Summations Only

I'm too tired to check right now but I remember the therapsid bones as shifting a lot from the reptilian position. The written description sounds like a drastic shift.

Not necessarily. Imagination can come up with a lot of "coulds" that don't turn out to be possible in reality. And the many changes required for evolution to be true between different species defy any known genetic processes that I'm aware of, especially if you're relying on mutation accidents. So they may LOOK "possible" and actually be GENETICALLY impossible. That's pretty funny if the fossil record is a lot of separate unrelated species. You'd just be imposing the theory on them, not getting evidence from them.

Please don't presume to "explain" things to me that I have my own argument about. Thanks.

If you're writing in the EvC reply box it saves what you've written even if you hit the wrong button or EvC itself suffers a glitch. I've been able to back up six or seven steps on some occasions to find my post still in the box.Otherwise, just keep saving the post as you write it.

'And this is exactly the sort of scenario I keep talking about. Yes you can get some dramatic new phenotypes this way, and they will be highly divergent from each other. But always always always at the cost of diminishing genetic diversity in relation to the parent population, within each separate daughter population. It may take more population splits and lots more generations before it reaches anything like a point where further evolution is impossible, but if it should continue through those many population splits, each time producing new phenotypes, it will eventually reach that point.

Yes, of course, as I've said myself many times. "Microevolution" happens all the time WITHIN SPECIES. It is only assumption based on the ToE that keeps on insisting it transcends the species. What we SEE is only microevolution within the genome of a given species, we do not see evolution beyond those limits. Yes, even the new breed which is wrongly called a "new species" may not be fully genetically depleted. It may still have enough diversity for some further change. It only ends for those particular lines of microevolution that have formed from small numbers of individuals, which can occur as the result of enough population splits, small numbers of individuals splitting from the parent and becoming isolated from it, and then the same thing happening from this daughter population after it's become established. It's not the only way evolution occurs but it illustrates the processes I want to highlight. It's basically a ring species I'm talking about, a series of populations forming from a relatively small number of individuals moving away from the parent population and forming a daughter population. There are many different things that can happen to populations so there are many different ways they evolve, but they all roughly follow this pattern. Some populations remain stable for probably hundreds of generations, with some genetic drift however. What I'm describing doesn't HAVE to happen to any given population, but my point is that it represents the evolutionary processes most clearly and shows that their ultimate direction is to genetic depletion as the natural result of the formation of new phenotypes.Of course as the creatures dispersed from the ark this pattern would have been the most likely, small numbers of individuals breaking off from an established population, becoming geographically isolated at some distance as they found a niche, developing new phenotypes, becoming a new breed, and the same process happening from that base again until the creature was as dispersed as it was going to get. Meanwhile the earlier populations would also have been sending out scouts as it were and developing completely separate populations of new breeds. In those early days there would have been enough genetic diversity to allow for dozens, maybe even hundreds of new breeds. It's only in our time that a continuation of these processes can lead to genetic depletion in some evolving lines.I don't know what you mean by "why should it end today?" Where did I say any such thing? See above for what I hope is a clearer description of my view. And your point is?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Actually it's really just an accurate description of the bare facts without the ToE interpretations that turn them into a ladder of evolution. The observed facts include nothing that could show genetic relatedness, they show only a collection of different creatures that may or may not be related. The assumption of relatedness is imposed on the facts, not a fact in itself. And the only reason it's assumed is that it looks like there is a series there. But if it's genetically impossible to get from one species to another, for many reasons including the kinds of changes the fossil record itself appears to require, then all you've done is make up something that is false and imposed it on the facts. At best it remains remains a theory in need of real evidence. No. But of course I don't see it as pathetic. Nevertheless maybe you have something new to say?Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I don't dispute any of the facts. What I'm disputing is the evolutionist interpretation that this sequence of living things proves evolution, the genetic descent of the higher from the lower. I've acknowledged that the order is very seductive of that sort of interpretation, but nevertheless there never has been any actual evidence of genetic descent, and now I've been arguing that in fact the changes required to get from the reptile bones to the mammal bones are genetically impossible.This I suppose is one of my arguments that "lacks substance" according to Percy but it's a lack in response to a lack then, an argument against a substanceless argument, since I believe I've shown that the evidence proposed -- principally the dog breeds -- doesn't account for the requirement.The point I've been making is that genetics doesn't move things around structurally; it doesn't produce gradations from one individual to another or one population to another, it doesn't produce graded shades of brown eyes, it produces either brown or blue or some other color eyes. There are gradations in dog breeds but they are produced by the selection pressure on the desired traits and the gradations are mostly in size and overall look of the thing, not in small points that change in relation to each other.I think I've made a good observation here: genetics doesn't work the way it would have to work to produce the gradual changes between fossils that is always assumed to be how evolution works. It doesn't produce gradual changes over generations, it produces variations.This is the first time I've made this argument. This fossil example led me to it. Since it's the first time it's going to have some bugs in it I'll have to work out but so far it just keeps getting stronger as I think it through. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

