Evolving the Musculoskeletal System

Not when you can look back in the fossil record and see all the different variations which have developed from earlier forms.You are just unwilling to accept what the evidence shows.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Are you familiar with the fossil record, and all the museums and library floors devoted to the details?Before you jump on the creationist bandwagon and say "it's too complex" you should really be familiar with some of that evidence.Religious belief is fine, but in this case it is contradicted by huge amounts of empirical evidence--repeatable and predictable. Ignoring that evidence and claiming "goddidit" is a very weak argument and won't impress anyone who is not already a true believer.(See also tagline below.)

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Some of the evidence is found in the following journals:

American Journal of Human Biology
American Journal of Human Genetics
American Journal of Physical Anthropology
The Anatomical Record Part A
Annals of Human Biology
Annals of Human Genetics
Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics
Anthropological Science
Anthropologie
L' Anthropologie
Archaeometry
Behavior Genetics
Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
Biological Psychology
Biology and Philosophy
BMC Evolutionary Biology
Current Anthropology
Current Biology
Economics and Human Biology
Ethnic and Racial Studies
European Journal of Human Genetics
Evolution and Human Behavior
Evolutionary Anthropology
Forensic Science International
Gene
Genetical Research
Genetics
Genome Research
Heredity
Homo
Human Biology
Human Heredity
Human Genetics
Human Genomics
Human Molecular Genetics
Human Mutation
International Journal of Osteoarchaeology
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
Journal of Archaeological Science
Journal of Biosocial Science
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Journal of Human Evolution
Journal of Human Genetics
Journal of Molecular Evolution
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Molecular Biology and Evolution
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution
Nature
Nature Genetics
Nature Reviews Genetics
PLoS Biology
PLoS Genetics
Proceedings of The Royal Society: Biological Sciences
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Russian Journal of Genetics
Science
Trends in Genetics

This is a very partial list. Then you need to add in the museums around the world, and a lot of other evidence.Of course, you won't accept any of this evidence as your mind has already been made up by religious belief.So why are you even asking?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Why Tibetans breathe so easy up high

Residents of the Tibetan Plateau show heritable adaptations to extreme altitude. We sequenced 50 exomes of ethnic Tibetans, encompassing coding sequences of 92% of human genes, with an average coverage of 18x per individual. Genes showing population-specific allele frequency changes, which represent strong candidates for altitude adaptation, were identified. The strongest signal of natural selection came from endothelial Per-Arnt-Sim (PAS) domain protein 1 (EPAS1), a transcription factor involved in response to hypoxia. One single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) at EPAS1 shows a 78% frequency difference between Tibetan and Han samples, representing the fastest allele frequency change observed at any human gene to date. This SNP’s association with erythrocyte abundance supports the role of EPAS1 in adaptation to hypoxia. Thus, a population genomic survey has revealed a functionally important locus in genetic adaptation to high altitude.

It is interesting to note that the high altitude adaptations found in residents of the Andes Mountains employ an entirely different mutation.That's evolution in action. And you might consider how quickly this mutation/adaptation occurred in the Andes, as those mountains were populated in the relatively recent past (5,000+ years ago if I remember correctly).

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Read the blog I linked to, then the original article.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

How about cartilage?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Drawing a line is even more interesting in a ring species.There is the ability to interbreed between populations A and B, B and C, C and D, etc. but not A and X.Where would one draw this line?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

OK, lets try another example.Try to roll 100 dice and get all sixes. Impossible?Not the way evolution works. Roll the dice and anything that is not a six, just roll again.No problem. You'll have all sixes before lunch, with plenty of time out for morning tea.This example illustrates the problem mathematicians and creationists have. They calculate the odds of everything happening all at once.In practice, evolution works in tiny steps with billions of cases all evolving at the same time. What doesn't work is weeded out and what works is retained.That changes the odds considerably.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

So?What's the difference?Do you have any evidence that the first organism couldn't have been assembled bit by bit, rather than all at once?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Sounds like this is on topic then.Could you cite for me the additional bones in our feet that were not in ape feet?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Bones are one of my specialties.In my beginning osteology class I learned to identify all the bones of the wrist and ankle (identifying which bone and which side) behind my back from feel alone.Primate bones are remarkably similar to one another.

I think what we are seeing here is the difference between a belief-based and an evidence-based "worldview."Among scientists, evidence is the underlying principle of everything we do. False "evidence" is not only meaningless, it is detrimental to advancement. This is why we care so much about gathering, testing, and then explaining the evidence, and using predictions to lead to new evidence. And this is why we are so careful about how we cite the evidence. We must be sure we are not getting bad data mixed in with good data.Creationists rely on belief, so scientific evidence is secondary--at best. Their "evidence" comes from scripture, revelation and other such sources and is not subject to the same tests that scientific data would be. Because they don't rely on scientific evidence, as we do, they don't take the care with it that we do. It is just not a part of their training.We now return you to your regularly-scheduled debate.

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Who designed these stalactites and stalagmites?

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.