pangloss

Just wanted to post this in a friendly atmosphere... For posterity, you see....

*************************************************

I was not ‘debating against’ anything, I was simply commenting on what had been written in one post. How can an inference be a ‘wrong conclusion’? If, as you wrote, every ‘Kingdom’ is its own ‘orchard’, the only logical inference TO be made is that in this instance, ‘Kingdom’ refers to the created ‘Kind’ from which the creationist – which you are – believes all extant diversity sprang from. I don’t see what the big deal is.

Asking questions is fine, but that is not what creationists are doing, is it? They are saying – insisting – that all extant life is the result of some type of microevolution from a finite set of ‘original kinds’. They say that there is a limit to such diversification. They insist that they are correct, yet they cannot seem to produce any sort of consistent criterion (much less criteria) for delineating their boundaries. Yet they still insist that they are there.

With all due respect to Plaisted – a computer scientist – his writings on the subject are little more than the fallacious attempts to ‘prove’ the impossibility of abiogenesis by back-calculating the odds of some extant protein arising as-is by chance. He seems, like many creationists do, to believe that any and all ‘intermediate’ forms of a protein undergoing evolution would have to have some similarly beneficient function in order to remain in a population. There is no rationale for that, other than a caricature view of evolution. Indeed, Plaisted’s (and innumerable other creationists&#8217 foundation can be demonstrated by this concluding paragragh:

“This whole mechanism is simply amazing. It would appear that chaperones are necessary for life, but I would be very interested if biologists could devise some reasonable scenario by which they could have evolved.”

Personal incredulity, wrapped in the ever present implicit ‘challenge’.
So, creation science has been alive and well since long before Darwin, yet there is precious little to show for it. Thank you.

Science does take time. But as you just admitted, creation had been the reigning paradigm since well before the ToE. Regardless of your personal distaste for and inexperience in the sciences, the ToE is, in fact, scientific and it has in its support data from numerous fields of science. These repeated charges of the ToE not being science and such smack of desperation and an ignorance of the available data.
Now THAT is a non-sequitur. Please produce documentation that abiogenesis is the pillar of the ToE that you seem to be making out to be. If this one tangential issue is inaccessible to the normal routes of investigation, I fail to see any logic or rationale in proclaiming that the ToE is therefore not scientific. A dearth of physical evidence means simply that any given hypothesis will benefit from only a small amount of evidence. Your ‘conclusion’, therefore, is quite unwarranted. No, they show that you have latched onto an area of research for which there is very little physical evidence and have proclaimed it the most important such area, and that if none of the handful of lurkers or participants on this discussion board can answer the ‘questions’ to your satisfaction – and I doubt you would accept any answer as valid regardless of the source or the amount of documentation – that, therefore, evolution must be wrong/unscientific/etc. You are not alone – a large number of ‘professional’ anti-Darwinists have been harping on the same area, most likely because they have had to retreat form everywhere else.
What do you mean “chromosomal fusion could be objectively tested”? Again, it appears that you believe that chromosomal fusion was the linchpin of the descent of humanity from an ape-like ancestral stock. While such a line of reasoning might seem to have merit to the underinformed, in reality, it is a non-starter.
For example, the chromosome numbers in the Primate superfamily Cercopithecoidea vary from 2n=46 and 2n=721.
This guenon (C. mona) has 2n=66.
&lt;img src=" <a href="http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/images/img4697.gif" target="_blank">http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/images/img4697.gif</a> " alt=""&gt;

This one (C. mitis) has 2n=72.
&lt;img src="http://www.primate.wisc.edu/pin/images/img4284.gif" alt=""&gt;

Should we conclude:

1. That chromosomal fusions/splittings/rearrangements are paramount in the microevolution of these guenons?
2. That if we cannot “objectively test” whether or not such events can explain the descent of these guenons from an ancestral stock that they were independently created?

