[that mad man]

Remarks on the Rev. S. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell, And on the Origin of Species
(S83: 1863)

http://www.wku.edu/~smithch/wallace/S083.htm

Its a good read! []

[Asyncritus]

So I take it you have heard nothing of the many AI projects in the making.  Including the countless ones developing "learning computers".

Are these the products of Intelligent Design or not?

Several question:
1.What benefit to mankind does this Intelligent Design theory hold?

Quite simply, it's truth: something that unintelligent designers seem to care little about.

2.What designed the designer?

I don't know Carl Benz's parents. Do you?

3.Can we use Intelligent Design to suggest theories of a God and keep up this appauling sharade?

What appalling charade? I believe in God, and make no secret of it.

I think you will find all the answers to the above questions here:
1.None.
2.Um, another designer, it evolved.
3.Of course, why its already happening.

Pity I can't describe these answers in the same way as the design I see.

All I can see it doing is starting wars.

Ever heard of Social Darwinism?

Personally I feel you are terrified of death and seek further meaning in your life.  Why not discover something real, or do some charity work.

Instead of making silly judgements on someone of whom you have no knowledge, why not go criticise answersingenesis or similar?

[atrox]

observed speciations []
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5

[Asyncritus]

Evolution has had many millions of years to work on many billions of possible permutations - simply put, evolution is happening and producing some wonderful things, none of which require an intelligent designer.

Have you totally ignored the palaeontological facts which innumerable workers have dug up? There is no evolution of anything. Species, even phyla, appear with breathtaking suddenness - as if they were created - and disappear the same way. Even such diehard evolutionists as Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge had to produce their punctuated equilibrium theory to account for this.

It was so near to creation that the establishment - people like you, I suppose - jumped down their throats, and Gould at least backtracked.

I notice that once again you are bringing up tenuous examples that you feel show a weakness in evolution - everyone who understands evolution and thinks rationally about these things see them as a strength - It's amazing that cliff swallows have evolved to do what they do, but evolve they did.

What a pity you can't stop question begging, Ben! How do you know they evolved? Because they evolved. Well, how much further forward are we? Zero. And this is typical of evolutionist arguments. They have no weight, and can point to no evidence whatsoever.

This is not a tenuous example - it is totally destructive of any evolutionary theory of its origin. I've never even heard of one single halfway decent theory, or any solid facts to support it.

I'm afraid each and every example you give is based on a simple logical failing - there is no evidence for your god, and no mechanism through which it can act.  As I have stated before, evolution has been witnessed in the wild and in the lab, and predictions made by evolutionary theory happen.

I wonder what you'd call evidence. Can you give me an example? Use the cliff swallows - what would covince you that there is a Great Designer at the back of the phenomenon? You can see that they must have a navigation system which works perfectly. No that evolved by chance mutations - mutations of what, I ask you?

You can see they have a timing device or calendar that works precisely to the day. You've got one on your mobile. Did that come about by random mutations? No, ny Nokia. Is that phone intelligently designed? Of course it is. But the birds' calendar - that evolved by chance mutations. Like hell it did.

I'm really sorry to inform you, but Darwin's Origin of the Species was written well over 100 years ago.  That's 100 years of scientific development - so it doesn't matter which gaps Darwin couldn't fill.

My dear fellow, he couldn't fill ANY gaps. All he showed was that evolution IS a great gap. I tell you again, look up the palaeontologists, and see what they say about the origin of ANY group you can think of. "We dunno" is the chorus. Don't take my word for it, go see for yourself. Google is the great destroyer of evolution. Ask Gould - he wrote several books like 'Ever Since Darwin'. Go read it, and you'll hear things like:

""The Cambrian explosion so disturbed Darwin that he wrote in the last edition of his Origin of Species 'The case must remain inexplicable, and may be truly be urged as a valid argument against the view here entertained' "

"Nonetheless, these exciting finds in the preCambrian palaeontology do not remove the problem of the Cambrian explosion, for they only include the simple bacteria and bluegreen algae" p120, 121

You are very unlikely to find a modern scientific book or paper on evolution that will cast any doubt on any aspect of evolution.

As the above shows very clearly, even the Origin cast doubt, and Gould, as only one example, expresses serious reservations. Punctuated equilibrium is the heaviest recent blow on evolution theory.

Here's more:
""The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design…has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.'1 "…The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change.'

Gould ridiculed the lack of fossil evidence pointing to gradualism. "The overwhelming prevalence of stasis became an embarrassing feature of the fossil record.'

"This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists."
-G. G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode of Evolution (N.Y.: Columbia Univ., 1944), p. 106

It's accepted by the scientific world and a great deal of the world at large.

 

Yes, their tenure depends on their doing so!

The scientific world at large once thought that the world was flat, that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that spontaneous generation took place everywhere.

You like to pick on Richard Dawkins, but I hope you realise he's not alone in his thoughts, merely more vociferous than many, who do not see this as a discussion worth having.  Might I suggest you read his books, which are very good at explaining how evolution really works, and will answer some of your criticisms.

You've obviously never read Lewontin, famous Harvard geneticist, who said:

"Lewontin writes: "As to assertions without adequate evidence, the literature of science is filled with them, especially the literature of popular science writing. Carl Sagan's list of the "best contemporary science-popularizers" includes E.O.Wilson, Lewis Thomas and Richard Dawkins, "each of whom has put unsubstantiated assertions or counterfactual claims at the very centre of the stories they have retailed in the market.

I think that means 'lies', don't you?

