The Origin of Novelty

I did say approximate hope the rest of your day is better.

Neither of those statements are true, nor have you supplied evidence to suggest them.Just because the oldest bat that we have found could fly doesn't mean that there were not earlier more primitave bats that they evolved from. Also, the oldest bat that we've found isn't necesarily the "first" bat to exist.We haven't even looked at the significance of the evolutionary change yet. No, that's not true. We know the fossils are transitional because of the features they have. A seal doesn't have features between a manatee and a goat. No, it isn't. You're displaying a lack of understanding of what constitutes a transitional fossil. It doesn't work like you're saying. That's a lie. Do you *NOT* understand where babies come from? Animals come from other animals. There's no such thing as a "unique" animal. The pictures I linked to in Message 768. We have a bunch of transitional fossils. When you group them by their traits, they line up by their age.Why do you suppose that is? The Theory of Evolution offers a plausible explanation. I've seen no other. No, it shows no such thing. But we know that animals don't magically poof into existence but instead are born from other animals. Surely this is basic stuff here. How can you not understand how babies are made? Fossils are rare. The record is incomplete. The holes in the fossil record do not suggest that the animals magically poofed into existence. I'm sorry but that's just silly. Okay, again, we have a bunch of transitional fossils that can be independently grouped by their traits and their ages.What is the explanation for that? Is it better than the explanation that follows from the Theory of Evolution? Anything that involves magic is automatically 100 time worse. That's bullshit. You're not addressing the evidence, you're trying to hand-wave it away. Gawsh, its like the animals have been evolving! Again, you're not understanding how tranistional fossils work.You cannot put a seal between a manatee and a goat and say its transitional to them. Until you understand how that differs from identifying transitional fossils we will be unable to proceed.

You are missing the big picture. You are missing the nested hierarchy. No fossil represents a gross violation of the nested hierarchy. We do not find any bird-mammal transitions. We do not find a croc-duck transitions. We only find the transitions that evolution predicts we should find. The theory passes the fossil test with flying colors. Then show us a 55 million year old horse with a single hoof. "Short-term"? What does that mean? The nested hierarchies extend all the way back to the phylum level and beyond. I would not consider that to be "short term".

Okay, I just stumbled across this through a bump, from Message 89. Its another great example of transitional fossils: Holy shit! If we arrange those fossils according to their age, its almost like we can see the transitions between the different forms.Now, we now know that this is not a claim of definate ancestry. And that we should expect that there are various forms in a given time period.Here's the important question: why should we expect those forms that we've found to align both by shape and also timeline?Where's the explanation for the pattern?If you want to doubt the pattern, where's the other fossils that we've found that break it?

Sure. And if "approximate" meant "almost entirely wrong" then you'd be golden. What sort of reaction do you expect when you repeat claims that have already been refuted? The whole Carboniferous=swamp thing was debunked for your benefit in another thread, but you still go ahead and repeat the falsehood.When you first get something wrong, that could be called an honest mistake. When you keep getting it wrong, well... That's not what I said nor what I meant.What I am trying to get you to understand is that something like palaeontology or taxonomy is COMPLEX. They're complex and they're exacting and it's really really difficult to gain any kind of expertise in them. To get even close to the level of expertise of a professional palaeontologist you need to study. You need to study a friggin' lot.You haven't studied a lot. You've barely studied these topics at all. What you've done is make a few cursory web searches. You demonstrate this every time you make a blatantly silly comment like "Marine anoxic (trilobites)" or "every time in history has an aquatic animal that can walk". And yet you still seem to think that your opinion on these topic is worth as much as the experts. You dismiss the whole of palaeontology without understanding the first thing about it. This is an act of incredible arrogance.You need to realise that scientists are not idiots. They are not ignorant of their own subjects.You are ignorant of these subjects, yet you still assume to ridicule them. If that's not an act of hubris, then I don't know what is.Mutate and SurviveEdited by Granny Magda, : No reason given.

I know my posts require you to read and understand quite a few research papers, so I'm not surprised that it takes some time to reply to this: Message 751Part of what we're discussing (the increase in numbers of coding genes by successive mutations over time) is certainly relevant to a thread on the evolutionary origin of novelty. However, my falsification of your young earth model by genetics alone isn't really on topic, so I'll start a new one on that alone. It'll be called something like "Can the standard YEC model be falsified by genetics alone?". I'll show that it can, as a special present for you and any other YECs around.

Hi, as you likely realized I haven't the time to quickly deal with your posts in this thread, there is no ways I will have such time in another thread as well. I stick to one thread at a time, and i will get to your posts, don't worry I'm keen to get into the dating thread too, and also start my own one on radiometric dating. None of this can happen soon.

