In The Beginning...

[shernren]

Sorry --- feathers are extremely complicated. The barbs interlock like a "zipper", clearly presenting an efficient low-weight barrier to high-speed air ("flying"). Fur does not progress into feathers without direction.

So you are admitting that feathers have use for animals which don't fly.

And making the creature more fragile and susceptible to injury.

...unless it can fly away...

Actually, no. Hollowing out bones involves removing mass along, or near to, their neutral axes along the middle of the bone. Therefore, a hollowed bone is not significantly structurally weaker than a solid bone. (A degreed engineer should know these things, right?) Bird bones are not simply hollow tubes, but are criss-crossed with struts; such a structure would make an animal lighter, enabling it to move faster given the same amount of energy. Furthermore, bird bones are also hollowed out by the presence of air sacs which facilitate the respiratory system; the same air sacs are present in dinosaurs, and would have served the same purpose of allowing more efficient energy extraction and running.

No, squirrels do not have feathers or steerable tails. But their tails do utilize air flow for balance. Precise "steering" is only necessary when flying.

Define "steerable tails". Most fast feline predators do indeed use their tails for balance, and in the sense of being steerable.

Inverse cube law; at low velocities, air resistance is negligible. Besides, fast-running lizards are "streamlined".

That's just it: the faster an animal needs to move, the more aerodynamics come into play. Birds probably descended from fast-moving dinosaurs such as oviraptors, to which aerodynamics would indeed have been necessary.

I'm speaking of an air foil. Bernouli's equation. Pressure inversely proportional to fluid velocity. A running lizard does not develop "lift".

Gliders do. More on that in a moment.

You really think that, across the environment, "high food intake individuals" have a competitive edge against more efficient ones? The highest energy consumers, fly. With a few exceptions; a shrew has a high metabolism, but is enslaved to its food.

Why not? Remember that all these adaptations, on their own, increase energy efficiency of the typical theropod. Feathers help it keep warm; hollow bones and air sacs make it light and redistribute body weight so that it can run faster; strong tails help balance; aerodynamic styling of the body reduces drag. In fact there is only one item on your "list" which doesn't do anything of the sort: actual aerofoil shaping of the wing. How did that evolve?

This is where you betray how little you know. The main debate in bird evolution right now is whether it happened "ground-up", or "trees-down". It is easy to see what good "half a wing" would have done in a trees-down evolutionary scenario: half-a-wing is useful for gliding, no matter whether or not it can be flapped for flight. But what about "ground-up"? A hint is in the previously mentioned tails, which help balance. Another way in which animals could balance when running at high speeds is by holding their arms out, in the same way that a tightrope walker increases his/her moment of inertia by holding a long stick out. But if arms were held out for balance, then airflow over them would matter to the animal's running speed - and voila, an evolutionary imperative for airfoils.

All these adaptations put together helped dinosaurs to radiate into the niche of airborne, high-consumption animals.

Ya' haven't convinced me.
Still do. "Irreducible Complexity". A chicken hatches from a lizard egg. Etcetera...

Which strawman thinks evolution needs a chicken to hatch from a lizard egg? Many examples of dino-bird intermediates have been found in the fossil record. Even besides Archeopteryx, one of the most clearly transitional forms, we have others like Microraptor, Caudipteryx, and Sinosauropteryx. Archy was so transitional that when it was first discovered, one of its fossils was mistaken for a Compsognathus. Chicken from lizard? Please.

Oops --- you overlooked the fact that there is no CONSTRUCTION of complicated DNA. Amplification exploits the natural replicative process of DNA. Certain building blocks (a, c, t, and g) will only pair with certain other blocks; naturally, the strand splits down the center, and the cell becomes replicated as each torn half gets its former counterpart, replaced. Thus --- two strands, identical.

"Replication" is not "origination". (Say, that's almost as catchy as "phylogeny recapitulates ontogeny", or something like that...)

Cute. Tell me something. Will cytosine naturally pair with adenine in the absence of enzymatic catalysis?

