Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Bait And Switch (Intuition, Part Deux)

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Once upon a time people thought that the sun revolved around the earth because this was intuitive. They were wrong. Once upon a time people thought that the moon revolved around the earth because it was intuitive. They were right. Therefore, intuition can’t be trusted.

Good enough. Evidence eventually confirmed the truth in both cases.

Then along came neo-Darwinism in the 20th century. Intuition and the simple mathematics of combinatorics suggest that random errors and throwing out stuff that doesn’t work can’t account for highly complex information-processing machinery and the information it processes in biological systems. There is no evidence, hard science, or mathematical analysis that can give any credibility to the proposed power of the Darwinian mechanism in this regard.

Intuition suggests that step-by-tiny-step Darwinian gradualism could not have happened, because the intermediates would not be viable. A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons. We find long periods of stasis, and the emergence of fully developed creatures with entirely new and innovative capabilities.

So, the Darwinian argument essentially goes as follows: Because human intuition is sometimes wrong, we can ignore intuition, basic reasoning, historical evidence, and the lack of empirical evidence — but only in the case of the claims of the creative power of the Darwinian mechanism.

This is classic bait-and-switch con-artistry: Intuition can be wrong, therefore evidence, the lack thereof, and logic can be ignored or assumed to be wrong as well.

Comments
Khan. Let me tell you how this is going to go,,, You will deny the abruptness of the fossil record and quote shady piece after shady piece of evidence and all this will be found to be inconclusive or even outright deceptive by UD bloggers...With me so far? Finally you will be forced to deal with proving that functional information can be generated by natural means to support your assertions of evolution of increased complexity? Follow?.... You will fail to be able to do this... In fact you will fail to be able to pass even the simple fitness test that I outlined earlier.... Follow?.... You will ignore that you have no empirical basis to make your claims but you will continue to make unsustainable assertions because, for whatever misguided personal reason, you do not want it to be true that there may be a God...Follow?...I'm fairly certain you may have already realized your evidential deficiency, and if so I am just left wondering, have you ever looked into your heart and asked why it is so important for you to deny God exists? Of what possible benefit is it for you to cling to such shallow evidence, and even be deceptive about it, when at the base of your atheistic imperative there will be absolutely no pay off for you anyway?,,,, I guess what I am really trying to ask is,,,Have you gone completely off your rocker man?bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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Khan,
“Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well..”
How so, exactly?
So, can I assume your comment was a opportunistic convienence of sorts, and really didn't have merit?Upright BiPed
August 2, 2009
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BA^77 National Geographic is not a scientific publication.Khan
August 2, 2009
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Khan, So you think evolutionists are to be trusted? Dino Fossils Generate Overblown Claims 06/18/2009 June 18, 2009 — A picture of colorfully-plumed dinosaurs graces an article on National Geographic, but were feathers found with the fossil? No; the article said, “Primitive feathers may have covered the dinosaur’s body, but there is no direct evidence for that, noted [James] Clark, whose work was funded in part by the National Geographic Society” (which also owns National Geographic News). The feathers are apparently completely imaginary. National Geographic has been caught doing this before (see 06/13/2007 and 04/10/2006), inventing feathers out of thin air. I guess national Geographic could care less about evidence,,,,So do you work for them Khan? http://crev.info/ Did This Dino Have Bird Breath? 09/29/2008 Sept 29, 2008 — Birds are the only vertebrates with a unique one-way, flow-through breathing system that includes hollow bones. Their unique respiratory system is part of the set of features that allows flying with its need for rapid metabolism. Science news outlets are clucking wildly about another putative missing link between dinosaurs and birds: “Meat-eating dinosaur from Argentina had bird-like breathing system,” announced PhysOrg, for instance. Does the evidence fly? The original paper in PLoS ONE is much more subdued.1 Paul Sereno and team found an allosaur-like dinosaur with more hollow bones than usual, which they interpreted to be associated with air sacs. Air sacs are a feature of the avian lung system, but not the only feature; nor is this the first dinosaur fossil with “pneumatized” (hollow, air-filled) bone. The big sauropods like Diplodocus had them. Opinions differ on what function they