Gorilla Genome

[PsychoSarah]

Ok so it was predicted that this find would be in a specified rock at the specified age. They found it, but what they had hoped to find at that specific location and specific age was to be the fossil evidence for the water to land transition predicted for that specific age and location. Yet that is not what they found at all. They found that the Tiktaalik evolved long before that specific location and age. So the prediction was not confirmed.

So now you claim that the time period is really nothing...it is only 20 million years which is an acceptable error.

At a stroke, this rules out not only Tiktaalik as a tetrapod ancestor, but also all known representatives of the elpistostegids. The arrival of tetrapods is now considered to be 20 million years earlier than previously thought and these tetrapods must now be regarded as coexisting with the elpistostegids.

Evolution is so slow and has inconsistent speed enough that 20 million years, which is an age that has a degree of error in and of itself of hundreds of thousands of years if not millions, ((we aren't perfect at the age thing, especially for fossils that old)) is not significant. How hard is that to understand? Additionally, there is more than one line of potential tetrapod ancestors. "Tiktaalik is a transitional fossil; it is to tetrapods what Aurornis is to birds, troodonts and dromaeosaurids. While it may be that neither is ancestor to any living animal, they serve as evidence that intermediates between very different types of vertebrates did once exist." From Wikipedia
Tiktaalik - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and I do not understand why you assumed it was an ancestor to modern tetrapods. That really isn't the point of this conversation.

 

[lifepsyop]

Not directly in most cases, but here is how it goes: Living species have degrees of how closely related they are genetically. This degree of similarity should roughly match up with that of their last shared ancestor, and gives some amount of order to when certain traits must have appeared.

No, that's not how it goes. Genetic or phenotypic traits may simply be more or less conserved in different lineages, thus masking a signal of steady divergence.

If more distant groups have an unexpected amount of similarity, then the evolutionists can simply assume that those traits were highly conserved (maintained by natural selection) and the opposite scenario goes for differences between groups thought to be more closely related.

The concept of a "molecular clock" keeping careful track of lineage divergence times throughout evolutionary history has always been fraught with contradictions. If you studied the literature you would understand this.

 

[lifepsyop]

Evolution is so slow and has inconsistent speed enough that 20 million years, which is an age that has a degree of error in and of itself of hundreds of thousands of years if not millions, ((we aren't perfect at the age thing, especially for fossils that old)) is not significant.

You just implicitly admitted here that the discovery of Tiktaalik was lucky. If there is a "degree of error of 20 million years", then how could Shubin have possibly have known to hone in on the precise rock layer? When, according to yourself, a Tiktaalik-like body-plan could have just as easily been found 20 million years earlier, or 20 million years later.. that's practically the entire Devonian period!

Sarah you have to really sit back and think about your reasoning here, because it is a trainwreck of flawed logic.

It gets even worse for you. You say a 20 million year difference is "not significant"... okay, if 20 MY is negligible, why not 30 MY, or 40, or 50 million years? Is being 50 million years off significant? You have no idea.. you have no standard, you're just making things up.

Again proving my point. Evolution theory is just a wishy-washy fog with no robust constraints or significant predictive power. You yourself demonstrate that, while groping around for some solid internal structure to the theory, you find nothing but vapors.

 

[Oncedeceived]

You just implicitly admitted here that the discovery of Tiktaalik was lucky. If there is a "degree of error of 20 million years", then how could Shubin have possibly have known to hone in on the precise rock layer? When, according to yourself, a Tiktaalik-like body-plan could have just as easily been found 20 million years earlier, or 20 million years later.. that's practically the entire Devonian period!

Sarah you have to really sit back and think about your reasoning here, because it is a trainwreck of flawed logic.

It gets even worse for you. You say a 20 million year difference is "not significant"... okay, if 20 MY is negligible, why not 30 MY, or 40, or 50 million years? Is being 50 million years off significant? You have no idea.. you have no standard, you're just making things up.

Again proving my point. Evolution theory is just a wishy-washy fog with no robust constraints or significant predictive power. You yourself demonstrate that, while groping around for some solid internal structure to the theory, you find nothing but vapors.

