Looking for all the missing links

[good brother]

That's not necessarily 60 changes- in chickens if the gene shh is activated they will grow teeth, if inactivated, no teeth. Indeed, there are even dinosarus with no teeth such as the ornithomimosaurs. Lungs within theropod dinosaurs and birds are remarkably similar structures, making use of air sacs distributed through the bones. I have not ventured to compute how many changes are needed between birds and dinosaurs. Would going through the genome and just counting each base pair difference suffice? If so there is a remarkable continuity between animals already, with relatively minor differences in the genome producing pronounced effects in phenotype. You're also working with an entire population of mutation generating sexed up dinosaurs, not just one family line.

So, you're saying the crocoduck theory is good?

In Christ, GB

 

[Jro]

So, you're saying the crocoduck theory is good?

In Christ, GB

What's the crocoduck theory? I've always thought that was a great common name for Archaeopteryx lithographica.

 

[good brother]

Take two panels one black one white, separate them by a thousand panels making the change from black to white,
now point out the two panels where black changes to white, you can't because although you know that each box is different from the panel before it you are unable to see the difference.

We can look at all the panels together and see the change did in fact take place but we are unable to see where the change took place, that's the same as evolution at work.

With that logic, one could squeeze a platypus between a beaver and a duck.

In Christ, GB

 

[Jro]

With that logic, one could squeeze a platypus between a beaver and a duck.

In Christ, GB

Yup, hence why it's important to understand which traits are important for phylogeny and which are not.

 

[good brother]

What Good Brother is trying to say with his numbers is this:

"I refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence for the theory of evolution---including the more foundational evidence which doesn't need a single fossil to exist---unless you can show me that the planet earth has SO MANY FOSSILS such that I look out my window and see nothing but fossil remains all of the way to the horizon! To accept evolution you must show me the fossil remains for every animal that ever lived! I should have to have to bulldoze and backhoe a thirty foot thick fossil layer from my backyard before I can plant a garden!"

(And lest I be misunderstood, the above is not hyperbole. Indeed, depending on what "level" of transitional forms he demands, the depth of the fossil layer would be much deeper. If he expects to find a COMPLETE and continuous lineage, an enormous "tree" of fossils would have to remain from ancient times.)

I am just saying that the claim has been made by evolutionists that we have this common ancestry exists and that all these transition forms supposedly existed, but they cannot be found in any layer anywhere, therefore we should throw Genesis out the window because it can't be accepted on faith, but evolutionary theory can be.

But even if such a layer existed, he would somehow explain it all away using a global flood theory! (I'm serious.)

"Even if such a layer existed...." Are you saying there isn't proof for your belief? Evolutionists are the ones claiming all the transition forms, and yet there aren't any anywhere. Hey everyone, I'm Gingus Kahn! I have no proof, but then you shouldn't expect any.

But like so many non-scientists, he assumes..

I guess I was under the impression that a true scientist wanted proof and evidence for a theory, not just assumptions and blind faith.

that Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES placed The Theory of Evolution on a foundation of paleontology.

Why do you accept one book written by a pastor* as scientific, but you don't trust God's word the same way?

*Darwin dropped out of Med school after only a year and a half of being a lousy student, only later to go to Seminary to study to be a man of the clergy.

In Christ, GB

 

[good brother]

What's the crocoduck theory? I've always thought that was a great common name for Archaeopteryx lithographica.

You know, that a crocodile laid and egg and a duckling hatched.

 

[Jro]

You know, that a crocodile laid and egg and a duckling hatched.

Yeah, obviously that's exactly what evolution predicts.

 

[good brother]

Yup, hence why it's important to understand which traits are important for phylogeny and which are not.

By the way, how exactly are cows and whales related again?

GB

 

[good brother]

Yeah, obviously that's exactly what evolution predicts.

You were the one who seemed to be pointing out that not that many changes were needed.

That's not necessarily 60 changes- in chickens if the gene shh is activated they will grow teeth, if inactivated, no teeth. Indeed, there are even dinosarus with no teeth such as the ornithomimosaurs. Lungs within theropod dinosaurs and birds are remarkably similar structures, making use of air sacs distributed through the bones. I have not ventured to compute how many changes are needed between birds and dinosaurs. Would going through the genome and just counting each base pair difference suffice? If so there is a remarkable continuity between animals already, with relatively minor differences in the genome producing pronounced effects in phenotype. You're also working with an entire population of mutation generating sexed up dinosaurs, not just one family line.