The dog breeds change AS A WHOLE, all parts at once, all the bones changing to conform to the overall design of the breed while still articulating according to the Basic Dog Template as it were.The ear bones would have to change too many things. The Eustachian tube is completely redesigned; the stapes would have to be complete reshaped and lose its root that connects to the quadrate; I'm not quite sure what's going on with that malleus /articular area but it is completely repositioned in relation to the stapes-quadrate and proportionally much larger in relation to them. I don't see how anyone can say the changes dog breeds go through compares at all. Besides which, the dog breeds DO change as a whole, the size and shape of bones are proportional to the overall design. These ear differences are a selected area. It WOULD be remarkable if all the parts remained in "constant contact" through the imagined pathway but in fact it couldn't happen. All we are seeing in that diagram is two entirely different ways the ear was designed for each particular creature, and ears aren't going to work unless those parts are in contact. You don't see parts losing elements (stapes root), shrinking or expanding in relation to other parts except to a small extent to accommodate to the changing overall structure, or becoming completely different as the stapes did.

Yes they need time to work through the new population. The new allele frequencies would start out by producing a variety of new traits in individuals scattered throughout the population and then over the generations develop a more general new look to the whole population as the traits get recombined generation after generation. Which I've many many times already discussed.RAZD you don't understand my argument at all. I've covered every objection you are making a million times over and since you don't want this topic to continue on this thread let's drop it. But first I have to answer this: Here I'm talking about reduced genetic diversity, not the complete depletion that would lead to loss of interbreeding. You don't understand one thing about my argument and yet supposedly you've followed it through how many threads by now?I'd really rather not have to go back through that argument in all its details on this thread.Yes the thread is about fossils but the thing is you can't talk about the fossils EVOLVING unless you can prove that it's genetically possible. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I suspect that you think I'm wrong about something I didn't say, but let me expand a bit. When a breed is being developed, a particular trait or set of traits may be selected but what you get is the overall change I'm talking about: you don't get a bulldog head and legs with a greyhound torso, or a Chihuahua head on a Great Dane body, even if none of those body parts are selected. What you get is an overall proportional structure that goes with the selected traits. It appears that DNA does its thing within the general template or design of the species and not just by piecemeal changes of particular traits. This is perhaps more mysterious and even divine than anything else about how DNA operates.But you are clearly not in a mood to pursue this topic and there's way too much discord between our views to spend more time on it right now. I don't want to say I'm leaving the thread because as usual I don't know if I will, but I think I should because everything I need to say I've said and I'll just get worn out trying to answer a million objections. We'll see how it goes.