Well said!

 

[sfs]

You just implicitly admitted here that the discovery of Tiktaalik was lucky. If there is a "degree of error of 20 million years", then how could Shubin have possibly have known to hone in on the precise rock layer?

A few simple questions: what other theory, besides evolution, predicted the existence of anything like Tiktaalik? What other theory predicted its location in the geological record with an accuracy better than 20 million years? What other theory has made any predictions at all about genetic differences between species?

Scientists tend to use the best theory available. Any theory will make imperfect predictions and have points on which it can be attacked. But the attacks only succeed in science if the theory is a complete failure (which the theory of common descent certainly is not), or if there is a superior alternative.

What alternative do you have to offer?

 

[lasthero]

A few simple questions: what other theory, besides evolution, predicted the existence of anything like Tiktaalik? What other theory predicted its location in the geological record with an accuracy better than 20 million years? What other theory has made any predictions at all about genetic differences between species?

Scientists tend to use the best theory available. Any theory will make imperfect predictions and have points on which it can be attacked. But the attacks only succeed in science if the theory is a complete failure (which the theory of common descent certainly is not), or if there is a superior alternative.

What alternative do you have to offer?

Well said!

 

[JacksBratt]

A few simple questions: what other theory, besides evolution, predicted the existence of anything like Tiktaalik? What other theory predicted its location in the geological record with an accuracy better than 20 million years? What other theory has made any predictions at all about genetic differences between species?

Scientists tend to use the best theory available. Any theory will make imperfect predictions and have points on which it can be attacked. But the attacks only succeed in science if the theory is a complete failure (which the theory of common descent certainly is not), or if there is a superior alternative.

What alternative do you have to offer?

For evolutionists, the fossil record is their alphabet. They use the bones of past living creatures as letters to write a story based on filling in the gaps and reading between the lines. The earth has left them with this "scripture" that tells them how all of this happened and who is who's dad and son and relative. It's all extrapolation, assumption, prediction, and exaggeration with some guess work in there too.

I will take the words penned by men which were inspired by the One who created the universe over the words written by the random findings of a tilled up earth, any day.

 

[JacksBratt]

You just implicitly admitted here that the discovery of Tiktaalik was lucky. If there is a "degree of error of 20 million years", then how could Shubin have possibly have known to hone in on the precise rock layer? When, according to yourself, a Tiktaalik-like body-plan could have just as easily been found 20 million years earlier, or 20 million years later.. that's practically the entire Devonian period!

Sarah you have to really sit back and think about your reasoning here, because it is a trainwreck of flawed logic.

It gets even worse for you. You say a 20 million year difference is "not significant"... okay, if 20 MY is negligible, why not 30 MY, or 40, or 50 million years? Is being 50 million years off significant? You have no idea.. you have no standard, you're just making things up.

Again proving my point. Evolution theory is just a wishy-washy fog with no robust constraints or significant predictive power. You yourself demonstrate that, while groping around for some solid internal structure to the theory, you find nothing but vapors.

 

[Subduction Zone]

For evolutionists, the fossil record is their alphabet. They use the bones of past living creatures as letters to write a story based on filling in the gaps and reading between the lines. The earth has left them with this "scripture" that tells them how all of this happened and who is who's dad and son and relative. It's all extrapolation, assumption, prediction, and exaggeration with some guess work in there too.

I will take the words penned by men which were inspired by the One who created the universe over the words written by the random findings of a tilled up earth, any day.

The problem is that the Bible does not look like it was inspired by God. It has countless errors, bad science and bad morals. Meanwhile the "findings of a tilled up earth" have shown themselves to be far from random. The reason the geology, biology, physics and other sciences work is because they tell a consistent story that can be reliable checked and confirmed. The flaws in science are much smaller than the flaws in the Bible.

 

[lifepsyop]

The reason the geology, biology, physics and other sciences work is because they tell a consistent story that can be reliable checked and confirmed.

