Posted on 06/15/2006 11:39:26 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Sshh. Don't tell the others, they think that the whole idea is rediculous.
"Surely, a theory that says that land creatures could eventually live under water, and water creatures could walk on land..."
The theory says that land creatures HAVE EVOLVED to live in water - of course, then they are not land creatures anymore, they're sea creatures.
Likewise sea creatures which evolved to live on land are now land creatures.
You are being misleading. No one thinks headless creatures are ridiculous. What is ridiculous is to postulate that a vertebrate whould evolve to not have a head, but still maintain the balance of the skeletal structure.
Yes it does. If a one-celled organism can evolve into a human being, a sloth, a dinosaur, and a star fish, what configuration do you believe evolution says is impossible (remembering my own caveat that it only grants possibility to those changes which yield a fitness).
This is stupid. I tried to use the most obviously true example just to make a point about looking for what you want to see (another obvious issue), and the evolutionists jumped all over BOTH obvious ideas because I guess they were afraid it was some setup to advance creationist theories.
There are a myriad of creatures that are alive today that don't have heads (as well as those without just about any appendage or internal organ you may want to name). But evolutionists argue that a headless living creature is absurd?
No wonder the creation arguers here get frustrated by the discussions on these threads, when even obviously true statements get dismissed simply because they mistakenly feel threatened.
oops, spell that "would"
redefinition of the argument is one way to turn it around, I guess.
How many million years old is it then?...Would you believe 10 million?...or perhaps 9 million?...Can't they extrapolate some date of divergence from the ancestor - they seem to do this all the time with human and ape fossils?
...it's the family it belongs to that was thought to have died out 11 million years ago...
So, if they are emphasizing this as a different species from the extinct "ancestral" family, then they must think this particular type of rock rat has undergone some of that thar' mackro evolooshunn.
The creationists who argue here say it is rediculous to argue that one-celled organisms would evolve to HAVE a head, and a skeletal structure, but that obviously is not the evolutionist position.
I guess some here think that evolution means that whatever we observe is not only possible but obvious from the evolutionary perspective, while anything we don't see today couldn't possibly be possible.
Which seems to limit the limitless possibilities offered by evolution. Oh but of course, evolution doesn't offer limitless possibities, those here argue, that would be silly.
I am not redefining anything. You started out proposing that some scientist would posit that this fossil being discussed might not have had a head in life, because it somehow evolved that way. That is a blatant, and stupid, strawman. When you were called on it, you began to pretend that you meant any headless creature in general.
>>>"Theory: a well-substantiated explanation..."
Thank you for this convenient list of terms. Very well done.
Also, I wonder if these birds, like the cormorants on leashes, were missing their heads because they refused to fish for their Chinese owners after their owners placed rings around their necks so they couldn't swallow their catch.
"You too tired to fish... Off with your head." I seem to recall that PBS has some interesting videoes of this kind of fishing in action. I think it was a little slower than using the Australian dynamite-in-the-water technique.
"Also, I wonder if these birds, like the cormorants on leashes, were missing their heads because they refused to fish for their Chinese owners after their owners placed rings around their necks so they couldn't swallow their catch."
Umm, that's supposed to be a joke, right?
No, I started out noting that the scientists assumed there must be heads because obviously that is what they would expect, as a way of noting the possibility that they could also think other features would so "obviously" be there that they might have assumed ambiguous parts of the structure must be the way they obviously thought they WOULD be.
Others argued that it was stupid to think creatures could not have heads, and I said in general evolution is about possibilities and people argued that creatures with heads was NOT possible so I said that there are creatures without heads, and we ended up here.
I couldn't fathom why people would argue that evolution was restricted or that creatures couldn't exist without heads. I never argued that we should assume the heads didn't exist, I merely said it would be fascinating if at least one scientist would so postulate and see were it led them. Science is about postulating the unobvious based on observation, but that was tangential to the discussion.
When I realised people missed the entire point that I was using the OBVIOUS "assumption" which everybody was quick to make (they must have heads) to illustrate how the same could be true about something which may not actually BE true, I posted an article on the subject of reasoning.
That article used the same obviously obsurd concept (an elephant with no head) as a way of illustrating the point of the article. I even highlighted the appropriate paragraph.
I hoped that, with an example of the application of this type of argument, I could get people off the absurd notion of arguing whether creatures could have heads, but that attempt failed as well.
A thread like this flows from point to point, and to imply that the last point is somehow indicative of the first would be to misunderstand the art of conversation. I was wrong to suggest this was an intentional error on your part, and I apologize.
BTW, a "strawman" is a position different from that being argued which the proponent believes will be easier to debunk, not an exageration used to illlustrate a point that may be obscured with a less obvious case. Since my point was never that the scientists were wrong because they assumed the bird had a head, my argument was not a "strawman".
(just a pet peeve of mine with the mis-use of the word, nothing personal).
Even if we were to go back and start over evolving multicellularity some branches would probably end up with the same type of bilateral/anterior-posterior bodyplan that we have simply due to the adaptive benefit in having a head where the major sensory organs are located--although perhaps the brain would not be centered there (interesting speculation).
So, in conclusion, yes, supposing the theory of evolution predicts a headless bird is silly.
Evolution does not require that a mutation be MORE viable, merely that it be viable enough to survive within the population.
I hope that I won't get into an argument over that.
But no, I wouldn't expect a vertebrate with no skull to be viable, much less more viable than others in the population with a skull.
But realise this is another thing that, if said by the "wrong" people, raises argument, as many of the supposed transitions seem certain to pass through intermediate stages that seem significantly "unviable" or "not as viable" as the existing population.
I swear I'm getting out of this thread.
I'll bet the scavengers and predators of the time never lacked for a piece of tail.
Not that this isn't the case (given a sufficiently broad definition of butt and brain) but surely you are aware that evolution can only work with what it has. Chordates started with their nerve bundle towards one end and that became the pattern for what came after.
Creating a straw man such as you have done really does nothing for either side of the argument.
Really?
I take you have a full description of all fossils including the diagnostics?
Feel free to post it here.
You seem to be conflating scientists with science. The very reason such checks as peer review are built into science is because scientists do recognized their own fallibility and tendencies to bias. It is the adherence to the modern methodology (which is slightly modified for each group within science) which prevents mistakes from exiting long term. Modern science is basically adversarial where scientists spend time showing how others are wrong and expecting the same treatment in return. Many scientists will actually be thankful when errors are pointed out.
Not really. The numerous evolutionary selection 'forces' actively limit the range of variability within a given environment. If it wasn't for the limitations of selection, mutations by themselves would have run rampant resulting in far more variation than we see. Only when a group of organisms are faced with a modified environment does selection force that population towards a new norm.
The smaller the population (above a specific critical point) the faster the new norm is reached.
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