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Author Topic:   New abiogenesis news article 4/12/02
Bart007
Inactive Member


Message 62 of 89 (29812)
01-21-2003 8:28 PM
Reply to: Message 54 by thousands_not_billions
01-20-2003 10:36 PM


Hello Thousand_not_Billions.
I have been reading your posts and you have conducted yourself excellently and have provided legitmate arguments on behalf of Creation.
As is customary in these debates, your evolutionists opponents have no science to offer on behalf of evolution, only ad hominem attacks on Creationists and fantastic stories to fill in what science fails to provide for them.
I encourage you to stand firm in your convictions because the sciences know nothing about evolution.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 54 by thousands_not_billions, posted 01-20-2003 10:36 PM thousands_not_billions has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 63 by thousands_not_billions, posted 01-21-2003 8:32 PM Bart007 has not replied

Bart007
Inactive Member


Message 66 of 89 (29825)
01-21-2003 11:04 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by Quetzal
01-21-2003 6:39 AM


Evolutionist and Professor G.A. Kerkut stated in his book 'Implications of Evolution', concerning the horse series:
"The evolution of the horse provides one of the keystones in the teaching of evolutionary doctrine, though the actual story depends on who is telling it and when the story is being told. In fact, one could easily discuss the evolution of the story of the evolution of the horse."
Taking the entire skeleton into account, the Hyracotherium is a lot closer in appearance to the modern Hyrax than it is the the horse. Like Hyracotherium, the Hyrax has four toes on the two front feet and three on the hind legs. The two are about the same size in height and have the same number of ribs. Evolutionists like to show sketches of Hyrcotherium standing like a horse, but sketches could just aas well be drawn to show hyracotherium in the same posture as a modern day hyrax as the legs of both are very similar. It is possible that Hyracotherium is unrelated to the modern day Hyrax, but then, it would then be even more possible that it is not ancestral to the modern day horse. Especially since it coexist in the fossil record with a much more horse like creature that stood 3 to 4 feet high. I can't remind this horses name, but it is on display at AMNH where it is shown to be contemporary to hyracotherium.
You make the claim that we creationists have been gulled by the creationists websites. You might just as well claim that we have been gulled by evolutionists. Here are what leading evolutionists had to say about the Hyracotherium:
In the first place, it is not clear that Hyracotherium was the ancestral horse. G. A. Kerkut, Implications of evolution, 1960, pg 149.
"The first animal in the series, Hyracotherium (Eohippus) is so different from the modern horse and so different from the next one in the series that there is a big question concerning its right to a place in the series . . [It has] a slender face with the eyes midway along the side, the presence of canine teeth, and not much of a diastema (space between front teeth and back teeth), arched back and long tail."H.G. Coffin, Creation: Accident or Design? (1969), pp. 194-195.
H. Nilsson maintains that while Hyracotherium does not resemble present-day horses in any way, they were remarkably similar to the present-day Hyrax.
Heribert Nilsson writes (Synthetische Artbildung):
"The family tree of the horse is beautiful and continuous ONLY IN THE TEXTBOOKS [Emphasis mine]. In the reality provided by the results of research it is put together in three parts, of which only the last can be described as including the horses. The forms of the first part are just as much little horses as the present day damans are horses. The construction of the whole Cenozoic family tree of the horse is therefore a very artificial one, since it is put together from non-equivalent parts, and cannot therefore be a continuous transformation series."
Gaylord Simpson was a popularizer of the horse series as an example of gradual phyletic evolution for many years, pushing it into high school textbooks and the AMNH. Yet even he was aware that claiming hyracotherium at the root of the equid group was suspect..
Matthew has shown and insisted that Hyracotherium (including Eohippus) is so primative that it is not much more definitely equid than tapir, rhinocerotid, etc, but it is customary to place it at the root of the equid group." G.G. Simpson, as quoted by Kerkut in Implications of evolution
In 1980, Colin Patterson had the horse series removed from display at the British Museum in London, and Dr. Raup had eohippus removed from the horse series display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Pressure from dogmatic evolutionists forced Dr. Patterson to reinstate the horse display.
But what about the rest of the horse evolution? Well, it is much ado about nothing. It is simply horses evolving into horses.
The alleged horse transition is simply variation around a mean. Evolutionists have never demonstrated that these horses can not interbreed (Darwins finches were said to be 13 species and 3 genus's until they were all found to interbreed.) Many of the horse types are known to overlap and coexist at the same time and this overlapping continues to grow as more fossils are found. The birth of Three toed horses still happens today. The variations can easily be accounted for per the creationists model as natural selections of existing traits plus information losses, per migration to diverse geological areas, isolation, and ecological changes over time.
