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Whale Evolution vs. The Fossil Record: The Video
| October 25, 2011 | Posted by Jonathan M under Intelligent Design |
206 Responses to Whale Evolution vs. The Fossil Record: The Video
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notes:
As for ‘vestigial legs’; It turns out the leftover ‘vestigial legs’ are really very functional pelvic bones instead:
The time for the supposed transition of whales, from some four legged creature, has now been dramatically shortened;
It seems the entire argument for inferring the supposed fossil sequence for whale evolution, in the fossil record, is primarily based on the erroneous readings of ‘bone homology’, or bone similarity, between different species. Yet this entire line of reasoning, for establishing scientific certainty for any proposed evolutionary sequence of fossils, is anything but ‘certain’, as this following video and quote clearly point out:
Here is a cool animated video showing a sperm whale using ‘designed’ echolocation to hunt a giant squid:
Moreover, identical forms of echolocation show up in widely divergent species from whales. This finding is unexpected from an evolutionary perspective, yet this finding is exactly what we would expect to find from presupposing a Creator to reuse optimal designs:
This following videos and articles take a honest look at just what Darwinian evolutionists are up against to satisfactorily explain supposed whale evolution from a scientific point of view:
Dont forget the supposed webbing that darwinist cartoonists drew on ambulocetus to help it look like a champion swimmer.
http://www.trueauthority.com/cvse/whale.htm
“”Ambulocetus (49 million years ago)
Of all the supposed whale transitions, ambulocetus is probably the most well known. It is often depicted as an animal that is adapted to living on land and in the water. Of course, just like pakicetus, the artistic reconstructions of ambulocetus go beyond what the fossil findings justify.
The ambulocetus remains that have been discovered are much more complete than the first findings of pakicetus; however, crucial parts of the animal still have not been discovered. For example, the pelvic girdle has not been found.[7] Without this, there is really no way of telling how the creature moved. This, however, does not stop evolutionists from using artistic manipulations to make ambulocetus look like it is a transitional form.
Very often, popular science journals, such as National Geographic, have depicted ambulocetus as being very transitional-like by giving the creature webbed feet.[8] This is another place where the reader must be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. Soft tissue rarely ever gets preserved, and the ambulocetus remains are no exception. In other words, all we have are the bones. There is no evidence that the creature had webbed feet other than in the imagination of the evolutionists.”"
Now that we have a whale fossil at 49 million years ago, this kind of puts a cramp on things for evolutionists as far as ambulocetus being a transitional whale .
Whats incredible is that we are not being taught this in schools. Is this science?
WS43,
Well, and? Does not really support ID in any conceivable way shape or form wherever it ends up being placed.
BA77
So write a paper! Prove them thair experts to be wrong-uns.
Note that this is all about what descended from what – it is not about ID. So, JonathanM/BA77/wallstreeter43, if you don’t think whales were descended from land animals what do you think they were descended from? Or do you think they appeared fully formed in the ocean one day?
kelly did you even watch the video to see what dim dare experts said???
Wow, that was one of the funniest pieces of Creationist propaganda I’ve seen in some time. Not quite in the same category as Ray Comfort’s “Bananas are the Atheist’s Worse Nightmare”, but close.
I particularly liked the part about how modern scientists can’t decide which modern animal whales descended from, and the part where the moderator drones on about “the fins and tail had to arise by accident, the blowhole had to move by chance, etc.
Keep that positive evidence for ID coming!
But it is by accident. Natural selection can only act on whatever random mutations (or whatever) produce.
And whales may have not descended from anything modern, but they would have had to come from something similar to modern land mammals.
bbigej,
No, rather there is no conscious intent behind it.
markf you ask;
markf, Since it is now completely accepted science that the entire universe suddenly appeared ‘out of nowhere’ in the Big Bang, then why should it be considered incredible by you that anything within the universe should originate suddenly?. To clearly illustrate this point, let’s remember Boltzmann’s Brain;
markf, before you say that is just Physicists and Mathematicians arguing hypotheticals, and no ‘serious’ Darwinian scientist believes in such things, Eugene Koonin himself has postulated such ‘sudden appearance’ of life;
Besides it not being scientifically ‘impossible’ for such sudden appearance of life to happen on earth, the fossil record certainly gives very strong impression that this is exactly what has happened on earth, numerous times:
First life:
Cambrian Explosion:
subsequent life:
Here are some quotes by leading paleontologists on the true state of the fossil record:
Music and Verse
This is a really interesting statement Kelly. I wonder, was there a conscious intent behind you writing this.
If so, please account for the evolution of your ability to have a conscious intent. Or is that just an illusion.
See you have a big problem there. The modern theory of evolution is that life evolved by only “natural” causes. i.e. things which follow directly by necessity from physical law or occur randomly by “stochastic” processes. There exists currently no way to account for a conscious act. You can deceive yourself and hold onto your evolutionary perspective by calling consciousness an “emergent” property. This is not science, this is just hiding a problem by inventing a new term. I wish all people who believe life originated by chance would admit this contradiction, and drop their silly beliefs, but the power of self-deception is very strong.
JDH,
Inbetween that statement and your next one:
I think you forgot to put in how those two points are linked.
Like FCSI? or CSI? Or SCI? or dFSCI? or dFCSI perhaps?
There’s no need to explain the link between the two, unless you really want to. I already know what you are going to say! And the funny thing is that I’m supposed to be the predictable one here, as you have your designer gifted free will.
Indeed it is, indeed it is.
Evolution is not the same as consciousness. They are two completely different things. We know what evolution is, we don’t know what consciousness is.
Good job they got noted palaeontologist Duane Gish in to add some much needed gravitas.
That’s that then. Evolution binned by logic straight outta Dumbo
further notes:
We now have conclusive evidence that a non-local, beyond space-time mass-energy, cause had a direct hand in ‘designing life’:
Moreover, we now have evidence that a non-local, beyond space-time mass-energy, cause is responsible for ‘feeding’ all life on earth, since Photosynthesis is found to be achieved through ‘non-local’, beyond space-time mass-energy, quantum entanglement, and since all higher lifeforms on earth are eventually dependent on that photosynthesis to give them energy from their food for survival i.e. Higher life on earth is completely dependent on a ‘non-local’ cause for the ‘energy’ in which to life life on this earth:
Verse and music:
DrBot
FOUL!!! You can not say evolution has nothing to do with consciousness. The standard model of evolution demands that evolution be able to account for consciousness.
Let’s consider the possibilities.
1. Evolution of man occurred with no divine intent, but divine intervention created consciousness.
2. Evolution of man occurred with no divine intent, and the consciousness evolved.
I don’t think you are saying that number 1 is an acceptable solution to you. I have never read any article by any evolutionist that says so. Show me the article that says – “We believe evolution created animals by random chance – but we admit the evolution of human consciousness shows the unmistakable fingerprints of divine intervention.” It does not exist. They all hope that someday, some theory will be able to account for consciousness. They don’t realize that a simple look at probability space for the simplest of activities ( such as typing this response ) combined with the finite time of the universe, precludes evolution being able to account for conscious activity.
Sorry, evolution as proposed is an all or nothing theory. Either…
1. Everything emerged by chance. Self-Replicating Molecule -> DNA or DNA precursor -> Living Cell -> Multicellular Creatures -> Man and Consciouness -> Man-made structures including buildings, bridges, computers, rockets, and the internet.
2. Or Divine intervention entered in somewhere.
The problem for evolutionists is if Divine Intervention entered the process anywhere, it is the most reasonable that Divine intervention was prevalent throughout the whole process.
So your statement that evolution is different from consciousness although technically correct is not true in this context. The existence of consciousness falsifies the theory of evolution as an undirected process. IF you really applied some basic thinking and mathematics to the situation, you would realize this is true. But you can’t admit that. So you make assertions like the above so you don’t have to answer to the obvious.
See above reply to DrBot
The Incorrigible Dr. Berlinski Exposes a Whale of Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v....._embedded#!
Really? A young-earth creationist video from, I suspect, the 1990s, featuring Duane Gish? A video which can’t be bothered to point out that Darwin removed his bear/whale hypothesis from the Origin, that can’t be bothered to note that the mesonychid hypothesis (that’s what the hyena & carnivore-type “ancestors” were about) is decades old and Ambulocetus (and the modern hippo) are universally acknowledged to be closer relatives of the ancestor of whales, although mesonychids are still relatively close? A video that ignores natural selection and pretends that evolution says that the whole thing happened by chance (and, I’m quite sure, is quote-mining Bill Clemmons, a guy in my department, who is very likely talking about the chance process of fossilization, not saying that all of evolution is purely a matter of chance.
BTW – is the reply I gave to DrBot what you thought I would say?
If the truth is so clearly on your side, why the fierce rhetoric? This is why I’m skeptical of the claims of evangelical Darwinists–they obviously are emotionally invested in a scientific theory, and that leads me to question their objectivity. (Of course the same can be said for creationists/ID proponents).
bbigej
Because the non-stop willful dishonesty of the Creationist leadership rubs many in the scientific community the wrong way. It costs real time and real money to respond to this sort of trash-science propaganda, resources that could be much better spent on productive areas like research.
Nick you meant this Ambulocetus mentioned by Wallstreet in post #2 ???
As well Nick it is funny that you focused on Duane Gish, solely to belittle him, when, by far, the main dish of the video was when Philip Gingerich, a paleontologist and acknowledged world a leading expert in the evolution of whales, who indeed discovered Rodhocetus itself, admitted that the tail and flippers, which were, and are, displayed in textbook and museum drawings all over the country, are completely non-existent
http://darwiniana.org/whale1.gif
.,, Now Nick, when I see such unrepentant dogmatism from you for promoting whale evolution, with no real evidence to do it with, in the face of such clear evidence that neo-Darwinists are, and have been, severely misleading the public, it makes me think that a particular mammal, named Nick Matzke, severely needs to make his own journey to the water to have his own personal ‘life transforming experience’ within that water;
Ginob yes it must have cost alot of time to pay those evolutionary artists and cartoonists to draw those webbings on ambulocetus. I was a hugeeee fan of the walking with DVD series because I truely believed neo-Darwinian theory to be true to the point that I thought what these biologists were saying was true. I still remember watching in awe as I viewed ambulocetus swimming like a pro with his webbed feet on walking with mammals.
I wonder how much money it will take to make that newly found 49 million year whale fossil go away. Shhh let’s not tell anyone that this whale was on the earth at the same time as ambulocetus. It will be our little secret .
It is deceptions like the example above and others that that drew me away from my theistic evolutionary leanings and lead me to intelligent design. My other fellow Catholics are still stuck there but it’s just a matter of time before they switch over also.
I hate to be deceived and when I find out about the deception I’ll never trust that source again.
Let’s not forget the money it costs them at the 1980 Chicago conference of introducing punctuated equilibrium because the evolutionary biologists couldn’t extrapolate macro evolution from micro evolution, so they substituted one theory with no evidence to back it up with another. It feels like my eyes are opening up in ways I never imagined a few years back.
wallstreeter43
Psst…here’s a few more little secrets:
1. Scientific interpretations are always provisional and subject to the introduction of new evidence.
2. The new 49MYO specimen doesn’t affect all the other evidence for the common descent of cetaceans from terrestrial animals even one iota. All it does is add to our knowledge that there were other side branches in the cetacean tree that existed in the same general time frame.
I’m sure since your Bible is perfect and infallible you’re not familiar with the concept of science being a self-correcting enterprise.
