a bush, not a ladder, and there are many lateral shoots, lineages that dead-end and went extinct. Evolution isn't goal-oriented; archeopteryx wasn't half a bird, it was a complete type of animal all its own, and presumably it wasn't the only species like it that existed around that time. Much like domestic dogs were originally bred from wolves... but there were and are also foxes, coyotes, and other examples of that group that are NOT ancestors of domestic dogs. Similarly, it is likely that there were other Archeopteryx-like species around that general time, and any one of them may have been the direct ancestor of modern birds.

If you're trying to support evolution... you may not want to mention "fossil records" and "gradual mutation over billions of years" on the same... thread.

Except that phyletic gradualism is not an assumption held by modern biologists. Check out those links I gave earlier (for that and punctuated equilibria) - they won't burn your eyes, it's just wikipedia.

If you're going to say "Man evolved from apes" and I ask "Why are there still apes?" And you say "man didn't evolve from apes, we have evidence, they both evolved from an ape-like species."

No, that's not quite right. Humans ARE apes (great apes, family Hominidae), and we and other modern apes evolved from other ape species.

and I ask "If you know that said ape-like species evolved into two seperate species (something we cannot simulate in any laboratory)... you know that it did something we've never seen before

Whoops, you're wrong there - we have seen speciation occur, not just in simulations but in living organisms, both in the lab and in the field.

where are the fossils to prove it even existed, let alone intermediary fossils to prove that it gradually changed into not one but two seperate species at the same time...

Again, not quite right. It's unlikely that our most recent common ancestor with chimps changed into two different species at the same time. That's not how evolutionary biologists would conceive of it. At some point, a reproductively isolated population of the species started to diverge from the rest of the population. The original population continued on, some part of it diverged, and eventually became different enough to be a separate species. The common ancestor may have been very chimp-like.

also how can something gradually evolve over a long period of time into two seperate species in the same geographic location? While they were similar enough to mate, would they not interbreed and become one species again?

A good question, which is exactly why it is generally agreed that most speciation events occur when there is a geographical barrier to interbreeding with the parent species (known as allopatric speciation), such as when a group of individuals of the species establishes in an isolated habitat outside of the range of the rest of the population. Again, this is something that has been observed to lead to speciation in currently living organisms.

Which again raises the question: If humans and apes evolved from the same ape-like being... why are there still both humans... and apes?

If white Americans came from Europe, why are there still both Americans and Europeans? Both have similar but distinct cultures, and both are different from Europeans in the 16th Century. It's a rough analogy.

... I just made that paragraph up... but BOY, I like it. Saving that one for later.

I'm sure it seemed very convincing to someone not familiar with evolutionary theory.

Still, if we know they both evolved from particular species, where is our evidence of that species? We know they evolved from it because they exist, which we know existed because they exist? Therefore our evidence for their having evolved from something else is that something that isn't what we're looking for exists? Fat men exist. Old fat men... with beards. Some of them dress up like santa. We can observe people who appear very similar to santa... did they evolve from santa, indicating that not only did he exist... but is the ancestor of all old fat men? My grandfather kind of looked like santa... Is that conclusive evidence that not only did/does santa exist, but did I evolve from him because my family members tend to look like him? Or are they just old and fat?

I can't parse that at all.

The fossil record is not perfect. Most organisms that have ever lived, have died and decomposed without leaving fossil traces. You have to draw conclusions from the information that we DO have. Based on genetic and anatomical evidence, chimpanzees are our closest living relatives. Our most recent common ancestor would likely have the genetic and anatomical traits that we share in common with chimpanzees. We don't know exactly what it would have looked like, we don't put a latin name to it, and we'd have no way of knowing for certain if we found it that THAT was the one, or if it was another very similar species. But we know it in the same way we know that we DO have a great-great-great-great-great-grandmother, even if all the records are destroyed and we have no idea who she might have been. And of course, the hominid fossils that we have help with our confidence level quite a bit.

On another note: I read through your posts, and it was informative. There were quite a few things in there I didn't know, and I look forward to having a more in depth conversation with you 1 on 1 when I have some time.

It would be a pleasure. Evolution of symbiosis is a favorite topic of mine, and one of the insect groups I work with most often (subfamily Scolytinae, bark and ambrosia beetles) has some spectacular illustrative examples.

It's been a while and I certainly don't remember the title of the book, but it was one of those illustrated anatomy "look at these spiffy graphics" types. I'll try to find it.

Okay. I suggest you stop using the claim until you can document it a little better. The green woodpecker (Picus viridis) is one of about 15 species in that genus alone. It would be quite remarkable if its anatomy differed in a huge way from all other woodpeckers. You can see a molecular phylogeny of woodpeckers and allies, including P. viridis here (warning: large .pdf file).

