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Author | Topic: On Transitional Species (SUMMATION MESSAGES ONLY) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Robert Byers Member (Idle past 4394 days) Posts: 640 From: Toronto,canada Joined: |
Taq writes: If evolution was true then there should be millions of remnants leftover in the anatomy of creatures without practical use. That is your own assertion, not one made by the theory of evolution.
Patterns origins fit creationism fine. We expect a common blueprint. 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? My assertion is well founded on reasoning used by evolution proponents.if you use vestigial bits to make a conclusion then the opposite conclusion is better made by the fantastic poverty of vestigial points. The blueprint idea works well.first there are no such things as mammals or retiles . There are just kinds. These groups are just wrong ideas on lumping things together. Bats are indeed just flying rats. That is a real adaptation after the flood. Creatures have hair simply because they need it. not because its a trail of heritage. Why say that? In fact there is a common blueprint for echolocation in bats, whales etc. We all have eyes from a common design. Yet its not a sign of biological relatedness. Your nests are just twigs of presumptions and won't bear a storm of scrunity.
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Robert Byers Member (Idle past 4394 days) Posts: 640 From: Toronto,canada Joined: |
frako writes: If evolution was true then there should be millions of remnants leftover in the anatomy of creatures without practical use. 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.
There are creatures with vestigial bits remaining. they had no problem.In like manner it could ONLY be in all that action of biological change that there would be great amounts of unused leftovers of former anatomy. its a numbers game here. The great poverty demands that there was no evolution as the few demand that there was in special cases. Anyways the use of creatures with remnants of parts is being used by evolution to make its case. In fact it makes a case against it by the absence of leftovers.
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Robert Byers Member (Idle past 4394 days) Posts: 640 From: Toronto,canada Joined: |
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. A notion ain't evidence.in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. there is not biological evidence for evolution. This is a flaw in the thinking.
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Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Robert Byers writes: Yes marine creatures are a special case. They are amongst the few with "unused' remnants of previous body realities. 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.
This is different from you claiming everything is a reused and so vestigial thing. 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
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 310 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
A notion ain't evidence. No, the evidence for the notion is evidence. For the notion.
in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. If you rewrote that in meaningful English, it would still be wrong.
there is not biological evidence for evolution. Biologists disagree. Perhaps you should think about why.
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Percy Member Posts: 22490 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 5.0 |
Robert Byers writes: A notion ain't evidence. Robert, please invest some time and thought in your posts. Peter did not claim notions are evidence. He said that species change over time is a notion that has stood up to scrutiny. The scrutiny of evidence. What did you think he meant by scrutiny? What did you think was being scrutinized? What did you think you would achieve by quoting his very sentence and then responding in a way that ignored the clear meaning? Why do we bother? Once a thread has degenerated to the point where you have to explain the meaning of simple English, progress seems unlikely. What is wrong with us that we insist on responding to blather as if it contained sense? Responding like this is not in the spirit of the Forum Guidelines, but to pretend nonsense is sense and respond to blather and prattle as if it meant something would be delusional behavior.
in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. there is not biological evidence for evolution. This is a flaw in the thinking. There's a flaw in the thinking, alright, but it's yours. Congratulations on this display of inconsistent capitalization, bad punctuation, ignorance, and bald and baldly wrong assertions. At least you're consistent, since you give your location as "Toronto,canada" and are probably really from someplace else like "altanticCity,New jersey". Robert, once again I ask you, what fantasy world do you live in where faulty information leads to correct conclusions? Could you at least try to give the impression of trying to get your facts straight? We understand you have this fantasy that the conclusions of geology and biology are based upon presumptions rather than evidence, but while you're participating in these discussion threads could you please focus your attention on arguments that make sense and have evidence. I'm actually beginning to miss those creationists who argue, "We use the same evidence you do, we just interpret it differently and therefore reach different conclusions." I much prefer a creationist who not only knows there's evidence but even knows what it is to one who just shuts his eyes and puts his hands over his ears while repeating, "There's no evidence, there's no evidence..." --Percy
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Peter Member (Idle past 1505 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
A notion ain't evidence. This got pretty well covered by others.
in fact in order to discover species flowing into/out of each other over time is founded not on biology but presumptions that geology shows this time too have taken place. 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.
there is not biological evidence for evolution. 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.
