A Line of Skulls for Mike the Viz

Well, again only going from those pictures. Not a lot is missing. The only part that is obviously missing bi-laterally are portions of the maxilla (jaw just below the nose). And inferring the shape from what is there seems reasonable.However, why would a bit of one of these skulls being missing be of any significance to the discussion anyway? It is the over all picture that we are dealing with here. The real story is, of course, based on much, much more than such a cursory overview. The details supports what the overview indicates.We both agree that more specimens will be valuable. But given these, and the many others that exist, how much would you bet with what odds that the next 5 discovered within this time range won't show similary trends?Would you bet on the discovery of a 1200 cc brain case from 4 million years ago?

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'I hope that no one is suggesting that they think this acutally represents the sequence from one form directly to us.'

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Well, this honesty impresses me Ned.

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Mike, Ned's stance is pretty much the norm both for proposed human lineages and those of any other animal. You can't really know for sure if you are looking at a direct ancestor or a cousin.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

You're right, John. It is not my idea just what I've already read.BTW this is a bump for Mike. Where have we gotten with this?It is my impression that your request for transitionals has been met. Not only that it wasn't picking the very best example but rather a most interesting one, being, of course, US. I think you may remain not completely convinced given where you are starting from and think that there needs to be more specimens. However, it appears to me that you are clinging to the hope that the new finds will wreck the whole picture rather than fleshing it out with more detail.Is that what you are left with? A hope for future evidence that somehow is suddenly at odds with over a century of finds? That also has to be at odds with all other information. Isn't that a bit of a tenuous position to be left in?Where will you be if the next half dozen discoveries also support the big picture? How much more will it take?We are back to the original question. What do you need as evidence for transitionals of any kind? You have yet to answer that.Thanks in advance for playing fair.

It is my impression that your request for transitionals has been met. So, a few skulls (from the countless numbers that have been unearthed) are arranged in a sequence that lends validity to a pet hypothesis and that is supposed to "have met" the request for transitionals thereby supporting the pet hypothesis? Is this how the game is played? [The question is rhetorical, of course, since we all know full well that this is precisely how the game is played.]I think you may remain not completely convinced given where you are starting from and think that there needs to be more specimens. No - there needs to be more genuine, unbiased science ... we already have more than enough specimens to debunk evolution.However, it appears to me that you are clinging to the hope that the new finds will wreck the whole picture rather than fleshing it out with more detail. Why do I sense projection here? Rather it appears to me that it is you that is clinging to the hope that new finds will (finally) provide 'real' support for what remains as a poorly supported hypothesis (let there be no doubt, we are speaking of evolution here). One piece of advice : don't hold your breath!Is that what you are left with? A hope for future evidence that somehow is suddenly at odds with over a century of finds? Surely you jest? You are... aren't you?That also has to be at odds with all other information. Isn't that a bit of a tenuous position to be left in? "All other information"? Are you referring to the fact that no one has a clue (beyond Alice-in-Wonderland scenarios) of how evolution ever began? Is this what you mean?Where will you be if the next half dozen discoveries also support the big picture? How much more will it take? Funny, I was about to ask the same thing! How much more counter-evidence will it take before evolution die-hards will pack up and seek a more rational alternative? How much more evidence is required before those same people will concede that a purposeful Creator makes a heck of a lot more sense than natural forces without purpose or mechanism creating encoded complex design?We are back to the original question. What do you need as evidence for transitionals of any kind? You have yet to answer that. Let me take a whack at this : Without pre-supposing that there have been macroevolutionary transitions, nothing would qualify as a transitional. Think about this and see if you can understand why this must be so. When you do, you will have learned, Grasshopper... errrrr... NosyNed.Thanks in advance for playing fair. I doubt you'll consider my post as "fair", but it is.

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Joralex

Joralex
Time to put your money where your mouth is my man."No - there needs to be more genuine, unbiased science ... we already have more than enough specimens to debunk evolution."Show us.

Well, it'll take some. So far all we've seeen from you, Johnson, Dembski, Behe, et. al is "gosharootie, Buffalo Bob, it sure is complicated ... musta been one o' them thar designers what dunnit!" I consider it fair ... and completely content-free.

You mean, the "game" where evidence is asked for and then presented? I can see how you might see that as a "game" - one that you've consistently refused to "play" - but the rest of us call it "constructive debate." Says you. Show us some, why don't you. Oh wait, I can anticipate your response: "it won't matter what I show you, because your ignorance is invincible."They should coin a new fallacy for you, Joralex. "The argument from concealed evidence." Then again if it works for the US government why can't it work for you? And without the supposition that you can connect two points with a line, no two points will form a line. Without the supposition that you'll make the connections between different facts, Joralex, there's no reason to suppose you'll ever arrive at rational discourse. If you can't think your way from A to B, why is that the fault of evolutionary theory?The simple truth is, the fact that multiple independant scientists can reconstruct roughly the same transitional series from the same fossils is evidence that the transitions are not imagined, but represent something close to reality. But if you can't put 2 and 2 together, Joralex, why is it the fault of the people who are telling you it's 4?

