Fraud Picture 1
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Science News
Week of Jan. 15, 2000; Vol. 157, No. 3 All mixed up over birds and dinosaurs
By R. Monastersky
Red-faced and downhearted, paleontologists are growing convinced that they have been snookered by a bit of fossil fakery from China. The "feathered dinosaur" specimen that they recently unveiled to much fanfare apparently combines the tail of a dinosaur with the body of a bird, they say.
"It's the craziest thing I've ever been involved with in my career," says paleontologist Philip J. Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta.
The fossil, named Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, comes from the northeastern province of Liaoning, where local farmers have been unearthing many new dinosaur species, some showing evidence of downlike coats and feathers. Currie, Stephen Czerkas of the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, Utah, and Xing Xu of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing announced the discovery of Archaeoraptor at a press conference in Washington, D.C., at the National Geographic Society last October (SN: 11/20/99, p. 328).
At the time, they called it a missing link between birds and dinosaurs because it manifested the long bony tail of dromaeosaurid dinosaurs and the specialized shoulders and chest of birds.
The scientists couldn't be sure of the fossil's history because they had not excavated it. Spirited out of China, the specimen attracted Czerkas' attention when he saw it for sale in Utah. His museum arranged its purchase by a benefactor.
Recently, while examining a dromaeosaurid dinosaur in a private collection in China, Xu decided that the Archaeoraptor fossil is a chimera [A chimera is a mix of parts from different critters - Mar.]. The tail of that dinosaur is identical to the Archaeoraptor tail, he told Science News.
The two tails are mirror images of each other, derived from the same individual, says Xu. When rocks containing fossils are split, they often break into two fossils. Currie suspects that someone sought to enhance the value of Archaeoraptor by pasting one part of the dinosaur's tail to a bird fossil.
Czerkas is reserving judgement until he can view both fossils together.
"I've got all this other evidence suggesting the tail does belong with the [Archaeoraptor] fossil," he says.
The paleontologists already had concerns about the tail because the bones connecting it to the body are missing and the slab shows signs of reworking. They had convinced themselves, however, that the two parts belonged together.
Other scientists criticize the team and the National Geographic Society for unveiling the fossil before any detailed article had appeared in a scientific journal. "There probably has never been a fossil with a sadder history than this one," says Storrs L. Olson of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Because National Geographic published an article about Archaeoraptor before any formal description, credit for the scientific name now goes to the author of the magazine article, rather than to the scientists, says Olson.
Currie says that the mix-up over this one fossil does not diminish
the evidence suggesting that birds evolved from dinosaurs. It will, however, cause him to be more tight-lipped in the future about fossil finds
until a journal article appears. "Certainly, I don't recommend to any budding scientist that they do it this way."
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Anyone think the media will retract the story with the same enthusiasm with which they presented it? I can go back through decades of newspapers and find a fascinating array of claims like this, almost none of which have stood the test of time or have the significance claimed for them. The average person who simply accepts what they read is thus being steadily and greatly misled. Media bias is present in all fields, not just politics.
The Piltdown Parrot?
Bump. If I recall the claims for this fossil were announced in a press conference, without peer review. Shades of cold fusion? Will the press ever learn?
LOL! Good Post!
I'm gonna go find me a fossil centaur ;-)
A couple of observations:
Science News is the only magazine I subscribe to. It is always accurate, readable and fair. It also publishes stories questioning global warming.
Shame on National Geo, but this story illustrates the self-correcting nature of science. There are too many egos involved for frauds to persist forever. Of course, this may not be the end of this story.
As for the mainstream media -- who reads them anyway?
So what's the significance of this? Scientists make a mistake, discover it, and are quite happy to announce it to the world. Peer review works. Moral: People shouldn't jump the gun in scientific research.
I'm no bible thumper but every time one of these frauds occurs I can't help thinking of the line "..he will send them a strong delusion.." A delusion being a misinterpretation of a real thing, act, condition or event.
...almost none of which have stood the test of time or have the significance claimed for them.
Isn't that a rather broad statement? There have been, at most, a handful of hoaxes in paleontology -- and these are promptly exposed for what they are. There is no attempt to cover anything up simply because a few scientists were taken in by a hoax. These guys simply pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and get on with business; the hallmark of true scientists.
But twenty years from now we will still have people who believe that a feathered dinosaur was found because they read this claim on the front page of the newspaper, but never saw the retraction (if any was even printed).
Peer review is not perfect, not in a less than ideal world, because those doing the reviewing are not perfect. It is an improvement over a lack of review, not a perfect cure. Moreover, peer review also serves to enforce the status quo or prevailing orthodoxy, particularly in issues that get back to personal worldview and are based not on fact but on interpretation.
Peer review can only work if it is used; the media did not use it in this case.
I support the use of peer review, so long as its' limitations are understood. Where deep ideological/philosophical/worldview divisions exist, it should be understood that a single unified system of peer review is not reasonable. In those cases each faction should engage in peer review and police itself, and the media should rely on the peer review within each such faction rather than only listening to the faction they agree with and ignoring others. This is not a perfect solution, but it addresses the charade that science is some sort of all-encompassing, perfect, fail-safe, automatically self-correcting approach to the accumulation and understanding of natural world data. That, I believe, is a caricature.
In the meantime, I've found something rather extraordinary. Fossil centaurs! Apparently they were meeting with a strange tribe of horse-headed humans and satyrs when they were buried in a mudslide! My critics are saying it's just a bunch of disarticulated horses and their riders, but what do they know? I bet I can sell these for a ton on Ebay! ;-p
But twenty years from now we will still have people who believe that a feathered dinosaur was found because they read this claim on the front page of the newspaper, but never saw the retraction (if any was even printed).
C'mon Marathon... how many people don't recognize that Piltdown was a fake..?
And who discovered this bit of fakery? It would seem to me that it was the scientific community itself. (not because they sought to advance some dogmatic position, but because they sought to advance and defend the science)
National Geo has a history of this, remember the prehistoric tribe in the deep jungle of the Phillipines?
Is has been said that "a sucker is born every minute", and most of them go to work for the National Geographic Society.
OWK, it took over forty years to admit it was a fake. Yet dentists who studied it originally noted the presence of file marks which, in hindsight, clearly showed someone had been monkeying with it.
And it was not some magic "self-correcting" principle the science-worshippers appeal to that caused the fraud to be admitted and recognized. It was a change in theory, of belief about how humans evolved, that led to Piltdown being an embarassment. With Piltdown now in conflict with the new stories being told about hominid evolution something had to be done to resolve the conflict - fortunately at this time new testing came along and, in the light of these new interpretations, ready acceptance of the fraud was at hand.
My point is that Piltdown was only recognized as a fraud when the scientists had changed their minds on a more general level, their interpretations, of the historical evidence.
announced the discovery of Archaeoraptor at a press conference in Washington, D.C., at the National Geographic Society last October (SN: 11/20/99, p. 328).
Took them a whole two months to smoke this one out.
All in all...I'm pretty impressed.
Isn't that a rather broad statement? There have been, at most, a handful of hoaxes in paleontology -- and these are promptly exposed for what they are.
A handful of hoaxes but boxesful of errors arising from a strong desire to interpet the evidence (or lack of it) to conform to one's biases. Errors tend to take longer to to be acknowledged, but not always. I applaud these paleontologists for their courage and integrity in acknowledging their error so swiftly.
The lesson to the public here is, it is okay to be skeptical of the latest, breathless rush by evolutionists to announce to the world that they have have some fossil or mechanism that "proves" some aspect of their science.
As Richard Feynman once advised graduates at a Caltech commencement exercise, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool."
I have to be honest with you my friend. It is the use of phrases like "science-worshippers" which makes it difficult for me to take these conversations as seriously as they probably deserve to be taken.
More meat... less dogma.
Bttt
C'mon Marathon... how many people don't recognize that Piltdown was a fake..?
Probably as many as thouse who don't know Nebraska man was a pig. In fact, there are large number of women in Nebraska today that will argue that there is no way to determine any appreciable difference.
Peer review is a long drawn out process that can take decades, even longer. During which time a lot of things happen and positions staked out, and reputayions on the line. It is much more brutal an environment than you would expect from mere academians. Take Hubbles law, look at all the science in all the fields that have yet to realize that there own work was based on it. Since Tift first discovered that the red shift is quantized, he had been openly and repeatedly blasted. How long has it been? Only now have the scientific opinion scales shifted to Tift. Ironically, due in no small part to the telescope named after Hubble. Like I said, science is a brutal bussiness.
Sorry gi's, spellcheck on.
mORE LIES FROM THE EVOLUTIONISTS!! HAVE TO ADD THIS ONE TO THE "WHY EVOLUTION IS WRONG" THREAD!!!!!!!
Probably as many as thouse who don't know Nebraska man was a pig. In fact, there are large number of women in Nebraska today that will argue that there is no way to determine any appreciable difference.
LOL
(But then, I'm not from Nebraska)
Seems to me that Tielhard de Chardin was involved in the Piltdown hoax. He was a Priest who pushed the "directed evolution" wagon. It's amazing that he was a close aquaintance of the perps, was present for some of the "finds", but never wrote about Piltdown man or included it in his theorizing.
Guilty knowledge?
More importantly, his silence on the subject suggests he knew that science eventually uncovers frauds. Not because science is virtuous, but because scientists look after their legacies.
The fraud was discovered when someone discivered tar was holding the feathers on. Upon further research it was discovered that it had been run out of town shortly before the discovery.
For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conque the highest peak -- and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for ages.
Piltdown Bump . . .
So what's the significance of this? Scientists make a mistake, discover it, and are quite happy to announce it to the world. Peer review works. Moral: People shouldn't jump the gun in scientific research.
Good question. Well, the significance is the school textbooks not being corerected, such as IS the case with the concept of "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny", disproved 100 years ago as a total deliberate fraud. It is still in the textbooks and is a typical example of how all scientists have bias.
This concept is the scientific justification for abortion, as the "fetus"(not baby mind you) is a reptile, amphibian, bird, fish, etc. Observe:
Fraud Picture 1
Fraud Picture 2
A set of 19th century drawings that still appear in reference books…are badly misdrawn, says an embryologist in Britain.
Although Haeckel confessed to drawing from memory and was convicted of fraud at the University of Jena, the drawings persist. “That’s the real mystery,” says Richardson (of St. George’s Hospital Medical School in London) New Scientist Sept. 6, 1997 p. 23
This is STILL in my college biology book, and my daughter's science books as evidence of evolution.
In a debate with Dr. Ashley Montague, Dr. Duane Gish said this:
Evolutionary religion is rarely very efficient at "self-correcting" after "peer review". It depends on the social and political implications to society.
His,
Bob Z.
rzuvich@hotmail.com
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Evolutionary religion is rarely very efficient at "self-correcting" after "peer review". It depends on the social and political implications to society.
This is true. Unlike the field of Physics, (where Theoretical Physicists are under constant review by Empirical Physicist), in Evolution, there is no equivalent Empirical Evolutionist.
Why did the feathered dinosaur cross the Yellow River?
To avoid being plucked for its piltdown.
Science News is the only magazine I subscribe to. It is always accurate, readable and fair.
I've read Science News; and with all said publications, it is only accurate and fair, based upon who is reading it and the accuracy of current so called scientific theory and assumptions. In other words, not so accurate and fair.
W.K.
"More meat... less dogma."
Evolution is "dogma meat." This just proves it.
Well, some 'frauds' can last virtually forever if the poor science becomes the belief system of the vast majority of scientists like Darwinian gradualism has become. Only the brave scientists, armed with the continuing complete lack of intermediate fossils between major forms, have come out against Darwin's well-intentioned but inaccurate hypothesis.
Yet, those who try to publish facts against the whimsical gradualistic macro-evolutionary theory are kept from getting their articles into the major scientific journals. The bias FOR macroevolution, based on psuedoreligious belief systems where evolution is a pivotal pillar of atheistic beliefs, acts as an censoring force deleting any opposing views, no matter how solid in scientific principles they are founded.
All this trifling over gradualism, punk eek and such avoids the central question. Show me some solid evidence from DNA evidence, fossil remains, or radioactive dating, that contradicts the theory of an ancient earth and the common descent of all life.
These are the two central claims of evolution. They have stood untouched for a hundred and thirty years. Every time there is a new technology or a new investigative tool it reinforces these two central claims.
Show me the contrary evidence.
...it is only accurate and fair, based upon who is reading it and the accuracy of current so called scientific theory and assumptions...
Read what you have written and show me any publication that is more accurate and fair than current theory and assumptions.
While you are at it, show me some DNA evidence that contradicts the assumption of common descent of all life.
The paleontologists already had concerns about the tail because the bones connecting it to the body are missing and the slab shows signs of reworking. They had convinced themselves, however, that the two parts belonged together.
The lesson here is that if we want something badly enough, we can convince ourselves that it's true. As described here, the clues pointing out the error seem obvious, yet they made the error anyway. (Probably it's less obvious when you see the actual rock, but these fellows were trained professionals who should have, and obviously did, know better.)
The rush to print, and the loud proclamations from the evolutionary community points out that the triumph of desire over fact is more widespread than just the scientists directly involved with the "discovery."
The same can be said of the anti-evolution community, as may be seen even in this thread. The fact that this fossil is not what it was originally said to be: well, it doesn't prove evolution false. It puts the evidence back a step, but that's about it.
Read what you have written and show me any publication that is more accurate and fair than current theory and assumptions.
Sure, those based on fact, not assumption or bad theories. My comment, was to your reference that the magazine you refered to was the most accurate and fair; which it is not.
While you are at it, show me some DNA evidence that contradicts the assumption of common descent of all life.
Never said anything about this topic. But before I can attempt a contradiction or agreement, you might want to tell what I am to contradict or agree with. Read your sentence: show me some DNA evidence that contradicts the assumption of common descent of all life.
Which common descent idea are you talking about? As the definition keeps changing, what is yours?
I'm off to work, I'll get back later.
Show me the contrary evidence
Prove your theory. Incidentally, punk eek versus gradualism is not a trifling matter. Gradualism (traditional Darwinism) posits infinite changes accumulating over time, implying a fossil record rich with transitional forms. Darwin himself said his theory would fail if transitional forms weren't found. Punk eekers are paleontologists who actually went into the field to search for these predicted transitional forms and found only a few (still disputed) fossils that fit the bill.
Punk eek was thus knitted together as a safety net to catch Mr. Darwin's theory as it fell from the highwire of the impoverished fossil record. Meanwhile many eminent neo-Darwinists such as John Maynard-Smith are on record as dismissing punk eek as junk science.
I suppose we could settle the dispute with a vote as to which theory is sufficient, but that wouldn't be science.
Your post implies that the two theories are largely compatible, and certainly on the core issues. Not necessarily. Gradualism and punctuated equilibrium exist to save a vital component of Darwin's theory. Intelligent, capable scientists in both camps believe that the other's postulated mechanism--and Darwin's theory by implication--fails on, or is far from being established by, the evidence. That's a significant problem that shouldn't be glossed over.
Meanwhile other scientists are bailing out in favor of pansperism or complexity theory because they are convinced that irrespective of the transitional forms problem, the issue of how life got started on earth to begin with is implausible under any Darwinian paradigm.
Apparently, the most recent issue of Scientific American includes articles that will likely delight the panspermists--who are ridiculed by the orthodox Darwinians.
Evolution theory is more unsettled than it has been for over 70 years.
And please don't come back and rail about "creation science." This is about the problems with evolution as a viable theory in its present forms. It has nothing to do with biblical creationism.
Please list the publications that are based on facts and are therefore more accurate and fair than Science News. You might also list some of Science News' errors, bearing in mind that they are a digest of more "serious" journals. So please give me an example of an error they have reported and not corrected.
My definition of "common descent" is simply descent from a common ancestor, a definition pretty much unmodified in the last century and a third. If you believe the "seeds" of life arrived from space you are simply pushing the origin back in time, but not modifying the problem.
If you don't believe in common descent you are obligated to demonstrate a discontinuity in the DNA sequences among current living things -- the existence of a monster, in other words.
There are many hypothetical disproofs of common descent. I am not aware of any and feel certain that the discovery of one would be headline news.
One of the strongest reasons for believing in evolution is that the central assumptions -- ancient earth and common descent -- have survied more than a century of technological advance. Darwin did not know about radiation and could not have envisioned DNA sequencing. But these new investigative tools have supported ancient earth and common descent.
This is about the problems with evolution as a viable theory in its present forms.
