Professor Dumped Over Evolution Beliefs

A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.

During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."

The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.

"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."

Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.

"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."

Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.

Why would someone offer the commie Chinese creature as a transition? Just because it has feathers?

It's almost an archaeopteryx, except Archy could fly. How small does a "gap" have to be before a creationist can cross it?

The thing that's just a feathered dinosaur:

The thing that's just a bird with teeth and a bony tail. (If it's a fake, somebody faked six separate specimens.)

One, we are told, is a dinosaur. The other, we are told, is a bird. Creationists in their seminars are instructed that all birds are like each other and unlike dinosaurs, all dinosaurs are like each other and unlike birds, and to be sure to sneer while asking "Where are the missing links?"

Continuing on, another "true" bird, Confuciusornis:

Note that the closeup is of a forelimb. Did they teach you at the seminar to ask, "What use is the halfway thing between wing and claw?"

In Darwin's day, the fossil record was a tiny fraction of what we have now. He couldn't point to very many transitional forms at all. He nevertheless boldly predicted, based on his theory and the tree of life, that certain kinds of forms would eventually turn up. He has been repeatedly right, and the scoffing creationists who argued the gaps in the data as holes in the history have been wrong. All you have left is the refusal to see.

Methinks BP is making a common assumption here in regards to feathered dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were not true reptiles. There is strong evidence they were warm blooded or sem-warm blooded. Reptiles are cold blooded. The flying reptiles BP refers to were the pterosaurs. However, they may not have been true reptiles either, as there is strong evidence they were fur covered, which indicates they also required insulation. The feathered dinosaurs gave rise to modern birds (feathers originated for insulation purposes, not flying; they were simply adapted for the latter). The truly-flying reptiles (to distinguish them from gliding reptiles, which can be found even today) went extinct, possibly out-competed by the early birds.

Junior,

I can't really ask how many feathered dinosaurs are still around can I, seeing as there are none, except of course Nessie.

Well maybe I can ask, but the answer either way is zero. Why is that? Shouldn't there have been some other use for feathers other than for flying? Or did our little therapods just start jumping out trees till they started growing feathers. At which point they started flying instead of hitting the ground. Still they needed to work out that landing thing sooner or later. Kinda reminds you of that show "Greatest American Hero" where Ralph Hinkley keeps crash landing. Now that was a hoot.

Regards,
Boiler Plate

P.S. be careful with that "methinks" stuff you might hurt yourself, or even worse turn into a European.

<< It's almost an archaeopteryx, except Archy could fly >>

How do you know? Ever see an archaeopteryx in the sky?

<< The thing that's just a feathered dinosaur: >>

Oh, look at the pretty pictures done by a professional artist! Aren't they cute!

Notice that one has wings like a bird and the other looks like a hairy lizard. You need to get a better artist. Try the ones who did all the wildly different artist renditions of homo rudolphensis and zinjanthropus (see them at http://www.mbowden.surf3.net/Aprecon.htm).

<< The thing that's just a bird with teeth and a bony tail. (If it's a fake, somebody faked six separate specimens.) >>

Only two of the specimens (both found in the stomping grounds of Ernst "Faker" Haeckel) are well enough defined to be useable. One of your six specimens consists of A feather! I thought it was a stretch to build up a specimen based on A tooth, but this exceeds that when it comes to evolutionary imagination.

<< Note that the closeup is of a forelimb. Did they teach you at the seminar to ask, "What use is the halfway thing between wing and claw?" >>

Wings WITH claws on the end (like an ostrich), are not 1/2 way anything. They are wings with claws on the end. It is not a wing evolving into a claw, or a claw evolving into a wing. Something in the process of evolving from one to the other would indeed be of little use as either.

When you find a wing with a claw on the end in the fossil record, you can PRETEND something is transitional, or evolving. When the SAME THING is found on bats, or birds like ostriches, which are alive today, you can't pretend, because we can observe that nothing is transitioning or evolving.

You have to live in a fairy tale land to pretend evolution has ocurred.

X: What are you gonna do when they find this one is another fake?

VR: What are you gonna do when they don't?

