"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote in message
...

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.


You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do, and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano. You are
stuck in the Cambrian, but have to make your observations 600 million years
later. I think you are about to lose points for tardiness.

Steve

"John Harshman"
Fletis Humplebacker
John Harshman
Fletis Humplebacker


STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred
in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major
anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at
that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major
divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate
uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would
reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major
discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness
and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377,
26 10/95, p.682



You have no clear idea what he found, because you have never read
anything he wrote except these little snippets. You have no basis to
accept or reject anything he said.

To the contrary, you are the one dismissing his words as a
misrepresentation. I'm calling your bluff.

One more time:

" [T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record.Preserved
transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our
understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely
wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples:
therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the
half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken
temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]
Faced with these facts of evolution
and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to
buttress their rhetorical claim.


That's their claim of evolutionists, you know.



if I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am
-- for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or
episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my
colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record
-- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change
thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory,
not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small
isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of
speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of
time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological
microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is
infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether
through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the
fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are
generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between
larger groups."

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens
Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.



How did any of that show that his words were misrepresented on the
creationist site? I don't see where his argument with his contemporary
counterparts alters the excerpts that they posted from Nature.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

"John Harshman"

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


That isn't in dispute, his reference is the geological record, not a
stop watch. The point is that it was, by all accounts I've seen so far,
sudden. Hense the term "explosion", which was contrary to the traditional
view of evolution.

Clearly there was something sudden going on, if your definition of
"sudden" includes periods of 5 million years.

It does geologically speaking. It would not be sudden if we were
talking about tax rebates.


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

You have confused PE with the Cambrian explosion.

I can understand something like the environment favoring birds with
bigger beaks to dominate the breed. I don't think we need to see
such a transition in the fossil record to know it happens. The kinds of
macro-transformations of limbs changing from flippers to legs wouldn't
be so quick that it would leave no trace. I've seen nothing that suggests
a natural transformation like that would happen in 100,000 years.

Indeed it wouldn't. It would probably happen in many steps over millions
of years. And in fact we have transitional fossils for those
intermediate steps in whales, for example. We have good evidence from
both the fossil record and the genetics of living species for the
transformation. Whether it was natural is not something we can test.

Let us know when you come up with some evidence for the transitions.

Gingerich, P. D., M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S.
Malkani. 2001. Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet
of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science 293:2239-2242.

Thewissen, J. G. M., E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Hussain. 2001.
Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to
artiodactyls. Nature 413: 277-281.

Shedlock, A. M., M. C. Milinkovitch, and N. Okada. 2000. SINE evolution,
missing data, and the origin of whales. Syst. Biol. 49:808-817.

That should do for a start. New fossils and new molecular analyses make
this conclusion stronger every year.


And yes, you are right, we can't test the cause although we can draw
conclusions based on what we know. You believe miracles are natural,
I believe they are supernatural.

Odd way to put it.

All you ever do is back up assertions with more assertions.


You can live in your little insulated world if you like. But don't you
ever feel like a mushroom?

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.

But if all you ever do is look at creationist web sites, how can you
consider that to be more than one side?

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

"John Harshman"

Fletis Humplebacker

John Harshman

Fletis Humplebacker



STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred
in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major
anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at
that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major
divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate
uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would
reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major
discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness
and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377,
26 10/95, p.682


You have no clear idea what he found, because you have never read
anything he wrote except these little snippets. You have no basis to
accept or reject anything he said.

To the contrary, you are the one dismissing his words as a
misrepresentation. I'm calling your bluff.


One more time:

" [T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record.Preserved
transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our
understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely
wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples:
therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the
half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken
temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]
Faced with these facts of evolution
and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to
buttress their rhetorical claim.

That's their claim of evolutionists, you know.

Good for them. But in this case all we're arguing about is whether
creationists have distorted one particular statement of Gould's. Gould
says they have. Who is better able to determine that than Gould?

if I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am
-- for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or
episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my
colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record
-- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change
thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory,
not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small
isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of
speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of
time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological
microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is
infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether
through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the
fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are
generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between
larger groups."

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens
Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

How did any of that show that his words were misrepresented on the
creationist site? I don't see where his argument with his contemporary
counterparts alters the excerpts that they posted from Nature.

Read for comprehension. Gould himself is saying that his words were
misreprented by creationists, and he's telling you what he really meant.
I don't know how he could have said it more plainly.

In article ,
Fletis Humplebacker ! wrote:

"John Harshman"

Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?
--
John Brock

Steve Peterson wrote:
"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote in message

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,


As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head. I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything welll documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web. Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.



and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.


This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.


You are
stuck in the Cambrian,


Wrong.


but have to make your observations 600 million years
later.


Time traveling isn't within my powers.


I think you are about to lose points for tardiness.

Steve


Let us know if you can come up with something substantive.

John Brock wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker


"John Harshman"


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.


Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.


I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


"John Harshman"


Fletis Humplebacker


John Harshman


Fletis Humplebacker



STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred
in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major
anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at
that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major
divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate
uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would
reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major
discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness
and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377,
26 10/95, p.682


You have no clear idea what he found, because you have never read
anything he wrote except these little snippets. You have no basis to
accept or reject anything he said.

To the contrary, you are the one dismissing his words as a
misrepresentation. I'm calling your bluff.


One more time:

" [T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record.Preserved
transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our
understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely
wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples:
therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the
half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken
temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]
Faced with these facts of evolution
and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to
buttress their rhetorical claim.

That's their claim of evolutionists, you know.


Good for them. But in this case all we're arguing about is whether
creationists have distorted one particular statement of Gould's. Gould
says they have. Who is better able to determine that than Gould?


No, that isn't what we are arguing. Can't we even agree on what we
are arguing about? No one disputed Gould's concern, I posted some
quotes from various websites that you dismissed by calling them
creationist's misrepresentations. I challenged you on that. You
are also painting all creationists with the same broad brushstroke.



if I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am
-- for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or
episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my
colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record
-- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change
thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory,
not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small
isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of
speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of
time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological
microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is
infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether
through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the
fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are
generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between
larger groups."

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens
Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

How did any of that show that his words were misrepresented on the
creationist site? I don't see where his argument with his contemporary
counterparts alters the excerpts that they posted from Nature.


Read for comprehension. Gould himself is saying that his words were
misreprented by creationists, and he's telling you what he really meant.
I don't know how he could have said it more plainly.


You could be much plainer, you know. How was his quote on the
website misrepresented?

John Harshman wrote:
Mike Marlow wrote:


"John Harshman"


Well, it's been fun visiting rec.woodworking, but my work here is done.


Not so fast mister...

You didn't tell us anything about your tablesaw, your jointer, your tool
wish list, and you didn't post any "gloat" about the free stack of 10 year
aged cherry that you got for free (so that we could tell you that you suck).


That's why I'm just visiting. Don't have any of that stuff. Just tell me
that I suck and get it over with.


You are probably more interested in 500 million year old aged cherry
but I'm here to tell you that it will play hell on your planer.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

Steve Peterson wrote:

"Fletis Humplebacker" ! wrote in message


No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,

As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head.

!

I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything welll documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web.

An interesting thesis. It might be true, though I don't think so yet. At
any rate, I'm not as good at finding things on the web as I am at
knowing the scientific literature.

Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.

That's what libraries are for, dude. Learn to use them.

and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.

This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.

Showing where you were wrong is easy enough. It's showing *you* that's
the trick.

You are
stuck in the Cambrian,

Wrong.

but have to make your observations 600 million years
later.

Time traveling isn't within my powers.

I think you are about to lose points for tardiness.

Steve

Let us know if you can come up with something substantive.

I will admit that I don't know what Steve was talking about either.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:



"John Harshman"



Fletis Humplebacker



John Harshman



Fletis Humplebacker



STEPHEN J. GOULD, HARVARD, "The Cambrian Explosion occurred
in a geological moment, and we have reason to think that all major
anatomical designs may have made their evolutionary appearance at
that time. ...not only the phylum Chordata itself, but also all its major
divisions, arose within the Cambrian Explosion. So much for chordate
uniqueness... Contrary to Darwin's expectation that new data would
reveal gradualistic continuity with slow and steady expansion, all major
discoveries of the past century have only heightened the massiveness
and geological abruptness of this formative event..." Nature, Vol.377,
26 10/95, p.682


You have no clear idea what he found, because you have never read
anything he wrote except these little snippets. You have no basis to
accept or reject anything he said.

To the contrary, you are the one dismissing his words as a
misrepresentation. I'm calling your bluff.


One more time:

" [T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record.Preserved
transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our
understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely
wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples:
therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the
half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken
temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]
Faced with these facts of evolution
and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position,
creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to
buttress their rhetorical claim.

That's their claim of evolutionists, you know.

Good for them. But in this case all we're arguing about is whether
creationists have distorted one particular statement of Gould's. Gould
says they have. Who is better able to determine that than Gould?

No, that isn't what we are arguing. Can't we even agree on what we
are arguing about? No one disputed Gould's concern,

It's not about Gould's concern. It's about whether creationists
(including you) have distorted Gould's statements. You won't agree to
that despite Gould's specifically saying that you have, and exactly how
you have.

Gould is rare in having made such an explicit statement in print. The
other folks haven't, and you have to go back to their original writings
to figure out what they meant. Some of those I have, and can read their
full text. Some of them I don't, and must guess at the meaning based on
the general context of paleontology, which you sadly lack.

I posted some
quotes from various websites that you dismissed by calling them
creationist's misrepresentations. I challenged you on that. You
are also painting all creationists with the same broad brushstroke.

If the brush fits...

if I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am
-- for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or
episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my
colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated
equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record
-- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change
thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory,
not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small
isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of
speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of
time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological
microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is
infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether
through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the
fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are
generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between
larger groups."

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens
Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

How did any of that show that his words were misrepresented on the
creationist site? I don't see where his argument with his contemporary
counterparts alters the excerpts that they posted from Nature.


Read for comprehension. Gould himself is saying that his words were
misreprented by creationists, and he's telling you what he really meant.
I don't know how he could have said it more plainly.

You could be much plainer, you know. How was his quote on the
website misrepresented?

Read what Gould said. See? We are arguing about this. I see no point in
going over this yet again, for what must be the fourth time at least.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Mike Marlow wrote:



"John Harshman"



Well, it's been fun visiting rec.woodworking, but my work here is done.


Not so fast mister...

You didn't tell us anything about your tablesaw, your jointer, your tool
wish list, and you didn't post any "gloat" about the free stack of 10 year
aged cherry that you got for free (so that we could tell you that you suck).


That's why I'm just visiting. Don't have any of that stuff. Just tell me
that I suck and get it over with.



You are probably more interested in 500 million year old aged cherry
but I'm here to tell you that it will play hell on your planer.

Don't know about the genus Prunus, but the earliest angiosperms are only
Cretaceous in age, and the earliest land plants only barely Ordovician.
And anyway I don't have a planer.

John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


John Harshman wrote:


Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


John Harshman wrote:




Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


It's time to whittle the posts down for the sake of brevity,
you are already at 43k.


