Seeing fossils without the Evolution goggles

[Caliban]

I see that along with all the other definitions changing the word "fact" must have changed also.

You need to do some more reading on the subject if the word fact seems controversial to you.

 

[HitchSlap]

This argument challenges one of the foundations of the Evolutionary worldview, that the order fossil animal groups in the earth point to Evolution as an explanation.

The Evolution of different life on earth is a story that could be told in many highly contrasting ways. Evolution is really more of an open ended genre than a specific account of how life supposedly evolved.

You could essentially randomize the fossil orderings of major animal groups and afterwards still be able to construct continuous Evolutionary trees out of them to paint a picture of universal common descent.

A simple way to visualize this is to reverse a supposed transitional fossil sequence... For example, picture a bird losing its wings and feathers and gradually evolving into a therapod-like dinosaur. You could flip the sequence of bird and therapod fossils and still make up an Evolutionary narrative for it.

But that was just something basic for demonstration. You could shift all kinds of fossil sequences around and still be able to write up Evolutionary stories about how one thing evolved from the other. Mammals could co-evolve alongside amphibians. Birds could be placed closer to mammals than reptiles. The amount of different Evolution stories you could write up based on different fossil sequences would be nearly endless.

The only real constraint would be to probably have lots of small stuff at the bottom layers. (primordial creatures that generate a list of different animal phyla that the more advanced forms can be said to have descended from) ... but that isn't much of a test of anything because you always find those types of creatures in the deepest parts of the earth for purely physical reasons, regardless of models of earth-history.

If there were any problematic fossil gaps or anachronisms left over (i.e. some transitional fossils sequences seem out of order) they can more than likely be solved in the same manner they are now. Attributing them to "Ghost Lineages" would be a versatile solution. Fossilization is quite rare, after all. (Also hard to find much reliability with molecular clocks, because they often break.)

This demonstrates how Evolution is really a metaphysical idea that can be projected onto almost any kind of data set found in nature. It is not a theory formed by evidence.

A theoretical model of Evolutionary origins of a planet's biodiversity would practically always be possible, regardless of the data set. There aren't any real physical checks preventing Evolutionists from writing up a flexible narrative of how life evolved.



*edit: added visual aid*

In Darwin's time, while the overall image of the fossil record was blurry and lacked resolution, the basic pattern and structure was well established. (small marine creatures at the bottom, an "age of reptiles" in the middle, and bigger mammals on top) ... Since then there has been an increasing resolution of that image.

More fundamentally speaking, this is just a simple matter of logic. One cannot possibly predict *how* Evolution might have worked on the history of a planet... Whose to say that drastically varied environmental pressures might not have produced mammals before dinosaurs? It's impossible to predict.

So all that's really taken place is a fining-up of resolution of the pattern of fossils.

This is why the original low-resolution image of the fossil record could have been practically anything, and a corresponding evolutionary story could have been written to try and explain it.

Poe?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Whose personal interpretation should I conflate It with then?

Academias?

I'd rather eat glue first.



Oh, so now I incorporate poetic phrases from the Bible into my cosmology?

Anything else you think I do, that I don't?

I don't know whose you should go by. The problem is that if the Christian God did make the world, and God cannot lie, then your interpretation can be shown to be as wrong as that of a person that believes in the Flat Earth.

 

[AV1611VET]

I don't know whose you should go by. The problem is that if the Christian God did make the world, and God cannot lie, then your interpretation can be shown to be as wrong as that of a person that believes in the Flat Earth.

How would you know it's right, if it was?

 

[Subduction Zone]

How would you know it's right, if it was?

Because it is testable. As are many of the claims of creationists.

If creationists were not afraid to learn they would see this too. How do we know that Flat Earthers are wrong?

 

[AV1611VET]

Because it is testable.

No, it isn't.

You can't test an object that appears ex nihilo.

Let alone one that appeared ex nihilo in 4004 BC.

That's why they're called "miracles."

 

[AV1611VET]

How do we know that Flat Earthers are wrong?

Because the Earth isn't flat.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No, it isn't.

You can't test an object that appears ex nihilo.

Let alone one that appeared ex nihilo in 4004 BC.

That's why they're called "miracles."

You forgot something. You claimed that God does not lie. One looks and see what the evidence that he made looks like. False evidence is a form of lying.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Because the Earth isn't flat.

Then by your standards we know that your interpretation is wrong because life is the product of evolution.

Seriously, you have to do better than that.

 

[AV1611VET]

You forgot something. You claimed that God does not lie. One looks and see what the evidence that he made looks like. False evidence is a form of lying.

But you were told not to look at the "rudiments of the world," weren't you?

In fact, Paul said, "beware".

So if academia ignores that warning and does it anyway, then they can't claim it was God's fault, can they?

