Darwin's Theory of (d)evolution

Originally posted by Long Lance

they combine the traits of existing cats and are of course hybrids, which imho only blur the issue. new traits is where it is at, otherwise evolution would only contract over time.

hybridiation wont account for new traits which is why its ignored in ToE pretty much

mutation affects only one individual at a time. unless this individual interbreeds with its ancestor species (or any other for that matter, although that would probably be dumb luck) it would be unable to find a mate. clear enough?

not really ..you seem to be suggesting becasue it has a new mutation to it DNA its an entirely new species? so it would have difficulty breeding and passing on the mutation

it isnt 1 animal growing somthing new and becoming a new species on it own, its a breeding group passing the trait around and over time signifanct differances build up within that population to differenciate them from thier original species classifiation

therefore, you'll have to allow time for that mutation to spread over a population, which could then be repeated several times until the entire population is part of a new species.

whih entire population?

do you mean every other of the same species that in existance? or thier breeding group wih may be an isolated group or on the edge of species natural habbitat so natural selection work to enhance survivability on and across the borerd allowing them to extend thier range

speciation is a matter of a small groups on the fringe or isolated populations altering to become new pecies not the entire species changing into somthing else

i may be misreading what your suggesting and if so i appologise but what you seem to be aying differs from the way it works

hence my remark about very long times (measured in generations), which are required to make it work.

yepp

drosophilia appears to be a valid example, although i wonder how deliberate the process was. i mean it has to be happening somehow, the question is how and when and if one could do something with it.

very deliberate they breed them in a tank where they had to fly up to reach thier mate in a area scented by ethynol

the other population had to flu down to an area cented by somthing else

thi went on for a bunch of generation then thye let them in the tank together, 1/2 flew up 1/2 flew down so no longer were able to mate due to mating ondition and partner selection issues

we know how and when ..in fact weve seen speciation so many time we have had to classify the 4 different observed ways

not clear on your do somthing with it comment though ..... why and what would it be used for? besides unnatural selection of animal husbandry gets reult faster and you can guide it better too

Originally posted by Daniem
reply to post by blj777

 

Evolution is not a progression from "lower" to "higher", and evolution does not require an increase in complexity A population can evolve to become simpler with less genetic information, and have a smaller genome—often called "DEVOLUTION", but that is a misnomer


4 - "If you killed all of the Bees on the planet - life would cease to exist within 5 years"

-Id like to see a link to where you read THAT. Aint no bees in the antarctic, yet somehow penguins thrive.


5) "How do Believers of Darwin explain how exactly did Bees and Flowers evolve - how could the one evolve or exist without the other."

-Bees, like ants, are a specialized form of wasp. The ancestors of bees were wasps in the family Crabronidae, and therefore predators of other insects. With the passage of time, bees have become completely dependent on flowers as a food source.


9) "Where are the living proofs of evolution ? Why are monkeys still alive and doing well, but none of the other hypothesised transitional forms."

-The theory of evolution does posit "transitional forms", but not "endpoint forms". That is, every animal, plant, fossil that exists, is an example of a transitional form. Evolution is a continuous process that has no "goal" per se. (See also List of transitional fossils.)




Tiktaalik represents an intermediate form between fish and amphibians


"God is outside of space and time, and our tiny minds can't beging to imagine him, what is so hard to believe about God making everything, at least for me it is more logical."

-Id like to see a link to where you read THAT.

Nothing is hard to believe if one choose to be ignorant and is determined that what you believe is true, and in no way will you change you mind. It is in other words, the easy way out. God did it... think no more.

It was Albert Einstein that said if the bees died out we would all be gone within about 4 years: globalclimatechange.wordpress.com...

Point 9 above where you state evolution posits transitional forms, well I've read plenty on Darwin and there are NO transitions anywhere in the so called fossil records. Prime examples are Archaeopteryx, Eohippus and the Ammonites amongst thousands of others. Archaeopteryx is said to have evolved from dinosaurs called Coelosaurs yet these and ALL dinosaurs did not have collar bones/wishbone, yet Archaeopteryx does.

Modern birds wings are composed of the 2nd 3rd and 4th fingers of the hand, Archaeopteryx's is composed of the 1st 2nd and 3rd like all Theropods. To add to Archaeopteryx 's embarressment a fossil was discovered of a fully feathered bird capable of flapping flight in 1991 that was said to pre-date Archaeopteryx by 75 million years. It would appear that things are not correct, you cannot have flying birds 75 million years before Archaeoptreyx, well not according to the neo Darwinists, yet there they are. If that fact is correct where does that leave Darwins theory of Evolution? Will the neo Darwinists like Richard Dawkins if they haven't already rant and rave that the timeline and dating methods are all wrong, yet they use the very same dating methods. You can't have your cake and eat it. Eohippus, the supposed forerunner of the modern Horse. No transitions have been found BEFORE this animal showed up and there is a massive gap between it and the next one in front of it Mesohippus. So where did Eohippus come from? Did it just magically appear out of thin air? Was it brought here by some Alien lifeform?

reply to post by Chuffer


Carrying on with Ammonites: If you walk along the beach from Lyme Regis in Dorset to Charmouth you will find rocks in the cliffs that have been tilted at an angle by earth movements. As you travel along the beach you are able to see higher and higher up the geological succession. What you find in these rocks as you pass along are different species of ammonites. In the lowest bed is a genus called Asteroceras in the next one called Amaltheus and in the highest Harpoceras. Uniformitarian geologists believe these rocks took millions of years to form. Darwinists say that successive ammonite species represent a line of descent: that the ammonite Harpoceras near present day Charmouth is the remote offspring of Asteroceras at the Lime Regis end. The fact that there are gaps in the fossils and NO transitional forms intermediate between the various species does not alter this conviction. Because the rocks are a succession and took millions of years to lay down then the fossils they contain are a living succession also.

A quote from Darwin himself on The Origin of Species:

"The number of intermediate varieties which have formerly existed on Earth must be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assurdely does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be argued against my theory."