Then your logic is failed and wrong.  Please tell me where intelligence can arise from, without referring to the god that there is no evidence of.  There's lots of evidence for evolution, and we can follow a logical progression to the evolution of intelligence.

Intelligence can only arise from intelligence. Every school teacher knows that, and so should you. You will never get a donkey producing a theory of relativity.

And just where is all this evidence for evolution? Bring it here so I can treat it justly.

When you choose to believe in creationism, you opt out of reasoned debate on evolution - you have chosen belief over logic and evidence

Sir Isaac Newton:

"This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

Was he an idiot too?

- there is no evidence for your god, yet you choose to believe in it.  That's fine, but you can't then try to argue with the logic of, and evidence for, evolution, and expect to be taken seriously.

"This most beautiful system [The Universe] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."

No evidence, huh? Try telling Newton that.

I shall repeat myself - a lack of specific evidence for a certain aspect of evolution is not evidence for an intelligent designer.

I will repeat myself too. There is not a single iota of evidence that can possibly show that intelligently designed things are not intelligently designed. Order does not come from chaos, nor intelligence from madness. Several Nobel winners said so too:

"I would rather believe in fairy tales than in such wild speculation. I have said for years that speculations about the origin of life lead to no useful purpose as even the simplest living system is far too complex to be understood in terms of the extremely primitive chemistry scientists have used in their attempts to explain the unexplainable. God cannot be explained away by such naive thoughts."
--Sir Ernst B. Chain, Nobel Laureate (Medicine, 1945),

"To improve a living organism by random mutation is like saying you could improve a Swiss watch by dropping it and bending one of its wheels or axis. Improving life by random mutations has the probability of zero."
-Albert Szent-Gyorgi, Nobel Laureate (Medicine, 1937).

"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest."
-Sir Ernst B. Chain, Nobel Laureate (Medicine, 1945).

So the 'everybody accepts evolution' battle cry has become a pathetic wail, which will one day fade into the distant past.

[BenV]

I never said you were an idiot, and the words of Newton (who died in 1727 - a long time before anyone had put forward the mechanism through which species change over time) are completely irrelevant in a discussion of evolution.

I was hoping not to come back to this discussion, but just to touch on a few final points...

I think it's first worth pointing out that we are approaching this discussion from different paradigms.  As a believer in god, you base your arguments on the assumption that god exists.  As I don't believe in god, I approach it with no such assumption.  As such, we will struggle to find common ground, as your logic is based around a different premise to mine.  This is why I would prefer to end this discussion here.

It only takes one piece of evidence for evolution to kill off the intelligent designer - it's illogical that an intelligent designer would work on everything except the examples we have evidence for, where we can see evolution to be the process.  Any evidence of evolution kills creationism stone dead, so here's a particularly tidy one:

The rock pocket mouse lives in rocky outcrops in Mexico and New Mexico.  They can have are several different coat colours - ranging from light to dark.  One population has evolved to live on dark, basalt rock, where there is a high selection pressure to have a dark coat.  (being darker on a dark substrate makes predation far less likely, and so the darker mice were more likely to breed, and pass on their genes to the next generation.) 

There is a perfect association between different versions of the Melanocortin-1 receptor gene and coat colour. 

The genome of the Rock Pocket Mouse has been sequenced, and so we can see that not only is there strong evidence that local populations have adapted by natural selection, but that the genes responsible have been identified.

In other words - different alleles (mutants) of the Melanocortin-1 receptor gene offer different selective advantage depending on environment, and correspondingly the populations on dark basalt are under strong selection pressure to have darker fur.

To simplify: Natural selection, acting on known variations in known genes, has resulted in genetic differences between one population and another in a different environment - evolution by natural selection, no intelligence required.

[atrox]

"This regular absence of transitional forms is not confined to mammals, but is an almost universal phenomenon, as has long been noted by paleontologists."
-G. G. Simpson, Tempo and Mode of Evolution (N.Y.: Columbia Univ., 1944), p. 106

all your references are about 70 years old...impressive...
Oh, and I think I gave you some transitional forms, which are still existing on the fish thing (you are still ignoring perfectly)
and there is a bunch of transitional forms... for example a lot of human ancestors...homo habilis, australopitecus..
or just listen to this guy

and again, because you seem to missed this one by accident []:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5

[Asyncritus]

I´m always wondering if lungfish, mudskipper and eels never read the "Why Transition From Water to Land
is Impossible"-part.
Maybe someone should tell them, that they will die within the next few Seconds, when they leave water..

Let me tear this nonsense to pieces atrox.

Have you ever read anything about how the mudskipper survives out of the water? I didn't think so.

Let me inform you then:

Mudskippers breathe through their skin and also through the lining of the mouth (the mucosa) and throat (the pharynx). This requires the mudskipper to be wet, limiting mudskippers to humid habitats. This mode of breathing, similar to that employed by amphibians, is known as cutaneous breathing.[This, btw, is tripe. Amphibians do breathe through their skins, BUT VERY MANY HAVE LUNGS]. They propel themselves over land on their sturdy forefins.[Did you hear that? The amphibian has legs. The fish does not - it has fins.

Therefore, they cannot live on dry land. They cannot be regarded as a transitional form, because they die if they dry out. They are called mudskippers for this very reason - they skip on MUD, which you may recall, is WET.

They are as much land dwellers as we are underwater dwellers. I don't see many gills on scuba divers.

Why does the eel not know, that its impossible for him, to cover the distance between two habitats, spending hours out of water without a propper sceletton or the right muscles?