That's an empty mantra. There are certainly many patterns, but Evolution theory is practically useless in terms of predicting anything of substance. As I have been explaining and demonstrating over the past several pages, the structure of Evolution theory is like an amorphous fog that has adapted to accommodate the data, as it could potentially accommodate countless other pattern configurations. Evolution theory 'explains' the data in the same way a glob of jello can easily fit into a million different sized containers. If you don't understand that, then of course you will be left marveling at how nice of a fit the theory is to the data.

 

[Oncedeceived]

A few simple questions: what other theory, besides evolution, predicted the existence of anything like Tiktaalik?

What did they predict exactly? They predicted they would find the direct transition from water to land.

What other theory predicted its location in the geological record with an accuracy better than 20 million years?

The first lob-fined fish appeared around 380 million years and the first tetrapods appear 363 million years ago. So there was only around 20 million years that could be predicted to hold the life form they were looking for. That makes the timeline pretty limited to say the least, and then along comes the discovery of tetrapod tracks 20 million years earlier. Yet, it is still claimed as a predicted life form exactly where it should be ignoring the fact that it isn't what they had planned to find nor was it the direct transition due to the fact that it was after tetrapods already existed 20 million years earlier.

What alternative do you have to offer?

So it is the only game in town. That isn't usually a sterling point.

 

[sfs]

For evolutionists, the fossil record is their alphabet. They use the bones of past living creatures as letters to write a story based on filling in the gaps and reading between the lines. The earth has left them with this "scripture" that tells them how all of this happened and who is who's dad and son and relative. It's all extrapolation, assumption, prediction, and exaggeration with some guess work in there too.

I will take the words penned by men which were inspired by the One who created the universe over the words written by the random findings of a tilled up earth, any day.

And yet you can't tell me a single thing that's true about the physical world, while scientists can tell me reams of things. Why is that?

 

[sfs]

What did they predict exactly? They predicted they would find the direct transition from water to land.

Did they? I thought they predicted they'd find a fossil of a transitional species. Transitional species don't have to be on the direct line of descent to modern species: they can be on side branches.

The first lob-fined fish appeared around 380 million years and the first tetrapods appear 363 million years ago. So there was only around 20 million years that could be predicted to hold the life form they were looking for. That makes the timeline pretty limited to say the least, and then along comes the discovery of tetrapod tracks 20 million years earlier. Yet, it is still claimed as a predicted life form exactly where it should be ignoring the fact that it isn't what they had planned to find nor was it the direct transition due to the fact that it was after tetrapods already existed 20 million years earlier.

When anything first appears in the fossil record can be offset by millions of years from when it first lived. So what? You didn't address my point: what other theory offers any kind of prediction at all about, well, anything about biology?

So it is the only game in town. That isn't usually a sterling point.

So you agree, then: creationism isn't in any way an alternative explanation to evolution, and evolution is the only viable explanation we have. Right? Because that seems to be what you're saying. If you disagree, present the alternative that does a better (or even remotely as good) a job.

 

[Oncedeceived]

Did they? I thought they predicted they'd find a fossil of a transitional species. Transitional species don't have to be on the direct line of descent to modern species: they can be on side branches.

They said it would be when they first predicted it. You don't remember?

When anything first appears in the fossil record can be offset by millions of years from when it first lived. So what? You didn't address my point: what other theory offers any kind of prediction at all about, well, anything about biology?

They knew when lobed-fined fish appear and when tetrapod appear. Hardly a prediction when it had to be between the two and there was so little time between.

So you agree, then: creationism isn't in any way an alternative explanation to evolution, and evolution is the only viable explanation we have. Right? Because that seems to be what you're saying. If you disagree, present the alternative that does a better (or even remotely as good) a job.

Being a Christian as yourself do you feel evolution has no part in God's creation?

 

[lifepsyop]

When anything first appears in the fossil record can be offset by millions of years from when it first lived. So what? You didn't address my point: what other theory offers any kind of prediction at all about, well, anything about biology?

