Fletis Humplebacker wrote:
John Harshman
Fletis Humplebacker
"John Harshman"
As I have explained in several ways, the Cambrian explosion isn't as
sudden as you think,
I've addressed that misrepresentation a number of times now. At this
point you are deliberately misrepresenting me. That's a shame. I've
repeatedly said it was the scientific communities interpretation, I've not
added or taken away from it.
But you (or rather your creationist web sites) have taken away nearly
everything.
I don't agree. I asked you to prove it and you keep slinging the
same charge out over and over. Repetition makes it true?
That would seem trivially obvious. The creationist sites are presenting
short quotes from much longer articles. Or do you deny that too?
That's why there are all those holes (...) in the quotes.
No, they quoted the relevent portions. I understood quite clearly that
geological time was the reference. Most people know that
evolutionists don't speak of suddeness as in the blink of the eye.
Usually it's considered bad form to quote sentence fragments, much less
string together fragments from different sentences. So, if geological
time is the reference, what's the problem? There's plenty of time for
natural processes to operate, if that's what we're arguing about, or for
common descent to occur by whatever means, if that's what it is.
This ends up confusing time immensely; the explosion is expanding and
contracting in time as needed to accomodate anything you like. One claim
you make is that most orders of invertebrates arose in the Cambrian
explosion, and I have shown that this doesn't apply to brachiopods. You
just ignore that.
That, I believe was posted in the first post that you responded to. And how
does most mean all?
"Most" presumably means, at minimum, greater than 50%. But the
brachiopods don't reach that level even if I spot you the entire
Cambrian (which, I remind you, is 53 million years long).
nor does it have anything to do with speciation,
which is what Gould was talking about.
But let's try it your way. What do you think is the true history of
life? What was the Cambrian explosion, really? Go into some detail.
I've quoted that a number of times too.
No, you haven't. I want your own theory. Were all Cambrian species
separately created over the course of 53 million years? Why such a burst
of new "phyla" (if the word has any meaning for you, which it should
not) at that time, particularly? All you have said is that the record is
incompatible with evolution. But what *is* it compatible with? And why?
It's compatible with an external force, which was the conversation.
What would not be compatible with an external force? And what is it that
this external force supposedly did? Why are you dodging here?
That finding was in fact predicted by evolutionary theory. If, as
phylogenetic analyses had previously found, whales are artiodactyls,
then we would expect early whales that still had feet to have
douoble-pulley astragali. Finding the astragalus confirms a prediction
of common descent.
Rather it confirms that their belief is that creatures with feet were
whales. That's circular reasoning.
I present evidence, you respond with a mantra.
http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_ap01.asp
It was half of a pulley-shaped anklebone, known as an astragalus, belonging
to another new species of whale. A Pakistani colleague found the other half.
When Gingerich fitted the two pieces together, he had a moment of humbling
recognition…. Here was an anklebone, from a four-legged whale dating back
to 47 million years, that closely resembled the homologous anklebone in an
artiodactyls. Suddenly he realized how closely whales are related to antelopes
(p. 31, emp. added).
“Well-preserved ankles of the earliest ancient whales are now needed to confirm
that the traits seen in the new skeletons are indeed inherited from early artiodactyls
and not a result of convergent evolution,” Rose said.
The Nature article is deceitful. The headline gives, and the conclusion takes
away. It starts out with “Almost like a whale: Fossils bridge gap between land
mammals and whales . . . . Fifty million years ago, two mammals roamed the
desert landscapes of what is now Pakistan. They looked a bit like dogs. They
were, in fact, land-living, four-legged whales. Their new-found fossils join other
famous missing links, such as the primitive bird Archaeopteryx, that show how
one group of animals evolved into another.” Then it proceeds to undermine
everything it just said. The fossils are not anything like whales except for alleged
similarities in ear bones and heel bones (of which neither has anything to do with
whale function), and there are other scientists who disagree strongly that this fossil
has anything to do with whales. The article glosses over tremendous anatomical
differences between the fossil and whales and yet assumes that these formidable
evolutionary changes must have occurred rapidly without leaving a trace in the
fossil record of hundreds of transitional forms that must have been required. The
opening paragraph lies about Archaeopteryx, which is not ancestral to birds (earlier
birds are found in the fossil record),
This is not actually true. If you think it is, name the earlier birds.
It's also irrelevant. Don't know what the article said, exactly (and it
wasn't the Gingerich et al. article being talked about here), but
Archaeopteryx is not generally claimed to be ancestral to birds. We
can't actually distinguish ancestors from close cousins. Archaeopteryx
is a transitional fossil, though.
You didn't read it did you? I quoted the relevent portion that did address
Gingerich's article.
You are mistaken. In fact what is being addressed is a news item in
Nature that refers to Gingerich. Gingerich's article itself is not being
addressed at all in the stuff you quoted, just a different article that
talks about Gingerich. You're reading tertiary sources!
I beg to differ...
http://www.trueorigin.org/ng_ap01.asp
So, from mere dimples in teeth and folded ear bones, this animal somehow
“qualifies” as a walking whale? Interestingly, prominent whale expert J.G.M.
Thewissen and his colleagues later unearthed additional bones of Pakicetus
(Thewissen, et al., 2001). The skeletons of Pakicetus published by Thewissen,
et al. do not look anything like the swimming creature featured in either Gingerich’s
original article or in National Geographic.
This is a new quote, talking about something different from your
previous quote. I believe this is talking about Gingerich's 1983
article, not the 2001 article, since the 2001 article doesn't show
Pakicetus at all. It shows Rodhocetus and Articetus.
See Gingerich's web site for plenty of information on fossil whales:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ginge...les/Whales.htm
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I can't accept your viewpoint as gospel no matter how many times
you repeat it. I don't see any natural way of a four legged creature
becoming a whale.
I can't comment on whether the process was natural, just confirm that it
did occur. There are plenty of 4-legged whales, ranging from fully
terrestrial to fully aquatic. Basilosaurus, which surely could not have
walked on land at all, nevertheless had four legs, with toes even on the
hind legs. What do you make of that?
That's a whale tale if I ever heard one and just
get more of the same when asking for evidence. You, again, sidestepped
all the points that they brought up by minimizing the source in your own
mind. Oddly enough that's what you accuse me of. I'm tired of your BS
and I have work to do.
Don't we all.