Doubting Didymus

Actually, come of them clearly are (apes, that is, not monkeys). The one right at the top left isn't actually a fossil, it's a modern chimpanzee skull. The point of the picture is to show that there is a clear transitional sequence from chimps, our closest living relative, and modern man. I wouldn't even know where to begin trying to separate the apes from the men in the picture above. It'd be like asking where on a greyscale spectrum does black turn to white. Tellingly, no two creationists can decide either.

The fact that these skulls are not organised in the above sequence according to where they come in the transitional sequence, but by their antiquity is just the icing on the cake. It's just another example of two independant fields (geological dating methods and morphological analysis in this case) agreeing on the same evolutionary conclusion.

Doubting Didymus

There's a sherlock holmes quote that I constantly strive to remember in cases like this. Something like "when evidence from seemingly unrelated sources points to the same conclusion we must always give it our strictest attention". I think it's from hound of the baskervilles. Does anyone know the precise quote?

markfiend

Jack the Bodiless

Charles:
It would certainly help your case if you could provide an actual example of a case which "falls apart on scrutiny", yes?

So far, you have failed to do so. Your "vestigial organs cannot have any function at all" strawman has been thoroughly incinerated, and that appears to be all you had.

Now I think it's quite likely that the higher concentration of immune-system structures in the human appendix evolved precisely because the appendix is a major avenue of infection. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a cave fish somewhere that has better immune-system defenses in its useless eyeballs for the same reason. If this turns out to be the case, will you argue that the eyeballs are "part of the immune system" and therefore have never been eyes at all?

The problem with this argument is that it is ludicrous. This is a criterion that YOU consider to be legitimate:
Unfortunately, everything about special creation fails the "ludicrousness test". It is ludicrous to suggest that vestigial eyes were never eyes, ludicrous to deny that the appendix is a vestigial section of gut, ludicrous to pretend that ostriches don't have wings.

Of course, many aspects of science fail the "ludicrousness test" also, especially in physics. It is ludicrous to suggest that matter is mostly empty space, ludicrous to claim that the speed of light is independent of the velocity of the observer... and don't even get me started on quantum theory.

But you have failed to explain why evolution is ludicrous. Unlike modern physics, it doesn't require rewriting scientific laws. You've mumbled something about mathematical probability and "enormous space of alternatives", and cited (or, rather, mentioned in passing) a book written in 1967 (ancient history in the field of genetics). But, so far, nothing has come of this except mathematical fallacies: the coin-flipping fallacy and the "too many harmful mutations" fallacy (a variant of the standard creationist "let's ignore natural selection" fallacy).

Harmful mutations aren't a problem unless they overwhelm the creature's reproductive rate. If a mated couple have 10 offspring in their lifetime, even a 50% rate of lethal mutations will leave 5 survivors, more than enough to cause a population explosion leading to fierce competition and natural selection in which beneficial mutations (no matter how rare) will eventually prevail.

A lethal mutation rate in excess of 80% would cause problems in the scenario above, as there wouldn't be enough survivors to replace the parents, leading to extinction. However, this is not happening: species aren't on a universal downward slide to extinction. Of course, creationists might argue otherwise, citing "the Fall": however, the huge rate of lethal mutations required for this would be very obvious.

So, given that this isn't happening, evolution is the inevitable outcome.
The existence of millions of fossils perfectly arranged in the evolutionary "Tree of Life" sequence of common descent, with abundant transitional forms between the major groups, would certainly pose a problem for the credibility of creationism. It's equivalent to claiming that God is lying to us, by faking overwhelming evidence for evolution (or, at least, common descent). And creationists are well aware of this.

Hence, they invented the Fantasy Fossil Record.

The Fantasy Fossil Record has characteristics that are markedly different from the actual one. Far fewer fossils, for instance, and a lack of transitional forms. Also, fossils in the FFR are "context-free": they never appear in strata that can be dated, for instance. Hence, "evolutionists" in the FFR universe simply plug the fossils into the place that their religion dictates, without actual data.

Amazingly, the Fantasy Fossil Record is constructed entirely on the misrepresentation of the views of people who don't believe in it! People like Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge, of "punctuated equilibrium" fame. Creationists atually expect us to believe that the author of "The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism" considers the fossil evidence to support the opposite conclusion!

Even knowledgeable creationists reject this baloney. Kurt Wise (the only creationist with a PhD in paleontology that I've ever heard of, and probably the only one in the world) has openly admitted that the fossil record overwhelmingly supports common descent, and that his religious faith is the only reason he won't accept this. Of course, non-fundie Christians who know about such things are also aware that the Fantasy Fossil Record doesn't represent reality.

monkenstick

charley, the existence of pseudogenes like GLO is both confirmation of evolution and a huge problem for ID/YEC

I think the urate oxidase pseudogene is an even better example - humans have no functional enzyme to break down uric acid, which is one of the reasons we can get gout.
Other mammals such as mice, do however have this gene.