Looks like you need to ask that of your own boys:

<< Even within the materialistic paradigm, not all evolutionists believe the dinosaur-to-bird sub-paradigm. This includes Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and his colleague, University of Kansas paleontologist Larry Martin. Martin commented on the grip of the paradigm, in the context of another 'feathered dinosaur' claim: 'You have to put this into perspective. To the people who wrote the paper, the chicken would be a feathered dinosaur'. >>

<< even some evolutionists, like John Ruben of Oregon State University in Corvallis, are sceptical about the claim of downy feathers. He believes that they are 'just collagen' -- internal connective-tissue fibres left behind when the flesh decayed. Larry Martin pointed out that if the creature really did have feathers, one would expect them to be preserved under the same conditions that could preserve down, which is much more fragile. >>

<< Dr Storrs Olson, Curator of Birds at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has previously been scathing about overzealous bird-dino claims in both Nature and National Geographic. Similarly, he says he cannot discern feathers or feathery structures in this latest discovery, and advises caution against the possibilities that the feathers come from a different source. This caution is reasonable—he was one of the first to smell a rat about the Archaeoraptor fraud. >>

Why would someone offer the commie Chinese creature as a transition? Just because it has feathers? (That's *assuming* it's real, which has been a bad assumption to have about the Chinese fossils in the past).

Yes, Archaeoraptor, which you only found out about because a palaeontologist caught the fraud within two months. If these "whores of evolution" were so intent on spreading a lie, why did they expose this fraudulent fossil so quickly? Meanwhile, the creationists are still selling tickets to the Paluxy river tracks and claiming the Grand Canyon was cut by Noah's flood.

Feathered dinos would be classified as lizards based on skeletal features. If platypus isn't transitional, then the commie Chinese creature shouldn't be claimed as such.

Feathered dinos are classed as dinos, not lizards. The platypus isn't transitional between ducks and mammals. Its a remnant of group of mammals that are extinct apart from the 3 living species.

How come it's the only mammal with a bill? Do other mammals lack teats and lay eggs? How many other furry mammals have venemous spikes?

Because its the only platypus species remaining. If all deer species had died out except for the moose, the moose would be the only antler-bearing species on earth. The underlying bone structure of the "beak" is identical in both platypus and echidna, except that the echidna's is narrow and cylindrical. As regards mammals lacking teats and laying eggs, yes there are two other species, the echidnas. These three species are the sole remnants of the primitive mammal subclass, the Monotremes. The young hatch from the soft-shelled eggs after only 10 days, after which the vast majority of their development (platypus - 4 months, echidna - 6 months) takes place in a pouch where they feed on milk, just like marsupials. While they do not have teats, they still secrete milk, like all other mammals. The male platypus has functioning poisonous spikes, the echidna's spikes have lost their function. These species are not transitional in that they are direct links between other species, but they are specialized remnants of a group of mammals that arose before the placentals and marsupials, the two other major groups of living mammals, and still retain the more primitve egg-laying and teatless methods of reproduction and nurturing, so we can say with confidence that lactation, fur, the dentary-squamosal jaw and the three-bone inner ear all evolved before the retention of the eggs in the uterus.

Hey - that's what I've been saying. Glad you agree.

No, either you're trying to be smart, or you've missed the point. The feathered dinosaurs are classed as transitional because the rest of their skeletons support the hypothesis, not just the feathers alone.

Pigeonhole - that's an appropriate word to use for a bird (provided archy isn't another fraud).

Ah, so you're adamant the Archie is a bird? Why don't you take the time to compare it to the skeleton of a bird (and one of those feathered dinosaurs).

And keep shouting "fraud". That'll make it go away.

<< Meanwhile, the creationists are still selling tickets to the Paluxy river tracks >>

At the risk of being moderated for speaking the truth - you are a liar. I just returned from the Paluxy. The ones charging to see the tracks are the fine evolutionists at the Dinosaur Valley National Park. The McFall family didn't sell us any tickets to investigate the river bed on their farm, but we did give them a voluntary offering when we were finished, since the tracks there put the National Park to shame.

Dino Valley is on the verge of going under, because they don't have enough tracks to generate interest. Most of them have eroded.

With the backing of the gov't, they easily could remove some of the limestone layers to expose more tracks and shelter them to prevent erosion, to make the Park profitable again. Similar excavation been done at McFall, with positive results, but with limited private funding and material. Why won't Dino Valley do it? Are they afraid of what else they might uncover besides dino tracks?