"(V)iable theory?" There are some here at FreeRepublic who insist that we call evolution a "fact," not a "theory"...
Prove your theory.
Theories cannot be proven, only supported or disproven. The central theory of evolution is common descent, not the specifics of variation and selection. Darwin had no knowledge of DNA, and wrote before gene theory.
We now understand many mechanisms that cause variation, and we understand many kinds of selection. Regardless of who wins what in the mechanism war, common descent remains the cornerstone.
If you believe evolution is in disarray, show me some evidence of discontinuity in the DNA sequences of current living things. Show me a living creature that does not have most of its DNA sequences in common with every other living thing. (either a subset or superset of other creatures or plants).
We share common DNA with plants.
Vade, some months ago, when I was preparing to write my essay on the fallacies inherent in current evolutionary mythology regarding avian evolution -- which {sniff, sniff} as I was called away on travel for several months, remains unwritten at this time -- sigh -- you challenged me to refute this very "discovery"... apparently convinced that you had at last found "evidence" of evolution which I would be hard-pressed to refute.
Ahem. Vade, consider your position summarily refuted.
Marathon, a great find. Thanks for posting this. Sure, the evolutionists will say, "See!? This proves science is self-correcting!!", as if the repudiation of falsely claimed "evidence" as the hoax that it is should in any way be taken as "validation" of their pet fable, known as "evolution".
The truth of this episode is simple. Science has, in fact, been affirmed. But the fiction of Evolution has been deprived of yet another of its coveted just-so-stories....
We share common DNA with plants.
You are suggesting that God should use entirely new blueprints, down to the bio-chemical level, every time he designs an organism?
Seems rather presumptuous to be telling a Designer how He ought to Design something, especially after the fact.
Common Descent "evidence" in DNA can be taken that way, if your emotional preference is to believe in Evolution. Equally, it can be taken as evidence of Common Design.
All this is, however, immaterial, if we can succeed in the libertarian/conservative goal of getting Government out of education. Give the power and money back to the parents, and schools will be responsive to the demands of the majority of Americans that they teach critical analysis of alternative theories of Origins. In addition to (IMHO) competitively raising the quality of American education across the board, in both the hard sciences and the social sciences.
We share common DNA with plants
A buick and an ford may share some common parts but that doesn't mean they were made in the same factory.
All life on this earth is carbon based. It shares a finite set of elements arranged in such ways that life is possible under the environmental characteristics of this planet. Under either a evolutionist theory or a creationist theory this is as you would expect it to be. Under evolution you'd expect things to have some commonality. Under creation you'd expect them to be made to live in the same environment.
Commonality, without the intermediate forms (fossils or living) does not prove anything beyond that common feature being the best solution to the problem (hemoglobin for example). And since God is the ultimate engineer, you'd expect Him to use the best solution. Commonality as it exists in the world proves creationism just as much as it supports evolution.
Just because a fish has hemoglobin, and I have hemoglobin does not prove that we are related.
Common descent is just as unprovable as evolution because the missing intermediate forms don't exist. As such it has the same standing as creationism. It must be accepted on faith. The only difference is that it takes far greater leaps of faith to accept evolution.
God Bless America (Please)
-- you challenged me to refute this very "discovery"
Can you quote me the thread on which you claim this happened? To my own memory I've never heard of archaeoraptor until today. (But I was beating some people up with Confuciusornis just two or three threads ago.)
One of the strongest lines of evidence in any investigation is prediction. Mathematical prediction is the strongest, as in the predictions of astronomy or particle physics.
Not quite as strong, but still pretty good, is the prediction that future discoveries of evidence will be consistent with the theory and not contradict the theory. (Consider, for example, the photos of O.J. wearing the shoes he said he never owned. This evidence does not prove he was the murderer, but it was an unexpected line of evidence consistent with the prosecutor's theory. The "murder shoes" could have been found in the closet of a neighbor and have nothing to do with O.J.) The point is that evolution, meaning common descent, could be disproven by any number of lines of evidence, but it hasn't.
In the 1860's scientists could not have known about radioactive dating, nor about gene sequencing. Nevertheless these new technologies have produces evidence consistent with an ancient earth and common descent of life.
Show me a prediction made in the 19th century, outside the paradigm of evolution that has been similarly vindicated by new lines of evidence..
Show me some solid evidence from DNA evidence, fossil remains, or radioactive dating, that contradicts the theory of an ancient earth and the common descent of all life.
These are the two central claims of evolution. They have stood untouched for a hundred and thirty years. Every time there is a new technology or a new investigative tool it reinforces these two central claims.
I don't offer this as a proof or disproof of anything, but consider the following:
As we see in this case, the desires of scientists to prove a cherished theory can overcome even obvious problems with the data, leading them to a wrong conclusion.
Scientists have marshalled a lot of data supporting the theory of evolution. If they have nevertheless reached the wrong conclusion, it follows that the problems with their data are considerably more subtle than was the case with "archeoraptor".
Subtle problems are obviously more open to interpretation than are clear-cut ones. Moreover, these threads demonstrate that there's often a very great emotional investment in evolution. Thus, I'd expect that any subtle-but-damning anti-evolution data can and would be "convinced away" by many or most evolution scientists.
I make no claims as to whether or not such problems exist for evolution; however, I do question whether these problems would be acknowledged even if they did exist.
Now on to common descent. As I've seen it, evidence for common descent is often given in terms of commonalities and differences in particular gene sequences for different species. Assuming that the data do reflect a progression from one species to the next, does this prove a Darwinian theory of common descent?
Not necessarily -- we could just as easily take this as evidence of an Intelligent Designer. Let's sketch out the new theory in terms of a computer programming problem (DNA actually lends itself to this sort of analogy). In real life I do a lot of programming, and very often I'll use the basic structure of previous programs as the starting point for my new programs. In addition, a lot of the basic pieces (e.g., time, vectors, and matrices) are pervasive.
My programs thus have the signature of common descent (and of continual improvement and increasing complexity) -- but it's clearly not a Darwinian process. As applied to DNA and the fossil record, could not the theory of an Intelligent Designer explain the data just as well?
We can very plausibly hypothesize that an Intelligent Designer would go through the same sort of process with DNA. In fact, the programming analogy addresses a process that Storm Orphan pressed home to me last week: that evolution does not address the transition from non-life to life. An Intelligent Designer would have created the "computer, compiler, and operating system" prior to introducing the "programs" He wrote.
Throw in the fact that millions and millions of people claim to have experienced the presence of God, which even provides us with an additional piece of "evidence" in our favor. It's all anecdotal of course, but given the numbers involved, can you simply dismiss the existence of God in the face of it? You can "convince it away," of course, but that's bad science.
So now let me turn it back on you: Show me some solid evidence from DNA evidence, fossil remains, or radioactive dating, that contradicts the theory of an Intelligent Designer as I've sketched it.
I'll predict that you cannot do it.
I trust you do not refer to the Theory in Trouble thread where I introduced links to several feathered dinosaurs and proto-birds, but nothing mentioned in this article.
And, do I see some wishful creationists trumpeting the end of THE feathered dinosaur fossil? You can't rebut a theory from a position of painful ignorance. There's a cartload of dinosaur/bird intermediate forms.
Ah! Memory coming back. The "hairy feathers" exchange. I have it on my hard disk and you can eat your "refutation." Sinosauropteryx was the one mentioned and there are plenty of good fossils of that one. So, now what's a "Just So" story? You haven't been praying hard enough for it all to go away.
Here are some links again so you can educate yourselves on how much of a problem you still have. There's not a reference to archaeoraptor on a one of these that I've noticed so far.
A good site for Confuciusornis Sanctus, the bird with the claw wing that couldn't be. (You have to read the "Theory in Trouble" thread to get that one.)
An Early Birds site.
A site on--get this--Feathered Dinosaurs of China! Lots of them, but I did a search on "archaeoraptor" and didn't find it. So you still have plenty to contend with.
Did you catch that "We share common DNA with plants" statement? They forgot to mention that the nucleotides encode digital blueprints, each with its own "launguage". And thats why we don't get cross-over. No cogs or dats, as it were. A little knowledge is a painful thing to watch. Just like on that "Hydrothermal Origin of Life??" thread. statistcal models without the knowledge of the problem or how tho use them. But then agin, what did we learn? Oh yes, Evolution is more clever that we are, it uses random chance, but before the probability numbers start to get interesting then switches on the auto-arrange. Boy that is clever. Auto-arrange, who would of ever figured?
...lol...
...bump...
...vote the evil, lying and corrupt democrats out...
Since you can be very easily confused when it's convenient for the greater glory of God, I'd better inform you in advance that archaeoraptor isn't Caudipteryx, either, despite Caudi's fossil having been unveiled in a National Geographic press conference (albeit one a year and a half earlier).
As they say in the courtroom dramas, perhaps THIS will refresh your memory!
To: VadeRetroThought I'd seen it all, then. Last June 1, it was. But these days I'd never let you rant on and on about "Where are the intermediate fossils?" without smacking you upside the head. You kept pretending all of science is still looking for the reason why Darwin's smooth, continuous fossil record prediction of 1859 didn't pan out. I was letting you get away with more than I realized. (Sigh!)
A new Materialist Superhero - VADERETRO, the Evolution Man! Watch him jump off a cliff flapping wings made of hair and fall to his demise screaming "They're feathers they're feathers they're feathers!!!" See him walk along a beach, and then, walk back the same way, curiously excavating the crushed sea-shells from his sandal-prints (he does this for hours at a time).Sorry, I just had to.
So, you're saying that because cortexes are only found in mammals, that therefore they only evolved in mammals, and because they only evolved in mammals, therefore they'll only be found in mammals? Very circular, Mr. Vade, but it is still all begging the questions HOW, WHEN, AND WHY NO EVIDENCE AND NO TRANSITIONALS? that were asked in the first place.
From: Uriel1975 (Uriel@DiesIrae) *
05/01/99 20:39:32 PDT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------To: Uriel1975
Please bring that up etc.I'm not committing to how much more I'm going to play, actively. Haven't seen all the species and all the features, but I've seen all the tricks and heard 90 percent of the arguments. If I catch you making incredible factual misrepresentations, I'll speak up. But anyone who cares by now should know to take your data with a box of salt.
In other words, "Trust but verify." I feel as though you've been caught out there enough. Anyone still wavering that you can rope in from here is demonstrating non-survival of the unfit.
Don't want to leave you hanging on one point: If you're wondering about those hairy fossil feathers, they're on Sinosauropteryx. You can see them in a photograph in the February 1998 Scientific American: The Origin of Birds and Their Flight (Kevin Padian and Louis M. Chappe). Despite the fossil record being completed in the early 80s, there've been a lot of intermediate forms turning up. Not enough to bother you or Marathon, of course, but I'd suggest you make sure you've got all that covered if you don't want to look dishonest again.
From: VadeRetro (Me@Billary.com) *
05/01/99 20:54:43 PDT
One thing I had figured, though:
. . . anyone who cares by now should know to take your data with a box of salt.
Theories cannot be proven, only supported or disproven.
Let's take your assertion at face value. Then perhaps Eugenie Scott and Stephen Gould ought to be more circumspect when they have the urge to rush to inform publish to the world that "Evolution is a fact, not a theory." Scientists still have a lot of credibility in our culture owing to the fact that they can speak authoritatively in specialized and highly technical languages that the mass of people cannot understand. People tend to take them at their word. Scientists have a special duty to be precise and not to exaggerate their evidence and positions when speaking to the public.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make that we share DNA with plants--that we have a common "ancestor"? That's a point-of-view; but if you stick with the scientific method you must still show a credible mechanism that ties life together through the transitions. Wishing, and hoping, and "just knowing" it's there isn't sufficient.
It might be sufficient in a sense if science were open to entertaining metaphysical explanations, but it isn't. That would be a relaspe into the God of the gaps conundrum. For good reason science focuses on the physical. That's fine and commendable if research is done with scrupulous honesty, with an eye ever-vigilant to bias, and one acknowledges the a priori commitment to material causes as a philosophical limitation on inquiry.
In short, science is good when the scientist humbly admits his or her personal limitations and the limitations of the methods he or she employs. Unfortunately, evolutionary theory from the very beginning has been populated by some very arrogant characters (Julian Huxley in 1959 triumphantly declaring that evolution had forever displaced and dismissed God as a creative force is just one example of a legion of examples). That has led to some arrogant science ever-declaring victory (and why do they insist on seeing it as "war" anyway?) only to later mumble a la Emily Litella, "Never mind." It is good for them to have the mickey taken out of them from time to time.
I have no quarrel with honest, unbiased science. I have a major quarrel with arrogant scientists, and a more arrogant group is not to be found outside the bounds of evolution theory.
The treatment of Behe by the science community will serve as my litmus test as to whether evolution science has shorn itself of the shameless arrogance that has come to characterize so much of it. When evolution scientists can engage his ideas--and ideas of other dissenting scientists such as those who posit intelligent design or panspermia-- with professional respect and courtesy and engage them solely on the evidence and not by appeals to authority, ridicule, or name-calling, I will consider that evolution science is on its way to becoming healthy.
Haeckel Bump. Now this is fun!
Come take your medicine, children.
The Piltdown Parrot?
Now, that's a NEW FREEPER Classic!!
Vade, perhaps you missed the memo that came out shortly after our last conversations. I'm afraid that apparently it has escaped you that Confuciusornis is not only just a bird, but it's not even being postulated as the "ancestor" of modern birds any more -- in other words, it is a bird, its own (non-ancestral) bird, and nothing but a bird.
June 14, 1999 No. 386
By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC-CH News Services
****** CHAPEL HILL Working together on fossilized remains, Chinese and U.S. researchers have discovered a previously unknown species of primitive bird, a finding that offers new evidence that early bird evolution was considerably more complex than previously believed.
In the process, the scientists have identified on its nearly complete skeleton, the world1s oldest surviving horny beak, part of a fossil dating back some 130 million years. They also say they1ve added more weight to the argument that birds descended not from dinosaurs, but rather from unknown earlier reptile ancestors.
"One of the really interesting things about these discoveries is that they unexpectedly and vividly show that birds had already diversified by the late Jurassic-early Cretaceous period," said Dr. Alan Feduccia, chair of biology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.... (from out of nowhere, apparently!!)
A report on the discovery appears in the June 17 issue of Nature, a British science journal. Besides Feduccia, authors are Drs. Lianhai Hou and Fucheng Zhang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Larry D. Martin and Zhonghe Zhou of the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
The researchers have named the new species Confuciusornis dui in honor of Wenya Du, the man who collected the specimen near the edge of a lake in northeast China1s Liaoning Province and donated it to the Beijing institute. It is a smaller but close relative of Confuciusornis sanctus, another crow-like bird of the same age the researchers found and reported in Nature in 1995.
Because hundreds of specimens of C. sanctus now have been found in the same area, volcanic eruptions likely killed them along the lakeshore instantaneously and froze them in time, Feduccia said. The new species was an unexpected but pleasant surprise.
"This bird was more advanced than Archaeopteryx in that it had a beak but was less advanced in that it had two small openings in the rear of its skull very similar to the reptile progenitors of birds," he said. "This is a mosaic pattern we see very much in vertebrate evolution in other words, various lineages showing both primitive and advanced features at the same time. What this really shows is that early bird evolution was not linear, as many people have depicted it, but rather a far more complicated Śbush1 with many extinct lines."... (More advanced! Less advanced! Forward and reverse, all in the same bird! Chinese firedrill on evolutionary chronology, everybody!)
Neither of the two cousin species likely were ancestors of modern birds, Feduccia said. Instead, they were side "twigs" that disappeared from their family tree -- or bush -- millions of years ago.
Males of both species bore two long tail plumes indicating the sexes differed significantly from each other. Like its cousin, the new bird C. dui also grew asymmetric wing feathers characteristic of all modern flying birds. Ostriches and other birds that can1t fly well sprout nearly symmetric feathers incapable of creating an airfoil and hence lift.
"These birds also have highly curved foot claws and reversed big toes showing they were clearly tree-dwelling creatures," the scientist said. "Together, these and other characteristics -- and the fact that the birds lived in complex social colonies show that they were pretty well developed.
"It seems to us that this was a tree-dwelling bird, not an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur as people advocating a dinosaur origin of birds have said."
In 1979, Feduccia made international news by publishing a paper proving that the oldest known bird, Archaeopteryx, could fly because its wing feathers were asymmetric. Barbs on one side of its wing feather quills clearly grew longer than barbs on the other side.