For years many believed the Coelacanth to have been extinct for millions of years, yet they were discovered off the coast of Africa in 1938. How do the neo Darwinists account for a fish supposedly extinct? (No doubt we'll see shifting of goalposts to fit their theory)

Another thing that has always nagged at me, Crocodiles. They are supposed to be over 200 million years old yet survived the so called Extinction Event that wiped out ALL the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So what exactly where Crocodiles doing that every other dinosaur wasn't? They weren't the only one that lived in burrows or were the only predator, rememeber there was also plenty of large predatory dinosaurs living in the Oceans.

Originally posted by Chuffer

It was Albert Einstein that said if the bees died out we would all be gone within about 4 years: globalclimatechange.wordpress.com...

yes but its people he uggested would die out along with lot of fruiting plants .. basically human would start to starve

with our increased ability to grow cereals starving to death's not so much of a concern any more

Prime examples are Archaeopteryx, Eohippus and the Ammonites amongst thousands of others. Archaeopteryx is said to have evolved from dinosaurs called Coelosaurs yet these and ALL dinosaurs did not have collar bones/wishbone, yet Archaeopteryx does.

umm all dinosaurs had no collar bone? sure about that? whats the medical term for collar bone? clavical ... and as theropod are the most likley of the dinosauria as aves ancetsors shall we check if they have clavicles?

hmmm yes some do, but more intereting when 2 clavicles fuse to form a wishbone (real name Furcula) we also find those in theropod dinosaur such as velocoraptor

en.wikipedia.org... o dinosaiurs had wishbones .... ok whats next on the list?

Modern birds wings are composed of the 2nd 3rd and 4th fingers of the hand, Archaeopteryx's is composed of the 1st 2nd and 3rd like all Theropods.

ahh finger digits

Note that anatomists initially assigned digit numbers I, II, and III to bird limbs on the basis of their form, but later had to revise that to II, III, and IV on the basis of embryology. Dinosaur digits are assigned numbers I, II, and III on the basis of their adult form (which is admittedly much less ambiguous than adult bird digits!)…but what about their embryology? If we had access to information about expression of molecular markers and early condensations in the dinosaur limb, would we have to revise their digit numbers?

We don't have fetal dinosaur hands to experiment on, but our growing knowledge about how limbs develop suggests that that might just be the case. This diagram illustrates the sequence of development in the hand of an alligator (a) and an ostrich (b).

pharyngula.org...

www.dinosauria.com... and another

so it seems the wishbone not a problem or the digits .... whats next?

To add to Archaeopteryx 's embarressment a fossil was discovered of a fully feathered bird capable of flapping flight in 1991 that was said to pre-date Archaeopteryx by 75 million years. It would appear that things are not correct, you cannot have flying birds 75 million years before Archaeoptreyx,

and much to the palentologist that annoucned the poible new species found in texas it turns out the skeleton contain bone from 3 other known dinosaurs

basically he made a mistake which is why it isnt accepted as a new specie and well it was even more reptilian then archie ever was

and the species was called Protoavis texensis

Is Chatterjee right? One problem with Protoavis is that the bones were not found in an articulated skeleton, and had to be pieced together. In this situation, there is always the possibility of mixing up bones from different organisms. This has happened often enough in the past to make many paleontologists wary when discussing Protoavis. Dr. Kevin Padian of the UC Museum of Paleontology believes that Protoavis is probably a mixture of two or more different skeletons, and several other paleontologists concur in this interpretation.

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu...

When they were discovered at a quarry in the Texas panhandle in 1984, in sedimentary strata of a Triassic river delta, the fossils were a jumbled cache of disarticulated persons that may reflect an incident of mass mortality following a flash flood. The discoverer, Sankar Chatterjee of Texas Tech University, was persuaded that the cache of crushed bones all belonged to the same species. However, only a few parts were establishing, primarily a skull, and this has led many to consider that the Protavis fossil is chimeric, made up of more than one organism.

www.rareresource.com...

after the hash you made of archie ... maybe worth checking your facts on the other too

reply to post by noobfun


As I suspected most of what you replied with are assumptions made by neo Darwinists to fit what they want to see. You still have not shown me the Transitional Links of anything that came before Archaeopteryx or even after, like Eohippus this thing just suddenly appeared in the fossi record. Good going. Where's the "Missing Link" in Man, have the neo Darwinists like Dawkins managed to find it yet?

In fact for more than 150 years intense collecting by well funded professional expeditions have not yet yeilded any of the remains Darwin envisaged and Africa and the Middle East thought to be the most likely have now been thoroughly searched. There are early apelike remains and there are hominid remains. Indeed the store of primate fossils has been multiplied a thousand fold since Darwin but the only the "Missing Link" so far discovered is the bogus Piltdown Man.

Originally posted by noobfun
which entire population?

said isolated group which is supposed to spawn the new species, of course. adequate genetic diversity needs to be carried over to avoid inbreeding issues.

not clear on your do somthing with it comment though ..... why and what would it be used for? besides unnatural selection of animal husbandry gets reult faster and you can guide it better too

a dog is still a dog, even though it's a far cry of its ancestors, which is easily demonstrated by mating f-ex. a poodle with a collie, where are the new species? crops are different, because some appear to be cultigens. the main issue with these is they were carried over from an uncharted past and we can't reproduce the process, afaik.

Originally posted by Chuffer

As I suspected most of what you replied with are assumptions made by neo Darwinists to fit what they want to see.

no one is based on big bones called faculas that are found on many dinosaurs .. so nto an asumption

one comes from research and tests on both varied aves and aligators, because bird digits were identified the smae as dinosaurs until embryology showed this was wrong, similar thing happened with gators too .. and as dinosaurs were related to both .... shame we dont have any dinoaur ebryo' to finally lay this tired old thing to bed ...... based on testing of two extant relatives of dinsoaurs .... this on is partially assumption as i stated no embryo dinosaurs to play with

and well when someone goes new bird traaadaaa! and a bunch of other plaentologists start taking it apart and identifying mulytipul bones as belonging to other pecies and the skull was orginally cruhed badly so chnace are in its degraded state you could put it back togerther as pretty much anything you want ... so not an assumption either the extra bones have been identified and thier correet species named ....

yes just another neo-darwinist conspiracy to use the evience to prove things correct ... .... ummm .... wait ....... is that even a conspiracy?

