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Author Topic:   Evolution. We Have The Fossils. We Win.
Faith 
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Message 106 of 2887 (768722)
09-13-2015 1:47 PM
Reply to: Message 105 by Coragyps
09-13-2015 1:46 PM


Why SHOULD they ever be found together?

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Dr Adequate
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Message 107 of 2887 (768723)
09-13-2015 1:50 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by Faith
09-13-2015 1:47 PM


Why SHOULD they ever be found together?
Because water is no good at taxonomy.

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Coragyps
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Posts: 5553
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Message 108 of 2887 (768727)
09-13-2015 2:08 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by Faith
09-13-2015 1:47 PM


Because of gravity. Dead things that were swimming will eventually sink. And you just cannot seriously argue that every clam and every teleost fish ever completely avoided any neighborhood that had trilobites or eurypterids or conodonts.
And those are not even a start on the hundreds of never-coexisting fossils that one can find.

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Admin
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Posts: 12998
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Member Rating: 2.3


Message 109 of 2887 (768735)
09-13-2015 2:58 PM
Reply to: Message 106 by Faith
09-13-2015 1:47 PM


A good goal for participants in this thread is to avoid argument by way of refusing to acknowledge or understand simple and obvious evidence and arguments from the other side. Looking down the list of thread participants, each and every one has participated in discussions of this topic before. Feigning ignorance of familiar and oft-used evidence and arguments from the other side is something I will try to discourage.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 110 of 2887 (768736)
09-13-2015 3:06 PM
Reply to: Message 109 by Admin
09-13-2015 2:58 PM


I have no idea what you're talking about but that's OK, I don't need to be on this thread anyway.

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Admin
Director
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Message 111 of 2887 (768748)
09-13-2015 3:35 PM
Reply to: Message 110 by Faith
09-13-2015 3:06 PM


Admin in Message 109 writes:
A good goal for participants in this thread is to avoid argument by way of refusing to acknowledge or understand simple and obvious evidence and arguments from the other side.
Faith in reply writes:
I have no idea what you're talking about...
There you go again.
...but that's OK, I don't need to be on this thread anyway.
Are you sure? Because your history is to use the threat of leaving as a debate tactic, so if you leave this time I'm going to hold you to it.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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AZPaul3
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Message 112 of 2887 (768912)
09-14-2015 10:17 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Coragyps
09-13-2015 2:08 PM


Because of gravity.
Oh. I thought maybe it was because the different tastes would conflict with a red wine marinara.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 113 of 2887 (769366)
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