Here’s an idea! Maybe you could give us the ID explanation for all the fossil and genetic evidence associated with cetaceans. While you’re at it you could also give the ID explanation for why whales and dolphins are occasionally found with atavistic hind limbs.
Have at it!
wallstreeter43, I’m sure you’re willing and able to give us the ID explanation for the temporal distribution of fossils in the fossil record. The ID explanation for why some lineages show gradual transitions and others show punctuated equilibrium.
Evolution explains it because rates of evolution are not constant but track environmental changes – long periods of a slowly changing environment gives slow gradual changes, stability followed by a rapid environmental change gives punk eek.
But you know more than all the crooked lying evolutionary biologists and paleontologists, so let’s hear the true ID explanation.
Wow so ambulocetus and that 49 million year old whale both were ancestors of the modern whale. This is a truely amazing feat of engineering magic. It’s also amazing that when we are talking about the lack of evidence for transitional forms that you veer off topic into the bible. Gino maybe you can allow nothing but these results into your worldview but I am allowed to believe in evolution if I chose to. As is said I was believer in evolution until 2 years back.
The more you veer off topic in this way the more I feel that evolutionists have something to hide. Gino I would advise you to petition those very scientifically honest materialistic evolutionists that helped in the production of those walking with mammal DVDs and have them budget for a new DVD that includes all of those new provisions we have found and include them in their next DVD. Let’s see if they are honest enough to talk to the public about this, to the point of saying that macro evolution hasn’t been observed and isn’t a fact.
wallstreeter43
Let’s see if you are honest enough to give your own explanation of where whales came from as GinoB keeps asking. Or to put in crudely – have you got a better explanation?
This YEC creationist is positive and desires marine mammals to be indeed land creatures who adapted to empty post flood seas.
Evolution picks marines mammals because they have a good case.
Rather a case for a mammal becoming a sea creature. nOt evolution as such.
The vestigial legs being used for breeding doesn’t mean they were not first legs.
Being so stuck in the water they the help. I think females have the same thing but not sure.
Why ID and YEC can’t these air- breathing, active, milking, smarter, vestigial bones critters simply be a special case of adaptation ??
They don’t make the evolutionary case but rather a case against evolution.
If they use whales and vestigial bits to prove evolution then surely the complete lack of vestigial bits in everything else makes a greater case against evolution by the odds.
Is it not possible the very unique breathing marine creatures are special cases of change.??
Seals probably are related to bears.
Why not?
Could there not be powerful mechanisms in biology to account for great change?
People changed!
Evolutionists and creationists need to come up for air on defining the origins of biology based on a few rare cases.
Marine mammals are very unique and not a sample for evolution.
So should not be a target in fighting evolution.
Just a special case. Bats too.
markf:
“Let’s see if you are honest enough to give your own explanation of where whales came from as GinoB keeps asking. Or to put in crudely – have you got a better explanation?”
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Classic – “Burden Shift”
The Atheist/Evolutionist has no clear rational answers for the crackpot storytelling of a mythical creature other than what ever the artists conception or cartoony movie pimped off as science says it is. However, to be totally fair, the same problem of origins exists for I.D. and Creationism because no one was actually there. This is also born out in Job chapters 38-41 where Job was being corrected by God because he was feeling a little self-righteous about himself and why God allowed the test. The common theme in that conversation over and over again was:
“Where were you when . . . . ”
What is on Intelligent Design’s side is logical scientific inference. The subject above in question is the kooky way Fables and Myths are blindly accepted on whale origins without ANY questionings by the so-called intellectually elites here who simply take it on blind faith.
And why is that ??? Because they’ve got accountability issues and resentment of definitions of morality and that is not what the subject is about. Why else would what would be considered otherwise intelligent people with all those Phds believing in something that has it’s explanation in nothing more than their own version of Grimms Fairytales or more accurately something Captain Kirk would find in Science-Fiction ??? That has always been the number one motive behind this dogma. Trip on over to the perverted vulgar cesspit forum where most of these sock puppets reside(and they proudly admit what their time wasting intent is over there) and take a read at what most of their writings reveal in a thread created specifically for demonizing and scrutinizing every utterance ever posted on this blog. Of course you’ll want to take a toxic waste decontamination shower afterwards, so maybe it’s not a good idea to visit after all.
So the failed so-called hard core science pimped off as facts in the glaring light of no evidence other than creative misuse of imagination by abused intelligent minds is what we are left with.
You can always tell they have NOTHING when they backslide into “Burden Shift” default mode
Unlike ID, which clearly states facts, such as the fact that some unspecified entity having unspecified capabilities did some unspecified things at unspecified times for unspecified reasons using unspecified methods.
Prove me wrong.
Robert Beyers:
“Evolutionists and creationists need to come up for air on defining the origins of biology based on a few rare cases.”
====
As time goes on more and more evidence is condemning their side’s stand on what constitutes evidence. Hence we get those notorious crackpot definition shell games of common sense terms/words which have always been well established for decades, but in the light of their personal failures to provide proof for anything, they have need of being argued against even if they come off as complete imbeciles in the process. That’s why creating newer and newer sock-puppets and hunting in forum wolfpacks should be considered nothing more than another lame losing survival strategy.
Petrushka:
“Prove me wrong”
====
ROFLMAO!!!
I don’t have to, you just did it to yourself – AGAIN! LOL
Cetacean hind limbs are just old, unused FINS and there isn’t any evidence that a fully terrestrial mammal can “evolve” into a fully aquatic mammal. That means your claim of “fossil and genetic” evidence is totally misleading.
Yaeh and MAYBE someday your position will have some research that supports your position!But until then do keep those promissory notes a comin’….
BA77: “markf, Since it is now completely accepted science that the entire universe suddenly appeared ‘out of nowhere’ in the Big Bang, then why should it be considered incredible by you that anything within the universe should originate suddenly?. To clearly illustrate this point, let’s remember Boltzmann’s Brain;
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010
For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain
“The Boltzmann brain paradox is that it is more likely that a brain randomly forms out of the chaos with false memories of its life than that the universe around us would have billions of self-aware brains. The rationale behind this being paradoxical is that, out of chaos, it is more likely for one instance of a complex structure to arise than for many instances of that thing to arise.
This ignores the possibility that the probability of a universe in which a brain pops into existence, without any prior mechanism driving towards its creation, may be dwarfed by the probability of a universe in which there are active mechanisms which lead to processes of development which (given a starting state that is unlikely but not as unlikely as the spontaneous appearance of a brain with no precursor) offer a reasonable probability of producing a species such as ourselves.
In a universe of the latter kind, the scenarios in which a brain can arise are naturally prone to produce many such brains, so the large number of such brains is an incidental detail.”
All of the multiverse theories provide mechanisms for generating universes, which makes the probability of universes being created 1. And of course, our universe is such a type as to support evolution which is just such a theory that will produce billions of brains.
This type of gaffe bodes ill for The King’s College which has just made Bruce L. Gordon an Associate Professor of Science and Mathematics.
Nick:
Umm natural selection is not a magical ratchet, it does nothing- no selecting- and in the end whatever survives to reproduce, survives to reproduce.
wallstreeter43:
Clearly not. However, ambulocetus and “that 49 million year old whale” clearly had a land-dwelling common ancestor, as do modern whales. Which of the two, if either, were direct ancestors of the modern whale has yet to be determined, but it will be interesting to see what further investigation reveals.
Eocene:
The way the scientific method works, for better or worse, is that the onus is on the person proposing an explanatory model to show that their model explains the data better than some alternative model.
ID is not an explanatory model. To be an explanatory model it would have to make differential predictions. “An Intelligent Designer did it”, without any constraints on the design or fabrication methods of the designer makes no differential predictions, so it is not an explanatory model. A model that can explain anything explains nothing.
If you want to shift the burden to evolutionary biologists, you need to present a model that explains the data better than current evolutionary models.
Merely claiming that current evolutionary models do not explain all the data does not support ID.
And I have to say, the argument that whales didn’t descend from land dwelling animals is so weak, that ID would be stronger without it.
Why do you think that early whales had legs?
Elizabeth:
Nice bald assertion.
Your position is not an explanatory model- your position does not make any predictions at all- “the blind watchmaker didit”, without any evidence is not an explanation.
And BTW in order to even consider a design inference we must first eliminate your position! So eliminating your position does indeed support ID.
And early whales did not have legs.
Evos want to know ID’s explanation for whales as in how does ID explain their existence-
Well the ONLY honest answer ANYONE can give (evos included) is “We do not know”
No. Science is absolutely dependent on precise definitions. If you want to test the truth of a scientific claim you need to know the definition being used by the claimant. This is not a “shell game”, and equivocating between “common sense” usages and a specific scientific usage is just that, equivocating, and is likely to result in a fallacious inference.
While there are many very smart people on this board, I repeatedly find fundamental misunderstandings both of evolutionary claims and of scientific methodology – and, indeed, of the nature of scientific claims.
I’d like to make two points:
First is that, whatever you read, or think you read, by any so-called “evolutionists” that suggests to you that “evolutionists” think they have “proved” that Darwin was correct, or that ID is incorrect, is wrong. Evolutionary theory is a model, constantly subject to revision in the light of new data. However well-supported current evolutionary theory is, it cannot rule out the possibility that an Intelligent Designer was or is involved in the creation and/or evolution of life. All it can do is offer model mechanisms that provide good accounts of why we observe what we do, and test those models by deriving testable predictions that are then tested against new data.
Second: ID is not an alternative theory to current evolutionary models. It explains nothing, simply because “an ID” could explain anything. It may be true, but it is not an explanatory theory. Claims for ID that are based on probability calculations are completely fallacious, because none of those calculations are based on any theory-driven or data-based estimate of the probability distribution of any alternative explanation. “Chance” is no more an explanation than “ID” is. The choice is not between “an ID did it” or “Chance did it”, but between current evolutionary theory, which accounts for the data pretty well, and some alternative, as yet unarticulated, theory.
It’s a “bald assertion” Joseph simply because I cannot be bothered, at this moment, to reference the copious evidence that whales are descended from land-dwelling artiodactyls.
And yes, evolutionary theory makes copious testable predictions that have been copiously tested. Saying it didn’t and TINAE that evolutionary theory has no evidence to support it doesn’t make it true.
And no, you don’t need to “eliminate [our] position” to consider a design inference. Moreover, eliminating our position wouldn’t allow you to make a design inference. If you want to make a design inference you have to propose a testable design hypothesis.
Ambulocetus had legs. I guess you are saying it wasn’t an early whale. I guess I think you are ignoring a heck of a lot of evidence.
Liddle:
“ID is not an explanatory model. To be an explanatory model it would have to make differential predictions. “An Intelligent Designer did it”, without any constraints on the design or fabrication methods of the designer makes no differential predictions, so it is not an explanatory model. A model that can explain anything explains nothing.”
====
What part of my post where I said:
“However, to be totally fair, the same problem of origins exists for I.D. and Creationism because no one was actually there.”
didn’t you actually get ???
—-
Liddle:
“The way the scientific method works, for better or worse, is that the onus is on the person proposing an explanatory model to show that their model explains the data better than some alternative model.”
====
Except I don’t have your particular ‘eye of faith’ to believe what the cartoonist philosophers are trying to preach and teach.
—-
Liddle:
“If you want to shift the burden to evolutionary biologists, you need to present a model that explains the data better than current evolutionary models.”