You still have not shown me the Transitional Links of anything that came before Archaeopteryx or even after,

dont need too sorry, your opinion doesnt count, especially after the misinformation above go find your own

you would also know if you reearched any of this around 3% of all species that ever exited are likley to be fossalised, that means we will probabily never know about the other 97%

and you dont need every single one in the line up to show it transitional that jut not understanding how it works or demanding things knowing you wont get them in an effort to stick with what ever delusion your basing this on

to be a transitional it doesnt need another species sat right nxt to it either side, it has a reptiles jaw, reptiles teeth, reptiles head, birds bone, bieds ung, bird wing, bird ankles, birds feathers

its a mix of bird and reptile making it tranitional, infact saying that is wrong as bird are reptiles, they are avarian reptiles ..... cadistics and taxonomy dont cha know

hey looks heres a few dozen of the hundreds of transitional forms (these arnt for you go find your own Chuffer these are for everyone else)





so your saying we havnt found any of thoe? or that you havnt seen any of those? or your going to pretend they are not tranistional?

Good going. Where's the "Missing Link" in Man, have the neo Darwinists like Dawkins managed to find it yet?

hgahhaha even know what the term missing link signifies? in fact we had the first 1/2 of the mising link fixer was found prior to the publishing of Origins, but the important second fossil ..found in the 70's

There are early apelike remains and there are hominid remains. Indeed the store of primate fossils has been multiplied a thousand fold since Darwin but the only the "Missing Link" so far discovered is the bogus Piltdown Man.

wait what? ..... there are primate fossils and homonid fossils ...... as shown above in the video thats exactly what w needed for the missing link .... way to not understand

and piltdownman proves nothing except omeone made a fake to fool science and they didnt have the technology at the time to test it ....

seriouly why dont you try somthing novel ..ready? quit the ad-homs and trying to disprove evolution, why dont you try stating what you believe and pulling out supporting evidence for that

chances are you cant as you dont have any, so the only choice you have is try and disprove evolution and then pretend that makes what ever you think is correct

if i say the moon made of chalk and you say its made of cheese, then we fly up to the moon grab some moon rock and test it, the tests show it not made of chalk ... does that mean its cheese? ... no

so present your case for what ever you believe it to be with evidnece supporting it and make sure the evidence is accurate and honest becasue i will check .. thats what smart people do they check things when they are told them

[edit on 21/2/09 by noobfun]

Well...

The HIV AIDS virus is one such example of rapid evolution and adaption.

Ironically, the Pope still professes that condoms are against creation, yet meanwhile, they help to prevent the spread of the disease...

Evolution is a theory, yes, theory, that has however been proven by modern scientific observation.

OR

The story that God took a rib out of Adam to make him a friend because all of the animals weren't enough company for the poor fellow.


I wonder which one is a more "provable" as a theory - you can't call evolution just a theory because there's no proof, then claim creation is correct, because there is no testable theory for that.

Just hypothesis is left over.

Originally posted by Chuffer

For years many believed the Coelacanth to have been extinct for millions of years, yet they were discovered off the coast of Africa in 1938. How do the neo Darwinists account for a fish supposedly extinct? (No doubt we'll see shifting of goalposts to fit their theory)

yes lets shift goal poists ... o wait lets not lets examine the word ceolacanth ..

is it a species of fish? ... no
i it a genus of fish? no
is it a fmaily of fish? no

so what is it? its a nonsense general term for an entire order of fish with 25 known species, 23 of which the ones found in the fossil record are now extinct an 2 extant species which are both deep water living (unlike the other 23) and are both not found in the fossil record meaning they are a relaitvley new species (well new interms of ceolcanths) or have always been a deep water species

its not a fish thought extinct still alive, its an order thought extinct found to have 2 previously unknown surviving species

so the 23 others were dead no fossils of 24 and 25, sorry wheres the problem? a reasonable conclusion really

en.wikipedia.org...

Another thing that has always nagged at me, Crocodiles. They are supposed to be over 200 million years old yet survived the so called Extinction Event that wiped out ALL the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So what exactly where Crocodiles doing that every other dinosaur wasn't

hmm well some crocdilians became cold blooded and became ambush predators able to wait for extended periods of time without eating, able to put thier body into a virtual spended animation ...... which still warm blooded dinosaur couldnt .....

which is probably why the warm blooded active predatorial species of crocodillia died out, the warm blooded land living form died out, the fully marine adapted ones died out ... and what we have left are jut a small subsection of how diverse in anatomy and behaviour they were

Originally posted by Chuffer
As I suspected most of what you replied with are assumptions made by neo Darwinists to fit what they want to see.

No, Thats what religious people do... they fill the gaps in with "god dunnit" because that is what they want to see...

What you are seeing are people trying to present the verifiable evidence available.

You still have not shown me the Transitional Links of anything that came before Archaeopteryx or even after, like Eohippus this thing just suddenly appeared in the fossi record.

Wait a second... the creationists ask to see a transitional species, so we submit Archi. Then instead of admitting Archi is a transitional species, they demand to see a "transitional link" between that transitional species and another species? This is splitting hairs... Suppose if we produced one, you would want another?

Good going. Where's the "Missing Link" in Man, have the neo Darwinists like Dawkins managed to find it yet?

There is no such thing as a "missing link". We can show that there is a high probabilty that evolution of man happened along the lines evolutionary biologists.

In fact for more than 150 years intense collecting by well funded professional expeditions have not yet yeilded any of the remains Darwin envisaged and Africa and the Middle East thought to be the most likely have now been thoroughly searched.

What remains would you suggest we're looking for?

There are early apelike remains and there are hominid remains.

one and the same. However, there are also species related to man that didn't cut the natural selection mustard... and thus died out.

Our bodies still posses many of the traits that would have been useful at one point in time, but are actually weaknesses in our current evolutionary stage.

