Please give three examples, not including Piltdown (since it was never claimed to be a missing link, simply an extinct side branch)
Which of these links (none are missing, obviously) between reptiles and mammals are false?
Posted on 06/27/2006 5:06:32 AM PDT by 7thson
Ann Coulter states in her book on page 201 -
Darwin’s theory of evolution says life on Earth began with single-celled life forms, which evolved into multicelled life forms, which over countless aeons evolved into higher life forms, including man, all as the result of the chance process of random mutation followed by natural selection, without guidance or assistance from any intelligent entity like God of the Department of Agriculture. Which is to say, evolution I the eminently plausible theory that the human eye, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Ronal Reagan (among other things) all came into existence purely be accident.
On page 202, she states The “theory” of evolution is:
1. Random mutation of desirable attributes (highly implausible)
2. Natural selection weeding out the “less fit” animals (pointless tautology)
3. Leading to the creation of new species (no evidence after 150 years of looking)
My question – is she correct in her statements? Is that Darwin’s theory?
On the ligher side, check out the first paragraph on page 212. LOL Funny!
You need more work on your understanding of Christian doctrine.
You need to work on better answers.
No, those weren't designed in by a deity. Ever heard of the Fall of Man? Lots of stuff on earth wasn't designed in, it came about as a result of man's rebellion.
By what process, exactly? How does "man's rebellion" cause the rise of all the traits and life forms being discussed here, if you've ruled out "designed by a deity"? That leaves you back with natural origins again, eh? Or will you just throw up your hands and say, "the devil did it"?
Calling ID a theory when it isn't is actually a lot of the objection. As I said on another thread: Say that a genetic marker is common to both domestic cats and dogs. What predictions does ID make about other finding this marker on other species? Evolution makes definite predictions of this sort, and every time they've been tested, they've been right. Until ID can do at least as well, it's not a theory; it's barely a coherent hypothesis.
Some specific citations to back this up would be in order. Thanks.
Hunter to buddy: ARRGGHH, there's a bear chasing us!
Buddy: I can't outrun a bear!
Hunter: But I can outrun you.
Truly metaphysical.
Please give three examples, not including Piltdown (since it was never claimed to be a missing link, simply an extinct side branch)
Which of these links (none are missing, obviously) between reptiles and mammals are false?
BTW, there are many critters on this earth that appear to have been UNCHANGED for hundreds of millions of years.
Then, there are the most advanced critters, e.g. humans, who have no living ancestral forms since the first split from the critter we share with the chimpanzees.
DeKalb corn has no "pre corn species" ancestors still alive either.
Yup, you've misunderstood the definitions, not again, but still.
You are describing technology, not science.
Maybe this is why:
"...Granted, it was only a year or two in school that I studied that bunk as it was forced fed down my throat (sleep most of the time -..." from your post 179.
Then, a more complex form of life appeared (cells with a nucleus).
Then, in a few more hundred million years multi-cellular life appeared and it's been downhill ever since.
Evolutionists are holding on tight to the idea that "something happened" in that 3.5 billion year deadtime where life seems to have neither changed, evolved, nor devolved.
The panspermia folks argue that the more complex nucleated cells arrived here from "outer space".
So, which is the simplest explanation 1 ~ that life did nothing for 3.5 billion years and then began evolving into nucleated cells, or 2 ~ that life did nothing for 3.5 billion years until the arrival of a more advanced form with an appetite for chowing down on bacteria?
Four
Putting O2 in the atmosphere was hardly nothing.
Go right ahead, you're perfectly in line with biologists on that one. But you go off the rails when you try to attack imaginary biologists which exist only in your own head -- you know, the ones you hallucinate think that "only" selection is at work in evolution.
It makes great sense when looking at other traits. Thus, it is quite scientific to look for other reasons that animals evolve.
And biologists do, and have identified many of those processes. Is there some particular reason you're either a) grossly ignorant of that fact, or b) dishonestly pretending that they haven't and that they say that "only" selective advantage is at play?
My personal opinion is that much evolution occurs simply because certain traits are subject to progressive change, much like our climate.
Welcome to "genetic drift". The biologists are way ahead of you. Kimura described the mechanism in 1968 -- a bit behind on your reading, aren't you?
Thus, I would argue that it is just as likely that the Giraffe's neck has a progressive mutation that makes it grow longer independent of any advantage it might give.