 

[Loudmouth]

Put into said group based on whether or not they're extinct. With all morphology in mind, if crocodiles were extinct and thought to live 65 million years ago, they would certainly be catagorized as a dinosaur. [SIZE=-1][/SIZE]

Why would crocodiles be put in the same category as dinosaurs? I want to see you explain this one in your own words.

Would you please do me the favor of kindly removing your head from where it doesn't belong? It's not condusive to a semi-productive conversation. Evolution has been refuted a thousand times, Carbon dating has not only been refuted, but I can site at least half a dozen GROSS errors, as recently as 1999.

This argument has been destroyed in another thread.

And why is it still given as 'very strong evidence for evolution' in textbooks today? over 100 years later?

Haeckel was wrong when he said that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. However, ontogeny DOES REFLECT phylogeny. The way an organism develops is evidence for common ancestry, whether you like it or not.

While their minds are potentially open, we make sure to shut it to any other possibilities by saying "We know for a fact this is how things work, and if you disagree you fail the class and get held back and get kicked off the soccer team... so if you want to keep your friends, you must submit to our interpretation." Isn't that why we don't want religion in schools?

If you disagree then start presenting factual information. That would be a good start.

here's a challange. Give a highschool student in a biology class learning about evolution a camera. In class, ask him to disagree with the theory of evolution... see what happens. The fact that "scientists don't really believe it" doesn't change the fact that our children's minds are being closed off from any other possibility... over something that was proven wrong a century ago.

High school students do not have the knowledge needed to challenge the theory. Besides, is a high school classroom the proper place to challenge a scientific theory? NO. The proper place is in the peer reviewed literature and at world class scientific conferences. Why are creationists so afraid of these venues? Why do they consistently focus their attention on the scientific illiterate (ie high school students)?

I recomment you not use fundamentalist religious web sites. "exploring the controversy of evolution vs. creationism."
Click on the Evolution link... all "why you should believe evolution."
Click on the Creationism link... "Arguements against creationism."

I recommend you go to www.pubmed.com and read through the peer reviewed literature.

There is no two sides. That's the problem. Creationists don't want evolution to never be mentioned again... parts of the theory are valuable even assuming it's not right. They just want it listed as a -theory- that some subscribe to with evidence and counter-evidence... i.e. not a dogmatic law.

That is exactly how scientists view the theory of evolution. The difference between creationism and evolution is that scientists actually use the theory of evolution to learn new things about nature. Creationism is only useful for christian apologetics. Scientists are pragmatists, first and foremost. If a paradigm does not and can not produce new knowledge and is not testable then it is of no use to a scientist.

Evolutionists want to keep their theology in schools taught as irrefutable fact, and have contrary arguments banned from schools.

No, they want lies banned from the science classroom. Unfortunately, creationist arguments are loaded with them.

Do you see any problem with that at all? Stalin doesn't go through your head for even a second? Anything to be taught as fact... should actually be a fact. Anything known to be a theory that many disagree with, with known holes (such as "we evolved from a common ancestor but have no explanation as to how it got there") should be taught as exactly that.

I have started a thread entitled What are the Weakness of Evolution?. I challenge you to actually post something that challenges the theory.

Now we're going back to fossils being the best evidence for evolution? Fossils demonstrate gradual change over billions of years? Yet "intermediary fossils" is still a curse word? We still have no missing links that haven't been

There are thousands of known intermediate fossils. Would you like to learn about them?

If anything's a PRATT, it's fossils being used to illustrate the gradual change in species. Example: We think birds come from dinosaurs, specifically raptors... Talk about a missing link! The best we have is the archeopterix... which is dated about 65 million years back... the mix between all birds and reptiles.... yet fully formed birds have been found which date 50 million years BEFORE the archeopterix (what it evolved from).

More lies. There are 15 known groups of feathere dinosaurs. Archie is hardly the only known intermediate. Why do you keep repeating creationist lies?

If you're trying to support evolution... you may not want to mention "fossil records" and "gradual mutation over billions of years" on the same... thread.

Hardly. The fossil record alone evidences evolution quite well. When genetics is put on top of the fosil record the evidence is undeniable. Well, undeniable to an objective observer at least.

If you're going to say "Man evolved from apes" and I ask "Why are there still apes?" And you say "man didn't evolve from apes, we have evidence, they both evolved from an ape-like species." and I ask "If you know that said ape-like species evolved into two seperate species (something we cannot simulate in any laboratory)... you know that it did something we've never seen before, where are the fossils to prove it even existed, let alone intermediary fossils to prove that it gradually changed into not one but two seperate species at the same time... also how can something gradually evolve over a long period of time into two seperate species in the same geographic location?