Then how do you respond to Jesus' words, "God created them from the beginning male and female..."? Matt19:4

From the beginning of what? Luke refers in the preface to his gospel to "those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word" (Luke 1:2 ESV); does that mean the Apostles were around from the creation of the world? If Jesus means in that passage "God created them from the beginning of humanity male and female", it makes perfect sense - and you haven't a shred of proof from the passage that it can't be so.

Did He make them "fully Human male and fully Human female"? Yet --- all life (per evolution) began as one single cell. NOT "male, and female".

You are adding the word "fully" in, for Jesus only says: "But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' (Mark 10:6 ESV) Does Jesus say how God made them? That God "instantly", or "fully", or "with the snap of a finger and 3 microseconds' time", made them male and female? No, Jesus only says that humanity has been male and female from the start. And all humans began as male and female, did they not? Has there ever been a time when anything we would identify as a human was not male or female? For Jesus did not say that from the beginning of creation God made all life male and female either, but only applies it to humans.

"One flesh", denotes physical union.

And "the beginning of creation" denotes God's eternal will for mankind's relations. One metaphor deserves another.

How does He "rebuke literalism"?

And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce and to send her away." And Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. (Mark 10:2-5 ESV)

The Pharisees were the literalists of the day, and Jesus responded by essentially telling them that some things were put in the Bible not because God commanded them but because the Jews were wicked. Isn't that the most stinging rebuke of literalism possible - that some things are in the Bible simply to highlight our stupidity, and we shouldn't read too much out of them?

In saying "stopping the sun", it is the same effect as saying "stopping the earth". We see the sun move, so if the earth is stopped the apparent movement of the sun across its course in the sky, ceases.

God does not technically have "hands"; though He uses "theophanies", such as when He wrote on the wall.

Indeed. So Galileo is justified when he says:

This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words.

In other words, if you want to criticize evolution, don't start from the Bible; Biblical passages which appear to oppose evolution may have utterly different meanings. (The Catholic Church of the 1500s would have considered you heretical to think that Joshua only referred to "apparent" motion, and if they were given to the same folly some modern creationists are they would then ask "Perhaps Jesus only 'apparently' died on the cross and rose three days later?".) Begin with the witness of nature and work from there; but don't give in to the temptation of including a Bible passage which may later prove to mean something entirely different.

No, it doesn't; there is zero evidence of one "kind" becoming "another kind". Adaptibility explains certain sub-species; but offers nothing beyond conjecture of how "reptile" became "mammal". No offense intended. "Mountains" --- of how all mammals (for instance) slowly diversified into many branches? Of single-celled-animals slowly becoming multi-peds and sighted descendants?

No evidence, Shernren, just "hand-drawn-charts". And lots of supposition....

Hand-drawn-charts like these?

Note that the only gap is a time gap relating to the difficulty of finding fossils from certain times; there is a continuous distribution of brain size all the way from 400cc to 1600cc. If you're like most creationists I know, then human evolution is your main bugbear, so this is evidence for you - or would you like to explore some other area?

 

[Ben johnson]

Likewise, to talk about adapation, mutation, speciation, we don't need know how the first organism came about, only that there was life. You basically showed my point.

Not good enough, my friend. Either there is a "natural non-designed random beginning", or there must have been conscious thought behind biology.

And if we can establish the credibility of "conscious thought", that shapes the rest of the discussion...

And if a design works in one area, would you use a completely different inferior design in the same area? That's the problem with common designer. Similarity is explained by common design, then how do you explain differences? Evolution has a way, but Creationism doesn't. Creationism has an answer for everything but explains nothing.

And how does "evolution have a way to explain similarities"? Referring to what I said above in passing (ontogeny recapitulates philogeny), shall we discuss "gill slits" in embriological morphology, discuss Haeckel and his falsified drawings? The "gill slits" as I understand, do not develop into any pulminary organ, anyway...

Second, show me any man-made designs that fall under a nest heirarcy. My guess is you can't, but yet all of life can be categorized neatly in a nested heirarchy. This is because evolution works off of existing structures where as in design, we use module components.