served in the dinosaurs: thermal regulation, weight reduction, balance and other functions are possibilities unrelated to respiration. Sereno’s team has been examining this fossil for 12 years. In short, they found more of hollow bones than usual in this dinosaur, some in the thoracic region. Using this evidence as a launching pad for speculation, they devised a four-stage hypothesis on how the avian lung might have evolved. They did not claim that this dinosaur had a bird-like breathing system, despite the headlines. The following excerpts from the paper give a feel for the conservative tone of the authors about their find: * Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave a record of their presence. * Principal findings: We describe a new predatory dinosaur from Upper Cretaceous rocks in Argentina, Aerosteon riocoloradensis gen. et sp. nov., that exhibits extreme pneumatization of skeletal bone, including pneumatic hollowing of the furcula and ilium. In living birds, these two bones are pneumatized by diverticulae of air sacs (clavicular, abdominal) that are involved in pulmonary ventilation. We also describe several pneumatized gastralia (“stomach ribs”), which suggest that diverticulae of the air sac system were present in surface tissues of the thorax. * The advent of avian unidirectional lung ventilation is not possible to pinpoint, as osteological correlates have yet to be identified for uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation. * The origin and evolution of avian air sacs may have been driven by one or more of the following three factors: flow-through lung ventilation, locomotory balance, and/or thermal regulation. * As a result of an extraordinary level of pneumatization, as well as the excellent state of preservation of much of the axial column and girdles, Aerosteon helps to constrain hypotheses for the evolution of avian-style respiration. * The capacity of the cervical air sacs to invade centra to form invaginated pleurocoels may have evolved independently in sauropodomorphs (sauropods) and basal theropods and appears to have been lost several times within theropods. * The osteological or logical correlates needed to support some of these inferences have been poorly articulated, which may explain the wide range of opinions on when intrathoracic air sacs like those in birds first evolved and how these relate to ventilatory patterns. * Based on the osteological correlates we have assembled (Table 4), we would argue, first, that until we can show evidence of the presence of at least one avian ventilatory air sac (besides the non-ventilatory cervical air sac), it is problematic to infer the presence of flow-through ventilation or a rigid, dorsally-attached lung. Second, we know of no osteological correlates in the gastral cuirass that would justify the inference of abdominal air sacs. Potential kinesis of the gastral cuirass and an accessory role in aspiration breathing potentially characterizes many amniotes besides nonavian dinosaurs. The absence of gastralia in crown birds or in any extant bipeds also hinders functional inferences. And third, it is not well established that abdominal air sacs were either first to evolve or are functionally critical to unidirectional ventilation. * Avian lung ventilation is driven by muscles that expand and contract thoracic volume by deforming the ribcage and rocking a large bony sternum. Basal maniraptorans have many of the features associated with this ventilatory mechanism including a large ossified sternum, ossified sternal ribs, uncinate processes a deepened coracoid that contacts the sternum along a synovial hinge joint. By contrast Aerosteon and the abelisaurid Majungasaurus lack these features. Does that mean that maniraptorans had evolved unidirectional lung ventilation? Or does it indicate only that the maniraptoran ribcage functioned in aspiration breathing more like that in avians? We do not know of any osteological correlates that are specifically tied to uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved. * The factors driving the origin and evolution of the functional capacity of avian air sacs and lung ventilation remain poorly known and tested. After the fossil was described with its typical taxonomic details, the paper primarily contained a good deal of speculation on the origin of the avian lung system, with no firm conclusions. The authors discussed problems with all existing theories. The most optimistic claim they could make was stated as follows: “In sum, although we may never be able to sort out the most important factors behind the origin and evolution of the unique avian pulmonary system, discoveries such as Aerosteon provide clues that help to constrain the timing and circumstances when many of the fundamental features of avian respiration arose.” Such a statement merely assumes that avian respiration “arose” by evolution somehow. The “wide range of opinions” within the evolutionist community undermines the confident claims in the popular press. It also shows that non-evolutionary explanations for the unique system that enables birds to soar gracefully in the air were completely ignored. For problems with bird lung evolution theories, see an article on CMI that reviewed Michael Denton’s use of the topic