I was recently trying to figure out why you never responded to my
evidence for human evolution, so I looked back in the thread. The reason
is that you deleted the whole thing without comment, even though you in
fact asked me to give you that evidence. I know this was a mere
oversight on your part, and I have thoughtfully restored it below:


How can you not know??? You called my sources fraudulent and
presented your assertions as the gospel. I might as well be talking to
an Islamic fundamentalist. That and the length might have something
to do with it.


Your sources *are* fraudulent.


I've asked you at least four times to show us where the fraud is. All
you responded with is Gould saying 20 years or so ago that he
was often being misrepresented. Let's fast forward to the here and
now and focus like a laser beam.



They exist only to make you feel secure
in your existing beliefs and give you a warm, fuzzy cocoon to protect
you from any jarring facts.


So far that isn't a substantive rebuttal.


As for assertions, hey, you deleted the
data.

The "data" was in 37+k posts that I told you I can't respond to and
consisted of your assertions of the facts. The few links that you provided
I did look at and respond to.



Obviously you don't really care about it. And why not? You might
as well not have read the stuff I restored below. You don't address it
at all. There seems no point in continuing, but I will make one last,
futile attempt.
[snip all the good stuff]


Having ruled out chance, now the question is how you account for the
pattern we see. I account for it by supposing that the null hypothesis
is just plain wrong, and that there is a phylogeny, and that the
phylogeny involves the African apes, including humans, being related by
a common ancestor more recent than their common ancestor with orangutans
or gibbons. How about you?

If it isn't by chance and your hypothesis is wrong that only
leaves one other thing, a deliberate design.


The problem is that deliberate design doesn't explain it. You have yet
to confront the nested hierarchy of life, and you never will.


Yes, I've responsed to it. You see similarities as evidence of common
ancestry. I asked for evidence since it doesn't appear to be in the
fossil record, as admitted by prominant evolutionists themselves.
You responded with assertions of DNA evidence and I responded
with some difficulties with. If it was a slam dunk there would be
no debate, that includes within the evolutionist camp. So I believe
you are exaggerating your view while downplaying any objections.



By itself, this is pretty good evidence for the African ape connection.
But if I did this little exercise with any other gene I would get the
same result too. (If you don't believe me I would be glad to do that.)
Why? I say it's because all the genes evolved on the same tree, the true
tree of evolutionary relationships. That's the multiple nested hierarchy
for you.

So what's your alternative explanation for all this? You say...what?


Sounds like more smoke and mirrors. Have you examined this objectively?


Yes. Like many, it confuses multiple questions, notably common descent
and natural selection. We can investigate common descent, as I did
above, without knowing the mechanism by which the differences we
consider important arose. So that whole spiel is irrelevant to the
question I asked.


If the mechanism is in doubt and lineage is still being debated then the
assertion that it happened can't be considered a scientific fact.


http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vie...20News&id=2477

At this point, the sympathetic reader eager to secure Darwin's narrative
might resort to searching the "biochemical record." Surely the molecular
structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins contain the long-sought evidence.
Again, though, molecular biology helps in some ways in that it shows
commonalities across species--just as other aspects of anatomical structures
show commonalities--but again it's the distinctions--and the means by which
they are generated--rather than the similarities that must be explained to
support the theory.

Perhaps it's enough for the friendly guardian of the Darwinian narrative to
propose that the genes that control the switching on and off of other genes
simply changed in some random way, allowing humans to branch off the
primate line. And maybe they did. But again, notice, this is a molecular
narrative, not a proposition demonstrable by experiment. It's a story that
fits the facts--but so might another.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2070
Marks went on to concede:


Hardly conceding. Simply a bit of the obvious. Most of the differences
between human and chimp don't matter, and a few matter
disproportionately. That article is wrong from start to end, by the way.
As a useful corrective, you can download this recent comparison of the
human and chimp genomes:

I like the way that all my sources are fraudulent and useless and
yours are above reproach. That's pretty much what happpens
in public education, which is what got this thread going.



http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture04072.html


Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative
differences among genomes.... Thus, even among such close relatives as human
and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10
percent larger than the human’s; that one human chromosome contains a fusion
of two small chimpanzee chromosomes; and that the tips of each chimpanzee
chromosome contain a DNA sequence that is not present in humans (B-7, emp. added).


However do you explain one human chromosome being a fused version of two
chimp chromosomes without common descent?


I believe the point was that two chimp chromosomes resemble a
particular human chromosome. To me that isn't evidence of decent.
If it happened that way I don't see evidence for a natural mechanism
at work.


It's because of a necessary similarity between similar organisms? But
out of these 76 sites with informative differences, only 18 involve
differences that change the amino acid composition of the protein; the
rest can have no effect on phenotype. Further, many of those amino acid
changes are to similar amino acids that have no real effect on protein
function. In fact, ND4 and ND5 do exactly the same thing in all
organisms. These nested similarities have nothing to do with function,
so similar design is not a credible explanation.


There has been many times that scientists did not see evidence
for function only later to realize their error.


Less than you would imagine. But your defense is that I must be wrong
because some unspecified people have been wrong before? That's it? But
that's a universal defense; it works on anything anyone says, if it
works at all.


Nice spin but what I actually said was just because you don't
see any evidence for a particular function that doesn't mean
that one will never be found. You are being unscientific with
that kind of reasoning.



God did it that way because he felt like it? Fine, but this explains any
possible result. It's not science. We have to ask why god just happened
to feel like doing it in a way that matches the unique expectations of
common descent.


No, you assume common decent so your theory fits your conclusion.


You weren't paying attention. I assumed (in my statistical test) that
there was no common descent, and I falsified that hypothesis. You just
blipped over the data and analysis, didn't you? As long as your
creationist web sites give you a fig leaf of rejection, you can be happy.


I blipped by your assertions because I asked for evidence. I'm suspicious
of your data and analysis since it isn't evident elsewhere. If what you
said was so readily accepted where is it?



By the way, if you want to see the full data set I pulled this from, go
he

http://www.treebase.org/treebase/console.html

Then search on Author, keyword Hayasaka. Click Submit. You will find
Hayasaka, Kenji. Then click on Search. This brings up one study, in the
frame at middle left. Click on Matrix Fig. 1 to download the sequences.
You can also use this site to view their tree. The publication from
which all this was drawn is Hayasaka, K., T. Gojobori, and S. Horai.
1988. Molecular phylogeny and evolution of primate mitochondrial DNA.
Mol. Biol. Evol., 5:626-644.


1988? They haven't nailed it down any better since then?


Not any better, no. Just more and more data all pointing to the same
thing.

That wouldn't be better? I'm not a biologist or a professional
poker player but I know a bluff when I see one.


Really, this particular relationship is a no-brainer. That's why
I picked it. So you can't do any better than to note that 1988 was a
long time ago?


Seems like a good question since you've based most of your
argument on brand spanking new DNA research.


Nobody publishes papers talking about human relationships
these days, just as nbody publishes papers showing that heavy objects
don't fall any faster than light ones. Been there, done that. But if you
want recent stuff, you can go to GenBank, the genetic sequence database,
and pull up hundreds of priimate DNA sequences of all sorts, more every
week. They'll all tell you the same thing, like I said. But none of this
matters to you, does it? You are secure in your world. Your requests for
data were a sham.


No, my requests were ignored. I asked for evidence for macro-evolution
between man and ape since you said it was the best documented one.
Looking at chimpanzee DNA sequences doesn't do it for me, sorrry.
Since humans resemble apes in many ways I don't see why the DNA
would be vastly different. I understand that recent genome research on
rats has us about at a 2.5% difference. Even though some humans
resemble rats figuratively I don't see that as evidence of any lineage.


Well, it's been fun visiting rec.woodworking, but my work here is done.

Sorry you feel that way, I hope you'll visit and maybe jump on
some wood someday.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:
[snip]

The problem is that deliberate design doesn't explain it. You have yet
to confront the nested hierarchy of life, and you never will.

Yes, I've responsed to it. You see similarities as evidence of common
ancestry. I asked for evidence since it doesn't appear to be in the
fossil record, as admitted by prominant evolutionists themselves.
You responded with assertions of DNA evidence and I responded
with some difficulties with. If it was a slam dunk there would be
no debate, that includes within the evolutionist camp. So I believe
you are exaggerating your view while downplaying any objections.

There you go again, claiming that prominent evolutionsts agree that the
fossil record doesn't support evolution. Exactly what Gould was
complaining about. Now, that's chutzpah. Your difficulties with DNA
evidence were not real difficulties, as I explained. And you appear not
to know what a nested hierarchy is.

By itself, this is pretty good evidence for the African ape connection.
But if I did this little exercise with any other gene I would get the
same result too. (If you don't believe me I would be glad to do that.)
Why? I say it's because all the genes evolved on the same tree, the true
tree of evolutionary relationships. That's the multiple nested hierarchy
for you.

So what's your alternative explanation for all this? You say...what?

Sounds like more smoke and mirrors. Have you examined this objectively?

Yes. Like many, it confuses multiple questions, notably common descent
and natural selection. We can investigate common descent, as I did
above, without knowing the mechanism by which the differences we
consider important arose. So that whole spiel is irrelevant to the
question I asked.

If the mechanism is in doubt and lineage is still being debated then the
assertion that it happened can't be considered a scientific fact.

So according to you, before we knew about fusion we couldn't have known
for sure that the sun is hot. I can't agree with that. At any rate, the
lineage is not being debated. The details of relationships among some
hominid fossils are debated, but not the relationships of the living
species. It's universally agreed (among scientists, that is) that humans
are a species of African ape. Has been for years.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vie...20News&id=2477

At this point, the sympathetic reader eager to secure Darwin's narrative
might resort to searching the "biochemical record." Surely the molecular
structures of DNA, RNA, and proteins contain the long-sought evidence.
Again, though, molecular biology helps in some ways in that it shows
commonalities across species--just as other aspects of anatomical structures
show commonalities--but again it's the distinctions--and the means by which
they are generated--rather than the similarities that must be explained to
support the theory.

Perhaps it's enough for the friendly guardian of the Darwinian narrative to
propose that the genes that control the switching on and off of other genes
simply changed in some random way, allowing humans to branch off the
primate line. And maybe they did. But again, notice, this is a molecular
narrative, not a proposition demonstrable by experiment. It's a story that
fits the facts--but so might another.

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2070
Marks went on to concede:


Hardly conceding. Simply a bit of the obvious. Most of the differences
between human and chimp don't matter, and a few matter
disproportionately. That article is wrong from start to end, by the way.
As a useful corrective, you can download this recent comparison of the
human and chimp genomes:

I like the way that all my sources are fraudulent and useless and
yours are above reproach. That's pretty much what happpens
in public education, which is what got this thread going.

But your sources are fraudulent. They're massaging the primary
literature to say things that the authors themselves never did. I'm
citing that primary literature itself.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal...ture04072.html

Read some of that literature for yourself rather than getting it
filtered through creationist web sites. Make your own decision.

Moreover, the genetic comparison is misleading because it ignores qualitative
differences among genomes.... Thus, even among such close relatives as human
and chimpanzee, we find that the chimp’s genome is estimated to be about 10
percent larger than the human’s; that one human chromosome contains a fusion
of two small chimpanzee chromosomes; and that the tips of each chimpanzee
chromosome contain a DNA sequence that is not present in humans (B-7, emp. added).

However do you explain one human chromosome being a fused version of two
chimp chromosomes without common descent?

