Always talking about micro-evolution?

Ok, I'm clear with you now on that. Sorry about how I reacted.But as I'm typing this, I'm noticing the title of this thread; whoa, we've been WAYYY off topic here for quite a while. I already got a warning earlier today for engaging someone after they changed the topic, so I'm backing off for a while in hopes somebody can somehow get us back on track.[This message has been edited by Skeptick, 02-06-2004]

A bit "snarky"? I admit that I had to look that one up in the book. Means "to nag" and originates from "low" pig latin. But I doubt you meant that.
But getting beyond that; you're referencing my "My dear Mammuthus..." response to his overdone cut and paste project? I don't think so. I suspected Mammuthus responded the way he did for a precise purpose, which may or may not be revealed if he ever responds back. I suspect he knew what answer I was looking for, but yet responded with what you saw, which I found humorously disrespectful. But I don't whine for apologies; I usually just try to make it plain that I didn't appreciate it and attempt rewind the whole thing and start over. No apology is in order, at least not at this point in time.But, I just have to ask, are you Mammuthus' 3rd party rep? If Mammuthus wanted to whine for an apology, he certainly would have done it himself. Or do you request everyone to provide apologies whenever they're "snarky" on this forum? Have you ever been snarky before? Where can I find this flooding thread you've talked about? Sorry about all the questions. I at a hotel and had to swipe my wife's laptop to get online, and she want is back NOW. No time to proofread...

Absolutely unbelievable.You may have noticed that this is a science board, where we talk about scientific theories and make reference to the scientific literature. Or rather, you would have noticed this had you paid attention to any of the prior discussion before charging in headfirst.You also would have noticed that Mammuthus is one of the longer-term participants here, and that he's actually a scientist.And now you're complaining that, unlike any of your posts, he substanitated his arguments with evidence from scientific, peer-reviewed literature? Absolutely ludicrous.Quite frankly, that's how things are done here. Statements are supported with evidence. If you don't want to play by those rules it is suggested that you take your ball and go home.I don't think anybody gives a damn if you apologize or not. I think NosyNed was giving you the benefit of the doubt - he was willing to accept, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that you were an intellectually honest, earnest seeker of truth. How he was able to arrive at that conclusion in the face of your escalating game-playing is beyond me.Take the "last word", as it's apparently so important to you. There's clearly no other reason to have any more words with you whatsoever.

Sorry about the word. It is an English experssion I picked up from my Mum.Yes I do get snarky now and then when I get impatient. We all do I suppose.As for Mammuthus: I don't know if you realize but he is actually a research scientist. I have even worked in a research lab once upon a time and have also listened to and read over exchanges between researchers. You were treated with the respect that a collegue of his would get. He didn't try to push you aside with a line or two of anecdotal chit chat. He gave you a series of serious researches done in the area you asked about. He probably didn't have time or even stop to think that they might be hard to understand for the layman. Or if he did he expected that the readers here would ask for an explanation. I have to do that now and then.All of the above is a guess at what went on but it is exactly the kind of thing I've seen before. There is a long exchange between Mammuthus and some others about the extinction of mega fauna (Mammuthus's area of research) and there was quite a bit of that sort of thing in it if I recall correctly.When scientists get down the nitty gritty in an argument there are exchanges of a WHOLE lot more than the little bit shown here.

This is off topic, so if you have anymore questions perhaps we could open a new thread. I found a decent website (found here) that you might want to check out, it describes STRs (short tandem repeats) that one of the abstracts was talking about. For the 0.9962, this is the percentage of the population that is excluded for each of the nine loci. Multiply by 100 and you get the percentage (99.26% of the population excluded, 0.74% included), and this is for each loci. The discrimination power is the ability to tell one person from another (in this case 1-2x10^(-9)) 1 person can be identified out of a population of 1-2 billion people. For any given profile of the nine STR's there should only be about 2-3 people in the whole world with those specific STR's.Again, this is off topic, a new thread should be opened for further discussion. That is unless I have made a glaring error in my interpretation of the data.

