Where are all the missing links?

I'd be happy to discuss either of these systems with you, but let's pick one and dress it out first.What about bat sonar screams ID to you? What about migratory birds screams ID to you?As for the talk about bird lungs and reptile lungs, there is a big problem right off. This author, like so many others, assumes that bird evolved from reptiles, then looks at todays lizards and examines their biology.Birds did not evolve from reptiles. Birds evolved from dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have some features in common with reptiles, but they are themselves not just "big gila monsters" or "big iguanas".And, by the way, I googled "bird lung evolution" and the first thing that came up was this site:Pharyngula - Hotell anbefalinger BarcelonaWhich describes the avian lung with diagrams and a cool latex injected duck. It then goes on to show the skeletal ramifications of this elaborate breathing system, then shows the same features in dinosaurs.So, far from disproving evolution, this example is yet another startling proof for dino-avian evolution.

The only fun in designing anything is when whatever you are doing is subject to constraints. It can be the limits of your software, the characteristics of acyrilic paint or the texture of the canvas or the limits of the frame in which you paint or the hardness/softness of the wood you carve. Finding ways to achieve a goal within constraints is the challenge, the growth and the pleasure (which is why simply being able to purchase what you want without constraint leads so often to unhappiness)A designer who starts out out with matter, energy and laws of nature and applies constraints to each of them and then goes on to arrange these elements so that they form elbow joints, mountains, seas, aesthestic appreciaton, the ability to love is could hardly be described as being stuffed into a "boring little box". There is more to life than the mechanical workings of things

This is true.I did read your link. During that and some of the subsequent follow up I came across the usual "probably" "could have been protofeathers" " results are inconclusive" language that pepper such articles. Call me biased but my contention about missing links is that they should link to something concrete at either end is not satisfied by talk of what is assumed to be "some kind of primative feather". I looked up some other 'links' in the Arcies chain and saw fascinating artists *impressions* of what these animals looked like, replete with quill-like hair which is said (predictably) to be a proto-feather. Could it just be quill like hair?

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Which is why presumably, you're not a fuselage engineer. Flying in your bubble-plane would I imagine be prohibitively expensive due to the drag incurred by having a bubble large enough to carry the same amount of passengers as a 747 being.....well, very large Constraints my dear DHR, constraintsThat's the fun

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

Depends on which definition you use I suppose. I suspect the original defintion of the species (which sufficed for thousands of years) had nothing to do with gene flow and this variant is a case of making the defintion fit the theory. You can observe anything in the wild if the definition is made to suit what it is you can see. Without going to far off topic I'm sure it was as easily rebutted as this then you wouldn't get people arguing for flood. Would you? The Bosnians reproduced and died, they were subject to selective pressures (ethnic cleansing). Random mutation demonstrated? The genes they inherited from their parents randomly mutate to produce traits that their parents, whose genes didn't mutate in the same way, didn't have. Random means random. This example doesn't demonstrate random. No matter. I am not the same as either of my parents but I have their genes. Why am I not a clone. Is it that the deck is being shuffled in a wide variety of ways. How does this point to speciation? Less similar means not the same as. If there was a gradual line pointing to less and less complexity as we went back then we might be onto something solid. But that apparently isn't the case. The Cambrian fossils point to less complex creatures in 'later' strata than far more complex creatures below. I understand too that reptile-bird fossils have been found in later strata than genuine birds. The reason given is that the original of the reptile-birds lie in yet to be discovered earlier strata - which would kick the ball into touch. I ain't sure CF but as far as I can make out, it's not as clear cut as you say.Your simplification could well describe the process of evolution but as with much else, the devil is in the detail and that's where the evidence needs to be sound. I wish at times that my boss could understand the broad brushstrokes behind a project proposal but given the money involved most often I have to fill in the detail at which point I come to understand why he's the boss

Whether living things arose by design or by accident, there can be no doubt that living things have a multitude of parallels with the machine design world: levers, motors: liner and rotational, feedback controls, wiring circuits, chemical reactions, energy conversion, integration of discrete elements to form more complex function, sensory systems, bearing elements, linear and rotational, seals, valves, shock absorption (see aeroplane undercarraiges), waste disposal etc, etc...

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Romans 10:9-10: " if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved....."