From the Homo naledi thread
From New Species of Homo Discovered: Homo nalediHomo[/i] Discovered: Homo naledi, Faith, Message 152:
... How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host? ...
There is information of this sequence of evolution that I have posted before, one resource is
THE THERAPSID--MAMMAL TRANSITIONAL SERIES
by Lenny Flank (c) 1995:
quote:
... The fossil transition from reptile to mammal is one of the most extensive and well-studied of all the transitions, and detailed series of fossils demonstrate how this transition was accomplished. ...
... In reptiles, the lower jaw is made up of a number of different bones, and the jaw joint is formed between the quadrate bone in the skull and the angular bone in the jaw. In mammals, by contrast, the lower jaw is made up of a single bone, the dentary, which articulates with the squamosal bone in the skull to form the jaw joint. Reptiles also have a single bone in the middle ear, the stapes. In mammals, there are three bones in the middle ear, the malleus, incus and stapes (also known as the hammer, anvil and stirrup). ...
Paleontologists point out that the therapsids possessed many of the characteristics of both reptiles and mammals:
"In many respect, the tritylodont skull was very mammalian in its features. Certainly, because of the advanced nature of the zygomatic arches, the secondary palate and the specialized teeth, these animals had feeding habits that were close to those of some mammals . . . . Yet, in spite of these advances, the tritylodonts still retained the reptilian joint between the quadrate bone of the skull and the articular bone of the lower jaw. It is true that these bones were very much reduced, so that the squamosal bone of the skull and the dentary bone of the lower jaw (the two bones involved in the mammalian jaw articulation) were on the point of touching each other." (Colbert and Morales, 1991, p. 127)
... it is apparent that, during the evolutionary transition from reptile to mammal, the jaw joints must have shifted from one bone to another, freeing up the rest of these bones to form the auditory ossicles in the mammalian middle ear. .... As Arthur N. Strahler puts it, "A transitional form must have had two joints in operation simultaneously (as in the modern rattlesnake), and this phase was followed by a fusion of the lower joint." (Strahler 1987, p. 414) ...
... it can be clearly seen in a remarkable series of fossils from the Triassic therapsids. The earliest therapsids show the typical reptilian type of jaw joint, with the articular bone in the jaw firmly attached to the quadrate bone in the skull. In later fossils from the same group, however, the quadrate-articular bones have become smaller, and the dentary and squamosal bones have become larger and moved closer together. This trend reaches its apex in a group of therapsids known as cynodonts, of which the genus Probainognathus is a representative. Probainognathus possessed characteristics of both reptile and mammal, and this transitional aspect was shown most clearly by the fact that it had TWO jaw joints--one reptilian, one mammalian:
"Probainognathus, a small cynodont reptile from the Triassic sediments of Argentina, shows characters in the skull and jaws far advanced toward the mammalian condition. Thus it had teeth differentiated into incisors, a canine and postcanines, a double occipital condyle and a well-developed secondary palate, all features typical of the mammals, but most significantly the articulation between the skull and the lower jaw was on the very threshhold between the reptilian and mammalian condition. The two bones forming the articulation between skull and mandible in the reptiles, the quadrate and articular respectively, were still present but were very small, and loosely joined to the bones that constituted the mammalian joint . . . Therefore in Probainognathus there was a double articulation between skull and jaw, and of particular interest, the quadrate bone, so small and so loosely joined to the squamosal, was intimately articulated with the stapes bone of the middle ear. It quite obviously was well on its way towards being the incus bone of the three-bone complex that characterizes the mammalian middle ear." (Colbert and Morales, 1991, pp. 228-229)
Thus, the fossil record demonstrates, during the transition from therapsid reptile to mammal, various bones in the skull slowly migrated together to form a second functional jaw joint, and the now-superfluous original jaw bones were reduced in size until they formed the three bones in the mammalian middle ear. The reptilian quadrate bone became the mammalian incus, while the articular bone became the malleus. The entire process had taken nearly the whole length of the Triassic period to complete, a time span of approximately 40 million years. ...
There are several other fossils that are in this lineage of transition detailed in the article. Please read the article to get the full transition description.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 114 of 2887 (769371)
09-20-2015 9:07 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by RAZD
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


Re: From the Homo naledi thread
Need to move dwise post here.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 115 of 2887 (769373)
09-20-2015 9:10 AM
Reply to: Message 113 by RAZD
09-20-2015 7:23 AM


