Religion of Evolution

A few things.

If you look around at what else Milton has to say, you will see that he is a bit of a quack. For instance, on his site he says that when gas collapses to form stars (not possible in a young universe) that the center cools to near absolute zero and cold fusion then powers the star.

Most of his critique boils down to a Gish style series of multiplying gaps. So what if you have dozens of genera and hundreds of species, I want to see the intermediates between those. That game can go on for ever.

He criticizes the sudden change between Mesohippus and Miohippus even though the artticle he is criticizing says "This transition also occurred suddenly, but luckily a few transitional fossils have been found that link the two genera."

He criticizes the article for being to general. If that is his problem, he should go to the bottom and go read the references. There he can get all the details he wants about what specific traits and factors are used to connect the various specimens.

He claims that the is no genetic evidence when I have already given you one reference that uses genetic evidence.

He also claims that speciation has never been observered. Well it has, but that is a subject for a different discusion.

We can fill the next page with comments before you hit you limit. That allows for a few more back and forths. And, like you said, if we are still having a nice conversation, we can continue it in a new thread.

 

That may be true. Neverless, this part of what he said here caught my eye:

From THIS LINK

What are your thoughts on that?
Am I repeating myself yet? If I do that simply point out to me where you've answered before, I'm an airhead when it comes to remembering sometimes.

Another question. I'm gonna ramble and put out some very basic thoughts that will help seal any doubts you may have had that I'm not an odd person.
What do you believe God's role in evolution is? Does he stop it when he thinks the evolved creature is good enough, or does that depend on surroundings? Why is a worm still a worm? How long is average to begin expecting a change in a creature once the surroundings begin to change? If we took enough food out of a forest to make bears struggle to survive, but surrounded the forest with sealed iron boxes of food, wouldn't it be a relatively short time before we started seeing baby bears born with longer, stronger teeth to help them puncture the boxes and get them open?

Gina

 

Yep. In fact, that's kind of what "The Beak of the Finch" is all about. Exhaustive studies of finches on an island in the Galapagos showed that evolution moves at tremendous speed when the environment shifts to food that requires a sturdier "opener."

The thing is, when conditions improve, it swings back again. Only when there is a permanent change in the environment do you see permanent large-scale change.

 

Hasn't extreme doubt been spread on Darwin's finches, including no proof that the noted bit of a millimeter was truly growth, but may have been measurable because of the birds being leaner?

Since extreme doubt has been cast, shouldn't it be relatively easy to create circumstances that would cause such changes? Why not start developing the digestive system of a fish in order to survive? If there is no food for a bird and it is surrounded by water, why would it not start developing into a fish?
Gina

 

Yep. In fact, that's kind of what "The Beak of the Finch" is all about. Exhaustive studies of finches on an island in the Galapagos showed that evolution moves at tremendous speed when the environment shifts to food that requires a sturdier "opener."

The thing is, when conditions improve, it swings back again. Only when there is a permanent change in the environment do you see permanent large-scale change. </font>[/QUOTE]Haven’t been following this thread much, but Gina’s quote concerning bears developing longer and stronger teeth to puncture iron boxes still wouldn’t prove evolution.

It’s still a bear.

 

The bible does say that nature was commanded to reproduce after it's own kind.
Do you believe that verse is misinterpreted by creationists UTE and others, and if so what do you believe is the proper meaning of it?
Gina

 

Let's try this again, UTEOTW. I think you will see the point this time.

Notice your "own" statement.

See? You not only obfuscated what was shown - you misrepresented the facts entirely.

You make it "appear" that they represented a NON-uniform "bushy" sequence but mistakenly CALLED it uniform with smooth transition.

That representation of what they DID would be a lie of course - so you could never go there -- right?

IN FACT what they DID is to NOT present a bushy sequence - but rather they DID present a SMOOTH transitional sequence and no amount of obfuscating will change that "inconvenient fact".

So instead of LOOKING at the sequence that they DID present and saying "HEY this sequence looks more BUSHY than SMOOTH we were saying the wrong thing about THIS SEQUENCE that we are SHOWING" they say- we showed the WRONG sequence. The SEQUENCE we SHOWED never happened in all of time.

So you "need" to bend that around to "WE discovered that the SEQUENCE WE WERE SHOWING was more bushy than we first thought".

Such a wrenching of the "inconvenient facts" will "probably" slide right past an already devoted believer in evolutionism reading your post - but HOW did you expect it to survive objective, critical thinking UTEOTW??

