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Author Topic:   Bird Evolution
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 3 of 17 (139657)
09-03-2004 4:17 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Monsieur_Lynx
09-03-2004 3:42 PM


Whoever designed it had to have a very good grasp of aerodynamic principles.
If you were flying on a modern airliner, a great deal of its design resulted from computer modelling employing evolutionary principles - so-called "genetic programming."
Now there is a prevalent idea in scientific circles that birds "evolved" from a reptilian ancestor.
I'm fairly sure we've established before that the ancestor of birds was an archosaur, not a reptile. That clade includes birds, dinosaurs, and crocodilians.
would one consider a duck-billed platypus a transitional form between a duck and mammal?
No, but one would consider its ancestor a transitional form between mammals and other therapsids.
If creatures that are terrestrial gradually evolved wings, they would have difficulty walking--
Why?
why would it think of flapping those structures to soar through the sky?
If it had them, why not?
So wings, light-weight skeleton, etc. could not have evolved after the creature attempts to fly, nor could they have evolved before the creature attempts to fly.
True. So the third option must be true - flight evolved alongside these structures.
After all, flight isn't a bivalent state. There's a gradient of flight, from simple gliding (as many mammals do), to soaring, to outright powered flight.
it would be a lame bird, neither capable of flight nor walking.
Why? Wings and legs are two different structures in birds, and there are no flighted birds that cannot walk. Clearly, this prediction is falsified by the existence of flighted birds that can walk.
Maybe you've never seen a bird, or something?
Why would we expect aerodynamic structures like the wings on a bird, or a lightweight hollow skeleton found in birds, to develop spontaneously, on its own?
Because there's a survival advantage at all points along the flight gradient. Even a little bit of flight is better than no flight at all, if you've ever seen a chicken.
I don't know why evolutionists shy away from this notion of God creating the various CREATures that we see.
Why do we "shy away" from it? Because it's contradicted by the evidence. The genetic, cladistic, and stratiographic evidence is very conclusive - birds evolved from other archosaurs.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Monsieur_Lynx, posted 09-03-2004 3:42 PM Monsieur_Lynx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by Monsieur_Lynx, posted 09-06-2004 5:40 PM crashfrog has replied

  
crashfrog
Member (Idle past 1467 days)
Posts: 19762
From: Silver Spring, MD
Joined: 03-20-2003


Message 16 of 17 (140503)
09-06-2004 8:38 PM
Reply to: Message 13 by Monsieur_Lynx
09-06-2004 5:40 PM


Okay, so you yourself are able to see that something like a plane requires an intelligent designer--that is, to construct such computer modelling requires the aid of some programmer, someone who is intelligent--it can't happen on its own.
Not until computers can reproduce, no.
But what does that have to do with anything? Genetic programming is constructed in such a way that there's no intelligent input into the design. It's design without intelligence.
I mean, it doesn't make any sense the other way. If the result you get is still the product of intelligence, why bother with the programming in the first place? Why not just sit down and design the plane? If the design for the plane comes from the heads of the programmer, why do they even bother to program the computer? Why don't they just sit down and draw the design?
Such a claim is certainly not corroborated by evidence!!
Clearly it is; the evidence is that birds evolved from other flightless creatures, and that there's a gradient of flight ability found in the natural world.
That's fairly conclusive, to me. If birds evolved from other creatures, as they did; and there's a variety of transitional forms between flightlessness and flight, as there are, then it's simple. Flight evolved.
I think you're apparently having difficulties visualizing the evolution of creatures incapable of flight into creatures that can fly.
Since you're the one coming up with conclusions drastically opposed to scientific concensus on the issue, I rather think that it is you who has this problem.
So initially you have these creatures that have forelimbs structured for walking.
See, here we go. No, initally you have bipedal organisms, like theropod dinosaurs. Compsagnathus can walk just as well with bare arms as with feathered.
Okay I'm calling your bluff--exactly WHAT evidence supports the evolution of birds from from archosaurs/reptiles/whatever?
Ok, you don't seem to really understand.
Birds are archosaurs. Dinosaurs and crocodilians are archosaurs.
They didn't evolve "from" archosaurs, they are archosaurs. They will always be archosaurs.
Take a good look at that observation I pointed out--does the presence of a bill and the ability to lay eggs suggest that a duck-billed platypus evolved from a duck?
Since the platypus does not lay the eggs of a duck, or have the bill of a duck, clearly not.
You don't seem to be able to distinguish between characteristics that are similar on the surface and characteristics that are the same, like the characteristics birds share with dinosaurs.
That is, the stratiographic evidence is very conclusive, isn't it?
On it's own, no one evidence is conclusive. Certainly the situation you describe could be used as evidence to propose a conjecture of platypus/duck ancestry.
But the evidence from the other fields doesn't support it. The molecular phylogenetics doesn't support platypus/duck ancestry. The taxonomic investigation certainly doesn't support platypus/duck ancestry - platypuses and ducks don't have anywhere close to the same physiology.
The opposite is true for bird/dinosaur ancestry. The stratiography suggests ancestry; the genetic information suggests ancestry; the taxonomic comparison suggests ancestry. None of these prove it by themselves; that's not how science works. The total evidence taken together, however, gives us great confidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs, or an ancestor of dinosaurs.
But surely you don't believe that creatures like chickens can eventually evolve the ability to fly like a hawk do you?
Absolutely I can. There's nothing that a hawk has that a chicken does not. Were there a selection pressure on chickens that favored hawk-like body types, they would certainly be able to fly like hawks. As it is, though, we breed chickens for meatiness, not flight.
We can instead say that the various birds were *designed* for their particular niches in nature.
By what designer, though? The only known designer in the universe are humans, and they weren't there to do it.
How exactly do the observed genetic similarities **contradict** a common Designer behind all the life we see.
Well, I don't know that it contradicts a designer, but it certainly contradicts an intelligent designer. Why would an intelligent designer copy the kinds of mistakes, errors, and junk that we find in DNA that allows us to infer ancestry? I should point out that these are the same techniques that allow us to perform paternity tests; surely you're not saying you were created to look like your father?
Separate creation explains the diversity among the life we see
Only if you're willing to believe in an idiot creator.
This message has been edited by crashfrog, 09-06-2004 07:39 PM

This message is a reply to:
 Message 13 by Monsieur_Lynx, posted 09-06-2004 5:40 PM Monsieur_Lynx has not replied

  
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