Indeed the store of primate fossils has been multiplied a thousand fold since Darwin but the only the "Missing Link" so far discovered is the bogus Piltdown Man.

Wow... scientists have discounted the piltdown man for a long while now... why is it that creationists have a need to dwell on it?

There is no "missing link". Period... I could show you fossils all day that demonstrate that a slow change from ape to human occured, but you'd split hairs and demand to see fossils in between the fossils I show you...

The fact of the matter is, very very very few organisms become fossils when the die... Any fossils we do have, we are extremely "lucky" to have. This means, we cannot produce human fossils for every decade of the last few million years as you would like...

Fortunately, we do have some brilliant minds at work when it comes to anthropology, archeology, evolutionary biology, zoology, paleontology, Botany, etc etc etc.

I'm sure glad we have a layman like you to sort out all the "bogus" scientific findings of the last century... where would be be without that?

Here's an idea... Why don't you look at all the evidence, and come up with a scientific hypothesis as to the descent of man...

Remember, a Hypothesis isn't a hypothesis unless it is falsifiable.

I shall reiterate my question again, SHOW ME THE TRANSITIONAL LINKS? As of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species, not a single undisputed "missing link" has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earths crust despite the most careful and extensive searches.

This is a difficulty because if life has evolved in the way that Darwin proposed there should be many millions of transitional species, invertebrates with rudmentary backbones, fish with incipient legs, reptiles with half formed wings and so on. Indeed given a theory that postulates continuous random genetic mutation and hence a continuous spectrum of life forms constantly evolving to become better and better adapted such specimens should be the rule rather than the exception. Life itself should be boldly innovative rather than cautiously conservative.

Have you heard the story that the Neo Darwinists have used as their Holy Grail for many years about the peppered moths changing their colours from light to dark because of all the soot coming out of the factories in Manchester England?

The gradual darkening affected the peppered moth Biston Betularia which is nocturnal but spends the day resting with wings outspread on the tree trunks. Before pollution the moth was light gray in colour with dark gray speckles giving it a perfect camoflage against predatory birds since the tree trunks were also light gray. As the trunks became darker the moth "evolved" a darker protective colouration until by 1898 some 99% of the moths in the Greater Manchester area had the dark colouration.

This phenomenon has been dubbed industrial melanism by Darwinists and is described by the British Natural History Museum in 1970 as the most striking evolutionary change actually witnessed and demonstrating Darwins natural selection. This story if true would be interesting evidence in favour of evolution by natural selection. However, the story turns out to be not quite what it seems.

Initially around 1848 only a few specimans of the dark variety of moths were collected in the Mnachester area. It was assigned the postition of a subspecific variety and given the variety name carbonaria. As the tree trunks became darker the light coloured moths lost their protective camoflage became conspicuous and fell easy prey to birds. At the same time the carbonaria variety became better camoflaged and began to flourish. Simply put, first there were a few darks moths and a lot of light ones, the light ones lost their camoflage and the dark ones gained it. All the light moths were eaten leaving only the dark ones. Far from being an example of evolution or even natural selection the peppered moth is an example of a shift in population.

The same thing would happen to white humans if some disease killed us all off to just leave the black race unharmed.

I do not believe that mutation and natural selection together constitute the mechanism of evolution, nor do they explain the appearance of the multitude of plants and animals on earth. This theory states that all of the plants and animals on earth "evolved" by the gradual accumulation of fortuitous mutations over a long period of time. These mutations conferrred a "selective advantage" that accumulated over time to produce new orders, classes and phyla. Here are my objections:

1. Certain biological processes and structures have no selective advantage at intermediate stages of evolution. Why then, are they selected?

2. In many organisms, fewer offspring are produced than are able to survive. There is, therefore, no struggle for existence and natural selection doesn't occur.

3. In most past extinctions, it has been chance, not cause, that led to the elimination of species.

4. New taxa appear suddenly, not gradually in the fossil record. When these new classes appear, they are fully representative of their class and show all the characteristics of that class.

5. There is an almost total absence of transitional links between major classes. If Darwin were correct, we would be up to our ears in transitional forms.

6. There are no "common ancestors". Where are they?

7. Biochemical analysis has shown that the major classes are equidistant from each other. If Darwinian evolution occurred, the more advanced classes would be proportionally further from less advanced classes.

8. Mathematical analysis has shown that a random search process, such as proposed by Darwin could not have found all of the life forms in the time available.

9. Darwinian evolution (as of now) cannot be simulated in artificial systems.

10. An experimental proof of natural selection has not been demonstrated. Artificial selection has been shown to be a dead end street

11. If the DNA is analogous to a computer program, as many believe, then it could not have "arisen" by chance. Mathematical proof has shown that the validity of an algorithmic process is not itself an algorithmic process. At least one higher intelligence is needed.

12. The argument from design. Some say that Hume defeated Paley's argument from design but all he proved is that since Paley's argument proceeds by analogy, that this does not constitute a formal proof. Agreed. An analogy is only as good as it's ability to persuade. I find it very persuasive. If I were to find a Mac computer on Mars, I would not think that it had assembled itself from the native elements by a process of random chance. I would assume that it had been designed for a purpose. So with life. All living organisms appear to be biochemical machines that show evidence that they were designed for a purpose.

13. If evolution were occurring, one would expect to see some new phyla from time to time. All of the major phyla appear in less than 10 million years and no new phyla have appeared in the last 500 million years.

14. The number of phyla, classes, orders. etc. is decreasing over time. If evolution is occurring, I would expect them to be increasing.

15. Darwinian evolution violates the 2d Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that entropy (disorder) increases in all natural processes. The evolution of life from simple to complex is a decrease in entropy.

16. There has been very little change on a cellular level over billions of years. The basic biochemical processes such as cell respiration, photosynthesis, protein synthesis, appear to be very ancient and show no evidence of having "evolved" over time. The DNA replication and protein synthesis in the oldest bacteria is essentailly the same as in modern humans.

17. There isn't one single shred of evidence to support natural selection. as the mechanism for evolution. All that has been shown is that it is a trivial effect that can produce variety in already existing forms.