Feeding habits, environmental changes and genetic limits, can account for all horse size variation. Variations in sizes of living horses today are compatible to those of all horses of the past. Long term trends in diet changes can also account for the tooth evolution observed in the fossil record. The presence of certain proteins can trigger the transformation of molars.
Here are some comments from evolutionists
"There was a time when the existing fossils of the horses seemed to indicate a straight-lined evolution from small to large, from dog-like to horse-like, from animals with simple grinding teeth to animals with complicated cusps of modern horses . . As more fossils were uncovered, the chain splayed out into the usual phylogenetic net, and it was all too apparent that evolution had not been in a straight line at all. Unfortunately, before the picture was completely clear, an exhibit of horses as an example . . had been set up at the American Museum of Natural History [in New York City], photographed, and much reproduced in elementary textbooks."*Garrett Hardin, Nature and Man’s Fate (1960), pp. 225-226. (Those pictures are still being used in those textbooks.)
THE HORSE "STORY", Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist British Museum of Natural History, "There have been an awful lot of stories, some more imaginative than others, about what the nature of that history [of life] really is. The most famous example, still on exhibit downstairs, is the exhibit on horse evolution prepared perhaps fifty years ago. That has been presented as the literal truth in textbook after textbook. Now I think that that is lamentable, particularly when the people who propose those kinds of stories may themselves be aware of the speculative nature of some of that stuff." Harper's, p. 60, 1984.
"Marsh's 'Horse Evolution' is still presented as fact to students today! A fossil exhibition was staged at the American Museum of Natural History. "The exhibit is now hidden from public view as an outdated embarrassment. Almost a century later, palaeontologist George Gaylord Simpson re-examined horse evolution and concluded that generations of students had been misled." Encyclopedia of Evolution - Richard Milner
"...first we note a primary signal of branching, branching, and more branching. Where, in this forest, could anyone identify a main trunk? The bush has many tips, though all but one are extinct. Each tip can be connected to a last common ancestor by a labyrinthine route, but no paths are straight, and all lead back by sidestepping from one event of branching speciation to another, and not by descent down a ladder of continuous change." S. Gould, Full House, pg 67
Regarding the earlier portion of the fossil record:
Gaylord Simpson once claimed: "The line from Eohippus to Hypohippus exemplifies a fairly continuous phyletic evolution." G.G. Simpson, Horses, 1951, pg 215.
Gould Replies: "The enormous increase in fossil evidence since Simpson's time has allowed paleontologists .... to falsify this view. In other words, bushiness now pervades the entire phylogeny of horses." S. J. Gould, Full House 1997, pg 67-69.
"Throughout the history of horses, the species are well-marked and static over millions of years." S. Gould, Full House, p. 69.
"High schoool textbooks propose that, ..., the rabbit sized Eohippus commenced his move up through the evolutionary ranks, one incremental step after another. ... The high school progression is an artifact; .... The facts are discrete. There is no hint of gradual change, no hint either of selective advantages accumulating."
D. Berlinski, review of Full House, O&D 18(1), pg 30.
"The popularly told example of horse evolution, suggesting a gradual sequence of changes from four-toed fox-sized creatures living nearly 50 million years ago to today’s much larger one-toed horse, has long been known to be wrong. Instead of gradual change, fossils of each intermediate species appear fully distinct, persist unchanged, and then become extinct. Transitional forms are unknown."
B. Rensberger, Houston Chronicle, Nov 5, 1980, sec. 4 pg 15.
"Regarding transition in the structure of the toes: no intermediate structures: The evolution of the foot mechanisms proceeded by rapid and abrupt changes rather than gradual ones. The transition from the form of foot shown by miniature Eohippus to larger consistently three-toed Miohippus was so abrupt that it even left no record in the fossil deposits ... their foot structure changed very rapidly to a three-toed sprung foot in which the pad disappeared and the two side toes became essentially functionless. Finally, in the Pliocene the line leading to the modern one-toed grazer went through a rapid loss of the two side toes on each foot."
J. B. Birdsell, Human Evolution, pg 170. 1990
Even Gaylord Simpson came around to the truth:
"The uniform, continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the heart of generations of textbook writers, never happened in nature... The evolution of the horse family, Equidae, is now no better known than that of numerous other groups of organisms..." George Gaylord Simpson, Life of the Past, 1953
Quetzal, you have got to stop getting your information from those rag Talk Origin FAQS. They are leading you down blind paths. Maybe you, like Simpson did fifty years ago, accept the truth about the failure of the horse series to demonstrate any kind of Evolution other than Creation Model type adaptive change. Perhaps you too can join the forces of Goodness and Truth and help get this horse disinformation out of school textbooks. It would be the right thing to do.
[This message has been edited by Bart007, 01-21-2003]
[This message has been edited by Bart007, 01-21-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 56 by Quetzal, posted 01-21-2003 6:39 AM Quetzal has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 71 by Quetzal, posted 01-22-2003 3:57 AM Bart007 has replied