How do you expect that waving of the hands and smoke and mirror "revisionism" to delete the "inconvenient fact" that the SEQUENCE that they DID SHOW - DID show SMOOTH transition? The SQUENCE that they DID show DID NOT exist as an actual SEQUENCE in all of time - and even THEY admit it!

You jump quickly to "yes but they imagine a DIFFERENT sequence - a bushy one" while conviniently hiding that fact that it is both "imagined" AND it is "NOT like the SEQUENCE they were ACTUALLY SHOWING before".

(I have only brought this up a dozen times - and you have only dodged it a dozen and one times in a blatant effort to suppress "inconvenient fact" in favor of your "preferred story").


"#1. In "reality" we have NO SMOOTH SEQUENCE of horse feet progressively evolving to what we see today (IN the fossil record)."

Well as I said - you seem inclined to turn a blind eye to these inconvenient facts that do not fit with your "story".

Why not just give up the story - accept the facts and believe the Bible?

Through most of "what sequence" -- through most of the sequence presented in 1951 as "fact"???

The one presented in 1951 in a book entitled simply 'Horses' published by George Simpson, professor of palaeontology at Harvard??

Is THAT "the sequence" that you believe to show the REAL transition in hooves?

"You know" - the very historic fact this post was highlighting on the subject of horse evolution!

No?

Then when in your post above did you do the "bait and switch" to "a different sequence" in your defense of that 1951 sequence?

 

Bob said --

"#2. In "reality" Evoutionists CLAIMED that we had this and LINED up fossil examples to back up their claim. In "reality" evolutionists ADMIT that the sequence that they were SHOWING (starging in 1951 in a book entitled simply 'Horses' published by George Simpson, professor of palaeontology at Harvarddid) not exist as an actual SEQUENCE or series for horse evolution."

Hmm. Wouldn't Simpson be delighted to hear that.


Bob said --
"[i#3. In "reality" evolutionists here seek to obfuscate the "obvious" at every turn. And who knows - maybe some people "buy it". What do you think?[/i]"

Simple. Turning the facts on their head so that you claim that the 1951 sequence that was presented by Simpson IS a smooth transitional sequence that DID exist in nature for horse evolution JUST as Simpson originally claimed.

When you say IT DID exist - you either speak absolute error knowingly to misdirect -- or you are simply not following the most basic of facts in this case. Even Simpson no longer believes in that sequence that you so stoutly claim DID exist!

How sad.

What??

 

Gina

A few topics here.

First, I have a better example of Milton as a quack. In one of his books, he claims that the Roman Empire never existed and that Latin is a language invented by English schoolmarms to keep the teachers employed.

Second, you quoted him on speciation. This is getting into a different topic and the reason I said so in the short review of his website that I made. There are planty of examples of speciation, but I need to know if this is a path you wish to go down. There are planty of good examples, even a few from very modern times. I would just like to know more specifically what your questions about speciation are.

Finally, the short answer to your last question is that all creatures reproduce after their kind. You will never see a species give birth to a different species. Change happens very slowly and to populations. So that verse is not a problem. That is just how things work.

As for it is still just a bear... That is the beauty of it. The changes happen slowly. You will never have a change in a short time and see something recognizable as completely new. But the change is additive. Go back to the horse series. The change from species to species, even genus to genus was not that great. Another cusp on a tooth here, a loss of a toe there. But in the end, you saw a great change from the start to the end. And not only down the path that gave us horses and zebras. The same starting point also led to rhinos. But all through small changes.

 

"planty of examples of speciation"

I'll be back on here after the kids go to bed, in the middle of making dinner here but gotta know...
was this a typo or are you hinting at the types of examples you plan on giving?
Gina

 

I cannot type to save my life. Neither can I spell. It is a deadly combination.

I did ask you for a spellchecker...

 

"See? You not only obfuscated what was shown - you misrepresented the facts entirely.

You make it "appear" that they represented a NON-uniform "bushy" sequence but mistakenly CALLED it uniform with smooth transition."

Who are you quoting as saying "appear?"

I am not changing my challenge. Here is the full quote. Again. Try and tell us where in it you get the idea that Simpson thinks that the horse sequence does not exist.

Did you miss the part where he talks about the changes we see in the horses the first few times I posted this? His whole point was "Trends do not really have to act that way: there are not really orthogenetic."

"IN FACT what they DID is to NOT present a bushy sequence - but rather they DID present a SMOOTH transitional sequence and no amount of obfuscating will change that "inconvenient fact"."

Where exactly? He says right there "The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature." He is claiming that the sequence was not smooth.

