lpetrich

Ed:
As I stated earlier just because a theory makes accurate predictions does not necessarily mean that it is an accurate picture of reality, ie epicycles.

I wound not laugh too hard at epicycles. A Fourier Transform is essentially epicycles -- and enough of them can fit any reasonably-continuous curve.

So the key question becomes: can one predict the epicycles' parameters?

The definition that I am using is anything intrinsically related to what a person is. A person is a being that has a will, conscience, emotions, intellect, communicates propositionally, and etc.

Except that gametes, fertilized egg cells, and early embryos have NONE of these features.

It is not just me, NOONE has ever seen impersonal processes create the personal while millions have seen persons produce the personal.

The way that NOONE has ever seen non-cowlike processes create the cowlike, while millions have seen cows produce the cowlike?

(pseudogenes being nonfunctional...) But now my hunches from creation theory are being confirmed by these new studies.

This suggests that SOME pseudogenes can acquire new functions, but that does not mean that ALL pseudogenes are fully-functional in some way.

No, God wants us to know that there is only one creator, if every species was a weird mosaic then it would appear as if there were multiple creator/designers.

I have no idea why weird mosaics would necessarily look like multiple designers while a hierarchy of features would not.

Especially features that show an abundance of convergent but not-exactly-alike evolution.

The eyes of vertebrates and squid/octopuses have a video-camera-like architecture, but they differ in lots of details, with vertebrates having one characteristic architecture (neurons in front of the photoreceptor cells, etc.) and squid/octopuses another (neurons behind the photoreceptor cells, etc.).

Birds, bats, pterosaurs, and insects have characteristic wing architectures, one for each group.

Grasping organs were invented from frontmost limbs several times, though they show a variety of differences in detail. Human hands vs. elephant-trunk tips vs. lobster/crab and scorpion claws.

Etc.

By using a basic blueprint (DNA, cells, body plan patterns and etc.) that is evidence there is only one designer. If there was no such thing as a basic blueprint, Darwin would never have been able to propose the theory of Evolution!

Actually, Darwin did NOT invent the idea of descent with modification -- he made a strong case for it, one that was independent of the ultimate mechanism of heredity. And much of his case was based on relatively small-scale examples of evolution, one that did not require a shared "basic blueprint". However, many large-scale features do turn out to be shared, which has made it possible to infer large-scale evolution.

Duvenoy

Hoping that at the Porcelin Alter of the One True Relief, everything comes out ok, and you will be blessed with Supreme Regularity.

Me, I'm taking a break from nonsense and dropping out of this thread for a while. Blame it on Tweb. Sarfati, et. al., has overwhelmed my bullshit capacity. I'm taking a break from them, too, although I'll lurk a bit, hyar an' thar.

doov

ps418

Brilliant. So, Ed, by your 'definition,' an individual that lacks any one of these abilities is not a person? There are plenty of people that can not communicate propositionally (for instance, profoundly retarded people), plenty of sociopaths that to all appearances lack any sort of conscience, and plenty of brain-injured people with blunt affects that express no obvious emotions whatsoever. I guess these are not 'really' people at all.

Patrick

PS- What about ability to learn to use vB code? Shouldn't that be on the list somewhere?

Lobstrosity

I'm taking a break from this thread as well given how poorly-thought-out the responses I'm getting are. I simply can't deal with it. I've said my piece and intelligent people understand the points I was trying to make. If Ed wants to keep his head in the sand none of us are going to be able to stop him.

pz

Would that everyone had achieved that bit of wisdom about a year and a half and 800 posts ago.

Ed

No, that would have caused it to be even more basal so I was actually helping the evolution cause by where I placed my measurement and the australopithcus is still strongly anterior compared to the human.

Quote:

Ed: thereby demonstrating the facultative bipedalism of the Australopithicines. While the gorilla is facultative quadrapedal and the human is obligate bipedal. jtb: Making it a transitional form between facultative quadrupedalism and obligate bipedalism. Keep going, Ed, you're getting there...

No, there are no fossils showing the movement of the FM from the austro position to the homo position.

Quote:

Ed: Also you contradict yourself. You state that "australopithicines are basically bipedal chimpanzees", but if that is true then they are 100% ape and cannot be "fossil C." jtb: Chimpanzees aren't bipedal, humans are. Therefore a bipedal chimp isn't "100% chimpanzee", it's maybe 80% chimp, 20% human. A transitional form.

As I stated above australopithicus is not fully bipedal, facultative bipedalism means that the majority of the time they are bipedal but with a still significant time of quadrapedalism. But also, bipedalism is not a human-only trait so where does that 20% come from?

Quote:

jtb: Unfortunately for the creationists, we have a range of transitional forms from this point on. I hereby nominate Homo Habilis as "Fossil C".

Actually the evidence points to the Homo habilis material being a mixture of human and australopithecus fossils. Anthropologist Dr. Dean Falk has written that "The evidence presented shows that skull KNM-ER 1805 should not be attributed to Homo ...... the shape of the endocast from KNM-ER 1805 is similar to that of an African pongid, whereas the endocast of KNM-ER 1470 is shaped like that of a modern human." These are both so-called habilis fossils.