to argue against Darwinism in his classic book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. A diagram of the bird respiratory system is shown in the article. Carl Wieland on CMI (PDF file) also critiqued an earlier claim (2005) that hollow bones in some dinosaurs revealed an evolutionary link to the avian lung. 1. Sereno et al, “Evidence for Avian Intrathoracic Air Sacs in a New Predatory Dinosaur from Argentina,” Public Library of Science ONE, 09/30/2008, 3(9): e3303 doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003303. The bluffing about evolution in many science news reports is shameful. Search on Aerosteon and you will find examples, like this one on InTheNews.co.uk: “Dinosaurs: Breathed like birds. A carnivorous dinosaur with a bird-like breathing system has provided more evidence of the connection between the two groups of animals separated by millions of years.” The whole article is fluff. “Palaeontologists are now satisfied Aerosteon provides the evidence needed to seal the connection with birds,” it ends. One cannot bluff about fluff. National Geographic must have panicked at our expose, so they cranked out a propaganda piece immediately announcing, “New Birdlike Dinosaur Found in Argentina.” They even put imaginary feathers on it: “The new dinosaur probably had feathers, but did not actually fly,” they said (cf. 06/13/2007). OK, so we went hunting for feathers in the original paper. “The fossil evidence for intrathoracic air sacs now closely overlaps that for feathers, which had evolved in coelurosaurian theropods most likely for heat retention.” That was the only mention of feathers. This appeal to imaginary feathers was followed by more storytelling in lieu of empirical evidence: Air sacs may have initially been employed as an antagonist to feathers in theropod thermoregulation. Although this hypothesis has been criticized for lack of empirical evidence in living birds, air sacs have been implicated in avian heat transfer and/or evaporative heat loss, and Aerosteon and many other theropods had a body weight more than an order of magnitude greater than that for any living bird. A thermoregulatory role for the early evolution of air sacs in nonavian dinosaurs should not be ruled out without further evidence from nonvolant ratites. Can you believe that? They invented imaginary feathers out of thin air for this big heavy meat-eater to compensate for imaginary air sacs that they presume existed near its hollow bones. So now their evolutionary magic produced two imaginary thermoregulatory systems competing with each other – what, for survival of the coolest? For the fun of it, let’s grant them air sacs and even imagine with them a respiratory system that had some birdlike features; after all, any two vertebrates, like mice and camels, or frogs and penguins, are bound to have similarities as well as differences, depending on what you decide to focus on for the moment. Paul Sereno told National Geographic that the beast didn’t fly (obviously, unless you can imagine wings on a T. rex), so NG concluded, “even though this species was birdlike [sic], feathers and air sacs didn’t necessarily evolve for flight.” So their point is... ? All the hype about feathers was supposed to reinforce the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. They were practically ready to name this thing Tweety Rex, and now they seem to be telling us this beast evolved air sacs for a completely different function, about which no one is sure, and it was an evolutionary dead end anyway. Even NG’s accompanying slide show didn’t show feathers. The only suggestion of a birdlike respiratory system was in slide 2, where colored regions represent the imaginary air sacs in the thorax. But excuse me, Mr. Scientist sir, did any of that soft air-sac material fossilize? “Evidence from the fossil record for the origin and evolution of this system is extremely limited, because lungs do not fossilize and because the bellow-like air sacs in living birds only rarely penetrate (pneumatize) skeletal bone and thus leave a record of their presence.” Are you telling me there was no direct evidence for the air sacs in this dinosaur? “Some of its postcranial bones show pneumatic hollowing that can be linked to intrathoracic air sacs that are directly involved in lung ventilation.” They can be, you say, but how strong is the inference? “We do not know of any osteological correlates [fossil evidence] that are specifically tied to uni- or bidirectional lung ventilation (Table 4), which may explain the range of opinion as to how and when avian unidirectional lung ventilation first evolved.” But isn’t a unidirectional lung ventilation system the primary distinguishing feature in birds? Are you telling the court that this is all inference, not evidence? The tale gets more speculative and implausible with each lawyer’s question. Darwin’s defense attorneys are sweating in their seats. NG quoted a colleague admitting, “It shows that evolution is not a chalk line—there are many dead ends.” Being interpreted, this means evolutionists can always concoct a story for any possible combination of data. (Chalk is erasable, you know.) We think a scientist who wants to feather his monster should produce the feathers in the fossil, not draw feathery