"Some other scientists had speculated that Confusciusornis was a ground-living predator whose beak may have been hooked like a hawk, and this restoration was recently featured as a cover of Scientific American," Martin said. "The new fossil shows something very different. The beak is pointed and turned up at the tip very much like the cartoon bird Woody Woodpecker."
Combining modern and ancient features in the same skull was surprising, he said.... (Not if you reject the evolutionary chronology.)
Dui, the new specimen, also shows that the half-moon shaped bone in the wrist that1s been used to support a dinosaurian ancestry for birds is the same in Confusciusornis and Archaeopteryx as in modern birds, but is a different bone in dinosaurs, Martin said.
Sorry you missed the memo, Vade. Of course, deprived of their beloved Confuciusornis as any sort of missing link, the Evolutionists needed a new missing link to fit the bill. Fortunately, they found one... just in the nick of time... Archaeoraptor!!! The "missing link" was found! Again the tottering edifice of avian "evolution" could at least point to a single two-of-clubs to support the whole, unwieldy house of cards... Earliest Flying Dinosaur Found
****** Paleontologists have discovered a new feathered dinosaur that may be the
earliest flying, feathered dinosaur.
Archaeoraptor liaoningensis (meaning "ancient robber from Liaoning
[China]") was a turkey-sized theropod dinosaur. It lived about 120-140
million years ago, during the early Cretaceous period. This biped had
hollow bones, feathers, and a long tail. This meat-eater also had sharp
claws and teeth. It had a full set of feathers and a long tail, which
probably stabilized it in flight. Its shoulder girdle and breast bone
were similar to those of modern birds, indicating that is may have been
able to fly, according to Phillip Currie of the Royal Tyrrell Museum in
Alberta, Canada, "We're looking at the first dinosaur that was capable
of flying." "We don't know how good a flier it was, but it certainly has
all of the structures you would expect to see in a flying animal." ****** Archaeoraptor liaoningensis, presented for the first time in NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC, is a true missing link in the complex chain that connects
dinosaurs to birds. It seems to capture the paleontological 3moment2
when dinosaurs were becoming birds.
Archaeoraptor, which lived more than 120 million years ago, had a
dramatic combination of physical characteristicsĐa very advanced,
birdlike shoulder structure, wishbone and big sternumĐall indicating the
animal was a powerful flier. Remains of feathers surround the specimen1s
bones. Yet its tail was strikingly similar to the stiff tails of a
family of predatory dinosaurs known as dromaeosaurs, which includes the
3raptors2 of Jurassic Park.
3This mix of advanced and primitive features is exactly what scientists
would expect to find in dinosaurs experimenting with flight,2 NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC magazine says. ****** Why, once they'd found the beast, by golly gee if it wasn't "exactly" what their Evolutionary "premises" would predict! How incredibly serendipitous!! Until, of course, it turned out to be a fraud. Oooops. Back to the drawing board, eh, Vade? Now, you're right about one thing... I did not have conclusive proof that you were outrageously overselling Confuciusornis when you originally challenged me June 1. My final nail in that particular coffin had to wait until the C. Dui reports of June 14. But I do admit that I find it gratifying, that in a debate between a creationist and an evolutionist, the steady advance of science leaves the evolutionist without his missing links, while the creationist is, in fact, wholly vindicated in his opinion a mere two weeks after stating it. Heh heh.
Archaeoraptor liaoningensis
October 14, 1999
"Some other scientists had speculated that Confusciusornis was a ground-living predator whose beak may have been hooked like a hawk, and this restoration was recently featured as a cover of Scientific American," Martin said. "The new fossil shows something very different. The beak is pointed and turned up at the tip very much like the cartoon bird Woody Woodpecker."
VadeRetro's "feathered dinosaur" was as much a Bird, a True Bird, and nothing but a Bird -- much like Woody Woodpecker -- except, we presume, with a somewhat less annoying laugh.
Now, you're right about one thing... I did not have conclusive proof that you were outrageously overselling Confuciusornis when you originally challenged me June 1. My final nail in that particular coffin had to wait until the C. Dui reports of June 14.
Patent lawyering, complete with the "Heh heh." There are no nails in my coffin. Various disputes and problems remain in the bird ancestry question, as I pointed out myself on the "Theory in Trouble" thread.
You never suspected that I was outrageously overselling Confuciusornis to you on that June 1 thread. Go back up and look for yourself. How could you have? I never mentioned it to you.
Per your penchant for exulting over every dispute in real science as proof of YECism: it's been noted before that Confuciusornis and Archaeopteryx (or is it Protoarchaeopterx? Even I can get confused.) are contemporaries, so they probably aren't both in the direct ancestry of modern birds. (Not many scientists are saying that either one is.)
Indeed, some people still say, "Some other reptile, not dinosaurs!" So? That makes you like a condemned man exulting as his would-be executioners argue between the axe and the guillotine.
Now, I didn't expect an apology, even though you're supposed to be the polite one, but this is more brazen than I remembered. You're caught out, man! Time to 'fess up!
Follow the links I gave you above. Archaeoraptor was spanking brand new last October, a one-fossil new species. Demolishing it puts you no better off than you were back in, say, September. One less nail in your coffin. (But there were and are still so many!)
VadeRetro's "feathered dinosaur" was as much a Bird, a True Bird, and nothing but a Bird -- much like Woody Woodpecker -- except, we presume, with a somewhat less annoying laugh.
A bird, except for a non-keeled, smallish, raptorian sternum. A bird, except. . . what the heck kind of wing is THAT?
But wait! "Feathered dinosaur?"
You're still doing the "I'm so dumb, I can't tell the word Confuciusornis from the word Sinosauropteryx" trick! Still brazening it out? I pity anybody you're fooling.
Yes, the concensus of opinion is that Confuciusornis is an early, VERY primitive bird. (If you think it's just a bird, bring one in to Show-And-Tell for us next week please. A picture will suffice, but it must be from your backyard.)
THIS
You never suspected that I was outrageously overselling Confuciusornis to you on that June 1 thread. Go back up and look for yourself. How could you have? I never mentioned it to you.
You were overselling it just hours ago, Vade. "Beating people over the head with Confuciusornis", were you? Then you were employing a rubber chicken to administer the "beating". Confuciusornis is just a bird. You mentioned the "feathered dinosaur" fossils in our prior debates, and certainly Confuciusornis is the best-catalogued of the "feathered dinosaurs" -- (except that we now know - ahem - it's just a bird).
So I find it a little disingenuous for you to play at being wounded for my demolishing Confuciusornis as a reputed "link", when you allegedly "never mentioned it". If you didn't expect me to look at the single-most-catalogued member of the group of finds to which you were referring, just what did you expect, anyway?
Per your penchant for exulting over every dispute in real science as proof of YECism: it's been noted before that Confuciusornis and Archaeopteryx (or is it Protoarchaeopterx? Even I can get confused.) are contemporaries, so they probably aren't both in the direct ancestry of modern birds. (Not many scientists are saying that either one is.) Indeed, some people still say, "Some other reptile, not dinosaurs!" So? That makes you like a condemned man exulting as his would-be executioners argue between the axe and the guillotine.
The axe-ers and the guillotine-ers are busy killing eachother's theories, each proving the intellectual shallowness of the fantasies of the other.
P. Lemoine, a president of the Geologic Society of France, editor of the Encyclopedie Francaise, and director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, has concluded: "The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach; but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate.... It results from this summary, that the theory of evolution, is impossible."
Indeed.
Now, I didn't expect an apology, even though you're supposed to be the polite one, but this is more brazen than I remembered. You're caught out, man! Time to 'fess up!
You accused me of fraud, and exulted in the "feathered dinosaurs".
Face it Vade, the "feathered dinos" were the fraud. They're just birds. This is not personal antipathy at work, but it is my turn to exult. To put it bluntly, you claimed them as "missing links", I said they could not be. And, not to put too fine a point on it, I was right.
Follow the links I gave you above. Archaeoraptor was spanking brand new last October, a one-fossil new species. Demolishing it puts you no better off than you were back in, say, September. One less nail in your coffin. (But there were and are still so many!)
Au contraire. Without Archaeoraptor to replace the oops-its-just-a-bird-not-a-missing-link Confuciusornis, it is the fable of avian evolution which is... shall I play upon words?.... groundless and hollow. (hah!)
No reptilian "ancestor", alleged "primitive" Confuciusornis and Archaeopteryx not the ancestors of any "modern" birds (just true birds in their own right), Evolutionists torn between the ancestral Theropod school and the ancestral Thecodont school, both M@ `MQŔning that thM;Ŕher's story is not simply unlikely, but physically and chronologically impossible.... I say that they are both right....
Frankly, evolutionists still make great story-tellers, but that's about it....
What this really shows is that early bird evolution was not linear, as many people have depicted it, but rather a far more complicated [bushy] with many extinct lines."... (More advanced! Less advanced! Forward and reverse, all in the same bird! Chinese firedrill on evolutionary chronology, everybody!)
Presidential Press Secretary Uriel1975 today mocked the emerging complexity of avian evolution as a "Chinese firedrill!" (A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy quickly scheduled a press conference today to protest the use of this term in derogation.)
both M@`MQŔning that thM;Ŕher's story is not simply unlikely, but physically and chronologically impossible.... I say that they are both right....
I love watching you squirm. My lawyer wants to meet you.
Combining modern and ancient features in the same skull was surprising, he said.... (Not if you reject the evolutionary chronology.)A) What's the elipsis hiding? B) Combining ancient and modern features in the same skull in one of the most primitive birds known, with distinctly reptilian features, is less than a shock to me.
Ooh, having deprived you of Confuciusornis, you are now inviting me to destroy your faith in Sinosauropteryx too? Joy, joy!! Although, admittedly, if I can't find conclusive proof in the course of a few hours tonight, I might have to wait a couple weeks for the advance of Science to demolish this alleged "link" (sorta like it did Confuciusornis)
By the way, thank you for posting the "Both a Bird and a Dinosaur" illustration! You'll have to wait a little while for me to pull up the source citations, but I just can't wait to post the review of that exact illustration as being an unscientific fraud!!!
You are really putting too much faith in the "artist's conception" just-so-stories.
Vade, some months ago, when I was preparing to write my essay on the fallacies inherent in current evolutionary mythology regarding avian evolution -- which {sniff, sniff} as I was called away on travel for several months, remains unwritten at this time -- sigh --Nothing has gone away today except (probably) a fossil whose find was announced in October. And I the fossil I mentioned to you in June wasyou challenged me to refute this very "discovery"
... apparently convinced that you had at last found "evidence" of evolution which I would be hard-pressed to refute.Ahem. Vade, consider your position summarily refuted.
Might just be some crafty guys looking for round-eyed suckers. Never doubt the profit motive.
"distinctly reptilian"? In a bird that lends no support for the "dinosaurian origin of birds"? Doesn't wash with me.
I might have to wait a couple weeks for the advance of Science to demolish this alleged "link"
In the meantime, you might want to stay away from the birds in your neighborhood, if ol' C-bird is "just a bird" to you. If the birds in my town looked like that, I'd never put up a feeder!
"But I was beating some people up with Confuciusornis just two or three threads ago."
You were beating something, alright, but it wasn't other people.
Doesn't wash with me.
Translation: "I see nossink!
That makes you like a condemned man exulting as his would-be executioners argue between the axe and the guillotine
There's that imagery again. Science by battleaxe, broadsword, and blunderbuss. Tsk.
but I just can't wait to post the review of that exact illustration as being an unscientific fraud!!!
Are they going to denounce the fossil right above it as an unscientific fraud too?
Arkansas Man?
Arkansas Man?
(a.k.a. homo perma-eretus genitalius bentis)
Sorry!!!!
That's homo perma-erectus genitalius bentis
“The feathers of Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx seal their relationship to the earliest known birds,” Currie writes in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. But “in their body form they look...more like those slender, meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods.”
While you're out, don't forget to refute Caudipteryx. So many fossils, so little time.
I'm lurking. I don't have a dog in this fight. The facts will be sorted out in due course. With or without this creature, evolution still makes sense. More than any alternative hypothesis.
(excerpted from DinoData website)
DINO-BIRDS Sinosauropteryx Scipionyx Protachaeopteryx Caudipteryx and Confuciusornis ------------------------------------------------------------------------ by G.S. PAUL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Direct examination confirms that the "croc-septum" described by Ruben et al. 1997 consists entirely of breakage and glue. Where all three arrows in their paper point, there is major damage. The ventral flakage is especially hard to see in photos, the dorsal breakage is patently obvious. The central crack was filled with cement colored to match the sediment.
The breakage occurred when the slab was broken into numerous pieces during its initial removal by a local farmer, as a result the damage is symmetrical on the two slabs. The repair work was also done by the collector. So Ruben et al. mistook incompetent collection and repair work by an amateur for soft tissue anatomy. What is the dark material? In Scipionyx the probable liver sits well forward in the chest (as in birds), directly above the juncture of the anterior gastralia and what must have been the posterior end of the cartilage portion of the sternum. The authors of the Nature paper have confirmed to me that the liver does not extend dorsally in Scipionyx, contrary to certain claims made at Dinofest. In Sinosauropteryx the anterior end of the gastralia is well forward of the dark material. Ergo, the liver very probably was not preserved.
The dark material is in the same location - the posterior half of the body cavity from dorsal vertebra 8 or 9 back - as the well preserved intestines of Scipionyx, so it too probably represents the contents of the gut. There is no soft tissue evidence for the presence of a croc-like liver, septum, or fore- and-aft partitioning of the body cavity in any theropod. It was suggested at Dinofest that the "body outline" (visible in the photo in July Natl Geo) of the largest Sinosauropteryx lies outside and contains the "internal fibers". The "outline" is actually the preservative applied after the completion of prep work.
In some places on the sediment the sealant is thick enough to glisten (in most areas the coat was so thin that it absorbed into the sediment with a flat sheen), there are some thick circular drip bead marks, the brush work can be seen in some places, in some places there was a shallow shelf of sediment where the brush did not carry the sealant into the base of the shelf, etc. The sealant was applied to preserve the loose feathers on the slab as well (as you can see in the Natl Geo photograph). In the Natl Geo photo, there appears to be an small array of feathers at the tip of the tail of the large Sinosauropteryx. However, the slab was - as true of all of these specimens - badly shattered, and the feathers lie on a separate slab. At first glance there seems to be a couple of distal vertebrae on the feathered slab.
However, examination under magnification with a flashlight revealed that no bone is present, the vertebrae are illusions created by breakage of the sediment. The last few tail vertebrae are missing because they were lost along with the slab that really belongs there. Nor do the feathers have any connection with the vertebrae (unlike the tail feathers of Protarchaeopteryx and Caudipteryx). They are just some loose feathers on a slab that the farmer decided looked good at the end of the tail. The "tail flipper" that some seem to think surrounds the supposed tail feathers is of course just more brushed on sealant. From what I gathered some who examined the specimens still belive that the sealant is a body outline and that the tail flipper is real. Mistaking damage and prep work is not, of course science, and one can only hope these nonsensical notions will not see the light of publication.
They're ALL frauds, Vade.. All your precious "Feathered Dinos".
Now I know why you've got your lawyer present.
"VadeRetro's "feathered dinosaur" was as much a Bird, a True Bird, and nothing but a Bird -- much like Woody Woodpecker -- except, we presume, with a somewhat less annoying laugh."
You know if this keeps up, evolutionists are likely to be found in motel bathrooms all over the country hanging by their belts. What else are they going to do after they've lost their reason to live? :-)
As to the explanation offered by those "red-faced and downhearted, paleontologists?"
I don't have a dog in this fight.
Huh!? WAIT A MINUTE! I DON'T EVEN HAVE A DOG! (And it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?)
I'm lurking.
You're the only one I know that posts this. The statement is false when posted.
"With or without this creature, evolution still makes sense."
Bless your faithful heart, dear Patrick.
You just must provide us a link to DinoData web site. I'm sure ICR or whoever won't mind at all!
"But I was beating some people up with Confuciusornis just two or three threads ago." -- VadeRetro.
Ha, take a little Confuciusornis, you creationist! And some more Confuciusornis! And let me jab you again with -- Confuciusornis!!
What? It's just a bird?
Confuciusornis?!?! Uh, why of course it's just a bird. Why do you accuse me of ever saying otherwise? Now, have at thee, with Sinosauroteryx! (gee I hope it takes those YEC'ers longer to refute this one, hope against hope...)
