Why are there no cows in the Devonian?

[HitchSlap]

If I am right, then somebody should revise the dictionary.

If you're right, then up is the new down.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

I doubt it.



Your argument fails. If you compare aquatic reptiles and aquatic mammals they are actually quite different in their mobility capabilities. Mammals generally have much more speed and stamina. On top of that there is also an argument for differential escape and animal intelligence.

That sounds a lot like something you just made up. Pliosaurs were large, powerful swimmers. So were mosasaurs. And ichthyosaurs, obviously. All highly adapted for aquatic life, yet they all appear long before the marine mammals that fill the same niches.

And of course you have consistently refused to address the problem posed by the plants. Flowering plants don't show up for a long time, despite occupying every niche from mountains to water. Are you claiming they were better able to avoid the Flood than the lycopods or ferns or conifers that appeared before them? How is a daisy any more capable of evading the flood that Cooksonia? I know plants often get ignored, but not one of your proposed models explains the zonation of the plant fossil record. I know it would be convenient for you to hand wave away and entire kingdom of organisms as a minor discrepancy, but obviously that is not an honest approach. You keep saying that the general pattern holds up well, but only because you refuse to acknowledge the vast amount of conflicting data.

Again, the general pattern is that Chinese people live in China, but that doesn't make it correct to argue that all Chinese people live in China.

The gaps in Evolution's model are outrageous. And Evolution is such a flexible theory that it could have accommodated many different fossil patterns.

And yet it just happens to be a fossil pattern that is corroborated by the molecular evidence. What a coincidence.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

Not a bad example. Thank you.
I have reservation on whether this particular "every" should mean "all". It might not be really "all".

Perhaps you could clarify here. I have just given you an example (from Genesis, no less) that unambiguously shows that the words "every" and "all" are completely interchangeable. So are you conceding the point that the two are indeed synonymous our are you persisting in your personal definitions of the words? Keeping in mind that the very book in which you're claiming the distinction exists shows unambiguously that it does not.

 

[lifepsyop]

How can you say that when even you accept the glaring inconsistencies?

There are no "glaring inconsistencies". You're just hand-waving. Nobody said the model was perfect. But it does offer a reasonable explanation for the general fossil record. Whether you like it or not.

And evolution explained it perfectly.

Evolution could "explain" nearly any fossil sequence. Even if we had found a pattern of mammals in the early rock records, the theory would have been built up around a "Great Land Diversification of the Devonian" or whatever. Mammals and reptiles could have convergently evolved similar structures from amphibians, if evolutionists were forced to explain the fossils that way. Evolutionists could accommodate anything, and leave the problems as curious mysteries to be solved in the future.

I would love for you to demonstrate that either of these were ever widely accepted by the scientific community.

Doesn't matter if they were widely accepted. Evolutionists were still prepared to go the route of mammal-bird evolution if they had to. Your theory predicts very little and is extremely well insulated from potential falsification. It is a great art of storytelling.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

Anomalocaris is believed to have been a bottom feeder. It is right where we would expect it to be.

Perhaps, but it was obviously a rather mobile swimmer. Certainly more mobile than the various trilobites or other benthic organisms like Hallucigenia. You are trying to sell the idea that the zonation we see in the fossil record can be explained by differential escape ability while also claiming that differential escape ability doesn't matter. And what about all the other discrepancies that have been raised with your imaginary pattern? There's still the marine reptiles and the birds and the plants and essentially an endless list if we take the time to enumerate them all.

 

[HitchSlap]

There are no "glaring inconsistencies". You're just hand-waving. Nobody said the model was perfect. But it does offer a reasonable explanation for the general fossil record. Whether you like it or not.




Evolution could "explain" nearly any fossil sequence. Even if we had found a pattern of mammals in the early rock records, the theory would have been built up around a "Great Land Diversification of the Devonian" or whatever. Mammals and reptiles could have convergently evolved similar structures from amphibians, if evolutionists were forced to explain the fossils that way. Evolutionists could accommodate anything, and leave the problems as curious mysteries to be solved in the future.




Doesn't matter if they were widely accepted. Evolutionists were still prepared to go the route of mammal-bird evolution if they had to. Your theory predicts very little and is extremely well insulated from potential falsification. It is a great art of storytelling.

Creationism and cdesign proponentsists exist for one reason only, that is, they're forced to have to defend two chapters of a mythological creation account. They begin with the answer, and then look for the "facts" that support their fantasy. Sorry, but this is exactly the opposite of real science.

