Are there any "problems" with the ToE that are generally not addressed?

You mean "conversation", and no, I did not ask a different question, not in any significant way. In Message 116 I asked: And in Message 118 that you're replying to I asked: Moving on: I nowhere said or implied that "the area" containing Coelacanth habitats did not change. All oceanic regions experience considerable change over time periods of millions of years. The oldest sea floor in the world is only 200 million years old. Sea floor experiences rapid turnover as it is produced at oceanic ridges and then later subducted, often at continental margins. The sea floor and surrounding continental structures in ancient Coelacanth habitats of 100 million years ago most likely no longer exist.It was the Coelacanth's environment that didn't change in any significant way, at least not to a degree that would have caused significant evolution or even extinction. As has already been described for you, swimming ocean creatures have no trouble changing their location. Sea floor only travels at most a few inches per year, and so Coelacanths would have had little difficulty gradually modifying their territory over the centuries so that they were always in deep ocean at the right temperature in areas with adequate food resources.That this must be true is because we have Coelacanth fossils from millions of years ago, and we have living Coelacanths today. Therefore, survivable habitats must have existed during the intervening period, otherwise the Coelacanth would now be extinct.--Percy

Actually I did mean the word concentration and in light of what we contentrated on it was a different question. In these discussions lots of questions get thrown at me without noticeI understand you guys were saying the envirorment for the fish didn't change however I was told ocean areas received no change. No matter.Where is the evidence that the envirorment did not change so this fish could live so long unchanged to the degree it did?Surely your saying since its there therefore that proves the envirorment for it was there all that time is a joke? Please Percy
Rob

Ah, I see. You were trying to refer to something we focused on previously. Usage of "concentration" in the way you did will usually result in confusion. The word that comes closest to want you want might be "focus". There can't be direct evidence because the ancient ocean environments do not exist anymore, and there's no direct record of their existence. What we do have is the record of the ocean floor. Ocean floor sediments are a record of the environment above.Also, realize I didn't say the environment did not change. Of course it changed. Over millions of years no environment stays the same. However, at any point in time deep ocean environments off continental shelves would have existed. Well, let's think about this. Humans are alive today. And humans were alive thousands and thousands of years ago. It is therefore safe to assume that there were always appropriate environments available for humans since our species first walked the earth. If this were not the case, then we wouldn't be here.Now let's consider Coelancanths. Coelacanths are alive today. And Coelacanths were alive 50 million years ago. It is therefore safe to assume that there were always appropriate environments available for Coelacanths all during this period. If this were not the case, then Coelacanths wouldn't be here. No other conclusion is possible.And you actually already believe the same thing, Robert, you just have a different time frame in mind. You believe Coelacanths were created during the six days a little over 6,000 years ago. In order for Coelacanths to still be alive today, there must always have been appropriate environments available for them all during the past 6,000 years. Your understanding is basically the same as ours in this regard.The significant difference is the timeframe. The youngest Coelacanth fossils are 50 million years old, and so the period during which acceptable environments must have been available is 50 million years, not 6,000. This doesn't mean that there was always an acceptable environment off the coast of Madagascar, because Madagascar probably didn't even exist 50 million years ago. All it means is that deep ocean environments off continental shelves always existed somewhere. And probably the environmental requirements were not quite as strict as they are fo the modern Coelacanth, since the fossil record indicates the order once possessed much more variety than it does today.Edited to add:

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The horseshoe crab is much better evidence of stable environments over long periods than the Coelacanth. The modern Coelacanth is only a distant relative of the fossil Coelacanths discovered so far, but the common horseshoe crab found on nearly any beach is the same genus as horseshoe crab fossils of 200 million years ago. If the horseshoe crab genus had appropriate environments for 200 million years, that is certainly much more amazing than the Coelacanth order's 50 million years.

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An aside: we've already tried to make clear that it was never postulated that the Coelacanth was the predecessor of tetrapods (land animals), but it just struck me that the modern Coelacanth would be an extremely poor candidate for the tetrapod ancestor. Living in deep oceans is the reason we didn't discover it until deep ocean fishing became possible, and, of course, that they can only survive at depth makes it very unlikely that they would ever populate the shallow shore environments from which tetrapod ancestors would have sprung.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 09-18-2004 08:02 PM

These matters have repeated mostly and only what remains is as follows.
Oddly enough in regard to my quiestion about evidence you retreat to We have no direct evidence. Well there is no direct evidence likewise for anything in origins subjects. Its all based on circumstansel evidence.Also the timeframe isn't only our difference. It is the point that makes Toe claims unlikely. The amount of time you say that the fish still found a enviromental home is speculation and not backed up by evidence. Of coarse it can't be and there is none. It is unbeliavable to anyone who thinks about the subject out there in the public.Also I believe you still are saying since the fish is here it proves the 50 millions of good living occured. This is circular reasoning still.
Rob

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The amount of time you say that the fish still found a enviromental home is speculation and not backed up by evidence.

