A Whale of a Tale

Well, okay, let us grant your view that there is a wide range of opinion about evolution within ID. Some IDists accept evolution, some reject it. That's so wide a range that these two groups could have little in common beyond the belief that God was involved. Can you explain to us how a field that both accepts and rejects evolution could possess any scientific validity? Or credibility, either?The point I was making was that at least some of your own have no problem with the fossil record. Why don't you try seeing how well your interpretations play with them? I wonder how people like Behe and Dembski will react to being called deceptive liars? What is it with you and suspicion at every turn? I'm not trying to trick you into some confusion about ID and creationism. Yes, of course I believe that ID is a form of creationism. Creationism is the attempt to introduce conservative Christian viewpoints as science into public school curriculums. When I referred to Behe as an IDer I only meant that he is is of the ID variety of creationist, and I meant no trickery by it. Yes, we know, you are evidence of that. That's why this site attempts to focus on the facts, rather than on charges of bias such as this one. You can say this as many times as you like, but it won't make it true. Your opinions are not based upon data but upon hopes. Your appeals that evolutionists should carry out studies which are not practical or possible makes this clear. If you creationists can figure out how such studies could be conducted and you think they would support your views then conduct them, by all means. Now lets consider hominids instead of just Homo sapiens. From Australopithicus afarensis to Homo sapiens is also change within a range, but quite a bit broader range. And from chimps to us is an ever broader range. There are no limits to change, and the foundation of heredity, the science of genetics, makes it clear that no such limits exist or can exist. And so the lack of transitional fossils between the major orders or classes leads you to conclude that a Creator or Designer must have done it. In other words, because there's a paucity of direct evidence, you conclude that something unknown and unseen, and indeed by many ID claims even unknowable, did it. How is that not just plain old traditional "God of the Gaps" thinking?--Percy

I mention that because the tremendous size and morphological differences between Basilosaurus and Ambilocetus and others are mentioned in the scientific literature as a real problem, along with other features. The simplistic arguments first advanced by evos have come under criticism, even among evos, for not taking all the data into account. That may be true, but the idea that these groups stay small, continue to evolve rapidly in geologic time, without ever growing into larger populations, moreover in marine environments, just does not wash. Sure, you could explain some "steps" or "gaps" being missing in this manner. You cannot explain 90-99.9% being missing in this manner. I think this is pretty bogus. First off, I would argue Neanderthals are better thought of a tribe of homo sapiens and not a separate species. They were just people, like you and me. A lot of false information has been spread abotu Neanderthals due to wanting Neanderthals to be transitional, but they are merely a variation of human beings, a tribe of people.Moreover, the fossil record does show evidence of intermiggling of Neanderthals with other tribes, as some features of both are present in some fossils. It is likely, just as with tribes in modern times, such as with Indians and Caucasians in north America, that a sudden shift can occur which would explain one tribe not being found so much after a certain point.Also, you noted that we should find fossils of creatures in rover beds, and considering whales are aquatic, one would think that fossilization for intermediate forms would be very high relatively speaking.

Good. I think we are making progress. I'm not concerned with specific lineage - I'm talking family tree here. We agree that Basilosaurus is related to modern whale populations.Can I assume that since we agree on Basilosaurus, we also agree on Dorudon, as the two are remarkably similiar?Now, let's talk skull morphology. Would you agree that animals with similiar skull morphology are commonly related?For example - four different species of crocodillian Or, if you disagree, can you explain why and post some examples that we can discuss?

Although this is off-topic, I would like you to consider defending this position (particularly the part I bolded) in a new thread. You sure make some wild, unsupported assertions for someone who so frequently accuses biologists of doing so!