Quote:

Ed: Also how does one transition form disprove creation? God may have allowed some organisms to metamorphise more than others. But the fact is if there is just one major gap in the fossil record then evolution is in serious trouble. jtb: There are MANY transitional forms in the fossil record, and they utterly destroy creationism. It isn't just their mere existence: their chronological position is also proof of common descent. For instance, there are no modern humans among the australopithecines or habilines.

But there are modern birds among archaeopteryxes.

Quote:

jtb: And are there any "major" gaps? What is a "major" gap, exactly? There is no reason why we should expect the fossil record to be entirely gap-free. The general structure of the evolutionary "Tree of Life" is very evident in the fossil record, and in the pattern of similarities between living organisms today. This has been recognized by all biologists, even before Darwin: it is the basis of the Linnaean classification system..

As I have been saying, evolution is unfalsifiable. Thanks for proving it! :banghead:

Jack the Bodiless

The position of the foramen magnum in australopithecines is transitional between the APE position and the HUMAN position. You are attempting the very argument that was highlighted in the "fossil C" post. You have been given a transitional form, and now you're looking for transitions between transitionals.

And what about Homo Habilis? It's inconvenient, therefore it does not exist?
It is a TRANSITIONAL FORM between australopithecus and ergaster. OF COURSE cretinists will call it a "mixture"!

But are you now arguing that if skull KNM-ER 1805 should not have been classed as Homo Habilis, therefore homo habilis does not exist? What about all the others, like KNM-ER 1470?

The evidence certainly does NOT point to Homo Habilis being an "invalid taxon". There is no scientific controversy about THAT. The only controversy is that, BECAUSE it is a transitional form between australopithecines and Ergaster/Erectus, individual fossils may or may not fall within the taxon: some will be more like australopithecus, others will be more like ergaster.

Here is an article on the subject.

You have already been called on that one. Again: PROVE IT.
Of course it's falsifiable! If the evidence didn't support it, it would be falsified!

It's like round-Earthism. In principle, flat-Earthers could falsify round-Earthism at any time, by finding the edge of the world. But, nowadays, experts generally agree that this is very unlikely to happen, given the overwhelming evidence for round-Earthism that already exists.

keyser_soze

We're gluttons for punishment...

Coragyps

In the displays at the museum, perhaps. Give me names of the ones that were in life, please - just one name of a "modern bird" should suffice.

Ed

Natural selection. That is what natural selection does, ie maintains the status quo. It eliminates the unfit members of the population.

Quote:

oc: 2. Therefore creation predicts that there should be no transitional fossils. That is, one might find a fossil that is different from known forms, but still fairly obviously of the same ‘kind’. All fossils should fall into neat categories. Creation predicts, then, that it is impossible for there to be fossils with characteristics of two separate kinds (and when evolution claims they existed). 3. Therefore, if such fossils be found, creation is refuted. Since they cannot, under creation, exist, it takes just one ‘transitional’ fossil to refute creation, provided creation is formulated in a refutable (ie scientific) way.

No, creation predicts that there will not be large patterns of transitional forms especially between major groups. As I stated before there could very well be transitions between smaller taxonomic groups such as species. The ancient hebrew of Genesis is very broad in its groupings of kinds.

Quote:

oc: Now, we ‘evolutionists’ claim that such fossils have been found, in profusion. But, Ed, you are trying to find a loophole. By claiming a lot of latitude in morphological variation within kinds, you potentially make your claim untestable, and so unscientific. “It’s just an extreme variant on so-and-so kind.” (That just happens to be varying in precisely the ways that evolution expects .) You need to be able to draw a line -- and ought to be able to, if kinds are ultimately immutable. So for your claim to be verifiable -- and I take it you want to demonstrate its veracity? -- you need to tell us where the line is.

I have already given the line, ie family and/or genus depending on the organism. And as genetic research continues we will be able to refine the line with greater accuracy.

Quote:

Ed: But the fact is if there is just one major gap in the fossil record then evolution is in serious trouble. oc: Ed, this is patent nonsense, and I cannot believe you say that with a straight face (hence, see my earlier post: I’m still waiting for that PM). You want us to discount all the evidence that there is, and rely on what there isn’t. How is what we do not know supposed to be representative? Suppose someone is accused of murder. We do not know how the accused may have travelled to and from the killing, nor how he gained entry to the victim’s house (through the unlocked door, or the open window?), nor did anyone see him arrive or leave -- in fact, nobody who has yet come forward had seen him that day at all. Those things we do not know. Yet, his fingerprints are on the knife; the blood of the victim is on his clothes; his trainer-print is in the mud of the victim’s garden; a hair matching his is in the victim’s pooled blood; the knife sticking out of the body is the same make and size as the one missing from the knife-block in the accused’s kitchen, and there is a possible motive. Those things we do know. Ed would have us acquit this person. TTFN, Oolon

No, your analogy is poor. A better analogy of the theory of evolution would be you have snapshots of the night of the supposed murder(fossils), ie a picture of the accused going in the house, even standing next to the body. But no empirical evidence connecting him to the actual act of murder. No matching DNA, no matching fingerprints, no murder weapon on his person. The evolutonist would convict him on a unwarranted historical extrapolation of murder.