The very existence of a fossil record is predicted by the worldwide flood account in Genesis. What if the global catastrophe in Genesis had been that all living things were burned up by fire, turned to piles of ash, or what have you, then a fossil record would make no sense and Bible believing Christians would be left without an answer. However an abundant fossil record makes good sense in regards to a flood catastrophe that would lead to living things' rapid burial in sediment. That is a major fulfilled prediction that makes your Tiktaalik example (that none of you can even fully explain, and which has already been contradicted by further fossil discoveries) look paltry in comparison. Of course you have to hand-wave and deny all of this. In Darwin's time, evolutionists simply took the emerging dominant fossil pattern being discovered by paleontologists and wrapped an Evolutionary narrative around it. And now for some strange reason evolutionists talk as if they predicted it. Just think about it. Why did the 'age of mammals' have to be preceded by an 'age of reptiles/dinosaurs'? A reverse order could have been discovered instead and an Evolutionary story could have accommodated it without missing a beat. That goes for all sorts of alternate fossil patterns that may have been discovered. Evolution is a fog that settles around the data.

 

[sfs]

They said it would be when they first predicted it. You don't remember?

No, I don't remember. Why don't you correct me by showing me what they actually said?

They knew when lobed-fined fish appear and when tetrapod appear. Hardly a prediction when it had to be between the two and there was so little time between.

Right. If evolution is true, then there was only a (fairly) narrow window when something like Tiktaalik would appear, and there should be such an organism. In other words, the theory requires there to have been a species like Tiktaalik during that period. That's why it's a prediction of evolution.

But if evolution isn't true, there's not reason to expect Tiktaalik to exist at all, and no reason to expect it to have lived at any particular time even if it did exist. That's why Tiktaalik is not a prediction of creationism.

This is why Tiktaalik is evidence for common descent and not for creationism.

Being a Christian as yourself do you feel evolution has no part in God's creation?

I'm not sure how to parse your question. As a Christian, I feel that evolution is as much part of God's creation as all of the rest of it.

 

[sfs]

The very existence of a fossil record is predicted by the worldwide flood account in Genesis. What if the global catastrophe in Genesis had been that all living things were burned up by fire, turned to piles of ash, or what have you, then a fossil record would make no sense and Bible believing Christians would be left without an answer.

Bible-believing Christians -- some of them clergymen -- went looking for the results of the global flood. What they found completely contradicted the predictions of a flood; the strata they examined looked nothing they'd been laid down in a single universal flood. What these naturalists did, since they were honest folk, was to invent the field of geology to explain what they'd found.

However an abundant fossil record makes good sense in regards to a flood catastrophe that would lead to living things' rapid burial in sediment.

The fossil record in fact looks nothing at all like what you'd expect from a flood. A flood would jumble all kinds of organisms together; fossils occur in a regular progression, varying enormously from bottom to top of the geologic column. A flood would occur at a single time; fossils range in age from billions of years to very recent. A global flood would produce a mass of poorly differentiated sediment; geological strata show a progression of scores of different environments -- sea bottom, coast, desert, swamp, forest -- all lying on top of one another, with multiple periods of millions of years spent above water and interspersed periods below water.

If this is your idea of a successful prediction, it's no wonder that you find science confounding.

That is a major fulfilled prediction that makes your Tiktaalik example (that none of you can even fully explain, and which has already been contradicted by further fossil discoveries) look paltry in comparison. Of course you have to hand-wave and deny all of this. In Darwin's time, evolutionists simply took the emerging dominant fossil pattern being discovered by paleontologists and wrapped an Evolutionary narrative around it. And now for some strange reason evolutionists talk as if they predicted it. Just think about it. Why did the 'age of mammals' have to be preceded by an 'age of reptiles/dinosaurs'? A reverse order could have been discovered instead and an Evolutionary story could have accommodated it without missing a beat. That goes for all sorts of alternate fossil patterns that may have been discovered. Evolution is a fog that settles around the data.

No evolutionary narrative could have accommodated finding Tiktaalik in Cambrian strata. Or in pre-Cambriban strata, which make up the bulk of the age of the Earth.