The maximum length of time a mudskipper can survive out of water is 36 hours. That really gives it a lot of time to evolve into an amphibian! (And in any case it has to reproduce IN WATER.)It hasn't done so yet, and you can let me know when they find one doing so.

Why does the Mudskipper not know, that he will dry up immediately, when spending more time out of water (like all the amphibias do, which should have the same skin-problem as described).

If he stays out of the water for more than 36 hours, he'll find out all about it, I promise.

Why does the lungfish not know, that he wasn´t allowed to suddenly (all evolutionists know, that the fish ages ago jumped suddenly out of the water and started climbing the trees, eh?!...Thats what evolution ist all about, isn´t it??

Yes, that's right! That's evolution in a nutshell! Fish, who can only survive in water, suddenly started walking around on land, climbing trees and jumping off, in order to turn into birds.
Marvellous nonsense, isn't it?

For goodness sake atrox, THINK for a bit. IF A FISH COMES OUT OF WATER FOR ANY SIGNIFICANT TIME, IT DIES. Here's what one evolutionist author says:
http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/fos.news.html

"So why are lungfish or mudskippers not relevant? Because hundreds of millions of years have passed."

Not me, him. They are NOT RELEVANT. ie, nonsense in this argument. They haven't evolved, they're still there, and they're still mudskippers and lungfish.

"An impediment to understanding the fin-limb transition has been the nature of available evidence from the sister group of tetrapods. The closest living relatives of tetrapods -- lungfishes and coelacanths -- either lack homologous elements to distal limb bones or are so specialized that comparisons with tetrapods are uncertain."

What's that mean? I'll tell you: it means 'we dunno'.


) develop these organs for breathing which gave him his name?
Why the hell do some fish die, when you prevent them from taking the chance to breath air (Anabantoidei, Corydoradinae).

The anabantoidea, despite having the labyrinth organ - not a lung btw, also have to stay wet. Put them on the sand for a week, and they're dead. How does that help you?

"As a result, labyrinth fishes can survive for a short period of time out of water, as they can inhale the air around them, provided they stay moist."

The catfishes swallow air, which is then absorbed through their intestines - no lungs, mark you. They live in shallow streams, and in muddy swamps, they swallow air, because they can't get enough from the water. No help there, I'm afraid.

Maybe someone should go out an tell them, that they don´t exist... there are no transitional forms...nooo! lips sealed

Just in case you didn't notice, all the taxonomists call these animals 'fish'. Not amphibians. Not halfway between water dwelling and and land dwelling animals. Fish. Unless all these taxonomists are idiots?

[Asyncritus]

The rock pocket mouse lives in rocky outcrops in Mexico and New Mexico.  They can have are several different coat colours - ranging from light to dark.  One population has evolved to live on dark, basalt rock, where there is a high selection pressure to have a dark coat.  (being darker on a dark substrate makes predation far less likely, and so the darker mice were more likely to breed, and pass on their genes to the next generation.)

There is a perfect association between different versions of the Melanocortin-1 receptor gene and coat colour. 

My dear fellow, this is nothing else but the Kettlewell moth syndrome. The dark moths died out on light backgrounds, and the light ones died out on dark backgrounds.

BUT BOTH KINDS WERE PRESENT IN THE POPULATION. Natural selection can only act on WHAT'S ALREADY THERE. I fully agree that natural selection takes place, but that is not evolution into new species, phyla etc. It explains the SURVIVAL of the fittest, but not the ARRIVAL of the fittest.

And there evolution dies, because natural selection cannot account for the appearance of new characters. It merely selects from the existing pool of genes. What we are arguing about, is WHERE DID THE POOL COME FROM?

IL Cohen ( mathematician and researcher) said: “At that moment, when the the DNA/RNA system became understood, the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists should have come to a screeching halt. …the implications of the DNA/RNA were obvious and clear. Mathematically speaking, based on probability concepts, there is no possibility that Evolution was the mechanism that created the approximately 6,000,000 species of plants and animals we recognize today."

He was right.

But thank you for being willing to discuss with me.

[atrox]

Wow, finally I got the privilege to see you answering my questions... []

But I´m afraid...it just shows, that you really don´t have any glue what evolution is about.
It´s ok, if you don´t want to believe in evolution... but if you want to discuss it, than you should at least understand the mechanisms, as evolutionists believe in... otherwise thats all just senceless..

Have you ever read anything about how the mudskipper survives out of the water? I didn't think so.

Let me inform you then:
[...]
Therefore, they cannot live on dry land. They cannot be regarded as a transitional form, because they die if they dry out. They are called mudskippers for this very reason - they skip on MUD, which you may recall, is WET.

Noone ever said, that fish came out of the water, to live in deserts and never went back! They started with staying out of water for short periods... but that fish, which could stay longer out of water had an advantage and could use the many unused ressources there. So they had the best chances to reproduce (as the example with the bees)... and so they started to stay longer and longer out of water... btw Many amphibias need to be wet too

The maximum length of time a mudskipper can survive out of water is 36 hours. That really gives it a lot of time to evolve into an amphibian! (And in any case it has to reproduce IN WATER.)It hasn't done so yet, and you can let me know when they find one doing so.

You are really getting ridiculous. They don´t have to evolve in 36h, and you really should know that, if you did understand what the theorie is about...I hope that was just a poor joke. By the way...all the amphibians need to reproduce in water as well.. but most of them can live on solid ground the rest of the year...

