Where are all the missing links?

Thank you, nwr. I think the evidence he drew from animal husbandry is often overlooked, though not because Darwin doesn't lay it all out. The very fact that we can make changes to our liking in domesticated animals was staggering when exmained in the scientific context of origins.I have often resented the mischaracterization of Darwin's work. As early as the late 1830s, decades before publishing, he began corresponding with the world animal husbandry--pet breeders, livestock breeders, and animal experts of all sorts.Rarely has a life's work been so methodically and meticulously researched and thought out. He knew what profound impact his observations and conclusions would have, and he was in no hurry to usher them out of the conseravtory and into the world.Herepton, it's one thing to disagree with Darwin, it's another to slander one of humankind's most original thinkers for that reason alone. It required an honesty of epic proportions for Darwin not to flinch from his central insights.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 09-03-2005 01:19 AM

And one of Darwin's main lines of evidence lay in pidgeon breeding -- probably because in pidgeon breeders have undoubtably produced entirely novel traits that definitely were not present in the ancestral stock.

I've just recently read this part. Darwin's attention to detail can get quite tiresome for casual reading Read it online here, look for the section head 'On the Breeds of the Domestic pigeon'

IOW, he had no evidence commensurate to the extraordinary claim. Ernst Mayr Professor of Zoology at Harvard University:"There is indeed one belief that all true original Darwinians held in
common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched.When Hull claimed that "the Darwinians did not totally agree with each other, even over essentials", he overlooked one essential on which all these Darwinians agreed. Nothing was more essential for them than to decide whether evolution is a natural phenomenon or something controlled by God. The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin's theories." One Long Argument (1991) p.99Herepton

Agreed.And the reason is because the fossil record clearly supports sudden creation and not speciation.If speciation were true the unbiased snapshots the record preserves would show the theoretical necessity of ToE. Everyone agrees species change slightly over time, extrapolating, or more accurately - assuming this accounts for big changes is driven by worldview needs.You can assume all you want - this is fine, but assumptions are not evidence. Creationists say if we take the evidence at face observable value the fossil record supports sudden creation and they are correct based on the evidence alone minus assumptions.We have already agreed the fossil record does not support ToE, therefore your theory, thus far, admitted by you is supported by philosophically driven assumptions. I suggest you go back to the drawing board and try again. Offering explanations not supported or observed in the actual evidence is tantamount to "quote mining nature."Your opinion about certain species is not evidence of relationship between them except by assumption. The evidence we have preserved in the fossil record supports a contrary theory. Species only mate with like species, except when forced to in a lab setting. The offspring produced is always sterile.The reproduction mechanism emits a scent that only attracts the sperm cell it was designed to attract. These are uncrossable barriers, unless of course you introduce a little hocus pocus. But suppose a little hocus pocus is assumed of which you have shown yourself open to, the subsequent random genetic mutation is still stranded without a mate of the opposite sex, unless of course, by some miracle another random genetic mutation somehow produces a mate in the same time and place and they somehow find each other in the wild.In summation:Your speciation theory is the misuse of logic called rhetoric, or more accurately - fantasy denying the reality and facts of science.By all means do not give up as what is true has no fear of falsification attempts if it is really true. The abandonment of substantiating even a skeletal chain of ancestry, which said chain is a logical prediction for a evolutionary theory, is because after searching for them high and low the world over: none could be found.But the lack of this evidence is being hand-waved away, if not conspicuously yawned at.To all honest objective scientists this absence of evidence is damning, unless of course ones starting premises are untouchable and off the table. In science - everything is on the table, eligible for falsification, that which is off the table is of religious nature. Rahvin:Evolution has nothing to do with Genesis. To think that Evolution's true purpose is to refute the Bible is simply dumb. Evolution refutes the creation myths of the Hindu religion and those of Native Americans and any other creation myth just as strongly. But it does so not out of spite for religion. Evolution exists because scientists seek the truth as presented by evidence. The fact that religion got it wrong is irrelevant.Herepton:Being a Darwinist your opinion here is very predictable. The arguments you presented does not justify the opinion, but nontheless you have a right to it anyway.Herepton

When offering quotes it is appropriate to offer the source in which the quote is to be found. (Note: this must be a source directly from Mayr}

