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lasthero

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Lining up pictures of animals that appear similar is their way of proving evolution actually happened and that transitional species exist. It is pictures on paper.

If all we found were random bones strewn all over strata in no particular order, you might have a point.

However, that's not what we found. The 'pictures' you mention were found in the order they're presented. You never find birds appearing before the ancestors they descended from. You never find whales appearing before the ancestors they descended from. It doesn't happen. All you see is this progression. Period. All you see are the subtle changes as you go higher and higher.

They have never actually observed, tested or repeated said "evidence".

You can repeat this canard all you like - it's simply not true. Evolution is constantly tested, repeated and observed. Just like plate tectonics, just atomic theory.
 
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Oncedeceived

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This is not what I was talking about, but thanks anyway.
 
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Cheeky Monkey

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You find that man made equations describe regularities we find in nature. It is an exceptional coincidence that the universe could be described by a man made construct that just happens to work in an infinite way.
Our equations and laws are approximations. There's no guarantee that they can give us ultimate insight. As the saying goes, the universe is under no obligation to make sense but scientists are. We make good predictions but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that this means we can or have described the universe.
Not only does it work in an infinite way, we live in a finite universe. How does one explain the concept of infinite in a finite universe? Another coincidence?

I don't think that there's any clear demonstration that our descriptions are infinite or that the universe is finite.
 
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Cheeky Monkey

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I mean like the Theropod to bird evolution or for instance the land mammal transitional to ocean dweller. There should be many incidences of life forms changing throughout the millions of millions of years in the past to present era.

But those long term trends are just acculation of speciation.
 
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Oncedeceived

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If a bird evolved into something more than a bird, that would invalidate evolution. Changes aren't supposed to occur like that.

So how does that relate to the theropod to bird evolution? Do you feel that a reptile to bird transition the same thing?
 
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Oncedeceived

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This is a poor analogy. Yes, we can say that we don't always know everything and in fact, there have been many changes with new discoveries in all areas of science.
 
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lasthero

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So how does that relate to the theropod to bird evolution? Do you feel that a reptile to bird transition the same thing?

Theropods became birds after a long series of speciation. That's all it ever was. Ever species was a little different than the one that came before, until the end result - modern day birds.
 
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Cheeky Monkey

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So how does that relate to the theropod to bird evolution? Do you feel that a reptile to bird transition the same thing?

You're talking like birds aren't theropods. That's like saying cows aren't mammals because they evolved from mammals.
 
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EternalDragon

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You've seen it personally? Are you sure that is the way they are found?

You can repeat this canard all you like - it's simply not true. Evolution is constantly tested, repeated and observed. Just like plate tectonics, just atomic theory.

Where? In what lab? Can I see it on you tube for instance? I hope you aren't repeating that weak "E.Coli can do something it could already do" experiment.

I don't think you understand what evolution is.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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Lining up pictures of animals that appear similar is their way of proving evolution actually happened and that transitional species exist. It is pictures on paper. They have never actually observed, tested or repeated said "evidence".
You do realise that there is more evidence and analysis involved than slapping any two fossils next to each other, right? They have to be dated to the right geological period (easily verifiable with multiple independent dating techniques), they have to exist in the right ecological niche (it's unlikely to find a rabbit fossil in the Jurassic oceans), they have to exhibit the myriad anatomical and skeletal features common to their ancestors and descendants (most Creationists are oblivious about just how much information exists within a single thigh bone - size, weight, gait, posture, taxonomy, age, diet, metabolism, etc), etc.

Sometimes I think palaeontology and archaeology should be mandatory subjects in school, given the sheer volume of misinformation that comes from Creationist quarters.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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So how does that relate to the theropod to bird evolution? Do you feel that a reptile to bird transition the same thing?
Don't forget that even here, there's no actual transition: therapods never become something other than theropods, and all their descendants are still theropods. The term 'bird', inasmuch as English allows, refers to a specific subset of theropods. Birds are still therapods, just as cats are mammals and whales are vertebrates. It's in line 1 of the Wiki article.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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This is a poor analogy. Yes, we can say that we don't always know everything and in fact, there have been many changes with new discoveries in all areas of science.
Yes, and always we've refined out theories, rather than replace them wholesale.

Thousands of years ago, we thought the Earth was flat (curvature: 0"/mile).

2000 years ago, we thought the Earth was a perfect sphere (curvature: 8"/mile.

400 years ago, we thought the Earth was an oblate spheroid (curvature: 7.9-8.1"/mile).

100 years ago, we thought the Earth was slightly pear-shaped (curvature: 7.9"/mile in the north, 8.1"/mile in the south).