Why does the Mudskipper not know, that he will dry up immediately, when spending more time out of water (like all the amphibias do, which should have the same skin-problem as described).

If he stays out of the water for more than 36 hours, he'll find out all about it, I promise.

Wow, 36h sounds a bit different than to claim, they would try up immediately... 36h is a lot of time...and maybe the next generation of mudskippers, that could have problems in finding food under water, could stay a bit longer out of water...and tha next generation stay again...and so on

Yes, that's right! That's evolution in a nutshell! Fish, who can only survive in water, suddenly started walking around on land, climbing trees and jumping off, in order to turn into birds.
Marvellous nonsense, isn't it?

Oh sorry, I need to read that again..."Yes, that's right! That's evolution in a nutshell! Fish, who can only survive in water, suddenly started walking around on land, climbing trees and jumping off, in order to turn into birds.
Marvellous nonsense, isn't it?"
Wow...Ben, now you know where the lack of understanding is... []

Again...no suddenly in evolution.... why do you allways say something about an sudden evolution??! If someone should use that word, than creationist... you say, some higher beeing, coming out of nowhere (did it evolve maybe  [] ) suddenly put the mamals on earth...
And as the examples show, it´s not that unlikely, that fishes started to go on land for several reasons..

For goodness sake atrox, THINK for a bit.

Oh, I did...but maybe you should start too...would make a discussion much easier...

They are NOT RELEVANT. ie, nonsense in this argument. They haven't evolved, they're still there, and they're still mudskippers and lungfish.

They are relevant, as they show you (wait...no...they should show ..but I´m sure you just have another "argument" against it), that these arguments of fish dieing the same hour or so, they leave water are just wrong! It is not that unbelieveable as the creationist would like it to be or make it to be...therefor they are relevant.
That is how the beginnings of landliving animals could look like... part-time-land-living.
Why did they not evolve? Because they didn´t have to...they are perfectly adapted to their environment. And if it didn´t change a lot, no other adaptation could conquer their niche.
But if there was another fish, just like the mudfish maybe, and the habitat did change...maybe they could now find much more food out of water than under water, than the adaptation, that could stay a bit longer out there had an advantage, and the biggest chance to reproduce, because it had the bigges chance to survive. An the adaptation, which could move a bit further on land, away from it´s collegues, to find food, where nobody else could go, than had the best chance to reproduce...and so on...I really shouldn´t need to explain that part, if you did understand what evolution is about...

The anabantoidea, despite having the labyrinth organ - not a lung btw, also have to stay wet. Put them on the sand for a week, and they're dead. How does that help you?

Of course they don´t have lungs...but you know...lungs needed to evolve... maybe through these organs...or comparable ones.. Many Amphians have to stay wet, too. But you won´t doubt, that most of them live on land for a pretty long period of their live...but if you put them on sand, they will be dead in a week, too ...so thats just anoter not-argument... it´s again an example of how transitional forms could look like... oh, by the way...there are also amphibians, which don´t have any lungs at all...breathing just trought their skin... so lungs are not a premise to take the first steps on dry land..

"As a result, labyrinth fishes can survive for a short period of time out of water, as they can inhale the air around them, provided they stay moist."

as I said...most ambhibians need to stay moist too...

Just in case you didn't notice, all the taxonomists call these animals 'fish'. Not amphibians. Not halfway between water dwelling and and land dwelling animals. Fish. Unless all these taxonomists are idiots?

Thank you so much for informing me... but now I really wonder, what you would expect from an transitional form? As I said, evolution comes in small steps... sometimes its only, that a fish could stay a bit longer out of water... therefor it would not be possible to draw an exact line between two species, which evolved from each other, if you would know all of the transitional forms...often you wouldn´t even notice, that one animal is different from the next form...

Take the great tit as an example.. There is a populationn livin in a race circle (east Europe)...if you go more to the east of Europe, the will change very slightly, you wont even really notice if you go step by step... but their is one place where the one end of the population meeds the other end and they behave like two different species...because these slight modulations did lead to two different species in seperated habitats... But you could not pick one of the birds and tell, that is an transitional form....

[atrox]

Oh, and I really would be said, if I would take you the pleasure of reading that side (and me the plaesure of you surely scientific explanation, why these examples can´t be true ;-) )
...so, in case you didn´t see that
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html#part5

[Asyncritus]

Hi Atrox

Let's discuss this business of a fish coming on to land, as you seem to think I don't understand what's going on.

Have you ever seen a fish on land after a fisherman has caught it? I have. I've caught many, dropped them on the bank - and they died. You know the expression - 'like a fish out of water'.

Now what makes you think there's any survival advantage in dying when the fish has dried out?

Look at it the other way. How long would you survive if you tried to live underwater? Not very long at all, unless you had diving equipment of some sort. Do you think, for example, that if somebody held your head underwater for 1 minute today, 2 minutes tomorrow, 3 mins the day after that, and so on, after a year like that you'd be able to live underwater? I very much doubt it, because you'd drown somewhere around 7 minutes.

Why do you think things would be different for a fish?

Here's the problem stated very nicely:

"In trying to decipher the evolution of tetrapods from fish, scientists face formidable problems. The transition from water to land occurred long ago, and various family trees suggested by the fossil record are so tangled that scientists acknowledge they may never be able to sort them out definitively".

For a fish to come out on to dry land - which is what we're talking about - it has to have breathing apparatus, like lungs. No fish has lungs - not even the lungfish. Their lungs are totally different to our lungs, and bear no relationship to them.