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As I related to you earlier, the deep ocean is a very static environment because of it's physical properties. There has always been areas in the ocean that are below 100 meters and stable in temperature. This is due to the way in which the oceans deal with temperature differences and the absorption of heat. When water takes on heat it becomes less dense and moves to the top of the body of water. This covers heat caused by lava. Any heat absorption from the sun is released when the water evaporates. This takes care of the heat from the sun. This is why the ocean is very cold (ie near 0 celsius) at depths below 100 meters in most regions in the world. This type of habitat has always existed and this niche has been filled by the coelacanth for many millions of years. Now, can you show me what changes occured to disrupt this type of environment world wide? I thought not.

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It is unbeliavable to anyone who thinks about the subject out there in the public.

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Again, who cares about the public. What matters is the science, something the general public has shown itself to be ignorant of. Science is not about what the public thinks but about what the evidence supports. So far, the evidence supports a very static environment over millions of years. Do you have evidence otherwise?

I'm getting tired of the vagueness.Robert Byers - this is a direct challenge:STATE what you expect to change about deep-sea environments. I will be awaiting your response, which I expect to occur shortly.

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"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

This is legal terminology, not scientific terminology. Remember that your premise is that science is not following it's own methodology, the Scientific Method. But nowhere in the Scientific Method does it specify criteria for acceptable evidence. And there's nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence anyway. Evidence like fingerprints, powerburns and rifling on the bullet are as effective at convicting murderers as eyewitness testimony. Uh, Robert, you've somehow managed to back up to square one again.What you should be doing is moving the discussion forward. Instead of stating that it's unbelievable to you, something you've repeated many times now, you should respond to the substance of what people are telling you. Thanks in advance! No, it isn't circular reasoning. The fish existed at the time the fossils were laid down. The fish exists today. Therefore, acceptable environments must have persisted from the time the fossils were laid down until today. We both agree on that. Where we disagree is that you think the fossils can be no more than 6000 or so years old based upon your belief that what men wrote in a religious book around 2600 years ago about a creation they could never have observed is literally true, while geological and radiometric data (in other words, scientific evidence) say the fossils are 50 million years old.By the way, the above about the Coelacanth was just shorthand. Don't forget it's just the biological order that includes both modern and fossil fish that still exists, not the modern Coelacanth species. No fossil of the modern Coelacanth has ever been found.--Percy

OK. Robert a few points that might help hereThe kind of selection that maintains morphology is referred to as stabilizing selection, this can occur in stable or changing environmentsDirectional selection can occur in constant environmentsRelatively little evolutionary change may be the result of large populations, low reproductive rate and individual turnover, stabilizing selection, little directional selectionand a relatively stable environmentBiologists are well aware of many lines of organisms that have undergone little change for millions of years, as already pointed out in this thread. This in not a contradiction of toe principals.I fail to understand why this fish should have feet? Its merely considered to be related to a group of fish that gave rise to land animals?

In fact, coelocanths may not even be the closest related group to land animals.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Apr 6;101(14):4900-5. Epub 2004 Mar 22. Related Articles, LinksNuclear protein-coding genes support lungfish and not the coelacanth as the closest living relatives of land vertebrates.Brinkmann H, Venkatesh B, Brenner S, Meyer A.Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany.The colonization of land by tetrapod ancestors is one of the major questions in the evolution of vertebrates. Despite intense molecular phylogenetic research on this problem during the last 15 years, there is, until now, no statistically supported answer to the question of whether coelacanths or lungfish are the closest living relatives of tetrapods. We determined DNA sequences of the nuclear-encoded recombination activating genes (Rag1 and Rag2) from all three major lungfish groups, the Australian Neoceratodis forsteri, the South American Lepidosiren paradoxa and the African lungfish Protopterus dolloi, and the Indonesian coelacanth Latimeria menadoensis. Phylogenetic analyses of both the single gene and the concatenated data sets of RAG1 and RAG2 found that the lungfishes are the closest living relatives of the land vertebrates. These results are supported by high bootstrap values, Bayesian posterior probabilities, and likelihood ratio tests.