No, it doesn't. Species is defined as a reproductive community. "Species" as a term of art in biology only goes back about 500 years (to Linnean classification), so it's not clear to me which definition you refer to, here. Not even the flood people dispute the law of superposition. They dispute the time frame, of course, but that's irrelevant to the point I'm making here. Regardless of whether the geologic column is a record of a million years or 180 days, the sediments on top are younger than the ones on the bottom. How much younger? That's not what I'm talking about right now. I'm talking about a pattern of relative age, not absolute age.Your position that the flood can somehow violate the law of superposition, and tuck younger sediment underneath older ones, is held only by you. It's patently absurd on the face of it. Sigh... It's like you're not even making an effort, Iano. Are you telling me that you don't know the difference between selection and mutation? Because you have not only a random assortment of half of their individual chromosomes each, but between 50 and 500 genetic elements that neither of them have. I can't tell you which ones, of course, because it's random.We know that random mutation occurs from studies of monocultures - populations of asexual organisms that reproduce clonally from one single individual. After even a few generations we find genes in individuals that the founder did not possess, and we find them randomly distributed.Not even the YEC people dispute random mutations. The scietific evidence is legion and unreproachable. Since it's not at all clear to me how we might measure "complexity" I'm not sure how your condition could be satisified. Moreover, the idea that evolution predicts an increase in complexity is mythical. Evolution predicts an increase over time of diversity, which includes diverse levels of complexity. There's no particular drive towards complexity; if there were bacteria would not still exist.In the fossil record, we do find a pattern of increase in diversity, and also indications of massive environmental events that have wiped out many diverse forms. The fossil record is a record of extinction, largely, and that's totally in line with evolution. The evidence is sound; the problem is that it's not at all clear that you've bothered to examine it nor bothered with the education that would allow you to see it in it's context. You confused selection with mutation in this very post. I'm not trying to make this about you, but it's going to be very frustrating to debate science with someone who substitutes arrogant presumption and sophistry for scientific inquiry.

Just bizarre. Since when is the 'designer' of the universe subject to constraints? That's what I mean about you shoving Her into a little box.To relate this to the subject of missing links: why would there be any links if every organism was specially designed?Why design archaeopteryx with feathers and teeth? Dinosaurs without feathers were pretty successful and birds without teeth are still pretty successful. If Archie was just an experiment, where are the other experiments? Where is the fish-whale experiment?It seems to me that a 'designer' - as you describe Her - would have left a lot of more-or-less successful experiments behind. So, where are all the missing experiments?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

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It seems to me that a 'designer' - as you describe Her - would have left a lot of more-or-less successful experiments behind. So, where are all the missing experiments?

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Well, what happened was that all species were designed by subcommittees. After the basic guidelines for life was laid out, the Animal committee made its designs, the Plant committee made its designs, and so forth.Then on the Animal Committee, the Arthropod Subcommittee designed its version of an animal, the Chordate Subcommittee made its designs, and so forth.On the Chordate Subcommittee, the Reptile Subsubcommittee designed its own version of a chodate, based on the basic Chordate design, as did the Mammal Subsubcommittee.Then the Cetacean Subsubsubcommittee, impressed with the work of the Teleost Subsubcommittee, decided to make its own version of a "fish" (although, being a subsubsubcommittee of the Mammal Subsubcommittee it was contrained by the basic Mammal Design), and a similar thing happened with the Chiroptera Subsubsubcommittee in regards to the designs produced by the Aves Subsubsubcommittee of the Reptilia Subsubcommittee. The Primates Subsubsubcommittee, of course, decided to make its own version of tree dwelling life (in consultation with the Angiosperm subcommittees, of course)....Well, you get the idea. There wasn't an intelligent designer -- there were lots and lots of designers, all contrained by specs mandated by higher ups.

I'm not sure this is strictly true. I think, to be pedantic, evolution predicts that life with fill out to fill the niches available. Such that, when selection pressure varies from niche to niche (and is on the whole not strong selection) there will be diversity. However when the selection pressure increases, diversity slows down or even decreases. Mammals are predicted to die out, not only due to massive selection pressure from humans, but from natural changes in the environment. I predict that eventually there will be only be single celled life on earth.It doesn't detract from your central point, but ToE doesn't predict diversity, it is formulated to explain it.

So, where is the fish-whale experiment? Fossil evidence please?

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People who think they have all the answers usually don't understand the questions.

Ahem.It would appear you, and your Muslim Creationist friend, are wrong. Simply saying that "evolution cannot account for x" does not make it so.

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A recent paper in Nature (11), shows that theropod dinosaurs have vertebrae pneumatized in a way that is very similar to modern birds. The authors have investigated the well preserved fossil of a theropod dinosaur called Majungatholus atopus and have found that the vertebrae possess very close similaritiies in pneumaticity compared with an extant bird (the sarus crane). See fig 1 below.

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Found here with about 1 minute of Google searching. Apparently the structure of the respiratory system of some dinosaurs was remarkably similar to that of modern birds.To continue:

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Detailed analysis of the individual vertebrae and ribs reveal a pattern of pneumaticity that is entirely consistent with the pattern in living birds - that is, the cervical air sac connect to vertebrae and ribs in the neck region of the spine, and in the thoracic vertebrae nearest the head; the abdominal air sac connects with the tail and sacrum vertebrae and the thoracic vertebrae nearest the tail; and the lung itself connects with the mid-thoracic vertebrae. This pattern is the same in all birds and is exactly what is found by detailed analysis of the vertebrae of M atopus. So it is not the discovery of pneumatised vertebrae in this fossil that is new, but the fact the pattern of pneumatisation is found to be the same as in living birds and consistent with a uni-directional flow-through breathing system. This situation is consistent for all known non-avian theropods, suggesting that it is a derived characteristic of the first theropods and spread throughout the entire clad of theropods including modern birds

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Apparently the avian lung structure is not as unique as you seem to think.Please, try again.