dragons on the chalkboard and tell the press that it “probably had feathers.” Chalk lines are supposed to be snapped to a level that has been carefully measured. So he’s right; evolution is not a chalk line; it’s a crooked crack in the wall of a theory that is about to collapse. Don’t build to it. We brought you extended quotes to illustrate the difference between original sources and the news media hype. The lesson: always check out the original data. The authors with the bones in their hand usually know better than to make any outlandish claims to their colleagues. In front of reporters, though, they lose restraint. Reporters go ape to praise Darwin. For example, Live Science, that perennial Darwin billboard, shouted Extra! Extra! “Bus-sized Dinosaur Breathed Like Birds. A huge carnivorous dinosaur that lived about 85 million years ago had a breathing system much like that of today’s birds, a new analysis of fossils reveals, reinforcing the evolutionary link between dinos and modern birds.” That, in turn, got passed around to all the major news outlets as gospel truth. This is bad breath, not bird breath. The sound of flapping dino-feathers is only the pompons made of synthetic material manufactured for the Darwin Party cheerleaders. http://crev.info/bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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JT, I personally have never delved into details of feather morphology or the genetics supporting them. So I have no way to weigh in intelligently on the discussion. It could be that feathers are really a simple variation genetically of another phenotype characteristic or they may be complex adaptations. I Have no idea. Also the presence of feathers may be a minor factor in flight compared to wing design, bone structure, and neurological development. I have no real basis for estimating all the factors necessary for bird flight. I just want to comment on the allusion to language. Language change does take the pattern hypothesized by Darwin but it has two big problems to be used as a model of biological evolution. First, it is a characteristic of intelligent activity and is often used as one of the basis for the differentiation of humans from lower animals. Even though word and phrase changes may seem random, they are implemented by human activity and as such it is hardly an activity that is not designed. While a grunt here or a whistle there may be due to happenstance, their survival has to do with a form of design by their end users as to their usefulness. The acceptance had a goal recognized by the users. Second, there is no identifiable unit of inheritance. It is a group of individuals and while they do change and the changes are often the result of an environment, there is no organized form of heredity even if one could point to a possible natural selection going on in certain instances. It is a Lamarckian system and in the 4 Dimension of Evolution, culture and the communication of information (the method of heridity) in a culture is passed on by Lamarckian processes. Use it or lose it and what the parent develops and finds useful it directly passed on to not only the offspring but fellow individuals of the culture. So language and culture do evolve but they do not do so based on any method that is applicable to biological evolution. Specifically there is no formal process of heredity. The lesson to be learned is that not all forms of change are similar in process.jerry
August 2, 2009
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BA^77 first quotation: he's wrong. Birds: Jurassic Theropods: Triassic Second quotation: that was from 1998. since then we've had numerous discoveries showing the stepwise evolution of feathers. we have already discussed thisKhan
August 2, 2009
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Though Khan (con) severely downplays the lungs of Birds this following video shows his just how misguided his lack of concern is: No Beneficial Mutations - Not By Chance - Evolution: Theory In Crisis Michael Denton - Lee Spetner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdZYguRuzn0bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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Discovery Raises New Doubts About Dinosaur-bird Links - June 2009 ----"For one thing, birds are found (many millions of years) earlier in the fossil record than the dinosaurs they are supposed to have descended from," Ruben said. "That's a pretty serious problem,"... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609092055.htm “Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.”bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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Joseph, that paper does nothing of the sort. All it does is show that dinosaurs couldn't have had air sacs that functioned in exactly the same way as birds. not many people (outside of National Geographic staff writers) were claiming this, as you can see here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0003303
We are inclined to support the latter, more conservative interpretation that pleurocoels in nonavian dinosaurs are a product of paraxial cervical air sacs and provide, at best, ambiguous evidence for intrathoracic ventilatory air sacs.