 

[Black Akuma]

Doesn't matter if they were widely accepted.

Come to think of it, who ever suggested that birds evolved from mammals? Like...ever? I strongly suspect you completely made that up.

 

[lifepsyop]

That sounds a lot like something you just made up. Pliosaurs were large, powerful swimmers. So were mosasaurs. And ichthyosaurs, obviously. All highly adapted for aquatic life, yet they all appear long before the marine mammals that fill the same niches.

And? It may have something to do with their behavior, or specific habitat.

And of course you have consistently refused to address the problem posed by the plants.

The Devonian rocks are where we see a great number of land plants appearing, about the same time as the amphibian animal ecosystems. This is what the Flood model would expect, a general ordering of fossils by ecosystem.

There may be some property of flowering plants that explain their order of appearance.

It's not like Evolution explains the origin of any of these things. Are you really suggesting an enigma warrants dismissal of a theory? Evolution would be left in the dust a century ago if you held such standards to it.

And yet it just happens to be a fossil pattern that is corroborated by the molecular evidence. What a coincidence.

Completely untrue. Either you're totally ignorant, or totally bluffing.

 

[ExistenceUnknown]

And you don't think my faith has wavered in the past because of other bigger issues that are way more important than this debate?

I'v been up and down and all around because of a whole heck of different issues such as the death of my father.

I'm sorry to hear about your father. Losing someone so close to us is a hard thing to experience. I hope your offense with evolution isn't because you think it tries to demonstrate that there is no God. No one can know this for certain.

Evolution will not shake my faith, trust me!

When it really comes down to it. Evolution and God are compatible. What Evolution is not compatible with is a literal reading of the Bible. I hope we can agree that Bible =/= God.

Evolution facts are all over the place and hardly make sense. And people BELIEVE this stuff???

Just because they don't make sense to you, doesn't mean that people who've spent their lifes studying the subject can't make sense of it. Trust me, there is a TON of stuff in evolutionary theory that I don't understand. In a way we have reached common ground, because we are all learning as we go.

 

[Dizredux]

You need to understand something here.

The Bible is The TRUTH period. Whatever it says is true, no exceptions. I base my belief on this book. The Bible is never wrong.

I hate to ask this but I feel I must.

It is that the Bible is never wrong or is it that your interpretation of the Bible is never wrong or is it both?

Just curious,

Dizredux

 

[46AND2]

And? It may have something to do with their behavior, or specific habitat.



The Devonian rocks are where we see a great number of land plants appearing, about the same time as the amphibian animal ecosystems. This is what the Flood model would expect, a general ordering of fossils by ecosystem.

There may be some property of flowering plants that explain their order of appearance.

It's not like Evolution explains the origin of any of these things. Are you really suggesting an enigma warrants dismissal of a theory? Evolution would be left in the dust a century ago if you held such standards to it.



Completely untrue. Either you're totally ignorant, or totally bluffing.

How many enigma must be given to you before you realize its actually the norm?. I assure you, there are a vast number of your enigma.

 

[lifepsyop]

Come to think of it, who ever suggested that birds evolved from mammals? Like...ever? I strongly suspect you completely made that up.

HAEMATOTHERMIA: WARM-BLOODED AMNIOTES
An exhaustive parsimony analysis of amniote phylogeny using 97 characters has substantiated the hypothesis that mammals and birds are sister groups. This deduction is further supported by parasitological and molecular evidence.

Brian Gardiner 1993 Journal of Cladistics


It was also proposed in the 19th century

However, the endothermic physiology present in both groups and their generally similar four-chambered hearts and epidermal, insulative structures (hairs and feathers, respectively) led pioneering Victorian anatomist Richard Owen to propose that both groups might be especially close relatives (Owen 1866). Imagining that both might have shared a common ancestor*, he used the name Haematothermia for his hypothesised bird-mammal clade.


This is also around the time Thomas Huxley was proposing that Mammals evolved from Amphibians based on similar physiological structures.

There is no question, that evolutionists would have carried these transition narratives into the 21st century had they been forced to. Evolution is storytelling.

Evolutionists don't like to advertise the flexibility of their theory, though. So it's not surprising you did not hear about this.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

And? It may have something to do with their behavior, or specific habitat.



The Devonian rocks are where we see a great number of land plants appearing, about the same time as the amphibian animal ecosystems. This is what the Flood model would expect, a general ordering of fossils by ecosystem.