Not only does genetics not work incrementally, nor make such just-so changes as those needed to get from the reptilian to the mammalian ear bones --there is no need to change the reptilian ear, it works just fine. Nature has no reason to make a mammalian ear out of it -- that is, there is no selection pressure involved. No need to make a mammal out of a reptile at all. So why would there be any changes in that direction?ABE: Oh and another thing I meant to include: the basic body structure of an animal is apparently hard-wired into the genome, and so are necessary features like ear design for pete's sake. The ear structure is just not going to change and neither is the basic reptile body structure. Genetics varies things like size and shape, whilekeeping the basic body design, fur, or scales in the case of reptiles? color etc. You always get a reptile. You always get a bear, though a small black one or a huge brown one. You always get a dog or a cat. The basic template is in the genome. Huge variations yes but it's always a dog a cat a reptile a bear or whatnot.Random variation is what genetics actually does when there is no selection pressure. It's the most common way varieties and races form in nature. New finch beaks. No reason for it, no selection pressure, it's just a variation possible in the genome and when that genetic option becomes more frequent in a population that is reproductively isolated, the finch gets a new beak. Then it chooses a different food that the new beak can handle.But then you've got those millions of years in there to make this reptile mammal thing happen. You'd only need those millions of years if you kept getting mistakes, unfunctioning ears. Lotta deaf reptile babies then. I guess they just died out or why didn't they adapt to their deafness? It would of course take time to come up with variations that maintain the necessary relation between the bones for a functioning ear. But there's no reason for that to happen even in a billion years. This isn't anything like how breeds form, this IS macroevolution and it's impossible.The problem I'm trying to highlight here is that discussions of fossil evolution completely ignore what genetics actually does. Evo theory just goes on and on about how such and such changes occurred over those millions of years without knowing if it is even possible, and in reality it's just not. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes and I'm sure this is generally true in most sciences. But two things come to mind to explain why this might not happen with evolutionary theory.The first is that it IS just a theory, it really has no hard evidence, it is built out of the very sorts of conjectures I've been talking about here, IMAGINED sequences of how evolution between two creatures COULD HAVE HAPPENED. There is no hard evidence, that imagined sequence is all there is, and maybe the attempt at an analogy such as with dog breeds, that doesn't work at all, but it gets taken for fact because the fossil sequence itself is taken for fact as proving evolution. The ToE is held together with mental glue. I'm not intending to be insulting, merely descriptive. For some reason it happens that if one can imagine a plausible sequence from a reptile ear to a mammalian ear that is accepted is how it must have happened. So of course I'm raising the question about whether it is even genetically possible, and the more I think about it the less genetically possible it appears to be.Second, any scientist who does begin to raise questions about the theory is on very shaky ground and knows it. The last thing anyone would desire in that position is being suspected of thinking like a creationist. And there is little in the way of hard evidence to be found on either side of this dispute; you're not going to risk your professional standing on even the very best reasoned argument.I personally think that as genome studies continue it may well have to be faced that there is a hard-wired part of it that makes a species a species. I read somewhere that there is a part of the genome that doesn't vary. I don't know if I extrapolated to the fixed species structure myself or if it was part of that article.I also believe that if studies were done on population genetics along the lines I've suggested, creating new populations from a few pairs in reproductive isolation and continuing to do that with each new population that forms - could take a decade or three or ten or more depending on the rate of reproduction -- that it would be seen that the development of new phenotypes always goes with reduced genetic diversity, which is the opposite of what is needed for evolution to progress to macroevolution. So: two tests. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Dear Admin,
I believe you are completely misunderstanding the argument here, but I won't continue it if you don't want to allow it after considering my attempt to defend it: I'm trying to get across that there really isn't any hard evidence for evolution. I know this flies in the face of everything believed here. Other sciences have a lot more than a theory to go on, they do have hard evidence; evolution has only conjecture built on conjecture, which I thought I'd been describing pretty clearly but maybe I'll say it better as I go on. Yes it is not hard evidence as I've been saying. It is fossilized creatures embedded in sedimentary layers, that is all it is. It is the apparent sequence which is interpreted as ancient to modern living things that is imposed on it that turns it into evidence. This is not hard evidence, this is interpretation. The only hard facts are the fossils in the rocks. The sequence is an interpretive overlay. And then when the relation between fossils in different layers is described as evolving from the one to the other this is assumed, it isn't proved and it can't be proved. The different bone structures are given and the evolutionary patheways that WOULD need to have been taken are described - meaning they are imagined, purely imagined. There is nothing else that can be done with them. There is no way to know whether they ever happened, it is purely an imaginary pathway. And yet it is put in the language of fact. Because the ToE is believed, though it too is only imagined, imposed on the buried fossils. The order of the fossils is not an open and shut case for evolution at all, they are just buried dead things. The order is SUGGESTIVE, but it's a far cry from hard evidence. This is why the ToE remains a theory. You can do experiments to prove the theory of gravity or electricity or germ theory; evolution has only interpretation, the IMAGINED evolution up the fossil ladder. But this is not name-calling, this is fact, as I've described above. It IS purely imagined, it is purely mental. The pathway from reptile to mammal is purely imagined, it can't be demonstrated, it is nothing but conjecture. This is obvious.So as I was pondering (and