====
I’m not burden shifting anything. The subject is the crackpot Warner Brothers Cartoon presented as evidence. The mythical creatures invented by the minds of biological philosophers don’t work for me. There are way too many problems presented as has in the past been mentioned by Berlinkski, which by the way he doesn’t necessarily mind if there is actually evidence, it’s simply that the lame RomperRoom approach they are trying to shove down everyone’s throat just doesn’t work.
—-
Liddle:
“Merely claiming that current evolutionary models do not explain all the data does not support ID.”
====
Let’s be honest, the model above is nothing more than a cartoon and somebody else’s wet dream of an imaginary religious vision of what they want to read into what is nothing more than fossil tea leaves. Again, I don’t have your ‘eye of faith’ to believe in evolution by some oddball cartoony pseudo-evidence.
—-
Liddle:
“Why do you think that early whales had legs?”
====
This is a dumb question. I don’t have in my posession your ‘eye of faith’ on the matter. Shouldn’t you be asking this kind of question to one of your fellow Church members ???
There isn’t any evidence that whales descended from land mammals- there isn’t any way to test the claim.
And no the theory of evolution does not make any predictions based on the proposed mechanism of blind, undirected chemical processes.
And yes the design inference MANDATES the elimination of bluind, undirected chemical processes- ie chance and necessity, before design can be considered. As for a testable hypothesis- your position does not have one!
I have asked you for a testable hypothesis for your position many times and you have failed to produce one.
Ambulocetus was not a whale and I am not ignoring what doesn’t exist.
The theory of evolution does not have any prcise definitions.
And ID is an alternative to the current ToE- you just don’t know anything about ID.
Clearly they don’t want to explain why this particular Walt Disney style “Land Before Time” cartoon where “Little Foot” turns into “Sharp Tooth” has other real world hands on evidence to back it up.
When asking what other evidence there is besides the Shamman Storytelling, we get “well what is I.D.’s answer?”
Then when they don’t get what they want they proceed to play possom.
Liddle:
“This is not a “shell game”, and equivocating between “common sense” usages and a specific scientific usage is just that, equivocating, and is likely to result in a fallacious inference.”
====
This is hilarious. You know full well EXACTLY what is meant by ‘defíntion shell gaming’. The idiotic crackpot definitions of “information” being ‘rocks in a landslide’ or information is patterns in snowflakes or information is gravity.. I’ve even had an atheist/Evolutionist attempt to shove down my throat with a shell game of the term you just used “common sense”. Saying what is common sense to me is not common sense to someone else. Without admitting anything, you know full well what these games are all about.
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Liddle:
“Evolutionary theory is a model, constantly subject to revision in the light of new data.”
====
No, Evolutionary Theory is another historical philosophical ideological worldview which actually requires tremendous amounts of faith just like any other religion.
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Liddle:
“ID is not an alternative theory to current evolutionary models. It explains nothing, simply because “an ID” could explain anything.”
====
I’m not exactly part of the ID movement, but sure it’s just as viable as anything else. It simply irritates you and you don’t like it because you have issues with the Catholic Church which I couldn’t care less about.(no offense anyone who is) The funny thing is, if some group suddenly appeared on the scene bashing Christianity and claiming life arose as a result of Theory of Aliens, you people would be kool with that type of I.D.
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Liddle:
“It(Intelligent Design) may be true, but it is not an explanatory theory.”
====
And yet as humans our whole world relates to intelligent designing. We understand the concepts of just what it is to invent, create and devise for purpose and intent things that are sophisticated and complex for a intended purpose. The inference is that the sophisticated mechanisms in nature just might have also have had a possible intelligent designer as opposed to all these magnificent things coming about by nothing more than blind pointless indifference without purpose or intent.
When pressed to prove how blind chance without purpose does anything, we instead get scientific cheating crackpots using intelligent design to rig an experiment and then proceed to exclaim evolution is no longer a theory, but a fact. Well there’s well known old expression, “Don’t urinate on my back and tell me it’s raing”.
Yes, there is lots of evidence, Joseph, and the way you test the claim is by making predictions, for example, about genetic relationships, or comparative anatomy, also constructing phylogenies and using statistical tests.
There is a reasonable summary on TalkOrigins here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/features/whales/
Sure it does. It doesn’t, of course, predict any one lineage forward, because evolution is a highly stochastic process, but it certainly predicts what we will find starting with extant species and looking at both genetics and fossil evidence.
Chance and necessity are not processes. And if you want testable hypotheses google virtually any peer-reviewed scientific paper on evolution.
I’ve given you many, Joseph, but the finding of transitional fossil sequences is one, as is the congruence of phylogenies based on comparative anatomy and those based on genetics, for example pseudogenes. But, as I say, read any data-based paper on evolution in the peer-reviewed literature and you will find a testable hypothesis being tested.
Are you saying that ambulocetus is not a cetacean? What do you think it is, then?
Elizabeth:
Genetic relationships, comparitive anatomy and phylogenies do NOT say anything about a mechanism and each can be used as evidence for a common design.
And no the theory of evolution does not make any predictions based on the proposed mechanism of blind, undirected chemical processes.
Strange that you can’t post any.
And yes the design inference MANDATES the elimination of bluind, undirected chemical processes- ie chance and necessity, before design can be considered. As for a testable hypothesis- your position does not have one!
The theory posuts blind , undirected chemical processes and I have looked at the literature and nothing supports blind, undirected chemical processes.
I have asked you for a testable hypothesis for your position many times and you have failed to produce one.
No you have failed to produce ONE pertaining to blind, undirected chemical processes.
It is a land/ sea mammal.
Of course it does. What terms do you think are imprecisely defined?
I know quite a bit about ID, Joseph. Tell me what differential predictions it makes.
You need to PREDICT SOMETHING before you trumpet about it. That’s just BS’ing after the fact like most all evolution.
Eocene,
Elizabeth is making progress in understanding the basic weaknesses of the TOE. I conclude it from seeing she use arguments against it, namely that a theory that can explain anything explains nothing. Well, that’s a start.
Please present some of these alleged precise definitions pertaining to the theory of evolution.
As for ID and predictions- what predictions do you think forensic science and archaeology make?
And obvioulsy you don’t know anything about ID because number 1 is ID is not anti-evolution.
Evos talk like there’s a buffet of evidence and then all we get are a few crumbs.
butifnot
Oh, you mean like the Discovery Institute’s famous list of “ID predictions”, every last one of which was taking a known scientific discovery and BS’ing after the fact that ID predicted it.
In your haste to fling mud you completely forgot to provide your better ID explanation for punk eek. We still need an ID explanation for the cetacean fossil and genetic evidence too. Please try again.
We still need a blind watchmaker explanation for anything biological. As for aftethe-fact- the theory of evolution is entirely after-the-fact.
Ah, my daily dive into Mirrorworld, where ID is an active science and evolution a left-field idea desperately in need of some factual investigation!
Joseph
Do you ever do anything in these conversations besides cover your ears like a 6-year old and scream “THERE’S NO EVIDENCE!!” ?
dmullenix, you, apparently without any reflection whatsoever, and a whole bunch of misleading rhetoric born out of your atheistic dogmatism, state:
To which Dr. Sheldon recently retorted:
William Lane Craig also, in his usual non nonsense fashion, stated;
Moreover dmullenix, though you will, in all likelihood, absolutely refuse to acknowledge this point because of your Dogmatic Atheism, your argument for the probability of the universe being created, of 1, out of the infinite probabilistic resources of the multiverse, is also a the very argument that guarantees the probability of the existence of God to be 1;
The preceding argument has actually been made into a formal philosophical proof:
I like the following concluding comment about the ontological argument from the Dr. Plantinga video:
Music and Verse:
Due to the enormous complexity of the interactions both within and without the organism, one design option might be to create multiple variants and see which one came out on top, keeping the best for further breeding. Eliminating ‘our’ position eliminates a demonstrably effective design strategy.
butifnot
There’s this magic thing called Google that will direct you to hundreds of sites covering the evidence for cetacean evolution.
cetacean evolution
If you want more technical details you can search Google Scholar and find the primary research literature on the subject.
more on cetacean evolution
It’s pretty hard to teach someone who doesn’t want to learn.
Oh, I know what “shell games” are about Eocene. Now, give me an example of the word “information” being used in a scientific paper about evolution but not being precisely defined, or, if you prefer, an example of the equivocation with the term.
There are many definitions of information, so clearly it is important for anyone making a claim that includes the word to state how they are defining the term.
Well, I guess if you think that you think it, but unless you support your view, it isn’t going to be very persuasive. In contrast, there is clear evidence in the scientific literature that the theory is subject to constant revision and refinement. For instance, we now know much more about the role of drift than Darwin dreamt of, indeed we now know vastly more than Darwin did about the mechanisms of inheritance.
You have no idea what “irritates” me, Eocene – please don’t make unsupported inferences about what is going on in my head! ID is not an alternative theory because it doesn’t provide differential predictions. If you have an ID theory that does, feel free to give it.
Sure, but that’s not an explanatory theory. Anything “just might also have had a possible intelligent designer”. To explain phenomena you have to make differential predictions. If a theory can explain any phenomenon, then it’s not an explanation at all. It’s tantamount to saying: anything can happen.
No, you don’t. Or, if you do, please give me a citation.
Evolution is only a “fact” in the sense that one definition of evolution is “change in allele frequency over time”, and this is observed to occur. So it’s as near as we ever get to a fact in science. The “Theory of Evolution” is the theory that explains the observed fact that populations evolve (in the sense that allele frequencies change over time) and adapt (in the sense that alleles that tend to result in phenotypes with enhanced reproductive success in the current environment become more prevalent). The ToE is also a theory that explains why anatomical features of organisms are distributed in a nested hierarchy, and why genetic features are also thus distributed, with some interesting exceptions. In other words it explains what we do observe, and it also explains what we do not observe (centaurs, for instance).
In contrast, ID explains none of these observations, or rather, it could explain any observation we could possibly make, and something that could explain any possible observation explains none of them.
The ToE is not a theory that can explain anything. It couldn’t explain centaurs, as I’ve already said.
Now, name a single possible observation that ID could not explain.
Tell me a possible observation that ID could not explain. As I’ve just said to Eocene, evolutionary theory couldn’t explain centaurs, or flying horses, or, for that matter, precambrian rabbits.
There are plenty of possible observations that the ToE could not explain. Name me one thing that an Intelligent Designer could not do. That is why ID is not an explanatory theory, and the ToE is. The ToE explains our pattern of observations and non-observations. ID cannot.
That is not really a response to my point. I am not asking you to have an “eye of faith”. All you have to do is estimate the fit of your model to the data. But you can’t do that if your model could fit any data you could possibly imagine.
Would you like to present some actual citations here? I have no idea what you mean by “crackpot Warner Brothers Cartoon presented as evidence”.
Well, of course you are entitled to your view. Obviously I don’t share your evaluation of the evidence.
Well, no, it’s not a dumb question. Cetacean comparative anatomy is distributed into a tree with creatures with legs at the node.
That’s evidence. It demands explanation. The ToE provides a coherent explanation. ID doesn’t even attempt one. Although, it has to be said, many ID proponents, including Behe, as far as I know, accepts the evidence for common ancestry.
Well, tell me what terms you think are inadequately defined.
And of course forensic science and archaeology make testable predictions.
I’m waiting for a comparable prediction from ID.
And I have no idea what you mean by “ID is not anti-evolution”.
