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Author Topic:   Transitional Forms
gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 2 of 35 (40)
01-08-2001 9:46 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Everykneeshallbow:
If science deals with emperical evidence, then why do scientists put FAITH in transitional forms when no such forms exist whether alive or in fossil form? These gaps in the evolutionary process have to be assumed which is not scientific.

The reason for gaps is well known: fossilization is an anomaly, not the norm. Evolution explains the nested hierarchy and speciation, which is sufficient.
Also, we have a strange defintion of 'scientific'. It is probable (based upon the evidence that is available) that evolution has occured, and we have reason to assume that not all transitionals will ever be available for study.
Basically you are saying that because we do not know every detail we know nothing. I hope this brief summary helps you see the error in this logic.
Finally, something is not based upon faith if there is physical evidence that a process has occured. We have the fossil hierarchy, morphology, transitionals, observed speciation events, biogeography, etc. All in all, not a bad body of evidence, but am open to debate on any or all of the above. Admittedly, I have not treated them in detail.

gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 4 of 35 (42)
01-09-2001 11:31 AM


quote:
Originally posted by Thmsberry:
Example: I find a fossil of a bird like creature before two legged dinosaurs supposedly evolve. However, birds who also walk on two legs, according to evolution, evolved from two legged dinosaurs. This should be a contradiction to the theory. But I can always rest my faith in the lack of evidence.
This is a straw-man argument.
For one, evolution does not rest on the proposed dinosaur-bird link, and the subject is even being debated amongst paleontologists.
The problem is that you think finding a two-legged bird before two-legged dinosaurs would destroy evolution. It wouldn't because evolution does not rest upon it, it would destroy the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs. Then we would be looking for reptile-bird transitionals.
However, evolution combined with dino-bird hypothesis predicts that two-legged dinosaurs should precede birds.
However, evolution indefinately predicts that fish preceded amphibians and amniotes. If you were to find a higher animal back in the Cambrian, evolution would be falsified because there is no way that a hypothesis could be altered to accomodate the observation, as it could in the dino-bird example you gave.
Why don't we avoid strawmen from now on?
[This message has been edited by gene90 (edited 01-09-2001).]

gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 9 of 35 (48)
01-09-2001 6:18 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Everykneeshallbow:
You seem to be saying that evolution has occurred therefore these transitional forms must exist, and that there is a hierarchy in the evolution process as evidenced by transitional forms' existence. A dizzying intellect for sure.

That isn't what I have said. The fossil hierarchy stands by itself without transitionals. (The hierarchy is the sequence in which species appear.) But transitionals are also evidence of evolution. I find it strange that large mammal-like reptiles would have ever roamed the Earth otherwise. It certainly doesn't fit Creationism because those creatures, like most of the organisms that ever lived, are extinct.

gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 21 of 35 (64)
01-11-2001 1:39 PM


quote:
Originally posted by Thmsberry:

If an amazing amount of higher forms are present, you can always make the claim that due to early geological condition on the planet and the probablity of fossilization in the first place, that the predecessors for these higher forms simply did not fossilize, but they did exists.

If they found human fossils in the Cambrian that would falsify evolution because organisms do not appear without ancestors. Small gaps are to be expected, but there must be a starting point.
Your argument is invalid because you are not basing it upon the Theory of Evolution, you are basing it upon what you believe scientists would do.

gene90
Member (Idle past 3823 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 25 of 35 (69)
01-11-2001 8:49 PM


[QUOTE] Keep in mind these are origin narratives.[QUOTE] No, it is only a scientific theory. You seem to want to call it something it isn't, and give it attributions it lacks.
quote:
This is how it will go. At some point in the future, Human beings figure out how to artificial produce worm wholes. They use them to travel in time. One period of interest was the Cambrian explosion for the possible descent with modification implications (I hope we will know enough by this time that people will not still be claiming that this theory alone explains the origin of all life on this planet). A few of the time travelling scientist got killed and fossilized during their exploration. Thus, this is why we have human fossils and no prehuman forms.
I think you're just ever so slightly short of a full orbit with this one.
Here, I can toss out slimy scifi and fundamentally useless "arguments" just as easily.
The wormhole device creates gravity waves that travel backward through time until they hit the edge of the universe (a giant piece of glass the Terrarium Keepers use to watch us through) where they are redshifted gravity field around the glass into microwaves, forming the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.
And Cygnus X-1 is an alien toilet. More on that later...if you throw out any more ridiculous "scenarios".
The first is the human fossil are false or the result of an accident in the lab.
These conclusions can both be ruled out if the results are repeatable. Remember, repeatability is important in science.
Scientist can pull these origin stories out of thin air.
No they can't, science requires repeatability, fulfilled predictions, and evidence. If those human skeletons in the Pre-Cambrian looked like Neanderthals I don't think they are likely to be from the future. If they were from the future, they should have technology with them. Your ridiculous scifi argument makes predictions that would easily confirm or falsify it.
All these stories sound quite correct.
I doubt anyone else agrees.
You can always shape the story to account for contradictory or a lack of evidence
That's not science. If you haven't noticed, you are trying so hard to argue against descent that you are actually accusing science of a conspiracy, either occuring now, or whenever falsifications occur.
This is the exact same tactic used by scholarly researchers involved in alien abduction studies, cattle mutilation, the hollow Earth, the Apollo-was-a-hoax theorists, and so on. Your logic that science will hide whatever it wants is unfalisifiable. Unlike common descent.

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