Posted on 02/18/2006 1:21:05 PM PST by DeweyCA
OOOO OOO -- don't forget my favorite: "Darwin's Deathbed Refutation"
Oh and the one I am seeing a lot today: "Commies used TTOE so all TTOE supporters are commies."
I understand ignorance, but it is so PURPOSEFUL with the CRIDers.
Yes, are you?
..The people making claims about Malachite Man have not been cooperative in supplying information that might be used to verify their claim. This would be surprising if they thought their claims could actually be verified.
I just ran this through my talkorigins to english translator.
Basically, it says, "Because we said so!"
Did we miss med time?
Well, yes there is.
You mean a another 'indisputable' house of cards just went POOF? :)
So you won't answer my challenge.
You throw epithets.
Go away until you have something of substance. I have made substanstive challenges and hav receieved wither your silliness or silence.
Do yourself the favor and be part of the silence.
Vestigial limbs on a Whale have a purpose? Interesting.
Considering that many 'features' have had their use modified over time why is it surprising to find some no longer serving their original function but perhaps being used for something else?
No. Survival of the fittest has always meant survival of the reproductively fittest, in some cases this means faster predators eat slower prey before the slower prey makes any significant contribution to the population. In some cases it means the male has sexier feathers. Because some, including anti-evolutionists, insist on misunderstanding the phrase it is hardly the fault of the scientists engaged in evolutionary research. The fact that evolution brings up some perhaps unpalatable concepts does not make the ToE wrong.
All right!! B_S is back.....
They are our earliest known bipedal ancestors. At times chimps can be bipedal. Hunt has observed, for example, that chimps stand on two legs when they eat tiny fruits, some of them no larger than a grape seed. These findings support a hypothesis advanced in 1970 by anthropologist Clifford Jolly. But Hunt's observation of chimps has added a new wrinkle: chimps are bipedal while eating tiny fruits both when on the ground, consistent with Jolly's hypothesis, and when in trees. Bipedalism is useful to chimps when feeding in either location.
This is so typical of this IDIOT BS science. So we only recently confirmed that modern chimps are bipedal, but these moonbats will claim to know with great authority (usually from examining a tooth or bone) that some monkey ancestor from 4 milliion years ago was 'certainly bipedal'. Modern 'intelligent' people believing this tripe and hanging on every word. What a farce!~
Just curious...how old are you?
Follow the thread for your answer. If your too lazy or dumb, don't waste my time.
This is so typical of this IDIOT BS science. So we only recently confirmed that modern chimps are bipedal, but these moonbats will claim to know with great authority (usually from examining a tooth or bone) that some monkey ancestor from 4 milliion years ago was 'certainly bipedal'. Modern 'intelligent' people believing this tripe and hanging on every word. What a farce!~
Don't hold back! Tell us what you really think.
By the way, might I inquire as to the source of your knowledge on this very complex and detailed subject?
The "answers" are reiterations.
If you can't answer me, then admit it. You are making yourself look like a fool.
Point to a single direct response to me. For that matter point to a single post that answers me.
You can't.
The Moab Man/Malachite Man bones represent a number of intrusive burials in the Dakota Sandstone, and are not integral parts of the host formation. The bones evidently represent intentional or accidental entombments of native Americans in a mining environment. As reported by a number of conventional workers and even some creationist authors, the bones are largely unfossilized and of essentially modern appearance, except for the greenish stain. There is no foundation for the claims of a few creationists that the bones contradict mainstream geology or support dinosaur/human cohabitation.
Actually, none of the points made on either web page resemble that in the slightest. Nothing Bible.CA says about Malachite Man is true. Perhaps the most notable factoid is that Malachite Man is the already-debunked Moab Man fished out of the garbage and recycled.
Apparently the author has not kept up to the science. Light sensing cells have been found on a number of organisms.
Beyond that single cell, many different 'transitional' versions of an optical device have been found on diverse organisms. The eye is not the same mystery it was in Darwin's time. Funny how the anti-evos can't keep up with these findings?
Congratulations -- like most uneducated anti-evolutionists, you have no idea what "vestigial" means, or how vestigial features are used as evidence supporting evolutionary origins. Please try to actually *learn* some biology before you attempt to critique it.
On this long list of bone-headed, fallacious, or dishonest creationist claims, you'll find that your misunderstanding has already been identified and addressed:
Here is part of my reply to the last guy who tried attacking biology due to the same lack of knowledge:
- CB360. Vestigial organs may have functions.
- CB360.1. The human appendix is functional, not vestigial.
- (see also CB130: Junk DNA not really junk.)
- CB361. Vestigial organs are just evidence of decay, not evolution.
Yes, VESTIGIAL FEATURES do indeed provide evidence of evolution "either way", because if they linger from a common ancestor, they indicate the link to that common ancestor, and if they have been "de-selected" as you say, they also provide evidence for evolution because they leave traces of their passing, such as the fact that birds do not have teeth, but still have "broken" genes to produce teeth (which can and have been chemically triggered to produce chicks with reptile-like teeth). Even though birds have lost the teeth of their reptile ancestors, they retain clear evidence that they *did* have teeth in a distant ancestor.
Vestigial features, even (and in some cases especially) ones which are not entirely non-functional, provide strong evidence for evolution precisely *because* they are the kind of "leftover" that a sensible designer wouldn't have put in if he were free to design things from scratch, but are exactly the kind of thing that evolution via common descent produces frequently (because it's slow to "weed out" things which aren't strictly detrimental, and because it "retasks" structures from earlier "models" instead of being free to "redesign" things from scratch.)
