On Transitional Species (SUMMATION MESSAGES ONLY)

Taq writes:It is the PATTERN of shared body plans that evidences common ancestry. That PATTERN is a NESTED HIERARCHY. Each and every time I bring this up you ignore it. It is time to start facing the facts. We have shown you these anatomical remnants and yet you still reject the theory. We have shown you those remnants. You ignore them. And yet the recurrent laryngeal nerve is a remnant of the developmental pathway established in fish that we inherited from them. You ignore it. It is present in all tetrapods. So your argument is that there should be vestigial parts if evolution is true. Since there are vestigial parts we can then conclude that evolution is false. Is that your argument?

Taq writes:That is your own assertion, not one made by the theory of evolution. A nested hierarchy is more than a common blueprint. You can have a common blueprint and still have NO NESTED HIERARCHY. When will you start understanding this? Please, read up on what a nested hierarchy is, and then explain why one would expect a nested hierarchy if creationism is true.So why don't we see any species with a mixture of bird and mammal features? Why do bats have fur and teats while birds have feathers and regurgitation? Why is there a lack of common blueprint between the bird and bat adaptations for flight? Why is it that we see certain intermediates but not others?

frako writes:NO!!!!Why because that would be very inefficient, providing blood, calcium or anything at all to organs or bones that serve no practical use is a waste of resources and a creature that is wasting its resources has a less likly chance of surviving then a creature that is not wasting its resources, so such organs/bones are selected against and bread out by evolution.

Peter writes:I've been away for a while too ... but I'm not any kind of Creationist.You say that the transitional nature of species is a matter of interpretation ... which is true ... as is the statement that they are NOT transitional features.It's whether our interpretations stand up to much scrutiny that counts.I would say that the notion that species flow from one to another over expanses of time is one whic DOES stand up to scrutiny ... which is probably why it's been around for so long.

Percy writes:It is not true that marine creatures are a special case. Just scanning through the Wikipedia article on vestigiality I see they list a number of examples of vestigiality, like whale leg and pelvis bones, ostrich, emu and other flightless bird wings, cavefish eyes, snake pelvis bones, and flightless insect wings. In people alone there are several examples of vestigiality, like ear muscles, wisdom teeth, the appendix, the tail bone and body hair.So could you please stop repeating the claim that marine creatures are a special case of vestigiality, and also cease employing it as an argument in support of your assertion that evolution makes conflicting claims about vestigiality. It makes no sense to keep employing an argument that is so obviously untrue. Despite repeated explanations you continue to hold a badly distorted understanding of both vestigiality and reuse. They're not synonyms. I'd be very interested in a discussion where our actual explanations and perspectives were being challenged, but your responses consist mostly of bald reassertions of your misunderstandings.Maybe it would help to focus on specific examples. In the evolution of bird wings from the forelimbs of dinosaurs, the bones of the forelimbs have for the most part become bones of the wings. That's reuse, a modification of an existing form for a new use.In the evolution of snakes the pelvis bones became unnecessary and functionless and for the most part disappeared, but some snake species still have rudimentary pelvises. That's vestigiality, which is loss of most or all function with no repurposing for a new function.Because evolution is a gradual and continuous process we should also be able to identify organs and/or structures that are on their way toward either vestigiality on the one hand or reuse for a new function on the other, but I am not myself aware of any good examples. Maybe the appendix is an example. Since surgical removal has no discernible effect on fecundity or longevity, one would expect that even it's current minor function as a store for useful bacteria would diminish further while the organ becomes smaller and smaller. Perhaps one of the biologists can chime in with more examples.Evolutionary theory is based upon observations of the real world. Your attempts to reconcile evolutionary theory with the real world with an eye toward assessing how well they align is the right approach, but in the real world marine creatures are not the exception in displaying vestigiality. The evidence from the real world tells us that vestigiality is present in all life, its one of the outcomes of evolution in a changing environment, and it is necessary that you acquire an accurate understanding of actual prevalence of things like vestigiality and other evidence from the real world if your assessments of evolution are to have any validity.Look at it this way. If I were to argue that Christianity is false because Jesus Christ doesn't really deliver presents on the morning of his birthday, and if I were to refuse to concede my confusion over many pages of discussion, would the fact that no one was able to convince me otherwise make my arguments any more valid? No, of course not. If I can't get my facts straight then any arguments I make based upon them won't be valid.You're suffering from the same problem. Get your facts straight, and then your arguments will make more sense.--Percy

