Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

The American Prowler ^ | 11/24/04 | Hunter Baker

[neoconsareright]

WACO, Texas -- At one time, the debate over Darwin's theory existed as a cartoon in the modern imagination. Thanks to popular portrayals of the Scopes Trial, secularists regularly reviewed the happy image of Clarence Darrow goading William Jennings Bryan into agreeing to be examined as an expert witness on the Bible and then taking him apart on the stand.

[Junior]

I can back my version of events up with source after source.

Please do. All I've seen so far are bald-faced assertions.

[VadeRetro]

This is what I'm talking about... I'll type a little more slowly, because I don't think you can read very fast. Archaeopteryx IS just a bird. The scientific community has and still agrees with this statement.

Lawyerly bin-gaming nonsense. Archaeopteryx was grandfathered into the "bird" bin because when it was found, feathers were considered diagnostic of birds. They aren't anymore, as many finds since basically HAD to be classified as dinosaurs even though they had feathers.

The absolutely idiotic game you're playing is that anything lumped in a bin at all cannot be a transitonal at all. Everything gets a taxon. Real science recognizes transitionals even as it assigns everything to a taxonomic bin. The bins are arbitrary.

Your bin game obscures that, not just in the case of Archaeopteryx (birds and dinosaurs) but in every case, related branches on the tree of life grow nearer to each other as you go back in time.

Here's evidence. (Once again, I back up what I say as you scream nonsense.)

... [T]he condylarths and primitive carnivores (creodonts, miacids) are very similar to each other in morphology (Fig. 9, 10), and some taxa have had their assignments to these orders changed. The Miacids in turn are very similar to the earliest representatives of the Families Canidae (dogs) and Mustelidae (weasels), both of Superfamily Arctoidea, and the Family Viverridae (civets) of the Superfamily Aeluroidea. As Romer (1966) states in Vertebrate Paleontology (p. 232), "Were we living at the beginning of the Oligocene, we should probably consider all these small carnivores as members of a single family." This statement also illustrates the point that the erection of a higher taxon is done in retrospect, after sufficient divergence has occurred to give particular traits significance.

Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.

[go_W_go]

When and by whom?

Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an evolutionist himself, says:

Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.

[VadeRetro]

Please do. All I've seen so far are bald-faced assertions.

Tried to do some of that here, for one thing. Normally, I think I'm on your side. ;)

[go_W_go]

In Eichstátt, Germany, in 1984 there was a major meeting of scientists who specialize in bird evolution, the International Archaeopteryx Conference. They disagreed on just about anything that was covered there on this creature, but there was very broad agreement on the belief that Archaeopteryx was a true bird. Only a tiny minority thought that it was actually one of the small, lightly built coelurosaurian dinosaurs [small lightly framed dinosaurs].

[go_W_go]

Did that mean that really they didn’t think it was a transitional pre-bird?

Well, it’s kind of interesting that they found it necessary to draft the following statement. ‘Conferees did agree unanimously to the declaration that organic evolution is a fundamental process of biology and we recognize the importance of the Archaeopteryx contribution to that problem.’ So you can see they were acutely aware that their deliberations might lead some to wonder whether, in fact, Archaeopteryx had anything to say about evolution, so they all did sign this. If, of course, it’s a true bird, it is not the half-way, half-reptile, half-bird like we've often heard.

[go_W_go]

Evolutionists point out that it does have some characteristics which are found in other classes, such as reptiles.

This is true, but then it’s true of almost any vertebrate skeleton. There are also design similarities between reptiles, mammals and living birds too. Birds have a distinctive, specialized skeleton because, as one distinguished evolutionist who is also an ornithologist once said, ‘Birds are formed to fly.’ So was Archaeopteryx.

[go_W_go]

What about the wishbone?

Archaeopteryx has a robust wishbone [furcula]. Some recent fascinating studies using moving X-rays of birds as they fly show how the shoulder girdle has to be flexible to cope with the incredible forces of the power-stroke in flight. You can actually see the wishbone flex with each wing-beat.

[go_W_go]

Do the feet of Archaeopteryx support the view that it was a dinosaur that ran along the ground?

No. Archaeopteryx, along with all perching birds, has what is called a grasping hallux, or hind toe, pointing backwards. Rearward-facing toes may be found in some of the dinosaurs but not a true grasping hallux with curved claws for perching.

[go_W_go]

How do evolutionists believe birds evolved flight?

There are really two theories — you can’t test either, of course. The arboreal theory says that they started up in the trees, and flew down, and so scales are viewed as having grown longer and longer somehow to promote gliding. The cursorial theory postulates that the birds really started on the ground and after vigorous hopping and what-have-you managed to eventually fly up.

