Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 63 (9161 total)
0 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,585 Year: 2,842/9,624 Month: 687/1,588 Week: 93/229 Day: 4/61 Hour: 0/0


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   dinosaur and human co-existence
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 70 of 271 (559442)
05-09-2010 4:48 PM
Reply to: Message 46 by Buzsaw
05-09-2010 12:04 AM


Re: Reptiles and Dinosaurs
Your problem remains: why did the alleged Ice Age allegedly render exclusively the dinos extinct, leaving the other co-existing reptiles alive and well to flourish and survive. That is your position. No?
Exclusively left the dinosaurs extinct?
You forgot calcareous nanoplankton, lots of benthic life, many many Scleractinia coral, just about all of Cephalopoda, a significant number of echinoderms, rudists, inoceramus, over half of all North American plants, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and indeed ALL large marine reptiles* except for (some) sea turtles.
They all went extinct at the same time. If you want talk about reptileish things in the fossil record - then most of them went extinct and some of them didn't. This is because, trivially speaking, the cause of the extinction wasn't comprehensive and for whatever assorted reasons, breeding populations managed to keep around during the turmoil.
Different circumstances behind the extinction events, and more or less species and orders would have gone extinct.
How does Creation explain why most Cephalopoda went extinct, but not all of them?


* Disclaimer already hashed out in this thread.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 46 by Buzsaw, posted 05-09-2010 12:04 AM Buzsaw has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 142 of 271 (559982)
05-12-2010 11:12 AM
Reply to: Message 140 by Buzsaw
05-12-2010 10:59 AM


snake ancestry
The most significant of this I've repeatedly repeated already, such as the fact that both are reptillian, similarities of visible appearance such as the two examples of the respective types.
Other than 'scaly' and 'has four limbs' - do you have anything more specific to say about their appearance? After all birds are scaly and have four limbs too. And given that some dinosaurs appear to have feathers, as do birds and snakes don't...
Why should we conclude that the descendants of dinosaurs are snakes and not birds. How can we rule out that snakes are descended from non-dinosaur 'reptillian' ancestors?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 140 by Buzsaw, posted 05-12-2010 10:59 AM Buzsaw has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(1)
Message 210 of 271 (560668)
05-16-2010 10:21 PM
Reply to: Message 208 by Buzsaw
05-16-2010 9:59 PM


dinosaurs are not better than ammonites
It is a scientific fact that the extinction of the dinosarus as a group was far, far greater and more significant than the few Google mined (Buzsaw is purported to be the only quoteminer) relatively scanty specimens.
Unless you can produce numbers regarding the 'greatness' and the 'significance' of the dinosaur extinction compared with the cephalopod extinction that occurred at the same time, then it is not a scientific fact. It is certainly a more dramatic story in my view than the Ammonites, but drama isn't a scientific consideration - its an aesthetic one; Science doesn't make value judgements.
It is a scientific fact that the Tertiary Period began as the dino group ended.
It is not a scientific fact that the dinosaurs went entirely extinct. It is clear that many of them did, most of them indeed. But all of them? How could we possibly establish that scientifically? As Creationists are fond of pointing out - the Coelacanth managed to avoid leaving any fossils that we could find since that extinction event.
Sciences problematic claim is that the dinos were the only exclusive great significant group that became extinct and that a meteor hit likely caused the sudden extinction, leaving the other great significant groups surviving and thriving.
Big things died, ecosystems collapsed. Many things went extinct. Not everything went extinct. Some groups were able to tolerate the changes better than others. Large things fared poorly. The evidence seems to indicate that some of the smaller dinosaurs survived the extinction event. There is nothing here that is inconsistent from a scientific point of view.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 208 by Buzsaw, posted 05-16-2010 9:59 PM Buzsaw has not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7799
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(3)
Message 228 of 271 (560796)
05-17-2010 5:12 PM
Reply to: Message 224 by Buzsaw
05-17-2010 10:29 AM


Just so
Your science says the earth essentially created/designed itself, violating what we observe in real life around us.
Did you not notice the problem here? Science involves reaching conclusions that are consistent with our observations. There are several senses of the phrase you described above which do violate what we observe (things like planets simply don't create themselves ex nihilo), and in those senses science considers them falsified.
As for the natural history that various scientists have come together to describe....it is consistent with all the observations.
Naturally you think differently, you think you've found some evidence that demonstrates the inconsistency. You have hubris enough to think that your lay interest in the subject, along with reading a few websites and a holy book hither and thither puts you in a much better place to make a determination about what is and what is not consistent with the evidence.
So let's be honest here - the chances are that you are just another one of the many that thinks they know better. I'm sure you've been a genuine expert in one thing or another in your time. Something you spent 10s of thousands of hours actually doing not just reading about, but actual vocations.
Surely you are aware that there are things in your expert vocations (and for the sake of ease, let's not consider science or religious issues when considering this) which an intelligent but un-informed layman may think foolish, and that make up a common error for people who are new to the vocation.
If you Thatch roofs, it looks really easy and a passerby might think you are wasting a lot of time and it shouldn't take weeks to do it. But they'd be wrong no matter how clear it is to them that you are wasting time.
So can we please try and engage a little humility here?
One of the things evolutionists are often criticised for is 'just-so stories', and it is something we really need to be aware of. A just so story is essentially an explanation for how things occurred that is non specific (very broad and general) without any specific support.
For example: The leopard got its spots as African hunters used their dark skin to paint the sandy cat with mottles to make them better animals to hunt Zebras down in jungles.
So we need to make sure any story for how snakes came about does not fall into this trap.
Science suggests that snakes evolved from things like Najash rionegrina, snakish creature with stumpy hind legs that existed at the same time as the dinosaurs.
We both agree that the snake 'lost its legs' - the only question that seperates us is how.
You say it was a curse. I know how mutations and natural selection etc is meant to explain it I'm asking you...how does this curse function? What are its mechanics? What evidence would it leave behind? How do we falsify the hypothesis?
I'm not asking about the weather, but the mechanics which inexorably leads to the loss of legs and how it works in general terms. Otherwise it's just a Just So story and not a hypothesis at all.
Observed evidence in the real world around us is that order just does not come about by leaving things to themselves unmanaged.
Your intuitions regarding order and disorder in this universe are almost certainly at odds with the experts that study them. Just like the passer-bys opinions on how a police officer should deal with a suspect, just like the liberal that tells the soldier how to keep the peace, the taxi driver who thinks he knows how to organise a 100million people in a correct way, the mathematician who criticizes epistemology...
Maybe you are a genius, and maybe you are ahead of your time. But if that were true, you should be able to communicate something a little more meaty than you have so far done, yes?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 224 by Buzsaw, posted 05-17-2010 10:29 AM Buzsaw has seen this message but not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024