Welcome to the boards, I see you are coming out of the box strong. Good for you.I hope my earlier post about Darwin answered your questions, since you didn't reply to it, but instead to the others.I see from this current post that you've made a few logical mistakes that we've seen here before.First, you've asserted that Darwin had "no evidence for his theory" and implied that this somehow negates the theory.Obviously, as was seen in my post, there was a great deal of evidence both in and out of the fossil record for Darwin's theory. But, let's assume for the sake of argument that Darwin simply had come up with this theory in an empty room without looking at any evidence. Would that, in and of itself, mean the theory is incorrect? No. Theoretical physicists are frequently coming up with theories which prove mathematically possible, but for which we lack the technology to even test. Are these theories therefore "false"? No. That judgement is left up to the evidence.Second, you're using the term species, but without giving us an understanding of what you mean by the word. Some people take species to mean "two animals which can not interbreed to produce viable offspring" others use species in terms of the classification system, still others use species in a much broader term (ie refering to all the different jumping spiders as a single species).It's easy to mix these terms up. For example, you imply in your post that two different species can not interbreed. If, by your definition of species, you mean two animals which can not interbreed, then your statement is merely a reiteration of your definition.However, what the statement seems to imply is that you believe this to be true in the sense of species within the classification system. This, however, is not correct. Asian jungle cats, for example, are a different "species" by classification than the common house cat. However, these two species can interbreed successfully. I'll be happy to give you a link to photos of some very pretty 1/2 breeds, 1/4 breeds, 1/8 breeds.It's easy to mix up the terms when making arguments, so it often helps to be very specific with what you are saying.Third, you've got this quote in there: This boggles me. What evidence are you refering to specifically and how does it support sudden creation?Additionally, it may help if you explain which version of Creationism you are arguing for? Christian Young Earth (Flood) Creationism? Christian Old Earth Creationism? Babylonian Creationism? Aztec? Norse? We need to understand which belief system you are saying the facts support before we can understand how they support it.Next point, on your reply to this quote: I think you've misunderstood the original posters point. I took it to mean that evolution as a theory would still hold up even if there were no fossils anywhere in the world.As it stands, there happen to be quite a few, and they overwhelmingly agree with the theory of evolution. But, if you disagree with this, I'd be happy to hear your point of view (see notes above to get said point across).Finally, in regards to you final point (which is also reflected in your previous post) -The Theory of Evolution simply states what is happening in the natural world. There are people who support ToE, but do not support abiogenesis. In other words, there is not a conflict between the belief system that God set the ball in motion and the Theory of Evolution. In fact, this is the position of the Catholic Church.It is true that many (I'll even go so far as to say most) supporters of the ToE do believe in abiogenesis. However, I would doubt that they themselves would try and argue "scientifically" against you if you suggested that God was the one who hit the primordial ooze with the spark that brought about life.Hope that clears some stuff up, look forward to seeing more posts from you. You seem very articulate

Citation please.There are two problems with using this to support your claim about what motivated Darwin.

1. At best it is hearsay, since it does not come direct from Darwin. But it is not even hearsay, for Mayr was not born until after Darwin's death, so he could not have heard that from Darwin.
2. There is a question on what Mayr intended there. Was Mayr saying that the Darwinists were first opposed to creationism, and supported evolution only because it was an alternative, or was he saying that the Darwinists supported versions of evolution on the evidence, and as a result came to believe creationism to be wrong. I expect Mayr intended the second of these. Perhaps with a full citation we could check the context to see if that gives further hints on what Mayr intended.

There are similar problems in the way you are using your second quote, although you at least provided a citation in that case.

You quote Rahvin as saying "Evolution is not based on the fossil record in any way."You later say "We have already agreed the fossil record does not support ToE, ..."Whoa! Where is that agreement?Certainly the statement you quote from Rahvin does not imply your own assertion of agreement. I won't try to put words in Rahvin's mouth. For myself, I certainly belief that the fossil record supports ToE, even though I agree that the theory was not based on the fossil record..

Observation. Specifically, observations of island life made during his travels aboard the HMS Beagle. Yes, it did. Hundreds are missing. How do you go from that to what you said? How do you go from "hundreds of missing links" to "massively missing?" Did you read the pages I posted with the transitional links we have? You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but like all scientific theories, evolution's foundation is the evidence of observation and experiment, and its confirmation is the vast preponderance of useful work accomplished as a direct result of its explanitory power.

Herepton writes:

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There isn't any secret about this. You can find it in "The Origin of Species". His main evidence was experience with artificial selection, and observation of closely related species (in the sense of the Linneaus systematization) that were adapted to slightly different niches.

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IOW, he had no evidence commensurate to the extraordinary claim.

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You have clearly never read Origin of Species or Descent of Man. These books are, as Modulous pointed out, quite tedious because they are chock full of very detailed evidence for his theory of evolution. Two entire books full of extraordinary evidence.-

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And the reason is because the fossil record clearly supports sudden creation and not speciation.

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This is false.-

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Everyone agrees species change slightly over time, extrapolating, or more accurately - assuming this accounts for big changes is driven by worldview needs.

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This is false. There is no known mechanism that would prevent "microevolution" from producing "macroevolution". To assume that "microevolution" cannot produce "macroevolution without a mechanism to prevent it, especially with the huge amount of actual evidence that "macroevolution" has occurred is a mind-boggling example of denial that can only be driven by "worldview needs".-

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Offering explanations not supported or observed in the actual evidence is tantamount to "quote mining nature."

