Freethought & Rationalism Archive

nogods4me · 03-07-2002, 03:04 AM

creationist: list all the numbers between 1 and 10
reply: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
creationist: no, i said all the numbers what about, 1.000000000000001, 1.000000000000002; I want to see them all before i will even think about accepting mathematics as true.
folks this guy wouldn't believe us if we showed him birth and death certificates, dna samples, notorized affadavits of paternity and maternity, and a 4 billion year long video tape from the first emergence of a self-replicating molecule to himself
goddidit, and that's enough for him

randman, didn't you say you were an Old Earth Creationist? so that means you think that both evolution, and The Bible are incorrect. where have you developed your theory of creation and the existence of life? and what evidence do you have of it's veracity?

MrDarwin · 03-07-2002, 05:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by randman:
I can't live here 24/7. I posted a lot when noone was posting and now there is no way to answer every idea.

If anybody should be complaining, it's me. Nobody expects you to "live here 24/7" but when I checked this morning I was surprised at the number of responses in the discussion I started just before bedtime last night, several of which were yours. So I know you have the time; you simply chose to ignore my questions, and tried to change the subject to one you liked better.

But you know what? You've asked a valid question. So tell you what, I'll address your fill-in-the-blank question in this discussion, if you go back to the other discussion and answer the questions I posted in mine. Just to remind you:

Quote:

Define "transitional form" and tell precisely what you would expect from a transitional form or fossil, if one group really had evolved from another, such as birds evolving from dinosaurs, tetrapods (r-legged land animals) evolving from fish, or mammals evolving from reptiles.

(edited to add that you can tell it was my bedtime--"r-legged" should have been "4-legged")

[ March 07, 2002: Message edited by: MrDarwin ]

Kosh · 03-07-2002, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Oolon Colluphid:
Hey, I go to bed and here in the morning is a fully formed thread! It must have been created (and to hell with the stepwise increase in posts)

I wish you could have heard the belly laugh
that gave me! Thanks Oolon, I'm wide awake now!
<img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" />

RufusAtticus · 03-07-2002, 06:02 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by randman:
I never claimed to be an expert on evolution.

Then how can you know that it is wrong if you are not inately familar with the subject?

-RvFvS

Kevin · 03-07-2002, 06:33 AM

Randman, yes that does make me question something: the honesty of your source. <a href="http://www.digisys.net/users/hoppnrmt/transitionfossils.htm" target="_blank">This site</a> compares what these people actually say vs. the words that Wallace puts in their mouths.

randman · 03-07-2002, 07:43 AM

McDarwin, transitional in the sense of proving macro-evolution would have to be a clear chain of species to species changes leading to a major change in "kind". I'll elaborate on the other thread.
One of the things many of you are doing that I consider to be totally wrong is to constantly claim these quotes are taken out of context. Well, I have read many enough of the contexts to know that what these guys are saying is pretty clear.
Gould, for one, proposed a model of evolution that differed, at least to him, from gradualism, and the reasons he did this were the characteristics of the fossil record. Now, you can be an evolutionary biologist, or whatever, but he is a paleontologist, and I put some stock on his opinion of the DATA. Personally, I draw a different conclusion, but noone is really taking him out of context, and the whole out of context charge to my mind is an attempt to cloud the issue.

lpetrich · 03-07-2002, 08:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by randman:

One of the things many of you are doing that I consider to be totally wrong is to constantly claim these quotes are taken out of context. Well, I have read many enough of the contexts to know that what these guys are saying is pretty clear.

Let's see if Randman really knows his stuff. Does he really know what these biologists were talking about? Does he know anything about biogeography? Cladistics? Comparative anatomy? Molecular-sequence comparison? Evo-devo? (evolutionary development biology)

And does he know why oceanic islands and small lakes are considered natural laboratories of evolution? Does he know what Homeobox genes are?

Mageth · 03-07-2002, 08:42 AM

<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

After reading this (and another similar) thread, I've come to the conclusion that, if in the future scientists discover fossils showing EVERY generation of a particular evolutionary line clearly showing the progression from some ancient ancestor to a modern species, the creationists would say "Ah, this is evidence that God creates EVERY generation of animals!"

Kosh · 03-07-2002, 08:55 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by randman:
McDarwin, transitional in the sense of proving macro-evolution would have to be a clear chain of species to species changes leading to a major change in "kind". I'll elaborate on the other thread.

Lord Valentine gave you that list last night
(reptail --> mamal). Why are you ignoring it?

Quetzal · 03-07-2002, 09:23 AM

randman: You DO, after all, ask a legitimate question: Why the hell don't we see microtransitions between fossil species? I'm not sure how detailed your knowledge about the process is, so I'll leave the technical details to others. I'd like you to consider the following - preferably with something resembling an open mind.

Evolutionary biologists and paleontologists simply don't expect to find microtransitions. Surprised? One of the key reasons why we wouldn�t expect to see them is the difficulty in anything actually fossilizing in the first place � of all the millions upon millions of organisms that have lived and died on this planet since the first unicellular life arose, only a relatively tiny handful died in conditions where they could be fossilized. And of that handful, many (possibly even the majority) that did fossilize were destroyed by natural processes: everything from erosion (wind, water, glaciers, etc) to volcanism (buried or destroyed) to bioturbation (wrecked by burrowing animals) to plate subduction (melted back into the molten core of the planet) to destruction by geology (ground to powder during an overthrust event or shattered by upthrust). Others, possibly more than have already been recovered, are buried so deep that finding them is impossible. The discovery of a fossil of anything is the exception, rather than the rule. The demand that every single animal be fossilized (which is what you are implying) is an impossibility.