I indeed noticed. I also noticed in other posts, when people have dumped not NEARLY as much copy-and-paste material into a post, an administrator or someone jumps in to remind that person to NOT do that, rather to just create a link or links to the info. Since Mammuthus has been around for so long, as you stated yourself, why would he deliver a copy-and-paste project longer than most I've seen on this forum (although, I admit that I don't have absolute knowledge of all the copy-and-paste demonstrations; there may indeed be longer ones, but that doesn't make Mammuthus' project any shorter or more compliant to forum admin's requests). I hope you see where I'm going with this. If you don't, don't worry, it's not necessary. Mammuthus knows. "Actually" a scientist? I'm not sure if you're aware of what you just inadvertantly insinuated.
But to your statement, again, I had already noticed that too, thank you. Had Mammuthus' reply actually come from an novice, I would never have responded the way I did. Your comments decribes specifically why I selected Mammuthus for my question (see post #49). Oh, yes, Mammuthus is an incredibly sharp individual, no doubt. I don't direct comments to an audience unless I've first done some amount of research. If someone replies to my post, I research historical posts of that person before I reply back. My mistake was opening post #49 with those 8 simple words that were first used by "the architect" and certainly tipped off Mammuthus. I was a little bold thinking those 8 words wouldn't be a tip-off; I did underestimate that, oh yes. Apparently Mammuthus has been stung by my line of questioning before and chose to avoid being an inadvertant tool used to drive another nail into Darwin's coffin; the fact that he has extensive experience supports that notion. I was just going to play it out again to see if a different answer has been formulated since the last time. Either you have no clue as to what I mean, which makes your post sincere, or you DO know what was happening and the methods you used in your last post is just your way of steering clear of a mate-in-twelve type scenario; a scenario which, once initiated, cannot be stopped.
Good grief, let's just drop it. But I still think Mammuthus knew exactly where this was headed and avoided it. It's just another one of the many issues that many (certainly not all) evolutionists can't discuss without becoming evasive, argumentative, confrontational, and even downright nasty. (as has been shown over many of the last several posts).[This message has been edited by Skeptick, 02-06-2004]

Well, I won't repeat the info I just put into post #81. Your points have been duly noted, but I felt (and still feel) there was another dynamic at work in the background that you may (or many NOT) have missed.

Super. So, 1:2b right? Is that 2,000,000,000? (I ask this because Mammuthus appears to be in Germany, and I believe in that country they use the British obs., which is different than the US billion (e.g. Millionen, Milliarden, Billiarden... I think).[This message has been edited by Skeptick, 02-06-2004]

That's a reasonable point, and I think I can answer it. The reason that Mammuthus's copy-and-paste was allowable stems from several reasons:1) It's not just copy-and-paste. He included his own annotations; it's generally accepted that the guideline discourages wholesale plagerism, not useful citation to support one's own arguments.2) He didn't actually quote the entire articles, just the abstracts and bibliographical citations. It's assumed that you would be able to find the whole article from the material presented.3) Each of the abstracts was relevant to your point.So in fact, Mammuthus's post was a perfect example of the proper use of copy-and-pasted material at this site. That you're not a scientist? That insinuation was hardly inadvertant; I've seen nothing to convince me that it's in any way inaccurate, either. Heck, I'm no scientist. It's nothing to be ashamed of. I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I realize that you think you're about to checkmate us; a delusion on your part, I'm sure. But I just don't understand what you think Mammuthus tried to do. Your first responses insinuated that you thought Mammuthus was trying to confuse you, or prevaricate in some way. Now I just don't understand exactly what you're accusing him of doing.If it's mate in twelve, or whatever, can we just skip ahead to the denoument? I hate chess.As far as I'm concerned, you asked a question; Mammuthus answered and supported his claim with peer-reviewed research. Apparently you think that constitutes some kind of disingenuous dodge. So, fine. Let's drop it. By all means, let the discussion continue. I'm curious to see the operation of the trap you're so convinced you've set for us.

No prob. You weren't expected to. It was meant for Mammuthus. If you wouldn't treat this whole thing as if Mammuthus has been sitting in the corner pouting while you bravely stand up for him, none of this would be a big deal. I still suspect that Mammuthus knows what this is all about. I never said they weren't; they were indeed relative to my point. They just didn't answer my question. Like asking if I could have a little taste of your chocolate chip cookies to see if they're as delicious as they look, only to be given parts of a long recipe and location of a local cooking class. Eventually, I'll be able to get a taste of those cookies, but that wasn't was I was interested in at the time. There's no guarantee, with any amount of training, that I'll be able to duplicate your efforts and have cookies that taste the same. And I'll never even know if they taste the same unless I actually get a taste of YOUR cookies. Plus, I didn't have the time or knowledge to figure out how to bake my own; I just wanted a taste of those made by an expert. But that doesn't hit on the point of the whole matter. I still suspect Mammuthus knows where this was really going and dodged me in a way you still don't realize. Had he responded back to refute my thoughts, I would taken his word for it and freely apologized for my method of smoking him out. He supported his claim, but didn't answer. He knows that, even though you missed it. Stay tuned.[This message has been edited by Skeptick, 02-07-2004]

In all earnestness, I'm glad you changed you mind.
But no, it's not important to me; obviously important to you. But what you're saying with the above quote is that if you respond to me at all, it's just to have the last word? I don't think you really mean that. We've had some pretty good discussion, at least on some other threads. As long as you stick to issues of at least some kind, and don't get personal, that is.
Seriously.

