pangloss

I have wondered why creationists find echolocation such a mystery.


I can echolocate. YOU can echolocate. We do it all the time. Blind people have it down to an art, and with training, they can learn to tell the texture of objects by their sound-reflection.

Certainly, bats and such are a level above that, but it seems clear that the basic wiring for the ability is in all mammals, certainly, maybe even most vertebrates.

Doubting Didymus

It might indicate that independantly, but it contradicts all the other phylogenetic tree evidence that places the chimp-human split after the gorilla-(human, chimp) split, including the evidence of all the other retroviruses. It's an anomaly, and needs an explanation, which is supplied in the paper. There are a number of possibilities. The first one that comes to my mind is a deletion in the chimp line, but I'm confident that the papers authors thought of that.

Urvogel Reverie

Charles Darwin writes:

"For example, the fossils often shows new species arising fully formed, as though they were planted there. Then they don't change for eons. Even the sequence of horse-like fossils, that old favorite of museums and textbooks, is now admitted to be a series of different, overlapping in time, species. If the different species evolved from each other, then it must have been rapidly so as not to have left any fossils of the transition. As Niles Eldredge admitted:

"There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff."

Or as paleontologist Robert Carroll explains, the fossil record "emphasizes how wrong Darwin was in extrapolating the pattern of long-term evolution from that observed within populations and species." So to the rescue comes punctuated equilibrium, which isn't so much a theory as a label. We don't observe gradual evolution and the fossil species are static, so evolution must proceed by fits and starts.

There are, of course, many fossil species with similarities, and these rightfully are evidence for evolution. But the many "explosions" with strange and new species appearing out of nowhere are strong arguments against evolution. We certainly cannot simply conclude that the fossils are strong evidence for evolution."



To claim that the fossil record is a disproof of evolutionary biology is indicative of either a severe misunderstanding of the paleontological data, or, a disingenuous argument. Either way, the assertion is equally fallacious. Combined with genetics and other molecular biology, paleontology is among the most significant of data substantiating common descent. Indeed, the matter of whether or not evolutionary biology's central premise is valid has been solved since 1861, with the discovery of Archaeopteryx lithographica, which by no means our only anatomical intermediate (indeed a conservative list for Archosauromorpha alone, excluding Avialae would include dozens), remains the most emblematic.

The very fact that there are taxa whose anatomy approaches conditions intermediate between other taxa defies creationist logic, which must by necessity advance morphological stasis over time so as to preclude a speciation event. Evolution predicts these fossils, and we find them. Creationism predicts that no such fossils should exist, and yet we have them in abundance. The parsimonious, indeed rational conclusion, is all too obvious.

As for punctuated equilibrium, it has been consistently misrepresented by creationists, thanks in no small part to the specious manner in which S. J. Gould presented it--as a revolutionary panacea to previous problems in deciphering the rate and process of evolution. However, punctuated equilibrium is simply a period of rapid evolution, following a period of fairly gradual morphological variation. It is explained within the framework of more gradual evolution, and evolutionary biology continues to have no need to devise grandiose schemes and their concomitant rubbish about "species selection" to explain that which is already well modeled. It is for this reason that punctuated equilibrium has rarely been taken to the extremes that Gould, Stanley, and Eldgredge took it. Your claim that the fossil record was the impetus for the formulation of this theory is correct, but also misleading because it is the fossil record itself which demonstrates that paleontology is not so supportive of punctuated equilibrium. In your quotation of Carroll (1988) you conveniently forget to mention that fact that he reviews the extensive morphological studies of various Cenozoic mammal fauna undertaken by Hurzeler (1962), Maglio (1973), Gingerich (1982, 1983), Chaline & Laurin (1986), Fahlbusch (1983), Harris & White (1979), MacFadden (1985), and Krishtalka & Stucky (1985) in which progressive morphological variation over time is observed in multiple eutherian lineages, and you utterly ignore Carroll's conclusions that attention to anatomical detail and not taxonomic convention demonstrate that the fossil basis for punctuated equilibrium is in fact very illusory.

Urvogel Reverie
Archaeopteryx lithographica

lpetrich

"Charles Darwin" seems to be proposing that an enormous number of species had been specially created over geological time.