<< and claiming the Grand Canyon was cut by Noah's flood. >>

My next trip is to Mt. St. Helens, where a canyon much like the Grand Canyon WAS created by a flood in a matter of months. If the eruption wasn't observed, your friends would insist the Toutle River carved the canyon. Also, unless rivers flow uphill, the Colorado River couldn't have carved the Grand Canyon.

<< Ah, so you're adamant the Archie is a bird? Why don't you take the time to compare it to the skeleton of a bird ... ? >>

I sure have. The skeletons had pneumatized vertebrate and pelvis (bones). This identifies both a cervical and abdominal air sac, present in modern birds. This indicates the unique avian one-way lung design which could not evolve into a two-way bellows system like ours without asphyxiating the poor bird.

<< Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of “paleobabble” is going to change that. >> Dr Alan Feduccia, world authority on birds at the UNC-Chapel Hill (and an evolutionist)

Archaeopteryx was a bird with fully-formed flying feathers and a wishbone.

Oh, look at the pretty pictures done by a professional artist! Aren't they cute!

So look at the fossils.

Notice that one has wings like a bird and the other looks like a hairy lizard.

Pretty much the same frame under the coverings. What modern bird looks like what modern lizard?

Only two of the specimens (both found in the stomping grounds of Ernst "Faker" Haeckel) are well enough defined to be useable.

All of the specimens were found in limestone from the same continent (but a rather different era) than Haeckel. [Ernst Haeckel, (1834-1919), Archaeopteryx lithographica, (~150 million years ago)]

I've not seen this defense raised before. How far away from Haeckel does something have to be before it's a real fossil? Note that one specimen, mis-identified until 1970, was found in 1855, well before the 1861 London specimen. Three specimens were found after 1950. The preceding link also demolishes most creationist arguments related to Archaeopteryx.

Wings WITH claws on the end (like an ostrich), are not 1/2 way anything... When the SAME THING is found on bats, or birds like ostriches, which are alive today, you can't pretend, because we can observe that nothing is transitioning or evolving.

The uselessness of creation science on display for all to see. Nobody screams for "the transitionals" like a creationist, but nothing is ever ever ever a transitional to a creationist. The appearance of demaninding physical evidence is just posturing for the bystanders. Inferring (in the wrong direction) from physical evidence, no matter how plentiful or how detailed said evidence may be, is "conjecture." You can have no idea if some population of bats somewhere is "rapidly" evolving or not, and neither can I, as even the "rapid" scenarios are not rapid on the human timescale.

At the risk of being moderated for speaking the truth - you are a liar.

I was speaking figuratively, as in the creationists are promoting the Paluxy tracks as genuine human tracks. I suspect that you knew that, but just to satisfy you, I hereby agree that creationists are not literally charging customers to view the tracks. Happy now?

Why won't Dino Valley do it? Are they afraid of what else they might uncover besides dino tracks?

I don't know. But maybe you're right. Its all a giant conspiracy.

My next trip is to Mt. St. Helens, where a canyon much like the Grand Canyon WAS created by a flood in a matter of months. If the eruption wasn't observed, your friends would insist the Toutle River carved the canyon. Also, unless rivers flow uphill, the Colorado River couldn't have carved the Grand Canyon.

This canyon is on the same scale as the Grand Canyon? Perhaps you could provide some details about this uphill flow claim you're making?

This indicates the unique avian one-way lung design which could not evolve into a two-way bellows system like ours without asphyxiating the poor bird.

And it is claimed where exactly that the mammalian respiratory system evolved from that of birds or dinsaurs?

I'm not denying that Archie may have flown or had many avian characteristics. They're there in the bones. But so also are the reptilian characteristics.

<< This canyon is on the same scale as the Grand Canyon? >>

Who said size matters? It's the same type of canyon. The Mt. St. Helens eruption and aftermath (including flooding), was not of global nature as was Noah's flood.

X: This indicates the unique avian one-way lung design which could not evolve into a two-way bellows system like ours without asphyxiating the poor bird.

Y: And it is claimed where exactly that the mammalian respiratory system evolved from that of birds or dinsaurs?

Who said that? Mammals and reptiles have the same type of two-way bellows systems. Birds have the one-way pneumatic bone system. Birds are supposed to have evolved from dinosaurs (reptiles).

Try not exhaling and see if you can evolve an avian respiratory system. In fact, this is an experiment I recommend for all evolutionists eager to show evidence their theory is valid.

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