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Every time a fundy breaks the laws of thermodynamics, Schroedinger probably kills his cat.

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I was wondering what to make of the first half of your post.

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I'm sorry that you didn't like my post, iano. It was a silly example; perhaps too silly to make my point. I was also going to add what we know about the interior of the earth as well as the interior of the sun, but I thought that it would make the post too long.Be that as it may, it remains that we always use uniformist assumptions. As I said, what else can we do? We can do what some people do: make stuff up, accept fables and tales as literal fact, and then complain loudly how people are making uniformist presumptions when they tell us how wrong our beliefs are. At any rate, it seems that the only time people object about "uniformist presumptions" is when these "presumptions" are applied to understand the world more than 6000 years ago. It seems a bit odd that people are more than happy to make assumptions about how the world works in places that they cannot directly see, or at times that they cannot directly observe -- it is only when these assumptions contradict a preferred history of the universe that suddenly there are problems with these presumptions.You seem to think that these "presumptions" are arbitrary, that they are accepted on some whim. That is not the case. People have investigated the possibilities that these assumptions may be wrong. People have wondered what would happen if the radioactive decay rates were different in the past, or what would happen if the speed of light was different in the past. These would leave definite, measurable effects that we would see today. We do not see these effects.Again, I can only point out that everything we see today in biology and geology can be explained by processes that are based "uniformist presumptions". "Uniformist presumptions" allow us to predict new observations that would not be predicted without the "presumptions". However God created the universe, he created the universe with the appearance of great age, with the appearance of undergoing changes based on understood processes for a long, long time. I don't see how you or God can blame us if we observe what we observe and make the obvious and necessary conclusions.It is not my fault that he arranged for us to see stars that are more than 6000 light years away.It is not my fault that he created stars that fit exactly the appearance of stars of ages as calculated by well-established models of stellar processes, not is it my fault that God created a Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation, or that distant galaxies were created with greater red-shifts than nearby ones.It is not my fault that when the flood buried sediments, it buried the sediments so that higher sediments have more radioactive parent less daughter isotopes and lower sediments have less radioactive parent more daughter isotopes, and that different radioactive decay systems using different modes of decay all give the same radiometric age for a given stratum, nor is it my fault that all individuals of any given species were buried in strata that have essentially the same radiometric age.More to the topic of this thread, t's not my fault that when God created life 6000 years ago, he did not create any whale/fish chimeras or bat/bird chimeras, or human/bear chimeras. It's not my fault that he created creatures that neatly fit into a line between known ancient artiodactyls and modern whales, it is not my fault that he created individual apes and individual humans that fill out a continuum between apes and humans, nor that he buried their remains so that more "primitive" types are found lower than more "derived" types. If we find out that he also created creatures that are intermediate between known ancient tree dwelling mammals and modern bats, that won't be my fault either.It isn't my fault that when mammal embryos develop, a small portion of the same structure that gives rise to jaws in fish, reptiles, and mammals develops into structures of the mammal's inner ear, nor that God created creatures with bones in states between reptile jaw and mammal ears.It is not my fault that God created a range of creatures where their limbs are not quite fins and not quite legs, and the more finlike the limb the more fish-like other structures are and the more leg-like the limb the more amphibianlike these other structures are.If I seem a little impatient with people who complain about "uniformist presumptions", it is because I honestly don't understand what they expect me to do with all this information. They seem to expect me to ignore basic facts like they do, or they expect me to accept painful contortions of logic like they do, or they expect me to trust this lying God who created a deceitfully old universe. But I don't understand how they can expect me to look at all the evidence that exists, and the clear, obvious patterns that exist in the evidence, and then run fearfully away from making unavoidable conclusions.So, I'll ask again, what else can we do? Ignore facts? Make up inane theories that exist only to preserve a particular creation myth? Just trust that despite the evidence in front of our eyes, somehow our preferred creation myth is somehow true?Edited to correct typos.This message has been edited by Chiroptera, 13-Sep-2005 06:42 PM

So it is your contention that animals which share birds respritory features, bone density, bone placement and feathers are not concrete enough to be considered proto-avian.You think that the proto-feather is simply quill like hair.Clearly there is no further reason for discussion here. No amount of evidence will ever be sufficient to convince you.PLease don't ask for evidence if your only intention is to just discard it out of hand.

An interesting paragraph from that article: So, crocodiles, the closest extant relatives to birds, also have many features in their physiology that don't make much sense for a cold-blooded ambush-type of predator.