they're just saying that theropods probably had air sacs, but how they were used is unclear. this is a very minor argument in favor of theropod ancestry, so refuting it is no big deal. the protofeathers, feathers, furcula, hollow bones, incubation behavior, etc etc of theropods provide a very large body of evidence that they were bird ancestors.Khan
August 2, 2009
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Khan, "Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well.." How so, exactly?Upright BiPed
August 2, 2009
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Khan, Why a paper from 2002 when more recent data refute the premise of theropod to bird evolution?Joseph
August 2, 2009
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This might help you: It has now been demonstrated Irreducible Complexity can be mathematically quantified as functional information bits(Fits). Functional information and the emergence of bio-complexity: Robert M. Hazen, Patrick L. Griffin, James M. Carothers, and Jack W. Szostak: Abstract: Complex emergent systems of many interacting components, including complex biological systems, have the potential to perform quantifiable functions. Accordingly, we define 'functional information,' I(Ex), as a measure of system complexity. For a given system and function, x (e.g., a folded RNA sequence that binds to GTP), and degree of function, Ex (e.g., the RNA-GTP binding energy), I(Ex)= -log2 [F(Ex)], where F(Ex) is the fraction of all possible configurations of the system that possess a degree of function > Ex. Functional information, which we illustrate with letter sequences, artificial life, and biopolymers, thus represents the probability that an arbitrary configuration of a system will achieve a specific function to a specified degree. In each case we observe evidence for several distinct solutions with different maximum degrees of function, features that lead to steps in plots of information versus degree of functions. http://genetics.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/publications/Szostak_pdfs/Hazen_etal_PNAS_2007.pdf Mathematically Defining Functional Information In Molecular Biology - Kirk Durston - short video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUeCgTN7pOo Entire Durston Video: http://www.seraphmedia.org.uk/ID.xmlbornagain77
August 2, 2009
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Khan, I am surprised we agreed at all,,LOL,,, I have already outlined the test to falsify genetic entropy and semi-validate evolution ,but will do so again,,, For a broad outline of the "Fitness test", required to be passed to show a violation of the principle of Genetic Entropy, please see this following video and article: Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - "The Fitness Test" - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BwWpRSYgOE Testing the Biological Fitness of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - 2008 http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v2/n1/darwin-at-drugstore This "fitness test" fairly conclusively demonstrates "optimal information" is encoded onto a "parent" bacteria by God, and has not been added to by any "teleological" methods in the beneficial adaptations of the sub-species of bacteria. Thus the inference to Genetic Entropy, i.e. that God has not specifically moved within nature in a teleological manner to increase the functional information of a genome once He has created the parent species genome, still holds as true for the principle of Genetic Entropy. Though I am surely no expert on the math of LCI, and may be in error as to how strict the limit for conserved information now is, it seems readily apparent to me, even with Dembski's and Mark's strict definition of LCI in place, to conclusively demonstrate God has moved within nature, in a teleological manner to provide the sub-species with additional functional information over the "optimal" genome of the parent species, the "fitness test" must still be passed by the sub-species against the parent species. If the fitness test is shown to be passed, then the new molecular function, which provides the more robust survivability for the sub-species, must be calculated to its additional Functional Information Bits (Fits) it gained in the beneficial adaptation, and then be found to be greater than 140 Fits of functional information. 140 Fits is what has now been generously set by Kirk Durston as the maximum limit of Functional Information which can reasonably be expected to be generated by totally natural processes over the entire age of the universe. This fitness test, and calculation, must be done to rigorously establish materialistic processes did not generate the functional information (Fits), and to rigorously establish teleological processes were indeed involved in the increase of Functional Complexity of the beneficially adapted sub-species.bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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BA^77:
That the investigators, who adamantly contest the dino-bird link, would appeal to an earlier common ancestor only pushes the problem “under the rug” without providing any actual concrete evidence for us to investigate
for once, I agree with you. this is one of the many reasons why the anti-bird-theropod folks are not taken seriously. see here for an example: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1642/0004-8038(2003)120%5B0550%3AACCOTT%5D2.0.CO%3B2 A highlight quotation:
By offering no testable alternative to the theropod origin of birds and maintaining that the origin of birds is potentially unsolvable, Feduccia and other critics of the theropod hypothesis of avian origins reject science itself. One-sided rejections of the theropod origin reflect not on thehypothesis, but on intellectual weaknesses of the critiques.
