KoolAid drinking placemarker.
Posted on 07/29/2002 6:35:04 PM PDT by Tribune7
Bump for 1000.
Yes, you're right. As we've pointed out many times, theories aren't literally "proven," but if they're accepted by scientists as useful models, they must explain the existing evidence, and they must survive experimental efforts to dis-prove them. You might think of the burden more accurately as the burden of coming forward with the evidence to support the theory, which is why Darwin amassed as much evidence as he could in his day and reported it in his published work. And of course, in the 150 years since, mountains of additional evidence have been piled up, all consistent with the theory. Are there areas where the evidence is thin? Sure. This is inevitable in any endeavour to find evidence about past events. But evolution does very well in meeting its burden of proof, as any respectable theory must.
The problem in that regard is with the "creation scientists," who have zero credible evidence. Their so-called theory is not a scientific theory at all.
The evidence I have seen so far is consistent with common descent from some very simple start. I'm unaware of a better fit, especially one which has any sort of common-sense, ordinary-experience foundation.
Common descent may not have happened. In fact, I can not see how it could have happened. A few weeks back I was reading about an abiogenesist who is now claiming life sprang from three seperate abiogenetically formed organisms. So much for the common-descent united front among naturalists.
You distort Woese. Before you're so sure he helps you, you need to learn what he says. He's saying that cellular organization may have been invented three independent times by precellular life (RNA world) rather as eyes have been independently invented several times. The three separate types of cellulars (archaea, prokaryotes, and eukaryotes) still exhibit the telltale signs of common descent. So much for your argument from distortion.
As far as macro-evolution goes, I wouldn't be surprised if it -- in its broadest meaning -- wasn't a factor in Earth's biodiversity.
You have no other explanation except for a magical being (or maybe little green men) running around making separate critters. That such a thing would not surprise you is unaccountable.
But, here's the difference, I wouldn't be surprised if if wasn't either.
Did you mean to say earlier that you wouldn't be surprised if it was? But your mental block wouldn't let you say it on either branch of your decision tree. Tsk! Tsk! It's that same horror that prevented anyone but No-Kin-To-Monkeys from trying to reason out a problem with evo logic last spring. You failed dismally there. No-Kin was revealed to be somebody's--but whose?--alter-ego, so his credentials as a real C are in question.
As Max noted, macro-evolution has never been observed.
Taxonomic orders do not spring up from nothing in a few years. We should not expect to have observed such a thing in the time we've been looking. Pakicetus and Ambulocetus were too related to be placed in a separate order from each other. Ditto Ambulocetus and Rhodocetus. There was already a separate order Cetacea when those fossils were found, however. In the extant species, it's easy to group all those completely marine-aquatic mammals as there are no ambiguous cases to consider. But what would Linnaeus have made of Ambulocetus? Pakicetus?
It starts with speciation. That diverges two lineages, never to rejoin. Later on, their descendants are classed in a separate genus. Later on, it's at the family level. Later on, they're in separate orders. E-siders explain this stuff over and over but you guys keep coming back dumb as a stump. That's your main weapon. No one can make you understand what evolution even says. The strawmen versions are easier to knock over.
Now the reason could be simply that it has never been observed. Or the reason could be that it can't happen.
It can't happen between 1859 and 2002. Capeesh?
Go back and read posts 928 and 930. They are dang near rants.
I'm on the verge of another one.
KoolAid drinking placemarker.
Hey, I like your rants!
No, this is a match.
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