Evolution in pieces.

Unfortunately, we don't have the pelvises for many of the older hominids, just the skulls and some leg bones; however, you can learn a lot from them as well. For example, the angle that the skull is mounted to the spine and how the muscles attach to it are strong indicators to how the body carried its head - perpendicular or parallel to the spine. S. tchadensis's skull clearly shows a mix of features, as I talked about above. In next more recent species, O. tugenesis, we have a femur that indicates that it was likely that this species spent most of its time upright. So the main turning point seems to be around tchadensis.Personally, I'm eagerly awaiting the next batch of fossil finds from the time period of tchadensis and earlier; there's been so much progress recently in this previously fossil-limited time period, I'm excited to see what we find next. I hope it will help clear up some of the current questions (the exact degree of bipedality, whether it's a sister species or a direct ancestor, etc).------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

Then you didn't read the article closely. They clearly mention a circuit that performs to a degree of efficiency greater than human designs. Not only that, but humans can't even entirely understand how that specific circuit works. According to accpeted electronics engineering, that circuit shouldn't work - but it does.Since the article isn't online, and since I don't have a copy onhand, I can't give you a specific citation. But that was in there. More specific. For instance there's a variety of bacteria that, when placed on a nylon substrate, mutate to be able to digest it - evenutally. (They mutate to do a lot of other things, or not do a lot of other things, but the ones that survive are the ones that, at random, mutate to eat the nylon.)Now, if that's not a random mutation, how does the design get in? I may know what genetic change is necessary to change a starch-eating bacterium into a nylon-eating one, but how does that "design" get to the bacteria?Oh, I see. You think it was already there. That the bacteria, for a million years, has had the potential to change to nylon-eating - millions of years before there was any nylon, of course.Well, I agree with you. The bacteria has always had that potential. Random mutation gives it that potential. And how do you measure potential? Who's to say that same potential can't encompass enough change to cover a bacterium giving rise to a person, eventually? It's all genes, you know. It's the same genetic material in microbes as in man. Who's to say what that potential might mean? Not you, I think. And an animal is still an animal. And life is still life. All that proves is that scientists don't like to come up with new names for organisms when a new one will suffice.I know you want to believe that all life is decended from n original kinds. What I'm telling you is that it's pretty much certain that n = 1: Life. That's the only original kind.On kinds: Pretend I'm showing you four organisms. Two of them are decended from the same original kind. The other two are decended from another two different original kinds.How do you tell the difference? How do you tell which organisms are from the same kind? Not just that change occurs. Evolution lets us make predictions about how change will occur in the future. For instance we can make predictions about what environments E. Coli has the metabolic capability to adapt to.

Why would it be? I was just taking a crap when it occured to me that cellular differentiation is explainable by kin selection. I can't believe that I'm so much smarter than you that you couldn't figure that out.It's no mystery, unless you're committed to a worldview where selection doesn't actually select and mutation doesn't actually change anything.

Dunno if these are different ones, but you might look at An Evolved Circuit or Evolutionary Electronics: Sussex University

Actually, the australopith pelvis is quite similar to the modern human pelvis. On the other hand there are no known ancient chimp-like pelvis fossils (correct me if I am wrong).Maybe my site could help a little:
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I read the article very closely. It only mentions ONE circuit designed by a human. They nor we haven't the foggiest if a human could design a circuit just as or more efficient than the computer generated circuit. That the humans that studied the circuit and couldn't figure it out just tells me how sad they are at electronics. There was no mentioning of the circuit shouldn't work but does. They just said they didn't understand it.One more time- organisms were designed with the ability to adapt to their environment."There is no way to predict what will be selected for at any point in time." D. Dennett author of "Darwin's Great Idea"So what about those predictions again? Predicting change is about as useful as predicting rain in India during the monsoon season.n=1 has been refuted. Carl Woese- try reading his peer-reviewed articles. LUCA is a myth. (Last Universal Common Ancestor)How do you tell what animals are from the same kind? How many times do I have to state this- Science can help us determine that. AiG, ICR and at least one book which I linked to have a good starting point on doing just that.

Cellular differentiation is still a mystery.crashfrog:
Why would it be? I was just taking a crap when it occured to me that cellular differentiation is explainable by kin selection. I can't believe that I'm so much smarter than you that you couldn't figure that out.John Paul:
Than why do biological authorties disagree with you and say it is a mystery? Maybe you should get your ideas to a peer-reviewed journal and have them published.crashfrog:
It's no mystery, unless you're committed to a worldview where selection doesn't actually select and mutation doesn't actually change anything.John Paul:
I am not committed to that view. A Creationist came up with NS before Darwin and change isn't even being debated.Care to back up your assertion about cellular differentiation with a citation?