--then I gotta dash outta here and go work out. Why? We already agree that dolphins and whales are similiar enough to interbreed. Commerson's dolphins are 4-6 feet long. Blue whales are 80 ft long.Basilosaurus was 65ft long. Ambilocetus was 9ft long. Narwals are particularly unique looking whales, long "unicorn horn" tooth sticking out the front. They are an arctic species, extremely isolated but in a marine environment. Why haven't they spread out? Perhaps if we enter another Ice Age they will.If we see it happening today, why should we assume that it has never happened in the past? Actually, that's the opposite of what I just said. Neanderthals are not transitional. They existed in a location for a while. Then both Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals existed in that location, then no more Neanderthals. They did not become HS. HS walked into their territory fully formed. There is one fossil child which appears to have features of both Neanderthals and HS. However, it's disputed. I tend to think it's a crossbreed - but if I showed you a skeleton of a mule, does that mean that mules are transitional between donkeys and horses? Assuming that the particular river where that species was located dried up, formed fossils, remained accessable to humans later and was discovered by paleontologist? Sure.For example, if a dolphin species from India or Brasil were to break out and spread all over the world - we'd be wondering where is the transitional species for these. If the Amazone or the Ganges were to dry up and we could explore the sediment we'd find them.Ganges River Dolphin Amazon River Dolphin

why don't you start a thread and state your position, what you believe or have been taught about Neanderthals? Then, we can better see how you feel Neanderthals are not a tribe of people.

The river dolphins look a lot like Eurhinodelphis, don't they?

Amazon River Dolphin: Gangese River Dolphin: Eurhinodelphis Bosii: So similar, yet so different. None the less, clearly related.

I asked you first. Nyah. You are the one making a positive assertion, therefore you should support it.

Yes, Randman, I agree, we have to recognize what is going on here.The fact is, I think almost everyone but you recognizes precisely what is going on here. Every time a point is raised for which you have no response that you can support with evidence, your reaction is to strike out and make emotional personal charges, just as you do here in this message. Instead of responding to my characterization of creationism as inherently unscientific by citing the scientific achievements of creationism, you instead attack the messenger, me, as delivering false charges.But the charges are not false, Randman. Creationists do not conduct science. What they do is conduct publicity campaigns against evolution that focus on legislatures, boards of education and common citizens. I'm not telling you anything new, and the courts have repeatedly found this to be the case. The judge in the recent Dover case termed ID a sham as science. This, also, is not true. Yaro tried for post after post to elicit from you some explanation for the sudden appearance of creatures in the fossil record. You called her a troll, you said you were going to ignore her, but you never answered. You still haven't. Do you think this demonstrates intellectual integrity on your part? Or are you going to set yourself up as judge and jury again and claim that the horrible and dishonest treatment you receive here justifies any kind of behavior you care to exhibit and any kind of treatment of fellow members that you care to dish out, and the Forum Guidelines be damned.The fact is that we're people just like you who deserve, also just like you, to be treated with respect. It would be nice if you would at least occasionally exhibit some Christian values by exhibiting a little tolerance and recognizing that we all, including you, are not perfect. Let those who live in glass houses and all that. And also "Do unto others etc...". And also "Turn the other cheek." It's Christians like you and Faith and those people from Dover who give Christianity a bad name by marching into public forums, be it discussion boards or boards of education meetings or whatever, and flaunting your bias and ignorance and hatred and intolerance all over the place. It's been explained to you, not once but many times, that the studies you propose are not possible. A reasonable response from you would explain why they are, indeed, possible. The response you instead give just ignores what has already been explained. Just to help you get in tune with what I'm looking for from you, please note that I did not call you a liar or dishonest or a sophist or any other name. I'm going to presume (to the point of insensibility if I have to) that there is a rational explanation for the appearance that you are ignoring what people have said, and that your next post will patiently explain that while it might appear that you were ignoring these explanations, in reality this is a misunderstanding that you will now make clear and so lay to rest.So stop raising all this "Oh poor me" crap and get on with the discussion. The Forum Guidelines say to focus on the topic and not on personal issues, and it's high time you demonstrated that you've got maturity beyond a 6-year old's and begin acting like an adult by showing that you can stick by your agreements by following the Forum Guidelines that you agreed to when you joined, and that you have been reminded of more often than any other single member of this board over its entire history. I defined evolution as descent with modification filtered by natural selection. This has been observed, both in the wild and in the laboratory. At the genetic level, practically every act of reproduction represents observable evolution. At a higher level, bacteria exhibit externally observable evolution in real time. Fruit flies exhibit externally observable evolution over months. If you doubt this then the time to object was many messages ago when I first said this, not now. But you've brought it up now, so fine, go ahead and explain why you believe evolution hasn't been observed. Remind me again how many times it was explained to you why transitionals might not be present? What you should really say is, "I know you guys explained why the transitionals might not be present, but I still don't accept that explanation, and here's why..." In that way the discussion can move forward, and you don't end up frustrating all the evolutionists who feel forced to list, yet again for the umpteenth time as I just did in a recent message, the reasons why transitionals are often missing from the fossil record.Randman, as you can see from the frustration apparent in this post I've just written, you're not the only one out there who is frustrated. But the Forum Guidelines were put in place to allow discussion on sensitive topics that by their very nature are often frustrating to discuss, and if we can all just follow the Forum Guidelines then things will go much more smoothly. It is only when someone sets himself up as judge of the behavior of others that civility breaks down. It is the moderators' job to keep discussion here running smoothly by as objectively as possible enforcing the forum guidelines. Things just don't go very well when members take things into their own hands.--Percy