You can argue anything you like, but that doesn't make it "just as likely". In almost every case where a trait with an obvious selective advantage is recognized, DNA or lab or field study has shown that selection is responsible rather than genetic drift. And mathematical analysis of population genetics shows that while genetic drift can be a strong influence on the genetics of small populations, for medium or large populations even a very weak selective advantage produces far greater likeliehood of a trait's fixation than does genetic drift. Furthermore (again due to real-world research as well as mathematical analysis of the processes) genetic drift is highly unlikely to produce extreme results requiring cumulative addition of multiple changes in one "direction" (such as the giraffe's extreme neck size), whereas selection excels at such results.
You'll also have to withhold your assumption of "just as likely" until you can provide sufficient evidence for a non-selective origin for giraffe's long necks at least as strong as the evidence which indicates that selection was involved, as for example in: "Winning by a Neck: Sexual Selection in the Evolution of Giraffe", Robert E. Simmons; Lue Scheepers, The American Naturalist / Vol. 148, No. 5 (Nov., 1996), pp. 771-786.
Survival of the fittest certainly exists in my theory,
"Your theory"?
but as a limit to allowable mutation, not as its driver.
...and you deal with the vast amount of evidence and research which contradicts "your theory" how, exactly? Oh, right, by not even being aware of its existence...
This makes a lot more sense to me, than arguing that infinitesimally small changes from generation to generation actually bestowed competitive advantage.
Whether it "makes more sense" to you or not, it flies in the face of a vast amount of existing research, so it "makes no sense" to the people who are actually conversant in this topic.
I would also say that this isn't necessarily opposed to Darwin's theory, but according to every Darwinist I've ever come across, it makes me a screaming heretic.
No, it just makes you an arrogant fool, like those people who think they've dreamed up a way during their lunchbreak to tweak internal combustion engines to get 500 miles per gallon, never mind that they haven't tried it out yet, have no more than an amateur's knowledge of automobile engineering, and absolutely no knowledge of physics in general or thermodynamics in particular. They just keep talking about "my theory of universal energy" etc. while they cackle about what fools those scientists and egineers are for not having seen something "so obvious", blah blah blah.
I've taken my own conclusions from that.
As well you should -- as they say, "if everything seems to be coming your way, maybe you're in the wrong lane". And if everyone laughs at your notions about biology, well...
"...DeKalb corn has no "pre corn species" ancestors still alive either."
You are kidding. of course?
If that were actually the case -- if indeed opinion was divided "half and half" on that issue, then you might have a point.
But since they're not; since over 99% of biologists accept the validity of evolutionary biology, it appears that your point just fell on its silly face.
Of course you don't. Those of us who have actually studied these topics, however, have a good familiarity with the processes involved and don't have a problem seeing how they give rise to complexity.
I might even refer to Occam's Razor. Did the Life on Earth arise through billions of years of random mutation?
Yes, since (leaving aside your incredibly poor description of the actuall processes involved), that's what an overwhelming amount of evidence indicates actually happened.
Or did a transcendent God create it through supernatural means? The simple explanation seems more likely to me.
Then you should go with evolution, because it's a lot simpler than the "let's postulate an infinitely complex invisible being" explanation, which only makes things (infinitely) LESS simple...
No. Restorer is quite right in the sense that Darwin did not theorize (or even systematically hypothesize) about the origin of life. The "warm pond" reference was a passing comment in a letter. It was a couple sentences in the context of (essentially), "but who the heck knows?"
Darwin never addressed the origin of life systematically and scientifically. And when Darwin DID address an issue systematically and scientifically, there was no doubting it. Typically he would fire off dozens of letters querying experts, open up notebooks, heavily notate books and articles (sometimes physically dismembering them in the process and sorting their pages into folders), conduct hundreds or even thousands of experiments personally, etc. No such effort, or any systematic effort, was ever devoted by Darwin to origin of life studies of any kind.
Here, btw, is the "warm little pond" comment. It's from an 1871 letter by Darwin to his friend, the botanist Joseph Hooker:
It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed.
In '63 Darwin had written to Hooker that:
It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.
Both quotes can be found here.
In his published works and his actual theorizing, Darwin ALWAYS treated life as axiomatic.
