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Author Topic:   Kiwi bird and its wings
Taq
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Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 12 of 23 (885117)
03-23-2021 6:31 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by mike the wiz
03-23-2021 5:15 PM


mike the wiz writes:
But the evolution of the ancestor's wings is assumed and therefore question-begged.
It isn't assumed. If wings evolved in birds then they would fit into a statistically significant phylogeny, and they do. The evidence demonstrates that wings were present in the common ancestor of birds.
Vestigial features in and of themselves do not evidence evolution. What does evidence evolution is the pattern of vestigial features. We only see vestiges of features that we would expect in an evolutionary tree, such as vestigial wings in kiwi birds. We don't see vestigial features that the tree does not predict, such as vestigial feathers in mammals or vestigial teats in birds.
So then the vestiges themselves wouldn't be designed into them, their original purpose would be designed.
That still doesn't explain why characteristics produce a statistically significant phylogeny.
Whale hip bones for example, they assumed to have been from previous ancestors but, "the case" for the evolution of whales is a poor and circumstantial case. The fact is there can be reasons for why features exist, a lot of the time the vestiges themselves are later found to have uses.
Again, the presence of a vestigial hip is consistent with the phylogeny.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by mike the wiz, posted 03-23-2021 5:15 PM mike the wiz has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 13 of 23 (885118)
03-23-2021 6:34 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by mike the wiz
03-23-2021 6:00 PM


mike the wiz writes:
Just one more point on my helicopter tail-boom I designed for my drone.
It looks like a vestige of a helicopter. It has the usual boom-shape, it has the usual helicopter-style tail section where there is a tail fin like with a helicopter.
In order for your argument to work you would need to show how helicopters and drones fit into a nested hierarchy.
This perfectly explains the variety in nature. It could be that the designer, the Lord God, simply DESIRED a platypus to have a bill. DESIRED a kiwi to have those little wings that look "useless" to evolutionists.
The razor of parsimony cleaves off your argument.
quote:
For, be it observed, the exception in limine to the evidence which we are about to consider, does not question that natural selection may not be able to do all that Mr. Darwin ascribes to it: it merely objects to his interpretation of the facts, because it maintains that these facts might equally well be ascribed to intelligent design. And so undoubtedly they might, if we were all childish enough to rush into a supernatural explanation whenever a natural explanation is found sufficient to account for the facts. Once admit the glaringly illogical principle that we may assume the operation of higher causes where the operation of lower ones is sufficient to explain the observed phenomena, and all our science and all our philosophy are scattered to the winds. For the law of logic which Sir William Hamilton called the law of parsimony—or the law which forbids us to assume the operation of higher causes when lower ones are found sufficient to explain the observed effects—this law constitutes the only logical barrier between science and superstition. For it is manifest that it is always possible to give a hypothetical explanation of any phenomenon whatever, by referring it immediately to the intelligence of some supernatural agent; so that the only difference between the logic of science and the logic of superstition consists in science recognising a validity in the law of parsimony which superstition disregards. Therefore I have no hesitation in saying that this way of looking at the evidence in favour of natural selection is not a scientific or a reasonable way of looking at it, but a purely superstitious way.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, by George J. Romanes, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S.

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 Message 10 by mike the wiz, posted 03-23-2021 6:00 PM mike the wiz has not replied

  
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