I am guilty as anyone else of causing topic drift, but perhaps we should get back on to the topic at the top of the page.In the fossil record, there is no defined line between the major divisions of life we see today. For instance, there are fossils that possess both reptile and bird characteristics. There are also fossils that display characteristics of both mammals and reptiles. In my opinion, this does away with the idea that there are hard, defined lines that life can not pass over. Evolutionists don't simply proclaim that there is no barrier, quite the opposite. The absence of a barrier has been observed in the fossil record.It is for this reason that I look at micro-evolution as changes within a species and macro-evolution as speciation events. Do you, or any other poster, see any other way to classify macro and micro. If so, by what criteria or rules do you use in applying macro and micro evolution. Examples are not enough, you must have a set of criteria that apply to every example, otherwise the descriptions are arbitrary and subjective.[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 02-07-2004]

Well, now wait a sec on that one. I need to reasearch just a little as to what new info has been developed over the last couple of years since I haven't really kept up with developing info. But the last time I spent any time with this, I remember that Darwin stated the lack of transitional forms speaks against evolution. But post- Darwinian evolutionists declared that the fossil record will eventually reveal transitional forms (missing links) and prove evolution correct. Instead, over the decades, the fossil record has not revealed anything that science can clearly accept (that I know of) as a series of transitional forms. Then, some evolutionists made the amazing proclamation that somehow the lack of fossil evidence is actually better proof of evolution that had the fossil record actually provided examples of transitional forms. Archaeopteryx is so hotly debated even in scientific circles, that I'm not sure what it is. In Christian circles, some say Archaeopteryx is a hoax, others say its just an extinct bird and not a missing link. I'm not taking any position either way because I haven't taken a close look at the information (just from the sidelines as a passer-by). But now that we're on the topic, I'll probably take a closer look when I get a chance.But regardless of what Archaeopteryx might really have been, the fossil record doesn't show a trail of transitional forms between, let's say, a frog and a dog. Or maybe it does and I just missed it since I'm not keeping fully up to date with any newly developed information or discoveries. Please help me with this. I'll probably be shaking some of my rust loose during this coming week on this topic.

But the last time I spent any time with this, I remember that Darwin stated the lack of transitional forms speaks against evolution.Yes but he also said that this was most likely due to an imcomplete geological column and the difficulties of fossilisation, if I remember correctly.But post- Darwinian evolutionists declared that the fossil record will eventually reveal transitional forms (missing links) and prove evolution correct.
And there are many instances where it has. Archaeopteryx, while not an immediate ancestor to modern birds, is clearly a morphological intermediate between birds and certain reptilesInstead, over the decades, the fossil record has not revealed anything that science can clearly accept (that I know of) as a series of transitional forms.
Depends what you would mean by series, large vertibrae fossils are quite rare so unforatunately the chance of getting a specific series of fossils rather than a random sample is quite low. The series that do exist are usually seperated by millions of years so people *can* just wave them away as variations of a type. But I think some of the early mammal fossils with their reptile traits really is supportive of evolution, nevermind series.Then, some evolutionists made the amazing proclamation that somehow the lack of fossil evidence is actually better proof of evolution that had the fossil record actually provided examples of transitional forms.
No I don't think so, I think evolutionists admit it would be a lot easier if all these forms had appeared in sucession.Archaeopteryx is so hotly debated even in scientific circles, that I'm not sure what it is.
It is a creature with amazing reptile characteristics, and feathers. Unique. It is classified as a bird.In Christian circles, some say Archaeopteryx is a hoax, others say its just an extinct bird and not a missing link.
Probably you mean Creationist circles. I doubt most christians, like most other people, are actually interested in the topic!
It certainly isn't a hoax, that issue has been resolved after analysis of the rock. Hairline mineral fractures run through the feathers and into the bone, so the feathers haven't been imprinted. Also there are 7 archaeopteryx fossils you know, discovered at all times over the last 100 years. It is just an extinct bird though, it is not a *direct* link between reptiles and birds. BUT the important thing is that it is nothing like a modern bird, it is classfied as bird for conveniance. But it shows in the past that there were reptile like creatures with feathers, that sounds a pretty good prospect for evolution[This message has been edited by GreenBlue, 02-08-2004]

Could you please provide some support for this claim? In what peer-reviewed scientific literature or scientific conference proceedings or similar is there debate about Archaeopteryx? (The AIG and ICR house organs are not acceptable references; we already know that creationists don't like Archy).