On Transitional Species (SUMMATION MESSAGES ONLY)

Uh, Robert, I presented some evidence and made some arguments in my post that addressed these very same arguments that you just repeated yet again. Rather than having me repeat my arguments again, please just go back to Message 159 and respond to what I said (indeed, you should do this for everybody), particularly where I explain why there is less vestigiality than you think there should be.We understand your position, you don't need to repeat it over and over again. We want to see how you think your way through the evidence and arguments for evolution that we're presenting to you. Watching you simply ignore them lacks interest and drama.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Grammar.

Well, now that you've revealed your thinking, it's quite clear where you're wrong: No one here, except you, said only marine mammals have vestigial structures. Vestigial legs in whales isn't even the most famous example of vestigiality, the human appendix is.I think we've already presented evidence to you of how vestigiality is present everywhere throughout all life, but if you need it presented again or if you'd like additional evidence then just say so. What's most important is that you understand that marine mammals are not some exception case in their possession of vestigial structures. Nothing could be further from the truth.Because the copying of the genetic blueprint for reproduction is imperfect, change over time is inevitable, especially when the environment is inconstant. One would expect that some structures would change their form and function gradually, possibly even acquiring new purposes. One would also expect that some structures would fail to change in useful ways and arrive at the dead end that we call vestigiality. We find both adaptation and vestigiality in life, just what one would expect.--Percy

Hi Robert - Thank you for revealing more of your thinking again. It makes it much easier when we know where you've gone wrong, as here: Whatever makes you think that evolution requires rampant vestigiality? Evolution is all about adaptation, which is driven by natural selection. Creatures with "millions of remnants leftover" from prior environments couldn't be considered very well adapted to their current environment, and that's not what happens. The vast majority of structures that made creatures so well adapted in their old environments in their earlier evolutionary history are still there, but modified for the new environment.Now we know you already understand this explanation because you address it: If to you each structural change in the fossil record suggests a new original creation then you need only find evidence that life can be created this way. In the meantime evolution is the only theory that doesn't employ made-up mechanisms. Once you find evidence for your creatures-suddenly-poofing-into-existence theory you let us know. In the meantime, the major mechanisms of the theory of evolution, which are descent with modification and natural selection, lead us to expect gradual change over time, and the evidence of both the fossil record and genetics tell us that this is what happens.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Creations => Creatures; improve syntax.

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

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. 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

Hi Kaichos Man,Let's first dispense with Robert Byers vestigiality arguments before moving on to your own arguments, which are much different.It was Robert's claim that evolution should produce far more vestigiality than we actually see, that all creatures should be full of bits and pieces of predecessor anatomy, and that their low prevalence is evidence against evolution. I won't waste time summarizing the explanations of why this is not what we would expect of evolution, suffice to say that it is wrong.You are advancing a different argument about vestigiality, that it is evidence of "degeneration from The Fall," and that it represents a loss of information. Is this what the evidence I assume you're going to present shows, that there was a "Fall" that causes life to degenerate over time and lose information, and that vestigial organs are found to be caused by reduced information in the genome?Addressing a couple details: The absence of useful function is not what makes something vestigial. Vestigial structures and organs are diminished from their original structure and/or function. They've been left behind by evolution and now provide reduced adaptational advantages as compared to ancestral forms. If "useful functions" have been identified for whale legs and blind cavefish eyes then what a wonderful addition to our knowledge, but that can't change the fact that they're both diminished in structure and function and no longer provide their original and very significant adaptational advantages. Yes, I agree, and it seems pretty much in line with what I just said, but just a note about Yablokov. His Variability of Mammals where he proposes redefining vestigial was written back in 1975, and since we don't see that definition employed today we must assume that his suggestion never gained any significant traction. He defined vestigial as an organ or structure that is present in a subset of a population but is not characteristic of the population as a whole. Anyone reading your link (True Vestigial Structures in Whales and Dolphins | National Center for Science Education) will agree that his characterizations of vestigiality or whatever one wants to call it are accurate, but I personally don't like his redefinition of vestigiality, particularly because he proposes no replacement, and it must be the case that most other readers of Yablokov's book felt the same way. The conclusion of that 1982 article from the National Center for Science Education website is worth quoting in full: --Percy

Hi Kaichos Man,Concerning the term vestigial, it sounds like we largely agree on the relevant concepts. How we map terminology to concepts isn't that important to me unless it gets in the way of communication, which doesn't seem to be the case here, so as long as I can understand what you're talking about you can call it whatever you want. I understand that you consider vestigial structures to be evidence for design, but is that relevant to this thread? I think the only reason we got stuck on vestigiality with Robert is because he made so many misstatements of fact, and even just of simple definitions, and kept repeating them over and over again.--Percy

I don't see you even pretending to try to understand and address what people are saying. You're like an information black hole. Information goes in, nothing comes out.While you were away Kaichos Man paid a brief visit to this thread. See his two posts beginning at Message 220 to witness that it is possible for a creationist to understand the concept of vestigiality.--Percy

About blind people and sound, while I guess it couldn't be considered sonar because the sound isn't necessarily self-generated, you can learn a great deal about your surroundings from sound, especially reflected sound. A long, long time ago after I'd been playing racket ball for a couple years I discovered I could get my racket on the ball a fair amount of the time with my eyes closed, the sound, both reflected and direct, apparently providing sufficient cues.I don't think the ability to navigate sonically is very unusual among animals, but rather that in bats and dolphins it is unique in its degree of specialization and sophistication.Note to creationists in the Your EvC Debate Dream Team - Fantasy Debating thread: I'm expressing disagreement with Huntard.--Percy