Why Darwinism is wrong

"But my point is made by the fact that evolutionists only consider convergent evolution to be plausible, until recently, for the changes you refer to here, but now we see that in reality, convergent evolution, if evolution is true, can account for just about any similarity."No. Most similarities are explained by common ancestry. You gave one example (mammalian ear bones) where convergence is being claimed when it seems as if common ancestry or a designer would be a more convenient explanation. Is it not also true that this is one paper that has not yet been fully vetted by the rest of the scientific community? The researcher found one monotreme that did not have the three ear bones found in all other mammals. Actually, he only found a lower jaw bone. So you are hanging your skepticism of convergent evolution on the discovery of one jaw bone of one extinct monotreme species - that has not been fully vetted by the scientific community. Against all of the other evidence for convergent evolution and in light of your designer bias, this seems like an extremely thin reed to me.

Now here we have an example of the famous "unfalsifiable" theory.It would not matter what sort of variety that life forms showed--it could always be attributed to "intelligent design."This argument is really no different from the old Argument from Design. Notice how the planets revolve around the sun with perfect regularity and order.This is like saying, everytime I throw a ball into the air, it comes back down. Every single time. There are no exceptions.Therefore, God exists.That's really what this ID concept amounts to.

Except that does not falsify evolution. All that would change is the proposed path of evolution, and that sort of thing has happened a lot. It would be a duplicatable, hard evidence proof of the creation process.No one can "prove" technically anything in science, but it would be very strong evidence for creation, and it's a prediction of mine.ID predicts the discovery, or my form of ID does, of direct engineering processes.

Did you try the little exercise I suggested?"Biology reflects what we know and is fully congruent with what we know of design"How can you possibly say that? What are your biological credentials/training that allow you to make such a sweeping generalization?

The point is it is entirely an unproven assumption that similarities in different species are the result of prior species with similarities evolving into those species.That is a total assumption with no direct observation of that.That assumption governs nearly all of the interpretation of the data in the fossil record and otherwise, but even within ToE, there is acknowledgement that similarities could also arise independently.The fact evolutionists say it is more likely that they arose via common ancestry is somewhat meaningless since evolution is the exploration of a concept which is extremely unlikely, but is considered plausible due to the vast periods of time involved, so that extremely unlikely and rare events could work.Well, considering that none of it is "likely", except granting 100s of millions of years, the notion that is safe to assume common ancestry rather than convergent evolution for individual instances of similarity strikes me as highly dubious.In fact, we know similar environmental pressures exert a continous pressure on species to select for traits that emerge within that genome. It would not be surprising then for various reptile "kinds" for lack of a better term to exhibit some convergent traits over a long period of time, assuming the time exists.It is also likely that mammals with a similar structure, a jaw, would exhibit the same convergent tendencies brought on by the environment.However, the idea that the reptile can mutate into a mammal is really not supported by the data. We don't actually see that change. We see bits and pieces, so-called snapshots, but the snapshots and data are so far apart, we could well be talking about just about anything.The claims of evolutionists here are just not substantiated.

I still find it funny that you are using common decent to show an example of convergent evolution in order to try to disprove common decent. A riot you are.

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Was this a response to my post?On edit: I was questioning how you could be so sceptical of convergent evolution based on one recent discovery that has not been verified by other scientists?You have a habit of repeating "boiler plate" instead of answering specific questions. It is a little annoying.This message has been edited by deerbreh, 07-29-2005 05:08 PM

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All that would change is the proposed path of evolution, and that sort of thing has happened a lot.

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You say that as if it would be such a simple thing to do. But I guess it might really seem simple when you don't really understand the nature of hierarchical classification.

You find it funny for me to show you guys your own inconsistency using your own theory, eh?

Imo, it seems like you are misreading or misunderstanding the concept of "hierarchical classification."It is my understanding that evolution is thought of as not directional. So species could evolve backwards if environmental pressures dictated that, correct?So there is no goal which governs the nested heirarchy, correct?

Because I see no reason if macro-evolution could occur, that it would not produce the same similarities across a wide range of species, and thus the data would be interpreted as common ancestry perhaps when it was just micro or macro-evolution producing convergent similarities.So the base assumption that these similarities can only be explained as common ancestry is false. It can at least be explained via convergent evolution, and it can also be explaine, imo, by a Common Creator.

I don't understand your question.Whales are definitely mammals. There is no way that whales can reasonably be classified as anything other than mammals. The number of characteristics that whales share with other mammals (including genetic evidence) is too great to allow whales to be anything other than mammals. What is more, cetaceans and artiodactyls can be grouped together. This is part of the hierarchical classification.So it is no surprise that artiodactyl/whale intermediates were discovered.It would be very problematic if fish/whale intermediates were discovered.

No, I find it funny that you don't see how your example of convergent evolution falls apart if common decent is not true. It is a matter of dependency. It is quite funny to see how groundbreaking you feel your argument is. I imagine you will find some quip to respond back with. You go have fun feeling validated while the rest of us gaze in wonderment.

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Well, a lot of this gets into how you classify an intermediary.But my point on whales is that if evolutionists found out that creatures appeared to be intermediaries between whales and fish, then they would say whales evolved from fish, and that land mammals evolved from whales, not that whales would be called anything but mammals.They would posit the so-called intermediaries you speak of as having descended from whales, not the other way around.This message has been edited by randman, 07-29-2005 05:55 PM

That is exactly what they would not say.Many creationists seem to think that evolution is just a bunch of random facts that are interpreted in a certain way. Well, the evidence for evolution is actually a whole lot of evidence, no single piece of which can be arbitrarily re-interpreted without creating problems for the rest.In the fossil record, there are definite intermediaries that show the evolution of fish into amphibians into synapsids into therapsids into mammals. These have been reliably dated, and the order is consistent with what we expect. Then, dated much later, we see transitionals linking land-bound artiodactyls to modern whales, again reliably dated as much later than the evolution of mammals from land based non-mammals.The genetic evidence is pretty conclusive, as well. The split between lungfish and terrestrial vertebrates occurred much earlier than the split between reptiles and mammals, which occurred much earlier than the split between marsupials and placentals, which occurred earlier than the split between cetaceans from the other mammal groups.This is what makes the theory of evolution so powerful -- the data itself, in different fields, using different analytic tools, gives a very consistent picture of the history of life. One cannot simply overturn all of this by stating suddenly stating that whales evolved directly from fish, and the other mammals from whales. It would completely contradict the entire picture that we have developed showing the evolution of whales from distant lung-fish ancestors via a terrestrial mammal route.