There may be some property of flowering plants that explain their order of appearance.

It's not like Evolution explains the origin of any of these things. Are you really suggesting an enigma warrants dismissal of a theory? Evolution would be left in the dust a century ago if you held such standards to it.

So your excuse for ignoring the fact that the most numerous type of plant doesn't fit your model is to propose some mysterious trait that caused them to never appear until the Cretaceous? I bet you can't even think of a property that could conceivably cause this discrepancy. They can't move, they aren't clever, they live in all the same places and they're made of the same stuff. What's left? I'm not saying that minor discrepancies invalidate a theory. But we aren't talking about a minor discrepancy. We're talking about example after example of your model predicting a pattern that is not consistent with what we actually observe in the fossil record. And your best explanation for the failure of your model is to propose some mysterious, conveniently vague properties of the various organisms that refute your model.

Completely untrue. Either you're totally ignorant, or totally bluffing.

Allow me to direct you to the ERV thread.

 

[bhsmte]

I hate to ask this but I feel I must.

It is that the Bible is never wrong or is it that your interpretation of the Bible is never wrong or is it both?

Just curious,

Dizredux

At this point, not sure it really matters. The reply will be interesting though and I'm sure entertaining.

 

[lifepsyop]

How many enigma must be given to you before you realize its actually the norm?. I assure you, there are a vast number of your enigma.

A great question to pose to the evolutionists.

Yes the flood model has many enigmas. The flood of Noah's day was a world-wide, unimaginably destructive catastrophe, that could never be reproduced.

However, it does explain both the fossil record itself, and the general sequence of that fossil record.

Maybe it does not explain so well why we don't find pterosaurs next to cows, but it definitely explains why we don't find cows in the Paleozoic.

Evolutionist explanations for the fossil record are mostly ad-hoc storytelling. Evolutionists are really in no lofty position to judge other models. It is amusing watching you guys flail your arms at some of these problems, knowing the superstitious Darwinian mysticism that you yourselves believe in.

 

[CabVet]

HAEMATOTHERMIA: WARM-BLOODED AMNIOTES
An exhaustive parsimony analysis of amniote phylogeny using 97 characters has substantiated the hypothesis that mammals and birds are sister groups. This deduction is further supported by parasitological and molecular evidence.

Brian Gardiner 1993 Journal of Cladistics


It was also proposed in the 19th century

However, the endothermic physiology present in both groups and their generally similar four-chambered hearts and epidermal, insulative structures (hairs and feathers, respectively) led pioneering Victorian anatomist Richard Owen to propose that both groups might be especially close relatives (Owen 1866). Imagining that both might have shared a common ancestor*, he used the name Haematothermia for his hypothesised bird-mammal clade.


This is also around the time Thomas Huxley was proposing that Mammals evolved from Amphibians based on similar physiological structures.

There is no question, that evolutionists would have carried these transition narratives into the 21st century had they been forced to. Evolution is storytelling.

Evolutionists don't like to advertise the flexibility of their theory, though. So it's not surprising you did not hear about this.

You have no idea about what you are talking about, do you? Saying that mammals and birds are sister groups is not the same as saying that birds came from mammals. But by all means, keep creating your strawman caricatures of evolution and "defeating" them.

 

[CabVet]

Maybe it does not explain so well why we don't find pterosaurs next to cows, but it definitely explains why we don't find cows in the Paleozoic.

No, it simply does not. If the "flood model" had any truth to it, we would find cows everywhere in the fossil record.

 

[Black Akuma]

However, it does explain both the fossil record itself, and the general sequence of that fossil record.

So, basically, it explains the fossil record and the sequence...if you ignore the multiple instances where it doesn't explain these things and in fact, greatly contradicts what we actually see.

Well...yeah, I guess I accept that. In the same way that I accept my car works perfectly fine if you ignore the dozens of times it's broken down.

 

[Loudmouth]

It works before it is falsified.

What fossil evidence, if found, would falsify creationism?

 

[lifepsyop]

You have no idea about what you are talking about, do you? Saying that mammals and birds are sister groups is not the same as saying that birds came from mammals. But by all means, keep creating your strawman caricatures of evolution and "defeating" them.

The explanation would be that mammals and birds evolved from a Cynodont/Therapsid, or a sort of "proto-mammal".

This is radically different then the current bird evolution story. It clearly demonstrates how flexibile evolution theory is, and how it can accommodate radically different patterns of data, and you have no argument against that point.