You ever heard about the coelacanth?

Well. once upon a time, in this sea far away, there lived a fish called Latimeria. Scientists thought that it was a very special fish which could walk out on to land and somehow breathe air! Hoo boy! This great fish was the ancestor of all the land animals or something. It got out and walked in swamps and such places.

And then you'll never guess what happened.

Evolutionists needed evidence to back up the supposed transition of vertebrates from the sea to dry land. For that reason, they took the fossil coelacanth, whose anatomy they believed was ideally suited to this scenario, and began using it for propaganda purposes. They interpreted the creature's fins as "feet about to walk," and a fossilized fat-filled swimbladder in its body as "a primitive lung." The coelacanth was literally a savior for evolutionists bedeviled by such a lack of evidence. Evolutionists had at last laid hands on "one" of the countless missing links that should have numbered in the millions.

Heh heh!

And then.... ta daaaa!

This evolutionist excitement was short-lived,when a living coelacanth specimen was captured by fishermen in 1938. This inflicted a terrible disappointment on evolutionists.

James Leonard Brierley Smith, an instructor in the Rhodes University Chemistry Department and also honorary director of various fish museums on the South Coast of England, expressed his astonishment in the face of this captured coelacanth:

    "Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if striken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was true Coelacanth." 

The discovery of this imaginary missing link, once believed to have close links to man's alleged ancestors, in the form of a living fossil, was a most significant disaster for Darwinist circles.

The coelacanth, the greatest supposed proof of the theory of evolution, had suddenly been demolished.

The most important potential candidate in the fictitious transition from the sea to dry land turned out to be an exceedingly complex life form still alive in deep waters and bearing no intermediate-form characteristics at all. This living specimen dealt a heavy blow to Darwin's theory of evolution.

So back to the old drawing board and some more idiotic inventions.

Don't you see how stupid this whole thing is? You take any goldfish and drop him on the floor, then let me know what happens. If he gets up and walks off into the distance, you are the greatest scientific discoverer of all time, and you'll get 25 Nobel prizes for your discovery.

But I think you'll have a big pile of dead stinking goldfish on your floor before that happens. Try it, and see. Let me know how long he can survive out of water. []

Here's another nice creationist site for you to laugh at: http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_05.php

[Asyncritus]

BTW Atrox

Fish have nostrils - but they are used for smelling. They aren't any lungs to attach to! And the gills don't need any nostrils.

[_Stefan_]

Asyncritus, your arguments are ridiculous. You are comparing modern organisms that are adapted to living in certain environments, to ancestral species that were adapted to living in intermediate environments, and expecting them to behave in the same manner. This is a logical fallacy.

Modern fish are adapted to their aquatic environments. You cannot fish them out and expect them to suddenly be able to survive for extended periods on dry land, because evolution occurs continuously over generally vast amounts of time, not over the period of a single lifetime. Individuals do not evolve. Populations do. It happens incrementally by many small steps, not big leaps. You ask where the variation in the gene pool comes from. The answer is through mutation, genetic drift, and genetic recombination.

If a fish is living near the shore and is using its fins as supports for its body as well as for better swimming, and over many generations it begins spending increasing amounts of time, from being totally submerged, to partially submerged, to staying on the shore, to living on land for finding food or for other reasons, it is easy to see how the transition from fish to amphibian can be made.
 
If by "there are no transitional forms" you mean that each species is a species in its own right, then yes, that's true. But to say that the fossil record does not show a sequence of organismal evolution is literally myopic.

For transitional forms, Wikipedia has a nice article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils 

Further, even without a shred of fossil evidence, there are other lines of evidence for evolution. This simple tutorial will help you with this. Genetics and developmental biology are particularly strong lines of evidence. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/lines/index.shtml

Look at amphibians themselves. The larvae and juveniles spend all their time aquatically, and then make the transition to partial or mainly terrestrial existence as adults. Consider toads, which have leathery skin adapted to conserving water, allowing them to spend the majority of their time on land, yet their offspring would die without water. The evolutionary history of these amphibians can be seen each time a tadpole metamorphoses into a toad. 

The tetrapod lung is considered to be a homologue of the fish swim bladder. http://www.earthlife.net/fish/bladder.html
http://www.csupomona.edu/~dfhoyt/classes/zoo138/PRIM_FISH.HTML - This page also gives you a good run down on evolution.


The sad fact of the matter is that you don't understand how evolution works, and I doubt if you even want to. If you did, this thread would be obsolete.

[Asyncritus]

Asyncritus, your arguments are ridiculous. You are comparing modern organisms that are adapted to living in certain environments, to ancestral species that were adapted to living in intermediate environments, and expecting them to behave in the same manner. This is a logical fallacy.

You are displaying an unfortunate ignorance of the facts of both palaeontology and modern discoveries.

First, we have absolute proof of the fact that a 418 million year old fish was no different to its descendants.

Latimeria, the coelacanth, is found in fossil form 410 -418 mya. It was also found in 1938 and is no different to the ancestral forms. Brierley Smith in the above quoted statement said:
    "Although I had come prepared, that first sight hit me like a white-hot blast and made me feel shaky and queer, my body tingled. I stood as if striken to stone. Yes, there was not a shadow of doubt, scale by scale, bone by bone, fin by fin, it was true Coelacanth."

Now what happened when the fish was brought to the surface? It died. As I have been saying.

Now what proof do you have for this silly idea that ancient fishes could come on to land and survive? None. And here is absolute physical proof that the idea is useless and just plain wrong.