Sure. Here is a great page listing the interemediate hominid fossils, the very ones you claim are "mising". Guess they aren't missing anymore, huh?

If humans and apes evolved from the same ape-like being... why are there still both humans... and apes?

Humans are apes just as we are primates, mammals, vertebrates, and eukaryotes.

Still, if we know they both evolved from particular species, where is our evidence of that species?

The evidence is the overwhelming genetic evidence that supports common ancestry between humans and other apes. Would you like to learn more about it?

 

[Mumbo]

[wash my mouth][wash my mouth][wash my mouth], the scientists totally already said Evolution wuz tru! You can't say it's not, because they said it was tru ATT! wo0t.

Uh.

... ::link to closed minded fundamentalist web page that does indeed refute some points... of course not the points I'm making::
I agree... let the embryos speak for themselves:

wow... look how similar those are. They're all small... all facing the left... Probably all pink. They're even mostly in a kind of "U" shape all curled up... The must have evolved from a common ancestor.

How scientific is that anyway? "See... those partially formed blobs kinda look the same... so they must be related." Just like "Hey... that cloud looks like a bunny... bunnys must have evolved from clouds! Plus, they're both fluffy!" Wo0t. I are a scientist too now.

If you read between the lines of my last post, you'd have seen that I didn't support Haeckel, or his drawings. So why are you shoving a picture in my face? It's true, embryos do look very different in many developmental stages, but their appearance alone isn't what makes embryos similar. Here's another talkorigins link. Trust me, it's relevant! Please give it a thorough read, even if it's against your usual policies to take evolutionist dogma seriously.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/haeckel.html

Aye... we still have INDEX FOSSILS! We know that if we find bones in the same strata as Graptolites... it's approximately 410 million years old. Right? ... and the fact that Graptolites can be found... alive... today... is irrelevant? We can date the layer of strata by the index fossils it contains... correct? Of course we only know the age of the fossils by what layer it's in. So we know the age of on is right, because it's coincides by the age of the other which is defined by the age of what we're trying to date.

What? I only meant that fossils provide a good idea of what the ancestors of certain organisms were like, even if the fossils don't belong to those ancestors specifically. I didn't intend to bring dating into this discussion at all.

But I'll humor you, I guess. I never heard of graptolites before now, but the fact that they still exist today does seem to be irrelevant.

"More important, the shape of the little hacksaw blades changed quickly over geologic time. Sometimes there are cups on one side of the blade, sometimes on both sides; sometimes the blades form a V or a Y. Once you understand the pattern of change, you can date the layers in a geologic structure relative to one another based on the relative positions of graptolite deposits.

Edit: Wikipedia and britannica seem to think that Graptolites is extinct. The only things that I can find that say otherwise are a 15-year-old news article and Kent Hovind. No offense to either party, but can you find anything a little more credible? Do any other readers know what the deal is with these little guys?

As for index fossils themselves, they're helpful, but they're not the only way to date things, as I'm sure you're well aware.

So similar things can be assumed to come from one another? If two things are related, which came from which? Of course, you'll answer they both came from a common ancestor. So... what's the common ancestor of a grape and a kitten?

What? Well, okay. If you trace the ancestry of animals back far enough, you arrive at microorganisms. The same goes for plants. You've likely realized that fossils get a bit unreliable that far back in time, which is why DNA is used to measure relatedness almost solely at that point. Of course, if you feel that DNA is simply God's programming language or something like that, you probably won't buy into it.

If you're ever short on evolutionist tripe to peruse, I'd recommend The Ancestor's Tale. It deals quite a lot with relatedness, the genetic relationships between man and other organisms in particular.

They... developed codependancy? So... if the termites only eat wood... how did the microorganisms get in their stomach? Maybe they were already in the wood and the termites at the wood with the organisms on 'em? So... why did they stop living on the wood? How would a microorganism suited for life and replication with the environment of "wood" Adapt to living inside a termite? If it was adapted to "wood" and it was eaten by a termite... it would most likely die. If it survived being passed through the termite, it would continue living in the wood... unless you think it "liked it in there" and "looked for another termite to eat it" and suggested to it's kids that they find such termites as well.

Er, if you read the quote I gave you for this, you'd have found an explanation. Microorganisms can be hardy little fellas, and if certain ones found a termite's gut to be a favorable environment (free food, relatively safe if you don't mind the acidity), they would eventually come to live there full-time. They wouldn't do this by telling other mircroorganisms about their cool new habitat, but by producing microorganisms that genetically favor such a place to live.