The above is not mine but it sums up what I also believe.

reply to post by noobfun


Ah I see what you're doing, you're being pedantic with semantics as the neo Darwinists have done. They discover a fish or order of fish and because it's supposed to be extinct for at least 65 million years and blows Darwins Theory of Evolution out of the water they collude to move the goalposts, nice and simple.

Coelacanth (pronounced /ˈsiːləkænθ/, adaptation of Modern Latin Cœlacanthus > cœl-us + acanth-us from Greek κοῖλ-ος [hollow] + ἄκανθ-α [spine]) is the common name for an order of fish that includes the oldest living lineage of gnathostomata known to date.

What they actually did was to disregard the Coelacanth and they've now moved the goalposts to another now extinct (hopefully for them) creature called Eusthenopteron which now holds the coveted missing link title between marine and terrestrial life. Oh dear, you could not make it up.

Originally posted by noobfun

Originally posted by Chuffer

Another thing that has always nagged at me, Crocodiles. They are supposed to be over 200 million years old yet survived the so called Extinction Event that wiped out ALL the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. So what exactly where Crocodiles doing that every other dinosaur wasn't

hmm well some crocdilians became cold blooded and became ambush predators able to wait for extended periods of time without eating, able to put thier body into a virtual spended animation ...... which still warm blooded dinosaur couldnt .....

which is probably why the warm blooded active predatorial species of crocodillia died out, the warm blooded land living form died out, the fully marine adapted ones died out ... and what we have left are jut a small subsection of how diverse in anatomy and behaviour they were

Not according to Wiki:

They are an ancient lineage, and are believed to HAVE CHANGED LITTLE since the time of the dinosaurs. They are believed to be 200 million years old whereas dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago; crocodiles survived great extinction events.

Oh dear, seems crocs survived extinction events unchanged for over 200 million years, so I'll ask again, what were crocs doing that ALL the other dinosaurs that died out weren't?

Originally posted by Chuffer
I shall reiterate my question again, SHOW ME THE TRANSITIONAL LINKS? As of yet no one has discovered a fossil creature that is indisputably transitional between one species and another species, not a single undisputed "missing link" has been found in all the exposed rocks of the Earths crust despite the most careful and extensive searches.

This is a difficulty because if life has evolved in the way that Darwin proposed there should be many millions of transitional species, invertebrates with rudmentary backbones,

you mean notochordal species?

The notochord is a flexible, rod-shaped body found in embryos of all chordates. It is composed of cells derived from the mesoderm and defines the primitive axis of the embryo. In lower vertebrates, it persists throughout life as the main axial support of the body, while in higher vertebrates it is replaced by the vertebral column. The notochord is found on the ventral surface of the neural tube.

Notochords were the first "backbones", as well, serving as support structures in chordates that lacked a bony skeleton.

en.wikipedia.org...

this kind of thing you mean?

Haikouichthys ercaicunensis is one of several species known only from the fossil record that predates any known vertabraic organisms that only had a notocord and not the notocord and spinal column found today

it is intermiediary between no support column and verterbraic spinal columns

fish with incipient legs,

Recent reexamination of existing Panderichthys fossils using a CT scanner shows four very clearly differentiated distal radial bones at the end of the fin skeletal structure. These finger-like bones do not show joints and they are quite short, but nonetheless show an intermediate form between fully fish-like fins and tetrapods.

en.wikipedia.org...

Eusthenopteron's notoriety comes from the pattern of its fin endoskeleton, which bears a distinct humerus, ulna, and radius (in the fore-fin) and femur, tibia, and fibula (in the pelvic fin). This is the characteristic pattern seen in tetrapods. It is now known to be a general character of fossil sarcopterygian fins.

en.wikipedia.org...

reptiles with half formed wings

hmmm ... this is a tough one ... will Mecistotrachelos apeoros do? a gliding lizard from 220 Mya?

www.livescience.com...

or Icarosaurus another giding lizard, or Kuehneosuchus which was more a parachuting lizard then a glider ...

Life itself should be boldly innovative rather than cautiously conservative.

yes why be conservative like these guys Opabinia

Have you heard the story that the Neo Darwinists have used as their Holy Grail for many years about the peppered moths changing their colours from light to dark because of all the soot coming out of the factories in Manchester England?

actually there already were a light and dark variety within the species, it wasnt it changing colour it was the fact that with the changing enviorment favoring darker over lighter colour the population trend changed from light dominante to dark dominance, and has now reveresed bak to light bieng the dominante colour strain

This story if true would be interesting evidence in favour of evolution by natural selection. However, the story turns out to be not quite what it seems.

really? ...seems it doesnt

Initially around 1848 only a few specimans of the dark variety of moths were collected in the Mnachester area.

umm varieties? they were the same species, the gene expression of the wing pattern show variation so wings turn out darker then others

the light winged and dark winged breed quite happily and thier offspring ranged from light to dark and variou shades inbetween, 2 light coul produce ome reasonably dark off pring and vie versa

in the same way if someone has 5 kids they will be of varied height some taller or horter then thier parents and some the ame height

the peppered moths gave birth to young some lighter and some darker then their parents

the darker offspring usually died leaving only the lighter ones to breed so the variation was based on lighter parents, when the enviroment began tochange the darker the offspring were the more likley to breed so the pattern shade variation with each succesive generation was bassed on a darker start point

it a demonstration on what natural variation of recombinante genetics can achieve when acted on by enviromental pressure

the carbonaria refers to the pattern expression not a differance in the moths, in the same way white or melanistic lions the more familiar tawny lions are the same species its only differenciation of pattern expression that seperate them

The same thing would happen to white humans if some disease killed us all off to just leave the black race unharmed.

well yes if the black race were able to breed them selves white again at a pace that kept with changing enviromental factors later when the changing enviroment deemed it an improvment to survivability

and if that disease focued not on caucasian markers in dna but on it ability to see the people it was going to infect, so you would also need conditions where it could see caucasians to infect them ut not could not see negroids(god i hate this bulcrap terminology but gotta use it sorry) mixed in with the caucasians

and maybe drag your nonsense out of 19th century's bigotry and failure of understanding, black white yellow brown were not different races, we are local variation of the SAME race homosapiens sapiens