I believe the point was that two chimp chromosomes resemble a
particular human chromosome. To me that isn't evidence of decent.
If it happened that way I don't see evidence for a natural mechanism
at work.

The term used is "fusion", not "resemble". And there is excellent
evidence for this fusion in the detailed structure of the region of
joining. Further, fusions of this sort happen frequently in the wild,
and there are many populations of mammals in which such fusions are
polymorphic. The natural mechanism is well known and observable in the
present.

It's because of a necessary similarity between similar organisms? But
out of these 76 sites with informative differences, only 18 involve
differences that change the amino acid composition of the protein; the
rest can have no effect on phenotype. Further, many of those amino acid
changes are to similar amino acids that have no real effect on protein
function. In fact, ND4 and ND5 do exactly the same thing in all
organisms. These nested similarities have nothing to do with function,
so similar design is not a credible explanation.

There has been many times that scientists did not see evidence
for function only later to realize their error.


Less than you would imagine. But your defense is that I must be wrong
because some unspecified people have been wrong before? That's it? But
that's a universal defense; it works on anything anyone says, if it
works at all.

Nice spin but what I actually said was just because you don't
see any evidence for a particular function that doesn't mean
that one will never be found. You are being unscientific with
that kind of reasoning.

What you are claiming is that we can never know whether anything at all
lacks a function. This in itself is bizarre, but it can be generalized
with equal (lack of) validity. Just because I have no evidence that my
cat is the reincarnation of Bertrand Russell doesn't mean that we won't
someday find that he is. And so on.

There are excellent reasons to believe that silent mutations have no
function, because of the rate at which they change and the degree of
polymorphism within populations. Not just that we don't know their function.

God did it that way because he felt like it? Fine, but this explains any
possible result. It's not science. We have to ask why god just happened
to feel like doing it in a way that matches the unique expectations of
common descent.

No, you assume common decent so your theory fits your conclusion.

You weren't paying attention. I assumed (in my statistical test) that
there was no common descent, and I falsified that hypothesis. You just
blipped over the data and analysis, didn't you? As long as your
creationist web sites give you a fig leaf of rejection, you can be happy.

I blipped by your assertions because I asked for evidence. I'm suspicious
of your data and analysis since it isn't evident elsewhere. If what you
said was so readily accepted where is it?

I gave you a citation to the original data and paper, and the chimpanzee
genome paper is on the web. But where have you been? Human relationship
to chimpanzees and gorillas has been accepted ever since Darwin. For a
popular account, try Jared Diamond's book The Third Chimpanzee. (Guess
who that is.)

By the way, if you want to see the full data set I pulled this from, go
he

http://www.treebase.org/treebase/console.html

Then search on Author, keyword Hayasaka. Click Submit. You will find
Hayasaka, Kenji. Then click on Search. This brings up one study, in the
frame at middle left. Click on Matrix Fig. 1 to download the sequences.
You can also use this site to view their tree. The publication from
which all this was drawn is Hayasaka, K., T. Gojobori, and S. Horai.
1988. Molecular phylogeny and evolution of primate mitochondrial DNA.
Mol. Biol. Evol., 5:626-644.

1988? They haven't nailed it down any better since then?

Not any better, no. Just more and more data all pointing to the same
thing.

That wouldn't be better? I'm not a biologist or a professional
poker player but I know a bluff when I see one.

The difference between 99.999999% certain and 99.9999999999999% certain
doesn't strike me as any better. So sue me. Look at any scientific paper
that includes DNA sequences for human, some African ape (chimp or
gorilla), and any other organism. You will find a tree uniting the human
and ape. Really, that's the only thing you can possibly get from any
genetic data.

Really, this particular relationship is a no-brainer. That's why
I picked it. So you can't do any better than to note that 1988 was a
long time ago?

Seems like a good question since you've based most of your
argument on brand spanking new DNA research.

Here's another. Despite the title, it has the requisite species:
Miyamoto, M. M., C. A. Porter, and M. Goodman. 2000. c-Myc gene
sequences and the phylogeny of bats and other eutherian mammals. Syst.
Biol. 49:501-514. The reason I have to pick papers that aren't
specifically about the question of human relationships is that nobody is
publishing on that any more, because it was settled years ago. So I have
to pick papers that just happen to have the required data in them, but
are really about something else that is in question. Also, just about
any paper on primate or all-mammal phylogeny will have something of the
sort.

Nobody publishes papers talking about human relationships
these days, just as nbody publishes papers showing that heavy objects
don't fall any faster than light ones. Been there, done that. But if you
want recent stuff, you can go to GenBank, the genetic sequence database,
and pull up hundreds of priimate DNA sequences of all sorts, more every
week. They'll all tell you the same thing, like I said. But none of this
matters to you, does it? You are secure in your world. Your requests for
data were a sham.

No, my requests were ignored.

Hardly ignored. What you mean is you don't like my evidence.

I asked for evidence for macro-evolution
between man and ape since you said it was the best documented one.
Looking at chimpanzee DNA sequences doesn't do it for me, sorrry.
Since humans resemble apes in many ways I don't see why the DNA
would be vastly different.

Strangely, many species that resemble each other, physically, much more
closely than humans and chimpanzees have much more different DNA. Two
species of frogs that you couldn't tell apart are much more genetically
distinct than humans and apes. So your understanding is not borne out.
At any rate, you mistake the argument. This is not just about
similarity. It's about nested hierarchy. And I will also point out that
the similarities in question are mostly silent, meaning they have no
effect on phenotype. There is no linkage between these silent
similarities and any you can see. So why should they both be there?

I understand that recent genome research on
rats has us about at a 2.5% difference. Even though some humans
resemble rats figuratively I don't see that as evidence of any lineage.

You understand wrong. We are much more than 2.5% different from rats.
And of course we are related to rats too, just not as closely as we are
to chimpanzees and gorillas. (I imagine there might be some way to
measure genetic differences that does put us only 2.5% from rats, though
I can't think of one right now. But any such measure, if applied to
apes, would have them being much closer to us than the rats were. There
are many ways of measuring similarity. Don't confuse feet with
centimeters and come out with the notion that cats are bigger than
elephants.)

Well, it's been fun visiting rec.woodworking, but my work here is done.

Sorry you feel that way, I hope you'll visit and maybe jump on
some wood someday.

Perhaps I was premature. Or perhaps I don't know when to quit. But here
I am. I realize it's futile, though.

Gentlemen,

I am going to snip this conversation, but I have had a realization that I
think applies. Fletis, you are looking at this like a criminal trial,
requiring proof beyond a shadow of doubt. John, and other scientists,
including me, use a standard more like a civil trial, requiring proof based
on the preponderance of the evidence. But that is how science works. Major
theories of science are just not proven beyond a shadow of doubt, or there
wouldn't still be investigation continuing.

John, I have a question that may supply some context to the data that humans
and chimpanzees are about 98% identical, by DNA analysis. We know there are
significant differences between groups of humans, like short bushmen and
tall watusis, eskimos and Australian aborigines, and the highly varied US
population. How much variance is there in the human genome?

Steve

Steve Peterson wrote:

Gentlemen,

I am going to snip this conversation, but I have had a realization that I
think applies. Fletis, you are looking at this like a criminal trial,
requiring proof beyond a shadow of doubt. John, and other scientists,
including me, use a standard more like a civil trial, requiring proof based
on the preponderance of the evidence. But that is how science works. Major
theories of science are just not proven beyond a shadow of doubt, or there
wouldn't still be investigation continuing.

John, I have a question that may supply some context to the data that humans
and chimpanzees are about 98% identical, by DNA analysis. We know there are
significant differences between groups of humans, like short bushmen and
tall watusis, eskimos and Australian aborigines, and the highly varied US
population. How much variance is there in the human genome?

By the same method (remember there are several ways of measuring
similarity), the two most different humans are about 99.9% identical.

In article ,
Fletis Humplebacker ! wrote:
John Brock wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker

"John Harshman"

Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

You have ignored my question! I already knew that *you* believe
these quotes undermine the case for evolution. But the quotes come
from highly intelligent and well informed people who in fact believe
that the theory of evolution is true. So how do you account for
this apparent contradiction?

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

3) As a rule scientists are not hypocrites. The vast majority
actually believe the things they say they believe. Yes? No?

4) As a consequence of 1, 2 and 3, it can be concluded that the
scientists you are quoting do not themselves believe that their
statements cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or open the door
to Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

5) You on the other hand *do* believe that these quotes cast doubt
on the theory of evolution, and *do* open the door to Intelligent
Design. Yes? No?

6) If you are right about this, then it follows that these quotes
have implications that the scientists who made them did not see,
but which you *do* see. Yes? No?

Did you follow that? If so, let me repeat my question. Why do
you believe that you are capable of seeing implications in quotes
that were missed by the scientists who made them? Do you feel you
are more perceptive than those scientists? Smarter? Better
informed? What? Scientists in general are very smart people. Do
you believe that you are as smart as the scientists you are quoting?
(That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you?)

Actually, why not be even more direct? Can you tell my why you
believe you are even competent to be in this debate at all? Suppose
you stumbled upon some web sites which claimed that the theory of
Relativity was wrong, and which included quotes from eminent
physicists which seemed (at least to you) to support this claim.
Based entirely on your own reading of those web sites and those
quotes, would you, a non-physicist (I'm assuming), feel competent
to debate Einstein's theory with physics professors? Of course
not! Only a total ignoramus would do that! Right?

And yet, while you wouldn't feel competent draw conclusions from
Einstein's words which differed from Einstein's own, you apparently
have no difficulty believing that you can turn Stephen J. Gould's
own words against him. So where does this confidence come from?

Understand, I am not asking you to prove to *me* that you are
competent -- I'm simply asking what are your reasons for believing
it *yourself*. After all, the world is full of people who pontificate
on subjects that they don't actually understand, and who can't be
made to understand this. (Yes? No?) Incompetent people tend not
to realize that they are incompetent, and I think even you would
have to agree that it would be the most ordinary and unremarkable
thing in the world if you turned out to be just another clueless
bozo who didn't know what he was talking about. What I am really
interested in is finding out why *you* believe this isn't so!
--
John Brock

John Brock wrote:

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

snip

Well, Fletis? Ignoring this one like you do any you can't answer?

John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker
Steve Peterson
"Fletis Humplebacker"



No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,

As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head.


!


I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything well documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web.


An interesting thesis. It might be true, though I don't think so yet. At
any rate, I'm not as good at finding things on the web as I am at
knowing the scientific literature.


I would imagine that any well established scientific axiom would have
some kind of presence on the web, given all the higher education sites,
especially regarding something as significant as what we have been
discussing.



Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.


That's what libraries are for, dude. Learn to use them.


We've crossed that bridge before, I don't have the extra time.
Web space is cheap these days, they can post anything significant
for the masses to read. That has the advantage of being updated
and perhaps being responded to elsewhere.


and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.

This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.


Showing where you were wrong is easy enough. It's showing *you* that's
the trick.


Nice going. But you accused the websites of fraud and responded
with Gould's beef with contemporary experiences 20 or so years ago.
How is that supposed to show anyone anything?


You are
stuck in the Cambrian,

Wrong.


but have to make your observations 600 million years
later.

Time traveling isn't within my powers.


I think you are about to lose points for tardiness.

Steve

Let us know if you can come up with something substantive.


I will admit that I don't know what Steve was talking about either.