Ok, I'm not truly lurking. This is a copy of what I posted in the "orthodox" evolution vs creation thread:
Everyone is off on that other thread [this one], raving about the feathered dinosaur fossil which may be a fake. It (the fraud if there be one) proves nothing. As I've said before, how many religious fakes and frauds and scams and false predictions have there been? Thousands? Millions? Means nothing, and doesn't prove the non-existence of God. And this fossil, if a fake, doesn't bring down the house of science. So I'll let them giggle and twitter, and then we'll all resume, as before.
However, the slab was - as true of all of these specimens - badly shattered,
Amazing! Evidently the idea is, shatter them totally, then build what you want, jigsaw-style! I wonder how we've been getting away with this? And how long can it have been going on? Why, who knows if any supposed "fossil" is what it's supposed to be! Thank you for exposing this, er, truly astonishing fraud!
More meat... less dogma.
Hmmm ... I get the answer "in the form of a question" right one of these days after all.
http://www.dinodata.net/
"DinoData" may sound like a kid's site, and it's not surprising that (as you watch your mythos die) you would presume it to be a creationist site, but it's actually a general paleontology survey website with some 40,000 internal links (and it's still under construction -- will be enormous when finished).
He didn't say all fossils everywhere, Vade, just those particular Sinosauropteryx fossils.
Of course, you know that, but at this point, you are grasping at straws....
"Ah, so I see Shao-Lin: your Kung-Fu is good! But not as good as my 'Vade-Fu.'"
(Defintely need to find some old Kung-Fu flicks for sounds on this one!)
You've got me laughing so hard I almost hacked up a lung! :)
Later...
"'orthodox' evolution"
See? It is a religion.
According to Norell the fossils are considered theropod dinosaurs rather than true birds because they lack a number of features seen in Archaeopteryx and more advanced birds. He and his colleagues doubt that the creatures could fly because they had relatively short forelimbs, short feathers, and a body twice the size of Archaeopteryx. Whats more, their feathers had a symmetrical shape like that seen in flightless birds today.
This from your DinoData site on Caudiraptor. In general, they don't seem to realize that they're wasting their time. Have you emailed them yet? Where do they hide this G.S. Paul guy, in the humor section? The fossil feathers are "just some loose feathers on a slab that the farmer decided looked good at the end of the tail?"
Finally are we all straight now on what's Archaeoraptor, what's Sinosauropteryx, what's Confuciusornis, and what's other? I don't want you forgetting again by the next thread.
He didn't say all fossils everywhere, Vade, just those particular Sinosauropteryx fossils.
He didn't say clearly what he meant. You'd have done better to post a link, so we could read it in situ. Saves thread length and saves filtering out your spin.
I trust when people read the stuff that comes from the evolutionist camp, the only word they ever see is the one in black, above.
It's the only one they use that really means anything.
Glad to oblige.
Later, as well... I may be outta here for the night.
I might as well reply - it's one data point out of thousands - you guys still have to explain why chickens have genes for teeth.
"'orthodox' evolution"
See? It is a religion
A misquote. A fabrication. A lie. The full expression was this: the "orthodox" evolution vs creation thread, which referred to the orthodox thread, the thread which is the continuation of our debate. If you grab at straws like this, you are intellectually absent.
This from your DinoData site on Caudiraptor. In general, they don't seem to realize that they're wasting their time. Have you emailed them yet?
wasting their time? I wouldn't say that at all. I, too, am curious what wondrous varieties of critters have died out since the Fall. I wish them all the best.
Where do they hide this G.S. Paul guy, in the humor section? The fossil feathers are "just some loose feathers on a slab that the farmer decided looked good at the end of the tail?"
Poor Vade. I'm sorry I destroyed the Grail of your Faith. It just goes to show -- actually examining the specimen before you go to press with the "artist's conception" is often good practice!
Finally are we all straight now on what's Archaeoraptor, what's Sinosauropteryx, what's Confuciusornis, and what's other? I don't want you forgetting again by the next thread.
Well, claim "victory" on "multiple threads" of Confuciusornis again, and I will have to play racquetball with your claims again, I warn ya.
But, other than that, it's just as I've said all along -- there are birds, and there are dinos, in the NE Chinese beds.
What is NOT existent is any sort of "link" between the two.
Bring up all the birds -- which are just birds... and dinos -- which are just dinos -- that you like.
Have a good evening, Vade! See you tomorrow or the next....
Bold off.
But, other than that, it's just as I've said all along -- there are birds, and there are dinos, in the NE Chinese beds.
Yeah, the old lawyering game. Everything's a A or B. Except one creation scientist swears thing A is an ape--just an ape, and another swears thing A is a man--just a man. I'll give you a TalkOrigins link for this phenomenon in a minute.
So, for sure, Archaeopteryx is a bird, to you. But what's Protoarchaeopteryx? If we find a proto-proto-archaeopteryx, then what do you do?
"If you grab at straws like this, you are intellectually absent."
And if you don'can't recognize when you're being "tweaked," then you truly are one of the dimmest bulbs in the lamp.
Of course, one would expect that from one who posts his presence by writing, "I'm lurking." (You're just such a cute little fella', aren't ya'?) Hehehe...
And next time: close your HTML tags, "sparky!"
Bold off, h3 off.
Still messin'
One last time before punting.
I don't see bold. I think your eyeballs have mutated.
I've been arguing with Urinal too long.
As promised, here's a link that shows how The Creationist Lawyering Game gets a lot of different results depending upon which creationist you ask. You'd think people could agree on whether something is a man or an ape, given that there's no such thing as a transitional fossil.
More evidence that we see your silly games for what they are HERE.
Show me the contrary evidence.
No no js1138, that's not how science works. First the theory, then the evidence or lack of it in its support. The burden of proof is borne by the theory. Evolution ain't doin' so well.
At first the paleontologists were ecstatic to find their fantastic feathered fossil. Two weeks later, they discovered to their horror that what they had thought was a unitary fossil was actually the breastbone of a pressure-cooked chicken in dried gravy joined by ordinary duct tape to a dehydrated slab of baby-back pork ribs. The lead researcher was understandably concerned. A clever lad, he immediately intuited what had happened. Alarmed at the thought of a possible loss of NSF grants, the department chair summoned the researchers and gave them a game plan to ride out the bad news.
At a hastily assembled news conference the department chair nimbly deferred all questions to the research team. Hesitating slightly, the lead researcher stepped up to the mic, coughed softly, and calmly and painstakingly set forth the best technical explanation he could think of for the fiasco.
The end (. . . until the next debacle).
... it doesn't prove evolution false. It puts the evidence back a step, but that's about it.
Beyond Micro-Evolution, which are changes within species, and vast surmise and speculations, the evidence for Darwinism is nowhere. This minor theory is immensely overblown in its substantiable importance and should be relegated to the dustbin of history (to borrow a phrase).
LOL!!! The story is much, much better with the sound bites. Thanks!!!
Just kidding!!!
(It's not like it's something important)
All kidding aside, I am impressed that these scientists would own up so soon to the error. I genuinely mean that.
The central theory of evolution is common descent, not the specifics of variation and selection. Darwin had no knowledge of DNA, and wrote before gene theory.
Behe agrees with common descent. Panspermists agree with common descent. The differentiating tenants of neo-Darwinist theory are the specifics of variation and selection.
"Confuciusornis is not only just a bird, but it's not even being postulated as the "ancestor" of modern birds any more -- in other words, it is a bird, its own (non-ancestral) bird, and nothing but a bird."
Alot like this one, no doubt...
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Confuciusornis is the oldest flying dinosaur with a nearly modern flight apparatus. It offers exciting new evidence for how a grasping hand evolved into a flying hand. The ancestral theropod dinosaur had three functional fingers in the hand: the thumb, index and middle fingers. Birds retain these three fingers, although they support flight rather than grasping. We have long wondered how dinosaurs made the transition from a grasping to a flying hand, and Confuciusornis gives us new insight into that problem. Confuciusornis still has fully functional raptorial claws on its thumb and middle fingers, but its index finger—the finger that supports the flight feathers—is composed of broad, flat bones and a reduced claw. As with other basal maniraptors, the thumb and middle fingers converge on one another while grasping in Confuciusornis, enabling its hand to support flight while still retaining some grasping ability.
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Looks like a pheasant, with a large golden crest. Known sometimes in Guyana to locals as the Canje Pheasant. Can only fly about 330 feet without crash landing. Hoatzins are mainly vegetarian and are one of a very few tree-dwelling birds to feed its young leaves. Live in large, flat, unlined nests. "Helpers" or the young from previous years help the parents take care of the babies. The young have claws on the tips of each wing. Very shortly after birth young hoatzins wander around the nest and nearby. Since they are still very weak the "claws" on their wings act as a support on branches. If they fall off into the water they simply swim to shore and eventually get back to the nest. The Hoatzin is the national bird of Guyana. Its main food source is the Moko-moko plant. Doesn't have many friends because it gives off a horrible smell which scares away animals. The adult is generally dark brown with white markings below. It has a long, erectile crest on its crown. Its wings and legs are short; its feet are large; and its tail is long and wide, broadly bordered with yellow. It gives off an offensive odor and is thus called the stinkbird or stinking pheasant. The hoatzin usually climbs among the branches of trees instead of flying. Scientific classification: The hoatzin makes up the family Opisthocomidae. It is classified as Opisthocomus hoatzin. |
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If you look at the artist rendering Vade has provided, and compare it to the photo and description of the Hoatzin, you'd almost swear they were the same bird!
"It seems to us that this was a tree-dwelling bird, not an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur as people advocating a dinosaur origin of birds have said."
Just like the Hoatzin. (Pronounced "Watson.")
"It no longer can be one of the main supports for a dinosaurian origin of birds," he said.
I would think not when it's "cousin" is the national bird of Guyana! (Do you still believe Coelocanths are extinct, Vade?)
VR: "A bird, except for a non-keeled, smallish, raptorian sternum. A bird, except. . . what the heck kind of wing is THAT?"
The same one that exists on the Hoatzin, Vade.
"The young have claws on the tips of each wing."
"Hoatzin, common name for a South American bird that may be most closely related to the cuckoo."
VR: "But wait! 'Feathered dinosaur?'"
Only in your dreams, Vade, only in your dreams...
(Looks to me like the artist who did the rendering may have used the Hoatzin, which has been known to exist since the late 1700's, as a model for the "feathered dinosaur." Have we uncovered yet another evolutionary hoax here on FreeRepublic?)
Later...
Re: the Hoatzin...
I'm sure some scientist will dig up a Hoatzin fossil in about 10,000 years and will be holding a press conference declaring it to be the "missing link" between dinosaurs and birds.
Here's hoping some future freeper will find this thread and jeer him, too. :)
A "Hoatzin" bump for you guys!
On the other hand, maybe the evolutionists here can make some hay with this bit of information about the Hoatzin (after all, they do it with just about every other "bit" they get.)
There's no other bird like a hoatzin. "It is the only bird that has a foregut for fermentation, like a cow's," explains Penn State biologist Blair Hedges. "It has bacteria like a cow's to help it digest cellulose and it has an enzyme like a cow's to extract nutrients from the bacteria."
"What's a Hoatzin" by: Nancy Marie Brown (Research/Penn State, Vol. 17, no. 2 (June, 1996))
WOW! Look at that! A "living link" between birds and cows! STOP THE PRESSES!!! POST A "BREAKING" ON DRUDGE!!! Hehehehe...
Please list the publications that are based on facts and are therefore more accurate and fair than Science News.
The dictionary for one. But this is not relevant to your argument. I quote you one more time.
Science News is the only magazine I subscribe to. It is always accurate, readable and fair.
My answer is it is not always accurate, pick any article in the mag that speculates, which it does quite frequently. Next point is fairness, as this is relative to who reads it, I question your assertation.
I'm only disputing your claim You might also list some of Science News' errors
Never made any claims about errors, just accuracy and fairness. Nice try.
My definition of "common descent" is simply descent from a common ancestor, a definition pretty much unmodified in the last century and a third. If you believe the "seeds" of life arrived from space you are simply pushing the origin back in time, but not modifying the problem.
Your "common descent" definition is a little vague. It simply restates the term "common descent". If you want a serious discussion define your terms. Then describe your "theory". Then I will be able to agree/disagree. In other words, how did we descend from a common ancestor, who/what was it, where did it come from?
If you don't believe in common descent you are obligated to demonstrate a discontinuity in the DNA sequences among current living things -- the existence of a monster, in other words.
I believe, if you put forward a valid theory (still waiting), then I would expect some supporting evidence from you, which we may discuss. Discussing a theory is not the point; the validity of the supporting evidence, if any, is. After all, it is your theory, not mine.
The WhiteKnight
Bump...
How does that line go: A bird in the hand, is better than two fake dino-birds in the bush fossil record.
bump Post #114
"How does that line go: A bird in the hand, is better than two fake dino-birds in the bush fossil record. "
I wonder how those creationists ever managed to fake that photo?!? :)
The lesson to the public here is, it is okay to be skeptical of the latest, breathless rush by evolutionists to announce to the world that they have have some fossil or mechanism that "proves" some aspect of their science.
Correction: It's OK to be skeptical of the latest, breathless rush by anybody who announces to the world they have something significant.
Remember Carl Baugh and his amazing Paluxy Man tooth he found right among the dinosaur tracks. His dentist told him it looked like a human tooth, and so he went straight to the press with his announcement. It took a few years before the evidence that it was really a fish tooth piled so high that even creationists started to slowly backtrack on their claims.
OTOH, in this case it is now 1 1/2 months since the Archaeoraptor liaoningensis was first shown publicly, and already they found out it was a fake. Pretty good record!
"His dentist told him it looked like a human tooth..."
So much for trusting "experts."
Now on to common descent. As I've seen it, evidence for common descent is often given in terms of commonalities and differences in particular gene sequences for different species. Assuming that the data do reflect a progression from one species to the next, does this prove a Darwinian theory of common descent?
Not necessarily -- we could just as easily take this as evidence of an Intelligent Designer. Let's sketch out the new theory in terms of a computer programming problem (DNA actually lends itself to this sort of analogy). In real life I do a lot of programming, and very often I'll use the basic structure of previous programs as the starting point for my new programs. In addition, a lot of the basic pieces (e.g., time, vectors, and matrices) are pervasive.
My programs thus have the signature of common descent (and of continual improvement and increasing complexity) -- but it's clearly not a Darwinian process. As applied to DNA and the fossil record, could not the theory of an Intelligent Designer explain the data just as well?
I'm a programmer too. If I was a super-intelligent programmer, it would be a piece of cake for me to write a production-quality program completely from scratch, hand-tuned to the assembler statement level for a perfect match to the functional specs.
But I'm not super-intelligent. So I always link in my massive in-house library of common functions & classes - some of which have been around for over 10 years now. Then I copy over a few source files from my previous product & start changing the comment header at the top to say "UltraChart 1.0" instead of "UltraProject 3.5". Or else I create a new MFC App Wizard project from scratch, and then use the ATL Object Wizard to create the COM interfaces I need, which is an easier way of doing the same thing...
Nope, I think the kind of code-reuse we see in DNA sequences is very convincing evidence of an un-intelligent designer!
Bump!
All kidding aside, I am impressed that these scientists would own up so soon to the error. I genuinely mean that.
This may be the first sign of open-mindedness I've detected from "your side" of these threads, and I am very pleased to see it. And to give your side its own due, the Church accepted the solar system and pardoned Galileo, but that was about 3 and 1/3 centuries after they convicted him of heresy. Yet they eventually came around, and this is very much to their credit. If you had asked me ahead of time, I would have bet heavily that the Church would NEVER admit an error. But they did. It was difficult because their whole setup is that they've got the one and only truth, so how could they ever be so wrong on something so important, but by golly, they finally did it. The contrast with science is that science does it faster, because they never claim infallabity.
Your responses are cute but essentially unresponsive. Science News is a "Reader's Digest" of science and bears comparison only with other sources of general science writing -- not dictionaries nor political magizines, nor entertainment magazines. I asked for the name of a better one. I also asked for examples of unfairness or uncorrected errors exhibited by Science News. I assume your attempt at redirection means you don't have any.
Common descent means descent from a single ancestor, as in the tree of life metaphor. I know you know this, so your query is simply misdirection.
Evidence for common descent is relative to current investigative technology. Until recently it depended on fossil finds and filling in "gaps". Now the burden has shifted to DNA sequences and placing the branches on the tree.
What makes evolution and the tree of life metaphor scientific is the falsifiable prediction that everything can be placed on the tree. There are many theories of how branching occurs and how the tree is pruned, but these are not central to the truth or falsness of evolution.