Moved Post: There's Just Something Funny about the Transitionals Idea
My post 152 from the Homo Naledi thread:
Yes I was going to leave the thread but then dwise posted this story of a creationist who converted to an evolutionist on the basis of a specific experience with a scientific journal, and I found myself pondering it and objecting to it, and I have questions I just HAVE to raise about it.
It's convincing enough as presented:
I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligent...
The part I put in small type, about the medical students who might operate on him is just irrelevant emotional puff. Knowledge of human anatomy they certainly need, but there's no way reptile-mammal evolution could help them in the slightest to operate on a human being.
Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic. Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence. How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls? How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host?
Malcolm agreed in Message 138* that the skull sequence IS artificial in the sense that "many" of the types are not considered to be in the genetic line suggested by the linear arrangement of the skulls, but thought to be separate lines of development. That alone should raise an eyebrow because the presentation obviously implies a direct line of genetic descent from one skull type to the next. Without those particular types in the genetic line, how then do you get from chimp to human skull or type to type within the human line? You've got no ladder without those. Isn't there some degree of self-delusion going on here?
First, reality produces variations, not gradatons. Microevolution creates variations, not smooth gradations. I say more about this in my footnote below. There is no gradation from one trilobite type to another in the fossil record, for instance, there are only populations of different types that happen to have been buried at different levels of the strata. So why should there be gradations between skulls or ear bones rather than just many different variations? There is an enormous variety within some species of living plants for instance, each with its own qualities and characteristics, but no clear gradation. The Pod Mrcaru lizards really should have been followed up with further experiments. Other groups of pairs from the original population should also have been isolated for thirty years. Then groups of pairs from those new populations again isolated. My guess is you'd get lots of variations on lizards, assuming there was sufficient genetic diversity in the original population for that to occur. I'd guess that the chance f a similar large-headed type evolving from another random set is very low, because any particular phenotype that develops from a small isolated population is the result of the pecular gene frequencies of that small population, and those are not going to be identical from population to population. You should end up with a whole bunch of different types of lizards all from that original population.
THAT is genetic reality. Linear gradation in genetic descent doesn't happen in nature, so why should it be expected in the fossil record?
Yes, it sure LOOKS like it happened according to those skulls and that journal full of supposed transitional types of ear bones. I don't know the explanation but I have to doubt it all.
Second, microevolution does not need the millions of years supposedly objectively dated between fossil skulls and reptile-to-mammal ear bones. As the Pod Mrcaru example shows, thirty years is plenty when you have an isolated small population, and nature should create such isolated populations frequently enough to be the explanation for the different breeds of fossils too.
Dates. Sure seems open-and-shut when you've got each skull dated, each example of reptilian or mammalian ear bones dated, and they all so nicely follow one from another just as evolution says they should. It's the dating of the specimens that seals the deal, right, so unless one wants to accuse all researchers in the area of outright fraud the dates have to be accepted don't they? How can one answer that?
First, I'm not accusing anyone of fraud, but there is certainly something odd about how this all fits together that ought not to be taken at face value.
Microevolution does NOT take millions of years, as I say above. The few thousand years since the Flood is plenty of time for the variation of all those saved on the ark to have developed into the races and varieties and breeds we see today, especially given that they all had to have spread out to populate the earth from one single location, which would have involved series after series of populations splitting off from other populations and subsequently developing its own set of gene/allele frequencies.
On that same thread with the Pod Mrcaru lizards Percy posted information about breeds of Jutland cattle:
Our results further demonstrate the rapid diversification of the Jutland breed herds due to limited gene flow and genetic drift.
The only point I'm making is that rapid diversification is not rare and it's an example not only of rapid microevolution but of the VARIETY within species that is the reality those fossil arrangements of skulls and ear bones defy.
Also, if millions of years even occurred every living thing would long since have become extinct because evolution DOES "use up" genetic diversity and mutation isn't orderly enough or rapid enough to replace that diversity, especially if rapid microevolution due to changed gene frequencies with population isolation is as common as I think it is. You run out of genetic diversity and that is the end of evolution for any particular line of genetic microevolution. There is no evolution from one species to another, it is all within species.
=================
*
Malcolm writes:
Well for the most part it is an artificial arrangement, since our current understanding of human evolution indicates that many of the species which these skulls represent branched off from our line of descent from a common ancestor we shared with Chimps.
This I've addressed above, but Malcolm goes on:
The reasoning we have for this common ancestor is the genetic evidence that Humans and Chimps are related, from simplistic DNA hybridisation to full genome sequencing, endogenous retroviruses, pseudogenes etc. Now to some, including yourself, a direct comparison between Humans and Chimps would suggest too many differences for the two species to be related, or to put it another way, for them to be related would require some ‘macroevolutionary’ change.
No, I don't think this quite reflects my thinking, right now I'm absorbed with questions about the skulls which he goes on to:
The arrangement of hominin skulls illustrates the much smaller ‘microevolutionary’ changes that have occurred between populations leading up towards our own population. You did agree with this by stating that the skulls represented normal human variation, the only exception being skull A, the modern Chimp. However, when you look at skull B it has a lot more in common with skull A then it does with skull N.
True, and as I did say somewhere I'm not sure if B and C are human or not. But I have problems with the arrangement of those that are most clearly human anyway. I did say they represent normal human variations, but in saying that I meant that in living reality you wouldn't find them in the just-so arrangement that implies line of descent from one to another that Dr. A's chart presents. What you would find in reality is differences between individuals but probably most clearly differences between racial groups, at least in general. One group would generally have broad faces for instance, another long faces, one prominent large teeth, another small crooked teeth, one would have short noses, another long noses, one high set prominent cheekbones, another hardly any clear cheekbones at all. GENETIC REALITY SHOWS VARIATION, IT DOES NOT SHOW LINEAR DESCENT FROM ONE TYPE TO ANOTHER. Even in isolated populations where genetic inbreeding has developed a distinctive racial appearance what you find is variation between individuals, not some gradation from individual to another or parent to child to child etc. Since this is the case with living things, why should we expect such neat linearity in the fossils that are found all over the planet that are unlikely to have any close genetic relation between them? AGAIN, WHERE ARE THE DEVIANTS IN YOUR JUST-SO SEQUENCE?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 116 of 2887 (769374)
09-20-2015 9:17 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:10 AM