The second prong of proof comes from the fact that ancient fishes and modern ones hardly differ, and as proof of that statement, here are two sets of photographs which prove this beyond doubt:



Those are flying fish - today found in quantity off the coast of Barbados, and being sold in the restaurants there. You can see the identity of the fossils and the modern fish.



That's a sting ray - modern and fossil. No difference.

Here's a guitar fish, ancient and modern:



Now with all that before us, how can you or anyone say that ancient fishes were somehow able to do things that modern fish can't? ie walk out on to land somehow and survive?

There's the killer point which nobody can gainsay. ACQUIRED CHARACTERISTICS CANNOT BE INHERITED.

For those who don't know what that means, here's an explanation: If a fish did manage to walk on land somehow, and it was the first such fish to do so, then although he can walk on land, his children cannot - because it isn't in the genes. That ability CAN'T GET THERE.

So no matter if a fish DID get out on to land and survive, its offspring couldn't do so. They couldn't inherit that ability, UNLESS IT WAS ALREADY THERE. And if it was alreadY there, HOW DID IT GET THERE?

So that leaves the theory high and dry - dead, and stinking, like the fish! 

I had a look at those dubious specimens in your Wiki link. Here's what is says about Eryops:

"Several complete skeletons of Eryops have been found in the Lower Permian, but skull plates and teeth are the most common fossils. Although it had no direct descendants, it is the best-known Permian amphibian and a remarkable example of natural engineering."

What, I wondered, was 'natural engineering'? Luckily, the author of the article gave a link, which said this, and I call your attention particularly to the intelligent design features involved:

"“[T]he creative application of scientific principles to design or develop structures, machines, apparatus, or manufacturing processes, or works utilizing them singly or in combination; or to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions; all as respects an intended function, economics of operation and safety to life and property.”

Does that prove my point, or does it?

I hope you readers are beginning to see the sheer nonsense that evolution requires you to believe, and will write in and say so in no uncertain terms, and ask some very nasty questions - like exactly HOW did this happen? And when you get stupid answers, you say so plainly. Otherwise the truth will be held down forevermore if the scientific press has its way.


Here's a splendid source of information for you to look at:

http://www.harunyahya.com/books/darwinism/atlas_creation_II/atlas_creation_II_09b.php

[Asyncritus]

The tetrapod lung is considered to be a homologue of the fish swim bladder. http://www.earthlife.net/fish/bladder.html
http://www.csupomona.edu/~dfhoyt/classes/zoo138/PRIM_FISH.HTML - This page also gives you a good run down on evolution.

I don't know which joker said that the tetrapod lung is a homologue of the fishes' swim bladder - but he or she knew absolutely nothing about the anatomy of either a lung or a swim bladder apart from the fact that they both contain air. THERE IS NO SIMILARITY WHATSOEVER.
 

The sad fact of the matter is that you don't understand how evolution works, and I doubt if you even want to. If you did, this thread would be obsolete.

Oh, it isn't sad at all. It is my refusal to swallow nonsense uncritically that you're objecting to. I've put up my understanding of evolution and Ben couldn't pick holes in it. So I don't know where you're going with this.

[BenV]

Hello again,

I didn't want to get back into this, but here we go...

Just to point out, if you think that ancient animals being identical to modern animals is evidence against evolution, you're wrong.  If the conditions haven't changed, there would be no selective pressure to change, and so ancient species would be genetically close to identical to modern species.  Evolution doesn't say everything should change, but if a mutation allows an individual to take advantage of a new niche, it will be selected for.  This process has also been seen in the lab.

I think you've missed the point of the lungfish.  We know that some fish can survive briefly out of water (lungfish, mudskippers etc.)  If it's advantageous to be able to survive out of water, as it no doubt was, and still is in certain environments, then the ones capable of this would have been more likely to breed - but we're going over old ground here, you've acknowledged that you understand natural selection, and can see how that shapes every species around us.  Your problem now is that you don't see how advantageous traits can arise to be selected.  You've been told a number of times that these traits can arise by mutation, recombination, genetic substitution etc.

It may be worth you looking into the work of Richard Lenski, whose long running E. coli experiment has shown advantageous mutations to appear in bacterial colonies, and that these traits depend on a series of mutations before any phenotypic change is witnessed.

Certainly, sometimes we can speculate on how species have changed, simply by applying the rules of evolution as we know them to be.  This means that although I'm not a biochemist, I can understand the process through which a certain protein has evolved.  We know that DNA replication is not perfect, and so we know where mutations come from.  To suggest that these changes are being controlled externally by an invisible, intangible intelligence is beyond speculation, and into pure fiction.

You're constantly criticising, and supplying what you believe to be evidence against evolution (which turn out to be evidence of your lack of comprehension of the rules of evolution).  I'll now ask again for evidence for a creator.  This would need to be evidence that species change with out natural selection, or genetic changes, or adaptations that are contrary to natural selection (i.e. an adaptation that couldn't have evolved, rather than one where you can't understand how it evolved.)

[Asyncritus]

Hi again Ben.

Just to point out, if you think that ancient animals being identical to modern animals is evidence against evolution, you're wrong.

If it was only one species, I would certainly agree with you.

Unfortunately, there are hundreds: they call them 'living fossils': that's the evolutionists' name for them. Here's a Wiki listing. You'll notice that these are only examples, not the whole lot.

:informally known as "living fossils".