The first real creationist I ever met was a botany professor at NC State university. He certainly does conduct science, contrary to your false smears. The reason I did not list specifics earlier is I thought it would be universally acknowledged that creationists and IDers do science. You mentioned Behe, for example, and he certainly is a working scientist that does science.My own experience with creationists such as the NC State professor is they usually are more knowledgeable about science than evos are. In his case, he was the first one to point out to me that evo claims in embrylogy were false. Evos kept making those claims for another 10 years, not just in textbooks but assumed these false claims in their peer-reviewed papers. It turns out the creationist was right, and the evos wrong, and that's how it's been for most everything I learned from creationists.Some areas I did not accept, but which made some sense, dealt with various dating methods. I have shown exactly how they are possible already numerous times now, but if they were not possible, then it would behoove evolutionists to recognize they are advancing something they cannot verify. But if this is the definition of "evolution", then it is highly misleading to argue for ToE in claiming evolution has been observed. Yea sure, things reproduce, but I could just as well say creationism has been observed to since creationism says things always reproduce after their own kind, and since that's observed and all we have ever observed, if I argued as evos do, I would go about proudly declaring creationism or ID is an observed, 100% proven fact. But percy, when you and others state, falsely I might add, that creationists or other critics of evolution don't do science, are just unreasonable, etc, etc,....as you and more so others frequently do, often committign whole threads to that, you have already thrown out the Forum Guidelines and civility altogether from the get-go.

No, Randman, I am not missing the point. It is you who is missing an important underlying principle that at heart is simple math. Whether you are referring to the number of species with fossil representatives or to the number of fossil representatives of a single species, the principle is the same. There is too much that you simply do not and cannot know, including the sizes of ancient and now extinct populations and the total number of extinct species. Because of this you cannot calculate the fossilization rate. Randman, how many times have you seen a list like this. This one is copied from my Message 133 that you just quoted, but I know I've composed similar lists and arguments containing these items to you before, as have many others:

1. Your conclusion of high fossilization rates is shaky at best and just dead wrong at worst.
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2. The transitional forms may not have had the same range as those fossilized, and so their fossils cannot be found in the same areas.
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3. The transitional forms may have lived in geographic regions where their fossils have not yet been discovered.
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4. The transitional forms may have left fossils in a region that has since subducted, and hence they are lost forever.
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5. The transitional forms may have had habits and habitats that made the likelihood of fossilization very tiny.
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6. The transitional forms may have existed in tiny populations which left so few fossils as to make the likelihood of finding any very small.

Obviously you've seen the items here mentioned many times in many threads. Please don't make me find the old threads and cite them to you, because it would be time consuming for me to do, and it would be a despicable thing to purposefully make someone else waste their time.So tell me, what's really going on here? Why are you digging in your heels on even the most uncontroversial of issues? We've gone over the reasons why transitionals are rare before. You know it. I know it. All the participants from the previous related threads know it. Whether you accept the reasons or not is a separate issue. The fact of the matter is that they've been provided not once but many times and been discussed at length. Why are you denying this? You still have no factual basis for your expectations. The fact of the matter is that fossilization followed by preservation for millions of years followed by discovery is rare. If it were not rare we would be awash in fossils today, but we're not. You again have no factual basis for your expectations. This is just an argument from personal incredulity. You seem to think it rare, almost miraculous in fact, that a species would have a small population and a limited range, but that is the case for most species alive today. Every major region of the world has a number of species with wide ranges and large populations, but the number of these species is dwarfed by the number of those with tiny populations and narrow ranges. For every gray squirrel species with huge populations and wide geographic ranges there are dozens and dozens of rare species with small populations and limited ranges. Your conclusions are based upon false premises. No, we're not asking you to do that. What we're trying to explain is that your conclusions are based upon false impressions of the natural world. You think you "know", for example, that most species are populous and wide-ranging, but you're wrong. Most of what you think you know about nature is probably based upon your hopes that ID is correct, and not upon any real information or study. Heck, I don't know, could it have something to do with the fact that you chopped my quote just before the sentence explaining why the pigeon example was relevant. I actually went on to explain: See, it makes a lot more sense when you read the rest of the paragraph. Now, how about responding to the whole explanation instead of just half? I'll assume I've already provided you sufficient information to figure out your pigeon confusion. As far as whale fossilization, it's consistent with fossilization in general: rare and unpredictable.--Percy

Whats the latest biological research as to the question of origins done by a creationist?Have any of them advanced any substantial theories as to the mechaism of ID?Whats the latest on speciation from the creo. camp? They figure out anything new yet?What about creation genetics, they find any new genes lately to help us cure desease?

Leave it to you to find a silly misinterpretation and run with it. I assumed that you would interpret my comment as clarifying what I said in the previous post, the part that you challenged. Instead you seem to have just tossed the original context of the discussion overboard so you can soapbox about Creationist academics. What I originally said in Message 124 was: You got upset and called this a false charge. Please explain to us, Randman, how this is a false charge?Obviously I'm aware that Creationists like Behe produce legitimate science. I can even point you to years-old posts here where I refer to Behe's published work in peer-reviewed journals. But Behe has never published anything about creationism or ID in any peer-reviewed journal. And with few exceptions, like that of Meyer and the BSOC fiasco, neither has anyone else. Creationism doesn't produce science, and that isn't the goal of creationism anyway. Its goal is the inclusion of Christian views in the science curriculums of public schools. Then please do so again. If we've failed in the past to point out the fallacies in your approach, I'll make sure it doesn't happen again. You remember that old joke that goes, "If you experiment on rats, they'll get cancer?" You remind me of that joke, because it seems like if we explain something to you, you'll claim it's misleading.No one is trying to mislead anyone. No one is trying to trick you. No one is trying to hide anything. No one is trying to pull a bait-and-switch. You have just got to, please, for yours and everyone else's sake, get out of this paranoia binge you're on. We're people just like you. Well, much like you, anyway, perhaps a bit less paranoid and caustic. We definitely are not devil-spawn bent on spreading the lie of evolution in order to seduce Christians away from God and Jesus. I expect a good many of us are somewhat like me in that I never give conservative Christian views a second thought. Indeed, I would probably be completely unaware of them were it not for their very public attempts to force their religious views into science classrooms.The core of evolutionary change occurs during reproduction, because reproduction is not perfect. It is that simple. The accumulation of copying errors and the mixing of alleles while interacting with environmental change produces changes on larger and larger scales over time. No, you'd be wrong, since we've observed speciation in both the laboratory and the wild. You'd further be wrong since creationism also includes, if we're talking about the "reproduce after their own kind (your words)" creationism of organizations like ICR, that a supernatural being created all life over just 6 days a few thousand years ago. I know I've explained this already, but I just want to make absolutely certain that you understand I in no way tried to imply that there are no creationists working on legitimate science. The next time you think someone is saying something false, try to see if you might be making yet another misinterpretation before once again going off half-cocked. Perhaps you are trying to carry on too many simultaneous conversations in too short a time period if you can't even remember the context of a point for an hour. It certainly isn't your correspondents' task to try to anticipate all the imaginative ways you might find to misinterpret something.--PercyThis message has been edited by Percy, 01-04-2006 04:22 PM