RAZD's post 155 from other thread
The part I put in small type, about the medical students who might operate on him is just irrelevant emotional puff. Knowledge of human anatomy they certainly need, but there's no way reptile-mammal evolution could help them in the slightest to operate on a human being.
The point, Faith, was that IF the information in the journals was all made up arbitrary evolutionist nonsense, then those students were studying arbitrary evolutionist nonsense.
Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic. Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence. How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls?
No Faith, evolution does not make errors -- it is not a person.
The reason we find such a neat pattern is because it is the history of evolution as it occurred, a little change here, a little change there, and over time creating the path from early hominid to modern man.
This path has many side branches, cousins, like the Neanderthals.
But the main point is that IF you have an actual evolutionary lineage, THEN there will be intermediate stages from one point to another in the fossil record. Finding intermediates confirms this.
Homo naledi is the latest find in a field with increasing numbers of intermediates between a common ancestor with Chimpanzees and modern humans. It fits neatly into the sequence shown.
The similarities between (A) and (B,C) point to that common ancestor.
Here is one image of possible lineage from 1998 with skull images:
Fossil Skulls!
quote:
Below are 12 fossil skulls that represent more than 3.5 million years of human evolution. Click on any of them to find out more. This exhibit is enhanced with the Shockwave plug-in, which you can download for free from Macromedia.
American Museum of Natural History
Note that this is interactive on the referenced page so that you can pick a skull and get further information on it.
Another version of such a tree can be seen at
The human story: We’re still here!
quote:
In Fossils: The Key to the Past (2009), British palaeontologist Richard Fortey points out, Not many years ago, there were very few named species of Homo — now there are a whole clutch of them. The original idea of ‘links in a chain’ leading to modern humankind has been replaced by a view recognising a number of branches that did not give rise to any survivors, and a rather special lineage that led to the whole panoply of the human race in all its diversity of colour, language and creed: that is to say, Homo sapiens.