Bart007
Inactive Member


Message 68 of 89 (29827)
01-21-2003 11:10 PM
Reply to: Message 65 by thousands_not_billions
01-21-2003 11:03 PM


quote:
Originally posted by thousands_not_billions:
Cut off half the message.
================
Finally, Mr Cerutti is out of date about this new nylon digesting ability allegedly from a frame shift. New evidence shows that the ability was due to plasmids

Besides, is not nylon technology carbon based. Seems likely to be a good food source for living things.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 65 by thousands_not_billions, posted 01-21-2003 11:03 PM thousands_not_billions has not replied

Bart007
Inactive Member


Message 87 of 89 (30482)
01-28-2003 7:22 PM
Reply to: Message 71 by Quetzal
01-22-2003 3:57 AM


Quetzal writes: "And yet another lengthy quote mine from ol' bart. When are you going to learn that "argument by spurious quotation" and "appeal to authority" doesn't cut it? You been reading the infamous "Quote Book" again?"
The key word above is "quote mine". This is a typical anti-creationist attack that dogmatic believers in Evolution mindlessly use to ridicule, browbeat, and insult creatiionists for the purpose of instilling fear and distain in the less informed and/or lurkers reading the postings by creationists. This type of intellectual pressure is known as 'Brow Beating' and is used to intimidate readers and pressure them to stay in the evolutionist camp.
Quetzel's sophistical attack is akin to the school bullies of elementary and junior high schools whose bad mistreatment of physically weaker students causes other students to ostracize the picked on students and to rally around the bully for fear they will be singled out next for humiliation. These type sophistries are the fodder of evolutionists postings, and this forum has been no exception.
When one reads science publications, be they by a creationist or evolutionist, they usually reference and/or quote the work of others. This is not considered quote mining.
Quetzal fails to demonstrate that any of the quotes I used were out-of-context. He merely alludes that they are. Besides his empty unsubstantiated allegation of "quote mining", Quetzal also referenced an anti-creationists website essay that was written by an anti-creationist propagandist named Cox entitled: "Dawn Horse Is a Good Ancestor For Rhinos Discredits Horse Evolution?"
The author of the essay, Cox, makes the claim that creationist Duane Guish is lying when he wrote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Duane T. Gish tells us in Impact #87 The Origin of Mammals the following:
"Others also doubt whether Hyracotherium was related to the horse. For example, Kerkut states, In the first place it is not clear that Hyracotherium was the ancestral horse. Thus Simpson (1945) states, ‘Matthew has shown and insisted that Hyracotherium (including Eohippus) is so primitive that it is not much more definitely equid than tapirid, rhinocerotid, etc., but it is customary to place it at the root of the equid group.’18 In other words, Hyracotherium is not any more like a horse than it is similar to a tapir or a rhinoceros, and thus just as justifiably it could have been chosen as the ancestral rhinoceros or tapir. It seems, then, that the objectivity of those involved in the construction of the phylogenetic tree of the horse was questionable from the very start, and that the horse on which the entire family tree of the horse rests was not a horse at all."
18. Kerkut, G. A., Implications of Evolution, New York: Pergamon Press, 1960, p. 149.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Concerning Cox's essay, Quetzal writes:
"Oh, and as to your quotations... Anyone interested can read this essay debunking at least the Gaylord Simpson quote mine. Another example of AiG's stellar intellectual honesty."
Quetzal, I read Cox's essay and I believe Cox fails to demonstrate in any way, shape, or form, that Gish lied about anything or misquoted anyone. Since you make the claim Gish was somehow intellectually dishonest, as demonstrated by Cox, please show us your intellectual honesty by explaining why you think this is so. Please also show how this has anything to do with my quotes and your claim that I too misquoted and/or misrepresented Simpson. If you can't, I expect a full retraction from you for misrepresnting me. Then maybe I can write an essay on the internet on how evolutionists misrepresent creationists.
I'll continue my response to your message 71 on my next post and deal with your alleged example of gradual evolution.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 71 by Quetzal, posted 01-22-2003 3:57 AM Quetzal has not replied