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I suppose that this might be true, but seeing the huge amount of excellent evidence in favor of the theory of evolution, it is irrelevant to this discussion.-

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Species only mate with like species, except when forced to in a lab setting.

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Since the theory of evolution does not require otherwise, this is irrelevant to the discussion.This is like saying that since French speakers can only communicate with other French speakers the Romance languages could not have evolved from Latin. Do you see the error here?-

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The abandonment of substantiating even a skeletal chain of ancestry, which said chain is a logical prediction for a evolutionary theory, is because after searching for them high and low the world over: none could be found.

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Quite a few examples of transitionals and even "chains" are well-known, at least to non-creationists. Whatever the defects of the fossil record in Darwin's time, the fossil record is much more complete now. Even though the fossil record is unnecessary to the theory of evolution (since there are many other lines of evidence that show beyond a doubt that common descent must be true), it is true that the fossil record is extremely good evidence for the theory of evolution.-

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To all honest objective scientists this absence of evidence is damning, unless of course ones starting premises are untouchable and off the table.

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I realize that you find it emotionally necessary to hold onto this one particular creation myth. I don't really know why, and I suspect that even if I did know why I still wouldn't completely understand it. Nonetheless, the facts are what they are, even if you choose not to recognize this. The evidence exists, despite what you chose to believe. And the evidence that exists really only points to one logical conclusion, whatever you choose to accept.

This is a great idea, Chiroptera! I'd be very interested in seeing the results of this.I wonder if there might be a way to conduct such an experiment right here... well, not here but in a thread of its own. Would it be possible, say, to exploit the post-specific reply function somehow to create a thread with "branching" replies?I suppose a written forum doesn't really lend itself well to such an exercise, as the whole point of the game is to try to remember what you've been told and accurately relay it to the next person.Still, I wonder if something similar to Charles Knight's invisible post script could be incorporated in just that one thread, such that participants could only see the post they're replying to. It could run for whatever length people wish and, at the conclusion, the entire "tree" could be made visible to all participants.It would, of course, need to be assured that everyone was relaying the message without referring back to the post, and so would require the total honesty of all involved.The numbers required could be a problem, though. With the number of recipients doubling every time, it would quickly become huge, though I suppose participants could rotate "branches" or something once they become numerous enough. In this case, the onus on the participants would be to disregard any previous messages they may have seen and always attempt to relay only the current message and nothing else.Of course, in a single thread, at the rate of increase proposed, even the 300 post limit would allow for less than ten steps on each branch. Still, even that should give us enough for some interesting comparisons, I think.I must admit, though, that the more I think about this the less feasible it seems on a written forum. That's a shame. In principle, I think it's a terrific idea, and I'd love to see the results of it. It would be well worth doing, in my opinion, if there is some realistic means of executing it.Any thoughts? Can anyone think of a practical way of doing this on a written forum?

I don't know that this would prove anything. After all, the layman has a phone in his house and sees a phone in his friends house. He can see "telephone poles" (clearly misnamed) and "telephone lines" (just as misleading).But no one has been able to show that there is anything specifically connecting any one phone to any other phone.Sure, you can show they are all tied into some strange "network" of phone lines, but to use that to prove that any phone is connected to any other is just ridiculous.Clearly, the evidence supports only one theory.There was this really big snowstorm in the not to distant past. When the flakes fell, so did the telephones. Simple as that.Prove me wrong.By the way, I discount any so called "evidence" you might present out of hand.

Is the question, can one find the missing-links if the data was spread into balanced trees's structure?? IE, that ordered input (only one person in the chain to the next which unbalances a tree), is put instead into red/black-2,3,4 trees instead??If so I would have to say that one will not be able to reconstruct the message (missing link) as I have noticed (in bovine reproduction) at least embryologically that the strucutre is to internalize the links cellularly rather than rotate to an outside. I suspect this applies phylogenetically when body size is allometrically contained in the same cell mass.1
10
0110
01100110
0101101010
etc or the opposite way (one has to notice that the symbol shape and hence difference of left and right does not matter) but by now the economics of cell block enterThe advantages of IT can not find the anatomy!

Hmm. I see what you mean by feasibility. Ten generations would require more than a thousand people. I've never actually played telephone myself -- how many generations do you need to get a significant difference from the original message?I wonder if a written version would work -- would writing the message down make the person less prone to make mistakes in the exact message? Especially since they can copy the message exactly while they are writing it down. Maybe it would work if they would only read the message once, and then relay it from memory the next day.But it would be cool if the people would write down their message immediately after they relay. Then we would have a "fossil record" of the message. I wonder if it would be possible to reconstruct earlier messages just from the existing variations, and then compare them to the actual written "fossils"?Edited to add:You know where this could be done? A large university that teaches intro biology to large lecture halls, with several hundred students in each section. Several sections might be enough students. Then this could be one of the laboratory exercises. Anyone here teach biology at a large university?This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 06-Sep-2005 12:08 AM