2a. If yes to #2, how then can any karyotypic evidence be used as evidence of any type of descent?
What does that have to do with Baraminology’s inability to apply criteria in an unbiased and arbitrary manner? These are supposed to be the ‘rising/shining stars’ of creation science. ReMine and Wise were consulted and/or used as references in these papers. I am confident that the more we learn about genome evolution, the more descent will be indicated. My confidence is being borne out on nearly a daily basis. Yours first needs to be filtered through the lenses of creationists who discard and wildly extrapolate what evidence there is to fit their preconceived notions.
I am not the least bit surprised that you failed to grasp the significance of the results I cited. It is not a question of “mice evolving into mice” – it is an issue of the testing of the methodology employed examining hypotheses of descent. The methods employed in molecular phylogenetic analyses were used on a known geneaology of inbred mouse strains to see whether or not these methods would reproduce the known relationships. Pretty straightforward.
I am saying that when a methodology works on knowns, that it is standard procedure to then be confident that the conclusions based on these methods, when applied to unknowns, is valid. That is how science – and even, I would hope, engineering – works. Or do you, in designing software, have to continually re-invent the various methods of writing software? Please then explain how one would test a methodology on a ‘known’ set of evolutionarily related non-intraKind creatures to your satisfaction. All I see here is the common creationist tactic of setting up no-win situations for the ToE. Were I to cite a study in which a methodology had been tested on, say, whales and hippos, doubtless the authors would be accused of circular reasoning and the whole issue hand-waved out of existence. There is simply no way to meet the ever-changing, arbitrary, biased ‘demands’ of the non-scientifically oriented ideologue.
The pelvis is discussed a bit. What do you suggest a long bone associated with a pelvis be called? What is this ‘genetic engineering’ schtick all about? There are plenty of genetic conditions that result in the formation of stunted limbs (or no limbs at all). Meromelia is a condition in humans that results in limb malformations. Caudal dysgenesis results in the absence of the coccyx and in some cases the sacrum in humans. It is no real surprise that such anomalies exist. In the case of terrestial bipeds, these conditions are of course non-adaptive. So, yes, there is evidence that limbs or parts of limbs can be un-developed. Doubtless, this will not be a sufficient answer for you, but I can only try.
I wasn’t aware that
1. Brittanica is the ultimate authority on scientific terminology
2.That shellfish, spiders, and insects have femurs.
3. that a femur is a “limb or appendage”
Looking into point 2 above should make it clear what I think of my point 1.

I prefer to use ‘definitions’ that are relevant to the discussion at hand and that are produced in the proper context. From Kardong’s “Vertebrates”, 2nd Ed., 1998. In the section on the basic parts of the appendicular skeleton (which insects do not even have, by the way):
“The limb region closest to the body is the stylopodium, with a single element: humerus of the upper arm, femur of the thigh.”
A few pages later, there is some detail on the anatomy of living and fossil tetrapods and bony fish. On p. 314, Fig. 9.13 has drawings of the limb (fin) structure of some living sarcopterygians. In particular, the Neoceratodus fin/limb structure has a femur explicitly indicated. It is a single bone that connects the pelvic fin to the pelvic girdle (with a ball and socket joint, no less). I would dare say that such an arrangement – the presence of a femur in this fin/limb assemblage – has nothing to do with a leg. Of course, you should have paid more attention to your preferred Britannica definition (emphasis mine):
“FEMUR: limb or appendage of an animal, used to support the body, provide locomotion, and, in modified form, assist in capturing and eating prey (as in certain shellfish, spiders, and insects). In four-limbed vertebrates all four appendages are commonly called legs, but in bipedal animals, including humans, only the posterior or lower two are so called.”