Perhaps you could define how you are using the term “anti-evolution” in that sentence.
wallstreeter43
So who discovered, dated, analysed and published this new whale bone? Some whistleblower from the DI? No!!! A bloody evolutionist! Did no-one think to quietly ‘disappear’ dis guy? Then they go and do a damn press release! We in the evolutionary illuminati take a very dim view of the publication of honest data that refines previous understanding. Don’t be surprised to see him swimming with dose paraphyletic fishes.
Perhaps you don’t realize that ID is by it’s very nature limited in it’s explanatory scope. ID theory simply affirms that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.” In principle, ID is compatible with common descent, though I and many others within the ID community are skeptical of the concept. The “certain features”, Dr. Liddle, that ID purports to explain better than undirected processes are the specified complexity found in the original life and irreducible complexity.
I would also add the fine tuning of the universe.
(and the specified complexity in the original life referring to DNA.)
Well Joseph, even we knew nothing about the fossil record of whales, there are two alternatives:
- either whales are descended from some other living thing with modification
or
- they popped into existence as living breathing whales at some time in the last 4 billion years
which seems the more plausible to you (forget about whether it is designed or not for a moment – we are only talking about patterns of descent)
markf-
I am very comfortable with saying “I don’t know”, and at this point in time that is the only honest answer.
Maybe someday someone will come up with a way to scientifically test the premise that cetaceans evolved from land mammals. When that day comes, if I am still alive, I will eagerly listen.
Except taht blind, undirected processes have never been obseved to design anything.
GinoB,
I say that because it is true. No you can refute that or whine about it- it appears you like to whine…
If nature, operating freely, ie blind, undirected processes, can account for the event/ object/ structure in question then the design inference isn’t even considered.
No murder if it was via natural causes and no artifact if erosion can produce it.
As for centaurs- please reference the peer-reviewed paper that says centaurs are a no-go for evolution.
What terms does it have?
And what testable predictions do you think forensic science and archaeology make?
The following is what I mean by “ID is not anti-evolution”:
Intelligent Design is NOT Creationism
(MAY 2000)
Dr Behe has repeatedly confirmed he is OK with common ancestry. And he has repeatedly made it clear that ID is an argument against materialistic evolution (see below), ie necessity and chance.
Then we have:
What is Intelligent Design and What is it Challenging?- a short video featuring Stephen C. Meyer on Intelligent Design. He also makes it clear that ID is not anti-evolution.
Next Dembski and Wells weigh in:
and
And from one more pro-ID book:
Do you understand that?
Did it ever occur to you that the evidence you point to assumes that whales evolved from land mammals and does not even cover if the transformations required are even possible?
[It’s pretty hard to teach someone who doesn’t want to learn.]
Who are you talking about? Evidences on a large variety of levels point to contrary conclusions that your ilk has been promoting for decades and funded by the pop culture machinery influencing public and private funding. I, for one, am sick of spoiled children motivated by philosophical preferences that happen to put them in a position of compensatory reward for no viable reasons, having their way under the guise of “science”.
Developmental basis for hind-limb loss in dolphins and origin of the cetacean bodyplan
So you accept that whales are descended from something – you just don’t think we have enough evidence as to what they are descended from?
Did it ever occur to you that the evidence you point to assumes that whales evolved from land mammals
It doesn’t assume that, it concludes that.
and does not even cover if the transformations required are even possible?
Developmental mutations are possible. This is a broad principle that one would not be expected to cover again and again and again in every specific cladistic grouping.
Except taht blind, undirected processes have never been obseved to design anything.
And neither have the assumed designers of biological diversity. Your point?
BA77, thanks for the information on Drs. Sheldon, Craig and company. I especially enjoyed the ontological arguments, but haven’t time to go into them at length. It is fascinating to see the existence of God tied to human conception though. Who’d a thunk it?
Dr. Craig’s musings on Roger Penrose, on the other hand, are less interesting. Penrose seems to think that the possibility of our solar system forming instantly by the random collision of particles is worth thinking about, which would explain his weird math, but frankly his argument doesn’t come close to having the panache of the ontological argument. I do agree, however, that Dr. Craig is the world’s greatest living Christian philosopher, which would worry me if I was a Christian.
But no matter, the possibility that THIS universe exists does happen to be 1 or at least it’s within a Descartes of 1. So do you really think that you personally are a Boltzmann brain? Personally, I doubt it. I’m pretty sure that your brain came into existence in the old-fashioned way, like everybody else’s. Which makes Dr. Gordon’s argument look pretty silly.
Maybe he has his own private physics too?
dmullenix, materialism, particularly the ‘randomness/chaos’ inherent within the construct of materialism, you simply have no way to prevent absurdities from the ‘multiverse’, such as the Boltzmann Brain problem, from swamping your atheistic theory for the origin of the universe,,,
Here are a bit more formal proofs refuting the atheistic conjecture of the multiverse:
But another thing that is completely illogical about your atheistic multiverse conjecture is this:
This atheistic conjecture of the multiverse CLEARLY does not deal with the ‘problem’ of the origin of the universe since atheists have just pushed to issue of the origination of space-time & mass-energy back a step:
Thus the question to be asked, instead of avoided, is where does the mass-energy space-time of this universe come from? Clearly the cause has to be beyond space, time, mass, energy! When we ask this specific question we find our answer! Transcendent, and Dominant, Information, as revealed by quantum entanglement, and quantum teleportation experiments, is the only known entity within science with sufficient causality to bring about the origination of the space-time mass-energy of the universe;
These following studies should, for all practical purposes, shut the multiverse argument down completely:
Verse and Music:
How can it conclude that when there isn’t any genetic data that supports the alleged transformations?
Yup as far as anyone knows whales are descended from whales. And no one needs to believe they popped into existence- tey could have been placed here by colonizing aliens or even genetically engineered….
Designers have been observed to design stuff and from that we can extrapolate.
Your position has nothing to extrapolate from.
Right those hind limb buds could have been for hind fins.
Please reference the active research – developmental biology perhaps- that demonstrates a land mammal can evolve into a fully aquatic mammal.
Why did the designer put hind limb buds in for hind fins that are not used and not present?
You say Cetacean hind limbs are just old, unused FINS, so when were the fins present and used? By what mechanism did they disappear? Did the designed change his mind and delete them from newer models?
GinoB:
Ask the designer- but that may not even be the case.
Back when cetaceans first appeared.
Mutation and survival
Ask the designer- but that may not even be the case.
I would think “evolution” would favor a cetacean with long arms with grasping hands. Why didn’t “evolution” do that?
Liddle:
“Well, no, it’s not a dumb question. Cetacean comparative anatomy is distributed into a tree with creatures with legs at the node.”
====
Again, I don’t posess your particular brand of faith in a religious Iconic Tree of image worship. If you choose to read things into a materialist vision of life then so be it. But I’m not receiving visions here of what you’re seeing.
—-
Liddle:
“Although, it has to be said, many ID proponents, including Behe, as far as I know, accepts the evidence for common ancestry.”
====
Personally I could care less if Michael Behe or any other ID proponant wants to believe in ‘common ancestry’. No problem with members of the same kind of organism developing from a common ancestor of one particular KIND, but anything else takes FAITH and I don’t posess yours. Behe(Shapiro, Yocky, etc) have the same proof problems of macro-evolutionary assumptions as any of the rest of you. While he has beautifully shown and illustrated to us complex sophisticated mechanisms for environmental adaptional survival and varietal changes in the same KIND of living organism, it delves into the realm of faith to assume that these micro adaptations eventually split/cut off of a KIND into another KIND of creature. That’s called FAITH and I simply don’t posess your brand of religious faith.
Joseph
What you think reality should be and what it actually is apparently are mutually exclusive domains.
There is EXTENSIVE genetic data that places whales slap bang in the middle of the artiodactyls (apart from cetaceans, a predominately land-dwelling group: horses, cows, pigs, hippos etc), by constructing phylogenetic trees on proteins (built from genes) and on the genes (DNA) themselves. I won’t bore you with a reference you won’t follow, but this data is freely available. We don’t have DNA in fossils, but we do have DNA in the living members of the clade. Either whales evolved from land-dwelling artiodactyls, or land-dwellers evolved from marine creatures – take your pick, but you can guess which conclusion the researchers reached, without the need for the detailed stepwise series of transformations. It happened again in the manatees, from the elephant clade this time. And, partially, in seals, from the carnivores.
To spare you writing the inevitable follow-up post, these trees are very unlikely to reflect commonality of design since, by your own lights, whales and land-dwelling even-toed ungulates share very little commonality of design. The only explanation left is common descent.
Oh, go on then, here‘s a summary. Note the multiple independent lines of evidence.
here
And I cocked up – horses aren’t artiodactyls!
Well by golly Chas, I guess you have conclusively shown to us IDiots that whales evolved from some type of four-footed land creature by pointing to these genetic similarity trees. But I suspect that you are not aware that this conclusive genetic similarity proof, that you have placed so much faith in, is not nearly as rock solid as you have imagined it to be. For one thing:
I would like to point out that this, ‘annihilation’ of Darwin’s genetic tree of life, article came out on the very day that Dr. Hillis, a self-proclaimed ‘world leading expert’ on the genetic tree of life, testified before the Texas State Board Of Education that the genetic tree of life overwhelmingly confirmed gradual Darwinian evolution. One could almost argue it was ‘Intelligently Designed’ for him to exposed as a fraud on that particular day of his testimony instead of just any other day of the year.
Here is another article, written by an evolutionist mind you, that states the true pattern found for life, from comparative genetic evidence, is not the tree pattern Darwin had envisioned:
Since evolutionists continually misrepresent the true state of the evidence for molecular sequences, here are several more comments and articles, by leading experts, on the incongruence of molecular sequences to Darwin’s theory:
https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1S5wXsukzkauD5YQLkQYuIMGL25I4fJrOUzJhONvBXe4
Moreover Chas, you have no proof that mutations to DNA can generate radical Bogy-Plan morphogenesis which is beneficial:
In fact mutations to DNA are ‘bottom rung of the ladder’ as far as the information within the cell is concerned:
Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,,
Further note:
How can it conclude that when there isn’t any genetic data that supports the alleged transformations?
ChasD:
That doesn’t even respond to what I said.
And whales and all mammals have quite a bit in common- ou do realize tat most of the genes are used, not for development, but for sustaining and everyday operations?
Well, it seems to me it does – you were asking for genetic evidence of a relationship by descent between land animals and whales, and there it is. You want the individual step-by-step transformations, and fitnesses in the actual organisms, then quite clearly I am not going to give them to you. You think THAT is a good reason to deny the land ancestry of whales?
Yes, I kind of know what most genes are used for. But whales and artiodactyls have far more in common, genetically, than do artiodactyls and horses, for example. Why? And we can pick genes by type – developmental, metabolic, etc – and they display the same pattern. Again, why? Why would artiodactyls need metabolism more closely aligned to whales than to horses?
Beyond that, what is really important to grasp is that ‘mistakes’ – repeats, transpositions, deletions, inversions, silent substitutions etc – follow those gene phylogenies very closely, and point to exactly the same thing – common descent. They can’t ALL be functional, or if they are, they cannot ALL result from functional differences between these very different organisms. If you don’t see such things as indicative of common descent, and can persuade others you are right, you have an excellent future as a defender of paternity suits.
Well by golly BA77, you have completely missed the point of the “tangled tree of life” issue. At its roots, and on some branches (ie, among prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes) there is extensive lateral gene transfer, and trees are not so robust. How do we discover this? By looking at this supposedly discredited phylogeny data and seeing where it breaks down!