So far, you haven't offered me an alternative that would predict the existence of something like Tiktaalik, or that could do so with better than 20 million year accuracy, or that can predict anything about genetics.

 

[Oncedeceived]

No, I don't remember. Why don't you correct me by showing me what they actually said?

They claimed that the ancestor to tetrapods would be found. The direct link between the lobed-fined fish and tetrapods.

Right. If evolution is true, then there was only a (fairly) narrow window when something like Tiktaalik would appear, and there should be such an organism.

Yet, it wasn't what they expected to find. They didn't find the ancestor to Tetrapods as expected because Tetrapods existed 20 million years earlier.

In other words, the theory requires there to have been a species like Tiktaalik during that period. That's why it's a prediction of evolution.

No, it predicted a Tetrapod ancestor.

But if evolution isn't true, there's not reason to expect Tiktaalik to exist at all, and no reason to expect it to have lived at any particular time even if it did exist. That's why Tiktaalik is not a prediction of creationism.

I didn't claim that evolution isn't true, I'm saying that evolution didn't predict correctly what would be found and finding Tetrapods 20 million years earlier than the Taktaalik shows that it only provides explanation ad hoc more times than not.

This is why Tiktaalik is evidence for common descent and not for creationism.

That simply isn't true, it might not be evidence for some creationist's interpretation of Creation but have no doubt that it is evidence for God's creation.

I'm not sure how to parse your question. As a Christian, I feel that evolution is as much part of God's creation as all of the rest of it.

God created correct?

Here is a quote from Jenny Clack that show that Tiktaalik was suppose to be the earlier life form from which tetrapods evolved:

‘There remains a large morphological gap between them and digits as seen in, for example, Acanthostega: if the digits evolved from these distal bones, the process must have involved considerable developmental repatterning. …​

‘Of course, there are still major gaps in the fossil record. In particular we have almost no information about the step between Tiktaalik and the earliest tetrapods, when the anatomy underwent the most drastic changes, or about what happened in the following Early Carboniferous period, after the end of the Devonian, when tetrapods became fully terrestrial.

Ahlberg, P.E. and Clack, J.A., Palaeontology: A firm step from water to land,Nature 440(7085):747–749, 6 April 2006 | doi:10.1038/440747a

 

[lasthero]

They claimed that the ancestor to tetrapods would be found. The direct link between the lobed-fined fish and tetrapods.

Pardon, but do you have their actual quote?

 

[Loudmouth]

You still don't get it, do you? It doesn't matter whether they do or don't. Evolution would accommodate either scenario. So why on earth are you claiming one scenario as some kind of vindication? It's because you don't know what you're talking about.

Again, you are only showing 3 closely related nodes that show ILS. This is not unexpected. What you would not expect to see is distantly related organisms (e.g. humans and armadillos) with higher DNA homology than closely related species (e.g. humans and chimps). If each gene produced a completely different tree for distantly related species, evolution could not accomodate it. What you keep pointing to is closely related nodes.

Yes the functions of computer programs can potentially be written many different ways. But what happens when the same software engineer writes similar program variations?

Does a software engineer write code so that it falls into a nested hierarchy? Nope, they sure don't.

For example, humans and yeast both have a gene called cytochrome c that works identically in both species. In fact, you can replace the yeast gene with the human gene for cytochrome c and the yeast do just fine. So why would the human and yeast cytchrome c gene differ by 35% while the mouse and human orthologues differ by just 10%? More importantly, why would the human and mouse genes be equidistant to the yeast gene? How do you explain this?

Can you give me an example of software engineers changing code over time so that it forms lineages and phylogenies?

Here is the link to the cytochrome c comparison. I don't know if it will work in your browser, but give it a try. Look at the comparisons for human and mouse (M. musculus). Notice how there is a 35% difference between human and yeast (S.cerevisiae), and a 36% difference between yeast and mouse. How do you explain this type of genetic equidistance?

HomoloGene - NCBI

The code will almost always look very similar.

Except when it doesn't, right?