Great Debate: Nuggin v. Randman

I'm concerned about your views on anatomy.In whales these bones aren't "leg bones" even though the same/similiar bones which appear in thousands of other species in the same place are leg bones.In humans it's not a tail, even though the same bones which appear in the same place on thousands of other species are tails.By this reconning, are cows teeth teeth? Are cat's claws claws?Why is it that whales and humans both have skulls? Why aren't our skulls something completely different than that of every other animal species out there? After all, our skulls are at the other end of the spine from our "not a tails". Shouldn't our skulls but "not a skull"?Yes, I'm being ridiculous, because that's how this argument sounds to me.

But that is clearly not your standard. Not to stray too far off topic, but you won't doubt that the leg bone is a leg bone, but you'll take a long handled clay pot as proof positive of dinosaurs living in modern day Mexico?

Randman, let's move on. We've pounded this one to death.Let's start a new thread on a topic that doesn't require dueling links to 86 page pdfs by post docs in fields that neither of us works in. It's all making my brain hurt!

I'm not arguing that there was a highly conserved embryonic stage. In fact, with the processes that I've described, a single highly conserved stage would be counter-intuative.What you are doing to is trying to disprove my points by disproving Haeckel original theory. Not a valid argument. Ditto.

Okay, I have two dogs. One has a very short base of the spine, but wags it all the time. The other one has a very long base of the spine but almost never wags it.If you want to call the vertabrae-like bones south of the hip "base of spine" then lets call them "base of spine" on every animal. Don't make up terms that just apply to humans.Or, alternatively, can you explain, if we are not related to the other primates, why only the great apes are lacking long "base of spines" while everything else has longer ones.

Too semantic an arguement."Is Pakicetus an ancestor of modern whales" would be worth arguing.The original statement is like "Is Lucy Human?". It's easy to show that Lucy is not human, but that doesn't say anything about evolution or her place on the tree.When people say "Pakicetus is a whale" what they are saying is "Pakicetus is part of a family tree, the living members of that tree are whales".But, again, this is going to result in hundreds of links to long papers of comparitive anatomy.Let's pick something that's either very speculative - "were there giants?"or let's do something where we can hash out the logic without having to present thesis - "Is there an overlap between the genetic variability of different groups, and if so, doesn't that imply macro evolution?"This message has been edited by Nuggin, 12-12-2005 11:03 AM

re: GiantsI was thinking more along the lines of historical perspective, reasons for giants in mythology other than their actual existance, fossil/skeletal remains supporting their existance, etc

What falsifiable counter arguement have you offered in place of evolution?

Well, just so were coming at it from different sides, I'll take the "no giants" stance.The rest of this should be in the other thread but...We should probably determine what is meant by "giants" as opposed to "tall people".Then I think we can split the discussion into two (perhaps overlapping groups). 1) Historical/literary/mythological references to giants. 2) Physical evidence.In some places there may be both, but obviously we'd expect the physical evidence to more compelling than a literary reference.Let's do it -- when you get back.

True, but all I ask is that you hold your own theories to the same high level of scrutiny you want to apply to other theories.