But looking at such well-preserved examples as fossil equines, one wonders why each new allegedly-created species closely resembles existing species. Is this all some massive coincidence? Or does it suggest that the process that creates new species is not really very "creative"?

Even the fossil record of human ancestors has that quality; there's a nice picture showing a series of skulls from chimp to various fossils to human -- and showing remarkable continuity.

Urvogel Reverie

Indeed this sort of gradual and more or less continuous morphological variation over time is a hallmark of most lineages, although it is nowhere as well demonstrated as some exemplar Cenozoic eutherian series, which I already listed some examples of. In addition, my beloved Archosauromorpha display a similar pattern in multiple lineages, including to large degree, the Crurotarsi.

Urvogel Reverie

Charles Darwin

The site is entitled "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" but I came away thinking it is a real misnomer. Though it proposes to be an objective approach to the subject, it is actually a clever attempt to hoodwink those less knowledgable readers. It starts out by stating that "scientific theories are validated by empirical testing against physical observations." This affirming-the-consequent sleight of hand sets up the reader, as the page goes on to site all kinds of dubious "validations." I could give you 29+ validations for the flat-earth model, that doesn't mean it is true.

There is, in fact, no explanation for how life and her species are supposed to have evolved. To head off that minor little problem, the page explains to the reader that "in evolutionary theory it is taken as axiomatic that an original self-replicating life form existed in the distant past, regardless of its origin." How convenient. Now all those thorny complexity problems can be swept under the rug as being outside of scope; but who are we fooling? And of course there still is no explanation for how something like our friend echolocation is supposed to have evolved; or did the first bacteria echolocate too?

The Introduction then ends up with this patronizing (mis) quote:

"Finally, there is this possibility: after I tell you something, you just can't believe it. You can't accept it. You don't like it. A little screen comes down and you don't listen anymore. I'm going to describe to you how Nature is - and if you don't like it, that's going to get in the way of your understanding it." �Feynman

Well if evolution is a fact, then skeptics like me must just be nuts right? Place your opponents in the "irrational" category and everything will be alright. Why is it that evolutionists cannot seem to recognize that their theory is, in fact, not a scientific fact?

I didn't read through the entire site, but went to the first "validation" that caught my eye. It was Section 2.2, Atavisms. It states:

"Probably the most well known case of atavism is found in the whales. According to the standard phylogenetic tree, whales are known to be the descendants of terrestrial mammals that had hindlimbs. Thus, we expect the possibility that rare mutant whales might occasionally develop atavistic hindlimbs."

Aside from the fact that nothing is "known" from phylogenetic trees, the idea that hindlimbs are a prediction of evolution is a joke. You don't really believe that evolution would be rejected if such mutants were never discovered do you? What if tails were never discovered in humans? This has got to be one of the most absurd claims I've ever heard. Of course, the text falls back on the standard cretionist punching bag opponent as if to present a serious rebuttal.

Charles Darwin

OK ...

How do you know it could be anything, such as a wildly different tree?

How do you know that an area isn't used?

But (i) dolphins and sharks; and (ii) marsupial and placental flying squirrels have some dramatic differences too. Furthermore, we really do not understand how the phenotype arises from the genotype. Finally, you seem to be conveniently ignoring the many phylogenetic mismatches. If you believe that phylogentic congruence proves evolution, then what about the mismatches?

Charles Darwin

Well, if that is the way you think, then there is not much I can say. If echolocation means nothing more to you than teeth then I'm not surprised you think evolution is a fact.

Valentine Pontifex

Just how is this a misquote?

Charles Darwin

Originally posted by Charles Darwin
Failure is a strong word. You're the one claiming that the ERVs help make evolution a *fact*. Sure, there is a lot of consistencies, there are also important differences, such as the ERV in the gorilla and chimp but not the human.

Oh I have no doubt that there are explanations. I'm not sure that that paper offers an explanation, but no matter, I certainly have read explanations for the [gorilla + chimp but not human] ERV elsewhere; the hand-waving was ferocious. Proving once again that if you allow for any explanation, then any explanation will do.