When I start alternating between single and multi-cellular I will believe your assertion.Loudmouth:
You already did, you started as a single diploid cell. It is very simple embryology.John Paul:
I am NOT alternating between single & multi-cellular. Nice misrepresentation. BTW sexual reproduction is still unexplained by evolutionists ("just-so" stories devoid of evidence don't count).

John Paul writes:
It is not up to me to provide a barrier.:ae:
Yes it is. You are the one claiming that small changes can't add up to large ones. The small changes have been undeniably demonstrated, i.e. that 1 + 1 = 2. It is up to you to demonstrate that 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10. (btw that analogy was shamelessly lifted from Rrhain)John Paul:
I can refute that with anolgies too. I can stack pennies however there is a limit. I can drive from New York to San Fran. but not to Hawaii. How many more examples of limits do you want? We observe limits in all of life. Why is life itself somehow without limits?It is up to you to provide POSITIVE evidence to support your case.:ae:
It has been provided. That you believe there to be limitations on the variability of morphology over time is your burden to prove.John Paul:
No, it hasn't been provided. Assertions are not evidence.The following link will show you the flaw in your thinking.
Welcome idthink.net - BlueHost.comevolutionary biologists no longer think that small changes add up to something bigger. That line of thinking is refuted by the fossil record.[This message has been edited by John Paul, 12-16-2003]

One more time- Creationists since the time of Linne understood change occurred. Saying anything to the contrary is a blatant misrepresentation of reality.Bipeadlism is common- just look at birds. Do you think we evolved from birds? Chimps do not walk upright, which is different from walking on two legs. They can do it, but you are treading close to Lamarkism if you think this acquired trait can be inherited.Again on limits- we observe limits in all facets of life. If you want us to believe life is immune from limitations you need to provide the evidence.

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One more time- Creationists since the time of Linne understood change occurred. Saying anything to the contrary is a blatant misrepresentation of reality.

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Evidence this, please - you keep asserting it.

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Bipeadlism is common- just look at birds.

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Your point? I was demonstrating that species of all degrees of dependence on two and four legs exist, and that there is no barrier for gradualism. We didn't evolve from *any* species alive today.

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Chimps do not walk upright, which is different from walking on two legs. They can do it, but you are treading close to Lamarkism if you think this acquired trait can be inherited.

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We didn't descend from chimps - you don't seem to be getting the point. The point here is that there is no barrier between being a biped and being a quadraped. Apparently you think that chimpanzees are too toward being a quadraped. Ok then, next species: Spider monkeys. (I'll keep going along the gradualistic path if you want)

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Again on limits- we observe limits in all facets of life. If you want us to believe life is immune from limitations you need to provide the evidence.

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What???You're trying to claim that there *is* a limit here, but then saying that it's my job to prove that it's not there. What you're doing is the equivalent of me stating that I have a pet pink unicorn, you asking for some sort of evidence, and me stating that it is your job to prove that I don't have a pet pink unicorn.If you think there is a barrier, state what it is. If you can't even postulate a single possible barrier, I'm not going to help you do it, because I see no barrier. It's unfair to ask someone to prove a negative.------------------
"Illuminant light,
illuminate me."

I'm a bit confused. It appears that your link agrees that there is "good indirect evidence" that birds and mammals evolved from reptiles. Can you explain why it is "indirect"?And since it is "good" does that mean they are agreeing that it took place. They appear to be but then argue that small changes could not have done it. Is that correct?The site then goes on about piling coins up and lifting weights. In those examples we can offer some reasons for a barrier. It is not clear that they do so for ongoing small evolutionary changes.They state:
That is, while (1) may apply to some evolutionary changes, generalizing such phenomena to the level of a universal explanation of evolution is an unjustified step.
(1) here is the idea of (1) much time + small changes = large changesWhat places does it apply to then?They also state:

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Perhaps, but if we try to secure this argument for evolutionary change, we end up merely assuming there are no relevant limitations. Do we really know enough about ontogeny and phylogeny to justify this raw assumption?

