Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Quark2005
There was a lot more evidence than you suggest used to place the fossils demonstrating whale evolution in their proper sequence.

No. The "proper sequence" had the mesonychus in it until a few years ago. And your link's conclusion was not a "proper sequence", but Conclusion Taken together, all of this evidence points to only one conclusion - that whales evolved from terrestrial mammals. We have seen that there are nine independent areas of study that provide evidence that whales share a common ancestor with hoofed mammals. The power of evidence from independent areas of study that support the same conclusion makes refutation by special creation scenarios, personal incredulity, the argument from ignorance, or "intelligent design" scenarious entirely unreasonable. The only plausible scientific conclusion is that whales did evolve from terrestrial mammals. So no matter how much anti-evolutionists rant about how impossible it is for land-dwelling, furry mammals to evolve into fully aquatic whales, the evidence itself shouts them down. This is the power of using mutually reinforcing, independent lines of evidence. I hope that it will become a major weapon to strike down groundless anti-evolutionist objections and to support evolutionary thinking in the general public. This is how real science works, and we must emphasize the process of scientific inference as we point out the conclusions that scientists draw from the evidence - that the concordant predictions from independent fields of scientific study confirm the same pattern of whale ancestry. Notice it is only in the first sentence. The rest is a rant. My point is that the evidence is mostly "appearance" and all inferential.

617 posted on 12/08/2005 7:56:39 PM PST by AndrewC (Darwinian logic -- It is just-so if it is just-so)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 345 | View Replies ]


To: AndrewC
My point is that the evidence is mostly "appearance" and all inferential.

And can you name or describe any empirical generalization that is not inferential?

658 posted on 12/09/2005 4:04:10 AM PST by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 617 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson