Oh, I understood him just fine. And when I pointed out problems in his presentation, or things which he had in error, or which he had not considered which required modification to his argument, he either totally ignored them, or dismissed them out of hand (as the mood struck him), then he reposted his original spam dumps.
He really needs to start working on listening if he's going to have something that resembles an actual debate.
G3K presents many facts regarding the many systemic changes required to go from egg laying to live bearing.
Yes he did.
His point is that the changes necessary could not have occurred over many generations because the fetus from one generation to the next would not have lived if the changes had happened one or two at a time.
And there he was wrong, for the reason I pointed out *MANY TIMES*, which he kept ignoring: Since the system starts out from an egg-laying configuration, it has a yolk sack which can feed the embryo for several weeks. This system will *continue to work* and feed the embryo over *however many* generations it may take to get a supplemental placental feeding system "up and running".
The embryo WILL NOT STARVE.
He never appropriately tackled that issue, and I'm astounded that you could have overlooked it as well, since I pointed it out, oh, a dozen times or so.
On the other hand, the statistical probability of all of the necessary changes to have occurred in both the mother and fetus in one generation by random mutation and still produce a living thing is beyond believable.
I agree.
The existence of different systems of reproduction in different species is not a demonstration that they are, could be or ever have been intermediate steps in changes in reproductive systems within the same species.
It does prove, however, that certain intermediate stages are truly workable, which greatly strengthens the point that they at least *could* have been used as "stepping-stone" stages.
G3K is pointing out (1) that each individual part of the reproductive process is so critical to producing a living offspring
Unfortunately, many of his "critical" parts turned out to be completely unnecessary in the cow placenta, which really undercut his argument.
and that the order of change required to transform from egg laying to live bearing is so enormous, it is not believable that the individual reproductive systems he spoke of could change a generation at a time and still result in live progeny capable of reproducing themselves.
First, saying "it's enormous, it doesn't seem believable" is not a "proof", it's an appeal to emotion.
Second, it's well known that slow processes, over enough time, can produce mind-bogglingly large results. Flowing water barely erodes rock, but over enough time it carved the Grand Canyon. The Appalachian mountains have been worn down to nubs of their former selves. The enormous Mississippi River delta was laid down a grain of silt at a time.
This is indicates that at the very least, "common sense" is likely to be wrong about how much can be done by small changes given large amounts of time for them to accumulate.
In order to rule out a particular outcome, at the *very* least you're going to have to do some number-crunching to make estimates of how much change can be accumulated in how much time given sensible estimates of how much is likely to be able to change per small time unit. Gore3000 never even made a stab at that.
Then, beyond that, in order to have something resembling an actual "proof" instead of a statistical argument, he would have to identify a particular step which was insurmountable by itself. Because if there *are* no insurmountable steps, then there's nothing at all stopping the whole chain from happening, one bit at a time.
As for "still result in live progeny capable of reproducing themselves", again, there's the issue that simply retaining the initial yolk-feeding processing is enough to "keep feeding" the embryos generation after generation until enough of a placental system is cobbled together to finally make the yolk redundant and dispensible. But during the vast "in between" period, even a partially working placenta can give a selective advantage as it supplements the yolk (as in some marsupials), even if it can't even come close to fully replacing it yet.
In sum, it's one thing to say, "that seems unlikely to me". If Gore3000 had said *that*, I'd have told him I disagreed, but it wouldn't have become a big issue.
But he didn't, he claimed to have actual *proof* (strong word) that it was "totally impossible" (*very* strong words). If he's going to make *THAT* strong of a statement, he sure as hell had better be able to back it up *very* rigorously, as by-gosh PROOF -- or he should retract the too-strong claim and revert to a statement of just his personal judgement about whether it seems "likely" or not.
It's like the difference between me saying I believed a 500 mpg car was possible, versus me saying I had *proof* one was possible. The former is an interesting speculation. The latter is a cocky claim of real knowledge, and it would be guaranteed to draw people from everywhere saying, "ok, Mr. Smarty, *show* us this 'proof' you say you have..."
Or consider the great difference between "I think Iraq has WMD's" versus "I can prove Iraq has WMD's"... Doesn't the latter make you want to insist on *seeing* it? Wouldn't you feel cheated if the answer was, "well, doesn't it seems pretty likely that..."
Gore3000 claimed to have proof. He never showed any such *proof*, he only showed a "gee, don't you agree that's an elaborate process?" appeal.
Thus the abuse. We're challenging him to show the alleged "proof", or back off on his overblown claim.
(2) The alternative to gradual changes over generations is a rapid change in one generation. Given the complexity and volume of changes required, this too is not believable as a result of random mutations.
That's not in dispute.
The burden of proof is on the evolutionist to DEMONSTRATE for each successive generation how EACH of the steps in between could occur and EACH TIME produce a living offspring capable of reproducing.
No, actually, it's not (although the "retain the yolk" point pretty much covers the harder spots).
It *would* have been if we had claimed to be able to *prove* that the transition was doable. We didn't make any such claim. We have no burden of proof.
Gore3000, on the other hand, stepped right up to the plate and volunteered the statement that he had "disproved" the very idea. Well, then -- he who makes a claim had better be able to support it, or withdraw it.
(Sidebar: No, it doesn't automatically invalidate evolution that we don't have a "possibility proof" for the transition at the moment. Right now it's just an unproven issue *either way* (although deeper analysis of DNA will likely shed a lot more light on the subject than Gore3000 believes possible). But this no more invalidates evolution than the fact that geologists haven't yet verified that every layer of rock in the world conforms to their theories of stratification invalidates geology. What makes these fields sciences, however, is that they *could* be invalidated by an eventual theory-violating discovery of that type. What makes them *trustworthy* sciences is that despite literally millions of "now let's check *this* out" reality-checks, they haven't yet met any insurmountable difficulties.)
If the disagreement with gore is that he has said arrogantly that he can disprove evolution using the egg laying to live bearing example, then you may have a point.
However, I think he has more successfully demonstrated the difficulty and UNLIKELIHOOD of this transformation's having occurred than you have demonstrated that it did. I don't think there is much credibility in phrases like "cobbled together" or "this is what could have happened".
First, saying "it's enormous, it doesn't seem believable" is not a "proof", it's an appeal to emotion.
No it is not an appeal to emotion to say that the problem appears too large for the solution proposed. It is an appeal to logic and rational thought.
It does prove, however, that certain intermediate stages are truly workable,
I think this is too great a leap. The potential viability of certain stages observed in one species as a possible transitional form in another species is far from demonstrating that it was such an intermediate stage.