You can check these against the Talk Origins skulls picture that DrA posted:
29 Evidences for Macroevolution: Part 1
You can also note that the new find, Homo naledi fits into these diagrams, as does a previous find by Lee Berger of Australopithicus sediba
quote:
Australopithecus sediba
The fossil skeletons of Au. sediba from Malapa cave are so complete that scientists can see what entire skeletons looked like near the time when Homo evolved. Details of the teeth, the length of the arms and legs, and the narrow upper chest resemble earlier Australopithecus, while other tooth traits and the broad lower chest resemble humans. These links indicate that Au. sediba may reveal information about the origins and ancestor of the genus Homo. Functional changes in the pelvis of Au. sediba point to the evolution of upright walking, while other parts of the skeleton retain features found in other australopithecines. ...
MH1
quote:
MH1 is a juvenile australopithecine, about 12-13 years old. It was the first specimen of Au. sediba found at Malapa Cave. Both cranial and postcranial remains have been recovered from this individual. The mixture of primitive and derived traits may help link the genus Australopithecus with the genus Homo.

Arranged by time the evolutionary trends appear.
Enjoy
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(4)
Message 117 of 2887 (769375)
09-20-2015 10:19 AM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:10 AM


Re: There's Just Something Funny about the Transitionals Idea
... Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation? ...
... AGAIN, WHERE ARE THE DEVIANTS IN YOUR JUST-SO SEQUENCE?
Again, evolution does not have a purpose or a goal, so there can be no errors, no deviations from some prescribed path.
Instead what we have is the natural history of the paths taken, with incremental changes from generation to generation.
Sometimes evolution ends in extinction and I suppose those could be considered your "deviants" ... but they aren't mistakes, just paths that did not pan out.
The purpose of showing a path of evolution that goes from point A to point B is to show those fossils that fit along that path, it is not to show all the dead end side paths or the paths that lead to other modern critters.
In other words, you are complaining about things that aren't shown not about things that don't exist. There are plenty of therapsidae that did not take the path to mammaldom, but they are not discussed in relationship to the fossils that do lie on that path.
Malcolm agreed in Message 138* that the skull sequence IS artificial in the sense that "many" of the types are not considered to be in the genetic line suggested by the linear arrangement of the skulls, but thought to be separate lines of development. That alone should raise an eyebrow because the presentation obviously implies a direct line of genetic descent from one skull type to the next. Without those particular types in the genetic line, how then do you get from chimp to human skull or type to type within the human line? You've got no ladder without those. Isn't there some degree of self-delusion going on here?
(* I fixed your link to point to Malcolm's post using mid=769316 instead of msg=138)
No, it is rather being open-minded: instead of claiming that each fossil represents an individual on the specific path to Homo sapiens descent, that they could be cousins, as Neanders are considered cousins. The fossil bones bedded in the spacial temporal matrix tell the story.
Curiously you are complaining here about not having that specific path where above you were complaining about not seeing the "deviants" from the path. This photo basically shows the whole fossil assemblage known at the time the photo was compiled (2000) with their relative ages. There have been several additions since then.
First, reality produces variations, not gradatons. Microevolution creates variations, not smooth gradations. I say more about this in my footnote below. There is no gradation from one trilobite type to another in the fossil record, for instance, there are only populations of different types that happen to have been buried at different levels of the strata. So why should there be gradations between skulls or ear bones rather than just many different variations?
Curiously you appear to be confusing (conflating) the variations that exist within a breeding population with the long term trends that occur over generations. You also appear to be expecting to see something that is not predicted by evolution: populations buried in different geological (temporal/spacial matrix) strata would be expected to be different. BUT they would also be expected to have some shared characteristics, and those characteristics would be expected to show a continued trend of derived traits built on previous derived traits. This is what evolution predicts, and this is what we see every time we look at a time-line of fossils. We see it with trilobites, we see it with therapsids, we see it with Pelycodus, and we see it with hominids.
Again, all we need to do is arrange the fossils by spacial and temporal relationships and the evolutionary trends appear.
Second, microevolution does not need the millions of years supposedly objectively dated between fossil skulls and reptile-to-mammal ear bones. As the Pod Mrcaru example shows, thirty years is plenty when you have an isolated small population, and nature should create such isolated populations frequently enough to be the explanation for the different breeds of fossils too.
Agreed it can happen fast, but that does not mean that all evolution has occurred rapidly. The problem you have is not with the evolution of the different populations represented by the fossils, but with their time and location sequencing: why does every new species occurs near the location of a recent ancestral species?
Dates. Sure seems open-and-shut when you've got each skull dated, each example of reptilian or mammalian ear bones dated, and they all so nicely follow one from another just as evolution says they should. It's the dating of the specimens that seals the deal, right, so unless one wants to accuse all researchers in the area of outright fraud the dates have to be accepted don't they? How can one answer that?
One either accepts what the evidence shows, or they show how those dates are erroneous. That is how science is done. This is the challenge of Age Correlations and An Old Earth, Version 2 No 1: how do you explain the correlations and the consilience of the dating systems if they are "prone to error" as many creationists claim.
Here's a question for you Faith: how come we can recover DNA from skeletons that are older than written history, from fossils that date to 30,000 years ago, but cannot recover DNA from fossils that date to over 100 million years ... if the earth is really young?
Why do each of the radioactive dating techniques all have a specific limit to how far back they can be used based solely on their half-life, why is there a different horizon for each method, ... if the earth is young?
Enough for now.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : 63?