Add to this the fact that soft tissues almost NEVER fossilize, and minor anatomical differences are difficult to tell even in living species, and you have just compounded the above problem.

Turning it around: if every organism that died was fossilized, and if every fossil was perfectly preserved, and if every perfectly preserved fossil could be found, then my prediction would be we WOULD find microtransitions. However, that�s pure wishful thinking. The fact that the fossil record is as complete as it is (enough to develop good hypotheses), and so many gross morphological transitions ARE documented, is in itself something of a miracle.

Try this thought exercise: given the hundreds of species of squirrels alive today (and I don't care if you consider them all one "kind" - they are, biologically, different species, at least since they don't cross-breed; hell, call it variation within a "kind", doesn't matter for this example), each of which also has some very minor morphological difference: How many species do you think we would recognize 10 million years in the future based only on their scattered, rarely fossilized remains?

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03-07-2002, 03:04 AM	#51
nogods4me Contributor Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Baltimore, MD USA Posts: 17,432	creationist: list all the numbers between 1 and 10 reply: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 creationist: no, i said all the numbers what about, 1.000000000000001, 1.000000000000002; I want to see them all before i will even think about accepting mathematics as true. folks this guy wouldn't believe us if we showed him birth and death certificates, dna samples, notorized affadavits of paternity and maternity, and a 4 billion year long video tape from the first emergence of a self-replicating molecule to himself goddidit, and that's enough for him randman, didn't you say you were an Old Earth Creationist? so that means you think that both evolution, and The Bible are incorrect. where have you developed your theory of creation and the existence of life? and what evidence do you have of it's veracity?

03-07-2002, 06:33 AM	#55
Kevin Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: ... Posts: 1,245	Randman, yes that does make me question something: the honesty of your source. <a href="http://www.digisys.net/users/hoppnrmt/transitionfossils.htm" target="_blank">This site</a> compares what these people actually say vs. the words that Wallace puts in their mouths.

03-07-2002, 07:43 AM	#56
randman Regular Member Join Date: Mar 2002 Posts: 333	McDarwin, transitional in the sense of proving macro-evolution would have to be a clear chain of species to species changes leading to a major change in "kind". I'll elaborate on the other thread. One of the things many of you are doing that I consider to be totally wrong is to constantly claim these quotes are taken out of context. Well, I have read many enough of the contexts to know that what these guys are saying is pretty clear. Gould, for one, proposed a model of evolution that differed, at least to him, from gradualism, and the reasons he did this were the characteristics of the fossil record. Now, you can be an evolutionary biologist, or whatever, but he is a paleontologist, and I put some stock on his opinion of the DATA. Personally, I draw a different conclusion, but noone is really taking him out of context, and the whole out of context charge to my mind is an attempt to cloud the issue.

03-07-2002, 08:42 AM	#58
Mageth Contributor Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Deep in the heart of mother-lovin' Texas Posts: 29,689	<img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" /> After reading this (and another similar) thread, I've come to the conclusion that, if in the future scientists discover fossils showing EVERY generation of a particular evolutionary line clearly showing the progression from some ancient ancestor to a modern species, the creationists would say "Ah, this is evidence that God creates EVERY generation of animals!"

03-07-2002, 09:23 AM	#60
Quetzal Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Ecuador Posts: 738	randman: You DO, after all, ask a legitimate question: Why the hell don't we see microtransitions between fossil species? I'm not sure how detailed your knowledge about the process is, so I'll leave the technical details to others. I'd like you to consider the following - preferably with something resembling an open mind. Evolutionary biologists and paleontologists simply don't expect to find microtransitions. Surprised? One of the key reasons why we wouldn�t expect to see them is the difficulty in anything actually fossilizing in the first place � of all the millions upon millions of organisms that have lived and died on this planet since the first unicellular life arose, only a relatively tiny handful died in conditions where they could be fossilized. And of that handful, many (possibly even the majority) that did fossilize were destroyed by natural processes: everything from erosion (wind, water, glaciers, etc) to volcanism (buried or destroyed) to bioturbation (wrecked by burrowing animals) to plate subduction (melted back into the molten core of the planet) to destruction by geology (ground to powder during an overthrust event or shattered by upthrust). Others, possibly more than have already been recovered, are buried so deep that finding them is impossible. The discovery of a fossil of anything is the exception, rather than the rule. The demand that every single animal be fossilized (which is what you are implying) is an impossibility. Add to this the fact that soft tissues almost NEVER fossilize, and minor anatomical differences are difficult to tell even in living species, and you have just compounded the above problem. Turning it around: if every organism that died was fossilized, and if every fossil was perfectly preserved, and if every perfectly preserved fossil could be found, then my prediction would be we WOULD find microtransitions. However, that�s pure wishful thinking. The fact that the fossil record is as complete as it is (enough to develop good hypotheses), and so many gross morphological transitions ARE documented, is in itself something of a miracle. Try this thought exercise: given the hundreds of species of squirrels alive today (and I don't care if you consider them all one "kind" - they are, biologically, different species, at least since they don't cross-breed; hell, call it variation within a "kind", doesn't matter for this example), each of which also has some very minor morphological difference: How many species do you think we would recognize 10 million years in the future based only on their scattered, rarely fossilized remains?

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