Behe agrees with common descent. Panspermists agree with common descent. The differentiating tenants of neo-Darwinist theory are the specifics of variation and selection.
I have no problem with people arguing over the nuts and bolts of evolution. As for the origin of first life, I don't believe evolutionist address this at all -- certainly Steven Gould explicitly excludes this from evolutionary studies. He argues that this is in the realm of physics and chemistry.
I don't believe that the heat of this debate is generated by the technical details of change and selection. The heat comes from the tree of life metaphor, the assertion by evolutionists that live has a common ancestor.
A buick and an ford may share some common parts but that doesn't mean they were made in the same factory.
But perhaps the common parts were made in the same factory. More to the point, if Buick and Ford share some really inefficient design feature, some off the wall widget that makes them more expensive to manufacture, less reliable, and offers no marketing or profit advantage, then we would suspect that the widget was descended from a common ancestor.
Life is full of such widgits.
They're ALL frauds, Vade. All your precious "Feathered Dinos".
There are, according to Buggman on an earlier thread, 250,000 species. It would be nice if the Evolutionists could find just one or two or three wholly non-controversial clearly transitional forms. As it is, they find a few examples that can be interpreted their way and expand those feeble examples to explain the universe. Even a paltry few thousand would shore up their case considerably. But finding virtually nothing, nada, of a non-controversial sort, in anything but the surreal world of Evolutionist "science", would put the theory to rest in the ground.
I was actually thinking more along the lines of a steering wheel, tires, and exhaust system, etc. They have lots of common components but are made differently, in different places by different people.
Commonality does not prove common descent.
GBA(P)
bold off . . .
This may be the first sign of open-mindedness I've detected from "your side" of these threads...
This is certified mischaracterization, if I've ever seen it, and from one who has no inkling as to the meaning of "open mind".
Commonality does not prove common descent.
You aren't responding to my post. First "uncommonality" could disprove common descent. A statement isn't scientific unless it can be falsified by evidence. So far the evidence has not disproven evolution. No amount of supporting evidence will ever be enough for some people.
Second, you didn't respond to my main point. When the parts share a common, inefficient design, you must ask why.
Let's play "Wish Away The Evidence!"
However, examination under magnification with a flashlight revealed that no bone is present, the vertebrae are illusions created by breakage of the sediment. The last few tail vertebrae are missing because they were lost along with the slab that really belongs there.
Or maybe your G.S. Paul is talking about a different specimen? Whether he is or he isn't, I don't think he helps you make Sinsauropteryx go away at all. Pray harder! Harder!
By the way, if no bone is present--the vertebrae are "illusions", why bother to mention that the last few vertebrae are missing? Why do the "illusions caused by the breaking of the sediments" curve right along with the tail? Wouldn't the lines of breakage be going the wrong way at some point?
It's a nice picture, VR, but from what I can tell from the article it was the guys who made the initial mistake who said there was no bone.
This may be the first sign of open-mindedness I've detected from "your side" of these threads, and I am very pleased to see it
With all due respect (don't you hate that phrase?), PH, this post--among others--makes me wonder just how much of the "opposing" posts you really take care to read.
Let's suppose you were to expound in detail just what it is that you think that I believe about the mechanics of the origin and unfolding of life and the cosmos. Whatever conclusions you might come up with would have to consist of tiny scraps of ambiguous evidence held together by enormous quantities of conjecture and inference, all of it conforming to your existing biases about Genesis creation science. Yet not once have I personally professed an apology or defense on behalf Genesis creation science.
This kind of reasoning is not unlike extending a spec of beef suet with a pound of Hamburger Helper and calling it a sirloin steak--the same sort of reasoning evolutionists are so prone to use in evaluating fossils and genes in their zeal to "win the war." This is the same sort of bias-driven reasoning that led to this feathered dinosaur error, Haeckel's frauds, the revolving door of "It's a hominid, no it's an ape" announcements and retractions, Marsh's and Kettlewell's rickety science and unjustified inferences etc. etc.
And why do evolutionists insist on seeing it as a "war" anyway? That's a terrible mindset to have when objective truth is at stake.
Beyond Micro-Evolution, which are changes within species, and vast surmise and speculations, the evidence for Darwinism is nowhere. This minor theory is immensely overblown in its substantiable importance and should be relegated to the dustbin of history (to borrow a phrase).
You can believe in micro evolution, but not macro evolution, even though there is absolutely no difference between the two?
Small changes in an organism build up over time, leading to speciation. There is not one sudden big change that does it, even in the theory of punctuated evolution; the animals simply change slowly to fill in new ecological niches. The only "burst" is in geological terms, i.e., millions of years instead of tens or hundreds of millions of years.
BTW, punctuated evolution and gradual evolution are not mutually exclusive. Animals change gradually over time. Once in awhile, though, something happens to open up new ecological niches which surviving animals quickly (geologically speaking) take advantage of.
It's a nice picture, VR, but from what I can tell from the article it was the guys who made the initial mistake who said there was no bone.
G.S. Paul is definitely post-morteming someone else's fossil Sinosauropteryx find. The only reference to some kind of conference with any anyone else reporting on a find is this:
The authors of the Nature paper have confirmed to me that the liver does not extend dorsally in Scipionyx, contrary to certain claims made at Dinofest.
This rambling discourse of Paul's seems to be trying to refute at least two different specimens as "data sculpture," although it's confusing enough out of context that I'm not sure what to make of it. What exactly are you basing your statement on?
something happens
That's easy to imagine. Just so!
I'm just tweaking you. ;-)
You do bring up a good point. This article seems to be more about Scipionyx than Sinosauropteryx, although the author talks about them almost as if they're interchangeable. They aren't.
Me to you (#126): This may be the first sign of open-mindedness I've detected from "your side" of these threads, and I am very pleased to see it.
Your response (#136): With all due respect (don't you hate that phrase?), PH, this post--among others--makes me wonder just how much of the "opposing" posts you really take care to read.
By God, sir. Even the slightest probe in your direction, attempting to show some goodwill when I felt it was due, generates a scornful blast. Be assured I shall not make the same mistake again. Be well.
I'm a programmer too .... Posted on 01/19/2000 01:04:10 PST
From the time-tag alone I could have guessed you were a programmer.... ;-)
Before I get on to your reply, I ought to state that my original post was meant to show how jsl138's challenge (to show how DNA or other evidence contradicts evolution) was essentially meaningless as a proof of evolution. My "theory" was created to illustrate that there are non-Darwinian ways to explain the same data, and that it's not possible to disprove my theory either, using the same criteria.
Nope, I think the kind of code-reuse we see in DNA sequences is very convincing evidence of an un-intelligent designer!
This is your opinion only -- you (not being super-intelligent) may simply not understand the purpose behind the code-reuse we see in DNA. At any rate, your comment does nothing to disprove my "theory", and it certainly doesn't do so by jsl138's criteria.
On the other hand, we have your own (and my) programming practices to give us a reasonable process for how an Intelligent Designer might leave extraneous information in DNA (and we're only assuming that it really is extraneous). For our purposes, it's not necessary to speculate about why the ID didn't clean up His code -- it's the existence of the Programmer that matters.
(Remember, it's really only a sketch -- let's not get too deep into the programming analogy).
What exactly are you basing your statement on?
I interpreted your post to be an argument about the missing bones. From my reading of the article, it appears that the scientists themselves had expressed concerns about the missing bones. In light of that, the picture you posted is nice but extraneous: the bones are apparently missing. I apologize if I misinterpreted your point.
By Jove! You're on to something, r9! Paul is very clearly rebutting this specimen find:
Remarkable Soft Tissue Preservation Reveals Creature Was Swift And Deadly.
In one fair-sized thread, Uriel has compiled an incredible history of "bait-and-switch."
Post 41, U rattles my cage that the fall of Archaeoraptor, a fossil just announced last October, is the refutation of a fossil species I mentioned to him last June. (As the Freeper known as chuckles likes to say, "Do the math!")
Post 56, U pretends the June conversation was about Confuciusornis. Wrong again! Confuciusornis rebutted as "just a bird."
Post 79, U rebuts Sinosauropteryx (the right speicies addressed at last!) with an article attacking a Scipionyx fossil!
[Various later posts] U and SRay cover U's tracks in a barrage of ridicule at me. Ah, the fight for the real science has to take some funny turns, sometimes.
...attempting to show some goodwill
Basically, you said that everybody else who disagrees with you is close-minded (and therefore wrong), and that Kevin Curry is himself close-minded except for this one time.
It may have been a show of goodwill, but you'll have to admit it was a pretty back-handed way of showing it.
I am a programmer too, and there are several reasons we leave extraneous code in programs. My favorite, and probably the least common, is to flush out pirates. Finding bogus code in a program is sometimes used as evidence of copyright infringement in court.
More common is laziness and cost cutting. Re-using bloated objects when you only need a function saves time.
So the question becomes, is God the programmer lazy, or obsessed with proof of authorship? There is garbage code in living things that points to common ancestry, not just common sloppy design.
No proof in science is ever final (final proof is foreign to scientific thinking), but disproof can be final. That is why I insist you produce a disproof.
DNA analysis offered the potential to disprove evolution, but it didn't. Instead it added to the list of vestigal features in living things -- non-functional, even counterproductive features that are shared across species.
From my reading of the article, it appears that the scientists themselves had expressed concerns about the missing bones.
Please quote the section you are talking about. I don't see it. Are you looking at the wrong article? The main article refers to Archaeoraptor, which is at best in serious doubt for now, suspected as a chimera. Uriel and I have been arguing over his post in #79 in which he attempts to place Sinosauropteryx in the same boat as Archaeoraptor. If it were so, S would have had an article similar to this one about it before now. At any rate, the article in #79 is at least mostly about something else yet, Scipionyx. Shifty little bugger, that Uriel.
>More common is laziness and cost cutting. Re-using bloated objects when you only need a function saves time.
I think, if we're talking about DNA, that the spaces are there for future change. Just like people putting a bunch of NOPs in machine-code, which they can use to put in more instructions at a later date.
Given the recent scholarship suggesting that the word "Nephilim" in Genesis 4 is properly translated as "Muppets," I think your fossil is actually the remains of Big Bird, and not a descendant of Barney at all.
Wrong fossil, wrong species. So what's your next dodge? Here's what Paul is talking about:
NOPs do not cause inefficiency (other than taking space, which is now cheap). Dead code in programs does not cause problems unless it is executed (in which case it isn't really dead, just forgotten by the programmer).
Living things, however have features and systems that are demonstrably inefficient and even harmful. The demonstration is found in other living things that have better designs, such as the human eye that has nerve fibers in front of the light receptors, rather than behind. Other organisms have better designs, and the different designs are consistent with the different branching points on the "tree of life".
If you want to disprove evolution, find a primate with the superior eye design -- or some equivalent anomaly.
The above-posted image seems to work only intermittently. Either the host site is busy or they were refusing certain types of requests. Going directly there should work in any event.
That is why I insist you produce a disproof.
This may be quite difficult, as it is impossible to prove a negative.
Marathon writes: "I support the use of peer review, so long as its' limitations are understood. Where deep ideological/philosophical/worldview divisions exist, it should be understood that a single unified system of peer review is not reasonable. In those cases each faction should engage in peer review and police itself, and the media should rely on the peer review within each such faction rather than only listening to the faction they agree with and ignoring others. This is not a perfect solution, but it addresses the charade that science is some sort of all-encompassing, perfect, fail-safe, automatically self-correcting approach to the accumulation and understanding of natural world data. That, I believe, is a caricature."
That's a good point, Marathon! Too many people, it seems, place undue faith in "peer review," and fail to see its inherent limitations. One limitation is who qualifies as a "peer of the realm," so to speak. Sciences are all organized at some level. They have formal organizations, publish formal journals, and hold formal conferences or conventions, often yearly. This sets up a political apparatus, replete with many perquisites. The "perks" include presidencies of the organizations, the editor-in-chief-ships of the mainline journals, and awards presented at the conventions. Recipients of these "perks," as well as the wannabees, discover that they have power to approve or not approve of people, papers submitted for publication, and ideas. They also can get other "perks," such as being called on by the media whenever a controversy arises, and to therefore speak as "authorities." Scientists are no strangers to flashing their credentials and scientific "badges" whenever they can. Look at a typical academician's curriculum vitae and see firsthand how they are more than happy to extoll these formal bestowments of legitimacy and acceptance.
Peer review, in practical terms up till now, has meant the power to reject papers from publication, or papers from presentation, or even membership in scientific organizations. Peer review should be viewed as a gate-keeping process. The gate opens wide for papers, articles, and people who say the acceptable things. The gate shuts tight on those who say the unacceptable things, or who question the foundations, or question the authority of the established "peers of the realm."
I have witnessed peer review first-hand. I have seen situations where decent papers or presentations have been rejected purely for ideological reasons, or worse, for personal reasons. I have seen situations, even, where a paper gets a majority vote for publication, only to have the vote of the peer reviewers be overturned by the editor of the journal. Who said life was fair?
What has changed in recent years is the advent of the internet. Yes, this has opened the flood gates to a lot of b.s. But it has also opened the gates to wider discussion of ideas, discoveries, research, and so on that should have been published, but which was gate-kept out. Organized science is finding it a bit more difficult to block out and suppress real challenges to its established orthodoxy. That hasn't stopped such scientists from acting any less close-minded -- in fact, it's actually intensified the close-mindedness. But, it has leveled the playing field, so to speak, and opened debate up.
Some people don't like these evolution threads on FR. To me, however, these threads often contain the most articulate comments and most reasoned comments on FR. The threads also illustrate the leveling of the playing field. Those who resort to the previous tactics of name-calling (ad hominem arguments) or other irrelevant arguments simply do not get away with them. These threads also illustrate the operation of the philosophical underpinnings of a free republic where a fair and level exchange of ideas is possible.
You can believe in micro evolution, but not macro evolution, even though there is absolutely no difference between the two?
Well of course there is. You are saying that new species are created in the same fashion that bird beaks change (and change back)? Show me.
My freshman biology text was full of that (discredited thirty yrs previously) nonsense about "Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny".Also they listed some two dozen "vestigal organs" supposedly supporting evolution.Finally, the textbook had two pages entirely devoted to the benefits of "positive eugenics" for humans.That portion would have made Hitler and Maggie Sanger proud!This was in the mid-50's
The problem here is that we can't be certain that any feature is an inefficient design. It may in fact be the best design for all environments or conditions under which that feature will be found.
These conditions may not be immediately obvious or even frequent but the feature may be essential to survival under them.
We just don't have the data about any "widget" to say it's good or bad under all circumstances. Therefore the presence of this widget still doesn't prove common descent.
Commonality proves commonality. Nothing more.
As to evidence disproving evolution. There is not a shred of evidence proving evolution. It is mathematically impossible in the amount of time the evolutionists say we have had. [Note that there is evidence proving natural selection of features WITHIN a species. This is not evolution]
GBA(P)
I don't believe that the heat of this debate is generated by the technical details of change and selection. The heat comes from the tree of life metaphor, the assertion by evolutionists that live has a common ancestor.
There are two different flames. There is the Creationist vs. Darwinist heat, in which both details are argued. And there is the non-Darwinist evolutionist/Darwinist heat. Non-Darwinist evolutionists and Creationists tend to line up together for two reasons: (1)Darwinists are "the kings of the hill" and both former camps want to knock them off the hill, and (2) Darwinists lump non-Darwinist evolutionists like Behe and others in with Creationists in an attempt to minimize them.
I appreciate your open-minded stance, however. --jazz
Proof that science is self-correcting, unlike religion.
Starting very hard at the Paul article, I realize that he's not attacking Scipionyx at after all. He's using a presumption that Scip was closely related to Sino to argue that Sino's guts are wrong. My apology on that one. (But you've been so shifty already in so short a period. . . what do you expect?)
Although we're clearly walking into the middle of whatever argument Paul's having, the force and fury of his attack seem to be directed at 1) the placement of the liver and whether it's a liver or not, and 2) the presence or absence of feathers at the very tip of the tail. I don't even see the feathers that he's refuting there, although there is a break in the rock. Is that a coincidence? Are we on the right fossil yet? I wonder.
The feathers on the picture I have start at the middle of the head and go the complete length of the spine, tapering off near the end of the whip-like tail which is not missing.
If I was a super-intelligent programmer, it would be a piece of cake for me to write a production-quality program . . . . . I think the kind of code-reuse we see in DNA sequences is very convincing evidence of an un-intelligent designer!
