What drove bird evolution?

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I am a convert to belief in evolution,

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I hope you have more than "belief" in Evolution, that you have some actual understanding of it. Accepting something on "belief" only doesn't leave much room for actual understanding.

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because i now see it really is a huge miracle, and i still choose to believe in God.

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That's funny. I am a Christian, and I see Evolution as a natural process, not a "miracle."

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just to get that out of the way that i'm not attacking evolution, just trying to get a better understanding of it.

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Good idea.

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Someone once explained to me, that evolution takes so long,

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Nope. It can happen rather fast, actually.

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that it's really so complicated that anyone who claims to understand it doesn't know what they're talking about.

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Sounds like the ones who told you this are the ones who don't understand Evolution. It really isn't that hard, at least not the basics that most outside of the field of research ever is exposed to.

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Which makes a lot of sense.

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Nope, it doesn't. The process really is rather simple. A change in genetic composition is either spread or not throughout a population, depending on how adaptable that mutation is. That's rather simple, don't you think?

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Consider the time frame, and you'll realize that the factors involved in, and the events that shape evolution must ridiculously outnumber the small amount of nuerons we have in our brain.

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What gives you that idea? Do you have any factual information that supports this claim?

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To the question. Evolution is about survival of the few that fit the best,

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Or the many, if they fit.

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so improbabilities become inevitibilities and most evolutionary events become convievable to imagine.

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Eh? Could you elaborate so it becomes clear what you actually mean here?

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But what about the evolution of flight? There must have been many steps before functional wings, but then why would there be any selection toward wings? What good does a partial wing do? What advantage were feathers, or featherlike things?

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Actually, wings can provide all sorts of non-flight assistance. It can help you move, it can help you cool off or be sheltered from the cold. It can help you flutter out of reach. There is nothing that indicates that the first bird was able to soar for years.

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I remember reading somewhere that feathers develop on a different part of the embreyo than scale, which they are supposed to be modified from.

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I would love to see that reference, as it sounds rather unlikely. Surprise me; find the reference.

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Will somebody please tell me how birds came to be?

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Through Evolution.

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However your contempt to me is understandable,

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I have no contempt for you.

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With your miracle comment you are assuming i believe miracle happen without the laws of physics, that is not so. I know it is natural, but it is still amazing to think of what has come from a single original cell.

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OK, that's a bit different. Sorry to misunderstand you. That's what I got out of your post.

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Of coarse evolution is built on simple concepts, but in the large mass which life has replicated to, it builds up to huge complexities. That's evolution, simple working together to become complex and comprehensive.

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Ah, so you are saying that ALL of evolution has summed up to complexity? I can agree with that.

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I think my point does make sense, you know how long evolution took right? I'm sure you know our existence is a blink in the span of it, so i'm not sure why you so passionately oppose the idea that it's simply to big for us to completely understand.

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So you are not talking about the process involved in evolution, but about ALL of evolution over the entire 3.5-4 bill years? That really is not how I read your post. And re-reading it, that still was not the message I get from it, but I accept your meaning as you now state it.

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What i meant in referring to evolution as a belief is related to my understanding that we must accept everything on faith.

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And I disagree with that. Yes, as I note later, you are now talking about the philosophy of senses. I must insist that what our sense tells us is real. You can call that a "belief" if you want to, but I can not accept that terminology.

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The reason behind a belief doesn't have to be blind, however the fact is that you cant proove anything.

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I can prove the data that I directly observe.

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Proove to me you haven't been dreaming your entire life and that your entire reality is a simulation. Until you can do that you must accept everything you see on what you choose to believe.

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Now, THAT is a creationist argument. Sorry but when I deal with science, I am not dwelving into Plato's Cave and other what-ifs. What we see, does really exist and happen. I can not accept the premise that leads to the idea that everything around us was "created" 1 minute ago with implanted false memories and everything.

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And you really screwed that first point, with your final one.

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And a good day to you too.

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As you can see you first told me to understand, not blindly believe (i assure you i must understand something before choosing to believe it). And your last sentence told me to accept something with no explanation whatsoever on why i should. That would be blind belief.

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I am saying that the process that lead to birds is the process of Evolution. I am NOT saying that you should blindly accept Evolution without learning about it and understand the mechanisms and the Scientific Theory of Evolution itself.This message has been edited by Steen, 06-22-2004 12:27 AM

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About the subject of reality : It is rather important to me to realize that everything is about choice(however i cant proove this). I also choose to believe that what we see with our senses is real, but maintain that there are other possibilites.

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Yes, we could enter the realm of philosophical speculations, read about Plato's Cave and so on. On the other hand, for science to have any meaning, what we meassure IS real.

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I guess it's a kind of pointless point that i often annoy people with my instistance of.

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Likely.

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Mainly the reason I hold this belief is to support freedom, and that i (or anyone) am not bound by obligation to accept what other people tell me is 'prooven'. We all are free to question everything and find our own reasons.

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Certainly. However, that also is essentially philosophy, not science. Is what you know as "red" really what others perceive as "red"? That can be argued to pieces, but does it matter? In science, when the gague says 2.345, then that is the number, regardless of your philosophy.

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i did find my source about the location of feathers on the embryo, it is unfortunately a creationist article, and i cannot find his source for that supposed discovery. I however do not think he would stupidly outright lie about it, his source may be shaky, maybe outdated and resolved, but it came from somewhere and i want to reconcile it.

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I really hate to burst your bubble, but my experience with creationists is that they often deliberately lie. My experience is that creationists somehow believe that if they are not vociferously discrediting Evolution, then they go straight to hell, so a bit of lying really doesn't matter to them in the big picture. And that is not a fluke, but rather a consistent impression generated over quite a few years experience. So sorry to say so, but to me a creationist site is lying until proven otherwise.And I did take a look at their site. It is as right-wing fundamentalist intolerant as the worst of them.As for feathers from scales:
Dinosauria On-Line
"At various stages of development, fetuses were injected with a virus that blocked development of a specific set of proteins in one of their limbs. In chicken embryos, the webbing of the toes were not absorbed and webbed feet were retained.The lack of the proteins also caused the scutes on the foot to develop into feathers.Scutes are the thick scales on the top of a bird's foot (see figure at right). There are smaller scutes on the back of the foot, called scutellae, and scales on the bottom of the digits, called reticulae. Analyses by Alan Brush have shown that bird scutes, scuttelae, claw sheathes, beak sheathes, and scales around the eyes are of the same chemical composition as feathers, *******and are controlled by the same genes.******* The reticulae have been shown to be identical to crocodilian scales both in composition and their location on the DNA strand."Page Not Found
(Evaluation of scientific reference in Nature of specific study)Dinosauria On-Line

What nonsense. Lots of birds are more flightless than chickens, because they had no predators that they could escape through flight. The chickens, evolving under protective situations, artificially selected for traits other than flights are perfectly OK with poor flight.You are as bad as desotobul on the delphi forums.

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It's another square/cube thing. Weight is proportional to volume which is a cubed figure, while the ability to fly is ultimately ralated to surface area of wings, which is a squared figure.

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Which would only be true if the ancient bird was directly proportional to the bird used for comparison.So not alone are you very ignorant of Evolution; rather simple physics concepts also escapes you. Should I conclude that you really don't know ANY science?

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So not alone are you very ignorant of Evolution; rather simple physics concepts also escapes you. Should I conclude that you really don't know ANY science?

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Don't act surprised when you find your comments being ignored...

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Don't act surprised when you find your false claims and misrepresentations challenged.