Among the ‘higher’ animals and plants – ie multicellular forms – lateral gene transfer is of minor significance at best, and these trees are pretty rock solid. In the interests of full disclosure, trees do not always map onto each other with “100% bootstrap support”. But the percentages are well in the region of … oh, for God’s sake, learn some biology!
ChasD:
No, that is not what I was asking for.
Try again, this time also try to pay attention-
What is the genetic data that demonstrates the changes required are even possible?
And for anyone with a genuine interest in the topic, horizontal transfer events are, by their very rarity among higher eukaryotes, a strong signal for common descent. If we see a sequence in two unrelated groups, common parental descent has no way of explaining this. But with mechanisms of lateral transfer (eg viruses) we have a means by which nonfunctional sequences can move between groups. But then they are copied by parent-child descent. This is one of several reasons why not every genetic sequence will map to the same tree in its entirety, but at the same time these nonfunctional signals give an excellent mapping to the tree of descent from the point at which they appear. I didn’t think common descent was an unacceptable issue for ID.
I my previous response, I said this:
Please try and pay attention. I realise you won’t see that as an answer, but in order to demonstrate that a change was possible, we would have to know the genetic and environmental milieu in which it was to take place. As you well know, this is not a reasonable expectation – you know that I can’t, so you think the demand negates the entire position – if I can’t prove it possible, then it is impossible. If this permits you to keep trumpeting the line that there is no genetic evidence that whales evolved from land animals (BY SOME MEANS), then tootle away.
Joseph
LOL! You were the one who just yesterday told us whales used to have hind FINS, and they lost them through “mutation and survival”
You can’t even keep your story straight for a single day.
bpragmatic
Folks like you are Exhibit 1A.
Well by golly Chas seems you got it all figured out (save for crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s) with your 3-card monte game of massive gene transfer, and I guess us IDiots got egg on our face once again. NOT!!!
One other persistent nagging problem I have though, Chas, could you please explain to me how the within space and time, energy and matter, events of materialistic neo-Darwinism caused the non-local, beyond space and time, mass and energy, quantum information/entanglement to reside within molecular biology on a massive scale???
related note:
Sorry, I don’t quite understand the tenor of your response …
But do you have something from the genetics of E. coli or Drosophila that fatally undermines the “tree hypothesis” for genes in the Artiodactyla/Cetacea?
Well Chas, you ask:
Well do you believe that there is even one novel functional protein/gene in whales from their transition from Artiodactyla(EVEN-TOED UNGULATES http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/ordartio.htm ), as is found in every unique genome sequenced thus far? If so then your imaginary ‘tree hypothesis’ is fatally undermined by rarity of proteins in sequence space as well as by population genetics!!!
and here is Falsification by population genetics:
Chas as well, as was mentioned in the OP, the Darwinian fossil record is just plain fraudulent:
Now Chas, you can buy all those ‘forced’ similarity sequences all day long, jump up and down, hold your breath until your blue, screaming that your sequence similarity proves neo-Darwinism is conclusively true. I DON”T CARE!!! for despite all your protestations to the contrary, the plain fact is to be scientifically legitimate you must ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATE that what you say can be done by Darwinian processes, actually can be done. Whereas on the other hand, as I have shown you, the ACTUAL DEMONSTRATED evidence that we now have in hand says that your Darwinian scenario is completely impossible as far as probabilistic resources of the universe are concerned!!! You see Chas it would not matter to science, even if the sequences were practically 100% identical, if you have no demonstrated mechanism to show that such change is possible!!!
Sorry, just attempting to extract a little from your post relevant to the subject at hand, for people who do care – about the facts, not about what I think – it is a fact that the issue of novelty, indeed of function per se, is completely irrelevant to phylogenetic analysis. As is the mechanism by which divergence between any two sequences is established. Those are completely separate evolutionary matters.
One simply cannot compare genes that do not exist in one of the lineages. They clearly are not commonly descended! One can only compare the ones that do.
So we have a set of genes that identifiably exist in all the organisms we wish to compare. This method says nothing at all about anything except the hypothesis of common descent. You can even do it yourself. Genomes are freely available on the internet. This is the kind of science that anyone with an aptitude for computing can join in with. Demonstrate, using this public resource, that common descent is NOT the best hypothesis for sequence congruence in the general case. It is certainly a possible outcome. Many genes do not betray common origins. Many appear to do so but result from convergent evolution. But for the rest, common descent is a hypothesis that one has to display a quite unseemly amount of intellectual gymnastics to avoid. Like I say, I didn’t think common descent was even a big deal for ID?
Chas, simply incredible! Known science falsifies what you believe to be possible for the platicity of organisms and you pretend, very unscientifically, as if all is business is usual, and do not even attempt to list any experiment to show otherwise (there are none!).,,,,,, Well, though not referenced by any experimental work, you seem to think that existing proteins diverged into other proteins quite pervasively, and easily, in your postulated conjecture for the evolution of whales? But here again I have experimental evidence in hand to show that you are wrong in this presumption:
notes:
What makes matters much worse for the materialist is that he will try to assert that existing functional proteins of one structure can easily mutate into other functional proteins, of a completely different structure or function, by pure chance. Yet once again the empirical evidence betrays the materialist. The proteins that are found in life are shown to be highly constrained in their ability to evolve into other proteins:
As well, the ‘errors/mutations’ that are found to ‘naturally’ occur in protein sequences are found to be ‘designed errors’:
GinoB,
Losing fins is not the same as turning hooved legs into fins.
Chas D,
Yes I fully understand that there is no way to scientifically test the claim that whales evolved from land mammals. Thank you for admitting it too.
My point is we don’t even know what makes a whale a whale- there isn’t any evidence that a whale is a sum of its genome. And I can take your “evidence” for common ancestry and use it for a common design OR convergent evolution.
I can only tell yer what I know. Protein (and noncoding DNA) in whales is most closely related to that in Artiodactyls. Interesting, isn’t it? Inexplicable, almost. Suppose we pick a DNA sequence that has nothing to do with ‘being a whale’, or ‘being a land-based Artiodactyl’. Something from the cytochrome family, for example (with care, because some cytochromes are more tightly conserved than others). Cytochrome c is the classic. I’m sure you have a Creationist tract immediately to hand where this has been shown to be totally bogus, so let’s pick another gene. What, that one’s bogus too – what about another? And this one? And that? Something from the mitochondrion, perhaps? What about a transpositional insertion? Or this bit where a block of text has simply been reversed? The whole of molecular phylogeny is just bullshit, you say? So if these patterns are not the result of common descent, then what? Don’t say common design …
… however counterintuitive it may be, the genetic evidence shows that: yes, the whale and the hippo are both made from essentially the same proteins that were in their common ancestor. Most of those are little changed, which is why these groups are considered related in the first place. To state the obvious, if the genes were nothing like each other, we would not think they were related. Of course, there must be some differences (because they are clearly different organisms). But the bulk of their genes say that they are, for the most part, the same, despite the sundry novelties that have been added or subtracted (by accident or design) along the way. You seem to think you have proved, with some nonsense about quantum entanglement, protein search space and some vague speculations about the plasticity of organisms, that this cannot be so.
Nothing like ‘assuming the conclusion’ to establish scientific certainty eh Chas??? you not even in the realm of experimental science, you refuse to acknowledge it, the thread is long, and i am done with you!
Chas D:
THAT is the whole problem! There isn’t any DNA sequence that we can point to and say “That has to do with being a whale”-
We don’t have any idea what makes a whale a whale…
Joseph
If mutation and selection can make a species of cetaceans gradually evolve away the ‘hind fins’, why can’t mutation and selection evolve a terrestrial mammal leg into a fin? Both terrestrial legs and fins have virtually the identical bone, circulation, and muscular structure. It looks to be quite straightforward to morph one into the other with small incremental changes.
GinoB:
The two scenarios are not even close to being similar. So why would anyone say if one can happen so can the other- there isn’t any connection.
Heck I can use explosives to take down a building but I can’t use explosives to build one.
Joseph
Mutations and selection aren’t explosions. They cause slow, small, incremental changes that happen generation to generation.
I can build a wall one brick at a time, or I can remove a wall one brick at a time by using the same tools.
Explain why mutations plus selection couldn’t slowly evolve a leg into a fin using the same mechanism you already admit causes major morphological changes.
BTW, where is your evidence that the hind limbs on early proto-whales were fully formed FINS and not legs? We have lots of evidence from the fossil record of gradually diminshing rear feet and legs, not gradually diminishing fins.
Paragwinn already posted a paper with evidence for the genetic regulatory elements that cause the genes for hind limb development to be not expressed, along with lots of nice images of the intermediate morphologies. I’m sure you read it thoroughly.
Where is your ID evidence for the same changes?
GinoB:
Except there still isn’t any for the type of changes you are talking about.
Explain how they can- ya see science requires POSITIVE evidence and your position lacks positive evidence.
Also tal=king something awat is much easier than changing from one type to another- fewer changes required.
Whales have fins and there isn’t any evidence that they ever had legs.
Present it then. And also the evidence of the leg transforming into a fin.
You are dense- making something disappear is easy and I never argued against it.
What you lack is the evidence a hooved leg can transform into a whales fin.
Joseph
Whale don’t have fully formed HIND fins. Where is your evidence that they once did?
It’s already been presented to you, multiple times. Not much we can do if you won’t read the scientific literature.
That’s right – you’re the guy who behaves like a fussy little child and answers every technical point by screaming THERE’S NO EVIDENCE!!! Bet that works wonders for you in real life too.
By what mechanisms and what detailed steps did these imaginary hind fins disappear? You say it’s easy, so give us the details.
And also the evidence of the leg transforming into a fin.
GinoB:
It doesn’t exist- you are lying.
Pargwinn alrady posted a paper- duh.
Joseph
LOL! I imagine you holding your breath and stamping your feet when you type out these childish NUH UH, THERE AIN’T NO EVIDENCE!!! replies. Am I close?
The paper paragwinn posted lays out the transitional steps from hind terrestrial legs to no hind limbs. You claimed proto-whales once had hind FINS, remember?
Maybe you try reading the paper instead of just claiming it doesn’t exist. You are the most confused, angry Creationist I’ve seen in some time.
GinoB-
You are confused- only a cry-baby would think that stating onvious facts, which is what I am doing when I say “There isn’t any evidence…”, is akin to throwing a tantrum.
Yes, you are close to being a lying moron, that is about it.
dolphin with hind FINS
Now how about that paper that demonstrates a hooved leg can evolve into a fin.
There isn’t anything in this paper- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm.....C1482506/- that demonstrates a hooved leg can evolve into a fin.
Er Joseph, did you even bother to read the dolphin article? It’s about a case of atavistic hind limb development.
“Dolphin reveals an extra set of ‘legs’
Scientists say fins may represent throwback to ancient land-dwelling ways.
Fossil remains show dolphins and whales were four-footed land animals about 50 million years ago and share the same common ancestor as hippos and deer. Scientists believe they later transitioned to an aquatic lifestyle and their hind limbs disappeared”
That does a great job of supporting your claim that proto-whales all had fully developed hind fins.
Why are there no fossils of proto-whales with hind fins, but plenty of fossils of them with hind legs and feet?
I think I’ll leave you now to cry in your soiled diaper. Attempting to converse with you when you behave like a child throwing a hissy fit is a waste of time.
Setting up a statistical test that assumes common descent is precisely equivalent to setting up a statistical test that assumes design. Both are simply legitimate approaches to hypothesis-testing, which necessarily assumes that the hypothesis might be true, then looks to see if the data supports it.