It's always black or white with you! The programmer has to be either super-intelligent or un-intelligent? How about kind-of-intelligent? Or at least more-intelligent . . . than you or I! ("What a piece of work is Man . . .")
Or at least more-intelligent . . . than you or I!
Or how about "more intelligent than you but less intelligent than she?" (Sorry!) ;-)
By the way, I'm being faithful to all my girlfriends right now.
Well of course there is. You are saying that new species are created in the same fashion that bird beaks change (and change back)? Show me.
My pleasure. Observed Instances of Speciation
By God, sir. Even the slightest probe in your direction, attempting to show some goodwill when I felt it was due, generates a scornful blast.
LOL! Kind of a back-handed compliment, don't you think? And I'm hurt. Haven't I shown any open-mindedness at all?
Or how about "more intelligent than you but less intelligent than she?" (Sorry!) ;-) By the way, I'm being faithful to all my girlfriends right now.
AH-HAhaha! Touche. (Panspermia's still pissed at you. You never call. You never write.)
DNA analysis offered the potential to disprove evolution, but it didn't.
True, but neither did it prove it. All it's shown is that DNA is a likely player in whatever mechanism is in play. My "theory" explicitly accounts for that.
This gets to the heart of the problem with your challenge: it doesn't allow for the possibility of an alternate theory based on the same data, and it definitely doesn't constitute grounds for proof of your theory.
That is why I insist you produce a disproof.
Yes, fine. But I can insist the on same thing for my "theory". What it boils down to is this: You've got a theory to explain the data. So have I -- and by the criteria you've set, it's now up to you to disprove mine. (As we've seen in all these endless threads, there are people hard at work trying to disprove yours.)
Of course the problem is, if both theories adequately explain the data, how does one use those data to disprove either theory? The answer is, of course, that you can't without additional data. To that end, my theory introduced the (admittedly anecdotal) evidence of God, who would presumably be the Intelligent Designer.
Disproving a theory can very difficult, of course, which is why I turned the challenge back on you. For you to disprove my theory, you have to disprove (exhaustively) that God plays any active role, and not just genetically, but also climatalogically, geologically, and er... astronautically (asteroids, solar output, and such).
Instead it added to the list of vestigal features in living things -- non-functional, even counterproductive features that are shared across species.
a) Counterproductive to what? You're assuming that these traits are not actually conducive in some other and/or larger frame of reference. b) If it truly is counterproductive, shouldn't natural selection have taken care of it long ago?
So the question becomes, is God the programmer lazy, or obsessed with proof of authorship? There is garbage code in living things that points to common ancestry, not just common sloppy design.
As I noted in a previous post: once you concede the presence of God within the process, a dissection of His programming practices becomes moot, because you've already accepted my theory. As for common ancestry, the programming analogy handles that nicely: for example, a lot of my code really does have common ancestry, and it shows. (I'll concede the sloppiness on my part.) At any rate, your or my opinion of His coding practices is not proof or disproof of anything.
And simply to conclude that it's "garbage code" -- if advances in biology have taught us anything, it's that we should be very, very careful about assuming such things. For example, recent findings indicate that our "vestigal" appendix is actually a rather active part of the human immune system.
Posts #150 & #160 -- a source of early-afternoon humor by comedian VadeRetro.
Starting very hard at the Paul article, I realize that he's not attacking Scipionyx at after all.
Stopping in for a few minutes to read my FR posts, I am bemused by the sight of poor SpayedRetro (that's for the "Urinal" crack, I'll drop it now) , muddling around trying to escape the binds in which he has been placed.
"The article is about Scipionyx, Uriel!! Hah, hah!! Yet again, I shall accuse you of fraud!!
"Uh.. hmm.. oh.. Oops!! My bad!! I, Vade Retro, am full of it. The article is not primarily concerned with Scipionyx."
"Naturally, you won't take those "shifty" comments of mine personally, will you (embarrassed grin)?"
"Let me try another tack -- my interpretation of nifty photos is superior to the detailed lab work of a paleontologist who has actually examined the specimen!!! You'll take me seriously now, won't you? (please?)"
Sure, Vade. I've already had to destroy your Faith in Confuciusornis and also, at the very least, the most-oversold claims made about the Sino fossils. If you like, I will deign to re-examine your posts this evening and deprive you of your last shreds of "feathered dino" silliness. See you this evening.
Please quote the section you are talking about.
Holy cats, VR: it's from the article at the top of this thread!
Recently, while examining a dromaeosaurid dinosaur in a private collection in China, Xu decided that the Archaeoraptor fossil is a chimera ... Currie suspects that someone sought to enhance the value of Archaeoraptor by pasting one part of the dinosaur's tail to a bird fossil.... The paleontologists already had concerns about the tail because the bones connecting it to the body are missing and the slab shows signs of reworking. They had convinced themselves, however, that the two parts belonged together.
To me this says that the Archaeoraptor's "tail" is believed to have been taken from a different fossil, from a different dinosaur, that it was pasted on to a bird fossil. Moreover, the article explicitly states that the paleontologists already knew that connecting bones were missing.
This all seems unambiguous -- why the difficulty?
Proof that science is self-correcting, unlike religion.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
Who says it's not self-correcting?
Sir, the DNA test alone may not support evolution -- but in conjunction with paleontology, anthropology, geology, astronomy, physics (radiometric dating) and a half-dozen other disciplines, it reinforces the concept of an ancient universe populated by evolving critters. Any datum taken on its own can neither prove nor disprove anything. When taken in the aggregate, though, patterns develop; and the patterns do not support a Young Earth Creation. Sorry.
This all seems unambiguous -- why the difficulty?
Unamibuously and without difficulty, Uriel and I are talking about the article in his post 79. So, unambiguously, you are on the wrong page.
and the patterns do not support a Young Earth Creation.
Who besides you said anything about a young-Earth creation? I certainly didn't, so please don't drag it into the discussion.
Please note: The whole reason I posted my "theory" in the first place was to point out the weakness in js1138's challenge. I really have no interest in proving it as a theory in its own right.
The question for you is the same: It's likely that I could produce a "theory" (suitably fleshed-out from the sketch I presented) which explains the data -- all of it -- just as well. Can you produce the evidence necessary to disprove it?
On the other hand, the "theory" has already produced some interesting results when I ask the evolution folks to apply the same standards of disproof to my "theory", that they require me to apply to theirs. For one thing, it shows how very difficult it is to disprove anything. For another, it seems pretty much to require a disproof of an Intelligent Designer. (A devilishly difficult task, if you ask me ;-)
Finally, I think it points out the major lesson of the article that started this particular thread; namely, that scientists (being human) can convince themselves of anything if they want it badly enough. That being the case, is it possible or even likely that data disproving one or both theories would be "convinced away" in the same manner as happened with Archaeoraptor's tail?
Yes, one of my favorite debating gimmicks is the "integrity" gimmick. When wrong, I resist all temptation to brazen it out. Rather, I apologize, get back to solid ground, and resume critical examination of the subject at hand. I use that gimmick to distinguish myself in the eyes of the lurkers from my less-principled opposition. Playing to the crowd, I know, but they just eat that trick up. It might be hard to fit it into your style at this late stage, but I recommend it for whatever it's worth.
Can you produce the evidence necessary to disprove it?
One more time. You cannot prove a negative. You can supply evidence which more strongly supports one position or another, but you cannot disprove a position. The preponderance of evidence will support a position or render it improbable, but will not disprove it.
By the way, I'm being faithful to all my girlfriends right now.
You know, before now I'd never considered naming my fingers! (Sorry, VR: I couldn't resist. I'll wash my mind out with soap now.... ;-)
I see now that we were talking about different things. My bad -- sorry.
it is impossible to prove a negative.
I am not asking anyone to prove a negative, at least in that sense. What I am asking for is the equivalent of an alibi. If I say O.J. Committed a murder and his defense attorney produces an airport security film clearly showing him at the airport at the time of the murder, a "negative" has been proved.
If you find an existing life form that has DNA that cannot be fitted into the "tree of life" then you have disproved descent from a common ancestor.
This is why there is so much heated debate over fossils that appear out of place. But such finds have always turned out to be frauds or misinterpretations. And when a misinterpretation is alleged there is always a dispute.
This is why it is so important to reconstruct lineages from DNA. The technology is new, but in a few decades we will have most common plants and animals placed.
If there are DNA monsters lurking among living things it will disprove descent from a common ancestor. Good luck.
you cannot disprove a position...
This is precisely wrong. You can disprove positions. That is what makes a "position" scientific, as opposed to a mere conjecture -- the assertion of a fact or relationship that can be disproven with evidence. If I substitute "Cube" for "square" in one of Newton's equations, I get an answer that can be disproven.
If I, as a 19th century scientist, speculate that the earth is at least hundreds of millions of years old, then I run the risk that radiocative dating will come along and disprove my speculation.
If I, in the 19th century, speculate that all life is connected by descent from a common ancestor, then I run the risk that my speculation will be disproven by DNA analysis.
What risks do the "intelligent design" theorists take? What kind of evidence could possible falsify the claim that everything was created as it is for a purpose? What kind of experiment, even if it requires future technology, could produce evidence to test such a theory?
I am asking for a thought experiment. Give me some currently unknown fact, which if discovered, would falsify intelligent design.
The preponderance of evidence will support a position or render it improbable, but will not disprove it.
If my theory says I am impervious to bullets, you can use a gun to very effectively disprove my theory. Suppose you shoot me. From the resulting wounds, you can conclude to an exceedingly high degree of certainty that it was your bullets that did the damage.
The alternative explanations are things like, "it was meteors having the exact composition of bullets which hit me in the exact spots at which you were aiming, and at the exact times the bullets should have hit. Then the meteors either a) evaporated the bullets and took on their shapes, or b) evaporated themselves without a trace while at the same time providing the bullets a path to my innards -- all so that the coroner still finds "bullets" when he cuts me open."
OK, on the hair-splitting level there's an infinitesimal chance that this sort of thing could happen -- but for all practical purposes, this is a complete disproof of my theory.
On a more scientific plane, the Michelson-Morley experiment provided data which eventually led to Einstein's disproof of the highly successful Newtonian physics.
The demise of Newtonian physics is actually a pretty good example of the kinds of difficulties we face in the Darwinian vs. non-Darwinian debate. Newton's laws work exceedingly well in most everyday situations, and I use them on a daily basis. But despite their usefulness, scientific data demonstrate that they're wrong: they can't explain everything they're supposed to. To a very high degree of certainty, therefore, a highly successful scientific theory has been disproved.
On the current topic, Darwinian evolution apparently explains a lot. Whether it can explain everything is of course what we're ultimately debating in these threads. If Darwinian evolution can't correctly explain something, isn't that the same as saying that the theory has been disproved?
Which brings us back again to my main point: "disproof" of Darwinian evolution requires evidence of processes that it cannot explain. Based on the example of the archaeoraptor, can we confidently expect that the "disproof" of Darwinism will be accepted? I assume it would be eventually -- but would it be accepted by today's leading evolutionists?
Even the slightest probe in your direction, attempting to show some goodwill when I felt it was due, generates a scornful blast. Be assured I shall not make the same mistake again. Be well.
On my lunchbreak and just saw this. The goodwill offer is duly noted and appreciated. I wish you well, too.
My point was merely to point out that you appear to have imputed a degree of close-mindedness to me that I don't think is justified by the evidence (my posts) if you had taken the time to read them carefully and not allow your inferences to overleap the evidence. I have been very careful not to champion and defend a particular scientific account for life or the cosmos in any of these threads--and certainly not Genesis creation science.
Admittedly, I do have religious faith: I am a Christian. But that is my faith--not my science. God doesn't need me to defend Him in the realm of science and I'd do a poor job if I tried.
I love science and I respect the scientific method (keeping in mind its limitations, particularly its a priori commitment to materialist philosophy). What I don't respect are overblown claims and rhetoric palmed off as unbiased, objective science by experts who presume to have final and complete answers and who seek to stifle the voices and views of honest dissenters. If upon reading that sentence your mind takes you to Galileo, my mind goes with you but also takes me to Behe, Hoyle, Crick, Penrose, Schutzenberger and others like them.
Time and time again I read on these threads that the "big questions" have been resolved, that it all hangs together. However, given the apparent zeal with which the reigning powers in evolution science savage, shun, and ridicule anyone who questions Darwinian orthodoxy (even punk eekers have suffered this), I am not at all surprised that there is an apparent unity of agreement. If some bright postdoc did have a brilliant solution that cut against the grain of orthodoxy, he or she would have a great disincentive not to pursue it. Why alienate the priesthood on whom your future depends and invite personal and professional abuse? "Go along to get along" is a truism in most fields of human endeavor particulalrly where the penalty for not going along is high.
Any unity born of dictatorial orthodoxy is more apt to conceal genuine discontent and to protect careless research than to reflect genuine agreement or to demonstrate that the important questions all have satisfactory answers.
great disincentive not to pursue it.
Excuse me, "disincentive to pursue it." (hate it when I do that)
If you find an existing life form that has DNA that cannot be fitted into the "tree of life" then you have disproved descent from a common ancestor.
The "Watson" bird posted by stingray could be an example (on a more local scale) of a problem with common descent: if this bird is "ruminant", how did it get that way, since (it's claimed) no other bird shares that characteristic? The characteristic did not come from the dinosaurs from which birds descended, because if it did we'd expect other birds to share the characteristic. And (based on the post) there's currently no evidence showing that this characteristic has avian descent (if there was, it'd have to be pretty recent, or other birds might vestigal or active rumination. But "recent" development of this characteristic raises its own set of problems).
On a broader scope, I think my point still holds: evidence of common descent doesn't necessarily prove common descent -- at least not in the Darwinian sense. One could define the characteristics of an Intelligent Designer in such a way that it explains the data just as well.
Your responses are cute but essentially unresponsive.
Cute responses; didn't mean to be cute, must be a natural gift, probably evolved from some common ancestor with puppies.
Science News is a "Reader's Digest" of science and bears comparison only with other sources of general science writing -- not dictionaries nor political magizines, nor entertainment magazines.
Why?
I asked for the name of a better one.
First, I have, second pick any of a 100 science journals were Science News pulls its articles.
I also asked for examples of unfairness or uncorrected errors exhibited by Science News. I assume your attempt at redirection means you don't have any.
Ah, assumption, the mother of all F***ups. I already gave them to you. I can't help it if you can't figure it out.
Common descent means descent from a single ancestor, as in the tree of life metaphor. I know you know this, so your query is simply misdirection.
Now you are telling me what I know and don't know; now who is being cute and flippant? Tree of life metaphor? Metaphor for what?
Evidence for common descent is relative to current investigative technology. Until recently it depended on fossil finds and filling in "gaps". Now the burden has shifted to DNA sequences and placing the branches on the tree.
Is there a theory somewhere in all of this??
What makes evolution and the tree of life metaphor scientific is the falsifiable prediction that everything can be placed on the tree. There are many theories of how branching occurs and how the tree is pruned, but these are not central to the truth or falsness of evolution.
One more time, what is your theory??? I'm still waiting. Are we talking about evolution or your garden? Now who is being unresponsive. Does this mean you don't know or have a theory?
I'm just looking for the theory, you know the one that follows the scientific method:
1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.
2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. The hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation.
3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.
4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.
In other words: A scientific theory represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests.
W.K. at your leisure
As long as you're proving that there are no "feathered dinosaurs" or "primitive birds," you might want to give Caudipteryx close attention.
A nice Just So painting to start with.
A nice text description of what a bird-osaur Caudi is HERE. (Scientists call it a theropod dinosaur, but it was a tough call for them. You'll read why.)
A nice Just So 3-D model.
A Page of Fossil Photographs which you can click on to see very big. It includes Protoarchaeopteryx. I'd ask you about that one but I assume you're already comitted. All YECs know that Archaeopteryx is a toothed, claw-winged bird--just a bird!--so its proto had better be a bird or we're in big trouble, huh?
Awaiting with a grin your attempts at spin,
VR
Darwinian evolution apparently explains a lot. Whether it can explain everything is of course what we're ultimately debating in these threads. If Darwinian evolution can't correctly explain something, isn't that the same as saying that the theory has been disproved?
I like your comparison of Darwin/etc. with Newton and Einstein. It is unlikely that Darwin, writing before the discovery of radioactivity, gene theory, and DNA, could have wrapped up the all mechanisms responsible for evolution.