[edit on 23/2/09 by noobfun]

[edit on 23/2/09 by noobfun]

[edit on 23/2/09 by noobfun]

Originally posted by Chuffer

Ah I see what you're doing, you're being pedantic with semantics as the neo Darwinists have done. They discover a fish or order of fish and because it's supposed to be extinct for at least 65 million years and blows Darwins Theory of Evolution out of the water they collude to move the goalposts, nice and simple.

sorry who's moving goal posts here? some of those 23 extinct shallow water living lobe finned fish that show distinct changes in fin morphology to include bones thats correspond to wrist arm leg and ankle bones while still keeping thier fin radials that are proposed members in the fish to tetrapoidal anatomical evolution are still ..... propsed memebers of the fish to tetrapoidal evolution

the 2 extant species that fall into the order Coelacanthiformes are not in that proposed chain, it not even propsed that ALL 23 extinct species were

theres no goal post moving just an inability to realise that not all 25 species did exactly the same thing, in the same way all the species of cat dont have the same stripes or spots or none retractable claws or mains

some species in the Coelacanthiformes order did head towards tetrapoidal evolution some didnt

What they actually did was to disregard the Coelacanth and they've now moved the goalposts to another now extinct (hopefully for them) creature called Eusthenopteron which now holds the coveted missing link title between marine and terrestrial life. Oh dear, you could not make it up.

except you just did .....

lets check the taxonomic claification for both shall we?

Coelcanth

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Sarcopterygii

Subclass: Coelacanthimorpha

Order: Coelacanthiformes


Eusthenopteron

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Subphylum: Vertebrata

Class: Sarcopterygii

Subclass: Tetrapodomorpha

Order: Osteolepidida



hmmmm look at that in bold Sarcopterygii ... they share this section of classification ...

Sarcopterygii - Crossopterygii ("fleshy-finned fishes", from Greek σαρξ, sarx, flesh, and πτερυξ, pteryx, fin -- "lobe-finned fishes", from old German krukja, "stick with end curved into a lobe") is traditionally the class of fleshy-finned, lobe-finned fishes, consisting of lungfish, and coelacanths.

so not entirely out of the running then .... what we see is the early coelacanths developing simple bones that can be identified to corespond to wrists etc, the line then splits and the Rhipidistia line move into fresh water and then we see that first step continue and increase in complexity until it gives birth to true tetrapoids

while they moved off to fresh water the early coelacanths stayed in seawater and eventually became extinct except for the 2 extant species we see today

coelacanths havnt been dropped or goal pot moved becasue 2 species are extant. the ancestors of the extant species still lead to the split into the Rhipiditia, they still evolved basic bone structure in thier fin hta would lead on to develope into tetrapod extremities

you cant keep calling goal post moving when no goal post have moved, some species of early coelcanthiforms lead to Rhipiditia, most became extinct and we found two new species we had no knowledge of and had never proposed that these 2 unknown were the actual ones that lead towards tetrapoidal development

Originally posted by Chuffer

Not according to Wiki:

They are an ancient lineage, and are believed to HAVE CHANGED LITTLE since the time of the dinosaurs. They are believed to be 200 million years old whereas dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago; crocodiles survived great extinction events.

hmmm dummdee dum

lets try researching a bit further then just the foirst page on wiki shall we?

en.wikipedia.org...

Crocodilia (or Crocodylia) is an order of large reptiles that appeared about 84 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period (Campanian stage). They are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria.[1] Members of the crocodilian stem group, the clade Crurotarsi, appeared about 220 million years ago in the Triassic Period and exhibited a wide diversity of forms during the Mesozoic Era.

The correct vernacular term for this group is "crocodilians" and it includes the alligator, crocodile and gharial and caiman families. The term 'crocodiles' is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to alligators and caiman, or even their

just becasue you belong to an order thats belongs to a super order thats been around for 220 million years doesnt mean you have

the super order Crocodylomorpha has been around for 220 million years the order crocdilia has been around for 85 million

en.wikipedia.org...

The Crocodylomorpha are an important group of archosaurs that include the crocodilians and their extinct relatives.

During Mesozoic and early Tertiary times the Crocodylomorpha were far more diverse than they are now. Triassic forms were small, lightly built, active terrestrial animals. These were supplanted during the early Jurassic by various aquatic and marine forms. The Later Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary saw a wide diversity of terrestrial and semi-aquatic lineages. "Modern" crocodilians do not appear until the Late Cretaceous.

many crocodyliamopha hows igns of warm blooded morphology, they were active and warm blooded and modern crocodilians still carry thi legacy with thier 4 valved heart and other structures

then land based ones were outcompeted by dinsosaurs and eventually died out completley with the KT event, the active marine crocidillia were also out competeted but held on again until the KT event, the then cold blooded ambush crocodilla that are comparable to todays crocodilla had several advantages in thier abilities to effectivley hibernate and go for long periods without eating that the warm blooded Crocodylomorpha of both land and sea did not have

and neither did most dinosaurs,

so while the rest of the Crocodylomorpha and most dinosaurs died off the ancestor species of modern crocidllians held several advantages that allowed them to hang on and survive through that period with enough animals to begin rebuilding and repopulating thier order across the earth

Oh dear, seems crocs survived extinction events unchanged for over 200 million years, so I'll ask again, what were crocs doing that ALL the other dinosaurs that died out weren't?

ummm bieng cold blooded, having the ability to low thier body ystem to an almost shut down ituation for long periods of time bieng able to go rediculously long periods of time without having to eat a they dont need to burn constant energy to keep up thier warm blooded body temperatures

and well its only the cold blooded crocs that survived, the warm blooded terrestrial ones all died and so did the marine speciaised crocs ..

Originally posted by Chuffer
I do not believe that mutation and natural selection together constitute the mechanism of evolution,

There's a little bit more.. (just a little bit.. honestly), but seeing as you are having a hard time understanding natural selection... I don't think it would be wise to more on to Sexual Selection...

nor do they explain the appearance of the multitude of plants and animals on earth.