Each side is quite certain the other side is dead wrong, of course. Evolutionist John Ostrom speculates that feathers evolved from large scales on the forelimbs of dinosaurs and that these long feathers, as they developed, were used to catch insects! Now, while feathers are remarkably strong for their weight, I can’t think of any worse treatment than to bang them together to catch insects. Also, they're an incredibly complex structure to use just for this purpose. And they would blow the insect out of the way. Birds couldn’t clap their limbs together in front anyway — they just don't have that kind of a shoulder.

Is there any evidence for either theory?

Not the slightest — and the people who take each view make that point. There are no examples of living or fossil scales that even remotely resemble a feather. Archaeopteryx has complete feathers like modern birds.

So how would you sum up your opinion?

The theory of the evolution of flight is not about the birds, so much as it’s a theory ‘for the birds’.

[VadeRetro]

So you can see they were acutely aware that their deliberations might lead some to wonder whether, in fact, Archaeopteryx had anything to say about evolution, so they all did sign this.

They were saying, "Yammering Yahoos, don't quote-mine our disagreements as meaning something ridiculous and unscientific." So the YYs gleefully went ahead.

[Leatherneck_MT]

lol yep and responses like yours just go to prove that you are descendants of a monkey.

[JeffAtlanta]

Yeah, really. It's why they call it a THEORY.

You don't understand the scientific meaning of the word theory. Its quite different than the common usage version.

[go_W_go]

They were saying, "Yammering Yahoos, don't quote-mine our disagreements as meaning something ridiculous and unscientific." So the YYs gleefully went ahead.


Is that the best you can do? After all, how many of your false statements about Archaeopteryx have I corrected? As you put it...

[Junior]

Paleontologists have tried to turn Archaeopteryx into an earth-bound, feathered dinosaur. But it’s not. It is a bird, a perching bird. And no amount of ‘paleobabble’ is going to change that.

Note, he did not say it was a modern bird, nor did he say it didn't also exhibit dinosaur characteristics. He simply drew the dino/bird line so that archaeopteryx fell on the bird side rather than the dino side.

Do you have anything else?

[VadeRetro]

Is there any evidence for either theory?

The Evidence for Dinosaur-Bird Transition (A Sidebar Thread) .

I'm personally aware of at least three theories on the origins of flight in birds. Understanding exactly how something happened is one issue. Being able to see the evidence that it did is a more basic test which you are flunking. Worse, you are using your unwillingness to understand the "how" to refuse to acknowledge the "what" in the first place, with the obvious point that if you don't see the "what" there is no need for a "how."

Creation science is all about not knowing things. It's never going to be very useful.

[Junior]

D'oh! I thought I was talking to that other fellow -- you know, the one who claims, without a shred of evidence, that archy was a modern bird.

Next time, I'll look before swinging.

[go_W_go]

Creation science is all about not knowing things. It's never going to be very useful.


Nice try, continue reading ALL of my posts...

[VadeRetro]

After all, how many of your false statements about Archaeopteryx have I corrected? As you put it...

Delusions of adequacy, here. I'm confronting you with the fossil record, how birds converge upon dinosaurs as one goes back in time. You're doing a lawyer's game with the taxa, where everything in the bird bin as everything else in that bin and everything else is different. But I already showed that Archaeopteryx is more related to Sinornithosaurus than a pigeon. You didn't explain it, you just waved a Feduccia quote. Feduccia isn't a creationist, he just thinks birds diverged from reptiles farther back than do most paleontologists.

Lawyer games and misleading quotes.

[The Bard]

Yeah, really. It's why they call it a THEORY.

You don't understand the scientific meaning of the word theory. Its quite different than the common usage version.

THE'ORY, n. [L. theoria; Gr. to see or contemplate.]

1. Speculation; a doctrine or scheme of things, which terminates in speculation or contemplation, without a view to practice. It is here taken in an unfavorable sense, as implying something visionary.

2. An exposition of the general principles of any science; as the theory of music.

3. The science distinguished from the art; as the theory and practice of medicine.

4. The philosophical explanation of phenomena, either physical or moral; as Lavoisier's theory of combustion; Smith's theory of moral sentiments.

Theory is distinguished from hypothesis thus; a theory is founded on inferences drawn from principles which have been established on independent evidence; a hypothesis is a proposition assumed to account for certain phenomena, and has no other evidence of its truth, than that it affords a satisfactory explanation of those phenomena.

The above is from Websters 1828 dictionary

Of course I remember my science teacher in school told me the easiest defination would be "Theory = Educated Guess"