I don't think he does either.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker

Steve Peterson

"Fletis Humplebacker"




No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,

As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head.

!

I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything well documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web.

An interesting thesis. It might be true, though I don't think so yet. At
any rate, I'm not as good at finding things on the web as I am at
knowing the scientific literature.

I would imagine that any well established scientific axiom would have
some kind of presence on the web, given all the higher education sites,
especially regarding something as significant as what we have been
discussing.

I've forgotten at this point what specific things you want documented.
Give me some particulars again, and I'll try to find them on the web.

Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.

That's what libraries are for, dude. Learn to use them.

We've crossed that bridge before, I don't have the extra time.
Web space is cheap these days, they can post anything significant
for the masses to read. That has the advantage of being updated
and perhaps being responded to elsewhere.

A nice theory. Some day it may be true.

and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.

This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.

Showing where you were wrong is easy enough. It's showing *you* that's
the trick.

Nice going. But you accused the websites of fraud and responded
with Gould's beef with contemporary experiences 20 or so years ago.
How is that supposed to show anyone anything?

It may not be a response to the particular web sites you referenced. But
it's a response to the same quotes used in the same way. Creationism
doesn't evolve very fast. How is it inapplicable? Isn't he addressing
exactly what your sites did?

You are
stuck in the Cambrian,

Wrong.



but have to make your observations 600 million years
later.

Time traveling isn't within my powers.



I think you are about to lose points for tardiness.

Steve

Let us know if you can come up with something substantive.


I will admit that I don't know what Steve was talking about either.

I don't think he does either.

John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker
"John Harshman
Fletis Humplebacker


That isn't in dispute, his reference is the geological record, not a
stop watch. The point is that it was, by all accounts I've seen so far,
sudden. Hense the term "explosion", which was contrary to the traditional
view of evolution.

Clearly there was something sudden going on, if your definition of
"sudden" includes periods of 5 million years.

It does geologically speaking. It would not be sudden if we were
talking about tax rebates.


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.


Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.


You have confused PE with the Cambrian explosion.


No, but the mother of all suddenness of life forms doesn't
make the case for slow gradual change. Or small incremental
ones for that matter.


I can understand something like the environment favoring birds with
bigger beaks to dominate the breed. I don't think we need to see
such a transition in the fossil record to know it happens. The kinds of
macro-transformations of limbs changing from flippers to legs wouldn't
be so quick that it would leave no trace. I've seen nothing that suggests
a natural transformation like that would happen in 100,000 years.

Indeed it wouldn't. It would probably happen in many steps over millions
of years. And in fact we have transitional fossils for those
intermediate steps in whales, for example. We have good evidence from
both the fossil record and the genetics of living species for the
transformation. Whether it was natural is not something we can test.


Let us know when you come up with some evidence for the transitions.

Gingerich, P. D., M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S.
Malkani. 2001. Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet
of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science 293:2239-2242.

Good example of the type of circular reasoning I see so often for
those who make the evidence fit the theories.


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), and it presents, in confident terms, a flimsy
observation that is highly disputed or irrelevant to this serious problem in the
evolutionists’ story. For shame, Nature!

The pictures on the Science page also stretch the truth, portraying Rodhocetus
as whale-like as possible. What they don’t tell you is that most of the bones are
inferred. Just a few fragments were found, and the rest is artistic license (See
Creation magazine, Sept-Nov 2001, pp. 10-14.)

What the bones show are extinct animals who were perfectly adapted to their own
environment, without any desire or pressure to evolve into something else. The
crucial features the evolutionists are basing their stories on are just skeletal features
– teeth, ear cavities, and foot bones. What about all the other specialized features
of whales – sonar, spouts on the top of their heads, the ability to dive deep, and
much more, for which there is not a shred of evidence of transitional forms? The
only way you can arrange extinct animals into a family tree is with a prior commitment
to evolution. This is circular reasoning. Beaver have webbed feet, too; are they
evolving into dolphins? The fossil evidence shows a wide assortment of adapted
animals that appear abruptly then went extinct. The rest is storytelling. These articles
also highlight a reappearing difficulty for evolution, that the genetic/molecular family
trees do not match the morphological family trees.



Thewissen, J. G. M., E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Hussain. 2001.
Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to
artiodactyls. Nature 413: 277-281.

....from the same page just prior to the above rebuttal.


Whale Ancestor Alleged 09/19/2001
“Everyone will agree that these animals are whales,” says an Ohio paleontologist
about a wolf-sized creature that probably only got wet walking across streams,
according to a report in Nature. But that may be wishful thinking. Molecular
analyses put very different creatures in the ancestral line of whales, and rival teams
see the hippopotamus as a more likely candidate.

Because cetaceans are so unlike any land mammal, with their legs as paddles
and their nostrils atop their heads, it has been immensely difficult to place them in
the evolutionary scheme of things . . . . “Rapid evolutionary change, be it molecular,
ecological or anatomical, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, and the speed with
which cetaceans took to the water may make their bones an unreliable guide to their
ancestry,” he says [evolutionary biologist Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in
Sweden]. Arnason believes the two camps will remain divided, at least for now.
“There’s no point trying to reach some sort of consensus based on compromise.
It has often been very difficult to reconcile morphological and molecular opinions,”
he says.

Science Magazine also has a report with pictures of reconstructions of two of the
specimens. National Geographic, as expected, joined in the celebration of the
new fossil, but admits “Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins,
and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain,
Rose said. "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the
cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result
of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls.



Shedlock, A. M., M. C. Milinkovitch, and N. Okada. 2000. SINE evolution,
missing data, and the origin of whales. Syst. Biol. 49:808-817.


Is the missing data still missing or did they fill it in with their beliefs ?
The problem I have with this sort of thinking is that the mammal is supposed
to not only survive but thrive in a competitive environment as it's leg's
slowly morph to flippers ( slowly even by PE standards ).


That should do for a start. New fossils and new molecular analyses make
this conclusion stronger every year.


I'd rather base my conclusions on unbiased evidence.


And yes, you are right, we can't test the cause although we can draw
conclusions based on what we know. You believe miracles are natural,
I believe they are supernatural.


Odd way to put it.


That's what it amounts to isn't it? Even if things happened as a natural
outcome of matter interacting with matter, life got amazingly complex,
fine tuned for it's environment and diverse rather quickly. I don't
have enough faith to believe that it is all a quirk of electro-magnetic
forces.


All you ever do is back up assertions with more assertions.


You can live in your little insulated world if you like. But don't you
ever feel like a mushroom?

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.


But if all you ever do is look at creationist web sites, how can you
consider that to be more than one side?


Good example of what I mean since I have posted from secular
sources as well and the ones from the creationist sites were primarily
from secular sources. Quoting Gould's 20 year old beef isn't evidence
that their words were misrepresented.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

...

I can throw out any number of books ...

But instead you should try reading them.

--

FF

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker

"John Harshman

Fletis Humplebacker


That isn't in dispute, his reference is the geological record, not a
stop watch. The point is that it was, by all accounts I've seen so far,
sudden. Hense the term "explosion", which was contrary to the traditional
view of evolution.

Clearly there was something sudden going on, if your definition of
"sudden" includes periods of 5 million years.

It does geologically speaking. It would not be sudden if we were
talking about tax rebates.


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

You have confused PE with the Cambrian explosion.

No, but the mother of all suddenness of life forms doesn't
make the case for slow gradual change. Or small incremental
ones for that matter.

As I have explained in several ways, the Cambrian explosion isn't as
sudden as you think, 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 can understand something like the environment favoring birds with
bigger beaks to dominate the breed. I don't think we need to see
such a transition in the fossil record to know it happens. The kinds of
macro-transformations of limbs changing from flippers to legs wouldn't
be so quick that it would leave no trace. I've seen nothing that suggests
a natural transformation like that would happen in 100,000 years.

Indeed it wouldn't. It would probably happen in many steps over millions
of years. And in fact we have transitional fossils for those
intermediate steps in whales, for example. We have good evidence from
both the fossil record and the genetics of living species for the
transformation. Whether it was natural is not something we can test.

Let us know when you come up with some evidence for the transitions.


Gingerich, P. D., M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S.
Malkani. 2001. Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet
of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science 293:2239-2242.

Good example of the type of circular reasoning I see so often for
those who make the evidence fit the theories.

Didn't read it, did you?

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.

and it presents, in confident terms, a flimsy
observation that is highly disputed or irrelevant to this serious problem in the
evolutionists’ story. For shame, Nature!

For shame, creationist web site! Archaeopteryx is an ideal transitional
fossil. Creationists can't even agree on whether it's "just a bird" or
"just a dinosaur with faked feathers".

The pictures on the Science page also stretch the truth, portraying Rodhocetus
as whale-like as possible. What they don’t tell you is that most of the bones are
inferred. Just a few fragments were found, and the rest is artistic license (See
Creation magazine, Sept-Nov 2001, pp. 10-14.)

Actually, quite a bit of Rodhocetus material has been found.

What the bones show are extinct animals who were perfectly adapted to their own
environment, without any desire or pressure to evolve into something else.

How you would tell this by looking at a skeleton, or even a whole
animal, is beyond me.

The
crucial features the evolutionists are basing their stories on are just skeletal features
– teeth, ear cavities, and foot bones. What about all the other specialized features
of whales – sonar, spouts on the top of their heads, the ability to dive deep, and
much more, for which there is not a shred of evidence of transitional forms? The
only way you can arrange extinct animals into a family tree is with a prior commitment
to evolution. This is circular reasoning. Beaver have webbed feet, too; are they
evolving into dolphins? The fossil evidence shows a wide assortment of adapted
animals that appear abruptly then went extinct. The rest is storytelling. These articles
also highlight a reappearing difficulty for evolution, that the genetic/molecular family
trees do not match the morphological family trees.

My, that was a lot of verbiage. Did you read it, or just copy it?
Apparently there is no possible evidence for evolution. All this thing
does is present the Zeno's paradox of evolution: show them one
intermediate, and they'll complain that the intermediates between the
intermediates haven't been found.

Thewissen, J. G. M., E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Hussain. 2001.
Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to
artiodactyls. Nature 413: 277-281.

...from the same page just prior to the above rebuttal.

You call that a rebuttal?

Whale Ancestor Alleged 09/19/2001
“Everyone will agree that these animals are whales,” says an Ohio paleontologist
about a wolf-sized creature that probably only got wet walking across streams,
according to a report in Nature. But that may be wishful thinking. Molecular
analyses put very different creatures in the ancestral line of whales, and rival teams
see the hippopotamus as a more likely candidate.

That's a distortion. Nobody says that hippopotami are ancestral to
whales, merely that they are the closest living relatives of whales.
Hippos, by the way, are artiodactyls, making that theory fully
compatible with the fossil discoveries. No conflict here.

Because cetaceans are so unlike any land mammal, with their legs as paddles
and their nostrils atop their heads, it has been immensely difficult to place them in
the evolutionary scheme of things . . . . “Rapid evolutionary change, be it molecular,
ecological or anatomical, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, and the speed with
which cetaceans took to the water may make their bones an unreliable guide to their
ancestry,” he says [evolutionary biologist Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in
Sweden]. Arnason believes the two camps will remain divided, at least for now.
“There’s no point trying to reach some sort of consensus based on compromise.
It has often been very difficult to reconcile morphological and molecular opinions,”
he says.

