Posted on 03/13/2002 4:47:26 AM PST by JediGirl
Whether I do or I do not is irrelevant to this discussion. :)
The point is that there is nothing intrinisically necessary between the 3 earbones and mammary glands - the true definition of a mammal. There is an almost necessary connection between live birth and mammary glands because individuals not born from an egg are not able to feed themselves. We see though in the platypus that even this almost necessary connection is not true. So to say that the connection between mammary glands and 3 earbones is not necessary in animal fossils is a very valid statement. And this is the problem with paleontology - it will assume that any animal with 3 earbones is a mammal and any animal without 3 earbones is not a mammal. This can only be true if one also assumes the coevolution of different sytems at the same time. Such an assumption is of course utterly ridiculous and it is clearly laid to rest by our friend the platypus.
I did not say every time.However, it does start from scratch when it comes to creating an entirely new gene. New genes are always necessary for macro-evolution. In fact whole sets of new genes are required to give an organism new faculties. These new genes start from nothing, and until they provide a new faculty that can be tested by "survival of the fittest" are just useless DNA. Therefore the many different random mutations required to achieve the proper sequencing of the new gene cannot be helped by selection.
Yes indeed. The laws of probability have a brilliant proof. It is called Las Vegas - a city of fantastic hotels built with the money of those who believed that the laws of probabiltiy did not apply to them.
No it is not. The problems of paleontology, and specifically the problem I have been discussing - the lack of evidence it truly provides for most of the significant changes in organisms relates directly to this. In fact, only the circular assumptions of paleontology tell us that no animal without three ear-bones could have been a mammal. We have fish nowadays that are mammals, paleontology cannot tell us whether some of the fish we know only by bones nowadays were mammals or not, it can only tell us that they did not have 3 earbones. Changes in bone structure tell us very little. The bones represent a very small part of the genome of an organism and the most interesting parts, the ones that tell us the most about an organism and which need to have evolved also and paleontology can give us no proof of them are the development of what most of us would call the "entrails" of the organisms. Look up the platypus and tell me how many of the unique features of it would have been determined just from the bones.
Shame you didn't read that article you linked for more than lawyering purposes. Organized religion has such a stultifying effect on some people, it's hard not to be poisoned against it.
New hyptotheses arise in science. Some of them are pretty interesting. Science makes progress. Religion doesn't. Religion should thus stay out of science.
The size of Neanderthal skulls is larger than those of homo-sapiens. So your statement trying to save the ridiculous assumption made by evolutionists is false. In addition, many times the only part of a species we find is the skull, sometimes only part of a skull. Only by assuming the size of the rest of the body can you make such a determination. That is another example of the circular reasoning used by paleontology. If that were not enough, we are quite aware that humans only use a very small proportion of their brains so brain size is not an indication of intelligence. It would also be nice for you to explain how the brains of elephants do not provide it with greater intelligence (not that you will be able to do so).
Don't you see the problem with the above statement? Let me show it to you very simply. Can you tell the IQ of a person by the size of their head? Does a person with an IQ of 150 have a head 3 times the size of one with an IQ of 50? Brain size and intelligence are totally unrelated.
Oh I am sure they exist. There are plenty of so-called scientists that have very little to do. The question is not whether the functions exist. The question is whether such functions have anything to do with reality. The fact that you were not able to compute the parameters for the function shows that its applicability to anything is very doubtful indeed.
So to say that the connection between mammary glands and 3 earbones is not necessary in animal fossils is a very valid statement. And this is the problem with paleontology - it will assume that any animal with 3 earbones is a mammal and any animal without 3 earbones is not a mammal. This can only be true if one also assumes the coevolution of different sytems at the same time. Such an assumption is of course utterly ridiculous and it is clearly laid to rest by our friend the platypus.Paleontology has help from comparative anatomy. Can you cite a lizard or bird or fish or amphibian with the "mammalian" earbones?
Do you give up on the line of reasoning that says there were no mamms on T. rex? There's no excuse for you not to have produced it by now. If you're pretending you can't see it, think of the implications of admitting you've never at any time understood at even the most basic level what you were arguing against.
You do not need to mass copy anything. What you need to do is copy and paste the paragraph that backs up the point you are trying to make and link to the rest. It is unfair to readers to make them look through a long article for the point you are trying to make. That is why most people will not click on a link and therefore are not fit for a public discussion.
Fine, after many posts I finally got the admission that there is no proof at all of whether dinos had or did not have mammaries. All that there is is circular reasoning from the non-science of paleontology.
It'd be more correct to say that the codes are still being decoded, but I see we're talking past each other again. I was talking about genetic programming, not genetic engineering.
I took a look at the article you linked. Tough reading (too technical, not enough explanation) but I got the gist of it. Here's my guess. As we understand more and more of the genome we'll see more and more complexity, more and more mechanism, cycles impinging on cycles in crazy ways. That is not a hallmark of design at least as practiced by humans.
But that's just a guess. Time will tell.
The above is a very willfull misrepresentation of Intelligent Design which needs to be cleared up. Evolution says that all species descended from a simpler species gradually. Intelligent Design says that gradual evolution is impossible because certain faculties are inextricably connected to each other and could not have arisen gradually. The questions which ID asks are very legitimate and need to be answered by evolutionists. In this thread we have hit on some questions which cannot be answered by simple evolution and some of the evolutionists here had to answer that certain features coevolved. Intelligent Design explains why this is very unlikely, unlikely to the point of it being impossible through gradual evolution. So when I asked Vade, half in jest, what is the theory of coevolution, I was asking a very serious question which has not been responded to.
Our brains appear to be quite a sophisticated computers. Other creatures have less capable ones of varying degrees. Some have none. Is your question why we have better ones than others? Is it why are there brains at all? Is it how can brains be as good as ours?
I have not read one source that addresses the question of mammaries on dinos.Your response:
Fine, after many posts I finally got the admission that there is no proof at all of whether dinos had or did not have mammaries. All that there is is circular reasoning from the non-science of paleontology.How is this honest when my entire post read as follows (already quoted part in blue):
I have not read one source that addresses the question of mammaries on dinos. For all that, I know what evolution must certainly say on the subject. I reason this by applying the model. The answer has to be: No mamms on a dino.You do this trick of pretending you can't see things. And sometimes, like now, you pretend to see what isn't there.Again, how am I doing this and where does ID offer anything comparable?
Let me know if you give up, but anyone who claims to know enough about evolution to reject it should at least be able to reproduce the reasoning I use but have not stated. (Although I've certainly given you some big hints. Anyone could read the thread and get it if they didn't know.)
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