I completely agree with this sentence:
“If people want to make a claim they had better be able to substantiate it.”
I have been waiting for substantiation of Spetner’s and ReMine’s claims for some time now, but none seem to be forthcoming.
As for your last sentence, see my statement beginning with “Now THAT is a non-sequitur.”
Ahh – the accusation machine gets fired up! Is it a strawman to ask for evidence that should not only be plentiful, but readily available (were we to apply the creationist demand standards)? I mentioned the Chihuahua scenario because of your implicit ‘demand’:
“If you have an alleged starting point and an alleged end result, postulating what might be expected in between would be pretty much a no-brainer, wouldn’t it”
Considering the fact that the Chihuahua is the result of selective breeding within the last few thousand years, it should take little effort to not just postulate but actually demonstrate all of the ‘in between’. Of course, I suspect such an endeavor would be virtually impossible. I brought it up in response to the typical demands of creationists that evolutionists not only ‘postulate’ the intermediates, but produce for them an unambiguous, complete chains of transitionals lest they declare evolution false and unscientific. If the production of such ‘intermediates’ is impossible for what amounts to a controlled production of a dog breed in a more-or-less known timeframe, then expecting the fossils of every single transitional species form an ancestral stock to some extant species is ludicrous to the extreme.
THAT was my point.
Do you think so? What were Chihuahuas bred from? Were someone to try to recreate this selective microevolution, would I not be able to point out all of the flaws in their attempts at every juncture? Complaining that they are using their know-how to manipulate the outcome? That the intermediates are not exactly, precisely what I would personally accept as evidence?
*I would like to remind the administrators that this sort of posturing and implicit ad hominem attack are what was supposedly to be extricated via the email submission system.
Anyway, as I demonstrate above that you are arguing from a position of ignorance on the last issue, here too we see the same. You may have ‘answered the question,’ but your answer does not logically address the question, therefore, it does not follow from the premises. Duplicate what? What would we perform this fusion in? I was unaware that the ape-like ancestor from which humans and apes descended had been identified, much less that it is still alive and available for us to perform chromosomal fusion experiments on (please re-read the demolition of this premise above). It is but a small aspect. See my example of the guenons above. Are you going to claim that these Old world monkeys cannot possibly be related via descent because of the difference in chromosome number? I have good reason to believe, based on the observations of obviously closely related species, that such a fusion was not pivotal nor did it cause any speciation event in the human historical lineage.
I, of course, would like to see some experiments that verify NREH in multicellular eukaryotes - and NOT anecdotes, phenotypic plasticity extrapolations, etc. I believe that you do not understand how scientific experimentation – especially in the realm of evolutionary biology – is undertaken. From my previous readings of creationists, were someone to undertake the very experiments you now seem to want, and recreate the evolution of some species in a lab, I have absolutely no doubt at all that you would simply declare the results to be supportive not of evolution but of Intelligent Design. It is a no-win situation for the evolutionist, a win-win for the creationist. What you apparently see – or at least want others to see – as some sort of ‘objective test’ of evolution is nothing more than a rhetorical ploy.

As I can see little coming form continuing exchanges in this thread, and also due to the fact that I have additional responsibilities at my job, I doubt that I will be able to respond in any sort of depth on this forum in the foreseeable future.

KC

How does the 'separate orchard' theory really explain the molecular evidence of common ancestry of the orchards themselves? Or is it really turtles all the way down???

Cheers,

KC

pangloss

Lets not be weighing folks down with legitimate questions, now...

I eagerly await reading the handwaving techniques that will be employed on the guenon chromosome issue...

pangloss

Here, my post dated June 17, 9:27:

<a href="http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=000158;p=3" target="_blank">http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=36;t=000158;p=3</a>


reads in part:

"Where is Wood’s work published? And I suggest that you hook up with John Paul and the two of you decide which side of your mouths the creationism angle is going to be argued from. You see, he says that chromosome numbers are a big deal, you say they are not. It is easy to ‘win’ an argument when you argue both sides of the same coin, no? "

As submitted, the bolded parts were excised:

"Where is Wood’s work published? Will he share his data, or will he, like Robinson of primate baraminology fame, claim that his data sets no longer exist?
And I suggest that you hook up with John Paul and the two of you decide which side of your mouths the creationism angle is going to be argued from. You see, he says that chromosome numbers are a big deal, you say they are not. It is easy to ‘win’ an argument when you argue both sides of the same coin, no?"


The following was removed in toto:


You mean, simply accepted the way it is being done today?

Dr.GH

Hi Scott,

Good to see you and John Paul are still at it. I have no idea what "Brittanica" edition JP got his femur definition from, as it does not match the one in the 1989 edition I own. But it does just happen to match the Micropedia entry for "leg."

This makes JPs taunting remark, "Are you changing the definition of “femur” to suit your needs? Do you have a definition of “femur” other than the one Britannica offers?" particularly fun.

It seems JP wants to equate femur with "leg," or maybe he just is really weird.

Enjoy,
Gary

seebs

I just want to point out that it is basically impossible to say the word "femur" in a sexy voice, but that saying it a lot will get you the right tone of voice to do a good Bert (as in Bert & Ernie) impression.