Bart007
Inactive Member


Message 88 of 89 (30500)
01-28-2003 11:59 PM
Reply to: Message 71 by Quetzal
01-22-2003 3:57 AM


quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Taking the entire skeleton into account, the Hyracotherium is a lot closer in appearance to the modern Hyrax than it is the the horse. Like Hyracotherium, the Hyrax has four toes on the two front feet and three on the hind legs. The two are about the same size in height and have the same number of ribs. Evolutionists like to show sketches of Hyrcotherium standing like a horse, but sketches could just aas well be drawn to show hyracotherium in the same posture as a modern day hyrax as the legs of both are very similar.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Really? I'm impressed by your knowledge of comparative anatomy. Let's take a close look, shall we?
Dentition:
Hyracotherium
3.1.4.3/3.1.4.3
Equus (modern horse, male)
3.1.3-4.3/3.1.3.3
Hyrax
1.0.4.3/2.0.4.3
Guess which one's more similar?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The Key words I used is: "Taking the entire skeleton into account.." Like Hyraxes, Hyracotherium had an arched back; four front toes, three rear toes; the eyes were set forward (midway) in the skull; and despite their dentition differences their cheek teeth were similar, the back teeth are spaced closely to the front teeth, they both have low crowned teeth lacking cement and molars with roots (all so different than horses teeth). They also occupied the same habitat.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Quetzal writes:
"On toes: As far as it goes, you are correct. Both hyrax and hyracotherium have four toes on the front foot, and three on the back. However, from the actual arrangement of the bones, Hyracotherium was digitigrade (as are modern horses). The location of the pads are at the end of the toes. The hyrax is plantigrade (flat-footed), with a noticeable heel (absent in Hyracotherium). There is an excellent fossil series - a perfect "gradualism" example, btw - showing the change in numbers of toes in the Equus lineage over time."
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I (nor gish for that matter as quoted in the essay you referenced) ever claimed that the Hyracotherium is a type of Hyrax. I am aware there are noticable differences and I pointed out in my post "It is possible that Hyracotherium is unrelated to the modern day Hyrax,...". I happen to believe it is not. I simply pointed out some of the Hyrax features that caused top scientists (and evolutionists) to state that it resembled a cony, a daman, a hyrax, more than a horse.
However, contrary to your claim that: "There is an excellent fossil series - a perfect "gradualism" example, btw - showing the change in numbers of toes in the Equus lineage over time." That lineage is made up by picking and choosing particular specimens from a labrythine bush of horse like creatures, just as there is a bush of todays horse from the 17" high Fallabella to the massive Clydesdale. There is no evolutionary gradualism at all. One might just as well organize all dogs into an evolutionary order from the Chiuaua to the Great Dane as an example of evolutionary gradualism, even though we know they are all one species that radiated from wolves not all that long ago.
In addition, you Hyracotherium (eohippus) has been utterly kicked out of the horse family as determined by cladistics.
Phylogenetic systematics of basal perissodactyls Froehlich, DJ, Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 1999, 19(1): 140
"The relationships among basal perissodactyls and among those taxa historically included in Hyracotherium are complicated. These taxa are morphologically similar, possessing few of the character states that diagnose the crown groups. To understand better these relationships, cladistic techniques were used to generate a matrix of 41 taxa and 125 characters including five non-perissodactyl outgroup taxa, representative basal tapiroids, brontotheres, chalicotheres, palaeotheres, and equids. ... The results also suggest that Hyracotherium is not representative of the basal morphology of the perissodactyls, and no currently identified fossil provides a good candidate for that morphology."
David Froelich also states:
"The reason that Hyracotherium has been excluded from the equid lineage is that it falls on a side branch toward the paleotheres. It no longer is an equid. Therefore, the name cannot be used (If it were it would represent a group of organisms for which you did not have a single ancestor, nor all of the descendants, ie. polyphyletic) Eohippus on the other hand was named by Marsh from a single worn maxillary fragment found in New Mexico (San Jose fm.) Unfortunately, the type material is not diagnostic (and currently mislayed) and either Eohippus is a member of a genus called Xenicohippus (an abberant equid) or is a basal tapiromorph called Systemodon (the type Eohippus material cannot be distinguished from these two possibilities because it is so worn)."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 71 by Quetzal, posted 01-22-2003 3:57 AM Quetzal has not replied

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