Hmm, sounds lke that quotation could apply to ID as well..Khan
August 2, 2009
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JT, Take my response how you want, Frankly I find your practice of science ludicrous and will state the plain fact of that since that is the way it truly is. You did not, and still haven't cited any credible empirics. You have appealed to Juvenile and prenatal birds? Are you serious? Do you draw this line of reasoning from the thoroughly discredited Haeckel Embryo drawings? Then you point to "degraded" feathers of modern birds, when we know that many birds have appeared "perfect" in the fossil record and then, through a process fully in compliance with Genetic entropy, lost the ability to fly... yet this is ignored by you... That the investigators, who adamantly contest the dino-bird link, would appeal to an earlier common ancestor only pushes the problem "under the rug" without providing any actual concrete evidence for us to investigate. That you would appeal to their "authority" in the matter as experts while ignoring the actual evidence they have blatantly ignored is despicable science on yours and their part. Yet you completely agree with their shoddy methodology because of your preconceived philosophical bias that it must be so because it is so "intuitive" to you that Darwinism "MUST" be true...Excuse me Sir but the fossils are far from conducive to your intuition. As is the Big Bang!bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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BA77: This insulting well-poisoning type of discourse of yours - merely labelling things as fairy tales, invoking Dr. Suess, etc - I didn't address you that way. Speaking of which, what do you have to say in response to the fact that you previously in this thread invoked all these experts who don't believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, never once mentioning these same people believe birds and dinosaurs evolved from an earlier common ancestor. As far as the fossil record - I am not an expert on that. There seems to have been others who have addressed that in this thread. But we know there are intermediate states of feather development in prenatal and juvenile birds. Does the fossil record indicate that these intermediate states of feather development existed in the past? If not, does that mean that juvenile and prenatal birds don't have a different form of feather from adults (if no fossil record of juvenile feathers exist). And also we know there are primitive states of feathers in many modern birds (birds with feathers lacking crucial components of flight feathers.) Does the fossil record not indicate these existed in the past either? The original subject was intution as Gil Dodgen conceived it, and in his intuition apparently, we should expect fully formed complex flight feathers to appear instantaneously with no precursors whatsoever. And my point is, that that is not the intuition at all of many many reasonable people.JT
August 2, 2009
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JT stated after much hypothesizing about how a feather "could have" arisen: , "Intuition would seem to suggest that complex artifacts would emerge gradually from simpler forms, Not arise instantaneously with literally no precursors at all." Yet we have this hard empirical evidence: “Feathers are a little too perfect—that’s the problem,” notes Yale University’s Manual of Ornithology—Avian Structure and Function. Feathers give no indication that they ever needed improvement. In fact, the “earliest known fossil feather is so modern-looking as to be indistinguishable from the feathers of birds flying today.” Thus you have failed to provide any actual evidence that the feather evolved,,,But once again only quoted from a grand fairy tale about how it "could have" arisen... This is science this is not Dr. Seuss: As far as your intuition goes, the Big Bang saw the "very sudden" appearance of all time-space, matter-energy in this universe, which was semi-immediately constrained by highly irreducibly complex and "transcendent" parameters,,,Would you call this counter-intuitive? And since we know for a certain fact, at least as far as certainty can now be grasped in science, that the entire universe appeared very suddenly, why should we regard the sudden appearance of the higher taxonomic classifications of life to be such an anomaly of science when sudden appearance is what we in fact witness in the fossil record for higher taxa,,,with the Cambrian Explosion being a prime example of this pattern? Should we continue to deny the hard facts clearly presented by the fossil record by appealing to fairy tales, as you have done, or should we not more properly start to ask the tough questions which true science is not afraid to ask?bornagain77
August 2, 2009
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[from OP:]
Intuition suggests that step-by-tiny-step Darwinian gradualism could not have happened, because the intermediates would not be viable. A lizard with proto-feathers on its forelimbs would be a lousy aviator and an equally incompetent runner. We find no such creatures in the fossil record, for obvious reasons.