praying about) that example I realized that for such an event to have occurred would require many stages of population genetics, and that led me to recognize that population genetics doesn't work that way: first it doesn't make incremental changes from generation to generation: in a condition of reproductive isolation it makes clear DIFFERENT phenotypic variations in many individuals that over many further recombinations can become part of a new look for the entire new population.Then I realized that the basic structure of the animal always remains the same. The dog breeds illustrations are an example. Of course it can be reshaped into the many different breeds but it never stops being recognizably a lizard or a dog or cat or etc. Then I remembered reading that there is a segment of the genome of every species that never varies, doesn't have alleles, is always fixed, and that could very likely explain the retention of the basic structure of the creature through even millions of generations if that were possible.This goes nicely of course with my argument that as new daughter populations are produced, genetic diversity is diminished. If this is true then a million generations of anything on the reptile or mammal level are impossible, and that many might be needed to follow the imagined evolutionary pathway.All these things argue that evolution can't ever become macroevolution, that the reptile ear and the basic reptile structure will not change no matter how many generations it undergoes, that the reptile and the mammal are two completely independent species and the latter couldn't have descended from the former, nor could any species evolve from any other.This is a lot harder evidence than is available for evolution and it makes the case against the imagined evolutionary pathway between the fossil bones that was presented as well as the case against the interpretation that the fossil record in itself demonstrates evolution. All one CAN do is imagine these things. But the evolutionary pathway idea seems to have lost track of how genetics works, and how it works makes the pathway impossible. Whereas how it works can explain the distribution of living things since the Flood. The fossils are only evidence that bazillions of living things died and were buried in layers under conditions particularly suitable for fossilization, in a sequence that seems to suggest but cannot demonstrate the idea of evolution from one to another. They aren't evidence for evolution. I think the telling evidence about the fossils is in what I've said above.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Ned's list of facts is in Message 216. I just read it and have no problem with any of those facts. They are the hard facts; the theory is something else that is imposed on those facts. He did a good job of sticking to the facts themselves. Because it is completely based on the subjective assessment of morphologies. But if you arrange them, say, by DNA characteristics of each species, perhaps how many genes etc, you would have to make a different sequence. The idea of their relative ages is completely imposed on the facts, without evidence. They aren't, they could be correct, but they aren't hard evidence and shouldn't be treated as hard evidence. So when a creationist comes along and challenges the interpretation it shouldn't be defended with a wall of assertions that it is as good as hard evidence. It isn't. The order is very suggestive as I keep saying, but it can't be treated as proof of evolution. I don't know why the pattern is so apparently consistent, but when there are other reasons to question the standard interpretation it can't just be taken as fact.And I do often wonder just HOW universal it really is. Once you're convinced it's this ironclad proof of evolution you aren't going to be very open to raising questions about it. Apparently insignificant deviations from the pattern could be overlooked, rationalized away etc.One thing that keeps coming to mind is why each layer/time period seems to be characterized by a dominant kind of life, while former kinds, those in the lower layers, seem to be much less in evidence. I'm not sure how true this is but most representations of the fossil record emphasize the apparent sequence that fits the taxonomic tree and whatever else shares the layer is generally overlooked. Isn't it true that the nautiloids that Steve Austin studied occupy that one and only layer in the redwall limestone? Why wouldn't you see nautiloids above that layer too, or do you? In significant numbers of course. There are billions of them in that one layer, it's THEIR layer, but surely we know the earth was never populated by just one kind of life and the nautiloid is a fairly large complex creature for there not to be an abundance of evolutionary precursors. But where are they? And isn't this a common situation from layer to layer?The dinosaurs supposedly went extinct at a specific point in time so that's the explanation for their nonappearance above the time periods they're associated with. The coelacanth that was once thought to be extinct is now known to be living but IIRC it showed up in the Devonian and then not again until, I forget, the Quaternary?, and that was the end of its fossil record. Why the long gap? Actually gaps plural. Weren't there any coelacanths in between the Devonian and its later appearance, or above that latest appearance? If not why not? It's of course possible to rationalize anything like this away, but I think it raises serious questions about the meaning of the fossil record.Do believers in evolution raise these questions? It's just not right to turn a conjecture into a fact, no matter how convinced you are of it. And it's only with the evolution-related claims that this is ever done too; the other sciences do not do that. As for alternatives it's a bunch of buried and fossilized life forms, that IS a fact. And you can add Ned's list of facts to this if you want. The problem is the interpretation not the facts. Well, but it's not. What "biological mechanisms?" and what testing? The order is a conclusion based on the fossil record and it is very suggestive but it is a far cry from hard evidence. It's a theory treated as fact, it hasn't been proved and there is no easy way to disprove it so it just keeps on generating imaginary scenarios in the place of actual known facts. No, for whatever reason there is a pattern to the fossils so when you understand the pattern you can predict from it where to find more examples of the pattern. I don't know how often your predictions pan out but there's no obvious reason they shouldn't. But that begs the question of the correct understanding of the pattern. The pattern is a fact but its interpretation is still in doubt. It becomes a problem when there are other considerations that call the ToE interpretation of the pattern into question.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.