This is how science changes: it refines. Each theory is replaced by a better one that explains all the old evidence and also the new evidence. That theories are replaced doesn't mean they're replaced willy-nilly. Our theory that the Earth is sphere(ish) won't tomorrow get replaced by a theory that the Earth is cuboid, and in 100 years time by a hexahedronal theory.

(Thanks to Isaac Asmiov, who stated all this better than I ever could in his The Relativity of Wrong: in essence, some things are wrong, and some things are wronger. The spheroid model is wrong, but not as wrong as the flat model. Evolution might be wrong, but it won't be as wrong as Creationism).
 
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lasthero

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You've seen it personally? Are you sure that is the way they are found?

Yes, I am. This might shock you, but you can actually take classes about these sort of things and even ask people who are knowledgeable in the field. You can read papers that show these findings.

But you want specific examples? Here.

http://listverse.com/2011/11/19/8-examples-of-evolution-in-action/

Not enough? What about these?

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

I hope you aren't repeating that weak "E.Coli can do something it could already do" experiment.

What are you talking about and why was it 'weak'?

I don't think you understand what evolution is.

It doesn't matter what you think. You have a strawman idea of what evolution is. Everything evolution was supposed to produce has been found. It made predictions, and the predictions were found to be true. We found the fossils. We've dated them. We observed. It's been tested. That you have a very narrow, idiotic definition of the word 'observation' is of no consequence.
 
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TLK Valentine

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You've seen it personally? Are you sure that is the way they are found?



Where? In what lab? Can I see it on you tube for instance? I hope you aren't repeating that weak "E.Coli can do something it could already do" experiment.

Are you suggesting a conspiracy? A centuries-old fraud on an institutional scale?

I don't think you understand what evolution is.

We're positive you don't.
 
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Oncedeceived

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That doesn't refute my point. Noether's theorem holds true even if the action of physical systems don't have any differentiable symmetry. The theorem says that such systems have conservation laws, not that our universe is such a system.

Does the theorem not work on the gravitational laws?


No. My opinion was that IF we have 99.999% of the puzzle, then we basically know what's going on. It is a separate matter to know THAT we have 99.999% of the puzzle.

I would agree, however if we don't know that we have 99.999% we can't possibly know that we basically know what is going on.


Of course. We can make decisions based on what we know, but we can't claim that the conclusions are correct because we don't know everything we need to know can't be quantified. We can know what we know but what we don't know might change everything we thought we knew.


My point is that it is incorrect to insinuate that we must have absolutely every iota of possible evidence before we can come to conclusions, and that if we have a gnat's breath less than 100% then we cannot come to any conclusions.

You are arguing on the basis that we have the higher percentage of knowledge when in fact, we can't know what percentage we are working with. If we base a conclusion only knowing .01 % of all available criteria we are going to be lacking a great deal of information. IF we feel that we have 99.999% of the information when in fact we only have .01% our conclusions will be substantially insufficient. We have seen this time and time again in science. We think we know for all most certain that something is so, and then we grow more technically advanced and find we didn't know what we thought we knew. Which is fine, that is the reason behind the whole process. We just have to keep in mind that nothing is set in stone in the scientific arena.


That simply is not true. If we have only .01% of all available fossils on earth how do we arrive at the conclusion we have all we need to make any real conclusion? Take whale evolution. There is only 10 million years or so for the evolution needed to evolve to the modern whale. If there is a modern whale fossil that is found before that period of time it changes everything. If we were to find a modern whale 100 million years earlier it changes the whole picture.

It doesn't matter how many there are if it only comes to .01% of the entire possible fossil record. We base our dating on a rather circular criteria. We base our evolutionary distribution on what we have found in the strata and we sometimes base our strata on what is found in it. We see life forms in a strata and we place that life form as arising in that strata if we don't find any fossil evidence prior to that strata, however, many times we later find that same life form millions of years earlier than predicted.


I am not sure what point you are making here.


I am saying that we should see the same type of branching that we have had in the past which take the organism in a completely different path and we don't see that in the last millions of years.

I would expect from evolution the same as has been throughout time. We should see during that time the branching off of life forms as in the past.



Would intermediate be a better word?
 
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Oncedeceived

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Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.
 
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Shemjaza

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Good. So we finally agree. There are separate kinds that no matter how much evolution occurs, they never become something that they were not.
But new separate kinds pop up all the time.

A bird is always a part of the therapod kind and a whale is always part of the synapsid kind... but they are both still the same "kind" in that they are vertebrates, tetrapods and animals.
 
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