Evolving the Musculoskeletal System

In which post did one of "us" describe it as a "miraculous designing feat"? You seem to be putting your own conclusions into our mouths. It is up to you to show that it is impossible. You have been parading your beliefs around as facts, such as evolution being impossible and miraculous. While this may stimulate you in some way, the rest of us are less than impressed.Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

Hi Percy,First of all, thank you for showing me how to highlight a link to a msg. That is very helpful info C'mon Percy, you've got to be kidding me. What about the elephant in the living room I talked about? Its not off topic because the systems I pointed out that are necessary for the Musculoskeletal to operate are all interconnected.I get it that evolution is a very slow step by step accumulation over a vast period of time. That is in essence my beef. Exactly! So how does a system that would take a vast amount of time to evolve be functional
during the vast time of evolvement?As I said in Message 71, if an organism isn't fully formed from the beginning it cannot exist. (of course I am talking about going back to the very first ones)
Not one of you has yet addressed this problem. Why is that?Respectfully,
IC

Oh really? Then lets see you sit down and design a completely original human body that we could transfer into and live successfully.

Oh, do you mean those intelligently designed computers using those intelligently designed programs...yeah, real evolutionary.Off topic so save subject for another thread...Bye the way Huntard... good to here from you Mate

Right. This selects against individuals being born half-formed, which is what we've been telling you consistently for more than 130 posts.The challenge before you is to imagine how an organism could be fully-formed even at the same time that it has more primitive systems. Hint - a worm is born "fully-formed" even though it completely lacks a skeletal system. By evolving through reduced or more primitive function, to make a long story short. In human beings, our complex skeletal system has a lot of complex functions - biophysical functions like providing lever-arms and fulcrums to magnify muscle force, immune system and blood function, etc. In its evolutionary precursors, the skeletal system had less functions, or simpler functions.In it's absolute most primitive, earliest forms - among the simplest organisms where endoskeletons appear - the skeleton does little of what it does in humans. It has no joints at all. It may have done nothing but provide bony protection for crucial organs. It certainly didn't house marrow. Every single one of us has addressed this problem in every post, IC. We're struggling to address it in a way that makes sense to you.

I still would like an answer to the question I've been asking you throughout this thread.What happens to a critter that is born with incomplete systems that are essential systems?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Ok, lets walk through this Crash. First of all you still got what I said in 71 wrong. I was talking about the human body the whole time. So drop this foolishness like I don't know many creatures don't have a skeletal system...give me a friggen break!Now. How did the very first worm become fully-formed?

I think where the debate continues to be fruitless is in ICDESIGN's notion of evolutionary history, which he doesn't seem to understand as a history where organisms inherit traits from their species ancestors, have them modified by random mutation, and then are selected for or against by their environments in ways that either extinguish or preserve these new, mutant characteristics.I think, and perhaps he'll be kind enough to tell me how stupid I am and call me names if I'm wrong, that ICDESIGN has the notion of evolutionary history commonly depicted in cartoons:and not only that, I think ICDESIGN interprets that happening for every extant organism, independently.In other words, when he tries to think about the evolutionary origin of organisms, I think he imagines:a bacterium, which then divides and becomes multicellular, and becomes something like a misshappen fish made of Play-Doh, and then over millions of years becomes less blob-like and more fish-like, and then grows scales, and then bones, and then fins, and then gills, and finally it's a modern fish,and then there's another bacterium, which divides and becomes multicellular, and then becomes something like a misshapen cat made of Play-Doh, and then over millions of years becomes less blob-like and more cat-like, and then grows fur, grows bones, grows teeth, grows wiskers and claws, and then finally it's a modern cat,and then there's yet another bacterium, which divides and becomes multicellular, and then becomes something like a misshapen person made out of Play-Doh, and then over millions of years becomes less blob-like and more human-like, and then grows bones, grows nerves, grows blood and vessels for blood, grows a brain, finally crawls out of the water, does this:and then it's finally a modern human being.Is that about right, IC? Are you of the notion that the evolution of the human skeleton is an entirely separate process from the evolution of, say, the skeleton of a fish; two processes that have never been the same process since humans and fish evolved from two different bacteria?If you could correct any of my inaccuracies about your notion of evolutionary history, I'd really appreciate it. We'll explain to you how the above notion is a highly flawed view in a bit.

It evolved from an equally 'fully-formed' thing that was not quite a worm. (Or, to be pedantic, since the term "worm" is nothing like well defined and actually describes multiple phyla, multiple things which were not quite worms).In other words, the exact same answer you will get about how any organism ever came to be: it was born of parents (or a parent) very similar to it, and who were very similar to their parents, but different enough from their great-great-great-(x100)-great-grandparents for those differences to be worth noticing.

No, you're talking about skeletons. This topic is about the evolution of skeletons.That evolution does not begin in the human species; humans inherited the traits of their skeletons from their ancestors, which were then changed by random mutation and natural selection. Skeletons are present in all vertebrate life, so to find out how skeletons evolved we have to look to the evolutionary origin of Craniata, the clade of chordate organisms that have bony parts (skulls, specifically.)Organisms like the hagfish have skulls but no skeleton. They have no joints and their bones do not house marrow. MKodern hagfish are, of course, as evolved as everything else but the "oldest bony organism" (which is where we would find the first skeleton in evolutionary history) would look a lot like a hagfish. The descendants of those early hagfish would have also had bony skulls, which they would have modified by mutation until those skulls had a jointed mandible, and then those organisms would have passed on a jointed skull to their descendants, and so on. Ultimately you would come to the first hominid to evolve, which would have had a fully jointed and articulated skeleton from birth. Not by magic, but by inheriting it from its non-hominid ancestors. By evolution - descent with modification of something else that was fully formed. (Earthworms - segmented worms - evolved from fully-formed roundworms.)Every organism that lives is fully-formed, as are it's evolutionary descendants. Half-formed organisms do not survive. Therefore there is substantial evolutionary pressure against organisms being born half-formed.

Keep going back to the first one. The very first one. What is you guys don't get about being the very first one?
If the first one burst on the scene fully formed that is called creation not evolution.

As an adjunct to this, I believe I am correct in saying that there are no new bones, joints, or major nerves that occur in humans but not in chimps. All the differences in body shape are the result of differences in the size and geometry of existing features.

That is called creation not evolution

You're correct, the very first replicator did not arrive on the scene by evolution. You'd be very hard pressed to claim that has any resemblance to anything that might normally be described as "creation" though.

And there is the problem.You are looking at it as a design. And you cannot comprehend how it is possible as a design. And, indeed, it probably isn't possible as a design. Nature's way is very different from a designer's way, and that is what you are failing to take into account.I commented on this back at Message 86. I'm not sure whether you read that post.