Presumably this was written before the whale astragali were found,
because it makes no sense after.

Science Magazine also has a report with pictures of reconstructions of two of the
specimens. National Geographic, as expected, joined in the celebration of the
new fossil, but admits “Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins,
and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain,
Rose said. "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the
cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result
of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls.

Not clear, since we don't know exactly what mesonychians were, and
whether or not they were artiodactyls.

Shedlock, A. M., M. C. Milinkovitch, and N. Okada. 2000. SINE evolution,
missing data, and the origin of whales. Syst. Biol. 49:808-817.

Is the missing data still missing or did they fill it in with their beliefs ?

Just reading titles won't tell you much, though it will, if you look
hard enough, give you an excuse not to think. This paper shows that
hippos and whales are closest living relatives. Morphological and
molecular data are now in agreement. Why do you think that would be?

The problem I have with this sort of thinking is that the mammal is supposed
to not only survive but thrive in a competitive environment as it's leg's
slowly morph to flippers ( slowly even by PE standards ).

So what you're saying is that you can't, personally, imagine what
advantage intermediates would have. Since you can't imagine it, it can't
be true. Yet you have seen sea lions, I suppose.

That should do for a start. New fossils and new molecular analyses make
this conclusion stronger every year.

I'd rather base my conclusions on unbiased evidence.

We're not going to get anywhere if you say that all the scientific
literature is biased. You are once again filtering all your information
through creationist web sites. Do you think they're unbiased? Where is
the creationist research? Have you ever seen any, or heard of any?

And yes, you are right, we can't test the cause although we can draw
conclusions based on what we know. You believe miracles are natural,
I believe they are supernatural.

Odd way to put it.

That's what it amounts to isn't it?

No.

Even if things happened as a natural
outcome of matter interacting with matter, life got amazingly complex,
fine tuned for it's environment and diverse rather quickly. I don't
have enough faith to believe that it is all a quirk of electro-magnetic
forces.

There are natural processes by which such things can happen. If you want
to consider them miracles, sure. And don't forget to separate the
questions here. Common descent and the mechanism of adaptation are two
different things. You're mushing them together again.

All you ever do is back up assertions with more assertions.


You can live in your little insulated world if you like. But don't you
ever feel like a mushroom?

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.


But if all you ever do is look at creationist web sites, how can you
consider that to be more than one side?

Good example of what I mean since I have posted from secular
sources as well and the ones from the creationist sites were primarily
from secular sources. Quoting Gould's 20 year old beef isn't evidence
that their words were misrepresented.

I don't recall you quoting anything that wasn't taken from a creationist
web site, but perhaps you did once or twice. Reading massaged snippets
of "secular" (read: scientific) sources does not constitute looking at
both sides. By the way, have you noticed that those web sites you keep
quoting also devote a great deal of effort to showing that the earth and
universe are 6000 years old and that most fossils were deposited by a
single, global flood? How can you possibly consider them to represent
real science? They're crackpots, even by your standards, aren't they?

"John Brock"
Fletis Humplebacker
John Brock

I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

You have ignored my question! I already knew that *you* believe
these quotes undermine the case for evolution. But the quotes come
from highly intelligent and well informed people who in fact believe
that the theory of evolution is true. So how do you account for
this apparent contradiction?

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?



I have no idea what their view is of ID and I posted them
because they support evolution. You seem to believe
that one excludes the other.


2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

3) As a rule scientists are not hypocrites. The vast majority
actually believe the things they say they believe. Yes? No?

4) As a consequence of 1, 2 and 3, it can be concluded that the
scientists you are quoting do not themselves believe that their
statements cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or open the door
to Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

5) You on the other hand *do* believe that these quotes cast doubt
on the theory of evolution, and *do* open the door to Intelligent
Design. Yes? No?

6) If you are right about this, then it follows that these quotes
have implications that the scientists who made them did not see,
but which you *do* see. Yes? No?

Did you follow that? If so, let me repeat my question. Why do
you believe that you are capable of seeing implications in quotes
that were missed by the scientists who made them? Do you feel you
are more perceptive than those scientists? Smarter? Better
informed? What? Scientists in general are very smart people. Do
you believe that you are as smart as the scientists you are quoting?
(That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you?)


I answered your question. They see problems with various aspects
of evolution so you can only say it's all nailed down as a statement of
faith. None of which necessarily rules out an Intelligent Designer.

"John Harshman"
Fletis Humplebacker
John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker

Steve Peterson

"Fletis Humplebacker"




No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,

As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head.

!

I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything well documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web.

An interesting thesis. It might be true, though I don't think so yet. At
any rate, I'm not as good at finding things on the web as I am at
knowing the scientific literature.


I would imagine that any well established scientific axiom would have
some kind of presence on the web, given all the higher education sites,
especially regarding something as significant as what we have been
discussing.


I've forgotten at this point what specific things you want documented.
Give me some particulars again, and I'll try to find them on the web.


Anything that you declare as a fact.



Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.

That's what libraries are for, dude. Learn to use them.

We've crossed that bridge before, I don't have the extra time.
Web space is cheap these days, they can post anything significant
for the masses to read. That has the advantage of being updated
and perhaps being responded to elsewhere.

A nice theory. Some day it may be true.


It's true now. Books are expensive to produce and distribute
plus you need new books to amend or rebutt them.


and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.

This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.

Showing where you were wrong is easy enough. It's showing *you* that's
the trick.

Nice going. But you accused the websites of fraud and responded
with Gould's beef with contemporary experiences 20 or so years ago.
How is that supposed to show anyone anything?


It may not be a response to the particular web sites you referenced. But
it's a response to the same quotes used in the same way.


I asked you to support your claim. Charges are easy to make.


Creationism
doesn't evolve very fast. How is it inapplicable? Isn't he addressing
exactly what your sites did?


To refresh your memory, your claim was that their quotes were misrepresented.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

...

I can throw out any number of books ...

But instead you should try reading them.

--

FF


You should try saying something worthwhile.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

"John Harshman"

Fletis Humplebacker

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker


Steve Peterson


"Fletis Humplebacker"





No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.



You seem to be a living, breathing, evolved example of fundamentalism run
amok. You certainly don't look at both sides of the evolution issue. John
has given you a great deal of reading to do,

As I suspected, most of this went over your head, Steve. I've provided
quotes with links to support my view, which probably also went over your
head.

!


I can throw out any number of books too but the point is that
anything well documented and accepted will have some reference
on the web.

An interesting thesis. It might be true, though I don't think so yet. At
any rate, I'm not as good at finding things on the web as I am at
knowing the scientific literature.



I would imagine that any well established scientific axiom would have
some kind of presence on the web, given all the higher education sites,
especially regarding something as significant as what we have been
discussing.

I've forgotten at this point what specific things you want documented.
Give me some particulars again, and I'll try to find them on the web.

Anything that you declare as a fact.

Particulars, please. Which things have I declared as a fact that you
want me to find? You could list in order of priority if you liked.

Dipping into each other's bank accounts isn't necessary.

That's what libraries are for, dude. Learn to use them.

We've crossed that bridge before, I don't have the extra time.
Web space is cheap these days, they can post anything significant
for the masses to read. That has the advantage of being updated
and perhaps being responded to elsewhere.

A nice theory. Some day it may be true.

It's true now. Books are expensive to produce and distribute
plus you need new books to amend or rebutt them.

Don't know about you, but I find books eminently superior to the web,
mostly by virtue of display resolution and contrast. Speed of access to
distant portions of the text is a third factor. At any rate, I didn't
mean that what you describe isn't possible, merely that most publishing
hasn't got there.

and summarized the information.
I have given you additional information of another type. You just ignore
it if you don't like it, and keep playing one note on the piano.

This coming from you has quite some irony. Rather than spewing your
vitriol why didn't you show me where I was wrong? If you're that right and
I'm that wrong it should be easy enough.

Showing where you were wrong is easy enough. It's showing *you* that's
the trick.

Nice going. But you accused the websites of fraud and responded
with Gould's beef with contemporary experiences 20 or so years ago.
How is that supposed to show anyone anything?

It may not be a response to the particular web sites you referenced. But
it's a response to the same quotes used in the same way.

I asked you to support your claim. Charges are easy to make.

It's also easy to ignore proofs that the charges are true. If Gould's
words aren't proof, I don't see what more is possible, given that I
can't have him call you up and tell you in person.

Creationism
doesn't evolve very fast. How is it inapplicable? Isn't he addressing
exactly what your sites did?

To refresh your memory, your claim was that their quotes were misrepresented.

Speaking hypothetically, what that I could conceivably produce would
consitute evidence for my claim?

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

"John Brock"

Fletis Humplebacker

John Brock


I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

You have ignored my question! I already knew that *you* believe
these quotes undermine the case for evolution. But the quotes come
from highly intelligent and well informed people who in fact believe
that the theory of evolution is true. So how do you account for
this apparent contradiction?

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

I have no idea what their view is of ID and I posted them
because they support evolution. You seem to believe
that one excludes the other.

I'm surprised and gratified to find that you understand this. Though I'm
puzzled because it's the first sign you have shown that you do.
Previously you had seemed to suppose that ID requires separate creation
of species.

Now you need to reinterpret Brock's question. If you aren't using those
quote to cast doubt on evolution, what are you using them for?

2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

3) As a rule scientists are not hypocrites. The vast majority
actually believe the things they say they believe. Yes? No?

4) As a consequence of 1, 2 and 3, it can be concluded that the
scientists you are quoting do not themselves believe that their
statements cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or open the door
to Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

5) You on the other hand *do* believe that these quotes cast doubt
on the theory of evolution, and *do* open the door to Intelligent
Design. Yes? No?

6) If you are right about this, then it follows that these quotes
have implications that the scientists who made them did not see,
but which you *do* see. Yes? No?


Did you follow that? If so, let me repeat my question. Why do
you believe that you are capable of seeing implications in quotes
that were missed by the scientists who made them? Do you feel you
are more perceptive than those scientists? Smarter? Better
informed? What? Scientists in general are very smart people. Do
you believe that you are as smart as the scientists you are quoting?
(That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you?)

I answered your question. They see problems with various aspects
of evolution so you can only say it's all nailed down as a statement of
faith. None of which necessarily rules out an Intelligent Designer.

What aspects of evolution did they see problems with, and why does this
require evolution being a statement of faith? Are you saying that
general relativity and quantum mechanics are just faith because they
can't now be reconciled with each other?

"John Harshman"
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker

"John Harshman

Fletis Humplebacker


That isn't in dispute, his reference is the geological record, not a
stop watch. The point is that it was, by all accounts I've seen so far,
sudden. Hense the term "explosion", which was contrary to the traditional
view of evolution.

Clearly there was something sudden going on, if your definition of
"sudden" includes periods of 5 million years.

It does geologically speaking. It would not be sudden if we were
talking about tax rebates.


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

You have confused PE with the Cambrian explosion.

No, but the mother of all suddenness of life forms doesn't
make the case for slow gradual change. Or small incremental
ones for that matter.


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
addded or taken away from it.


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.



I can understand something like the environment favoring birds with
bigger beaks to dominate the breed. I don't think we need to see
such a transition in the fossil record to know it happens. The kinds of
macro-transformations of limbs changing from flippers to legs wouldn't
be so quick that it would leave no trace. I've seen nothing that suggests
a natural transformation like that would happen in 100,000 years.