Peter writes:This got pretty well covered by others. It's based, in part, on biological observations of time-ordered, preserved remains. The time-ordering part is (I suppose) geology if we are talking about fossils, the observations of structure etc. are biology. That's odd ... I could have sworn there was a few gigatonnes of biological evidence cited on THIS site. Maybe I'm just interpretting it differently. Perhaps you could ellaborate and explain the flaw through (perhaps) commonly used examples of evidence for evolution ... just a thought.

arachnophilia writes:you might be surprised to know that the biblical definition of "kind" loosely matches up with a much smaller grouping than something like mammalia or saurischia. as i explained many years ago in Message 290 of the define "kind" thread, that even though the authors of the bible were likely speaking in the vernacular, their usage loosely lines up with the "family" level on the linnean classification system. that's above genus. so, for example, dogs, wolves, and foxes (all from the canidae family) would all the be same "kind", but bears, skunks, otters, and racoons wouldn be separate "kinds". of course, the bible lists bats as their own "kind" (strangely grouping them with birds, leviticus 11:19). but bats, chiroptera, are an order, with many many families under it. same with rodents. there are many, many families of rats.you are, essentially, proposing biblical macro-evolution. two extremely distantly related animals that used the exact same form of a particular adaptation, not found in any other related species between the two, would be a wonderful falsification of evolution. it would mean that "designs" were co-opted across non-hereditary lines.fortunately, the two systems aren't even close to homologous. bats use their ears, dolphins use a giant fatty drum at the front of their skull.

DrJones* writes: Really? What are the common design features between humans eyes and those of an ant? Be specific.

bluescat48 writes:From what mythological nonsense did you come up with this? Bats & rats aren't even that closely related.From the Ancestor's Tail pp174 & 192:Primates, Rodentia & Lagomorpha are in one sub class whereas Bats (2 orders) Megachiroptera & Microchiroptera together with the Insectivora, Cetartiodactyla, Perissodactyla, Carnivora & Pholidta are in the subclass Lauasiatheria

Wounded King writes:Another case of creationist super-macro-evolution I guess. Ape to human in 5-7 million years, no way, Rat to bat in a few thousand years, no problem.Just out of interest where were all the birds that the sky was so empty?TTFN,WK

Straggler writes:Can I ask why just rodents? Why not monkeys or foxes or even humans? Why didn't lots of different creatures "instantly upon spreading out from the ark find an empty sky and fill it somewhat"?Imagine a race of humans with wings and radar. By the terms of your argument this should be possible "instantly" given a nice empty sky. No?

Mr Jack writes:O_oDo you have any idea how diverse bats are? One in five mammal species are bats. 1 in 5! Bats aren't some obscure offshoot of rats, they're an extraordinarily diverse and variable group of animals.Bats are an order of mammals, equivalent in significance to the group Carnivora that includes dogs, cats, seals, weasels, bears, red panda, civets and so on. Are you really suggesting that they can be written off as rats who saw the sky and wanted to fly? Orville's more successful rat relatives?Come on! "Wings and radar [sic]" are minor adaptations? What can possibly count as a "non-minor" adaptation then? If you're happy with bats, all 1100 species of them, evolving from rats in just 4000 years, and evolving sonar and flight in that time what on earth is the limit that stops evolution explaining the rest of life's diversity?

Mr Jack writes:But this is simply not true. The strongest evidence for Evolution is all drawn from living species.