Yet --- many of those "nested heirarchies" conflict even the dates specified BY those studying them. As I understand the "equine progression", the "toe-sequence" is presented reversed, chronologically...

Which shows me you don't understand evolution. Evolution says nothing about a fish->mammal. It suggests that fish and reptiles/mammals share a common ancestor, the tetrapods.

No, you have it backwards. Tetrapods are (supposedly) descendants from fish --- specifically, arising from "lobe-finned" fishes into air-breathing "amphibians" in the Devonian period.

My little nephew was "buying the party line", scowling to me about how "dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago". I asked him if he'd ever heard of a ceolocanth, a fish KNOWN to have been extinct for 70 million years.

...until they CAUGHT one. Then another. And another...

My guess is you really don't understand evolution. Evolution is a fact...

No, it's not; it's a "faith", fulfilling all the tennets of the definition of "religion". As such, it is a religion that at once condemns beliefs like Christianity, all the while promoting ITSELF in the public arena to the exclusion of all other faiths.

To state that clearer, evolution/Humanism (the two are tied) have siezed education, banning Intelligent Design "because it's non-intelligent and non-factual", but we expect you to accept Evolution/Humanism on faith.

I meant no offense in that; it seems to me a severe "double-standard".

... since we observe allele frequencies changing in a gene pool over time, much like gravity is a fact, that we observe masses exerting a force upon each other. There's also theories in evolution and gravity that explain why.

Still sounds to me like "adaptibility". No argument.

As for your second point, that's bull that a scientific conspiracy is at work. Show me Creation scientists that actually do scientific research in Creationism. All you have to do is show me a reject letter from a submission to a scientific journal. We can read through the letter to see if there is a conspiracy, or more likely, Creation scientists don't do Creationist research. There's none. That's why they go through political channels rather than scientific channels.

Watch any number of programs on Christian TV, for names, dates, and places of "ridicule" and "public censor". The ACLJ as I understand it has taken on legal cases on the matter...

Sure, there might be 1000's of scientists that believe in intelligent design, but until it's actually tested and researched like evolution, it'll remain just an idea. Also, did you know there are more scientists named Steve from biological fields that accept evolution over intelligent design? 99.9% of biologists accept evolution, and they're the ones that count.

All of this is irrelevant until we see real research, though. I'll give ID a fair shake once there's real publications on the research in ID in major scientific journals.

You don't "research and test ID" --- not without a time machine. You discuss the impossibility of the beginnings, that molecules can and will never assemble themselves into life.

...like we're doing here...

 

[Ben johnson]

So you are admitting that feathers have use for animals which don't fly.

I'm thinking Penguins have feathers, though they serve the same fluid-dynamics as birds --- but underwater. I submit that feathers would not begin except as an aspect of "flight".

Actually, no. Hollowing out bones involves removing mass along, or near to, their neutral axes along the middle of the bone. Therefore, a hollowed bone is not significantly structurally weaker than a solid bone. (A degreed engineer should know these things, right?)

Insult aside, the strength in normal use may be similar, but the beast is still more fragile against impact. Application of force, etcetera.

Bird bones are not simply hollow tubes, but are criss-crossed with struts; such a structure would make an animal lighter, enabling it to move faster given the same amount of energy.

And with the lighter structure comes lower physical strength. An eagle is not expected to be able to pick up and throw a wolf. Illustrative exaggeration.

Furthermore, bird bones are also hollowed out by the presence of air sacs which facilitate the respiratory system; the same air sacs are present in dinosaurs, and would have served the same purpose of allowing more efficient energy extraction and running.

And why is this exemplary of "evolution" rather than "design"?

Gliders do. More on that in a moment.

Gliders --- as in flying squirrels, sugar-gliders? I'm not aware of them having an "air-foiled membrane".

