Creationist Wolf in Cheap Clothing

It was abandoned as a possible transitional species about thirty years ago. Both bird and reptile fossils appear far too long in the fossil record before it appeared was the main problem.

 

Mass extinctions may have been followed by subsequent creation events.

I wish I knew the next step. Unlocking our whole brain capacity is a likely place to look for the next step.

 

you have a link for this? i'm more curious than anything.

 

A couple:

http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/archaeopteryx.shtml
http://www.rae.org/flight.html
http://www.harunyahya.com/evolutiondeceit06.php

 

This is complete and utter nonsense. Just yesterday I had my hands on 2 of about 10 transitional species we have at the university. We have an unbroken line of fossil documentation of the division between humans and chimpanzees. All those australopithecines are known, and as mentioned, most universities have at least some examples of those species. Moreover, that's only for humans. We have thousands of other transitional species for other branches of the animal kingdom.

B.S.

Actually that one is incredibly easy to answer. Irreducible complexity is only a problem for cladogenesis, which is the replacement of one species with another divergent species. Irreducible complexity isn't incompatible at all with anagensis, which we already know to occur. Anagenesis is the evolution of an existing species into a different species. This happens through changes to the existing species, not the addition of new elements via mutation, etc. Behe's mousetrap analogy is rather disingenuous because anyone the most rudimentary understand of evolution (or the making of mousetraps) would understand the enormous flaws in that supposed argument.

I don't even understand why you would think that epigenesis somehow argues against evolution. Epigenetic transformation is one of the times when evolutionary factors are most able to produce mutations and other changes which cause micro or macro-evolution.

Oh, and I like how you give Christian links as sources of "scientific" information about the fossil record. That's hilarious. It's like me going to the RNC or DNC website for information about a politician.



Thelt:
You don't teach ID in science classes because it isn't science. Science has nothing to say for or against the supernatural because it can only address the natural, observable world. But for the record, I find it interesting that so many Christians now put their faith in ID when that was actually considered heresy as recently as two centuries ago. ID has only taken root since people abandoned the idea of literal creationism.


The truth is that evolution happens. It's actually observable in simpler species, and the only reason we generally don't observe it directly in complex species is that it takes much longer than a lifetime. But that said, we have abundant evidence of how and where it has happened in the past. The reality is that some Christians are just scared that evolution will somehow invalidate their belief system, just as other Christians were when it was initially proposed that the world was round. Christianity survived that, and it'll survive this, so I wish people would just relax and stop making ignorant attacks on real science just because they're paranoid about what it might mean.

 

That is interesting because even an evolutionist will tell you humans didn't evolve from chimpanzees. The rest of your post is filled with big words but after this its obvious it deserves not respect.

Due to the comment above, I don't think you have a rudimentary of evolution, but perhaps you could point out the flaws anyway if they are so easy.

You could have stopped with the bold part but I'll elaborate. Take a poisonous snake. Its venom is not an adaptive advantage unless it has a delivery mechanism and vice versa. Evolution cannot explain how those two things could have arisen out of mutations at the same time in order to provide the necessary benefit for them to stick.

 

he didn't say humans evolved from chimpanzees, rather that there exists a complete fossil record that links both species to a common ancestor (which, i have to admit, is news to me -- but i guess "complete" is a subjective word).

it doesn't try to. some snakes have piss-poor delivery methods (ie, little or no fangs) and highly toxic venom -- some in lesser amounts than others. venom is thought to preceed fangs.

 

Bingo. And by the way, that common ancestor is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, although I haven't had the luck to handle one of those fossils.


slydevyl:

Sure. Most people who haven't the slightest clue about the means of physiological change think that differences between species are caused by genes. Not so, or at least not exactly. When most people hear that chimps share 97% of a human's DNA, they think that the differences between us come from that other 3%, but they don't. The recently completed chimpanzee genome shows that almost all of the differences actually come from the DNA that we share, but the differences arise from how various protein keys are turned on or off. Thus we're actually carrying around all the tools we need to "change" into something else, it's only a matter of something environmental or chemical or radiological to change our existing makeup. As such, Behe shows his own misunderstanding of the processes of evolution. We already have most if not all the parts of the mousetrap in our DNA, and flipping a switch can cause those things to come into fruition. You actually don't need conveniently mutated genes, you just need to flip one little switch, which is usually done during epigenesis (hence my confusion at what your problem was with that period).

See above, but if I thought you were actually interested in learning about evolution then I would explain how exaptations and cooptations are different from adaptations. Put succinctly, we all carry around organs and cells and other elements that either have no clear function, have changed function, or can serve dual functions. So you not only can develop something that is only taken advantage of with another change later, but we see it all the time.

 

that was very well put. i remember seeing an experiment on flies where they irradiated them to increase the mutation rate. the mutations weren't strange non-functional protoadaptations that needed successive generations to come to fruition, they were things like extra sets of fully functional wings or even complete additional thoraces. those were the gross mutations. from this, it was not a big step to consider that the human brain, for example, could have increased in size in one quick step rather than having to grow incrementally generation to generation.

 

Its news to evolutionary biologists as a whole. As far as I know, Collin is the first human to name the missing link. He should be famous.

If venom preceeds fangs, why is it an adaptive advantage? I assume you are talking about a coral snake which is highly venomous but not dangerous to humans because its mouth is too small to bite them, however it is highly dangerous to its intended victims, frogs and the like.