Plus, you would need each of the subsequent generations to not repair broken DNA. Did you know that little people (previously called midgets) often times give birth to a baby unaffected with the "short end of the stick"? They grow up to be "full sized". What you are dealing with is example after example after example of irrepairable damage done in the existing DNA time and time again for millions of years and producing something good at the end of all that damage.

In Christ, GB

 

[verysincere]

With that logic, one could squeeze a platypus between a beaver and a duck.

No you couldn't. And you just demonstrated how you don't understand the logic at all. Indeed, you appear to have limited understanding of the theory of evolution in general.

And by the way, you also need to check on the definitions of "ad hominem" fallacy and the No True Scotsman.

You admit that there ARE transitional fossil forms. Many anti-evolution Christians do not, even though every time they insist that there are zero, they have been shown otherwise. So once they know about the transitional forms, any ambiguity is gone and they are guilty of lies. It is NOT an ad hominem attack to state a fact if it is also relevant to the context. An ad hominem fallacy is when an accusation is irrelevant to the argument. For example, "Darwin was a racist" is an ad hominem fallacy. Even IF Darwin was a racist (when in fact, there is much evidence to demonstrate that he was very favorably disposed towards the less fortunate and his entire family donated heavily to abolitionist causes), it is irrelevant to the evolution debate. (Isaac Newton was involved in a lot of bizarre, contrary-to-the-Bible fields of study, such as alchemy. But it has no relevance to his theories of motion.) So when we identify anti-evolution activists who have a history of being dishonest about relevant evidence, we have every reason to be skeptical of their evidence when they advance other arguments involving evidence.

So despite the Ken Ham model of "playing the ad hominem victim", it NOT an ad hominem attack to call him a dishonest quote-miner. (Yes, ignorance of a topic could also be a possible explanation for his errors, but once we have evidence that he has been informed of his errors, ignorance is no longer a valid excuse.)

For documentary evidence of dishonest quote-mining from anti-evolution speakers and writers, see TalkOrigin's Quote-Mining Project.

.
.

 

[Split Rock]

By the way, how exactly are cows and whales related again?

GB

uhhh.... genetically? You know... their DNA. Oh, I forgot, DNA must be a fraud too.

 

[Jazer]

"I refuse to accept the overwhelming evidence for the theory of evolution--

What you refuse to accept is that the evidence for micro evolution does not translate into evidence for macro evolution, no matter how much evos hope and wish that it would.

Look at Darwin's Finch. If you go back to the mainland you maybe able to present a case that somehow the Finch found it's way to Darwin's Island. You can be amazed that Darwin's Finch was able to adjust to it's new home. But you start with a finch and you end up with a finch. All you have is micro evolution and no macro evolution has taken place.

If you have evidence for macro evolution than by all means present your evidence. If you do not have evidence then do not make wild claims based on evidence that you do not have.

 

[Jazer]

uhhh.... genetically? You know... their DNA. Oh, I forgot, DNA must be a fraud too.

Umm, I think the word your looking for here is "JUNK" According to Science 98% of DNA is junk and serves no purpose. Creationists tend to believe that God don't make no junk and that everything has a reason & a purpose. Of course science is slowly staring to come around, because you hear a little whisper here and there that MAYBE it ain't junk afterall.

 

[Split Rock]

Umm, I think the word your looking for here is "JUNK" According to Science 98% of DNA is junk and serves no purpose. Creationists tend to believe that God don't make no junk and that everything has a reason & a purpose. Of course science is slowly staring to come around, because you hear a little whisper here and there that MAYBE it ain't junk afterall.

Nope... that's not what I was looking for. Besides, you can always blame non-functional DNA on "The Fall," and "The Curse."

 

[Jazer]

Nope... that's not what I was looking for. Besides, you can always blame non-functional DNA on "The Fall," and "The Curse."

Harmful mutations is not the question here. What is the question is so called beneficial mutations. Meaning a mutation that actually results in new information. Not just a frame shift which is information that was there all along.

 

[good brother]

No you couldn't. And you just demonstrated how you don't understand the logic at all. Indeed, you appear to have limited understanding of the theory of evolution in general.

It is apparent you did not read JanetReed's post. I was following HER logic illustrated in HER post.

And by the way, you also need to check on the definitions of "ad hominem" fallacy

I believe I nailed it as your post was nothing more than an appeal to the emotions than to the facts at hand.

and the No True Scotsman.

You said, and I quote:

Indeed, it is very difficult to find a scientist who rejects evolution who does so without having religious reasons for doing so.