[edit] Plants

    * Amborellaceae
    * Araucaria araucana the Monkey Puzzle tree
    * Cycads
    * Ginkgo tree (Ginkgoaceae)
    * Horsetails Equisetum (Equisetaceae)
    * Metasequoia Dawn Redwood (Cupressaceae; a borderline example, related to Sequoia and Sequoiadendron)
    * Sciadopitys tree (Sciadopityaceae)
    * Whisk ferns Psilotum (Psilotaceae)
    * Welwitschia (Welwitschiaceae)
    * Wollemia tree (Araucariaceae; a borderline example, related to Agathis and Araucaria)

[edit] Fungi

    * Neolecta

[edit] Animals

    * Vertebrates
          o Mammals
                + Cypriot mouse (Mus cypriacus)
                + Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens)
                + Okapi (Okapia johnstoni)
                + Laotian Rock Rat (Laonastes aenigmamus)
                + Volcano rabbit (Romerolagus diazi)
                + Amami rabbit (Pentalagus furnessi)
                + Monito del Monte (Dromiciops gliroides)
                + monotremes (the platypus and echidna)
                + Mountain Beaver (Aplodontia rufa)
                + Opossums
                + Przewalski's Horse (Equus ferus przewalskii, Equus przewalskii or Equus caballus przewalskii, classification is debated)
          o Birds
                + Acanthisittidae (New Zealand "wrens")
                + Hoatzin (Ophisthocomus hoazin)
                + Broad-billed Sapayoa (Sapayoa aenigma)
                + Bearded Reedling (Panurus biarmicus)
                + Coliiformes (mousebirds, 6 living species in 2 genera)
                + Magpie-goose (Anseranas semipalmata)
          o Reptiles
                + Pig-nosed turtle
                + Crocodilia (crocodiles, gavials and alligators)
                + Tuataras (Sphenodon punctatus and Sphenodon guntheri)
          o Amphibians
                + Purple frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis)
          o Bony fish
                + Bowfin (Amia calva)
                + Coelacanth (the lobed-finned Latimeria menadoensis and Latimeria chalumnae)
                + Queensland lungfish (Neoceratodus fosteri)
                + Sturgeons and paddlefish (Acipenseriformes)
          o Sharks
                + Frilled shark (Chlamydoselachus anguineus)

    * Invertebrates
          o Insects
                + Mantophasmatodea (gladiators; a few living species)
                + Mymarommatid wasps (10 living species in genus Palaeomymar)
                + Nevrorthidae (3 species-poor genera)
                + Notiothauma reedi (a scorpionfly relative)
                + Orussidae (parasitic wood wasps; about 70 living species in 16 genera)
                + Peloridiidae (peloridiid bugs; fewer than 30 living species in 13 genera)
                + Sikhotealinia zhiltzovae (a jurodid beetle)
                + Syntexis libocedrii (Anaxyelidae cedar wood wasp)
          o Crustaceans
                + glypheoid lobsters (3 living species: Neoglyphea inopinata, N. neocaledonica, and Laurentaeglyphea neocaledonica)
                + Triops cancriformis (a notostracid crustacean)
          o Molluscs
                + Nautilina (e.g. Nautilus pompilius)
                + Neopilina galateae, a monoplacophorid mollusc
                + Ennucula superba (Nut clam)
          o Other invertebrates
                + crinoids
                + Horseshoe crabs (only 4 living species of the class Xiphosura, family Limulidae: Limulus polyphemus,Tachypleus gigas, Tachypleus tridentatus and Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda)
                + Lingula anatina (an inarticulate brachiopod)
                + onychophorans
                + Valdiviathyris quenstedti (a craniforman brachiopod)

So what do we do with them?

I think Latimeria (the coelacanth) finished the argument 'that if conditions haven't changed, the fish wouldn't'. Do you really mean to say that conditions haven't changed in 418 million years? I very much doubt it.

This is terrible proof that evolution has not occurred. Remember, Stephen Hawkings remark: “…you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory”

Well, here are several hundreds of that kind of observation. What are you going to do with your theory? Still carry on with it, or abandon it?

I'd be interested to know what it would take to make you discard the theory. Tyre tracks in the PreCambrian? Well we have plenty of those. What else? A sting ray in the Cretaceous? We've plenty of those too.

Your problem now is that you don't see how advantageous traits can arise to be selected.  You've been told a number of times that these traits can arise by mutation, recombination, genetic substitution etc.

JSTOR aticle records 66 advantageous mutations over 10,000 generations. That makes all of this a joke. There simply isn't the needed time for all 6,000,000 or so species to arise not mentioning the extinct ones. Where did they all come from, then?

And then there's the Cambrian explosion.

For those who may not know, it is the sudden 'explosive' appearance of thousands of new species, genera, orders and phyla in what is described as a geological blink of an eye.

"Cambrian Explosion: the term used to describe the very sudden appearance of a huge variety of fossil organisms with hard skeletons in the sedimentary rocks of the middle Cambrian."
http://www-sedgwick.esc.cam.ac.uk/education/glossary.html

Note the VERY SUDDEN; the HUGE VARIETY of hard skeletoned organisms.

If the hard skeletoned animals arose from soft tissued animals, then there's no evidence of them doing so. Also, the swiftness of their appearance is consistent with their having been created in a short period of time. They simply cannot have evolved by the usual mutations + selections therefrom mechanism, especially if 66 advantageous mutations arose in 10,000 generations. There simply isn't time for them to have done so.

