Thank you for the kind and reasoned reply.
> But first of all, it’s not an ad hominem to say someone
> is ignorant and/or lying.
Thank you for the correction, but it is ad-hominem without evidence.
> Evolutionary science does not predict that there would be
> chimeras like that.
My public school textbooks were filled with such. The development of the eye, the conversion from shrew to bat, the dino-bird, on and on. Perhaps those books were not written by scientists after all, which is what I came to suspect after I gave up on evolution.
> Birds did not develop wings in order to fly—rather, they
> developed flying after they had feathered forelegs...once
> you have feathers and are up in a tree, you’re on your
> way to gliding; and once you’re gliding, you’re on your
> way to flying.
I’m sorry, but this is laughable, much like the drawings I remember of the evolution of the eye. Indeed, there would have had to have been a chimera of some sort in between climbing and gliding, then gliding and flying. The genetic and structural framework to support these features are just too complex. And where did all the new genetic information come from anyway?
> But the point isn’t whether you accept that scenario or
> not; the point is that Babu is engaging in a classic
> straw man argument.
I concede this point, but you must agree that evolutionists use straw men of their own against the creationists.
> This falsehood [”Lucy’s” knee] has been passed around
> creationist circles for 20 years now. An overview of why
> it’s false and the way creationists continue to use it
> even though they’ve been told it’s false can be found
> here.
I will concede this point on behalf of the original author, who did not research the matter carefully enough.
However, here is a correction posted on the Website of the Institution for Creation Research.
“The statement was based on reports of Johnson’s public comments and the slides he used at the University of Missouri on November 20, 1986, (see ‘Bible-Science Newsletter”, October 1987 pp 1-3), compared with a photo he published in his book Lucy: the Beginnings of Humankind (1981) page 157 and a National Geographic article in November 1985, page 593.”
You can read the whole article at http://www.icr.org/article/was-lucy-ape-man/
Dr. Morris goes on to say, “it does not demonstrate human ancestry. The most that could be claimed for Lucy is that she was a chimp-like primate, who spent most of her time in the trees, who perhaps walked a little more erect than other tree-dwelling primates when on the ground. I would be willing to concede this point.”
Thank you for the kind and reasoned reply. Likewise. Thank you for the correction, but it is ad-hominem without evidence.
I don't want to get bogged down in an argument about logical fallacies, but my understanding is that the ad hominem fallacy consists of trying to invalidate someone's argument based on who that person is. I didn't do that--I called the author ignorant based on his statements, not the other way around.
My public school textbooks were filled with such. The development of the eye, the conversion from shrew to bat, the dino-bird, on and on.
I'd like to see those. I can't even imagine how that would apply in the development of the eye--your books talked about something that was half an eye, half something else?
And I'm not sure what you mean by the "dino-bird." If you mean archaeopteryx, I'd say that we only know it's half-bird because we know that eventually we'd have birds. At the time, it'd just be its own "fully formed" creature. It's not a lesser dinosaur or an incompetent bird--it's just its own thing. Only from the perspective of time can we see that it was part of the transition from dinosaurs to birds.
Indeed, there would have had to have been a chimera of some sort in between climbing and gliding, then gliding and flying.
Yes--it's thought to look something like these:
As you can see, having feathers doesn't mean it doesn't have a functional arm. Like I said, we only call it a "chimera" because we know it's a stop on the way to birds. But it's a "fully formed," fully functional creature in its own right, with nothing that only halfway works.
Perhaps I shouldn't have introduced the word "chimera." My point is that many anti-evolutionists seem to expect an animal to have to grow wings from buds or something and then lose its arms, rather than just have its arms gradually become something capable of flight without ever losing their function for something else.
However, here is a correction posted on the Website of the Institution for Creation Research.
Good for them.
The most that could be claimed for Lucy is that she was a chimp-like primate, who spent most of her time in the trees, who perhaps walked a little more erect than other tree-dwelling primates when on the ground.
Okay, and humans are chimp-like primates who spend most of their time on the ground and walk a lot more erect than the tree-dwelling primates. Sounds to me like Dr. Morris has perfectly described an ape-human transitional.