Newly found species fills evolutionary gap between fish and land animals

EurekAlert (AAAS) ^ | 05 April 2006 | Staff

[WildHorseCrash]

Agnostics are religious moderates. Can't make up their minds.

That is not true. We simply recognize the impossibility of reaching any certain conclusion as to whether there are no god, many gods, some gods, one goddess, demi-gods, etc. Anyone who says they are certain is simply emoting.

[muawiyah]

Which "church"? After all, some "churches" are founded on the idea that we are, as it were, the imaginings or thoughts of a sleeper who is awakening.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your engaging reply!

Even mor offensive is their penchant for "dissing" the works of anyone who uses their Creator-given intellect to try to "fill in the blanks" with understanding of how the Universe has reached its present state.

OTOH, I am similarly offended by "scientific observers" who ignore the truth of Scripture, ("God created the heavens and the earth".) and who insist that their speculations (theories) as to how the Universe developed alone constitute "truth".

Neither have a corner on "truth" ...

I would go one step further and envision the situation like the ten blind men trying to describe an elephant. One thought it was a tree, another a fan, another a rope and so on.

Their only hope is to realize they are in fact blind - and what they observe is strictly a matter of their approach (leg, ear, trunk). Then perhaps they can quit the pointless recriminations and actually make some progress...

[muawiyah]

Darwin and his friends were looking at the critters, and not their machinery.

Mistakes were made.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Not all Christians worship the Bible like it's some kind of idol."

Saying that the Bible is objectively true is in NO way saying that the Bible should be or is worshiped.

"Your statement is false on the face of it."

How can you say that? You don't think that there is such a thing as objective truth. For all you know, false could mean true. Up could mean down. Peace could mean war. How would you know?

Your postmodernist ramblings are underwhelming.

[mlc9852]

I thought you were an atheist. At least they have made some kind of decision.

[muawiyah]

I'm just passing on a generalized complaint I've heard frequently over the years.

Alfred Weggener was laughed off the stage at his first presentation of his continental drift theory. Not a scientist of his age ever adopted the Weggenerian view.

Eventually, the new science of tectonics proved Weggener to be correct. All current scientists believe tectonics to be the correct answer.

At the same time all the unbelievers are now conveniently dead.

[RightWingNilla]

CTM (Critical Troll Mass) achieved placemarker

[muawiyah]

Yes, attrition. They die off in fact.

[jec41]

Definitions of evolution on the Web:

development: a process in which something passes by degrees to a different stage (especially a more advanced or mature stage); "the development of his ideas took many years"; "the evolution of Greek civilization"; "the slow development of her skill as a writer"
(biology) the sequence of events involved in the evolutionary development of a species or taxonomic group of organisms
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

In the life sciences, evolution is a change in the traits of living organisms over generations, including the emergence of new species. Since the development of modern genetics in the 1940s, evolution has been defined more specifically as a change in the frequency of alleles in a population from one generation to the next.In other fields evolution is used more generally to refer to any process of change over time.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

[Quark2005]

Having said all this about faith, and intuition, because it is what I personally "feel", I don't know another way to reason through subject matter with others then through philosophy.

Interesting story. I think most of us have experienced occurrences or feelings we can't logically explain. None of it meets any scientific criteria, of course, but "man does not live on bread alone," though, I'll be the first to admit.

[muawiyah]

The scientists who ridiculed Weggener ALL believed in a different model ~ interestingly enough, they also believed in gradualism.

We now know gradualism doesn't work ~ tectonics work!

I detect a thread of "gradualism" in the posts from the Evos here ~ time to catch up to DNA though. The dynamics there simply do not require "gradualism". In fact, we can go in and change the whole picture ourselves. Over the long run we will probably take charge of our own and other genomes.

That's going to really pi$$ off the Creos too.

[King Prout]

Alfred Weggener was laughed off the stage at his first presentation of his continental drift theory. Not a scientist of his age ever adopted the Weggenerian view.

1. Can you prove that doubled-absolute assertion?
2. Would you be willing to admit that a single counterexample invaldates such an absolute assertion?

[muawiyah]

It doesn't matter how evolution works anymore, at least not in this world. We humans are taking over the job, and we are going to have the best tasting ever chickens that produce a pound of eggs and a pound of meat for every ounce of feed (and that's just one example), plus, just before they slaughter themselves, they'll shed their feathers.

Have you looked into what's going on with the development of new bio-fuels? They (ADM, et al) are planning on inserting instructions in the genome for various plants that will create an enzyme that turns all the cellulose into alcohol when it is heated.

Evolution as we knew it IS OVER.

[Elsie]

...advantage is definded by which individuals produce the most offspring.

There goes the nieghborhood!

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"We now know gradualism doesn't work ~ tectonics work!"

Plate tectonics is a gradual process.

[Elsie]

At any rate, this is why a discussion of evolution only makes sense in the context of populations, and should not be applied to individuals.

Are you trying to say that mutations don't start in a mere individual??

[WildHorseCrash]

OTOH, I am similarly offended by "scientific observers" who ignore the truth of Scripture, ("God created the heavens and the earth".) and who insist that their speculations (theories) as to how the Universe developed alone constitute "truth".

But you steal a base, here. You use "truth of Scripture" like its an objectively proved fact. It isn't. In fact, given the historic propensity for humans to create religions, sects, cults, etc., and given that the content of no religion's scriptures can even begin to be demonstrably true, the phrase, "truth of Scripture" can objectively be termed an oxymoron.

There is no "truth" in any scripture, but simply the subjective emotions of its adherents.

[jec41]

No, it really hasn't been defined as just "change" for hundreds of years.

BTW, my statement is correct whether we are talking about "defined" or "hundreds".

You have already said that the universe may be in your head. Solipsism. so you may have your own definition of evolution. However the world of science does not operate in your head and accepts the following definition of evolution that science determined.

ev·o·lu·tion (v-lshn, v-)
n.
1. A continuing process of change from one state or condition to another or from one form to another. 2. The theory that groups of organisms change with passage of time, mainly as a result of natural selection, so that descendants differ morphologically and physiologically from their ancestors.

The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary, 2nd Edition Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

[js1138]

I took geology before plate tectonics was accepted. I would like some references and citations for your claim that continental drift was laughed.

When I took geology it was taken quite seriously, even though there was no known mechanism capable of moving continents.

By "taken seriously" I mean the evidence for it (and there was quite a lot) was enthusiastically discussed at the introductory course level.

One of the things that made continental drift a serious hypothesis is that it predicted things which were, in fact found. It was accepted in half a century.

On the other hand, ID has been around in its present form for two hundred years without bringing any data to the table or making any predictions about what kind of data should be found. It has done no research and proposed no research. It has proposed nothing which would support or falsify its claims. It says nothing about the designing entity, nothing about the purposes, motives or methods of the alleged designing entity. All of these are elementary parts of any forensic investigation.

Last of all, and most sadly, ID advocates would not even have been looking for an intermediate fossil. There is no explanatory ID hypothesis that would expect an intermediate fossil.