Certainly, sometimes we can speculate on how species have changed, simply by applying the rules of evolution as we know them to be.  This means that although I'm not a biochemist, I can understand the process through which a certain protein has evolved.  We know that DNA replication is not perfect, and so we know where mutations come from.  To suggest that these changes are being controlled externally by an invisible, intangible intelligence is beyond speculation, and into pure fiction.

Ben, assuming that the first organisms were the most complex genetically that there ever were, then the mutations etc route you are describing can only have been downhill all the way. Why? Because in general, mutations represent DAMAGE  and DESTRUCTION of perfectly good genes/chromosomes.

They never represent improvements, really. Do you know how many generations of Drosophilas Dobzhansky and co. irradiated with gamma and Xrays? It was in the thousands. And guess what happened? Nothing as far as producing a new species is concerned. Red eyes changed to white eyes to no eyes at all. Wings were damaged, bodies deformed and so it went on. Why the society for the prevention of cruelty to dumb anmals didn't roast Dobzhansky and co, I don't know.

But we have had Chernobyl in recent years. It was probably the worst and most massive irradiation experiment ever performed. And guess how many new species have been formed in the locality? None. Similarly Hiroshima and Ngasaki.

Which I submit, leaves evolution high and dry - because unless a new characteristic can be inherited, it is valueless to the progress of evolution.

So where have we got to in the evolution of amphibians and reptiles from fish?

1 It couldn't have occurred.

2 The evidence shows that it didn't occur.

Since the Creator didn't choose to sign every cell with His Name, I can't supply that sort of evidence. What He did do,however, was to leave traces of His activity in the form of the extremely intelligent designs we see in the world around us. Michael Behe has described some of them in Darwin's Black Box.

That form of evidence is beautifully described by William Paley in his book on Natural Theology here:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ucNMDAWWyLsC&dq=William+Paley's+Natural+Theology+online&pg=PP1&ots=xiS8Bb1RxT&sig=FOnTBepsqX4-dkuMYLXsTQZ6idA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA5,M1

I highly recommend that you read it with some degree of attention.

[Asyncritus]

BTW, I just found this last night.

For anyone who may be interested in living fossils, here's an amazing and extensive compendium of unchanged, living fossils.

http://www.fossil-museum.com

[RD]

Just because the form of some creatures has remained the essentially the same for millions of years does not disprove evolution: they have adapted to an environmental niche which has not changed, so their form has not changed, although their immune systems will have evolved in response to appearance new diseases. [You're now going to tell us that there are no new pathogens, because that would require evolution].
 
Evidence of the evolution of one species into another is sufficient to disprove creationism "intelligent design", the horse for example...

Fossil Evidence for Evolution – Transitional Fossils
The second line of fossil evidence for evolution concerns transitional fossils. Transitional fossils are fossils which are thought to document the evolutionary change, or transition, of one species into another. The orohippus, mesohippus, miohippus, merychippus, and pleshippus are all thought to be transitional fossils, documenting the evolution of the hyracotherium into the modern horse.

http://www.allaboutcreation.org/fossil-evidence-for-evolution-faq.htm

These transitional fossils along with rare atavisms* in modern horses are convincing evidence for evolution,
(to those who are susceptible to reason).

* Probably the most well-known atavism is polydactyly of modern horses ... This condition is similar to the extra toes found in many of the three-toed fossil horses including Archaeohippus, Parahippus, Merychippus and Neohipparion.

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/ponyexpress/pony11_1/Pe111.html#Atavisms

[Asyncritus]

Just because the form of some creatures has remained the essentially the same for millions of years does not disprove evolution: they have adapted to an environmental niche which has not changed, so their form has not changed,

Don't you get tired of this nonsense? If they changed that's proof of evolution. If they haven't changed, that's proof of evolution. Marvellous.

although their immune systems will have evolved in response to appearance new diseases.

How do you know that?
[You're now going to tell us that there are no new pathogens, because that would require evolution].
 
Evidence of the evolution of one species into another is sufficient to disprove creationism "intelligent design", the horse for example...

The second line of fossil evidence for evolution concerns transitional fossils. Transitional fossils are fossils which are thought to document the evolutionary change, or transition, of one species into another. The orohippus, mesohippus, miohippus, merychippus, and pleshippus are all thought to be transitional fossils, documenting the evolution of the hyracotherium into the modern horse. [/size]

Haven't you read about Eldredge shoving that stupid lot of fossils downstairs in his museum, or do I have to go find the references?
http://www.allaboutcreation.org/fossil-evidence-for-evolution-faq.htm

These transitional fossils along with rare atavisms* in modern horses are convincing evidence for evolution,
(to those who are susceptible to reason).

Maybe they convince you, but it doesn't convince the palaeontologists who stata categorically that there are no transitional fossils. Here's Gould:

"(1)"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary states between major transitions in organic design, (2) indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, (3) has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution. St. George Mivart (1871), Darwin's most cogent critic, referred to it as the dilemma of "the incipient stages of useful structures" – (4) of what possible benefit to a reptile is two percent of a wing?"

Maybe he wasn't susceptible to reason either. But he was professor of invertebrate palaeontology at Harvard.

Simpson:
“Their absence is so nearly universal that it cannot, off hand, be imputed to chance, and does require some attempt at special explanation as has been felt by most paleontologists.”

Gould again:
I do not doubt the supreme importance of preadaptation, but the other alternative, treated with (6) caution, reluctance, disdain or even fear by the modern synthesis, now deserves a rehearing in the light of renewed interest in development: perhaps, in many cases, the intermediates never existed.