Then one runs the program, and “follows the evidence where it leads”. Guess where the evidence leads on Artiodactyla/Cetacea?
What? You are? You have experimental evidence that molecular phylogeny is wrong, as a science? Or that Artiodactyl-Cetacean evolution (BY SOME MEANS) is prevented by known genetic/developmental constraints?
OK then.
GinoB,
I read the article and looked at the picture- those are flippers, not legs- only evotards on an agenda would say the dolphin had hind legs.
Atavistic means the reappearence of a characteristic that was once lost- FLIPPERS APPEAR ON THE DOLPHIN, which means flippers were lost- duh.
And only evotard imagination sez proto-whales had legs and feet.
Your ignorance means nothing but does prove YOU are a waste of time.
GinoB:
I never said proto-whales had fully developed hind fins- see you ARE a waste of time as you can’t even read.
Atavistic- hind fins developed which means hind fins were lost.
You read it the wrong way round. We want sequences that we think have nothing specific to do with being a whale. We can’t be sure which ones do, but we can tell which ones don’t – if they also occur in another organism that isn’t a whale, they aren’t unique to whales.
The clumsy way this used to be done, before genome sequencing, was to mix up the whole of the DNA of two species and allow it to link. You can tell how close in sequence these are by the extent to which they bind – the closer the match, the tighter. Even that method placed whales in the Artiodactyla. But all this method says is that the complete sequence of whales is most like the complete sequence of artiodactyls, out of all organisms. That could just be an accident. Given that it must be most like something, maybe Artiodactyls just happened to be that accidental match.
But protein, and then gene, sequences gave a much more surgical tool. You can look at genes in respiration, say, which both whales and Artiodactyls need. They may have different requirements – whales dive deep and hold their breath, Artiodactyls don’t. But despite those different requirements, their respiration genes are actually closely related in sequence. It really isn’t clear why Artiodactyls would need respiration genes that are more like a whale’s than like a horse’s or an elephant’s. Nor why whales would need such genes that are more like Artiodactyls’ than seals’, or penguins’, say.
You can look at many other shared genes and get the same pattern, or a pretty good match. Even though the differences may be partly accounted for by difference in function, it’s the remaining similarities, after subtracting the differences, that argue for a common origin.
But the clincher is in the kind of more distinctive ‘errors’ that creep in from time to time, because reproduction is imperfect. You can find whole chunks of sequence shifted and embedded somewhere else. If this kind of function-independent rearrangement occurs in all the members of a group, and in no others, then it is strongly indicative of a common origin for that group. Common design wouldn’t be a strong alternative hypothesis, because the same signal appears in both whale and hippo, two very different designs.
A fascinating paper on the genetic evidence that cetaceans evolved from land animals – specifically, Artiodactyls, even more specifically, a common ancestor with the hippo.
The method used is basically ‘whale-independent’. It doesn’t look at things that may be involved in ‘whaleness’, but at short transposons, cut-and-paste sequences that move around the genome, effectively at random. If a sequence is present in a group of species, it is suggestive of a common origin for that sequence, because the probability of the same sequence inserting at the same point in a separate event is negligible. This avoids the known problems with some statistical tree-building that relies upon on sequence divergence – it is much more robust.
If one looks at a variety of different markers, one can build a tree based on sequences shared, each different marker grouping species at a different level. It is entirely possible that one could do this and get a complete mess – common descent is disconfirmed. But that is not what happens.
Repost – this got buried, but I thought it may be of interest.
Whales, Artiodactyls and transposons
IN summary, an analysis of whale/artiodactyl relationships independently of gene function using distinctive markers – SINE transposons.
A common design = a common origin
The paper assumes common ancestry.
Joseph
So you are now claiming the ‘Designer’ created the original whales with hind fins?
When did these whales exist? What time frame?
Where are all the fossils of whales with hind fins?
GinoB:
I am claiming that atavistic would mean that since hind fins/ flippers developed then there were hind fins/ flippers before.
As for fossils- wow- where are all the fossils of all the transitional forms that had to have existed under teh darwinian scenario- including the fossils of failures? To date we have a handful of speculative fossils which doesn’t amount to squat considering how many transitional forms must have existed.
Joseph
You forgot to tell us when did these whales with hind fins exist? What time frame?
They’re in museums all over the world – Sinonyx, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Rodhocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, etc.
Where are the whale fossils with hind fins Joseph? Of the above list, which were the original ‘Intelligently Designed’ species and which evolved from earlier species? How do you tell?
You’re the one who made the claim that whales with hind limbs existed then had the hind fins evolve away. Back up your claim.
GinoB,
I don’t know the time-frame. All I know is atavistic means it existed before- ie prior generations. That alone supports my claim. Either that or evotard use of atavistic characteristics is nonsense.
You do realize that Sinonyx andPakicetus were land mammals and only evotard imagination puts them with whales.
Ambulocetus, again only EI- but thanks for proving my point- you present a handful whereas there should be thousands.
And notice not one bit of your evidence points to any mechanism.
GinoB:
The existence of atavistic hind fins plus the existence of cetaceans without them.
If this is really too difficult to follow then perhaps you should go to another forum where your brand of trolling is welcome.
Joseph
LOL! You have no supporting fossil evidence, no supporting genetic evidence, no time frame, but you just *know* it happened. Sounds exactly like Intelligent Design Creationism’s position on everything in biology.
What about the rest of them on the list then? Designed or evolved from an earlier form? How do you know?
You already said mutations plus selection was the mechanism that caused rear limb evolution, remember? Are you on some sort of medication that makes you so continually confused and incoherent?
Joseph
Interesting. You think that atavistic tails on human babies means that humans were designed with tails but later evolved them away. What was the original designed purpose for tails on humans?
GinoB:
Umm atavistic hind fins/ flippers is supporting genetic evidence
And notice not one bit of your evidence points to any mechanism
Geez Gino, you must be on something- or you are just dishonest/ stupid- as I NEVER said that. I said mutation/ selection can take away things, however even then it could be by design.
IOW Gino you are so confused that you think ID states no change can happen- it doesn’t. ID says that not all changes are via blind, undirected chemical processes.
Your ignorance has you continually confused.
GinoB:
What alleged human ancestor had a tail?
Fossils, timeframe, the usual, please…
You do realize that Sinonyx andPakicetus were land mammals and only evotard imagination puts them with whales.
GinoB:
Don’t know- theoretical musings about untestable past events, while OK, are best left to the sci-fi writers or even the History Channel. But it sure as heck doesn’t belong in any science class.
Joseph
You tell me. You’re the one who just said atavisms are sure evidence that a previous ancestor had the feature.
Which human ancestor had a tail Joseph, and when?
Or are you going to flip-flop your story yet again?
No it doesn’t. It CONCLUDES it. By the same technique, they could have shown no signal of common ancestry, if the data did not contain one. This is simply a way of evaluating whether a set of data contains a signal that would be expected from common ancestry. Bingo! It does. A signal inexplicable by any other paradigm.
Am I allowed a brief show of exasperation? AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHH! There. Much better, thanks.
Joseph,
What’s all that about? It does not matter whether transposons move by chance or not. And any scientific argument that contains the phrase “I find it hard to believe that…” is worthless.
OK, so let us take on board what you quoted, and let us say that the movement of a transposon is a precisely-controlled, organismally relevant event. Nonetheless, if it is present at one location in one set of species, but absent from that same location in another species, we have a binary switch, on or off, present or absent.
1) Here is a sentence.
2) Here is a seTR1ntence.
3) Here is TR2a seTR1ntence.
4) HerTR3e is TR2a seTR1ntence.
5) HerTR4e is a sentence.
Each member of the above set was created by copying and pasting one of the sentences above it, with deliberate insertion of a TR according to a nonrandom rule. As a simple logical exercise, it should be possible to determine the order in which I did things, and hence the branching of the ‘tree’ that represents the (actual) common descent of the sentences.
Try and do the same on this set.
1) Here is a sentenTR1ce.
2) Here is a senteTR1nce.
3) Here is a seTR2ntence.
4) HeTR4re is a sentence.
5) Here iTR3s a sentence.
This contains NO signal of common descent.
If you were to pass the two sets through a simple, blind, non-assumptive algorithm that attempts to see IF common descent is displayed, the first would clearly say “common descent”; the second would not.
This is exactly what the research did. It took a data set that contained a completely unkown signal wrt common descent, and demonstrated very clearly that not only was there common descent, but the precise order of branching could be determined with an extremely high degree of certainty. Confirming entirely the INDEPENDENT lines of reasoning that obtain from looking at whole-genome hybridisation and multiple gene sets. There are DOZENS of papers placing whales in the Artiodactyla, each one using a different technique.
You take denial to new heights!
Blink. Did you read the post?
I said:
Are you saying that whale proteins resemble a hippo’s because there is a common design requirement in the two species? More than that between, say, hippos and elephants? That argument might fly for similar species, but you can hardly extend it to this level.
I’m prepared to believe you can do anything in the name of denial. I do wonder how you could take the SINE data, or whole-genome DNA hybridisation studies between whales and hippos, as evidence of convergent evolution (evolution, you say???), or common design! LOL, as they say. But you can have a go if you like.
GinoB,
I will ask YOU AGAIN:
What alleged human ancestor had a tail?
If you cannot answer that would mean what you posted is not an atavism- duh
Well Chas D- the one thing you cannot do is provide exclusive evidence for common ancestry- you don’t even know what makes a whale a whale- IOW your enture position is an unscientific belief system.
And BTW all similarities are evidence for a common design and guess what? Cladistics, ie common ancestry, is based on similarities- phylogenies are based on similarities.
What YOU don’t have is genetic data that links to the physiological and anatomical differences.
Common design runs through the entire “family” of living organisms.
And yes hippos spend more time in the water than elephants.
The paper assumes it- it cannot conclude it because there isn’t any way to scientifically test the claim.
Only evotards would think a mistake would hang around for millions of generations so it could be used as a genetic marker.
What common ancestry lacks is no one knows what makes a whale a whale, a hippo a hippo nor can anyone link the required genetic changes to the required physiological and anatomical changes.
No one even knows if such a transformation is even possible.
ChasD-
Your position is nothing but a belief- so it is worthless.
And BTW with common descent all traces of one parnt can be wiped out in two generations. IOW there isn’t any reason to expect any pattern given sexual reproduction.
Or are you too stupid to understand how that works?
Joseph
LOL! Time once again for the Joseph Defense!
“THAR AIN’T NO DARN EVIDENCE!!!”
Face it, you stuck your foot in your mouth yet again. That’s the problem when you toss out BS answers (i.e atavism show whales once had hind fins) without researching or thinking through the ramifications.
If you accept atavisms as showing an evolutionary history, then you accept that human ancestors once had tails. You don’t get to pick and choose which cases to accept.
You’re too funny Joseph. Amazingly ignorant and predictable, but funny.
GinoB,
Obviously you are a moron as YOU are the one who said the human tail was an atavism, not me.
Do you really think your ignorance means something? Really?
You take your hands from your eyes and ears only long enough to type. If people go to the trouble of doing the work, finding the sequences and the flanking DNA, constructing PCR oligonucleotide primers, amplifying by PCR, passing the amplified sequences through electrophoresis, and then demonstrate, by that means, with photographs of the plates and full disclosure of the method, a clear pattern of relationship, confirming a host of other real studies done by INDEPENDENT means … that’s a belief? Heck of a lot of trouble to go to.
