Posted on 07/11/2002 9:44:50 AM PDT by ZGuy
They could be glued to his forehead and he wouldn't know about them.
The events that lead to speciation are microevolutionary events. But it takes many microevolutionary events to result in speciation. Of course, macroevolution can't be uncoupled from microevolution and creationists are foolish to think otherwise.
Point of order: The Phae-ster is clearly using the time-honored hands-over-the-ears-defense, "Laa laa laa, I'm not listening, I can't heeeeeear you!"
Yes, exactly. And I think we here on this thread just discovered something very powerful.
This 'micro'/'macro' redefinition of theirs is the critically weak point of their argument. It proves they believe in evolution.
When confronted with that point by several folks here, each and every creo ran from it, even the prolific medved, who seemed willing to try and drown any debate out with sheer word-count. Yet he ran from this question like a little girl twice now, in two threads.
Fascinating, really.
What does 'truths' mean to you?
Is it in any way tied to 'evidence'?
What place does 'real world evidence' hold in your evaluation of concepts?
What's your definition of 'truth'?
Is it 'truth' only if it's in the Bible? Is that the only 'evidence' you consider valid?
I'm honestly interested in understanding you.
War is peace.
Ignorance is strength.
Freedom is slavery.
-- Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
What is a 'truth'?
Is 'evidence' from the real world important?
Or do you believe that the only evidence comes from the bible?
I'm starting to think it's the latter. If so, are you at least in touch with reality enough to understand why evidence from the real world is important to most people?
Good News For The Day
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"The most familiar, and the best-loved images of Jesus, are those that picture to us, his gentle, compassionate spirit. "Whoever comes to me, I will in no wise cast out"; "Come to me, all you who are weary"; "Let the little children come to me."
"But there are other images of Jesus in the Gospels, which show another aspect of his personality. They emphasize the steel in him. Sometimes Jesus was awesome; formidable."
"In the parable, Jesus presents himself as the landlord's Son; the rejected stone, that eventually becomes the most important stone in the superstructure of the kingdom of God. Jesus plainly thought that those who opposed him were in collision with God. He was warning nation's leaders: "It is unwise and unsafe to be against me." Tough talk from Jesus! He was signaling what was taken up by Peter at Pentecost, where, full of resurrection joy and authority, he preached saying: "This Jesus, you put him to death. . . . but God raised him from the dead. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:31-36).
"In the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus teaches that those who discard him, will not thereby have gotten rid of him. Jesus was not, and is not now, a passing phenomenon. So truly does Jesus represent reality; so deeply entrenched in the ultimate truth of existence, is his life and teaching, that He, and not his opponents, will prevail. If the universe is a moral place (and Christ himself is the most convincing evidence that it is), then his prediction that he would triumph, even over those who killed him, must come true. Therefore let us treasure the august aspects of his personality, as much as his gentle features, for they signal a world order in which 'goodness', as Jesus taught it, will... reign---unopposed. The stone that was rejected, will become the capstone."
Good News For The Day
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"There is a certain inevitability about Christ. He is the fulfillment of Herod's worst nightmare. Herod killed John the Baptist, and when Christ followed, the ruler thought John had risen from the dead. In a sense, it was true. Jesus' first appeals to the corrupt king were made through the Baptist."
"Christ is uncompromising; inexorable. He is unpreventable, unstoppable, unavoidable. An outline of the creation's future is discernible in the personality of Jesus. The new world order will bear the stamp of his character."
"The invincibility of Jesus is good news. It confirms our deepest hope-that the highest values known to humankind, will overcome, and reign. It is good strengthening to believe that... Spirit---is higher than matter. No one really wants to inhabit a world where material values rule. The incarnation of such values are exampled by Adolf Hitler, or Idi Amin."
"It is good news to know that we are loved by a 'tough love'; a love that is not willing to give up, or let go, and hence, a love that suffers long. In short we are loved by a love that will triumph. "Love never fails."
Good News For The Day
‘He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whom it falls will be crushed.’ (Matthew 21:44)
"In his parable of the tenants, Jesus looks across the years of Israel's covenant privilege, and gives his interpretation of them. He sees that Israel's history can be stated in terms of its refusal to recognize Him-the rejected stone. Through the prophetic ministry, Christ had made many pre-incarnational appeals to his people. "How often would I have gathered you together, even as a hen gathers her chickens."
"Thus did Jesus claim deep involvement in his nation's history. The Jews had stumbled over the Christ of the Old Testament. Many times the people had been humbled and broken through its rejection of his claims. So it may be with us. Our life story can be understood as the tale of a person engaged in a quest to make terms with the Stone-with Christ."