So can evolution ever be falsified? Sure -- by organisms having features that are *not* inherited from a common ancestor (by unmodified or modified descent). So far, no such feature has ever been found, despite 100+ years of searching, and despite the fact that *designed* objects have these kinds of non-heirarchical features all the time.
Try learning some biology before you attempt to critique it. Heck, you'd be a long way towards not making bone-headed errors on this topic if you had just *read* (and understood) the links I've *already* given to you for your education. They've already explained the problem with your fallacies, and yet you come right back and make them *again*.
Here, for example, are some of the passages you failed to either read or understand:
[From http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html]And:
Evolutionary vestiges are, technically, any diminished structure that previously had a greater physiological significance in an ancestor than at present. Independently of evolutionary theory, a vestige can also be defined typologically as a reduced and rudimentary structure compared to the same homologous structure in other organisms, as one that lacks the complex functions usually found for that structure in other organisms (see, e.g. Geoffroy 1798).
Classic examples of vestiges are the wings of the ostrich and the eyes of blind cavefish. These vestigial structures may have functions of some sort. Nevertheless, what matters is that rudimentary ostrich wings are useless as normal flying wings, and that rudimentary cavefish eyes are useless as normal sighted eyes. Vestiges can be functional, and speculative arguments against vestiges based upon their possible functions completely miss the point.
For more discussion of the vestigial concept, extensive modern and historical references concerning its definition (especially the allowance for functionality), see the Citing Scadding (1981) and Misunderstanding Vestigiality and 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Anatomical vestiges FAQs.
[From: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#vestiges]A vestige is defined, independently of evolutionary theory, as a reduced and rudimentary structure compared to the same complex structure in other organisms. Vestigial characters, if functional, perform relatively simple, minor, or inessential functions using structures that were clearly designed for other complex purposes. Though many vestigial organs have no function, complete non-functionality is not a requirement for vestigiality (Crapo 1985; Culver et al. 1995; Darwin 1872, pp. 601-609; Dodson 1960, p. 44; Griffiths 1992; Hall 2003; McCabe 1912, p. 264; Merrell 1962, p. 101; Moody 1962, p. 40; Muller 2002; Naylor 1982; Strickberger 2000; Weismann 1886, pp. 9-10; Wiedersheim 1893, p. 2, p. 200, p. 205).
For example, wings are very complex anatomical structures specifically adapted for powered flight, yet ostriches have flightless wings. The vestigial wings of ostriches may be used for relatively simple functions, such as balance during running and courtship displays—a situation akin to hammering tacks with a computer keyboard. The specific complexity of the ostrich wing indicates a function which it does not perform, and it performs functions incommensurate with its complexity. Ostrich wings are not vestigial because they are useless structures per se, nor are they vestigial simply because they have different functions compared to wings in other birds. Rather, what defines ostrich wings as vestigial is that they are rudimentary wings which are useless as wings.
Vestigial structures have perplexed naturalists throughout history and were noted long before Darwin first proposed universal common descent. Many eighteenth and nineteenth century naturalists identified and discussed vestigial structures, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), Georges-Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon (1707-1788), and Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). Over sixty years before Darwin's publication of On the Origin of Species, the eminent French anatomist Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844) discussed his observations of the vestigial wings of the cassowary and ostrich during his travels with Napoleon to Egypt:
"There is another species that, like the ostrich, never leaves the ground, the Cassowary, in which the shortening [of the wing] is so considerable, that it appears little more than a vestige of a wing. Its arm is not, however, entirely eliminated. All of the parts are found under the skin. ...
Whereas useless in this circumstance, these rudiments of the furcula have not been eliminated, because Nature never works by rapid jumps, and She always leaves vestiges of an organ, even though it is completely superfluous, if that organ plays an important role in the other species of the same family. Thus, under the skin of the Cassowary's flanks are the vestiges of the wings ..." (Geoffroy 1798)
Geoffroy was at a loss for why exactly nature "always leaves vestiges of an organ", yet he could not deny his empirical observations. Ten years later, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) identified several vestigial structures in his Zoological Philosophy (Lamarck 1809, pp. 115-116):
"Eyes in the head are characteristic of a great number of different animals, and essentially constitute a part of the plan of organisation of the vertebrates. Yet the mole, whose habits require a very small use of sight, has only minute and hardly visible eyes ...
Olivier's Spalax, which lives underground like the mole, and is apparently exposed to daylight even less than the mole, has altogether lost the use of sight: so that it shows nothing more than vestiges of this organ. Even these vestiges are entirely hidden under the skin and other parts, which cover them up and do not leave the slightest access to light.
The Proteus, an aquatic reptile allied to the salamanders, and living in deep dark caves under water, has, like the Spalax, only vestiges of the organ of sight, vestiges which are covered up and hidden in the same way." (Lamarck 1809, p. 116)
Even Aristotle discussed the peculiar vestigial eyes of moles in the fourth century B.C. in De animalibus historiae (lib. I cap. IX), in which he identified them as "stunted in development" and "eyes not in the full sense".
As these individuals noted, vestiges can be especially puzzling features of organisms, since these "hypocritical" structures profess something that they do not do—they clearly appear designed for a certain function which they do not perform. However, common descent provides a scientific explanation for these peculiar structures. Existing species have different structures and perform different functions. If all living organisms descended from a common ancestor, then both functions and structures necessarily have been gained and lost in each lineage during macroevolutionary history. Therefore, from common descent and the constraint of gradualism, we predict that many organisms should retain vestigial structures as structural remnants of lost functions.
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