I would note that this is precisely the same technique by which paternity tests and forensic DNA analysis are done.
Counsel: “I put it to you that this DNA evidence clearly places you at the murder scene.”.
Joseph: “Your position is only one of belief, and so it is worthless. And anyway, it might indicate common design, or convergent evolution”.
Counsel: “OK then, we’ll let you off. Just don’t do it again. Say hello to OJ for me”.
Oh Joseph, Joseph. The patterns we can investigate in surviving genes are the patterns in those genes that haven’t been wiped out. It does not matter about DNA that no longer exists; one cannot do phylogenetic analysis on it. This study used DNA sequences that exist. The DNA either side of the transposon is used to determine the precise location in the genome that we wish to target. That location exists in every species, whether it contains a transposon insert or not. Or are you … no, no, I mustn’t!
To recap:
GinoB sed that humans have atavistic tails- so I asked what human ancestor had a tail.
GinoB the intellectual cowardly liar then tries to put it all on me saying I had to provide that evidence- evidence for something I never claimed.
EvoTards are such a clueless lot…
Umm paternity tests are for the SAME SPECIES. There isn’t any reason for A) a mistake to become fixed in a population nor B) a mistake to hang around after millions of generations so it ccan be used as a genetic marker.
IOW you are a fool.
And you still don’t know what makes a whale a whale and without that you don’t have any science.
Only evotards would think a mistake would hang around for millions of generations so it could be used as a genetic marker.
Why would it not? We are constantly reminded how impressively faithful the DNA replication process is – almost as if it were … well, designed!
Which way would you like to play it? It’s not a mistake, so that’s why it hung around for so long? OK, then. It is still a signal of common descent, because you can use it to construct an unambiguous tree of descent. You cannot do that with a group that is not commonly descended – unless someone designed these sequences specifically to fool us.
Only evotards would think a mistake would hang around for millions of generations so it could be used as a genetic marker.
Chas D:
Why would it? It is up to YOU to produce POSITIVE evidence.
BTW it could be a signal of a common design- and evotards are the only people who are fooled.
One can scientifically determine whether the claim stands up to scrutiny. If it doesn’t, you would get a pattern other than the one which is revealed, time and time again. I’d call that testing it. It has been done, thoroughly.
No-one needs to know what makes a whale a whale in order to test sequences that are identifiably present in whales and non-whales, for the signal of common descent. Whather it is impossible for a whale to evolve (BY SOME MEANS) from a non-whale is a separate question. I’d say this data argues against that viewpoint, but that is not the point I am addressing.
ChasD,
We do not know what makes a whale a whale. And blind, undirected processes is not expected to produce any pattern.
Common design explains similarities.
Don’t let Joseph get to you. He’s not very bright, and doesn’t understand the first thing about any of the sciences being discussed here. He’s a knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk) Intelligent Design Creationists whose only tool is to bellow THERE AIN’T NO DARN EVIDENCE!! ad nauseum.
Poke him for a while for amusement if you like, but mostly just ignore him.
Unfortunately for GinoB he isn’t discussing any science.
Also Intelligent Design Creationists exist only in the minds of the willfully ignorant- and here you are!
You’re kidding. So the entire panoply of genes common to whales and hippos is there because they are both aquatic? What about deer, then? Their genes are also more like a whale’s than they are, say, a horse’s. Is that down to their shared fondness for squid?
ChasD:
Only a moron would jump to that conclusion. And here you are…
I know. Remarkable, ain’t it? But what would prevent us from extending this method out, other than an a priori assumption that common descent does not happen? Surely we wouldn’t want to go assuming stuff?
The existence of these genetic markers rather contradicts your claim. Like I say, if it helps you, let’s say they are not mistakes. The fact remains, one can detect their presence or absence, with great precision, within the flanking sequences, and the pattern that emerges – however they actually got there – is indistinguishable from a signal of common descent. Which leads us to wonder why. Because there are millions of possible patterns that could have emerged, and only a tiny percentage of them would give trees of descent. We got one of the tiny proportion of patterns that does indicate common descent. Dumb luck? Confirmation bias? Cheating? When you add datum points, by looking at more sequences, then by looking at non-transposon sequences, or silent substitutions in genes, or intergenic regions, they all do the same thing.
The UD moderation rules don’t appear to extend to insults directed from Christian to “Darwinist”, only the reverse. But have at it, if venting your spleen bolsters your position any.
What makes a whale a whale is a set of diagnostic features that enable its placement in the Cetacea, superfamily Cetartiodactyla. This relies upon extensive morphological, cytological, immunological and multiple-target molecular phylogeny data. What made a whale a whale is a different question. But common descent with even-toed ungulates is writ large in all their genes.
Joseph
That sure explains the case of the hyrax, whose closest living relatives are shown by genetic analysis to be elephants and manatees.
Must be common design, right Joseph?
I told you Joseph wasn’t too bright.
Chas: Are you saying that whale proteins resemble a hippo’s because there is a common design requirement in the two species?
Joseph: yes hippos spend more time in the water than elephants.
Chas: So the entire panoply of genes common to whales and hippos is there because they are both aquatic?
Joseph: Only a moron would jump to that conclusion.
I was simply wondering if I understood you correctly. You certainly seemed to be suggesting that common design was the explanation for all the genetic similarity data linking whales and hippos, and then introduced the supporting information that they both like a bath – or, to be fair, that hippos do it more than elephants do. Forgive me for raising an eyebrow.
Within a species, genetic similarity is accepted to indicate common descent, uncontroversially.
Yet between species, according to you, that self-same fact – genetic similarity – only argues for common design. Deer and whale or deer and horse – which pair has the more in common, design-wise? On the genetic data, why are deer and whale more close ‘common-design’ partners than deer and horse?
To repeat (since you do) molecular comparison is not interested in what makes an X an X. It compares DNA in an X with the similar DNA in a Y, and evaluates the degree of similarity, without much regard to the organisms they came from, or what the DNA actually does.
I’m not arguing about the processes involved, I am saying that there IS a pattern, very clearly. How do you think these guys get published? Just make stuff up? Actually, that’s obviously what you do think. But can you seriously argue that the ridiculous idea that cetaceans evolved from ungulates might not have to pass some fairly rigorous evaluation before becoming accepted?
So the presence of a given SINE transposon in hippos and whales, but not in any other organism, is explained by their similarities of design? The presence of another in giraffes, deer, cows, sheep, whales and hippos but not in any other organism – again, totally explicable on the basis of common design?
Joseph
YOU”RE the one who said atavisms are clear evidence that a feature existed in earlier generations, remember moron?
Humans ARE occasionally born with atavistic tails, complete with muscles, blood vessels, and nerves. The fact is well documented in the medical literature.
Human tails and pseudotails
From the abstract:
“A case of a tail in a 2-week-old infant is reported, and findings from a review of 33 previously reported cases of true tails and pseudotails are summarized. The true, or persistent, vestigial tail of humans arises from the most distal remnant of the embryonic tail. It contains adipose and connective tissue, central bundles of striated muscle, blood vessels, and nerves and is covered by skin. Bone, cartilage, notochord, and spinal cord are lacking. The true tail arises by retention of structures found normally in fetal development. It may be as long as 13 cm, can move and contract, and occurs twice as often in males as in females. A true tail is easily removed surgically, without residual effects.
You stuck your foot in your mouth on this one and we both know it.
GinoB:
Wrong again, moron. THAT is the DEFINITION of the word.
If you are that stupid- taht you didn’t know the meaning of the word “atavism”, what are you even doing here?
How do you know it is an atavistic tail?
It could be just a tail- it does NOT have to be atavistic.
Or are you that stupid that you cannot grasp that simple fact?
ChasD:
What allows it?
Again you sem to be ignorant of science in that YOU need POSITIVE evidence.
And you still don’t know what makes a whale a whale and without that you don’t have any science.
Good thing you aren’t a teacher as that is about the stupidest thing I have ever read.
You evos will just say anything in order to sound like you know what you are talking about.
A whale is the sum of its traits!? Thanks for the laugh…
There isn’t any reason for A) a mistake to become fixed in a population nor B) a mistake to hang around after millions of generations so it ccan be used as a genetic marker.
?
No, it does not. Ya see these alleged mistakes may not be mistakes at all and could have been designed in from the start OR convergence can account for them.
And again there isn’t any reason to expect any pattern from blind, undirected chemical processes.
YOU say only common descent can cause his but you don;’t have anything to support that claim- it is unscientific.
There you go with your private physics again, complete with Bible verse and a video.
Meanwhile, in this universe, which is run by the old fashioned type of physics which is independent of your beliefs, my question remains unanswered: Do you think you’re a Boltzmann brain?
Physics is yet another scientific venue that provides evidence for ID…
JosephOctober 31, 2011 at 4:59 am
That’s right moron, exactly as I’ve been telling you. You finally got something in evolutionarily biology correct.
I just showed you several scientific studies on the subject. You want to demonstrate for us that the studies got it all wrong?
Then where did the ‘information’ to build a human tail complete with muscles, blood vessels, and nerves come from Joseph?
Keep sticking that foot deeper and deeper into your mouth.
GinoB,
I told YOU the definition of an atavism. YOU choked on it.
The studies said there was a tail. They did not say it was an atavism.
Ya see unlike you scientists know humans did not evolve from a population of tailed organisms.
Is THAT your argument? Man you have to be one of the dumbest people ever.
The info was already there. Ya see tails are part of the developmental process.
Joseph
Go ahead, explain why human fetuses have a tail in the development process. And moron, if the genetic info was already there but just not expressed then the tails are atavistic by definition.
You just stuck your other foot in your mouth too.
GinoB:
That is not the definition- also primate tails have bones inside of them, yet no bones in these human tails which means they can’t be atavistic.
IOW Gino- you are ignorant and a liar.
ChasD: But what would prevent us from extending this method [marker-targeted PCR] out, other than an a priori assumption that common descent does not happen?
Joseph: What allows it?
What allows it is the fact that genomes from multiple species contain a sufficient degree of similarity as not to prevent it! If genomes were totally unalike – as unalike as the books on a library shelf – you could not perform this kind of analysis on them. But they are much more like multiple editions of the same book, genetically.
Again you sem to be ignorant of science in that YOU need POSITIVE evidence.
POSITIVE evidence for what? The positive evidence that these analyses can be performed on different genomes is the fact that there are many thousands of papers published doing exactly that. That kind of suggests that it is ‘allowed’ by the materials we have available – even that is telling.
Joseph And you still don’t know what makes a whale a whale and without that you don’t have any science.
Chas What makes a whale a whale is a set of diagnostic features that enable its placement in the Cetacea, superfamily Cetartiodactyla.
Joseph Good thing you aren’t a teacher as that is about the stupidest thing I have ever read.
You evos will just say anything in order to sound like you know what you are talking about.
A whale is the sum of its traits!? Thanks for the laugh.
‘Whale’ is a category that we humans apply to a particular set of living organisms, and to sundry fossil ones as well. Do you think there is something isolatable in the genome of each whale species that ‘makes a whale a whale’, independently of our human notions? Well I guess you probably do, in some vague Platonic God’s-blueprint sort of way. I’d like to see some positive evidence of the location of such an essence, intra- or extragenomic.
Chas D:
Spo all you have is a bald assertion, got it.
Positive evidence that changes in the genomes can account for the physiological and anatomical changes required. To date all you can do is assume common ancestry and look for what looks like confirming evidence to you.