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"the fact that multiple independant scientists can reconstruct roughly the same transitional series from the same fossils is evidence that the transitions are not imagined, but represent something close to reality"

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And, on top of that, the transitions are consistent with evidence from other fields (e.g., genetics). Explaining these consistencies is important to science, and I know of no better explanation than evolution. If some other theory explains these consistencies, maybe Joralex will tell us how.[This message has been edited by Zhimbo, 10-11-2003]

Did you read? What is the order of the skulls? Even the fact that they can be ordered is a bit telling. What evidence do you have that the order has been "monkeyed" with? As others have asked: what specimens? How many compared to even this very restricted set? In exactly what why do they "debunk" anything? Is it the fact that evolution has happened that the debunk or the neo darwinian idea of how it happened? So what is your prediction for the next few hominid finds? Describe what they might be like. Do you expect them not to fit into the big picture shown to date? I'm not sure if this has been explained to you before, maybe not or maybe you are a slow learner. How evolution started is not relavant to the issues of transitionals between geneara, orders and families that are taken from time periods some *billions* of years after it began. Why would you bring this up as some sort of rebuttal to the current issue unless you are getting a bit desparate. I must be missing something or be a slow learner myself. I don't recall any particularly strong counter-evidence from you. Fact is, my weak memory doens't recall anything resembling evidence from you. Exactly what do you mean by this? I see it as being one of two things:
Either you will NEVER take anything as being any kind of evidence for the transition between different taxonomic categories or
There is some definition of a transitional that I am not understanding. There have been a number of opportunities for you to take your vast knowledge of evolutionary theory and to tell us what you believe would count as a "transitional" that would fit the theory. I'm waiting for someone (not you perhaps) who dares to ask for transitionals to describe what one would look like. If it turns out the someone (not you perhaps) will not accept *anything* of *any* form as a transitional then it is disengenuous to ask for them. In fact is is pretty dishonest.

Presumably by "genuine unbiased science" you mean that any ocnclusions that conflict with your religious beliefs should be deemed "mataphysical" for no good reason. It's what you tried to do elsewhere.Like every Presuppositionalist I've run into you make all sorts of assertions that you cannot support. So you evade and you evade and try to intellectually bully people into accepting your spurious authority.

What is a "presuppositionalist " anyway? So far I'm not all that impressed.

ooo my first official function...edited out double post[This message has been edited by AdminAsgara, 10-11-2003]

Time to put your money where your mouth is my man."No - there needs to be more genuine, unbiased science ... we already have more than enough specimens to debunk evolution."Show us. I thought long and hard before this post but I honestly don't believe that it's possible to get you guys to 'see' the error of your ways - you are far too committed.

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The "more than enough specimens to debunk evolution" that I speak of are the very same ones that you guys employ to support evolution!

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You people cannot seem able to comprehend that evolution is built right into the evidence that is accummulated (part of its metaphysical foundation).

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To wit : suppose that a new fossil is unearthed. Tell me, what does the evolutionist immediately set out to do? I'll tell you : s/he will set out to determine where this new fossil fits into the 'tree of life' that has been pre-supposed (and fabricated!) by evolution advocates.

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Do I think s/he will be successful in doing this? Of course s/he will - who's going to say otherwise? The scientific establishment, fully committed to materialistic naturalism? Heck no - they won't oppose it in any way. Nor is anyone going to come from the distant past to oppose it. And whenever Creationists try to oppose it our attempts are brushed off as "those people don't know what the 'real' story is" or "those people don't understand science".

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As for the general population, they generally accept whatever the 'scientific establishment' dictates since, after all, how can they possibly hope to argue with the elite at MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Berkeley, et al.? That's all she wrote.

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So, please, let's get real here, people. Spelling out the meaning of my comment above : if the scientific establishment recognized its religiously zealous commitment to materialism - including the evolutionary paradigm - scientists could be more objective in evaluating what the data are trying to say. Instead, whatever is unearthed is made to fit the preconception of evolution. It's a no-win situation for both sides.

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As for those of you making comments about ID advocates (which include me, of course), my only remark is that I have yet to hear a single one of you satisfactorily derail Dembski's Explanatory Filter (EF)argument (not just here at EvC but anywhere). Although a great deal has been produced to support ID, I believe that the EF by its lonesome contains an intractable problem for the materialistic Naturalist.

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I personally believe that Dembski hit top-dead-center with his EF.

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Finally (on the 'skulls' of this thread), suppose I were to give you seven fossilized skeletons and told you that they belonged to the same creature but in different chronological periods. You'd arrange them in an order that 'made sense' given the pre-supposition. After you've done this, written a paper or maybe a dissertation and gotten your PhD in the matter, I then revealed that there was nothing 'chronological' about them - they merely represented statistically large variations of the same creature. You'd get to keep your PhD and the matter would be 'forgotten'.

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Does anyone here know how many degrees were 'earned' by writing a thesis/dissertation on the Piltdown skull and its evolutionary role? Does anyone here know how many of those granted degrees were retracted when the skull was discovered to be a hoax? For all I hear about Kent Hovind's "dubious degree", what of the Piltdown cases - why weren't those degrees immediately retracted from their "learned recipients"?

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That, in a nutshell, contains the essence of the value that I see in the skull lineup at the start of this thread.

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I'll say it again for emphatic effect : it is next-to-impossible to conduct true science under conditions such as these. What's really going on here is the promotion of a metaphysic - materialistic Naturalism - employing a few tidbits of 'real science' to make the ploy appear intellectually respectable.

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Hope I am being clear enough here 'cause you guys just ain't gettin' it.

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Jorge

Oh, you're quite clear, and we're getting it just fine.All your messages translate to ...you got nothin' but personal incredulity.Fortunately, real science is not constrained by your limitations.

No, Joralex, I have no idea how many PhD's were granted on studies of Piltdown Man. You never answered when I asked you on some other board a year or so ago, after you asked that same (rhetorical??) question.How many, Joralex? With author, title, institution - and year would be nice, too. How many?