Why not? Remember that all these adaptations, on their own, increase energy efficiency of the typical theropod. Feathers help it keep warm;

Feathers do not offer additional warmth over fully-furred critters. Feathers only benefit those flying.

hollow bones and air sacs make it light and redistribute body weight so that it can run faster; strong tails help balance; aerodynamic styling of the body reduces drag. In fact there is only one item on your "list" which doesn't do anything of the sort: actual aerofoil shaping of the wing. How did that evolve?

Uhmmm, it didn't?

In other words, if you want to criticize evolution, don't start from the Bible

We didn't --- we began with "biogenesis from non living matter".

Biblical passages which appear to oppose evolution may have utterly different meanings. (The Catholic Church of the 1500s would have considered you heretical to think that Joshua only referred to "apparent" motion, and if they were given to the same folly some modern creationists are they would then ask "Perhaps Jesus only 'apparently' died on the cross and rose three days later?".) Begin with the witness of nature and work from there...

When the Bible says "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork", that does not convlict the "witness of nature" --- but instead harmonizes it.

but don't give in to the temptation of including a Bible passage which may later prove to mean something entirely different.

I see; do you subscribe to the idea that "The Bible may be interpreted to mean nearly anything"?

I've written a theological text that I intend to have published; I've made a lot of people angry here with clear refutation of certain doctrinal paradigms; but Scripture says what it says, and taken as a whole it does not conflict. IOW, I do not subscribe to the idea that "Scripture can be ambiguously interpreted".

Hand-drawn-charts like these?

There is actually credibility for the idea of a "young earth". Radiological dating is based on assumption of initial isotope concentration (and purity!). C[sup]14[/sup] with its relatively short half life (5730) is only "good" for a few hundred thousand years; and founds on assumption of "constant atmospheric formation" (something caused the "Ice Age"). Thus we're constrained to the long half-life isotopes, Uranium and Thorium notably. But there is no guarantee those isotopes were formed pure in the "prehistoric stellar furnace". So not even those can be "proven absolute".

Geological structuring is another "dating method", but tens of thousands of years of structuring occurred in months at Mount St. Helens. Further, most every civilization recounts a "world flood story", which would have laid down eons of deposition in a few months.

We're getting a little "far afield" in the thread; I did not intend to debate every aspect of evolution, but rather to discuss "the beginning".

There is no mechanism for inanimate molecules assembling themselves into functioning, reproducing, cellular life...

 

[Mallon]

I submit that feathers would not begin except as an aspect of "flight".

Not necessarily.

 

[Melethiel]

We're getting a little "far afield" in the thread; I did not intend to debate every aspect of evolution, but rather to discuss "the beginning".

There is no mechanism for inanimate molecules assembling themselves into functioning, reproducing, cellular life...

So is your issue with abiogenesis or evolution or something else? Your posts are all over the map, and it's getting a bit confusing.

 

[shernren]

It's hard to believe that you really

did not intend to debate every aspect of evolution, but rather to discuss "the beginning".

There is no mechanism for inanimate molecules assembling themselves into functioning, reproducing, cellular life...

considering the red herrings you raise such as

There is actually credibility for the idea of a "young earth". Radiological dating is based on assumption of initial isotope concentration (and purity!). C[sup]14[/sup] with its relatively short half life (5730) is only "good" for a few hundred thousand years; and founds on assumption of "constant atmospheric formation" (something caused the "Ice Age"). Thus we're constrained to the long half-life isotopes, Uranium and Thorium notably. But there is no guarantee those isotopes were formed pure in the "prehistoric stellar furnace". So not even those can be "proven absolute".

(and contrary to your mistaken beliefs, most long-age radiometric dating, i.e. isochron dating, does not assume pure isotopes to start with), or

Geological structuring is another "dating method", but tens of thousands of years of structuring occurred in months at Mount St. Helens. Further, most every civilization recounts a "world flood story", which would have laid down eons of deposition in a few months.

(even though Mt. St. Helens deposits are recognizably different from normal sediments, which span many kilometers, requiring deposition rates in the order of meters per day), or

I've written a theological text that I intend to have published; I've made a lot of people angry here with clear refutation of certain doctrinal paradigms; but Scripture says what it says, and taken as a whole it does not conflict. IOW, I do not subscribe to the idea that "Scripture can be ambiguously interpreted".