Joseph: There isn’t any reason for A) a mistake to become fixed in a population nor B) a mistake to hang around after millions of generations so it ccan be used as a genetic marker.
Chas: The existence of these genetic markers rather contradicts your claim.
Joseph: No, it does not. Ya see these alleged mistakes may not be mistakes at all and could have been designed in from the start OR convergence can account for them.
Oh, for goodness’ sake! As I have said, whether or not they are ‘mistakes’ is completely immaterial. And there is a hell of a lot of “could have” in that sentence – a leprechaun could have made them, or me in my time machine. What is that refrain about POSITIVE evidence that rings in my ears?
If they were designed in from the start, the designer WANTS us to see common descent, because that, among all the patterns they could have followed, is the pattern they follow. But you are too clever by half to be fooled by this sneaky designer!
As for “convergence”, what the heck do you mean? Some kind of evolutionary process? Are you really invoking evolution to avoid a conclusion on evolution?
The fact is that they are there, and give the common-descent signal, even if they arose by a completely different means.
And again there isn’t any reason to expect any pattern from blind, undirected chemical processes.
YOU say only common descent can cause his but you don;’t have anything to support that claim- it is unscientific.
Oh, that repetitive bleat about what is and isn’t ‘scientific’. From someone who insists that an unknown and unspecified designer intervened at unknown and unspecified points in history to cause unknown and unspecified changes by an unknown and unspecified mechanism.
The signal of ‘Common Descent’ is not a cause, but an effect. SOMETHING caused it. A group of organisms whose DNA arose through common descent would be expected to display particular patterns betraying that, and when we look to see IF that signal is present or not, we find it. This says NOTHING about how that signal arose – it doesn’t even prove that the DNA was copied – but simply that the signal is there, unambiguously. It is hard to escape the conclusion that it was copied, and so that is what scientists plump for.
But equally, a designer may have implanted it to cover his tracks – but you know better, of course, you see right through his subterfuge to the even clearer signal of that designer, caught in the beam of your intellect.
Or you argue for convergence – I don’t think you even know what you’re arguing for here, I think it’s just a word you heard Casey Luskin use once. You can’t look at a large set of data from two genomes and say “convergence!” for each and every gene. And why each and every gene should converge on a common signal of common descent … you heard of Occam’s Razor?
Convergence breaks down particularly for the transposons, because we are looking simply at the digital signal of presence or absence – it doesn’t matter what they are or what they do, ‘mistake’ or otherwise. The “attractors” of convergence are binary: the “haves” and the “have-nots”. You don’t even begin to explain how deer, cows, sheep, hippos and whales converge on the “haves”, while every organism converges on “have-nots”, for a particular SINE transposon, or any other sets we could examine.
Chas D:
So what? That doesn’t support your nonsense that a whale is a sum of its traits.
Nope- what makes a whale a whale isn’t in the genome.
And we are STILL waiting for positive evidence that changes in the genome can lead to the phyiological and anatomical changes required.
Nope- what makes a whale a whale isn’t in the genome.
Really? Where is it then?
And we are STILL waiting for positive evidence that changes in the genome can lead to the phyiological and anatomical changes required.
A designer could make changes in the genome. Care to provide any positive evidence for that?
Chas D:
Exceot you don’t have any idea what pattern common descent would make. Blind, undirected processes wouldn’t be expected to make any recognizeable pattern.
Are you ignorant of convergence too?
It is only a common descent signal to people who are already fooled.
Occam’s razor?
Well it would favor ONE design over multiple just-so accidents.
IOW only a fool who wants to see common descnet sees common descent.
Nope- what makes a whale a whale isn’t in the genome.
Really, it would be some place else in the cell, ie egg and sperm.
Ya see no one can say that an organism is the sum of its genome and we have data that suggests otherwise.
And we are STILL waiting for positive evidence that changes in the genome can lead to the phyiological and anatomical changes required.
And we are STILL waiting for positive evidence for your claims.
Joseph Nope- what makes a whale a whale isn’t in the genome.
Chas: Really? Where is it then?
Joseph: Really, it would be some place else in the cell, ie egg and sperm.
Honestly? You think sperm and eggs are ‘someplace else in the cell?’. And the genome someplace else again? OK, I will stop here, you have out-dumbed me.
Like GinoB said …
I do hope it was a joke! Just hilarious. You are bringing ID into disrepute. Learn some biology … please!
chas d:
Nope but thanks for proving that you can misrepresent and twist with the best of the evotards.
You do realize that the egg and sperm contain more than 1/2 of the genome- right? Or are you also ignorant of all biology?
Exceot you don’t have any idea what pattern common descent would make.
It would make patterns of nested hierarchy that would enable a robust phylogenetic tree to be constructed.
Chas:As for “convergence”, what the heck do you mean?
Joseph: Are you ignorant of convergence too?
I know exactly what convergence means. I was enquiring what you mean. It is an evolutionary process, which seems an odd thing to invoke in support of evolution-denial.
Common descent does not predict a nested hierarchy.
Also ID is not anti-evolution, meaning it is an evolutionary process. Convergence refutes the claim that only common descent can explain something.
You must be really ignorant to not understand that.
Joseph,
I can’t compete with you in the twisting and misrepresenting department.
I am perfectly prepared to discuss in an adult manner, but you insist on throwing in fluff like “fool”, “moron”, “… are you too stupid to understand that”, “are you ignorant of xxx too?” and so on. You think that elevates the debate?
I’ve taken quite a bit of trouble to try and explain the biological perspective behind common-descent studies. You dismiss the whole thing out of hand, which is OK, but you seem to think that not just me, but everyone doing those studies, plus all reviewers, is biologically ignorant. And you aren’t.
I can only go on what you say. In 33.1.1, you said “it” [what makes a whale a whale] isn’t in the genome”, and immediately followed that with “it [what makes a whale a whale] would be some place else in the cell, ie egg and sperm.”.
I just don’t really know how to read that. If we were talking of mitochondrial genes, or epigenetics, I might have understood “someplace else in the cell”, but when you talk of sperm and eggs …
Again, not sure how to read that. I take the genome of a eukaryotic organism to consist of one set of 2n diploid chromosomes and one mitochondrial chromosome. That genome is repeated massively in development – but the developmental program, that ultimately results in an entity that is identifiably a whale, resides within that 2n+m genome. Epigenetic and developmental factors are specified by genetic ones.
Joseph:
Yes, it does, absolutely. Think Venn diagrams. Sex muddies the waters, (but only slightly), so consider an asexual lineage of individuals. The parent is A. It has two daughters, A1 and A2. A1 has two daughters A11 and A12. A2 has two daughters A21 and A22.
Now if you write down all the organisms, in set form, based on thiis known pattern of descent, you have
{A{A1{A11 A12}A2{A21 A22}}}.
That is a nested hierarchy, drawn by common descent. You can close up the nested brackets to make Venn diagram circles, and none of the circles overlaps. If we had labels at each node that were passed on only to descendants, we could recover the nested hierarchy from these labels, even if we did not know that that set was commonly descended. If you just grabbed 7 random organisms, they would not be expected to form a nested hierarchy.
Now, if whole species descended in that branching ‘parent-child’ manner, and we could find multiple genetic labels not shared by all the species in the group, we could use them to see if they followed the pattern predicted by common descent, or some other pattern (the latter is much more likely, statistically).
An excellent label is one of those SINE transposons, because they are just there or not. If you simply write down all the organisms in your study, and draw Venn diagrams around them on the basis of their possession of Label 1, Label 2, Label 3 etc, and the circles do not overlap (ie they only give concentric circles, not overlaps) then you have the clear signal of common descent.
Only if you can SHOW it! Unless there is a reason to suspect convergence (better than some desperate need to remain in denial about common descent), then common descent is the most parsimonious explanation for a nested hierarchy of multiple character states, over highly unlikely convergence of every single one on the same apparent hierarchy.
You just can’t help it, can you? Yes Joseph, I am really, really ignorant.
OK I got it- I was very vague- my point is wjat makes a whale a whale isn’t in the genome- the sperm and egg, especially the egg, contain more than their share of the genome.
For example we cannot take a hippo genome, place it into a whale’s egg and get a hippo.
Nested hierarchies are based on traits/ characteristics. And seeing that with evolution there isn’t any directeion- traits and characteristics can be lost or gained- no direction with evolution- that means no nested hierarchy.
Venn diagrams overlap and nested hierarchies do not allow for overlapping.
In order for there to be a nested hierarchy your “A” would have to consist of and contain all of its children. IOW you don’t understand the concept.
Common descent can’t be the most parsimonious because you don’t have any idea what is involved.
BA77′s “physics” has little to do with the universe outside his head.
dmullenix as to;
Actually it is the person who refuses to accept God that ends up with that view of reality:
Let’s hear what Alain Aspect has to say about the mind and physics, not somebody writing in the “Journal of Scientific Exploration”, a magazine that specializes in “… original research on consciousness, quantum and biophysics, unexplained aerial phenomena, alternative medicine, new energy, sociology, psychology, and much more.”
In other words, in a “scientific journal” that is not interested in UFOs, fake medicine and fake energy schemes.
http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/
That (UFOs, fake medicine and fake energy schemes) is a strange criticism coming from someone who dogmatically believes in the ‘magic’ of neo-Darwinism:
dmullenix, perhaps you would care to justify your use of ‘science’, in the first place, from a materialistic viewpoint, before presuming, prior to investigation, that you have all the answers in your atheistic materialism???
Further notes:
Here is the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries:
i.e. In the experiment the ‘world’ (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a ‘privileged center’. This is since the ‘matrix’, which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is ‘observer-centric’ in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”
Grand slam! I point out that the “Journal of Scientific Exploration” is a crank publication and you “rebut” that claim with citations to a Young Earth Creationist web site, a literature professor whose ignorance of science was just about complete and whose main strength as an amateur theologian was his complete ignorance of the previous 100 years of theological thought and Ellis Washington, mainstay of World Nut Daily and a man who praised Michael Savage so extravagantly that you’d almost think he was on Savage’s payroll – as he turned out to be. You would have been better off if you’d just stuck with The Journal. Ditto with references to your own threads.
Alain Aspect, on the other hand, is correct. The problem with quantum mechanics is, as I’ve said here before, the fact that it’s so different from the macro world that we live in that we have no intuitive way of picturing it. This opens the door to all sorts of extravagant fantasies.
Meanwhile, you continue to dodge my question. In 4.1, you quote Bruce Gordon talking about “Boltzmann’s Brains”. I ask again, do you believe that you and everybody else on earth is a Boltzmann Brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum? Can you explain why Gordon seems to think that the multiverse makes 6 billion such brains AND the universe more likely than the universe and six billion brains all produced by living organisms? I’d really like to know how you swing that one.
dmullenix, you act as if neo-Darwinism is not pseudo-science??? Great prove it to me with actual evidence instead of demeaning anyone who disagrees with your materialistic atheism!!!,,, And what is really incredible is that Boltzmann’s Brains flows out of your very own atheistic materialistic philosophy, and you without even a hint that you are aware of what you are doing, have the audacity (or sheer ignorance) to ask me to defend a postulation that arises from your atheism. It would be absolutely funny, save for the fact that I am sure you think you are being reasonable by asking me to defend the absurdity of your very own atheism. ,,, Truly I could not write a better comedy!!!
As well dmullenix, (I’m pretending you will be reasonable), quantum mechanics is only counter-intuitive for the atheist who refuses to admit the absurdity of his materialistic beliefs, and to see the Theistic foundation of reality!!!