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:10 AM Faith has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 118 of 2887 (769379)
09-20-2015 12:55 PM
Reply to: Message 114 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:07 AM


Re: From the Homo naledi thread
Here is my Message 151 that Faith needed to repost here. That last sentence had gotten cut off, so I completed it, which is the only change I've made to this post:
quote:
I started studying "creation science" circa 1981/1982. In the late 1980's on CompuServe, I was actively discussing and contributing.
Circa 1990, there was that most rare of rarities: an honest creationist. Merle Hertzler was a dedicated creationist, but he was an honest one. Most creationists have been converted, so they are aware of the inherent problems of their position. IOW, most creationists know full well where their weaknesses lie and to keep well away from them.
Instead, Merle would fearlessly research all leads. Which lead to this (http://www.oocities.org/questioningpage/Evolve2.html):
quote:
An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould's Ten Little Piggies . I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children's book, I should be able to find that book. (I thought I was so funny). I borrowed the book, and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals' ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, "Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38." That's it. That's all it said. But it was soon to have a huge impact on me. You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to the University of Pennsylvania library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet, and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn't believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously, but, before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.
On my next trip to the university, I found my way to the biomedical library and located the journal archives. I retrieved the specified journal, and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles. I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, he could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together. I didn't know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of "facts" actually guesses? I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies? Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligently sorting out the evolutionist lies while learning medical knowledge? How could so much error have entered this room? It made no sense.
Within a year, Merle Hertzler was a dedicated opponent of "creation science." Strictly from the evidence.
Edited by dwise1, : added msg ID and quote tags

This message is a reply to:
 Message 114 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:07 AM Faith has not replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 119 of 2887 (769381)
09-20-2015 1:33 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:17 AM