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Since in some cases, the reptile to mammal example is one, we see small steps in the fossil record I presume that they accept that one as having occured since this arguement doesn't apply to that.Next we seem to start to get to the meat of the matter:

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I think this is a crucial point. More and more biologists are arguing that morphological evolution is driven by changes in regulatory elements. In fact, some have even proposed that alterations in the patterns of gene regulation have been far more important in evolution than changes in protein function. But what does this mean? It would mean that all of the fossil evidence is largely the consequence of trivial evolutionary events that have little meaning for the origin of much cellular machinery. If most of evolution and the fossil record can be explained by changing the pattern of gene expression, then most of evolution and the fossil record is not relevant to questions about the origin of those genes or the basic process of gene expression itself. (1) might be vindicated at the level of organismic evolution, but at a very high price. That price being that almost all of the evidence of evolution now becomes irrelevant to the deeper aspects of life.

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One way to take this is that the idea of evolution being based on very small changes adding up becomes one of small changes in the basic genetics AND small changes in regulation of the genes producint large changes all of which add up to large changes.If that is what is being argued then that is in line with what I undertand current evolutionary thought to be.They then toss in:

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While evolutionary hypotheses that build upon (1) also build on what biochemistry and cell biology provide for evolutionary tinkering, they don't explain the origin of that biochemistry and cell biology themselves. To put it one way, the evolution of clothing and fashion depends on the human body, but nothing about fashion-evolution explains the origin of the human body.

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Which just tosses in the problem of the origin of life but is irrelevant to the question at hand.Then they say:

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Thanks to bacterial genomics, it is now becoming quite clear that extant bacteria would not be all that different from the last common ancestor of bacteria, which is to say that 3.5 billion years of small changes in bacteria have not resulted in any obvious large change. In terms of overall complexity, modern bacteria are no more complex than their 3.5 billion-old ancestors. In terms of the basic cellular machinery, not much has changed. Many small changes have not added up to large changes. Might this be the typical way in which evolution works?

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How is this relevant? No one has said that changes HAVE to add up. They can move around a point and not have a direction in the long term. What is being said is they CAN add up if there is selective pressure to give them some directionality. The important concept is one of a rachet. That is something which "holds" a change once it happens. Selection can supply that if it works out for the organisms.In summary they say:

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And when talking about the evolution of the mammalian middle ear bones, we should not forget that we are still basically in the dark in trying to explain how both a mammalian and reptilian zygote actually develops the middle ear and jaw bones, respectively. Without this knowledge, attempts to explain such a transition as a function of a series of small, incremental changes stretched across time are rooted in ignorance. That is, we don't truly understand neither the process of development nor the process of evolution and without such knowledge, there is no reason to think we are on safe ground when employing (1).

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So again, it appears that they agree that the events have taken place. They are concerned with the detailed understanding of the mechanisms.They suggest that it takes more than small changes and use regulation as an example of something other than small changes. However, small changes in regulation are also small genetic changes.

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One may assume (1) to explain evolutionary change as a working hypothesis, but we should keep in mind that large changes in evolution are basically a "black box" and a series of small incremental changes may play only a trivial, fine-tuning role in any transition (there is no evidence to think otherwise). What's more, bacteria, as the predominant life forms on this planet, which have experience the most evolution of all life forms, tell us clearly that (1) need not apply to biological evolution.

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Well, "working hypothosis" is what it is in the sense that it is the consensus theory for what has occured.However, I think we do understand a lot more about the genetics than they are claiming. I will leave that part for the experts.The bacteria statment, as noted, is totally irrelevant.

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One more time- Creationists since the time of Linne understood change occurred. Saying anything to the contrary is a blatant misrepresentation of reality.
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Rei:
Evidence this, please - you keep asserting it.John Paul:
I already have referenced it.I NEVER said we evolved from any organism alive today and I NEVER said we evolved from chimps.There is NOTHING in the literature that shows a quad can evolve into a biped. Only a belief it can happen.One more time- LIMITS exist in all facets of life. We observe these limits. I presented a link that explains what I mean. NO ONE has ever presented any evidence that the evolution of life is immune to limitations. IOW it is ONLY an assertion. What I asked of you was to present some POSITIVE evidence to support your position. Don't blame me if you can't do this.Try reading the article this time:
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The point is NosyNed that there is NO evidence that mutations can accumulate in the way evolutionists insist they did. Do you understand that?

John Paul, The fossil record would be a indication, but cladistics would be evidence which is refutable according to evolutionists, a link is below which provides information on the congruence between cladistics and stratagraphics.

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(please understand I am a student, I could be wrong, but this is what I have found to be a big foundation for evolutionists)http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/Benton/1999SystBiol.pdfPersonally, I dont see how shared derived characters supplement anymore then similarites for eukaryotes. So John Paul, I stand at your side in this argument currently, untill deployed otherwise because it seems that there really is no evidences other then imigations which lead to organic evolutions at a metaphoric standpoint.------------------
Thank You
The Elder