In other words, no true scientist would reject evolution, thus the "no true Scotsman".

In Christ, GB

 

[Freodin]

But you start with a finch and you end up with a finch. All you have is micro evolution and no macro evolution has taken place.

If you have evidence for macro evolution than by all means present your evidence. If you do not have evidence then do not make wild claims based on evidence that you do not have.

See, this is where you are wrong. You start with a finch... and where you will end, you cannot say. Your descendants may... and even they would not see the end of it. It won't be a cat, it won't be a dog, it won't be a spider. It will be something descended from a finch.

The evidence that this has happened, from the past to now, is in the DNA.

 

[good brother]

uhhh.... genetically? You know... their DNA. Oh, I forgot, DNA must be a fraud too.

Care to expand? If you are saying they both have DNA, thus they are both related, I could go for that. However, if you are saying their DNA is similar, I'm gonna have to require a scosche more evidence than a condescending sentence in passing.

In Christ, GB

 

[verysincere]

Funny thing is, it is saturated with fossils. We can go pretty much anywhere in the world and dig and find some fossils of some sort.

I'm not talking about the tiny mollusks which comprise the vast majority of the total fossil record. But you already know that. Nobody was fooled by the attempt at diversion.

That is a ridiculous argument. If that were the case, you should share that secret with Hollywood. They could take a stationary picture instead of spending tens of millions of dollars to make a movie, and just have the people stare at the single stationary picture!

Now this one is an excellent example of why dishonest quote-mining has led people to accuse anti-evolution Christians of "Lying for Jesus."

Unless you are going to tell me that you failed to understand the illustration of using one out every thousand movie frames to tell a story (i.e., use ignorance as your excuse), you KNOW that you misrepresented the analogy. And that misrepresentation is also known by another term: a lie.

I'm OK with hyperbole to emphasize a point, but here you tried to dodge and ignore the very heart of the analogy by several lies:

1) I never said that an entire movie could be replaced in every artistic sense by a "single stationary picture". Instead, on a typical movie, preserving just one frame in a thousand would be about one "photo" per 42 seconds of the movie. A film synopsis often involves a far lower "resolution" than that. I stated that the movie story could be told even after removing 99.9% of the frames.

2) You pretend that I said that the story would be just as entertaining and profitable as the complete movie and therefore could economize on costs. You lied.

3) You lied in pretending that Hollywood is unfamiliar with the concept of a series of "still frames" to tell a story. Almost every movie director and crew depend upon EXACTLY THAT for telling the story and planning the entire movie. It is called a STORY BOARD. (Again, the "resolution" as far as what percentage of frames can be removed varies.)

This kind of behavior explains so well why so many non-Christians (both on this forum and in the general public) assume that Christians will lie any way we can to promote our beliefs. [Whether that accusation is fair or unfair is largely irrelevant.]

Indeed, we've recently seen a number of posts in these Creation & Evolution threads where someone stated outright their belief that "Creationism is all a bunch of lies." You have illustrated why those accusations are common.

So the reason for my plea to my Christian brethren is that constantly creating this impression of lying is harming our credibility and even leads people to think that the Bible itself is promoting these lies. [Indeed, the Koran commends telling lies to an infidel if it advances the cause of Islam. I've heard non-Christians say that the Bible must be encouraging a similar behavior among Christians. Is that fair? No. But when Christians are lying regularly about origins topics, we are in a poor position to complain about fairness!]

Now ask yourself this: Are the uses of such dishonest tactics in opposing a scientific theory based on the overwhelming evidence which appears in God's Creation really worth the harm they do to the progress of the Gospel message in the Great Commission? Does the Bible encourage us to use these strategies in telling the world's scientific community that they don't know their jobs and how science works? Is that what Jesus called us to do? What is your scriptural evidence? (None.)

And if you actually DO believe evolutionary biology should be every Christian's arch-enemy, do you think that DISHONESTY is a wise tactic in that battle?

If you think the summarization of these tactics as dishonesty is inaccurate, you are welcomed to explain that assessment.


.

 

[good brother]

See, this is where you are wrong. You start with a finch... and where you will end, you cannot say. Your descendants may... and even they would not see the end of it. It won't be a cat, it won't be a dog, it won't be a spider. It will be something descended from a finch.

You say it won't be a dog or a cat, but it could be a dinoROAR!!...Ahem, I mean a dinosaur. It couldn't be a dog or a cat, but it might be an 80 feet long 5 ton monster with massive teeth and terrible sharp claws. It won't meow, but it might roar and chase after other exbirds.

In Christ, GB