Indeed it wouldn't. It would probably happen in many steps over millions
of years. And in fact we have transitional fossils for those
intermediate steps in whales, for example. We have good evidence from
both the fossil record and the genetics of living species for the
transformation. Whether it was natural is not something we can test.

Let us know when you come up with some evidence for the transitions.


Gingerich, P. D., M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S.
Malkani. 2001. Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet
of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science 293:2239-2242.

Good example of the type of circular reasoning I see so often for
those who make the evidence fit the theories.

Didn't read it, did you?


I read much of it and saw the same ole same ole. Here's a bone
that we think fits something in between so that proves a transitional
line, etc., etc.



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.

I realize this comes from Bizarrekly but it's the first one I found, is
this not typical? I've heard it myself.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsid...aeopteryx.html
It has long been accepted that Archaeopteryx was a transitional form between
birds and reptiles, and that it is the earliest known bird.



and it presents, in confident terms, a flimsy
observation that is highly disputed or irrelevant to this serious problem in the
evolutionists’ story. For shame, Nature!


For shame, creationist web site! Archaeopteryx is an ideal transitional
fossil. Creationists can't even agree on whether it's "just a bird" or
"just a dinosaur with faked feathers".


Again, I must remind you that "creationists" are various people.



The pictures on the Science page also stretch the truth, portraying Rodhocetus
as whale-like as possible. What they don’t tell you is that most of the bones are
inferred. Just a few fragments were found, and the rest is artistic license (See
Creation magazine, Sept-Nov 2001, pp. 10-14.)


Actually, quite a bit of Rodhocetus material has been found.

What the bones show are extinct animals who were perfectly adapted to their own
environment, without any desire or pressure to evolve into something else.

How you would tell this by looking at a skeleton, or even a whole
animal, is beyond me.


I suppose the same way that some can tell it evolved from something else.


The
crucial features the evolutionists are basing their stories on are just skeletal features
– teeth, ear cavities, and foot bones. What about all the other specialized features
of whales – sonar, spouts on the top of their heads, the ability to dive deep, and
much more, for which there is not a shred of evidence of transitional forms? The
only way you can arrange extinct animals into a family tree is with a prior commitment
to evolution. This is circular reasoning. Beaver have webbed feet, too; are they
evolving into dolphins? The fossil evidence shows a wide assortment of adapted
animals that appear abruptly then went extinct. The rest is storytelling. These articles
also highlight a reappearing difficulty for evolution, that the genetic/molecular family
trees do not match the morphological family trees.


My, that was a lot of verbiage. Did you read it, or just copy it?


Both.


Apparently there is no possible evidence for evolution. All this thing
does is present the Zeno's paradox of evolution: show them one
intermediate, and they'll complain that the intermediates between the
intermediates haven't been found.


"They" is a person but he brings up a good point, the animals are well
suited for their environment and circular reasoning makes the pieces
fit the tree.



Thewissen, J. G. M., E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Hussain. 2001.
Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to
artiodactyls. Nature 413: 277-281.

...from the same page just prior to the above rebuttal.

You call that a rebuttal?


You call that a response?


Whale Ancestor Alleged 09/19/2001
“Everyone will agree that these animals are whales,” says an Ohio paleontologist
about a wolf-sized creature that probably only got wet walking across streams,
according to a report in Nature. But that may be wishful thinking. Molecular
analyses put very different creatures in the ancestral line of whales, and rival teams
see the hippopotamus as a more likely candidate.

That's a distortion. Nobody says that hippopotami are ancestral to
whales, merely that they are the closest living relatives of whales.
Hippos, by the way, are artiodactyls, making that theory fully
compatible with the fossil discoveries. No conflict here.


Apparently there is one with the Ohio paleontologist. I think the point
was that his reasoning is all too common.



Because cetaceans are so unlike any land mammal, with their legs as paddles
and their nostrils atop their heads, it has been immensely difficult to place them in
the evolutionary scheme of things . . . . “Rapid evolutionary change, be it molecular,
ecological or anatomical, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, and the speed with
which cetaceans took to the water may make their bones an unreliable guide to their
ancestry,” he says [evolutionary biologist Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in
Sweden]. Arnason believes the two camps will remain divided, at least for now.
“There’s no point trying to reach some sort of consensus based on compromise.
It has often been very difficult to reconcile morphological and molecular opinions,”
he says.


Presumably this was written before the whale astragali were found,
because it makes no sense after.


So you say. These are the types of comments that you should support
instead of asserting. How does the whale astragali reconstruct the
rapid evolutionary change?



Science Magazine also has a report with pictures of reconstructions of two of the
specimens. National Geographic, as expected, joined in the celebration of the
new fossil, but admits “Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins,
and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain,
Rose said. "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the
cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result
of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls.


Not clear, since we don't know exactly what mesonychians were, and
whether or not they were artiodactyls.


Doesn't matter. We can paint them into the family tree anyway.



Shedlock, A. M., M. C. Milinkovitch, and N. Okada. 2000. SINE evolution,
missing data, and the origin of whales. Syst. Biol. 49:808-817.

Is the missing data still missing or did they fill it in with their beliefs ?


Just reading titles won't tell you much, though it will, if you look
hard enough, give you an excuse not to think. This paper shows that
hippos and whales are closest living relatives. Morphological and
molecular data are now in agreement. Why do you think that would be?



Circular reasoning?



The problem I have with this sort of thinking is that the mammal is supposed
to not only survive but thrive in a competitive environment as it's leg's
slowly morph to flippers ( slowly even by PE standards ).


So what you're saying is that you can't, personally, imagine what
advantage intermediates would have. Since you can't imagine it, it can't
be true. Yet you have seen sea lions, I suppose.


Yes, and if they had any less of a flipper they would be out of luck
in the water and much too cumbersome on land.



That should do for a start. New fossils and new molecular analyses make
this conclusion stronger every year.

I'd rather base my conclusions on unbiased evidence.

We're not going to get anywhere if you say that all the scientific
literature is biased.


It's interesting that you interpreted my comment like that.
That pretty much sums things up.


You are once again filtering all your information
through creationist web sites.


You've repeated that one a number of times too.


Do you think they're unbiased? Where is
the creationist research? Have you ever seen any, or heard of any?


I have a news flash for you. Many scientists are creationists, they
look at the same evidence that you do and sometimes write books
or otherwise contribute to a creationist site so that you can dismiss
them as irrelevent and biased.


And yes, you are right, we can't test the cause although we can draw
conclusions based on what we know. You believe miracles are natural,
I believe they are supernatural.

Odd way to put it.

That's what it amounts to isn't it?

No.

Even if things happened as a natural
outcome of matter interacting with matter, life got amazingly complex,
fine tuned for it's environment and diverse rather quickly. I don't
have enough faith to believe that it is all a quirk of electro-magnetic
forces.

There are natural processes by which such things can happen. If you want
to consider them miracles, sure. And don't forget to separate the
questions here. Common descent and the mechanism of adaptation are two
different things. You're mushing them together again.

All you ever do is back up assertions with more assertions.


You can live in your little insulated world if you like. But don't you
ever feel like a mushroom?

No, I feel freed from the burdens of the fundamentalism that has
enslaved your thinking. I can look at both sides of the issues.


But if all you ever do is look at creationist web sites, how can you
consider that to be more than one side?

Good example of what I mean since I have posted from secular
sources as well and the ones from the creationist sites were primarily
from secular sources. Quoting Gould's 20 year old beef isn't evidence
that their words were misrepresented.

I don't recall you quoting anything that wasn't taken from a creationist
web site, but perhaps you did once or twice. Reading massaged snippets
of "secular" (read: scientific) sources does not constitute looking at
both sides. By the way, have you noticed that those web sites you keep
quoting also devote a great deal of effort to showing that the earth and
universe are 6000 years old and that most fossils were deposited by a
single, global flood? How can you possibly consider them to represent
real science? They're crackpots, even by your standards, aren't they?

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

"John Harshman"

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


John Harshman wrote:


Fletis Humplebacker


"John Harshman


Fletis Humplebacker


That isn't in dispute, his reference is the geological record, not a
stop watch. The point is that it was, by all accounts I've seen so far,
sudden. Hense the term "explosion", which was contrary to the traditional
view of evolution.

Clearly there was something sudden going on, if your definition of
"sudden" includes periods of 5 million years.

It does geologically speaking. It would not be sudden if we were
talking about tax rebates.


Right. I'm asking you to keep this in mind. That definition of "sudden"
is not a big problem for standard Darwinian theory.

Sure it is. According to many or most of those who do this
professionally the suddeness is a big problem, hense the theories
that go beyond Darwinian thinking to accomodate it. I've posted
quotes that demonstrate it, your cognitive dissonance doesn't
make them disappear.

You have confused PE with the Cambrian explosion.

No, but the mother of all suddenness of life forms doesn't
make the case for slow gradual change. Or small incremental
ones for that matter.

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
addded or taken away from it.

But you (or rather your creationist web sites) have taken away nearly
everything. That's why there are all those holes (...) in the quotes.
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.

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?

I can understand something like the environment favoring birds with
bigger beaks to dominate the breed. I don't think we need to see
such a transition in the fossil record to know it happens. The kinds of
macro-transformations of limbs changing from flippers to legs wouldn't
be so quick that it would leave no trace. I've seen nothing that suggests
a natural transformation like that would happen in 100,000 years.

Indeed it wouldn't. It would probably happen in many steps over millions
of years. And in fact we have transitional fossils for those
intermediate steps in whales, for example. We have good evidence from
both the fossil record and the genetics of living species for the
transformation. Whether it was natural is not something we can test.

Let us know when you come up with some evidence for the transitions.


Gingerich, P. D., M. ul Haq, I. S. Zalmout, I. H. Khan, and M. S.
Malkani. 2001. Origin of whales from early artiodactyls: Hands and feet
of Eocene Protocetidae from Pakistan. Science 293:2239-2242.

Good example of the type of circular reasoning I see so often for
those who make the evidence fit the theories.

Didn't read it, did you?

I read much of it and saw the same ole same ole. Here's a bone
that we think fits something in between so that proves a transitional
line, etc., etc.

When you say you "read much of it" does that mean that you actually
acquired the paper itself? Or does it mean you read a snippet or two
from some creationist site?

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.

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 realize this comes from Bizarrekly but it's the first one I found, is
this not typical? I've heard it myself.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsid...aeopteryx.html
It has long been accepted that Archaeopteryx was a transitional form between
birds and reptiles, and that it is the earliest known bird.

And so it is, which contradicts the claim in that article that "earlier
birds are found in the fossil record". By the way, the fact that
Archaeopteryx is transitional and is the oldest known bird doesn't mean
that it's ancestral to modern birds, just as your great aunt, if she
outlived your grandparents, would not therefore be your ancestor.

and it presents, in confident terms, a flimsy
observation that is highly disputed or irrelevant to this serious problem in the
evolutionists’ story. For shame, Nature!

For shame, creationist web site! Archaeopteryx is an ideal transitional
fossil. Creationists can't even agree on whether it's "just a bird" or
"just a dinosaur with faked feathers".

Again, I must remind you that "creationists" are various people.

Indeed they are. They all agree that evolution is wrong, but they can't
agree on just why. Hmmm...perhaps the conclusion is independent of the
"reasons".

