randman writes:
Percy, it is hard to be civil when, to me, there is a pattern of misrepresentation directed at me and other critics. For example, you suggest I think it miraculous that a species or subspecies could evolve in a small group. I have clearly never made such a claim. I would think you know that.
You remember the part of an earlier post where I said we're people just like you who aren't perfect? Well, guess what? I was right, I'm not perfect. Though I held the thought correctly in my mind, it was not correctly expressed when it reached my fingers. I understood what you said, and I intended to capture it accurately, but it somehow just didn't come out that way. What I should have said was, "You seem to think it rare, almost miraculous in fact, that many species would have a small population and limited range, but that is the case for most species alive today." I don't know how "many" became "a", I can't explain it.
What is it in your heart that sees evil and ill-intentions in every difference of opinion? Faith is the same way. Give it a break, will ya? We're just people, not evil conspiracists.
But the idea that a subspecies evolves, remains small, and this process repeats itself to such a degree that 99% of the time no larger forms ever emerge, is prepostrous. Neither you nor any evos have ever showed that this is likely. In fact, the idea that brand new forms would evolve, but never expand or branch out strains the imagination.
That's nice, but this is still an argument from personal incredulity, plus your list of possibilities is incomplete. For example, creatures from upland regions are almost never preserved as fossils, the conditions are not conducive to it. This provides huge regions that would have accommodated many large populations (and small, too, of course) over long periods of time with nothing whatsoever being recorded in the fossil record.
You seem to take as an imperative that the fossil record be complete, but it isn't an imperative. Not only is fossilization a dodgy kind of thing, erosion can wipe out millions and millions of years of fossil record (I forgot this one in my earlier list). Finding fossils is also a kind of spotty thing, since we can only find what happens to appear near the surface, in other words, what geological processes have happened to erode down to.
Now, presumably you guys claim before these whales and dolphins emerged, they had ancestors.
Ok, where are they?
I know this was a long, long time ago, oh, maybe an hour or two ago, but do you remember that list I presented? Twice? The one you claimed you had never seen before? Check out
Message 147 for the most recent message where this list appears. Your question about "where are the transitionals" that you keep repeating has been addressed. Multiple times. Please respond to the points in this list. Oh, and if you could mentally include the point about layers with their fossils eroding away with the other items in the list I'd appreciate it. Thanks!
Think about this. Get past all the generalities and really think. The pattern should indicate that just before these whales and dolphins, there was something pretty similar occupying the same habitat, but whales and dolphins came along as a result of a subgroup evolving into whales and dolphins, and so the older forms disappeared.
But there was not necessarily something similar occupying the same habitat. Sometimes this will be the case, sometimes not, and how often which is the case you more often than not cannot ever find out. The habitat might not have existed before (plate tectonics, uplift and subsidence, environmental and climatic factors, etc.). The new species might arrive from a neighboring region. You're constructing a single scenario and then sticking with it as if it were the only possibility, and then your drawing conclusions that anything inconsistent with your favored scenario is impossible. But your scenario is only one of many. I couldn't even begin to list all the possibilites. There are more things in heaven and ocean, Randman, than are drempt of in your philosophy.
This is a pretty massive habitat. There is no reason for the pre-whale to remain isolated and small.
You have no way of knowing that there were no reasons for the pre-whale population to remain isolated and small. Perhaps it was limited to certain depths and temperatures. Perhaps the type of food it required was limited to a small region. Perhaps there were predators in other regions. Perhaps they weren't isolated and small, we just haven't found the fossils yet. Or maybe the fossils are gone now, subducted away.
I can buy that some of the "steps" or changes happened with smaller populations and so no fossils, but we'd have to have perhaps hundreds or more species emerge for this process to occur.
Keep in mind that species divisions are classifications man places upon nature. In reality the population would evolve in a continuous rather than species-step-wise fashion.
Are we to think continually, right after one another, they would all occur in small populations leaving no fossils, with none of them branching out and becoming a widespread population?
Sure. Why not?
Why wouldn't they first replace the old Basilosaurus, and thus grow into large numbers in that same niche?
Any number of reasons. Perhaps Basilosaurus was better adapted to that niche. Perhaps there was an isolating continent or isthmus or current of too warm or too cold water. Perhaps predators. We don't know.
That's what you guys are ignoring here with your arguments based on generalities. There is an ecological niche that clearly enables wide numbers of aquatic mammalian species, and so we should see the process well-documented as one form evolved a little more superiour to the other and filled the niche, but when we look at this niche, we see an abruptness which does not fit with evolutionary models.
Your mistaking abruptness in the fossil record for abruptness in the event itself. In reality the transition probably took thousands of years, although certain catastrophes can upset the balance of things and cause species distributions to change quickly.
You can shout all you want and swear I am offering nothing based on facts, but that's bogus.
No, Randman, you are wrong. You are offering no facts that support your views, only arguments based upon misimpressions. These misimpressions have been called to your attention many times.
You say you want me to follow the rules. Well, you follow them. Quit bringing up creationism, or general concepts, and deal with the narrow specifics of topics and arguments.
Oh, good grief. I say, "Follow the rules,", so you reply, "No, you follow the rules." Could you get off your tit-for-tat kick and just focus on the topic?
--Percy
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