lpetrich

However, evolution can take place inside of a species, as the history of domesticated animals and cultivated plants clearly demonstrates. Ed, like many creationists, might claim that this is not real evolution, however.

Ed seems to believe that the human species could have existed essentially unchanged for 100 million years, complete with records of a big flood back then. Unfortunately, the genetic distances between variants of various human genes, and that distance from comparable genes in other species, such as chimpanzees, is much more consistent with a much more recent emergence of our species.

But I'm sure that Ed will invent some ad hoc "maybe". I suggest that he consider some maybes of his own:

Maybe Noah's Flood was only a local flood, or even a myth.

Maybe the rest of early Genesis might best be called mythology.

Ed

No, Genesis was written around 1400-1200 BC. Also, it appears from the biblical evidence that humans lived much longer in the past than today, ie hundreds of years. So there would not be as many generations. If the population was very small then you are not as likely to find fossils. And actually since the evidence points to Homo erectus being 100% human, then there are fossils of humans at least 1.8 millions years old. Read "The Human Career:Human Biological and Cultural Origins" by Richard G. Klein.

[b] I didnt say that there was no evidence for it, for one there is the account in the scriptures which given the general historical reliability of the scriptures is good documentary evidence. But apparently the geological evidence is somewhat ambiguous at present given that Christian geologists have differing interpretations of the geological evidence.

Ed

The December 12, 1980 issue of "Science" an article by Roger Lewin called "Is Your Brain really necessary?"


[b] [quote]
Ed:
The main differences between mammals and reptiles occur in their soft tissue such as the heart and reproductive organs. Since this is not fossilized in the mammalike reptiles this connection is highly speculative. In addition, studies of the their skull endocasts show that their brains were typical of reptiles.

Quote:

lp: However, there is indirect evidence, like a hard palate in the mouth that several therapsids had had. This makes it much easier to breathe as one chews one's food; if one's metabolic rate is lower and one does not do much chewing, as is the case for reptiles in general, there is not as much pressure to evolve a palate. Also, some therapsids have pits in their skulls that may be for roots for vibrissae (whiskers). As to brain size, this is only natural for a creature whose ancestors had recently been reptilian.

Maybe the creatures that you mention above were just dumb mammals and not reptiles at all. Or, some creatures are "mosaics" like the platypus and have characteristics of other animals but are not ancestral at all.

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Ed: And as far as fish becoming reptiles, the lack of fossil specimens intermediate between anurans or urodeles and the older amphibians has forced paleontologists to base their speculations about the evolution of the group upon evidence from the anatomy and embryology of modern species which is a highly questionable practice. lp: Says who about the fossil record of frogs and salamanders?

B. Stahl in "Vertebrate History: Problems in Evolution".

Quote:

lp: And I don't see how using anatomy and embryology is "questionable".

Using them is not a problem but glossing over the major differences is. For example, there is no example from fish to amphibian of a fin changing into a forelimb, the skull had to change from two parts to a single solid piece, the hip bones had to enlarge and become attached to the backbone and a multitude of other changes in the soft tissues.

Quote:

(lots and lots of troublesome microbes and worms...) Ed: Some of those organisms may not have been pathogenic in the past to humans. Most of them may have been in the animals rather than the humans. Then later they microevolved to be pathogenic to humans. lp: Ed concedes that evolution happens!!!

I never denied microevolution.

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OC on whether Noah had collected cacti, which cannot tolerate much water... Ed: The scriptures dont tell us EVERYTHING. He may have had some whole plants. Also some early cacti may have been more hydrophilic. I wonder where the independent evidence is of that greater water-tolerance. And I mean "independent". And how did Noah and his family get all the cactus plants to southwestern North America and the Andes in South America? Why didn't they simply plant some cacti in the Sahara and Arabian Deserts? Or the Kalahari Desert? Or the deserts of southwestern and central Asia? Or the Australian outback? Cacti can grow without any trouble in Australia; I quickly found some Internet sites dedicated to discussions of cactus-growing there. And cacti have been successfully grown in other places also. So they are not ecologically tied to North and South America.

That just maybe where their vegetation mat landed or where they accidentally fell off the ark or any number of possible explanations.


[b] As I stated before there are Christian geologists on both sides of the issue so until it is resolved by them I may remain undecided.

Duck!

But if the flood happened over a hundred million years then 1.8 million year old humans doesn't solve the problem. That's still over 98 million years with no fossils or archaeological artifacts. And I took into account Biblical patriarchs living hundreds of years, that's why I said hundreds of thousands of generations, not millions. Given an average generation time of 25 years, then you're looking at roughly 4 million generations between the flood and Christ. However, even given an average generation time of 250 years you still got 400,000 generations of humans to account for. And if Genesis was written, as you say, about 1200-1400 BC then you've got several hundred thousand generations of people passing down a story from generation to generation. How could a story possibly remain intact throughout 400,000 generations. Even a couple of hundred generations would distort a story beyond recognition. Every play Chinese whispers? Then you'll know what I'm talking about.

Well, I guess we have to disagree here. I've read Patrick's stuff on this topic enough times to dismiss the flood story as nothing but legend. But I'm not the person to debate geology with.