These threads would be a lot more coherent if we started them with a sign in sheet, everyone identifying themselves as:
1. Biblical literalist, 6-day creationist.
2. Biblical literalist with wiggle room (i.e., days like a thousand years, etc).
3. Biblical metaphorist.
4. Directed evolutionist
5. Intelligent design determinist
6. Intelligent design indeterminist
7. Darwin gradualist
8. Punk Eek
9. Neo-Darwinist
10. One from column A, two from column B
11. You name it.
The point is that evolution, meaning common descent, could be disproven by any number of lines of evidence, but it hasn't.
How can you nail jello to the wall? It keeps changing shape. Darwin's built-in test, the fossil record, disproved it so instead of discarding the basic premise (common ancestry) punk-eek was invented.
>One more time. You cannot prove a negative.
I recommend a course in discrete math.
To prove something false, you present an example which demonstrates a case where it is false. To prove something true, you use induction to prove it true for ALL cases --a much more difficult task. A task involving symbolic manipulation.
Scientists can never conclusively say that something is a fact (nor do they) --just that the evidence so far supports it. It is entirely possible that some new evidence will cause them to change their views, as it has already.
If creationists feel that evolution is wrong, it is up to them to furnish concrete examples (as opposed to theories) to show that the theory is wrong.
Actually, Newtonian physics has never been disproven. Einstein added to our knowledge of motion. What his theory did obviate was the concept of the all-pervasive ether.
A superb post, your #154.
I like your comparison of Darwin/etc. with Newton and Einstein. It is unlikely that Darwin, writing before the discovery of radioactivity, gene theory, and DNA, could have wrapped up the all mechanisms responsible for evolution.
I suppose you could say the same thing about Newton. But he was nevertheless wrong.
Your laundry list of positions points out a problem I've been having in my posts: what does one call the various positions? I've used "Darwinist" and evolutionist on this thread, attempting to make a distinction between the two.
In playing with my "theory" I've used "Darwinism" to denote the standard "random natural selection" model, as opposed to something like a step-by-step "guided evolution" Intelligent Design model. In that sense "evolutioninst" and "Darwinist" are close to being the same thing, though as somebody else pointed out, there are other brands of "evolutionist" out there, too. Anyway, while I try to be as consistent, I recognize that my terminology can get rather tenuous.
Proving a negative is logically impossible. You can only prove positives. Determining something false is not proving a negative. Proving a negative is based upon a premise such as "A coyote is not a roadrunner." That is a negative statement and cannot be proven. If you begin with "A coyote is a roadrunner" you can prove this statement false. Saying "Evolution is not proven through DNA analysis" is a negative and cannot be proven. Saying "Evolution can be proven through DNA analysis" can either be proven true or false.
I'm sorry for the miscommunication, but in logical proofs it is impossible to prove a negative. The premise of the proof must be couched in such a way that the conclusion can be either true or false, and a negative premise cannot be shown to be either.
Sir, the DNA test alone may not support evolution -- but in conjunction with paleontology, anthropology, geology, astronomy, physics (radiometric dating) and a half-dozen other disciplines, it reinforces the concept of an ancient universe populated by evolving critters. Any datum taken on its own can neither prove nor disprove anything. When taken in the aggregate, though, patterns develop; and the patterns do not support a Young Earth Creation. Sorry.
I Hope you don't mind me being lazy. This is a copy of a post I made on another thread that had died. So I doubt you have seen it. So while it may be slightly out of context to your comments, it does touch on your statement above.
The DNA molecule is a digital blueprint. Of the simplest cell, it is the equivalent of over 3 full sets of the encyclopedia Britannica. As you know digital presentations require a language. Additionally sophisticated codes use a "parity bit" for the purpose of detecting errors. You keep stating that organizing "sentences" into blueprints is a strawman. Yet consider, the simple cell is analogous to a closed loop servo system with more than 4 degrees of freedom of motion. It is adaptable to a range of ambient conditions, can provide a defense to fend off invaders, is somewhat self repairing, and is self replicating. It has hundreds of thousands of specific types of robot machines everywhere. Each is composed of over 3,000 parts in three-dimensional configurations. The whole process of cell replication and the machinery required to do so, the winding and unwinding at speeds of 8,000 rpm without tangling the mass of DNA packed into the nucleus. The reading and writing with the use of intron and exon code sequences. All this and more is necessary for a simple cell. And you tell me that asking for the specificity of a single required protein, that if it is made wrong, will kill the cell, is to much to ask. The concept of auto-arrange is wonderful, it is what I believe too. I just have a different name for it...
The idea of panspermia that you ridiculed is a growing phenomenon in the upper ranks of the scientific elite. Just as S.Gould ridiculed something he called the "Hopeful Monster Theory" in the early 80's and by the end of the 80's was its major proponent, likewise the panspermia model is growing. In the 70's the rage was information theory, it was applied in many fields including genetics. We had just discovered the digital nature of the DNA code, this was a very exiting time. Until the reality that information theory required intelligent design. Talking about being dropped like a hot potato! Then the study of randomness, called chaos theory only to discover that true randomness does not exist in the physical world.
And yes I have drifted into physics again, as always. Many theoretical physicists are becoming more and more Bohmian, due to continuing revelation confirmed by the empirical physicist. The non-locality of quanta, (The Bell Inequality empirically verified in 82). Gravity being at least 20 billion times faster than the speed of light, if not non-local itself. The red-shift turning out to being "quantized". The idea that the six dimensions that we cannot perceive is curled inside the Planck length, (by definition that means they are non-local.) The search for a General unified field theory such as "superstrrings." The "superstring concept is where a point in our three spatial dimensions in time(the 4th dimension) is linked directly through each of the six other dimensions, (current theory is a total of ten.) If the other six are non local, then all space and time is linked to a single spot curled inside the Plank length. Can you conceptualize this. If you can, you have just discovered how to make brain sausage.
Back to Bohm, he theorized two levels of existence an enfolded (implicate) order and an unfolded (explicate) order. Bohm suggested that the unfolded, (the four dimensions of our perception), is really kind of an illusion, like a holographic image. Underlying it is a deeper order of existence, a vast and more primary level of reality that gives birth to all the objects and appearances of our physical world much in the same way that a piece of holographic film gives birth to a hologram., this is the essence of the enfolded order.. It is as if the entire universe is a digital simulation. As one Astrophysicist said " it is a if we are just a thought in the mind of God."
So Junior, let me close with this conclussion: the relevance of time and randomness may have been the greatest blunders of our time. The greatest minds of this century from Einstein to Hawkings have had to confront this. Maybe its just a common case of corporate insanity by Mathematics, maybe not. I don't pretend to understand what the minds of these and of other great minds comprehend or exactly why there seems to be a point where they all go that way. What is disturbing to many scientist in other fields seems to be that Physics traditionally is considered the most solid of sciences. What is disturbing to many physicists is what the empirical physists have been able to confirm.
since you like dictionaries, here's a definition of theory
theory (thę´e-rę, thîr´ę) noun
plural theories
1. a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, especially a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. b. Such knowledge or such a system.
2. Abstract reasoning; speculation.
3. A belief that guides action or assists
comprehension or judgment: rose early, on the theory that morning efforts are best; the modern architectural theory that less is more.
4. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from INSO Corporation; further reproduction and distribution restricted in accordance with the Copyright Law of the United States. All rights reserved.
Science is not limited to chemistry, nor is it limited to phenomena that can be exactly measured and counted. Certainly the "hard" sciences get more respect because quantifiable relationships involve a very special kind of prediction.
But "continental drift" was a respectable scientific conjecture. It lacked the precision of particle physics, but it did predict things, some of which have been confirmed. It suffered from a defective theory of mechanism, but it predicted that a huge "fact" would eventually be confirmed -- namely that Europe/Africa were once physically close to the Americas.
Evolution also asserts a "fact" -- namely that life on earth is descended from a common ancestor.
I assume that you belive in some form of legal justice -- including the trial and imprisonment of felons. I assume you are willing to accept evidence of a singular event. The event cannot be quantified or reproduced in a laboratory. But the methods proving the event as a fact can be scientific, and 12 people can be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.
Predictions do not have to be as mathematical as you assert. When you assert that someone committed a crime you are predicting that no contradictory evidence will be found. You cannot specify what the evidence might be, but you can say, for example, that no proof will be offered at trial that the accused was somewhere else at the time of the crime. As DNA testing has demonstrated, it is sometimes possible to prove someone innocent with technology that was unknown at the time of the original trial.
Similarly, evolution makes assertions which could be disproven with evidence, should such evidence turn up. So far it is winning the paternity suit with DNA evidence.
It is as if the entire universe is a digital simulation. As one Astrophysicist said " it is a if we are just a thought in the mind of God."
I like the poetry, but in the meantime, when you kick a brick wall, it hurts.
A scientific theory represents an hypothesis, or a group of related hypotheses, which has been confirmed through repeated experimental tests.
This only applies to Chemistry and Physics fully. The further away from "hard" science you go, the less rigorous the requirements to be science. In Evolution for example, how would you ever make an experiment that takes millions of years to prove? We have been torturing fruit flies for 50 years and all we have done is produce either sterile mutants or mutants that when bred together produce health fruit flies. The odds of getting anything in the next 1000 years from these experiments is frightfully small. So why bother?
Because of this and other inherent problems, Evolutionary scientist have determined a different of criteria to validate a theory. It is called shouting down and ridiculing your adversary and calling your theory "fact." This technique has proven quite effective in validating theory in this and other related area's of science.
I like the poetry, but in the meantime, when you kick a brick wall, it hurts.
Did you see the matrix? Kinda like that but on a much larger and more intense scale. I didn't see it but I heard that the "Thirteenth Floor" was even better. And I can attest to the fact that kicking a brick wall hurts.
Wonderful!! (and concise too!)
How can you nail jello to the wall? It keeps changing shape. Darwin's built-in test, the fossil record, disproved it so instead of discarding the basic premise (common ancestry) punk-eek was invented.
If you start with the assumption that someone in the 19th century, without the technological means to measure the age of the earth, is required to spit out the precise timetable of evolution -- then perhaps you can say that Darwin failed.
But if we did not allow refinement of theory after 1860, we would be without electric power, electronics, antibiotics, immunizations (including the beloved Anthrax shot), and painless dentistry.
Every scientific theory and conjecture is an invention. All require refinement. Most are eventually discarded in favor of better, more encompassing theories.
So aside from the fact that not everything that lives and dies gets preserved as a fossil, exactly what is it that disproves descent from a common ancestor?
Nope, I think the kind of code-reuse we see in DNA sequences is very convincing evidence of an un-intelligent designer!
This is your opinion only -- you (not being super-intelligent) may simply not understand the purpose behind the code-reuse we see in DNA. At any rate, your comment does nothing to disprove my "theory", and it certainly doesn't do so by jsl138's criteria.
Ah, but creationism is helpless to explain any design feature in principle. Since God is the infinitely-intelligent designer, every design feature could just as easily be an aesthetic choice as a functional choice. Who can hope to second-guess the design decisions of God???
On the other hand, we have your own (and my) programming practices to give us a reasonable process for how an Intelligent Designer might leave extraneous information in DNA (and we're only assuming that it really is extraneous). For our purposes, it's not necessary to speculate about why the ID didn't clean up His code -- it's the existence of the Programmer that matters.
Ah, but the whole purpose behind ID is to come up with a rationale (or to put it charitably, a theory) for all life being designed by God. God, as I said, is the ultimate, infinitely-intelligent designer. Why would an infinitely-intelligent designer leave extraneous scraps of code in a production product? (What's the programming term - lava lumps? Something about chunks of old code that nobody remembers why it was put there in the first place, so they leave it in assuming there must be a reason for it - even though its original reason was to work around an ancient bug in the original operating system from 10 years ago, etc. I've done it. You've done it too - admit it! :-)
(Remember, it's really only a sketch -- let's not get too deep into the programming analogy).
Well, lots of creationists here do like to make the analogy. Or they'll make the analogy to common design features of cars, etc. It's a similar argument, and I think it's flawed in the same way.
Anti-Patterns. That's the book I was thinking about. The lumps of code (I still forget the real name) is an anti-pattern. Anyway, they're analogous to psuedogenes in DNA.
Because of this and other inherent problems, Evolutionary scientist have determined a different of criteria to validate a theory. It is called shouting down and ridiculing your adversary and calling your theory "fact." This technique has proven quite effective in validating theory in this and other related area's of science.
I believe the "shouting down" proof was invented by Alley Oop. It certainly predates Darwin.
If I was a super-intelligent programmer, it would be a piece of cake for me to write a production-quality program . . . . . I think the kind of code-reuse we see in DNA sequences is very convincing evidence of an un-intelligent designer!
It's always black or white with you! The programmer has to be either super-intelligent or un-intelligent? How about kind-of-intelligent? Or at least more-intelligent . . . than you or I! ("What a piece of work is Man . . .")
LOL!
The problem is, creationists are arguing for God - the infinitely-intelligent designer. Compared to infinity, every finitely-intelligent designer is pretty dim.
(Infinity is a weird concept. Don't you think?)
Now, if you want to argue that God is really a high-school engineering student in some other universe, & our universe is just an extra-credit project...
Who can hope to second-guess the design decisions of God???
Who can specify a design decision that could not be made by God? How can you test the assumption of intelligent design -- even in a thought experiment?
Of course science fiction writers have considered that the "signature of God" might be found in physical constants or transcendental numbers, but in the meantime, the rest of us could use a burning bush.
I'm offended by the notion that we will find some proof of design with some technological wizbang gadget. Give me a God who, like John Hancock, writes his signature big enough for the disabled to see. If it's in our hearts, then it needs to be bigger, so Bill Clinton can see it.
Who says it's not self-correcting?
The idea that Jesus is God has been around since the inception of Christianity. And it's still around today. Where's the self-correction? I'll find you some Jews who do not believe John 3:16 constitutes a "correction" to Judaism.
But let's say for a moment that you're right. This article details a paleontological discovery in the process of being rejected as a phony. These paleontologists have shown themselves willing to reject a conclusion in the face of counter-evidence, as do nearly all scientists do.
Is there any counter-evidence that would convince you to abandon your conclusion that John 3:16 is true?
Now, if you want to argue that God is really a high-school engineering student in some other universe...
Gary Larson did this up really well.
So many missing link disappointments! Where are they all!? (We know they're there. They just have to be.)
Actually, Newtonian physics has never been disproven. Einstein added to our knowledge of motion. What his theory did obviate was the concept of the all-pervasive ether.
Newtonian physics is very useful. But it does not properly describe such phenomena as time dilation, length contraction, and such. It also fails to properly describe certain gravitional effects,such as the orbit of Mercury about the sun. By "adding to" our understanding of these things, Einstein essentially had to toss out the underlying assumptions of Newtonian physics.
Relativity (special and general as appropriate) apparently do predict and explain these effects, and we have the experimental data to back it up.
As a result, people don't use Newtonian physics for really precise work anymore, they use relativity. You can call it something other than "disproven" if you'd like. For all practical purposes, though, "disproven" is what it is.
You know, before now I'd never considered naming my fingers!
(VR looks guiltily around for hidden camera.)
10. One from column A, two from column B
LOLOL! (And an order of fries with that, please.)
I've done it. You've done it too - admit it! :-)
I admit it without embarrassment. My favorite term for it comes from some software that I heard of where the important part is a mystery to all current developers. The the folks who program around it call that section "Heart of Darkness".
Ah, but creationism is helpless to explain any design feature in principle. Since God is the infinitely-intelligent designer, every design feature could just as easily be an aesthetic choice as a functional choice. Who can hope to second-guess the design decisions of God???
Not true: you're only talking about the why of a particular feature -- the mechanics of how the feature are implemented is another matter entirely.
but the whole purpose behind ID is to come up with a rationale (or to put it charitably, a theory) for all life being designed by God
Not so. I could, for example, claim without loss of generality that life on Earth was created by aliens from a different galaxy. However, if you consider the anecdotal evidence of the existence of God, it's certainly logical to include Him in the list of candidate intelligent designers.
Why would an infinitely-intelligent designer leave extraneous scraps of code in a production product?
a) Who says we're the "production product?" b) Is the code really extraneous? c) If an Intelligent Designer exists, it's still moot to complain about his coding practices. And finally d) who says the ID has to be infinitely intelligent?
Now, if you want to argue that God is really a high-school engineering student in some other universe, & our universe is just an extra-credit project...
Well, yes that IS my theory, in fact. Bernie is his name. God is the teacher. (Bernie gets a C+!!)
who says the ID has to be infinitely intelligent?