"So you "need" to bend that around to "WE discovered that the SEQUENCE WE WERE SHOWING was more bushy than we first thought"."

Nope. No bending necessary. He said it himself.

"Such a wrenching of the "inconvenient facts" will "probably" slide right past an already devoted believer in evolutionism reading your post - but HOW did you expect it to survive objective, critical thinking UTEOTW??"

I guess I will have to continue to wait before I will see an example of good critical thinking.

"You jump quickly to "yes but they imagine a DIFFERENT sequence - a bushy one" while conviniently hiding that fact that it is both "imagined" AND it is "NOT like the SEQUENCE they were ACTUALLY SHOWING before"."

I have no need to hide that it is unlike the old sequence beforethey discovered so many more foissils. In fact, that is the point that Simpson is trying to make and that you are trying, unsuccessfully, to twist. The old, smooth sequence was incorrect and this was discovered as new data came in. It was not wrong because the horse did not evolve. It was wrong because it showed a simple, smooth, continuous, gradual sequence. You have given us nothing to contradict that claim using the expanded quote or any factual data.

"Through most of "what sequence" -- through most of the sequence presented in 1951 as "fact"???

The one presented in 1951 in a book entitled simply 'Horses' published by George Simpson, professor of palaeontology at Harvard??

Is THAT "the sequence" that you believe to show the REAL transition in hooves?"

I believe The Galatian already went through the steps for you. But yes, I imagine, though I have not seen it, that Simpson's sequence was probably fairly close. Certainly much better than the one from the 19th century that he was rejecting in the quote at hand. But probably not as good as what you could find today in an appropriate text on the subject.

"Hmm. Wouldn't Simpson be delighted to hear that."

Well since SImpson was the one saying that the jerky, bushy series is the right one, I think he already knew this about 50 years ago and woould not bother to be delighted over such old news. News from him. Though I imagine that some of the fossil finds since then and then genetic evidence we have recently obtained confirming the relationships from the fossil record would, in fact, delight him.

"Simple. Turning the facts on their head so that you claim that the 1951 sequence that was presented by Simpson IS a smooth transitional sequence that DID exist in nature for horse evolution JUST as Simpson originally claimed."

Neither Simpson nor I claim that the sequence is smooth. In fact his quote is showing that it is not the smooth sequence that represents history. It is the jerky one. And I agree.

"What??" In response to a claim of false assertions.

You assert that Simpson said something other than what he clearly did in the above quote.

You assert that there are no genetics linking horses and rhinos just as the fossil record suggests that there should be in the face of the following reference and without bothering to make a fact based challenge of it.

Use of mitochondrial DNA sequences to test the Ceratomorpha (Perissodactyla:Mammalia) hypothesis, C. Pitra and J. Veits, Journal of Zoological Systematics & Evolutionary Research, Volume 38 Issue 2 Page 65 - June 2000.

You assert that there are no genetics linking whale and other ungulates just as the fossil record suggests that there should be in the face of the following reference and without bothering to make a fact based challenge of it.

Molecular evidence from retroposons that whales form a clade within even-toed ungulates, Shimamura et al, Nature 388,666 (14 August 1997).

You claim that birds did not evolve without bothering to refute the data presented, from AIG no less, showing the relationship between crocodiles and birds as predicted from science by there decent from the archosaurs.

And the big one. YOu claim that the 1980's conference claimed that archaeopteryx was a bird only and not transitional or related to reptiles despite the eveidence presented in the following links and despite weeks of asking you to support your unsupported assumptions.

http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2740/18.html#000258
http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2740/21.html#000302

 

If all things started out as one species though, that would kinda make that verse pointless. If they started as 200 species it would still be hard.
If a man is a half monkey and a half man, is he biblically allowed to breed with a monkey or does he have to find a half monkey half woman?

And no, I don't really want to get into the species thing right this second.

On the horse tree site given, I can't find where it says which horses or parts of them are made directly from the fossils found and which parts aren't. Can you help me out with that? It may be on here and I'm missing it.