Duck!

[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Duck of Death ]</p>

Oolon Colluphid

Lpetrich predicted:

Then Ed wrote of how cacti got to south America:

Hmmm...

Anyway...

So how did they keep dry enough for a year on a floating mat?

Fell off while it was floating over South America? (If they fell off once the ark had landed, they’d be in Turkey...) You mean fell off into the water?

Or any number of AD HOC pieces of nonsense you can dream up! What else fell overboard Ed? Maybe that’s why there’s no dinosaurs now -- they fell overboard! “Hey Dad!” shouts Shem, “where did the Argentinasaurus go?!” Maybe god just miracled organisms to their present locations!

Huh? Biblical... evidence... nope, does not compute. Ed, it does not ‘appear from the biblical evidence’; the bible, an old book, states as fact that some people lived up to 800 years. Do you believe this?

Ed, a simple question: if H erectus is 100% human, why do you think it is not called Homo sapiens?

Okay... Flood at the breakup of Gondwanaland, circa 100mya. Subtract 2my = 98my. Divide by 800 year lifespan. That’s 122,500 generations. Assuming breeding in very last years of these incredible lifespans. Uh, where in the bible does it give any indication of that many generations since Noah?

I have. You clearly have not. But please ask your source to tell me where Klein suggests (a) Homo erectus is 100% human (ie, by definition, H sapiens), and (b) humans might have lived to such great ages. Maybe I just missed those bits.

Now, where were we... oh yes. A definition of ‘kind’, the dividing line between things like STS 5 and KNM-ER 1813, H erectus’s human status (you have simply reasserted it, please provide evidence, and I refer you back to that creationist site that denies it -- why are they wrong?), and those trilobites...

TTFN, Oolon

Oolon Colluphid

This is correct. Mind you, the rest of the article points out how extremely unusual this is and discusses ways of explaining it....

And anyway, as Ed said, this is a sidelight. One that has become a side-step on his part. Intelligence wasn’t the issue, sheer cranial capacity was. See about 1/3 the way down page 10.

As I asked later on that page, please provide a reference for such a wide range. And where does that leave OH 24’s 638cc, and KNM-ER 1470’s 775cc just scrapes in. Yet it looks like this:



That’s a human skull?!

Care to explain why that’s human but OH 24 (below) isn’t?



TTFN, Oolon

[ April 23, 2002: Message edited by: Oolon Colluphid ]</p>

lpetrich

This makes me wonder what Ed considers erroneous in the Bible. One might guess that he considers its genealogies erroneous, because according to him, they are incomplete, while being worded in a way that suggests their completeness.

Also, what counts as a "Christian" geologist to Ed? Would a mainstream one ever count as a "Christian" one to him? Would anyone who believes Noah's Flood to be a myth inspired by some local flood really be a "Christian" to him?

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe Ed doesn't really have a case, and thus has to invent lots of maybes to to appear to have a case.

And here's a maybe for you, since you take maybes so seriously:

Maybe we haven't been collecting fossils from the place and time where they had lived.

Except that such intermediates have actually been found. See, for example, <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html</a>

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe.

Ed, that's an evasion, pure and simple.

Ed

While of course there are skeletal differences, the soft tissue differences are more significant. It is similar to comparing placental and marsupial dogs. Also, if you are referring to James Hopson's Therapsid Series, his series is problematic. There is also the possibility that the mammal-like reptiles which have left no living representatives might have possessed features in their soft biology completely different from any known reptile or mammal which would eliminate them completely as mammal ancestors, just as the discovery of the living coelacanth revealed features in its soft anatomy which were unexpected and cast doubt on the ancestral status of its rhipidistian relatives.


[b] Read B. Stahl "Vertebrate History roblems in Evolution" and read above.

Ed

I believe that the basic "kind" is similar to the taxonomic category of Family. So yes, there are two or more species alive today that share a common ancestor.

[b] I think they did swim in the same oceans though at different population levels throughout history.

Quetzal

[lurk mode off]
Ed: Just a quick clarification to be sure I'm understanding you:

Are you saying here that trilobites and whales were alive at the same time? That they were temporally congruent and that the only difference was population size? Do you have any evidence to back that assertion - say, Basilosaurus fossils found in the same strata as even the most "modern" trilobite (Order Proetida)? Are you aware that there's a 200-million-year time disconnect between the last trilobite fossil and the first whale fossil - even the ancestral whale fossils (say, Pakicetus or Ambulocetus) which you dispute?

I assume from your post you're saying that some type of small population of trilobites - at one time the most populous and successful clade of metazoans the world has ever known - were somehow reduced to a tiny population that was coterminous with whales and that's why we don't see fossils for 200 my? As a wildlife biologist you should be as aware as I am how mutational load in a small, genetically isolated population can rapidly reach mutational meltdown - no matter how well adapted and plastic the population is. Only an extremely large and diverse population can possibly avoid this. With a large population, your lack of fossils becomes impossible to explain.

Please clarify your position.
[lurk mode on]

Somebody pass the popcorn.