God Bless America placemarker
Posted on 10/31/2002 6:51:38 AM PST by forsnax5
Los Angeles, Oct. 30, 2002 - Scientists from the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have, for the first time, shown experimentally the steps in the origin and development of feathers, using the techniques of molecular biology. Their findings will have implications for the study of the morphogenesis of various epithelial organs-from hairs to lung tissue to mammary glands-and is already shedding light on the controversy over the evolution of dinosaur scales into avian feathers.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
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You/are/here.
I'm sorry you feel that way, about the ranting I mean. I prefer dialog to ranting myself. The things you put in quotes are not a quote from me, not does it reflect my honest efforts to obtain understanding.
Nebullis's 120 does not 'say it all' but rather makes a series of assertions that she makes no attempt to back up with facts. Nor does she even attempt to refute the objections that I and others have raised. She simply brushes them aside with bald assertion. I hardly consider that 'saying it all'. How can you 'say it all' in a post that has not even attempted to address specific objections?
It's in their rules of engagement, rule 42, which states:
When anti-evolutionists point out errors, inconsistencies, flaws or that the TOE is not falsifiable, change the subject, post a link with a title that appears to dubunk the anti-evolutionist but has little or no substance related to the subject behind it or state the anti-evolutionists doesn't understand what the they just read.Let me know if you want a copy of their rules of engagement. It really helps to better understand from where these intelligent and well meaning but misguided folks are coming from.
Your "specific objection" is that the study isn't something else, something more spectacular. In this case, while they isolated the influences of three major genes on feather development and used what they learned to produce a new theory of feather evolution, your excuse for ignoring the whole thing is that they didn't experiment on a lizard and turn its scales into feathers.
Well, that's an idea for a later experiment. I suspect that if that is done, your excuse for ignoring that one will be that they didn't turn the lizard into a bird. Am I right? You can always move the bar yet again.
The general pattern of these threads is that, no matter no matter no matter what evidence is presented for evolution, there's always an escape clause for those who will see nothing. There's no evidence for evolution--if you're a creationist--in just the same way that there's no evidence against Clinton if you're a Clintonista loyalist.
The argument will then be put forth that not everyone thought this way, but that will demonstrate my contention that Darwininianism is unfalsifiable.
And you accuse me of "white-hot emotionalism"? Around here, equating someone with the same mindset as a Clintonista loyalist is about the worst insult available.
I won't trade insults with you, especially meaningless ones. I remind you that on a recent thread I was ready to "write my concession speech" on an important aspect of human evolution. In fact I posted those very words. It turned out that the two most critical finds that prompted my retreat were very controversial in their dating. You could not give me any more in that 50-90K critical window.
I remind you of these things because you are quick to accuse me of refusing to see things. The things I am refusing to see ARE NOT THERE. I did not see it on that last thread because the finds you were basing your position on WERE NOT WHAT YOU FIRST THOUGHT THEY WERE. That's all. Its not "white-hot emotion" on my part. Its Facts Vade. Facts.
If you could have shown me even a half-dozen finds whose age was clearly within the time frame under discussion I would have written that speech. Just like I conceded on that fish-amphibian fossil debate almost two years ago.
I DO concede when the facts are clear. You haven't got the facts on your side here. This experiment does not demonstrate what the evos on this thread are claiming it does, and no amount of your fuming and insults can change that. Got it?
Would you ever be willing to write such a speech? Have you ever?
Well said. Again.
Thread after thread after thread, subject after subject, there turn out to be "other ways" of interpreting the evidence. Anything but evolution. This is just another one. Why am I not allowed to notice what is going on? How could anyone not notice what is going on?
I won't trade insults with you, especially meaningless ones. I remind you that on a recent thread I was ready to "write my concession speech" on an important aspect of human evolution.
I can't tell how big the concession was which you would have made, since you didn't wind up making it. I'm more impressed that, despite accepting an old earth, you don't concede a non-human ancestry for humans. You chose, instead, to defend a 40K gap interval which had Neanderthals but only a couple of controversial non-Neanderthals.
Here's the problem for claiming that you're not really evidence-proof. You use that gap to claim that humans and apes are unconnected and don't intergrade at all in the fossil record. This is the particular array of hard evidence that you were wishing away.
It was really a two-pronged defense. 1) "There are Neanderthals in there and Neanderthals are offline." 2) "There's a gap in the stuff that can't be shown to be offline."
Point one is feeble. With any fossil series, potentially all of it is offline. Nor is it clear that Neanderthals are offline, despite what you may have heard. The point of the figure is that human and ape skulls intergrade in the fossil record. And my point again is that you refuse to connect dots. I don't think the case you cite reflects well on you at all as someone who is objectively considering and responding to the evidence.
In fact I posted those very words. It turned out that the two most critical finds that prompted my retreat were very controversial in their dating. You could not give me any more in that 50-90K critical window.
And at least in your own mind you escaped recognizing the obvious implications of the evidence. I leave it for the reader to examine the figure above and wonder if he or she would do the same. Except for the modern chimpanzee on the upper left, all skulls are in chronological order (upper left to lower right) as they appear in the fossil record.
I remind you of these things because you are quick to accuse me of refusing to see things.
Let's see how you helped yourself on this thread.
1) You read the main article and announced that the study had neither grown feathers on a lizard or scales on a bird, although the latter would have been a loss of function yada yada yada. Anyone who read the article knows what the study was, and by elimination what it was not. Duh!The things I am refusing to see ARE NOT THERE.2) You commended gore for posting facts, facts, facts after he set up a strawman involving Shh and spent several posts knocking it over. The article does not mischaracterize the role of Shh. Moreover, gore's posts concerning its varied role in vertebrate development do not in any way undermine the study reported here. You would rather slap high-fives with a creo who is wrong than correct or ignore him.
The evidence against Clinton wasn't there, either. There was no evidence. Half the callers to CSPAN said so.
If you could have shown me even a half-dozen finds whose age was clearly within the time frame under discussion I would have written that speech.
Would you have conceded human ancestry from apes? Or just that there are fossils in that gap?
Just like I conceded on that fish-amphibian fossil debate almost two years ago.
I have no memory of this. Are you saying you actually conceded and still concede that amphibians arose from fish but are hiding from a rather better evidence trail for the ape ancestry of humans? What's the big deal about humans?
I DO concede when the facts are clear. You haven't got the facts on your side here. This experiment does not demonstrate what the evos on this thread are claiming it does, and no amount of your fuming and insults can change that. Got it?
The experiment suggests a scenario for feather evolution from scales. That is true even though you don't like it.
Would you ever be willing to write such a speech? Have you ever?
Being a basic screw-up, I have had to eat crow on details being argued many times. I don't like the feeling of having the facts against me. I thus try no matter how it may hurt to emulate science as a whole by staying as square with the evidence as possible. OTOH, I have not had to eat crow on major evidence for creation/ID or against evolution. There isn't any.
The most remarkable thing about that display of skulls is that none of them (other than the presently existing man and monkey specimens) existed at the time of Darwin's work. I think Neanderthal was discovered very shortly thereafter, and all the rest came later. Yet evolution theory predicted that, because these then-unknown and unsuspected intermediate species had once existed, evidence of them might be found. And now the evidence has in fact been discovered. When a theory makes predictions about previously unknown phenomena, and then future discoveries demonstrate that those predictions were correct, that is very powerful confirmation of the theory.
Conversely, the creationists had been running around saying that "the missing link" would never be found because -- according to creationism -- there was no such link. So creationism's one big prediction has been a total failure. No wonder they spend so much energy denying the existence of the evidence.
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