That's the point. Neo-Darwinists are always trying to tie IDers to Creationists. But Behe makes it completely clear in DBB that he has no preconceived notions about the nature of the Designer. . . only that there MUST have been one.
Now, if you want to argue that God is really a high-school engineering student in some other universe, & our universe is just an extra-credit project...
Come on, Jenny. This was a trite ol' cliche way back when Cpt. Kirk encountered Squire Trelaine.
Perhaps you think I'm dealing with your point in a superficial and trivial way. Such is not my intention.
There is plenty of possible counter-evidence that would convince me that evolution is false. The possibility of a billion year old fossil impression of human shull comes to mind.
I stand by my point: science is self-correcting (illustrated by the feathered dinosaur), religion is not. Perhaps you can prove me wrong. So I ask again
Is there any counter-evidence that would convince you to abandon your conclusion that John 3:16 is true?
If you like, I will deign to re-examine your posts this evening and deprive you of your last shreds of "feathered dino" silliness. See you this evening.
I just dropped in for the funeral of my last ruined shreds and things are about where I left them. Did I give you too much homework? My provider is being very temperamental tonight. I imagine them as punishing me for being online about 10 hours arguing with you yesterday. At any rate, just leave the last shreds and tatters here and I'll come view them tomorrow if I can't get on again.
Phaedrus: Well of course there is. You are saying that new species are created in the same fashion that bird beaks change (and change back)? Show me.
Junior: My pleasure. Observed Instances of Speciation [link]
So, 4 definitions of "species". Let me expand a little. Show us how, precisely, one species transutes into another, i.e. the mechanism (chance is not a mechanism and speculations don't count as evidence), then show us specific examples of transtional forms that came about by this mechanism. Then show us the whole lovely tree with transitional forms in place. Can't do it? Of course you can't.
But let me help you with this. There are 250,000 species and a complete dearth of transitional forms. I suggest you simply look the evidence square in the eye, admit defeat and save your typing fingers. There is, among the "experts" this incessant retreat into the technical, and the deeper the better apparently. Confusion and obscurity can be the "expert's" friend. But any fool can see, certainly the layman can see, that the "experts" are stroking each other with words because they ain't got the beef.
I believe the "shouting down" proof was invented by Alley Oop. It certainly predates Darwin.
Point well made and well taken. And I am sure that a strong case can be made for the effectiveness of that old "tried and true" formula.
Darwin's built-in test, the fossil record, disproved it so instead of discarding the basic premise (common ancestry) punk-eek was invented.
Ahh, clarity. Darwin's apologists say evolution occurs too slowly to see it, thus the endless fossil record gaps. Punctuated Equilibrium says it happens too swiftly to see it. Thus the endless fossil record gaps. Whatta we got? GAPS! And gaps does not a theory make.
Your #191 is flat excellent, a certified home run.
The physicists, the best of the best in science, are saying "Wait a minute, we are finding by experiment that there is something quite significant beyond physicality that's intangible but nonetheless real." To me, this is a finger clearly and distinctly pointing toward God, and the more I look the clearer this becomes.
You have given us a worthy koan. Will we learn from it? I can already hear the jeers from the ignorant.
Darwin's apologists say evolution occurs too slowly to see it, thus the endless fossil record gaps. Punctuated Equilibrium says it happens too swiftly to see it.
The point that Eldredge and Gould were making, then, could have been modestly presented as a helpful rescuing of Darwin and his successors from what had seemed to them an awkward difficulty. Indeed that is, at least in part, how it was presented - initially. ...Eldredge and Gould could have said:
Darwin, when you said that the fossil record was imperfect, you were understating it. Not only is it imperfect, there are good reasons for expecting it to be particularly imperfect just when it gets interesting, just when evolutionary change is taking place; this is partly because evolution usually occurred in a different place from where we find most of our fossils; and it is partly because, even if we are fortunate enough to dig in one of the small outlying areas where most evolutionary change went on, that evolutionary change (though still gradual) occupies such a short time that we should need an extra rich fossil record in order to track it!But no, instead they chose, especially in their later writings in which they were eagerly followed by journalists, to sell their ideas as being radically opposed to Darwin's and opposed to the neo-Darwinian view of evolution ....
... The proper way to characterize the beliefs of punctuationists is: 'gradualistic, but with long periods of "stasis" (evolutionary stagnation) punctuating brief episodes of rapid gradual change'. The emphasis is then thrown onto the long periods of stasis as being the previously overlooked phenomenon that really needs explaining. It is the emphasis on stasis that is the punctuationists' real contribution, not their claimed opposition to gradualism, for they are truly as gradualist as anybody else.
Even the emphasis on stasis can be found, in less-exaggerated form, in Mayr's theory of speciation. [Mayer believed that large populations have more inertia, in a sense, against change than small populations.]
The proponents of punctuated equilibrium took this suggestion of Mayr, and exaggerated it into a strong belief that 'stasis', or lack of evolutionary change, is the norm for a species. They believe that there are genetic forces in large populations that actively resist evolutionary change ... [This question - whether or not there really are active forces for stasis - is where the controversies do lie within neo-Darwinism; but creationists try to paint these minor controversies as evidence of a crumbling ideology.]
-- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1996 edition, pp238-252
Because of this and other inherent problems, Evolutionary scientist have determined a different criteria to validate a theory. It is called shouting down and ridiculing your adversary and calling your theory "fact." This technique has proven quite effective in validating theory in this and other related area's of science.
Excellent points all. If I may make one minor change to the above.
It is called shouting down and ridiculing your adversary and calling your theory "fact." This technique has proven quite effective in validating theory conjecture in this and other related area's of weird science.
since you like dictionaries, here's a definition of theory
Again assuming something. A basic mistake. Never said I liked dictionaries.
theory (thę´e-rę, thîr´ę) noun plural theories
1. a. Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, especially a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or behavior of a specified set of phenomena. b. Such knowledge or such a system.
2. Abstract reasoning; speculation.
3. A belief that guides action or assists comprehension or judgment: rose early, on the theory that morning efforts are best; the modern architectural theory that less is more.
4. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.
We agree, the first definition is the classic scientific definition. The rest are also correct definitions but realize they do not comply with the scientific method.
Science is not limited to chemistry, nor is it limited to phenomena that can be exactly measured and counted.
Again we agree, scary isn't it. However, the fact science is not limited to chemistry is hardly the point. The scientific method for determining a valid theory is.
Certainly the "hard" sciences get more respect because quantifiable relationships involve a very special kind of prediction.
Again we agree, and they are respected well because they follow the strict structure of the scientific method as opposed to other areas of science.
But "continental drift" was a respectable scientific conjecture. It lacked the precision of particle physics, but it did predict things, some of which have been confirmed. It suffered from a defective theory of mechanism, but it predicted that a huge "fact" would eventually be confirmed -- namely that Europe/Africa were once physically close to the Americas.
Irrelevant.
Evolution also asserts a "fact" -- namely that life on earth is descended from a common ancestor.
You can assert anything you want, that won't make it a fact. Evolutionist make claims that are certainly not facts but simple speculation based on unsupported data. Your so-called fact isn't even a valid theory.
I assume that you belive in some form of legal justice -- including the trial and imprisonment of felons. I assume you are willing to accept evidence of a singular event. The event cannot be quantified or reproduced in a laboratory. But the methods proving the event as a fact can be scientific, and 12 people can be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.
Again irrelevant. Comparing legal jurisprudence to the scientific method is about as far a stretch as I think I've seen. What the heck, I'll play along. Try this. Reasonable doubt is what most objective people use when examining the relevant data about evolution. The idea that events cannot be quantified or reproduced in a laboratory for criminal cases would lend strong support for the dismissal of a case, not support for conviction. I am supprised that you would so easily give me ammunition to refute you. Thanks.
Predictions do not have to be as mathematical as you assert.
As you missed it and as I made no such claim, I'll repost the scientific method step 2. The hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation. and 3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations. So I never said predictions have to be mathematical. Please if you are going to quote me, be accurate, like your magazine.
When you assert that someone committed a crime you are predicting that no contradictory evidence will be found. You cannot specify what the evidence might be, but you can say, for example, that no proof will be offered at trial that the accused was somewhere else at the time of the crime.
I think I already covered this. Again, legal jurisprudence is not, I repeat not the scientific method. Next.
As DNA testing has demonstrated, it is sometimes possible to prove someone innocent with technology that was unknown at the time of the original trial.
Excellent point, which, reinforces my point about the scientific method. Test, Test, Test, and re-Test. Thanks again. Real theories can only be disproved. As yours is yet unknown and I'm still waiting for it, it is difficult to determine its validity.
Similarly, evolution makes assertions which could be disproven with evidence, should such evidence turn up. So far it is winning the paternity suit with DNA evidence.
I thought you said evolution asserts facts, let me find your quote so I get it right: Evolution also asserts a "fact". So which is it; Evolution makes assertions or evolution asserts fact??? Disregard, I think I made my point.
Still no theory forth coming? Talk about unresponsive. The DNA being similar tack, does nothing for any particular theory(I'm still waiting for yours). This in no way validates evolution or any other theory about mans origins. So when you come forward with your theory, we can discuss its pros and cons.
W.K. at your pleasure.
But anyway, all this is still too pessimistic, since the first replicators were probably short RNA strands. A nucleotide sequence of just six units is enough to provide a template for the creation of new copies of itself! Six units! And in 1996, Ferris et.al. created both proteins and RNA strands of up to 55 units in about a week, using certain types of clay as catalysts. Clearly, given the creationists' own framework for deriving probabilities of abiogenesis, the probability that life did not arise by chance are astronomical indeed.
64 Posted on 11/08/1999 20:48:46 PST by jennyp
"I mean, what is he claiming here? That a T.Rex's body was simpler than an iguana's? That dinosaurs' chromosomes had fewer genes than a modern salamaner? Evolution does NOT proceed towards greater complexity. If anything, it meanders towards fitness within the species' environment. (And of course there's a big question of just how well it does that!) You COULD say that a larger animal is more complex than a smaller one, using different metrics (# of differentiated organs, # of cells, total # of molecules, etc.). And some organisms have more genes than others. But the general progression from single-celled to large multicelled organisms stopped hundreds of millions of years ago. By any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), evolution hasn't been working to create more complex species over time."
130 Posted on 10/30/1999 15:14:23 PDT by jennyp
Let's try this again:
How do you get from "a nucleotide sequence of just six units" (sourced above) which was "was vastly simpler than anything seen in today's modern highly evolved organisms" to "a T.Rex's body" (or an iguana, et al supra) with a process that "by any meaningful chemical metric (which is the only kind that's relevant to the 2LOT), hasn't been working to create more complex species over time," and which cannot be observed today because it "stopped hundreds of millions of years ago?"
Proof, and not an answer like "...the first replicators were probably..." would suffice.
you guys still have to explain why chickens have genes for teeth.
Is this your best evidence for evolution? I wonder if Darwin thought of that one.
'm lurking. I don't have a dog in this fight. The facts will be sorted out in due course. With or without this creature, evolution still makes sense. More than any alternative hypothesis.
That's what most of the hard cases say when giving the reason for belief in evolution. You embrace evolution because the implications of creation make you uncomfortable. You might have to give up one or two of your pet vices.
I've been arguing with Urinal too long. 106 Posted on 01/18/2000 18:57:12 PST by VadeRetro
It took longer than usual for evolutionists to start the name calling but maybe that was because PatrickHenry started late. Sore loosers.
Bob, for those of us on modem connections, just put in a f***ing hyperlink and indicate that it is a massive file... you damn near blew up my connection...sheesh, how 'bout a little good net manners here?
But I'm not super-intelligent.
But you get a smiley face for effort.
To: Voice of the Far Right
Proof that science is self-correcting, unlike religion.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:16-17)
Who says it's not self-correcting?
Good answer, but vofr was speaking of religion not Christianity.
I believe the "shouting down" proof was invented by Alley Oop. It certainly predates Darwin.
And don't overlook the Misdirection-By-Posting-Links proof.
Re Matrix, yes, excellent, because it is mind-bending. The Universe is mind-bending. I will look for Thirteenth Floor. All Evolutionists should be required to sit at the knee of Advanced Physics and contemplate the Experimental Koans it has come up with before being allowed to shout or write one sentence.
If creationists feel that evolution is wrong, it is up to them to furnish concrete examples (as opposed to theories) to show that the theory is wrong.
A little knowledge of logic would be helpful:
The burden of proof is on the new idea (evolution is the new idea)
and
The burden of proof is on the more elaborate explanation (William of Occam's Razor). Evolution is the more elaborate explanation.
Using your principles, show me how this is wrong:
Beings from the planet VadeRetro are invisible. It is up to you to furnish concrete examples of why this is wrong.
Your post has clarified something for me -- namely the reason evolutionists refer to evolution as a fact rather than a theory. It is not irrelevant to compare the investigation of evolution to the investigation of a crime. In both instances you are asserting that specific events happened.
These events are singular and cannot be replicated. Evidence is gathered to demonstrate that the event happened. Then theories are put forward to describe the event in detail.
These FR threads are a jumble of people shouting at each other -- some are shouting that the "fact", the event, never took place. Others are shouting that the theories describing the event are incorrect.
I assume from your posts that you deny the "fact", the event, the continuity of life -- that is, you deny that all living things on earth are related by actual lineage. (I would not be shattered to find that there are pockets of subterranean microbes that represent another lineage, but I am unaware of any evidence for this).
Evidence in this kind of investigation will never be as thorough or as convincing as the experimental evidence found in chemistry and physics. And so far, the theories that attempt to describe the details of evolution are too vague to satisfy your definition of a scientific theory.
They are, nonetheless, scientific theories because they predict what kinds of further evidence will be found, and they rule out finding certain kinds of evidence -- in short, they are falsifiable.
As DNA studies continue the evidence for a common lineage will either be confirmed or contradicted. And eventually evolution will become an experimental branch of biochemistry. The "randomness" of variation will be controlled and studied in the laboratory, just as effectively as sub-atomic phenomena are controlled and studied in particle accelerators. And yes, species will be artificially mutated into other species, just as tomatos have been artifically mutated to enhance their profitability.
You could argue that I am describing a belief rather than a theory. Unlike some on this thread I am not afraid of the words belief and faith. Science does involve belief in the unproven. The central "newness" of science as a belief system is that it does not believe in the unprovable. Specifically, it does not believe in asserting "facts" that cannot be falsified.
The claimer must be part of the Clinton White House crew.
The burden of proof is on the more elaborate explanation (William of Occam's Razor). Evolution is the more elaborate explanation.
This is truely in the eye of the beholder. I do not know which of the 400 schools of thought represented of this thread that you belong to, but I assume you deny that evolution has happened at all. This leaves us with the "simpler" explanation, that everything we see was created in its current form, essentially instantaneously. There is no way to disprove this, but not everyone sees this as a simpler.
The Creator described in the Bible has a remarkable list of attributes -- omniscience complicated by the ability to regret decisions; ability to make laws "for all time" then blow them away with a Clintonesque "It depends on what you mean by 'eat'"; ordering the death of all women and children after a battle, then elevating the leader who defies this order to the position of the greatest of kings. If a mere human did these things we would call him capricious (or if we were liberal, we would say he grows or evolves his understanding).
The most amazing thing about this "simpler" explanation is that there is no way to predict anything, since any physical laws can be put aside at any time for no predictible reason. There was a briefly honored promise that the just would be rewarded (a promise made "for all time"), but this was cast aside in Job.
I am aware that all these inconsistencies can be explained away with the proper application of Clintonian spin, but they do not constitute, for me, a "simpler" explanation.
And yes, species will be artificially mutated into other species, just as tomatos have been artifically mutated to enhance their profitability.
In short, intelligent design. Mankind has known about this and has been practicing it for thousands of years.
In short, intelligent design. Mankind has known about this and has been practicing it for thousands of years.
No sir. Mankind has not done anything like genetic engineering for thousands of years. What we have done is selected individual organisms that had visible traits we liked and favored them in breeding. We did nothing to control variation.
A few years ago the current methods of genetic engineering would have seemed as impossible as controlling the rate of nuclear decay. Now the only thing slowing research is the (legitimate) fear of creating horrendously harmful organisms.
The fruit fly experiments that we have depended on for genetic research are equivalent to particle physicists wating for high energy events to occur by chance instead of building accelerators. We are now Dr. Frankenstein, for better or for worse.
If you believe that the existing evolutionary record reflects a case by case tampering with natural variation and selection, you need to demonstrate some line of evidence that is incompatible with natural variation.