(even though the 15th century Catholics would have had you excommunicated for believing that the earth goes around the sun, showing how mutable over time "orthodox" Scriptural interpretation can be), or

I'm thinking Penguins have feathers, though they serve the same fluid-dynamics as birds --- but underwater. I submit that feathers would not begin except as an aspect of "flight".
Insult aside, the strength in normal use may be similar, but the beast is still more fragile against impact. Application of force, etcetera. And with the lighter structure comes lower physical strength. An eagle is not expected to be able to pick up and throw a wolf. Illustrative exaggeration. And why is this exemplary of "evolution" rather than "design"?
Gliders --- as in flying squirrels, sugar-gliders? I'm not aware of them having an "air-foiled membrane".
Feathers do not offer additional warmth over fully-furred critters. Feathers only benefit those flying. Uhmmm, it didn't?

(even though natural selection obviously employs conditions of normal use, not postulated incredulities like eagles lifting wolves, to work on a population). When you say

We're getting a little "far afield" in the thread.

I indeed agree, and you never answered any of the replies on the first page. But forget about those. Do you want simple autocatalytic systems?

A proof of concept is exhibited in systems of amino adenosine triacid ester, or AATE. Molecules of AATE in solutions of their constituent molecules will catalyze the further formation of AATE from the molecules in the solution. This is, of course, a very simple system, and nobody suggests that AATE was actually the origin of life (or we'd all be made of it now). But it goes to show that simple chemistry can lead to a form of "reproduction" that looks an awful lot like life.

Similar catalytic properties exist in RNA: scientists have created RNA fragments, or ribozymes, in the lab, that can synthesize themselves from earlier existing nucleotides. Nucleotides are relatively simple chemicals that can be created in chemical reactions without life. Similarly, proteins can self-form under the right conditions: catalytic lengthening of glycine into hexaglycine has already been replicated in the laboratory. Also, phospholipids and other bipolar molecules can self-assemble into lipid membranes similar to modern ones, which would have maintained a reactive medium within the membrane with different properties from the outside environment.

Which of these avenues do you want to further pursue? Remember again to avoid the strawman of spontaneous generation. From my first post in this thread:

Spontaneous generation assumed that organisms which were macroscopic and phylogenetically continuous and contemporary with other organisms arose from essentially non-reactive organic mixtures via an undetectable vital force. Abiogenesis today attempts to investigate how organisms (if you can call them that) which were certainly microscopic, chemically simple, phylogenetically very distinct (although ancestral) to today's creatures, would have emerged from extremely reactive organic mixtures with catalytic presence through essentially repeatable chemical reactions.

What scientists are investigating today is fundamentally different from spontaneous generation.

 

[gluadys]

Still sounds to me like "adaptibility".

Is there adapatability without evolution? How does it work?

 

[gluadys]

We're getting a little "far afield" in the thread; I did not intend to debate every aspect of evolution, but rather to discuss "the beginning".

There is no mechanism for inanimate molecules assembling themselves into functioning, reproducing, cellular life...

Isn't the point that the beginning of life is not an aspect of evolution? Whether there is or is not a mechanism for molecules to become living cells, living organisms still evolve.

 

[Assyrian]

An eagle is not expected to be able to pick up and throw a wolf. Illustrative exaggeration.

Quite an exaggeration too. A large Golden Eagles weighs about 7 kg. About the same as a Jack Russell.



I wouldn't expect Eddie to throw a wolf either.

Feathers do not offer additional warmth over fully-furred critters. Feathers only benefit those flying.

Weight for weight, I think you will find eider down has a higher TOG rating than fur. But I don't think anyone is suggesting feathers evolved from fur. They are certainly warmer than scales.

 

[shernren]

Weight for weight, I think you will find eider down has a higher TOG rating than fur. But I don't think anyone is suggesting feathers evolved from fur. They are certainly warmer than scales.

They didn't? I thought the Bible said bats were birds!