More importantly... what proof do you have of termites that function like no termite that has ever been observed?

Termites aren't known for eating things? Well, seeing as termites are closely related to cockroaches, and cockroaches have been observed eating all sorts of things (including wood, actually), it's not much of a stretch.

Speculation is fine... there COULD have been such termites. But the speculation of "It COULD happen given hundreds of billions of years" is not evidence for a law of nature that should be taught with my tax dollars as absolute irrefutable fact.

Your Hovindism is showing again.

Assuming evolution is a natural part of planetary growth, it's logical to assume alians COULD exist. If it happened here, it's statistically impossible that it didn't happen on any one of any of the planets or planetoids around any of the billions of stars in any of the billions of galexies in the universe (of course, there are more than "billions"... but I don't feel like looking up the average star count per galaxies or the most current info on how many galaxies we've observed).

Sure. Of course, we don't know for certain how likely it is that life will come about, so it's hard to say.

Considering the time frame of "since the big bang" it's likely that we are not the most advanced race the universe has ever seen (whether they're still alive or not). And of those races, it's likely that at least ONE of them would be capable of space travel to earth. Given not only the billions of years of this planet but the very long period of time of the existance of the universe... it COULD happen. If they could make it here some of them COULD abduct at least one life form on earth.

Well, if Einstein got his equations right, it's impossible to travel faster than the speed of light, so there are limitations. But yes, it is remotely possible for nearby aliens with nothing better to do to go on very long, presumeably round-trip abduction outings. I'm not sure that I would count on it, though.

Do you want your kids being taught in science classes that "flying saucers are real, and they visit earth, and they abduct people." And anyone who didn't believe in alien abduction would be labeled a religious fundamentalist nut who DISAGREED WITH SCIENCE!

Uh. What?

... It's possible that somewhere out there aliens may exist. Evolution is observable and logical to the extent of selecting traits from within a species, so the exaggeration into the realm of wild speculation is an interesting theory. Interesting theory is not fact and it should not be taught as such.

It's not! I, for one, was never taught the startling truth of alien abductions in high school biology class. Maybe that's graduate-level stuff?

WOW. ... just wow. After specifying "NOT MOST WOODPECKERS"... specifically the European green woodpecker.

The article gives a nod to green woodpeckers.

Don't just type "Fundamental Evolutionist woodpecker rebuttal" into google and expect that to be an acceptable replacement for your own thought process.

So far you've relyed heavily upon rewording answersingenesis articles and Hovind sermons, so I wouldn't give any lectures on that if I were you. I just gave the article a read and thought it'd answer your questions better than I could (the biological structure of woodpeckers isn't really my specialty). Referring you to webpages beats ignoring your questions, or saying "durr I dunno."

Read up on the -european green woodpecker- ... not the red bellied woodpecker... not any other woodpecker. Any other bird has a tongue as you suggested... which is exactly the point. No other bird (that I know of) has a tongue shaped like the european green woodpecker. You can't refute the fact that it's tongue could not have evolved in intermittent steps with the speculation of how a COMPLETELY different tongue may have evolved.

Hey, um, hate to rock the denial boat here, but the description of the european green woodpecker quoted in the article I provided matches the one given in the refutation. You're sure that you read it?

The European Green woodpecker's tongue goes down the throat, out the back of the neck ... around the back of the skull beneath the skin, and over the top between the eyes, terminating usually just below the eye socket.

Familiar?

 

[Baggins]

[

Aye... we still have INDEX FOSSILS! We know that if we find bones in the same strata as Graptolites... it's approximately 410 million years old. Right? ... and the fact that Graptolites can be found... alive... today... is irrelevant? We can date the layer of strata by the index fossils it contains... correct? Of course we only know the age of the fossils by what layer it's in. So we know the age of on is right, because it's coincides by the age of the other which is defined by the age of what we're trying to date.

.

Do you think if you just spew out enough rubbish you win the argument?

I can't take the opinions of a man who think that Graptolites still exist today seriously.

Do you lie about things or simply not bother to check what you are writing for veracity before posting? It most be one or the other.

I am a geologist with a higher degree in palaeontology; Graptolites died out over 300 million years ago in the Carboniferous.

Graptolites (Graptolithina) are fossil colonial animals known chiefly from the Upper Cambrian through the Lower Carboniferous (Mississippian).

The fact that you think that rocks are dated by fossils is ludicrous, rocks are dated absolutely by radio isotope dating , not carbon dating which appears to be the only dating method you are aware of .

You are a charlatan and an enormous bag of hot air.

Good day to you