Why not?

Your failure to understand the data doesn't mean the data isn't conclusive.

This theory states that all of the plants and animals on earth "evolved" by the gradual accumulation of fortuitous mutations over a long period of time. These mutations conferrred a "selective advantage" that accumulated over time to produce new orders, classes and phyla.

See, if you can explain the basic premise of evolution like you did here... than why can't you understand it properly?

Here are my objections:

I can't wait!

1. Certain biological processes and structures have no selective advantage at intermediate stages of evolution. Why then, are they selected?

Erm, if an organism has a mutation that isn't immediately beneficial to survival, this does not mean the trait has to disappear from the species... This just means the original "mutant" survived to have offspring... Or perhaps the organism had inherited more relevant genetic mutations from their parents... and thus, had an unrelated beneficial trait...

2. In many organisms, fewer offspring are produced than are able to survive. There is, therefore, no struggle for existence and natural selection doesn't occur.

Actually, you just stated that in many organisms, all the offspring die. (fewer offspring than are able to survive). This would put the death rate higher than the birth rate, and the species would quickly become extinct.

3. In most past extinctions, it has been chance, not cause, that led to the elimination of species.

Nah, you are talking about KT and the like? Yes, there are mass extinctions such as KT... (even those, the species die off because of a failure to adapt to the new enviroment created by such an event). However, 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct... that's alot of KT like events!

Pandas are going extinct... and its not because of "over hunting" or any other man-made situations... Panda's are ill equipped for survival... It is difficult for them to mate, they eat a highly specialized diet, and even then have real problems digesting their specialized diet...

Look it up.. you'd be amazed the panda is even alive! Doesn't seem like randomness to me...

4. New taxa appear suddenly, not gradually in the fossil record. When these new classes appear, they are fully representative of their class and show all the characteristics of that class.

This is a bit of a misnomer... first off... geological time is IMMENSE... gazing into strata, you're not seeing thousands of years... but millions in a short amount of space... thus, by saying something like taxa appear suddenly is utterly ridiculous... saying species x appeared suddenly in the Paleozoic Era, you're saying 290 million years is sudden...

Now, add to that fact exactly how rare fossils are... yes, we have many many fossils, but this is just a testament to the sheer proliferation of life... very very very few organisms become fossils... out of those fossils... many of them no longer exist. Thanks to plate tectonics, most of the surface area of the earth is fairly "new". the old pieces of crust being forced back into the mantle by sliding under huge plates...

5. There is an almost total absence of transitional links between major classes. If Darwin were correct, we would be up to our ears in transitional forms.

Every species is a transitional form... there is no "finish line". Every species you see today, is in transition from their ancestors.

6. There are no "common ancestors". Where are they?

There are many common ancestors... but if you're looking for living examples... well... as everything is continuously evolving... well, put 2 and 2 together...

7. Biochemical analysis has shown that the major classes are equidistant from each other. If Darwinian evolution occurred, the more advanced classes would be proportionally further from less advanced classes.

There are no "advanced classes". There are a few "evolutionary plateau's" out there, but these species are still evolving, just at a slower rate (because their selection pressures aren't as strong, as they've found their nitch).

8. Mathematical analysis has shown that a random search process, such as proposed by Darwin could not have found all of the life forms in the time available.

Not really... we've actually found that cosmic rays are much more prolific than we originally believed... A cosmic ray is a form of radiation, and we all know radiation can cause mutations in DNA...

add that to the errors created when "xeroxing" DNA, and we've discovered it might have happened faster than we ever believed.

9. Darwinian evolution (as of now) cannot be simulated in artificial systems.

Of course not... Evolution is dependent on Natural selection and Sexual selection... what you are suggesting is Artificial Selection... which can, and have been proven in labratory experiments.. (see fruit flies).

We also have living testament to thousands of years of artificial selection in our domesticated animals.

10. An experimental proof of natural selection has not been demonstrated. Artificial selection has been shown to be a dead end street

www.sciam.com...

Quite fascinating... a species evolving in response to our destruction of the habitat:

Less than a century ago moths of certain species were characterized by their light coloration, which matched such backgrounds as light tree trunks and lichen-covered rocks, on which the moths passed the daylight hours sitting motionless. Today in many areas the same species are predominantly dark! We now call this reversal "industrial melanism."

www.newscientist.com...

Mostly, the patterns Lenski saw were similar in each separate population. All 12 evolved larger cells, for example, as well as faster growth rates on the glucose they were fed, and lower peak population densities.

But sometime around the 31,500th generation, something dramatic happened in just one of the populations - the bacteria suddenly acquired the ability to metabolise citrate, a second nutrient in their culture medium that E. coli normally cannot use.

Indeed, the inability to use citrate is one of the traits by which bacteriologists distinguish E. coli from other species. The citrate-using mutants increased in population size and diversity.

www.sciencedaily.com...

Within 10 generations that spanned less than a year, the proportion of males of the Hypolimnas bolina butterfly on the South Pacific island of Savaii jumped from a meager 1 percent of the population to about 39 percent. The researchers considered this a stunning comeback and credited it to the rise of a suppressor gene that holds in check the Wolbachia bacteria, which is passed down from the mother and selectively kills males before they have a chance to hatch.

11. If the DNA is analogous to a computer program, as many believe, then it could not have "arisen" by chance. Mathematical proof has shown that the validity of an algorithmic process is not itself an algorithmic process. At least one higher intelligence is needed.

Its not analogous to a computer program... this is just what creationists say. However, it most likely doesn't help that scientists will explain it in that way as a way of "putting it in layman's" terms...

12. The argument from design. Some say that Hume defeated Paley's argument from design but all he proved is that since Paley's argument proceeds by analogy, that this does not constitute a formal proof. Agreed. An analogy is only as good as it's ability to persuade. I find it very persuasive. If I were to find a Mac computer on Mars, I would not think that it had assembled itself from the native elements by a process of random chance. I would assume that it had been designed for a purpose. So with life. All living organisms appear to be biochemical machines that show evidence that they were designed for a purpose.