For instance only a year after the "warm pond" comment, in the 1872 edition of The Origin, Darwin explicitly presents the orgin of life as axiomatic, comparing it to gravity as something that must be taken for granted as existing with certain essential properties not themselves explained or accounted for by science (emphasis added):
It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several classes of facts above specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of urguing: but it is a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light has been thus been arrived at; and the befief in the revolution of the earth on its own axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence. It is no valid objection (to the theory of natural selection) that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or the origin of life. Who can explain the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction; notwithstanding that Leihnitz formerly accused Newton of introducing "occult qualities and miracles" into philosophy.
New datum. Thanks.
That's not what the statement actually says. You fell for the creationist spin about that statement and its signatories, didn't you? Heck, that statement is so mild and milquetoast that even *I* would sign if it it weren't being used for anti-science propaganda purposes, and I'm as big a supporter of "Darwin's theory" as anyone.
Get a clue.
Meanwhile, statements *supporting* evolution:
Project Steve. Nat'l Center for Science Education: the overwhelming number of genuine scientists supporting evolution.
Statement by IAP, signed by 68 major national and international science organizations -- including the UK's Royal Society, Isaac Newton's organization
Statement signed by more than 10,300 Christian clergy
Position Statement by the Executive Committees of the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, Soil Science Society of America
Academy Of Science Of The Royal Society Of Canada
Alabama Academy Of Science
American Anthropological Association
American Anthropological Association (2000)
American Association For The Advancement Of Science (1923)
American Association For The Advancement Of Science (1972)
American Association For The Advancement Of Science (1982)
American Association For The Advancement Of Science (Commission on Science Education)
American Association For The Advancement Of Science (2002)
American Association Of Physical Anthropologists
American Astronomical Society (2000)
American Geophysical Union
American Geophysical Union (1999)
American Institute Of Biological Sciences
American Astronomical Society
American Society Of Biological Chemists
American Chemical Society
American Geological Institute
American Psychological Association
American Physical Society
American Society Of Parasitologists
Association for Women Geoscientists (1998)
Australian Academy of Science
Botanical Society of America
California Academy Of Sciences
Ecological Society of America (1999)
Genetics Society of America
Geological Society Of America
Geological Society of America (2001)
Geological Society of Australia (1995)
Georgia Academy Of Science (1980)
Georgia Academy Of Science (1982)
History of Science Society
Iowa Academy Of Science (1982)
Statement Of The Position Of The Iowa Academy Of Science On Pseudoscience (1986)
Iowa Academy Of Science (2000)
Kentucky Academy Of Science
Kentucky Academy Of Science (1999)
Kentucky Paleontological Society Statement on the Teaching of Evolution (1999)
Louisiana Academy Of Sciences
National Academy Of Sciences (1972)
National Academy Of Sciences (1984)
National Academy Of Sciences (1998)
North American Benthological Society (2001)
North Carolina Academy Of Science
North Carolina Academy Of Science (1997)
New Orleans Geological Society
New York Academy Of Sciences
Ohio Academy Of Science
Ohio Academy Of Science (2000)
Ohio Math and Science Coalition (2002)
Oklahoma Academy Of Sciences
The Paleontological Society
Sigma Xi, Louisiana State University Chapter, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Society For Amateur Scientists
Society For Integrative and Comparative Biology (2001)
Society For The Study Of Evolution
Society Of Systematic Biologists (2001)
Society Of Vertebrate Paleontology (1986)
Society Of Vertebrate Paleontology (1994)
Southern Anthropological Society
Virginia Academy Of Science (1981)
West Virginia Academy Of Science
And she is wrong in that statement -- that is not what "the believers of evolution say".
You're right, she doesn't -- that's because she's writing propaganda, and not an accurate description of the state of evolutionary biology.
She states the science developed after The Origin of the Species refutes his theory, it does not back it up.
...and in order to claim that, she has to grossly misrepresent almost everything in evolutionary biology, and all the evidence for it. She is, in a word, either lying or incompetent on this subject.
Pharmboy's post is an excellent description of the actual state of evolutionary biology. Ann Coulter's description, on the other hand, is designed to grossly mislead her readers by telling falsehoods, half-truths, misrepresentations, and omitting important information.
Are you reading the same book?
I've read it, unfortunately. Her chapters on biology are like reading a Michael Moore book on, well, anything.
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