The pictures on the Science page also stretch the truth, portraying Rodhocetus
as whale-like as possible. What they don’t tell you is that most of the bones are
inferred. Just a few fragments were found, and the rest is artistic license (See
Creation magazine, Sept-Nov 2001, pp. 10-14.)

Actually, quite a bit of Rodhocetus material has been found.

What the bones show are extinct animals who were perfectly adapted to their own
environment, without any desire or pressure to evolve into something else.

How you would tell this by looking at a skeleton, or even a whole
animal, is beyond me.

I suppose the same way that some can tell it evolved from something else.

Nope, there are in fact rigorous methods for doing that. Look up
"phylogenetic analysis".

The
crucial features the evolutionists are basing their stories on are just skeletal features
– teeth, ear cavities, and foot bones. What about all the other specialized features
of whales – sonar, spouts on the top of their heads, the ability to dive deep, and
much more, for which there is not a shred of evidence of transitional forms? The
only way you can arrange extinct animals into a family tree is with a prior commitment
to evolution. This is circular reasoning. Beaver have webbed feet, too; are they
evolving into dolphins? The fossil evidence shows a wide assortment of adapted
animals that appear abruptly then went extinct. The rest is storytelling. These articles
also highlight a reappearing difficulty for evolution, that the genetic/molecular family
trees do not match the morphological family trees.

My, that was a lot of verbiage. Did you read it, or just copy it?

Both.

Apparently there is no possible evidence for evolution. All this thing
does is present the Zeno's paradox of evolution: show them one
intermediate, and they'll complain that the intermediates between the
intermediates haven't been found.

"They" is a person but he brings up a good point, the animals are well
suited for their environment and circular reasoning makes the pieces
fit the tree.

There is no reason why intermediates should not be well suited for their
environments. In fact natural selection would require it. That doesn't
mean at all that they aren't transitional. Circular reasoning is not
involved. You need to look up "nested hierarchy".

Thewissen, J. G. M., E. M. Williams, L. J. Roe, and S. T. Hussain. 2001.
Skeletons of terrestrial cetaceans and the relationship of whales to
artiodactyls. Nature 413: 277-281.

...from the same page just prior to the above rebuttal.

You call that a rebuttal?

You call that a response?

No, I just call it a snide comment. My response was elsewhere.

Whale Ancestor Alleged 09/19/2001
“Everyone will agree that these animals are whales,” says an Ohio paleontologist
about a wolf-sized creature that probably only got wet walking across streams,
according to a report in Nature. But that may be wishful thinking. Molecular
analyses put very different creatures in the ancestral line of whales, and rival teams
see the hippopotamus as a more likely candidate.

That's a distortion. Nobody says that hippopotami are ancestral to
whales, merely that they are the closest living relatives of whales.
Hippos, by the way, are artiodactyls, making that theory fully
compatible with the fossil discoveries. No conflict here.

Apparently there is one with the Ohio paleontologist. I think the point
was that his reasoning is all too common.

You don't know what the paleontologist actually said there. It wasn't in
direct quotes, and science journalists are famous for screwing up this
sort of thing. Note that the Ohio professor is talking about agreement.
It's the (unnamed) science journalist who is talking about conflict, and
he's confused about its nature. The question was whether mesonychians
(an extinct group) is closely related to whales, and, if so, whether
they are artiodactyls. Nothing to do with whether the fossils being
discussed are actually whales. Some paleontologists used to think that
whales were not artiodactyls, but the astragali put paid to that notion.

Because cetaceans are so unlike any land mammal, with their legs as paddles
and their nostrils atop their heads, it has been immensely difficult to place them in
the evolutionary scheme of things . . . . “Rapid evolutionary change, be it molecular,
ecological or anatomical, is extremely difficult to reconstruct, and the speed with
which cetaceans took to the water may make their bones an unreliable guide to their
ancestry,” he says [evolutionary biologist Ulfur Arnason of the University of Lund in
Sweden]. Arnason believes the two camps will remain divided, at least for now.
“There’s no point trying to reach some sort of consensus based on compromise.
It has often been very difficult to reconcile morphological and molecular opinions,”
he says.

Presumably this was written before the whale astragali were found,
because it makes no sense after.

So you say. These are the types of comments that you should support
instead of asserting. How does the whale astragali reconstruct the
rapid evolutionary change?

Beg pardon? Whale astragali just sit there. They don't reconstruct
anything. What they do, however, is show us that early whales had the
diagnostic features of artiodactyls, in full accordance with the
molecular data. How rapid the transition was is another matter. We
really can't tell from the available fossils. All we can say is that
there are quite a few transitional fossils in various stages of changing
from terrestrial to fully aquatic. Again, this doesn't mean that all
those transitionals were not adapted just fine to their environments,
just as hippos, sea otters, penguins, sea lions, seals, and dugongs are
adapted to theirs, even though they aren't as fully aquatic as whales or
as fully terrestrial as horses.

Science Magazine also has a report with pictures of reconstructions of two of the
specimens. National Geographic, as expected, joined in the celebration of the
new fossil, but admits “Despite this evidence that cetaceans (whales, dolphins,
and porpoises) evolved from artiodactyls, substantial discrepancies remain,
Rose said. "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the
cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result
of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls.

Not clear, since we don't know exactly what mesonychians were, and
whether or not they were artiodactyls.

Doesn't matter. We can paint them into the family tree anyway.

You have no clue about how phylogenetic analysis is done. It's not
arbitrary.

Shedlock, A. M., M. C. Milinkovitch, and N. Okada. 2000. SINE evolution,
missing data, and the origin of whales. Syst. Biol. 49:808-817.

Is the missing data still missing or did they fill it in with their beliefs ?

Just reading titles won't tell you much, though it will, if you look
hard enough, give you an excuse not to think. This paper shows that
hippos and whales are closest living relatives. Morphological and
molecular data are now in agreement. Why do you think that would be?

Circular reasoning?

Please read the paper, go through the reasoning, and tell me what part
of it is circular, because I'm having some trouble seeing it.

The problem I have with this sort of thinking is that the mammal is supposed
to not only survive but thrive in a competitive environment as it's leg's
slowly morph to flippers ( slowly even by PE standards ).

So what you're saying is that you can't, personally, imagine what
advantage intermediates would have. Since you can't imagine it, it can't
be true. Yet you have seen sea lions, I suppose.

Yes, and if they had any less of a flipper they would be out of luck
in the water and much too cumbersome on land.

How about penguins? How about sea otters? How about platypodes?

(Note: I'm not saying these are evolutionary intermediates, but they are
functionally intermediate, which answers your argument for functional
impossibility of the intermediate.)

That should do for a start. New fossils and new molecular analyses make
this conclusion stronger every year.

I'd rather base my conclusions on unbiased evidence.


We're not going to get anywhere if you say that all the scientific
literature is biased.

It's interesting that you interpreted my comment like that.
That pretty much sums things up.

I don't see another way to interpret it. You seem to be claiming that
all the literature I cited is biased (though without reading any of it
-- apparently you can sniff bias from a distance). Now, either I have
carefully chosen all the biased stuff out of the pool of literature, and
I can't imagine how you would know that, or it's all biased.

My guess is that you are assuming your creationist sites to be unbiased
representations of the literature, and since I don't conform to what
they say, I must be biased. Yes?

You are once again filtering all your information
through creationist web sites.

You've repeated that one a number of times too.

Seems to be true. I don't think you have read a single thing I've cited.

Do you think they're unbiased? Where is
the creationist research? Have you ever seen any, or heard of any?

I have a news flash for you. Many scientists are creationists, they
look at the same evidence that you do and sometimes write books
or otherwise contribute to a creationist site so that you can dismiss
them as irrelevent and biased.

I have a news flash for you. Almost no scientists are creationists.
Creationists don't do research. They don't publish any research. They
publish polemics on occasion, but that's hardly the same thing. If you
disagree, show me some scientific research (on a relevant subject) by a
creationist.

The creationists are trying to create the false impression that this is
a live controversy in science. You fell for it because you would like it
to be true. But find me the research.

[snip]


I don't recall you quoting anything that wasn't taken from a creationist
web site, but perhaps you did once or twice. Reading massaged snippets
of "secular" (read: scientific) sources does not constitute looking at
both sides. By the way, have you noticed that those web sites you keep
quoting also devote a great deal of effort to showing that the earth and
universe are 6000 years old and that most fossils were deposited by a
single, global flood? How can you possibly consider them to represent
real science? They're crackpots, even by your standards, aren't they?

No response?

In article ,
John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

I answered your question. They see problems with various aspects
of evolution so you can only say it's all nailed down as a statement of
faith. None of which necessarily rules out an Intelligent Designer.

What aspects of evolution did they see problems with, and why does this
require evolution being a statement of faith? Are you saying that
general relativity and quantum mechanics are just faith because they
can't now be reconciled with each other?

Well, maybe you have already seen this, but:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512 :-)

I have to say that I am curious about why you are willing to spend
so much time debating with Fletis. Isn't it blazingly obvious that
he is in way, way, way over his head? Seriously, I haven't read
all the posts in this thread, but have you seen *anything* Fletis
has written which would lead you to believe that, if he were to
get up off of his butt and read some of the articles you have
recommended to him, he would be able to understand them?

In a way my question to Fletis really had to do with his credentials.
He demanded yours a while back, and while you eventually coughed
them up (and they are rather impressive!), you were a bit dismissive
of the whole credentials thing, arguing that people should evaluate
the evidence for themselves. I have to disagree. Modern science
is a huge enterprise, and none of us have the time or the ability
to validate it all for ourselves. Most of it we just take on faith.
Not a religious sort of faith, of course, but a very human sort of
faith in the trustworthiness of the scientific community, a community
made up of actual human beings who know each other, and talk to
each other, and even talk to the rest of us sometimes. I took
graduate courses in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics from serious
scientists, so I know what the scientific community looks like from
the inside, and as a result I have faith that scientists in fields
I never studied are likewise on the level, and don't just make
stuff up. Most of what I believe about science I believe not
because I have evaluated the evidence for myself, but because I
see the scientific enterprise as a unified whole, and so I trust
it as a whole.

But really, the idea that a huge intellectual community could be
untrustworthy isn't entirely outlandish. In fact we have a perfect
example in recent history: the International Communist Movement.
It stretched across continents and decades, and it had all the
trappings of science: theories of history and economics, scholarly
journals, deep thinkers, the works. To believers it was a huge,
impressive edifice, to the point where many couldn't even conceive
of it being flawed. And yet it was entirely bogus. So it *can*
happen!

If you think about things in these terms I think it explains a lot
about the Creationists. Although their own religions sects are
really rather minor in world terms, from their own point of view
those sects are vast and imposing, unifying all of history on into
eternity. And since they know so little of the scientific enterprise
it appears rather small to them. So naturally it seems obvious to
them that any conflict between the two must resolve in favor of
their own beliefs. And really, is this way of thinking all *that*
different from yours and mine?

The rock bottom difference of course is that the scientific community
has *earned* our trust, by producing a steady stream of *true*
miracles, like airplanes that really fly, and medicines that really
cure, and so on. Even if I had never studied science and understood
none of it, the fact that science *works* would be enough to convince
me that the scientific enterprise was rooted in something *real*.
Even if I understood none of the logic, I would believe in evolution
because I believed in airplanes. I think this is the way most
people approach the issue (after all, most people aren't scientists),
and I think that's why Creationists are determined -- above all!
-- to misrepresent the *size* of their movement, and make it look
big. Size does matter. I think even many Creationists would lose
heart if they understood how few scientists accept their beliefs!
--
John Brock

In article ,
Larry Blanchard wrote:
John Brock wrote:

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

snip

Well, Fletis? Ignoring this one like you do any you can't answer?