Your gullibility and failure to comprehend these complex concepts does not invalidate science.

1/2

Originally posted by Chuffer
13. If evolution were occurring, one would expect to see some new phyla from time to time. All of the major phyla appear in less than 10 million years and no new phyla have appeared in the last 500 million years.

This isn't anything to do with evolution really... Scientists are in constant disagreement about phylum. In fact, if you ask 10 scientists how many phyla there are, you will most likely receive 10 different answers.

Perhaps we'd see more being done in this area if scientists could agree on a single set of phyla.

14. The number of phyla, classes, orders. etc. is decreasing over time. If evolution is occurring, I would expect them to be increasing.

why? Extinction is still happening. the idea of natural selection is that more organisms are born than can possibly survive...

15. Darwinian evolution violates the 2d Law of Thermodynamics. This law states that entropy (disorder) increases in all natural processes. The evolution of life from simple to complex is a decrease in entropy.

The second law of thermo actually only applies to closed systems... Since earth is not a closed system, this law doesn't apply. what you're suggesting is akin to stating that floating in space is against the laws of gravity... or wondering why your coffee pot doesn't work when its not plugged in... (earth has a constant supply of energy from an outside source: The sun).

16. There has been very little change on a cellular level over billions of years. The basic biochemical processes such as cell respiration, photosynthesis, protein synthesis, appear to be very ancient and show no evidence of having "evolved" over time. The DNA replication and protein synthesis in the oldest bacteria is essentailly the same as in modern humans.

DNA is the replicator. Life exists because chemicals came into existence with the ability to replicate themselves in the presence of other particular chemicals... this is abiogenesis, so I won't dive in too far.

17. There isn't one single shred of evidence to support natural selection. as the mechanism for evolution. All that has been shown is that it is a trivial effect that can produce variety in already existing forms.

Actually... suppose I was a predator that wanted to eat raccoons with striped tails...

as I kill them off... the population declines... now, if a raccoon is born without a striped tail, I wouldn't kill it off... now, that raccoon is given the opprotunity to reproduce... its offspring each have a 50% chance of inheriting that trait... eventually, we would expect to see a huge population of racoons without striped tails, because they've been able to avoid my hunt, and live to reproduce...

One of the articles I linked in the previous post says a lot about natural selection... I doubt you read it, but it does contain many of the answers to the "objections" you have...

The above is not mine but it sums up what I also believe.

You can believe anything you want, regardless of evidence. This does not make the evidence go away, nor does it make the evidence false...

Nor does it make your belief right or truthfull...

[edit on 23-2-2009 by nj2day]

Nj did a great job but there are two points id like to comment on that differ enough to make the post worth doing

Originally posted by nj2day

Originally posted by Chuffer
13. If evolution were occurring, one would expect to see some new phyla from time to time. All of the major phyla appear in less than 10 million years and no new phyla have appeared in the last 500 million years.

This isn't anything to do with evolution really... Scientists are in constant disagreement about phylum. In fact, if you ask 10 scientists how many phyla there are, you will most likely receive 10 different answers.

Perhaps we'd see more being done in this area if scientists could agree on a single set of phyla.

the very fact your selecting Phylum which is so high up the classification scale really doesnt make your argument,

Domain: Archaea, Bacteria and Eukarya (basically two types of bacteria and everything else)

Kingdom: Animalia (animals), Plantae(plants), Fungi(fungu), Protista(eukaraote bacteria), Archaea(bacteria), Bacteria(other bacteria)

so far its hardly what you would call an excluive exact reference level

Phylum: Chordate (anything with a spine) Arthropod( Arthropods are characterized as anything with jointed limbs and exoskeletons)

its hardly detailed stuff here no wonder new phyl dont appear often

thats like classing vehicles as one of two things,

vehicles that are pushed
vehicles that are pulled

and then declaring no new vehicles have appeared since the creation of the first thing with a wheel stuck on it, infact since we first put somthing ontop of somthing else and moved them with or without wheels

every vehicle is either pulled or pushed by some force to move it but with a loose enough deffintion submarines, jet fighters, wheel barrows all fall into those same catagories that are thousands of years old

14. The number of phyla, classes, orders. etc. is decreasing over time. If evolution is occurring, I would expect them to be increasing.

why? Extinction is still happening. the idea of natural selection is that more organisms are born than can possibly survive...

actually the numvbers of taxonomic ranks are increasing, our original clasification systems simply couldnt cope with what we now know is out there

domain
kingdom
phylum
class
order
family
genus
species

this was the original classification system

domain
kingdom
phylum
...subphylum
class
..subclass
order
..suborder
..infraorder
..superfamily
..epifamily
family
..subfamily
..infrafamily
..tribe
..subtribe
..infratribe
genus
species

so they are expanding, if you mean many of the classified species are becoming extinct faster then newer ones are comming along, well that happens anywhere the earth has gone through a stable period and then begins to change

some species get stuck in a rut and thier evolution either head the wrong way or they cant adapt fast enough to keep up and survive, after all 99.9% of all the species that ever lived are extinct

dont worry new species will come along when thiers a neiche to take advantage of or that they can outcompete the current holders

just like the vampire moths of russia, better average temperature has meant moth are better able to survive becasue plant diversity hant increased masivley yet food source were short and in a matter of a few years a common european moth has become vampiric and no longer mates with the none vampiric strains



ooo and ill just tag on if species reproduce slower then infants can and will survive then wouldnt that mean there should be a negative or flat line infant mortality rate? not the high levels seen across almost all species of animal,

www.bioweb.uncc.edu...

take a look at the first graph it compares infant mortality of 29 species of mammal, now if what your asserting that even more young animals can be born and survive then are already born where are you getting your data? with infant mortality rate up to 45% just in thoe 29 species in breddings between unrelated parents and thi is in captivity where predation and starvation are not even a factor

grizzly bears 1/3 survive to adult hood, cheetah in the wild its close to 3/10

hell even in humans in some places of the world infant mortality rates are up to 20ish%