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Author | Topic: No Witnesses | |||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
So Scientists are using pictures to determine that they evolved from land dwelling creatures to become sea dwelling creatures? I thought there was more to it.
For the past decades and centuries even, the hard work's been done. And it's all been published and it's all there for you to read. All you need to is to read it. OK, so you need to learn something about the science of paleontology too; there is no royal road to learning. . . . So the fossils come with name tags? . . . Well, I have a completley different argument now. Mainly using pictures as evidence, and unlabled fossils. I have told this story before, but perhaps you had missed it. From circa 1987 to circa 1994, I was active on CompuServe until they "improved" their service to the point of making it unusable; many of the essays I've posted on my website (cre-ev.dwise1.net/index.html) I had originally written and uploaded to CompuServe's library. On CompuServe, there was a remarkable creationist, Merle Hertzler. He was the most honest creationist I have ever encountered and his arguments in support of creationism were the best reasoned I have ever encountered. A year later, he had had to abandon creationism as untenable and had gone to the other side -- this is part of the basis for my recently posted assessment of the fate of honest creationists in Message 409 of The Three Kinds of Creationists. On Merle's website, his Did We Evolve? page recounts part of the story of his transition from creationism to evolution. I now post a greatly abbreviated quoting from that page; you have the link, which I recommend you use to read the entire page:
quote:Your mischaracterization of paleontology has been noted. Your contribution to our eyes rolling at the sight of yet another creationist howler has been noted. Your contribution to the impossibility of ever taking any creationist's utterance seriously has been noted. Now, was that really your intent? You are arguing yet again from ignorance. You have in the recent past expressed your intent of learning, of working this all out. How is that endeavor progressing? No, I do realize that what you had proposed will take years to accomplish, but in the meantime should you really be indulging in the same tired old creationist nonsense arguments? Instead, you need to continue to learn. No, it is not simple, but it is necessary.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5952 Joined: Member Rating: 5.7 |
Are you saying that seals and walruses used to be otters and beavers? Are you saying that otters and beavers will one day be seals and walruses?
No one who knows anything about evolutionary theory would honestly say such things. Only creationists, who know nothing about evolution, would say such things. Do you remember the discussion of the problem faced by creationists when they "triumphantly" confront "evolutionists" with their PRATTs? They get laughed out of there rightfully for uttering such nonsense. Of course, the problem is that they, being ignorant and misled, had no idea that what they had been taught was such nonsense. And yet what they say is nonsense and they must be informed of that fact. One example of such nonsense is creationists stating that for evolution to be true we would need to see a dog give birth to a cat. Which is what you are claiming here to be what evolution says. That is completely and utterly untrue and complete and utter nonsense. And as long as you utter complete and utter nonsense, then you should not be surprised at the reaction you receive.
Examine how life works! That is the key to reasoning all this out. Parents produce offspring. In doing so, the parents' genetic information, recombined with some mutations mixed in, is passed on to the offspring. As a result, parents' offspring are very similar to their parents, yet slightly different. In order to pass their genes on to further generations, those offspring need to live and survive within their environment, at least up to the point of being able to reproduce and even at times to do other things that will further ensure the survival of their genes. Those offspring who are better able to do that will be better represented in the progenitors of the next generation; those unable to survive or be selected for reproduction will be less well represented. The genes of those who are better represented among the progenitors of the next generation will contribute more to that next generation's collective genome. And so one, for generation after generation. My personal opinion, which I have not seen expressed elsewhere, is that evolution is not an actual force or process, but rather it is the natural cumulative effects of life doing what life does. Think in terms of what life does and evolution will make much more sense. Of course, that does not keep us from describing what life naturally does in terms of "evolutionary processes". Stop thinking in terms of one modern species "evolving" into another unrelated modern species ... or even into another related species. That is nonsense. As long as you continue to utter such nonsense, you will be treated appropriately regardless of what kind of shit-fit tantrum you decide to throw. A dog will give birth to a dog, a dog different from the parents, albeit very similar. Over successive generations, those differences can accumulate, eventually (should the environment's selective pressures so determine) over many generations result in an animal that bears little resemblance to that original dog. Similarly, a cat will give birth to a cat, different from the parent, and over generations, depending on the environment's selective pressures, could result in an animal that bears little resemblance to the original cat. But at no point could a dog ever become a cat, nor could a cat ever become a dog. Even if the new dog were to appear for all purposes to be a cat, its genes would reveal it to be a dog -- genetics does not lie. IOW, try to think in terms of Darwin's branching tree. Lamarck (remember the pre-Darwinian use/disuse acquired traits misconception of evolution? The immediate and obvious disproof of which is to cut off multiple generations of lab mice's tails and observe that their offspring continue to have tails with complete and utter disregard of our Lamarckian efforts.) thought in terms of a "Ladder of Life", in which all life worked its way up a Scale of Being with Man at its Penacle. That Lamarckian model has been shown to be wrong. Rather, what we see and would expect to see is an infinitely branching tree. Please review my message Message 186 in How do "novel" features evolve? where I discussed diachronic views vs synchronic views. As we view the evolution of a particular species over time, we would be viewing that species diachronically, meaning "over time". But in viewing the "Tree of Life" at any instant in time, we would be viewing it synchronically, meaning what the "snapshot of life" is at that time. At a given point in time, we would see the vast array of species that exist. From that point, each species would propagate, each "reproducing after its own kind." Let's follow one particular amphibian species, which I admittedly cannot readily identify (I am, after all, a professional software engineer). Around 318 million years ago, some amphibians responded to the increasingly dry environment to become stem reptiles (Captorhinidae), the earliest and most basal reptile types. From that base species (or group of species), we see the serpents, crocodiles, turtles, lizards, therapsids (progenitors of the mammals), dinosauria (progenitors of the dinosaurs and of birds). Now for a bit of fun. Walter Brown is one of the icons of "creation science". Retired from the US Air Force circa 1979, he appears to have been the primary source of that classic bogus creationist claim about the radical rate at which the earth's rotation rate is slowing down. But, please, let's leave that particular fiasco until later. Walter Brown's story is that it was his son who did this. Here's the story as I posted in my essay since 1990 (THE BULLFROG AFFAIR: or The Enchanted Prince Croaks):
quote:Did you understand that? From the "stem reptile", several separate branches radiated out, each one evolving separately and independently. Please review Message 201. In his book, Michael Denton, an Australian MD, posited a hierarchy that "disproved evolution", whereas in reality his entire argument actually supported the evolutionary view.
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