This is a flaw in the thinking. Perhaps you could ellaborate and explain the flaw through (perhaps) commonly used examples of evidence for evolution ... just a thought.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1505 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I thought to be transitional was to be be 'between' in a chronological sense ... if that's not the case then I retract the 'extinction' comment that I made.
But, if transitional is NOT about the chronology of species then it's not really a useful concept in evolution -- is it?
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Peter Member (Idle past 1505 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
I see what you mean about 'extinctions' ... I would think there are huge numbers of extinct transitionals
I chose the word 'could' very carefully.
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Perdition Member (Idle past 3263 days) Posts: 1593 From: Wisconsin Joined: |
Just because something is extinct doesn't mean it's not between two other things.
Archaeopteryx is between dinosaurs and birds, it is also extinct.
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Peter Member (Idle past 1505 days) Posts: 2161 From: Cambridgeshire, UK. Joined: |
Someone else pointed that out ... I should have stopped at 'dead end'.
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Taq Member Posts: 10072 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2 |
My assertion is well founded on reasoning used by evolution proponents. if you use vestigial bits to make a conclusion then the opposite conclusion is better made by the fantastic poverty of vestigial points. The conclusion is based on the fact that the vestiges we do observe fall in line with the lines of descent predicted by the theory of evolution. A vestigial pelvis in whales is consistent with whales evolving from terrestrial mammals. If there were zero vestigial organs this would not falsify this conclusion. If you were to find vestigial fur on a fish then this would falsify the conclusion.
The blueprint idea works well. Why?
first there are no such things as mammals or retiles .
Are there species that have fur, mammary glands, three middle ear bones, and a single lower jaw bone? Are there any species that have feathers, mammary glands, and three middle ear bones?
Bats are indeed just flying rats. If sparrows and bats have a common designer then why don't we see any bats with feathers or sparrows with teats?
Creatures have hair simply because they need it. not because its a trail of heritage. Why say that? False. The genes responsible for hair growth are inherited through DNA.
In fact there is a common blueprint for echolocation in bats, whales etc. No, there isn't. For example, dolphins have what is called a "melon". This is a dome of fat that acts like a lens to focus soundwaves. Bats do not have this. The blueprint is different. So I guess this falsifies the common designer then?
We all have eyes from a common design. Yet its not a sign of biological relatedness. Who is "we"? All life? All humans? You do understand how heredity works, don't you?
Your nests are just twigs of presumptions and won't bear a storm of scrunity.
The nested hierarchy is a fact, one that you can not explain.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I'll give it one more try and see if it helps. Well I'm not gonna not reply
For all intents and purposes the terms transitional and intermediate are one in the same. I realize that's just an idiomatic phrase, but I would say that they are not the same for all purposes. Specifically, the purpose of studying evolutionary biology and the relationships between species that are or are not consider in a transition from one morphological feature to another. Further, there are distinctions between the terms used in that purpose that are important enough to maintain and not "grey out", so to speak.
When these terms are put together with the theory of evolution then you can also include evolutionary distance. In this respect there is a tendency to label species close to the common ancestor as transitional and those further away as intermediate. However, it is an arbitrary line just as there is an arbitrary line between being short and tall. They are all shades of grey, if you will. I agree that you can do this, but I don't find it particularly useful. Plus, I don't think the distinction is based solely on distance from the ancestor but also includes the morphologies, themselves.
The proper usage of transitional is in relation to the observations, which is what I was trying to stress. When I realized you had a different aim here than me, and that we're not really in much disagreement, is when I figured it wasn't worth pursuing any further. But there does seem to be enough disagreement to keep typing to you.
You don't observe evolutionary distance, that is the conclusion from analysing the observations. You observe the morphology. Therefore, a transitional fossil must be described in terms of direct observations that are independent of theory. Does that make sense? It does, and I don't disagree with that. But I do think there is enough distinction between intermediate and transitional to keep them as seperately defined, at least for some purposes. That's what I was trying to exemplify with the 'fin-to-foot' hypothetical.
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
I see what you mean about 'extinctions' ... I would think there are huge numbers of extinct transitionals You're welcome
I chose the word 'could' very carefully. quote:
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REVANTH  Suspended Junior Member (Idle past 4799 days) Posts: 2 Joined: |
nice
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Not that nice.
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