Yes. But there's not much point in pursuing your young 6,500 year old biosphere model when it can be falsified by current observations in genetics, is there?

getting to your post on genetics

Do it for me - mindspawn can catch up (or not) ;-)

Thanks for the listA) Irrelevant - its a modern chimpB, C, D, E , F are simply apes. Just because a gorilla has a large cranial capacity, or a gibbon has an upright stance, or an orangutang has smaller eyebrow ridges, does NOT make them human. In the days before the great extinctions, there were a lot more species, just because one or two of them had some of these modern ape features, does not make them any more human than modern apes are human.G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N are humans. Neanderthal bloodlines are found among modern humans, just because through diet, lifestyle, or heredity, some humans have more prominent eyebrow ridges, does not make them less human. Take the Australian aboriginal race, these are descendants from Asian race groups, and SUBSEQUENTLY developed the prominent eyebrow ridge and receding forehead. And yet as a generalization, these people are particularly human - emotionally/spiritually sensitive and aware.If even today with our limited number of existing species, a range of ape and human skulls can be placed in a row, its really easy to arrange ancient fossils in a row too, because at every stage in history you have a huge range to choose from, especially before the extinctions. Arranging skulls proves nothing, but well done evolutionists, another arrangement for us to ponder over

Sorry, I do sometimes delay and then forget about some of the more technical posts, but I'm not deliberately avoiding any posts in this thread, except those that post repetitive nonsense.I do acknowledge that some mutations have benefit. these are generally of the DISABLING type. ie if something bad is attacking the organism and killing it, to disable that area and lose some function is better than to have the function and be susceptible to attack. A similar example is the Duffy gene, this gene can have beneficial disabling in independent populations that causes protection from malaria. So I do agree with some processes of evolution, I prefer to apply the term "devolution" though, reduced functionality and reduced coding genes over time.However these beneficial mutations are extremely rare, and yet adaptation via changes to allele frequencies is extremely common. Thus when beneficial changes are observed in an organism (a fly adapting to temperature, a mouse adapting to a new environment) the more common mechanism is changes to allele frequencies, evolutionists are too quick to jump to the assumption of beneficial mutation, maybe because of the lack of evidence for such evolutionary processes, and a subsequent tendency to clutch at straws.Edited by mindspawn, : No reason given.

I would like to look into this, but you just mention "upthread". I haven't got the time to find it, if you can understand I'm discussing with many people at once, and so I'm often surprised when I'm expected to do the research when logically I'm the one with the least time.

And if they had been classified by so simple-minded a process, you would have a point. But they're not, so you don't.Yes, they are all apes; upright walking apes, with far more in common with humans than you seem to realise. Except that these fossils were not "placed" in a row. Their ordering is not arbitrary, they are placed in chronological order. This is completely objective. And - quelle surprise - these observations agree with the ToE. No-one forced them to do this, they just happen to be that way. This is, as per our previous agreements about the nature of supporting evidence, yet another line of evidence that supports evolution.Now I know what you're going to say; you reject the dating. Ask yourself then; doesn't that make it somewhat odd that they all date in such a way as to support the ToE. I mean, if the dating were intrinsically wrong, there would be no reason for them to line up in any particular order. But when we look at them we can see that, based on dating alone, they agree closely with an evolutionary sequence. If the dating method was wrong, what possible reason could there be for this? This is utterly false.Disagree? Then show me a Pliocene Homo sapiens, or a modern Australopithecene. I agree. But the fact remains that no-one arranged these skulls in anything other than the chronological order they came in. Your criticisms are unfounded.Mutate and Survive

The AUSTRALOPITHECUS is an ape. And unfortunately you have had propaganda enriched education! In your early days of education you get shown a sequence of pictures from ape to crouched hairy man, and the mental imprint is so strong that evolutionists have built a massive "evidence based" mountain of information with no foundation except a few fossils arranged in artificial sequences. It is funny , even though its really sad for science. Fair enough question. I do believe evolution of complexity is theoretically possible in some minor forms, but never yet demonstrated. I believe the main limiting factor to increased complexity over time is the inability of nature through chance to make any meaningful novel changes (resulting in unique features). There have been very limited evolutionist claims in this respect, a few studies that claim a mutated gene remained active and yet increased fitness. Another limiting factor is the general observed tendency of duplicated coding genes to cause damage. However I am in discussion with bluegenes about other possibilities in this regard, and am open to reviewing my stance on this. But even if the required evolutionary mechanism of an increase in the number of novel coding genes is one day proven, this does not prove that evolution IS the explanation for modern organisms, just because the process is possible. A mole has splayed legs. I've dealt with his hominid range of skulls now that I had the time. No I would expect something more logical, like a body covering that had some aspects of scales and some aspects of fur. This is what the gradual change of evolutionary theory would predict. Its the very understanding of this slow process of evolution that is NOT reflected in the fossil record, that brings doubt to the theory of evolution as an explanation for the existence of modern organisms. Don't get too detailed or patronising, your New York explanation is really not necessary. Believe me the concept of gradual changes from bacteria to humans over 600 million years is pretty easy to understand. Do you think your blind acceptance of pictures of hominid sequences from your youth somehow makes you have advanced intelligence to better understand this simplistic concept? I think blind acceptance is the less intelligent process. To what extent have you actually taken the "baramin" concept as an intellectually challenging idea to throw yourself into understanding, even as an abstract concept just for intellectual amusement?To be more direct, where are these gradual changes you are claiming from the scales of a reptile, to the mole-like megazostrodon, a fully fledged mammal? Where are these so-called gradual changes? Believe me , creationists do understand evolutionists wild claims, we just battle to see it in the fossil record.