Just a layman's informal take on the subject: As is pointed out in the link "Evolution of the Morphological Innovations of Feathers" provided by Khan, down feathers are feathers lacking barbules at the tips. So we see that an "incomplete" feather is very adept at the function of insulation. Add one small ingredient to this "incomplete" feather and it becomes adept at a completely different function. As someone has already pointed out in this thread [55], there are an endless array of flightless birds in existence today. And there is an endless array of feather types among such birds having nothing to do with flight. Some of them have "feathers" lacking everything but the central quill. Consider the bizarre dinosaur-like "bird" the cassowary. What is revealing to me is the following: The consensus in evolutionary biology is that wings did not evolve originally for the purpose of flight. However there is also a consensus that today's flightless birds evolved from birds with the ability to fly. This would seem to indicate an intellectual honesty at the core of evolutionary thought, as how convenient would it be to conclude that today's flightless birds were the original birds, given that the theory is that feather's were not originally used for flight. But on the subject of partial functionality, consider a recipe instruction "add two eggs". Is such an instruction worthless on its own? Now take some random complete recipe and throw the instruction "add two eggs" into it. Is it a given that such an instruction will ruin it? Isn't there some small percentage of recipes where such an addition might in fact be an interesting improvement, (even though possibly taking the recipe in a radically different direction) And as far as the preservation and propagation of such a new instruction in a recipe, what if it were a misprint in a book gone to the publisher, but people liked it anyway? And to BA77, those in academia arguing that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs believe that both dinosaurs and birds evolved from an earlier ancestor. To me, God would be intrinsic in the concept of what is viable. Just a few quotes from the link mentioned above:
The tubular feather germ creates an appendage that can grow out of and emerge from the skin without actually increasing the size of the skin itself. With the evolution of periodic pulp caps, the tubular epidermal appendage can continue to grow without continued expansion of the dermal pulp. This proliferative capacity of tubular organization likely provided the first, initial selection advantage to the first feathers and led to the evolutionary fixation and proliferation of these structures around the body...
How has the tubular organization of the feather germ and follicle contributed to the evolution of innovation in feather diversity? Like the tubular bauplan of the ancestral, triploblastic, bilaterian metazoan, the tubular organization of the feather germ has fostered the evolution of morphological diversity and innovation by providing multiple axes over which differentiation can be organized, and morphogenesis can occur (Fig. 3)...
A striking feature of feather morphology is the hierarchical modularity of feather components and their development (Prum and Dyck, 2003). Morphological modules are serially homologous (or homonomous) replicate morphological entities within the phenotype (Raff, ’96). Recently, mor- phological modularity has been causally associated with the evolutionary origin of diversity because modular components provide opportunities for independence, covariation, and interaction among modules (Mu¨ller and Wagner, ’91; Raff, ’96). Independence of modules provides opportunities for diversification among replicate entities within the phenotype...
This hierarchical modularity spoken of above would also seem to be apparent in words and sentences of human langauages, so that if functionality is defined as a valid english word for example, you can start with the valid english word 'a' and adding one or two letters randomly at a time and only preserving valid english words, get extremely long valid english words in very short order. (The game of Scrabble is dependent on this principle). Similarly longer and longer valid english phrases and sentences can be built up by randomly adding words to a phrase and only preserving what is valid in English.) But to return to the original quote regarding intuition - Intuition would seem to suggest that complex artifacts would emerge gradually from simpler forms, Not arise instantaneously with literally no precursors at all.JT
August 2, 2009
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Gil, I used to do research in a couple different areas and would get doctoral dissertations and master's thesis from a couple different places. They would catalog them both and if the title seemed appropriate I would buy them. So I ended up with some obscure master's thesis' and dissertations in my possession since they were listed on the net. This was prior to google and at the beginning when search engines were just forming. So I assume there are more elaborate and thorough mechanisms for finding these documents now. For some if they sell a dissertation or thesis, the author is supposed to get a small cut.jerry
August 2, 2009
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It may be that the bot retrieved the entry from the Library of Congress, which in turn received it from Washington State. ("Data comes from Amazon, Library of Congress, and users like you.")Diffaxial
August 1, 2009