"From the beginning, Christ has been present to us. Our first meeting with him was through the warmth and love of our mother; then our father, and later, teachers and mentors. Christ has been there in providence; in good and ill. We have bumped into him time and again, in our attempts to be free of his claims. We have fought tooth and nail for our freedom from God. We have been burned and bruised repeatedly. These seasons of brokenness have been gracious. They have been... signs to us---that life will not work any other way but Christ's way."
"God enable me to discern the ministry of Jesus, the Stone, in my life."
Although it is true that one or two of the Ediacaran forms such as Spriggina bear a superficial resemblance to the early trilobites, to date the detailed case for such an ancestry is far from compelling.
Where's the data point for bizarre not-fully-shelled Anomalocaris?
From the link you provided to anomalocaris:
Over one hundred years passed between the initial description of fossil parts of Anomalocaris canadensis and its recognition as a large, swimming predator of Cambrian ecosystems. The long history of innaccurate reconstructions and identifications exemplifies the great difficulty characterizing from fossil remains, Cambrian animals with no apparent living descendants. During that time, there were several distinct approaches to the conceptual classification of the animals of the Cambrian. Initially, Cambrian fossils were typically described as ancient members of phyla that exist today. This early phase of describing fossils in terms of familiar phyla was superceded by the idea of the Cambrian being the setting for the prolific and rapid generation of classes and phyla (the "Cambrian Explosion") that have gone extinct and cannot be classified as members of modern groups. In that phase, Cambrian "weird wonders" such as Opabinia, Hallucigenia, and Wiwaxia, joined Anomalocaris as examples of taxa without modern surviving descendants, and bearing bauplans so unconventional they deserved phylum status. Gould (1989) championed this viewpoint in his book Wonderful Life. In the 90s, the trend has been to recognize most of the Cambrian "wonders" as members of extant phyla, but often representing extinct classes. Hallucigenia, for example, is now considered a lobopod, akin to Onychophora, while Opabinia and Anomalocaris are considered members of an extinct arthropod class (with some workers still suggesting subphylum or phylum grade).
End quote
Is it possible that the reason there are no data points for these two animals is that they have no decendents, past or present, and thus are not phyla precursors as you suggest?
Actually, we can't know whether they had descendants or are dead ends. They present a morphologically intermediate appearance between taxa which creationists always draw as floating on air, unconnected at the base. Why are we not allowed to infer the obvious? If the later taxa (in this case, trilobites and more generalized arthropods) didn't descend from the fossil species in question, they should be inferred to descend from something related.
Here's a paper that should make you rethink the kind of argument you are attempting, Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record.
Moving further up the taxonomic hierarchy, the 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.What the fossil record gives you is a rather spotty picture, which rarely allows you to state with confidence that Species A and not Species B was in the direct ancestry of Species C. But it does show that as you go back in time, seemingly unrelated life forms start to resemble each other. Theropod dinosaurs get so hard to tell apart that you can argue whether a species like Caudipteryx belongs in one bin or the other. (There's no problem like that between modern birds and any modern repiles.) The linked paper shows the same thing for reptiles and mammals, fish and amphibians.
There's a tree of life. You can plot every fossil and a separate point, draw a vertical line up from it as though no connections existed, and what you get doesn't look like a tree. But that doesn't prove the connections don't exist. Your ability to lawyer away, misunderstand, ignore, and forget data does not change reality one iota.
If this is true then they should not be used as examples of evolutionary precursors to existing phyla.
They present a morphologically intermediate appearance between taxa which creationists always draw as floating on air, unconnected at the base. Why are we not allowed to infer the obvious? If the later taxa (in this case, trilobites and more generalized arthropods) didn't descend from the fossil species in question, they should be inferred to descend from something related.
And when a fossil of "something related" is found, it can be plugged in on the tree at the appropriate point of divergence. There is little or no evidence that either Spriggina or Anomalocaris should be plugged in at the points your post suggests.
The article you linked to does not mention Spriggina or Anomalocaris, it only talks about vertibrates.
There's a tree of life. You can plot every fossil and a separate point, draw a vertical line up from it as though no connections existed, and what you get doesn't look like a tree. But that doesn't prove the connections don't exist. Your ability to lawyer away, misunderstand, ignore, and forget data does not change reality one iota.
I was not attemting to challenge the entire theory of biological evolution and every piece of evidence. What I did challenge was the assertion that Spriggina and Anomalocaris are viable candidates for present day phyla precursors.
From your original link about Anomalocaris:
In the 90s, the trend has been to recognize most of the Cambrian "wonders" as members of extant phyla, but often representing extinct classes. Hallucigenia, for example, is now considered a lobopod, akin to Onychophora, while Opabinia and Anomalocaris are considered members of an extinct arthropod class (with some workers still suggesting subphylum or phylum grade).
Doesn't sound like a very viable candidate for ancestor to multile phyla, as your posting seems to suggest.
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