Re: RAZD's post 155 from other thread
Thanks Faith, you saved me some effort; you can hide your post by using [hide](hidden text)[/hide]
Arranged by time the evolutionary trends appear.
I've been looking for better, more complete graphics, but it seems there are not that many out there that have the newest information.
So far the best collection I have seen is at wikipedia:
quote:
Human Evolution
Evidence
Evidence from molecular biology
Family tree showing the extant hominoids: humans (genus Homo), chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan), gorillas (genus Gorilla), orangutans (genus Pongo), and gibbons (four genera of the family Hylobatidae: Hylobates, Hoolock, Nomascus, and Symphalangus). All except gibbons are hominids.
Evidence from the fossil record
There is little fossil evidence for the divergence of the gorilla, chimpanzee and hominin lineages.[89] The earliest fossils that have been proposed as members of the hominin lineage are Sahelanthropus tchadensis dating from 7 million years ago, Orrorin tugenensis dating from 5.7 million years ago, and Ardipithecus kadabba dating to 5.6 million years ago. Each of these have been argued to be a bipedal ancestor of later hominins but, in each case, the claims have been contested. It is also possible that one or more of these species are ancestors of another branch of African apes, or that they represent a shared ancestor between hominins and other apes.
Homo sapiens is the only extant species of its genus, Homo. While some (extinct) Homo species might have been ancestors of Homo sapiens, many, perhaps most, were likely "cousins," having speciated away from the ancestral hominin line.[103][104] There is yet no consensus as to which of these groups should be considered a separate species and which should be a subspecies; this may be due to the dearth of fossils or to the slight differences used to classify species in the Homo genus.[104]
One current view of the temporal and geographical distribution of genus Homo populations.[102] Other interpretations differ mainly in the taxonomy and geographical distribution of hominin species.
H. sapiens
Comparative table of Homo species
I am not going to reproduce that table, just follow the last link and you can see the documentation of location and date for the different Homo species (ie more than the graphic above).
And then they show this:
Hominin species distributed through time
Enjoy

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:17 AM Faith has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


(4)
Message 120 of 2887 (769382)
09-20-2015 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 115 by Faith
09-20-2015 9:10 AM


Re: Moved Post: There's Just Something Funny about the Transitionals Idea
Anyway, I find myself having the same sorts of questions I had about Dr. A's skulls. The supposed evolutionary sequence is just too pat, too "just so" to be realistic.
You're complaining that the evidence is too good?
Where are the "errors," or at least the deviations from the too-too perfect path from the reptilian to the mammalian adaptation?
Well, I could show you lots of fossils of things that don't have any surviving descendants. Look, here's one.
It's called a Spinosaurus, it's a complete dead end. No mammals, no birds, and indeed nothing at all now living is descended from it. Happy now?
Doesn't evolution ever make mistakes? But of course you'll say it does, all the time, and yet this sort of perfect sequence is what you give for evidence.
That, Faith, is because if I want to demonstrate a reptile-to-mammal transition or ape-to-human transition, I'm not going to throw in the Spinosaurus, which is not part of that transition and so does not demonstrate it.
How did we get this neat progression of skulls from small cranial capacity to large human cranial capacity with such plausible morphological gradations from one to another of the skulls?
Because humans evolved from apes.
How did we get this neat progression of types of middle ear bones as described by Mr. Hertzler, in what sounds like a similarly smooth gradation from one type to another, each perfectly fitted to its reptilian or reptilian-mammalian or mammalian host?
Because mammals evolved from reptiles.
Dates. Sure seems open-and-shut when you've got each skull dated, each example of reptilian or mammalian ear bones dated, and they all so nicely follow one from another just as evolution says they should. It's the dating of the specimens that seals the deal, right, so unless one wants to accuse all researchers in the area of outright fraud the dates have to be accepted don't they? How can one answer that?
First, I'm not accusing anyone of fraud, but there is certainly something odd about how this all fits together that ought not to be taken at face value.
Again, you're complaining that the evidence is too good. You could say that of pretty much anything that's true. "You tell me trees exist, and then you claim to 'prove' it by showing me thousands of trees. Doesn't it strike you as suspicious that there's so many of them? That I can not just see them, but actually touch them? Doesn't it all seem a bit too convenient?"
So, what should it look like if there were trees? And what would it look like if evolutionists were right? Wouldn't there be intermediate forms --- such as we find? Wouldn't the dates roughly show the more basal forms to be earlier --- like they do?
---
Your crap about genetics has been exposed and ridiculed on other threads. If you want to do this again, bump one of those threads, don't do it here.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 115 by Faith, posted 09-20-2015 9:10 AM Faith has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 121 by arachnophilia, posted 09-20-2015 3:42 PM Dr Adequate has replied

  
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