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(I gather WordPress doesn't wrap long strings.)Diffaxial
August 1, 2009
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Gil @ 121:
Here is what I would like to know: To the best of my knowledge, there are only two copies of my Masters thesis — one in my personal library and one in the library archives at Washington State University. How did this end up on the Internet? http://openlibrary.org/b/OL167.....pe%CC%81ry
There is a "History" tab that indicates that Open Library uses a bot to retrieve MARC (machine readable cataloguing) entries. Your thesis catalog entry was retrieved from Washington State on 9/25/08. The apparent cover image is the same for all Open Library entries (i.e. isn't a scan.) Click on "View MARC" for more. Using the suggested curl command at the OS X terminal returns: 00855nam a2200265r 45000010009000000050017000090080041000260350017000670400023000841000031001072450112001382600010002503000014002605020049002745040027003235900054003506000045004049070025004499020011004749980026004859070015005119400011005269450026005379450026005632972286219950727074552.4 s1977 wau b 000 0bfre d aWSU000601934 aWaPScWaOLNdWaOLN1 aDodgen, Gilbert K.,d1950-10aAntonine de Saint-Exupéry :ble vol, le risque, et l'homme dans le monde moderne /cby Gilbert K. Dodgen. c1977. avi, 42 l. aThesis (M.A.) - Washington State University. aBibliography: leaf 42. aWSU:"Dept. of Foreign Languages and Literatures".10aSaint-Exupéry, Antoine de,d1900-1944. a.b1902664xbmultic- a000818 b2c950717dmeaf-g0 a.b1902664x lWClWH lwhs aWSU F6 1977 D6 lwc aWSU F6 1977 D6Diffaxial
August 1, 2009
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bornagain77, ------"Since you were so nice to provide me a darwinian fairy tale to read before bedtime Khan..." Fairy tales keep getting a bad rap by always being compared to Darwinism. We shouldn't be so mean to fairy tales, they at least contain some truth. :)Clive Hayden
July 31, 2009
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Completely and totally off-topic: From time to time I Google my name to check out the latest vitriol and abject hatred directed at me by Darwinists. I was amazed to discover that there is a reference to my Masters thesis, written in French in 1977, about the great French aviation pioneer and author, Antoine de Saint Exupéry. His best known work is The Little Prince. At that time I was pursuing degrees in music and foreign language and literature, and building and flying hang gliders on the weekends. Saint Exupéry was an inspiration, for obvious reasons, so I read his entire opus in French and wrote my thesis on his life and literature. Here is what I would like to know: To the best of my knowledge, there are only two copies of my Masters thesis -- one in my personal library and one in the library archives at Washington State University. How did this end up on the Internet? http://openlibrary.org/b/OL16750205M/Antonine-de-Saint-Exupe%CC%81ry Here's a link about Saint Exupéry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_de_Saint_Exup%C3%A9ryGilDodgen
July 31, 2009
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Here's one more link that might be of interest: http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/2/2008/07/21/another_reason_why_darwinism_is_wrong_naGilDodgen
July 31, 2009
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Hey Khan, How about explaining this piece of evidence: We now have concrete evidence for life suddenly appearing on earth, as soon as water appeared on the earth, in the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth. Scientific Evidence For The First Life On Earth - video http://science.discovery.com/videos/the-planets-life-earliest-evidence.html Dr. Hugh Ross - Origin Of Life Paradox - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHEl9PZW4hc Materialists have tried to get around this crushing evidence for the sudden appearance of life by suggesting life could originate in extreme conditions. Yet they are betrayed again by empirical evidence: Refutation Of Hyperthermophile Origin Of Life scenario Excerpt: While life, if appropriately designed, can survive under extreme physical and chemical conditions, it cannot originate under those conditions. High temperatures are especially catastrophic for evolutionary models. The higher the temperature climbs, the shorter the half-life for all the crucial building block molecules,,, http://www.reasons.org/LateHeavyBombardmentIntensityandtheOriginofLifebornagain77
July 31, 2009
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Here's a link, relevant to the conversation: http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2009-07-31T14_27_12-07_00GilDodgen
July 31, 2009
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Joseph, Ok, then show me one other paper (besides the one you always link to) showing evidence that bacteria are derived from euks.Khan
July 31, 2009
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Khan:
you think one study showing one result is as good as 1000 showing the opposite, in 100 different ways.
More bald accusations. You must be very proud of yourself for getting to tell other people their position.Joseph
July 31, 2009
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Since you were so nice to provide me a darwinian fairy tale to read before bedtime Khan, the least I can do is let you see the latest video I loaded on youtube: Human Evolution - Bones Of Contention - Dr. Marc Surtees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu-i2dKilSQbornagain77
July 31, 2009
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