Gina

 

"If all things started out as one species though, that would kinda make that verse pointless. If they started as 200 species it would still be hard. "

No, not really. Change is something that happens very slowly and generally to populations. At any point in time, the organisms alive at that time are simply making more of themselves. Now let's consider a hypothetical speciation event. YOu have this group of unicorns. They live in this mountain valley. They are well adapted for the vegetation and geography and predators of this area. Now during one rough patch of weather, a small herd goes looking for food and stumbles through a difficult pass to the other side of the mountains and cannot get back. Now let's say the first group is living on the windward side. They get a lot of rain, there is good soil, and the vegetation is lush. Now this new group finds themselves on the leeward side. It gets less rain and the vegetation is of a different type and more scattered. The first group continues reproducing after its kind, maintaining a kind of status quo. Maybe small changes. The second group will now have a new and strong set of selective pressures. Maybe changes in teeth to chew the vegetation. Maybe a change in color to blend in better. Maybe a change in size due to food restrictions. Maybe less natural cover means they need to become more mobile to escape predators. The new pressures wil force change. Maybe they cannot adapt and die out. Maybe they do adapt and eventually turn into a new species. In either case, they too continue to reproduce after their kind. It just happens that after thousands of years, the two species of unicorns separated by the mountain range are now new species.

Made up and simplified, I know. But you see things like this in nature where different populations will settle into a particular niche and eventually, as each population adapts to their specific niche, they become new species. Always reproducing after their own kind.

"If a man is a half monkey and a half man, is he biblically allowed to breed with a monkey or does he have to find a half monkey half woman?"

I think we would both agree that this is something God would frown upon. Let me make a more extreme version of the statement to show its flaw. You and a cow are both mammals, so why should you not be allowed to mate?

Even the animals have enough sense to not try and mate outside of their species. Well, except for that occasional dog who must think my leg is some strange breed. Even when we humans are unable to tell two species apart, they can when it come time to reproduce.

Mating is about reproducing. (Yes for us humans it is more than that. Maybe bonobos, too.) There is no point in it between the species. Some very closely related species can hybridize. But in general, mating between the species is unnatural and pointless.

You and a monkey share a large amount genetics. You and an ape, especially a chimp, share an extreme amount. For any mammal even the numbers will be very high. And even for single cell life, the numbers are higher than you would imagine. But you are still different species. It has been, guessing, 30 million years since you shared an ancestor with the monkeys and maybe 10 millon for the apes. You cannot mate with them. Morally it would be unnatural and physically there is no hope of hybridization.

"And no, I don't really want to get into the species thing right this second. "

That's fine. Let me know when you do and what you would be interested in seeing. We can come at it from the modern perspective of showing where species have split say do to geography or we can look at some very finely divided series from the fossil record.

"On the horse tree site given, I can't find where it says which horses or parts of them are made directly from the fossils found and which parts aren't. Can you help me out with that? It may be on here and I'm missing it. "

I am sorry, but I do not follow your question.

If you are asking which fossil horses went on to give us the modern horse and which died out, then try looking at the tree on this page.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html#part2

If you are asking for a history of how different traits arose and were passed down in the series, that is kinda of complicated. You may either need to keep reading or you could give us a specific trait or two and let us go through it for you. Above, the Galatian already did just this for just the toes. I think it was on the previous page near the bottom. http://www.baptistboard.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/topic/28/2589/19.html#000277

If you have a different question, just help me out by letting me know a little more clearly what you question is. I'm sorry, but I just do not quite understand.

 

That's ok. I COULD have said it more easily.
Are all of the horses shown on the chart images completely from fossil evidence? Did they find the whole fossils of all of the ones shown on the chart? If not, which parts were found, and for which models?
This is what else I'm looking for on the site and cannot find.

Ok, hope that's easier.
As for breeding of the half man half monkey, you're saying it would be unnatural for him or the monkey to breed with anything that is not at the same stage of evolving as themselves?
BTW on another forum we call the problem with the dog legosexuality.

This thread has to close, we'll start another one. Go ahead and reply to this here and then I'll close it.
Gina

 

It would merely be impossible for their gametes to combine to make a viable zygote.

 

Second question, first. Basically yes. Or what Brett said. YOu have to be the same species or things don't match up right.

First question. Boy, that is a hard one to answer. Part of the answer is that I just do not have enough resources to give a good answer. That answer would also be quite long as there are dozens of genera and for each genus there can be dozens of individual species. I was under the impression from what I clicked through on the original page I gave you from U. of Florida that the skeleton they showed was how much of a complete skeleton they had recovered for that genus. I am only basing this on the fact that some were represented by nothing more than jaws and teeth while others had whole skeletons. I might see if I cannot find something for you.

Finally, I'll await you to begin another thread if you wish. Since this can be a subject that divides I have a personal policy of not starting new threads on it since the dedicated forum went away. If this one reamins open the next time I get in front of a computer with time to look for what you are asking, I'll try and respond.

 

Ok. Let's see what happens, gonna try to do something...
Gina