Percy, it is hard to be civil when, to me, there is a pattern of misrepresentation directed at me and other critics. For example, you suggest I think it miraculous that a species or subspecies could evolve in a small group. I have clearly never made such a claim. I would think you know that.But the idea that a subspecies evolves, remains small, and this process repeats itself to such a degree that 99% of the time no larger forms ever emerge, is prepostrous. Neither you nor any evos have ever showed that this is likely. In fact, the idea that brand new forms would evolve, but never expand or branch out strains the imagination.Let me explain. Let's look at whale species. There are lots of different species, and what we find is some can mate with one another and so maybe some species are just different forms of a single polytypic species. The idea that for whatever reason, say sexual preferences, that newer forms or newer species can emerge is not at all miraculous.But let's suppose a new whale emerges with selective advantage over other whales. That whale is going to eventually spread out and take the place of the previous whales, and so what we would see is a whale a little bit different emerging, and we do see that with whales. We see significant differences among whales and dolphins over the past 30 million years, assuming evo dating, but they are all whales and dolphins. They are not some pre-form of whales or dolphins, but have all the same basic traits as whales and dolphins today.Now, presumably you guys claim before these whales and dolphins emerged, they had ancestors.Ok, where are they?Think about this. Get past all the generalities and really think. The pattern should indicate that just before these whales and dolphins, there was something pretty similar occupying the same habitat, but whales and dolphins came along as a result of a subgroup evolving into whales and dolphins, and so the older forms disappeared.Where are they?This is a pretty massive habitat. There is no reason for the pre-whale to remain isolated and small. Where is it?Let's look at an archaeocite like Basilosaurus. It has major bigtime differences between it and whales, but it is aquatic, and so let's think for minute about how many little speciation events where superious forms would evolve to make it into a whale. It would take a lot of changes, lots of mutations, etc,...I can buy that some of the "steps" or changes happened with smaller populations and so no fossils, but we'd have to have perhaps hundreds or more species emerge for this process to occur.Are we to think continually, right after one another, they would all occur in small populations leaving no fossils, with none of them branching out and becoming a widespread population?Why wouldn't they first replace the old Basilosaurus, and thus grow into large numbers in that same niche?That's what you guys are ignoring here with your arguments based on generalities. There is an ecological niche that clearly enables wide numbers of aquatic mammalian species, and so we should see the process well-documented as one form evolved a little more superiour to the other and filled the niche, but when we look at this niche, we see an abruptness which does not fit with evolutionary models.That's facts, real data, based on specific analysis. You can shout all you want and swear I am offering nothing based on facts, but that's bogus. You guys are the ones making general and not germane arguments such as fossilization in general, or pidgeons, and continually ignoring this argument and point, which is quite narrowly tailored and specific.You say you want me to follow the rules. Well, you follow them. Quit bringing up creationism, or general concepts, and deal with the narrow specifics of topics and arguments. In this case, explain the lack of transitionals within the same ecological niche between Basilosaurus and whales, and don't parrot some bogus generality such as fossil rarity or demanding, well, how do you explain it.If you want to talk about creationist or ID mechanisms, fine, but this is narrowly defined, and heck, even this is off-topic a little from the OP which deals with Pakicetus.Show you can answer the specifics without resorting to attacking creationism, creationists, IDers, the Bible, George Bush (for nuggins), or appealing to vague general principles.