Can't understand is more like it! Notice that he's misunderstood
my question twice now? (And he is not getting a third chance!)

Of course, since the question I asked has to do with his own thought
processes there's no way he could lift an answer off one of his
Creationist web sites, and that means that he needed to come up
with an answer entirely on his own. Based on what I've read of
his previous posts it doesn't look like that's something Fletis
can do. I'm kind of amazed that John Harshman has been willing to
toy with him for so long -- he has a lot more patience than I do!
--
John Brock

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

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.

That's the problem, Fletis, you just don't see! One last time, then I'm
giving up.

If cave fish can lose their eyes because they're no longer needed, a
four-legged mammal that has returned to the sea can lose its legs, or
convert them to flippers.

We still have a vestigal appendix. Totally useless, but it hasn't quite
disappeared yet. Maybe in another million years or so if we manage to
last that long. Did a creator give us that appendix as a joke?

John Harshman wrote:
Fletis Humplebacker wrote:


"John Brock"


Fletis Humplebacker


John Brock


I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

You have ignored my question! I already knew that *you* believe
these quotes undermine the case for evolution. But the quotes come

from highly intelligent and well informed people who in fact believe

that the theory of evolution is true. So how do you account for
this apparent contradiction?

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

I have no idea what their view is of ID and I posted them
because they support evolution. You seem to believe
that one excludes the other.

I'm surprised and gratified to find that you understand this. Though I'm
puzzled because it's the first sign you have shown that you do.


Then you were reading too carefully. I said from day one that
evolution occurs at some level and if species can make the
drastic changes that are claimed it wouldn't be a natural process.
I'm surprised that you didn't understand that.



Previously you had seemed to suppose that ID requires separate creation
of species.

I don't know what you mean. ID doesn't require anything but a creator.



Now you need to reinterpret Brock's question. If you aren't using those
quote to cast doubt on evolution, what are you using them for?


I told you why. The evidence doesn't support a natural process at work.



2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

3) As a rule scientists are not hypocrites. The vast majority
actually believe the things they say they believe. Yes? No?

4) As a consequence of 1, 2 and 3, it can be concluded that the
scientists you are quoting do not themselves believe that their
statements cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or open the door
to Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

5) You on the other hand *do* believe that these quotes cast doubt
on the theory of evolution, and *do* open the door to Intelligent
Design. Yes? No?

6) If you are right about this, then it follows that these quotes
have implications that the scientists who made them did not see,
but which you *do* see. Yes? No?


Did you follow that? If so, let me repeat my question. Why do
you believe that you are capable of seeing implications in quotes
that were missed by the scientists who made them? Do you feel you
are more perceptive than those scientists? Smarter? Better
informed? What? Scientists in general are very smart people. Do
you believe that you are as smart as the scientists you are quoting?
(That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you?)


I answered your question. They see problems with various aspects
of evolution so you can only say it's all nailed down as a statement of
faith. None of which necessarily rules out an Intelligent Designer.


What aspects of evolution did they see problems with,

I posted them a number of times. If you want to revisit them please use
google if your reader has been purged.


and why does this
require evolution being a statement of faith? Are you saying that
general relativity and quantum mechanics are just faith because they
can't now be reconciled with each other?


It depends on how far you stretch what is known.

John Brock wrote:

The rock bottom difference of course is that the scientific community
has *earned* our trust, by producing a steady stream of *true*
miracles, like airplanes that really fly, and medicines that really
cure, and so on. Even if I had never studied science and understood
none of it, the fact that science *works* would be enough to convince
me that the scientific enterprise was rooted in something *real*.
Even if I understood none of the logic, I would believe in evolution
because I believed in airplanes. I think this is the way most
people approach the issue (after all, most people aren't scientists),
and I think that's why Creationists are determined -- above all!
-- to misrepresent the *size* of their movement, and make it look
big. Size does matter. I think even many Creationists would lose
heart if they understood how few scientists accept their beliefs!

To answer part of your childish rant I asked for his credentials
because he was placing his expertise over another in the field
that he disagreed with, a Dr. Chein, and making many assertions
as scientific fact. I made it clear, how did you miss it? Selective
reading or selective comprehension?

Your above comment illustrates your narrow minded world view
so I'm not going to waste anymore time with you, given your level
of maturity, but I'll leave you with this...

From a well know fundamentalist right wing source...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feat.../11/slack.html
Scientists talk about why they believe in God.

In his day, Albert Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind." More recently, a Nature survey of
American scientists found about 40 percent of them to be religious.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Brock wrote:


The rock bottom difference of course is that the scientific community
has *earned* our trust, by producing a steady stream of *true*
miracles, like airplanes that really fly, and medicines that really
cure, and so on. Even if I had never studied science and understood
none of it, the fact that science *works* would be enough to convince
me that the scientific enterprise was rooted in something *real*.
Even if I understood none of the logic, I would believe in evolution
because I believed in airplanes. I think this is the way most
people approach the issue (after all, most people aren't scientists),
and I think that's why Creationists are determined -- above all!
-- to misrepresent the *size* of their movement, and make it look
big. Size does matter. I think even many Creationists would lose
heart if they understood how few scientists accept their beliefs!


To answer part of your childish rant I asked for his credentials
because he was placing his expertise over another in the field
that he disagreed with, a Dr. Chein, and making many assertions
as scientific fact. I made it clear, how did you miss it? Selective
reading or selective comprehension?

I find it fairly diheartening that after all this time I've been unable
to induce you even to spell Chien correctly. Or do you want proof of
that spelling?

The irony meter went pretty high on that last sentence, by the way.

Your above comment illustrates your narrow minded world view
so I'm not going to waste anymore time with you, given your level
of maturity, but I'll leave you with this...

From a well know fundamentalist right wing source...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feat.../11/slack.html
Scientists talk about why they believe in God.

In his day, Albert Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind." More recently, a Nature survey of
American scientists found about 40 percent of them to be religious.

How is this relevant? Are you claiming that religious scientists are
therefore creationists? That's certainly not true. Another poll of
scientists showed that about 5% of them believed in the separate
creation of humans. (Note that this is not 5% of biologists, but of
scientists and, I believe, graduate engineers and doctors too. A much
smaller proportion of biologists would be creationists.) What this means
is that 35% out of that 40% agree with me, not you. As I've said several
times, there is no reason a Christian can't believe in evolution, even
fully naturalistic evolution.

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'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.



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?



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.


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.


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.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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. 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.

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:

John Harshman wrote:

Fletis Humplebacker wrote:



"John Brock"



Fletis Humplebacker



John Brock


I've got a question for you Fletis. The people you are quoting
are in fact strong believers in evolution, whatever caveats they
might have about the details. You seem to believe that you are
sufficiently sharp that you can see implications in their words
that they themselves are not clever enough to see. Why do you
believe this?

I'm sorry that it escaped your attention. Many quotes specifically
stated that they themselves see problems. You are minimizing things
quite a bit by calling them caveats of detail. The point is that the
fossil record doesn't fit the beliefs. There's no scientific evidence
that can demonstrate how evolution could have happened on its'
own. That's the point.

You have ignored my question! I already knew that *you* believe
these quotes undermine the case for evolution. But the quotes come

from highly intelligent and well informed people who in fact believe


that the theory of evolution is true. So how do you account for
this apparent contradiction?

Let me break my question down into smaller pieces that you might
have less trouble with. I'm going to make a series of statements
-- please let me know if you disagree with any of them:

1) The scientists that are being quoted do in fact support evolution
and reject Intelligent Design. Yes? No?


I have no idea what their view is of ID and I posted them
because they support evolution. You seem to believe
that one excludes the other.


I'm surprised and gratified to find that you understand this. Though I'm
puzzled because it's the first sign you have shown that you do.

Then you were reading too carefully. I said from day one that
evolution occurs at some level and if species can make the
drastic changes that are claimed it wouldn't be a natural process.
I'm surprised that you didn't understand that.

And yet you have used arguments against the one (natural processes) as
arguments against the other (common descent).

Previously you had seemed to suppose that ID requires separate creation
of species.

I don't know what you mean. ID doesn't require anything but a creator.

Then you are now willing to accept common descent of humans and apes?

Now you need to reinterpret Brock's question. If you aren't using those
quote to cast doubt on evolution, what are you using them for?

I told you why. The evidence doesn't support a natural process at work.

Then you are now willing to accept common descent of the invertebrate
phyla, of whales and cows, and so on?

2) Unless they are hypocrites (or joking), people who believe in
something do not *knowingly* make statements which would imply that
the things they believe are untrue. Yes? No?

3) As a rule scientists are not hypocrites. The vast majority
actually believe the things they say they believe. Yes? No?

4) As a consequence of 1, 2 and 3, it can be concluded that the
scientists you are quoting do not themselves believe that their
statements cast doubt on the theory of evolution, or open the door
to Intelligent Design. Yes? No?

5) You on the other hand *do* believe that these quotes cast doubt
on the theory of evolution, and *do* open the door to Intelligent
Design. Yes? No?

6) If you are right about this, then it follows that these quotes
have implications that the scientists who made them did not see,
but which you *do* see. Yes? No?


Did you follow that? If so, let me repeat my question. Why do
you believe that you are capable of seeing implications in quotes
that were missed by the scientists who made them? Do you feel you
are more perceptive than those scientists? Smarter? Better
informed? What? Scientists in general are very smart people. Do
you believe that you are as smart as the scientists you are quoting?
(That wasn't a rhetorical question. Do you?)

I answered your question. They see problems with various aspects
of evolution so you can only say it's all nailed down as a statement of
faith. None of which necessarily rules out an Intelligent Designer.

What aspects of evolution did they see problems with,

I posted them a number of times. If you want to revisit them please use
google if your reader has been purged.

I can see why you not want to make your own argument.

and why does this

require evolution being a statement of faith? Are you saying that
general relativity and quantum mechanics are just faith because they
can't now be reconciled with each other?

It depends on how far you stretch what is known.

So those problems don't require a statement of faith, then. Glad we're
agreed.

"Fletis Humplebacker" wrote in message
.. .
John Brock wrote:
snip
To answer part of your childish rant I asked for his credentials
because he was placing his expertise over another in the field
that he disagreed with, a Dr. Chein, and making many assertions
as scientific fact. I made it clear, how did you miss it? Selective
reading or selective comprehension?

Your above comment illustrates your narrow minded world view
so I'm not going to waste anymore time with you, given your level
of maturity, but I'll leave you with this...

From a well know fundamentalist right wing source...

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feat.../11/slack.html
Scientists talk about why they believe in God.

In his day, Albert Einstein said, "Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind." More recently, a Nature survey of
American scientists found about 40 percent of them to be religious.

For the religious scientists, their faith is strong enough to believe that
if the natural world is the work of the creator, then the workings of the
natural world are the workings of the creator; that is how it works.
Creationists, including IDers, have a weak faith that can't handle some
information that conflicts with their dogma. Is that true of you? Do you
oppose evolution because your faith is too weak?

Steve
For some reason, still reading this drivel.

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
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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.