What the public thinks about evolution/creation is of great importance to the establishment and the scientific community. If we assert ourselves they cry bloody murder. It does matter indeed.Your asking me to show how the stable envirorment in question changed. But i don't say it changed. The fish is here.
We're off track in the discussion. You guys are presenting a unlikely senario of static ocean to justify the unlikelyness of this fish having a static world FOR SO LONG.
You dop't prove (if I may use that word) that the ocean was static this long. You say it could of been but the great changes on earth from the Toe idea in geology makes it an extreme position.
Long lived fish in long stable ocean floor is to common sense unlikely. Anyways nothing is evidenced.
We've been around this block and the big picture is still the thing. Anything can be given on paper a plausible answer.
Rob

I don't believe such changes happened in 6'ooo years. Althought great damage during plate teutonic days.
Toe is requiring stability of fish by way of stability of ocean. Its so long to have a stable ocean floor when all else is brecking up and massive destruction and extinction that the picture requires a faith without foundation.
On paper anything is possible as saying there is life out in space or saying there isn't.
Time and change here however is unreasonable though in a most very most very strict way possible.
Rob

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I don't believe such changes happened in 6'ooo years.

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I'm not asking you about 6000 years. I'm asking you about several hundred million years. You know that.

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Toe is requiring stability of fish by way of stability of ocean.

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... in a given region in a given time.

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Its so long to have a stable ocean floor when all else is brecking up and massive destruction and extinction that the picture requires a faith without foundation.

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Exactly what theory do you postulate in which the entire bottom of the ocean breaks up at once? After the bottom of the ocean breaks up in a given region, how different do you expect this region to be than before it broke up?This message has been edited by Rei, 09-23-2004 03:24 PM

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"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I don't know who you mean by "the establishment", but aside from that, no one here is arguing this point. We're merely responding to your claims that what the lay public thinks about a scientific theory is relevant to its validity.Once again, what the public thinks of a theory isn't relevant to its validity. If you still don't accept this, then in order to move the discussion forward you must explain why you think this isn't true. Please stop repeating what you believe and instead address what people have been explaining to you. Once again you're repeating yourself. We already know you think it unlikely. What you must do is rebut the points that other people are making. You're responding to Loudmouth's Message 125, so a legimate response would explain what parts of Loudmouth's explanation you accept and which you don't, and why:

1. Do you accept that hot water rises to the top of a body of water? Why or why not?
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2. That heat from the sun doesn't penetrate into the deep ocean? Why or why not?
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3. That deep oceans are cold? Why or why not?
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4. That there will always be parts of the ocean that are deep and therefore cold, and thereare are suitable environments for the Coelacanth? Why or why not?

To repeat once again, Robert, please stop telling us what you believe and start addressing the points people are raising.--Percy

Though few and rare yet we are bombarded with the assertions that man evolved from an ape or whatever.Could this paucity also reflect the limitations of archaeology ?If true, then when archaeology fails to support the Bible could the Bible still be true ?Evos scream about a lack of evidence of Israel in the Sinai but the paucity of transitional hominid fossils is given a sweetheart exemption.This message has been edited by WILLOWTREE, 09-23-2004 08:10 PM

you're reading it wrong. what's "few and rare" mean? well, let suppose few and rare means .001% of everything that every lived. that would mean that of the human being alive today, we'd have more that 60 thousand examples. of every homo sapien that ever lived, we'd probably have a few million examples.now, we don't have that many, and that's few and rare! "few and rare" does not mean "damned close to nothing."now, in reality, we may only have a few thousand examples of anything remotely human. [edit] fossils of non-modern non-homo-sapiens, i mean[/edit] sometimes only one partial example of each species, but often a dozen or more fossils. sometimes, whole burial sites.the fact that there are only a "few" fossils does not mean they just made stuff up, it means we're not inundated with them.as for israelite in sinai or egypt, unless they're the hyksos, we have next to nothing to show they were there. a few words of egyptian origin in the language (proves nothing) and a hebrew letter or two carved in stone somewhere. i can show you a skull of an austrolpithicus, can you show me the skull of an israelite in egpyt?This message has been edited by Arachnophilia, 09-23-2004 08:33 PM