Posted on 01/30/2006 9:40:22 AM PST by SirLinksalot
Well, hello Coyoteman! Nice of you to join us.
Been lurking.
Work to do. You know, digging up fossils and making up lies about them and all.
(Just kidding, I work with archaeological sites, not paleontological sites.)
You all be good now. I'll check back later.
Now, you might have simply forgotten, but this is the answer to questions you have been asking about a thing which fascinates you. But you forgot anyway.
Now, the article does have some deficiencies. It doesn't dwell on the obvious point that the mix of reptilian and mammalian features it cites arise from the line leading to modern monotremes having split off very early from the rest of the mammals.
A more detailed (if dated) treatment with some attention to creationist arguments here.
"You know, digging up fossils and making up lies about them and all"
Ah, yes. A tough job but somebody's got to do it! LOL
Looking forward to your wisdom as always.
"So, one day a snake gives birth to a bird. But where O where is there another little bird for it to mate with?"
But it is a hallmark of creationism and ID to cherish an ignorance of the most common arguments against their position (or for the position they oppose).
Yes, everything you're saying is wrong.
Now, when I'm fascinated by something I try to find out about it. What you're fasinated by, you fight to remain ignorant of.
We're not the same.
Actually I posted an aritcle about the platypus recently.
> Biotechnology is making it hard to defend Darwinism
Exactly backwards. Biotech is making it hard to defend anything *other* than Darwinian evolution as the cause of biodiversity.
> Children whose science educations are denied exposure to ID implications, even as a controversy, are missing a lot, imho.
Science class is the wrong place for ID. Teach about ID in an appropriate class... history or philosophy, say, alongside ID's stablemates of astrology and phrenology.
Is there more than one kind of evolution or is it all just natural selection?
> Is there more than one kind of evolution or is it all just natural selection?
There are several types of (biological) evolution. All the demonstrated ones rely on some form of natural selection.
Actually biotechnology has shown a process of unnatural selection and the process of reduction appears perilously close to reaching irreduction. Biotechnologists are scrambling to try and put Darwin back together again.
Even poor Sir Francis Crick, by the time of his death and after 60 years of seeking to use biology to demonstrate evolution, was forced to change scientific disciplines in his quest to disprove god. He even reverted to theorizing about "panspermia" to explain the irreducible and inexplicable.
http://www.gene-watch.org/genewatch/articles/16-3commoner.html
Would genetic drift be considered natural selection also?
> Would genetic drift be considered natural selection also?
No. Apples and oranges.
Noticed it among your links and made reference to it here. It wasn't a learning experience for you, as you have demonstrated on this thread today.
I won't leave this hanging forever since no one wants it.
There are two wrong implicit assumptions here. Evolution does not assume a snake (or even dinosaur) gave birth to a bird. No saltation. Someone now wants to announce that unctuated equilibrium is a "hopeful monster" theory. No, it isn't. Read here.
Just as importantly, whole groups evolve. Some kind of barrier arises between a sub-population and the rest of the species. It may be a geographical barrier. It may be a habitat preference arising during a period of adaptive radiation. There is no problem within the evolving sub-population finding a compatible mate. Even if the group is evolving "rapidly" on evolutionary timescales, nothing crazy happens in one generation. All through the process, members of the group remain sexually compatible with each other. Because it's a whole subpopulation evolving, compatibility exists within the group even as its members are slowly losing it with other groups.
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