It turns out that all surveyed members of the family hominidae (orangutans, gorillas, chimps and us) have a urate oxidase pseudogene, with a crippling premature stop codon in the same place.

It doesn't function as urate oxidase, because it is broken, yet it is 95 percent homologous to a fucntioning urate oxidase gene in spider-monkeys

So why is a broken gene distributed among primates in a manner entirely consistent with common descent?

Neither ID or YEC has a reasonable explanation for its existence

markfiend

Judging from previous behaviour on this thread, you can take it for granted that ol' CD will handwave an explanation, or say "I'll let you have the last word" or "OK, I give" or somesuch.

And then bring the subject up again in 300 posts' time as a point in his favour.

Jack the Bodiless

...Incidentally:
Now, you WILL be supplying some sort of support for this assertion eventually, yes?

caravelair

oh come now. when we started talking about vestigial characteristics, you immediately said something along the lines of how they keep finding functions for such characteristics. certainly that implies that you don't think an organ with function is vestigial.

once again, they fulfill a prediction of evolution, and therefore count as evidence. evolution explains these things perfectly, by saying that the organisms evolved from ancestors who used these organs the way they are used in similar creatures. for example, the ostrich would have evolved from birds that used their wings for flight. the blind fish evolved from ones that used their eyes for sight. now, this also has the potential to contradict our current view of evolution, for example, if a human had vestigial wings, it would make no sense, since humans did not evolve from flying creatures. however, as far as i know, vestigial characteristics that we have found so far are completely consistant with out view of evolution. on the other hand, i don't see how special creation could possibly explain these things beyond "god just made it that way". which doesn't explain very much at all.

nothing. because, as we discussed, vestigial organs do not need to be functionless. besides, it is clear than many things, like blind eyes, do not have a "perfectly good function". unless of course, you've thought of one that no one in the world ever has before.

but the point is, there is no reason an ostrich would need a wing shaped structure just for balancing. monkeys seem to find tails particularly useful for balancing, and those are much more simple structures, so why wouldn't ostriches have 2 tails sticking out the sides of them, instead of wings? why do they have feathers at all, if they don't fly? why not hair?

you're ignoring the fact that vestigial means reduced or rudimentary function COMPARED TO THE SAME STRUCTURE IN OTHER ORGANISMS.

it is not based on that presupposition at all. as i said before, it fulfills a specific prediction of evolution, and therefore is evidence of it. evolution predicts it. it's there. end of story. no presuppositions involved.

just out of curiosity, exactly what type of evidence would you need to see to be convinced of evolution? would you be convinced by ANY evidence, or have you closed your mind completely to the possibility? give me an example of something you think would be convincing evidence of evolution, if such evidence existed.

Ken

I'm just looking at appearances. It makes sense from the perspective of common descent that our body hair should stand on end in the same circumstances in which it stands on end for apes, though for apes the purpose is discernable, while for humans it's less clear. I'm not claiming this to be a proof of evolution, but it's just one in a series of circumstantial "things to think about" department that "fit" if evolution is true but are simply curiosities from an ID perspective.

You've shared with us a couple hairs of the camel of negative evidence for common descent (e.g., missing HERV). Do you have others in mind?

In my post before last, I made a clear distinction between common descent and evolutionary theory. Initially I'm only interested in the evidence for and against common descent, leaving open divinely guided evolution as a way of getting around the "how" problem you keep bringing into the discussion. I can't speak for the other contributors to this thread, but my preference is to evaluate the evidence for and against bare common descent before discussing the mechanism. The two questions are logically independent, even if they are usually lumped together in practice.

I have not read the detailed journal description, but I have enough faith in the researchers to know that they would not have published anything about dormant teeth genes if it were possible to add certain mouse genes to any old chicken gene to make teeth. Furthermore, I assume they knew which chicken gene(s) to choose based on its placement in the genome relative to genes responsible for teeth formation in other species. You can't just dismiss this so easily. How simple a matter it would have been for the Intelligent Designer to make the chicken gene(s) unreceptive to tooth formation, and then our poor gullible minds would not have been led astray! It would have been much easier to make these genes unable to contribute to tooth formation than not, since it requires a specific set of functions to make teeth, even with the help of the mouse genes. If this were not so, the researchers could have simply used mouse genes to instruct our appendix gene(s), for example, to make teeth!

More later...

Ken

lpetrich

The original Charles Darwin noted some common pre-Darwinian views in Chapter 13 of his Origin of Species; in a section on "rudimentary, atrophied, or aborted organs", he states:
This suggests that a common pre-Darwinian view was that such features are present for the sake of completeness, that an organism would not be complete without them.

Thus, we would not be complete without:

Gill pouches and fishlike blood circulation as embryos
An appendix
A tailbone (coccyx) and an embryonic tail
Weak brow ridges
Skull and pelvic bones that start off separate and become fused
Wisdom teeth
GLO and urate-oxidase pseudogenes

However, this view is not very popular among present-day creationists, who often prefer to argue that there is no such thing as a vestigial feature.