 

[AV1611VET]

Then by your standards we know that your interpretation is wrong because life is the product of evolution.

Not in Genesis 1, it wasn't.

And what "product of evolution" did the angels come from?

And what "product of evolution" did God come from?

Put another way, which came first? life or evolution?

 

[Subduction Zone]

But you were told not to look at the "rudiments of the world," weren't you?

In fact, Paul said, "beware".

So if academia ignores that warning and does it anyway, then they can't claim it was God's fault, can they?

Nope, I was never told that. Many other Christians weren't "told that" either. Worse yet creationists are still calling their God a liar. I don't think that the Ostrich Defense would work in the after life.


But then why don't you believe in a Flat Earth? You are contradicting yourself. The various visions and acts and words of the Bible portray it as flat.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Not in Genesis 1, it wasn't.

And what "product of evolution" did the angels come from?

And what "product of evolution" did God come from?

Put another way, which came first? life or evolution?

Technically evolution did not begin until after life began. "Before life" would have been abiogenesis. Once again it appears that it arose naturally.

And you are guilty of an equivocation fallacy. God is not "alive" in the same sense as life. If he was then you are also saying that some day that he will die. In the Christian view God is eternal. Therefore not biologically "alive".

 

[AV1611VET]

Technically evolution did not begin until after life began. "Before life" would have been abiogenesis.

Abiogenesis was a process.

Adam was not created by this process.

God spoke, and Adam appeared.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Abiogenesis was a process.

Adam was not created by this process.

God spoke, and Adam appeared.

That is merely your interpretation of the Bible. Once again since the evidence clearly refutes this and God would have had to have made the evidence it makes your beliefs rather blasphemic.

How do we know that the Earth is not Flat?

 

[lifepsyop]

Lamarckian inheritance is perfectly naturalistic. It just happens to be contradicted by the facts, so it has been rightly discarded as a potential theory of biology.

What's your point? Of course alternative evolutionary models can be cast aside, as long as there's at least one established as dogma. The important thing is that "Nature did it", some way or another.

Lamarckism was discarded, just like the gene-centric Neo-Darwinism model that has dominated the last 50 years is now in the process of being overhauled(including reintroducing some Lamarckian concepts)

All that matters is that, at the end of the day, there is a "Nature did it" cosmology to fall back on. That is the root creation ideology from which more specific evolution theories and models spring out of.

For a demonstration, just look at the "science" of Origin of Life / Abiogenesis studies... even when there isn't a believable story to tell, the sciences revert back to that ideological foundation: Nature did it.

 

[Speedwell]

What's your point? Of course alternative evolutionary models can be cast aside, as long as there's at least one established as dogma. The important thing is that "Nature did it", some way or another.

Lamarckism was discarded, just like the gene-centric Neo-Darwinism model that has dominated the last 50 years is now in the process of being overhauled(including reintroducing some Lamarckian concepts)

All that matters is that, at the end of the day, there is a "Nature did it" cosmology to fall back on. That is the root creation ideology from which more specific evolution theories and models spring out of.

For a demonstration, just look at the "science" of Origin of Life / Abiogenesis studies... even when there isn't a believable story to tell, the sciences revert back to that ideological foundation: Nature did it.

You still haven't told us what your story is. You don't like the idea that God lets nature do the heavy lifting. How do you think it works?

 

[Subduction Zone]

What's your point? Of course alternative evolutionary models can be cast aside, as long as there's at least one established as dogma. The important thing is that "Nature did it", some way or another.

Lamarckism was discarded, just like the gene-centric Neo-Darwinism model that has dominated the last 50 years is now in the process of being overhauled(including reintroducing some Lamarckian concepts)

All that matters is that, at the end of the day, there is a "Nature did it" cosmology to fall back on. That is the root creation ideology from which more specific evolution theories and models spring out of.

For a demonstration, just look at the "science" of Origin of Life / Abiogenesis studies... even when there isn't a believable story to tell, the sciences revert back to that ideological foundation: Nature did it.

Let's watch the false accusations. If you claim "dogma" the burden of proof is upon you to prove it.

By the way, science is always in the process of "being overhauled". Why is that a bad thing? Newton explained gravity. Einstein overhauled it, using your terminology, and made it far more accurate. It appears that there are still problem's with Einstein's theory when it comes to singularities. Does that mean that if you drop a rock that it will not fall? Hardly. Science is always in the process of getting closer and closer to the correct answer. Your beliefs were shown to be wrong over 150 years ago and the evidence against them only continues to amass.

 

[AV1611VET]

Science is always in the process of getting closer and closer to the correct answer.

Jesus will come soon and make sure it catches up.

 

[pitabread]

Jesus will come soon and make sure it catches up.

Been hearing that one for a couple thousand years now... I won't be holding my breath.