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The Missing Link in Bird Evolution Has Been Found!
| June 15, 2006 | Posted by GilDodgen under Intelligent Design |
I’m suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199695,00.html
Those of us with room-temperature IQs are perpetually assured that there is overwhelming evidence for Darwinian gradualism in the fossil record. So, after reading the news release linked above, I asked myself, “Self, why is this big news?”
I guess I just don’t get it. Why has the missing link in bird evolution just been found, when I have been assured for years that there is overwhelming evidence in the fossil record that the enigma of bird evolution was already solved?
Sigh. I’m apparently too stupid to understand Darwinian logic.
39 Responses to The Missing Link in Bird Evolution Has Been Found!
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DS,
Your definition of important science seems to include only science that has a currently knowable and specific practical benefit to humanity rather than simply the satisfaction of answering a question. However, time and time again, important science according to your definition has been pursued without a direct connection to practical application.
Do you think Albert Einstein pursued relativity because he thought that one day we could harness this work for nuclear power ?
This comment shows that you do not have a serious view of how science works. Applied science, maybe, but not basic science.
Fair enough. I’ll give you an opportunity to present examples of practical value in any fossils from many millions of years ago. Have at it. -ds
Two comments:
For kvwells, if you are suggesting that SETI is rooted in propaganda, why then do proponents of ID turn to it for support?
http://www.uncommondescent.com.....chives/541
For DS, if paleontology (fossil collecting) is a “harmless hobby,” then why devote such effort to marginalize this news report? And why so many comments from both sides of the argument? It seems to me that if paleontology were as trivial as you assert, no one would bother to report on it at all (have you recently seen any news stories about new discoveries in phrenology?)
In addition, by claiming as “good science” research into a cure for avian flu and improved egg laying (I agree with you on both counts), doesn’t it stand to reason that the genetic makeup and history of birds would be essential to that research? While this discovery isn’t “proof” of anything on its own, it is a critical piece of learning the evolution of birds and thereby will enable us to make more accurate predictions about the behavior of a bird disease.
I would like you or any other proponent of ID to describe, in detail, how ID would address the problem of Avian Flu, based on the assumption that birds were “designed” at some point in the past much as they are today, do enlighten me.
Leo S
For DS, if paleontology (fossil collecting) is a “harmless hobby,” then why devote such effort to marginalize this news report?
Such effort? I spent 60 seconds on it. You must mean such little effort.
It seems to me that if paleontology were as trivial as you assert, no one would bother to report on it at all
Filler
doesn’t it stand to reason that the genetic makeup and history of birds would be essential to that research?
Not one tiny bit.
it is a critical piece of learning the evolution of birds and thereby will enable us to make more accurate predictions about the behavior of a bird disease.
You can’t be serious.
I would like you or any other proponent of ID to describe, in detail, how ID would address the problem of Avian Flu, based on the assumption that birds were “designed” at some point in the past much as they are today, do enlighten me.
Straw man. How on earth did you ever get out of moderation? No matter, you’re back now. Addendum for GCT at ATBC: It’s a straw man because ID does not speak to virology. Duh. -ds
“This is total nonsense. This adds very important information about the evolution of birds. If you are not interested in the evolution of birds, then you might say that this contribute little. However, many people are curious about bird evolution, scientists and laymen alike, and to them, this is very interesting.” – ftrp11
Perhaps it is interesting to experts and fossil hobbyists that birds have basically been birds for 100 million years. But the tone of the article implies the opposite about bird evolution. That’s why someone said this article belongs in a dusty science journal, not a popular publication or media outlet.
Avian evolution is a powerfully disconfirming challenge to Darwinian speculation on many levels. Michael Denton, in his first book, “Evolution, A Theory in Crisis,” devotes a great deal of prose and evidence to the problem of evolving the avian lung, which is a continuous-flow, circulatory respiratory system, as opposed to the bellows-type respiratory system of its presumed reptilian evolutionary ancestors.
There is no conceivable gradualistic pathway between these two types of respiratory systems that would not guarantee the immediate death of a transitional form. Denton identified (IDed) irreducible complexity at a high level before Behe identified it at a low level. Life is irreducibly complex from top to bottom, and in every detail.
An then there are the complexities of flight. Everything (muscles, feathers, reprogramming of the central nervous system for flight control) must be modified simultaneously if transitional forms are not going to crash and burn in the process, and therefor leave no offspring.
Was all of this engineered by cosmic rays zapping nucleotides in the DNA molecule, or by genetic copying errors?
The Darwinian proposition as an explanation for all of this is absurdity, raised to a very large power.
RE:#32 “it is a critical piece of learning the evolution of birds and thereby will enable us to make more accurate predictions about the behavior of a bird disease”
Trying to analyze biological systems on the basis of the TOE has sidetracked medical research more than a few times. Consider the many so-called vestigial organs that have been found to have important functions. Supposedly evolution would leave in its wake tissues and organs that once served a purpose but no longer are useful and may be removed safely. That prediction of evolution didn’t work out too well. I don’t hear scientists talking about vestigial organs any longer so hopefully such an interpretation of evolution is out of vogue. On the other hand, had researchers understood that the organ was designed that way, they might have been more inclined to discover its purpose.
Quoting from “Coming to Peace with Biology.” Darryl Falk 2004
“Biologists believe that there were hundreds (perhaps thousands) of similar species that existed between 100 and 200 million years ago, and most would have been members of little side branches. Perhaps even one day somebody will discover a fossil of a species that REALLY WAS in the direct lineage to birds”
“…On the other hand, had researchers understood that the organ was designed that way, they might have been more inclined to discover its purpose.”
Comment by garyj  June 16, 2006 @ 8:58 pm
Gary, are you arguing that NDE is a “science stopper”?
Gil, you summed it up perfectly in comment #34.
Well put.
DS,
1) http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/ONeill.html
2) Even if there was no presently known application, this has little to do with whether it is science or not.
I seem to have touched a nerve. Fossil collecting is at best a harmless hobby. What you found above is commonly called “the exception that proves the rule”. Thanks for playing. It was brave of you to try for surely you knew I was right all along. Addendum for GCT at ATBC: The given example is a practical application for oil drilling in being able to easily date some strata with quick microscopic examination of the drill tailings. The subject of this article is a bird fossil and the practical application was in modern biology. Please explain how bird fossils millions of years old have any practical application that would vault their collection from harmless hobby into worthwhile science. Good luck. -ds