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Author Topic:   Genesis "kinds" may be Nested Hierarchies.
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 149 of 218 (824813)
12-03-2017 10:09 PM
Reply to: Message 147 by herebedragons
12-03-2017 8:55 PM


transitionals
Since cats and dogs are both modern species, they cannot have characteristics of a derived form, they ARE the derived form. ...
And they will be intermediates (transitionals) to future forms.
Every individual fossil or being is intermediate between ancestor and progeny/descendant forms except those that are without progeny and the last of a population going extinct.
Enjoy

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(2)
Message 150 of 218 (824814)
12-03-2017 10:28 PM
Reply to: Message 142 by Dredge
12-03-2017 6:47 PM


Intermediates and Transitionals
A cat fossil and a dog fossil could be imagined as transitional.
A cat fossil would have ancestors and be part of a breeding population that produced offspring.
Therefore that cat fossil would be intermediate (another term for transitional) between the ancestral population and the descendant population.
Likewise, a dog fossil would have ancestors and be part of a breeding population that produced offspring.
Therefore that dog fossil would be intermediate (another term for transitional) between the ancestral population and the descendant population.
By definition of what an intermediate is by evolution science, no imagination required.
quote:
Transitional forms
Fossils or organisms that show the intermediate states between an ancestral form and that of its descendants are referred to as transitional forms. There are numerous examples of transitional forms in the fossil record, providing an abundance of evidence for change over time.
Pakicetus (below left), is described as an early ancestor to modern whales. Although pakicetids were land mammals, it is clear that they are related to whales and dolphins based on a number of specializations of the ear, relating to hearing. The skull shown here displays nostrils at the front of the skull.
A skull of the gray whale that roams the seas today (below right) has its nostrils placed at the top of its skull. It would appear from these two specimens that the position of the nostril has changed over time and thus we would expect to see intermediate forms.
Note that the nostril placement in Aetiocetus is intermediate between the ancestral form Pakicetus and the modern gray whale an excellent example of a transitional form in the fossil record!
So here we have another teachable moment brought to you by Dredge.
Nothing to do with reality, however.
Amusing how reality keeps banging you in the shins as you stumble in the dark realm of ignorance.
Enjoy

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 161 of 218 (824940)
12-05-2017 1:21 PM
Reply to: Message 155 by Dredge
12-04-2017 7:27 PM


If a flying mammal (a bat) can be fitted into a nested hierarchy, ...
As shown to you in Message 126 the bat wing is an adapted front limb, with homologous bones from shoulder to finger tip with other mammals, and that they are also homologous with tetrapods like birds - which have also adapted front limbs to form wings:
The homologous bones are shown in different colors so that even school children can see their similarities.
Building nested hierarchies is done using homologies, not imagination, and that is why they can be repeated with the same results from scratch.
... then another flying mammal - a pig - surely can.
Curiously, I am aware of 'flying' squirrels and 'flying' lemurs and 'flying' marsupials ... all of which use adaptation of skin to form gliding surfaces (and which all fit neatly into nested hierarchies in different places due to their homologies of bones and other features -- again consistently are repeatably), ...
... but I am not aware of any flying pigs: can you provide any evidence that such a creature existed?
... All you need to do is invent another branch on the tree - as you could do for any "new" creature (whether living or fossilized). ...
And where are the homologies on the tree that such a branch would plug into? What is the evidence that could be used to place this flying pig into relation with ancestral forms?
Show me the evidence of a flying pig and then we can discuss it.
Can you tell me how an element of an unknown atomic weight, unknown numbers of electrons and protons would fit in the periodic table?
The nested hierarchies are built based on the structures within different species that are homologous or derived.
The elements in the periodic table are placed in their locations based on the structures of the atoms.
Without even a hint of the structure of this flying pig, how could one begin to place it? How do you even know it is a pig?
Science deals with evidence, so provide the evidence.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .

we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 155 by Dredge, posted 12-04-2017 7:27 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 190 by Dredge, posted 12-14-2017 10:40 PM RAZD has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 171 of 218 (825275)
12-11-2017 9:59 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by Percy
12-11-2017 8:19 AM


When the fossil of a dragon or minotaur or griffin or crocoduck is discovered ...
Fossils of dragons have been found. They are called ...
quote:
Pleisiosaurs (wiki):
Restored skeleton of Plesiosaurus
Fossils of griffins have also been found. They are called ...
quote:
Protoceratops (wiki):
Mounted P. andrewsi skeleton, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Earlier reconstructions made some errors ...
But these creatures fit neatly into the nested hierarchies, complete with homologies with ancestral species and descendent species (note that these are families, so there are a few varieties/versions of each).
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .

we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 185 of 218 (825374)
12-14-2017 10:21 AM
Reply to: Message 176 by CRR
12-13-2017 3:29 AM


Re: Kinds and Nested Hierarchies - another teachable moment
Next, biologists have trouble defining what a species is! There are many definitions of Species ( 26+). Similarly there can be several different definitions of Kind. Creationists have given definitions of Kind but no definition will please evLet'eryone; especially if they're looking for something to criticise. ...
Let's look at the issue of species definition in more detail, as this is a great opportunity to teach about this issue.
First off, ALL evolution occurs within species:
(1) The process of evolution involves changes in the composition of hereditary traits, and changes to the frequency of their distributions within breeding populations from generation to generation, in response to ecological challenges and opportunities for growth, development, survival and reproductive success in changing or different habitats.
This is sometimes called microevolution, however this is the process through which all species evolve and all evolution occurs at the breeding population level.
Mutations to existing hereditary traits (ie for eyes and ears) can cause changes in the composition of hereditary traits for individuals in a breeding population, but not all mutations are expressed (and many are in non-hereditary areas). In addition there are many different kinds of mutations and they have different effects (from small to large), especially if they affect the developmental process of an organism.
Natural Selection and Neutral Drift can cause changes in the frequency distribution of hereditary traits within a breeding population, but they are not the only mechanisms known that does so. Selection processes act on the expressed genes of individual organisms, so bundles of genetic mutations are selected rather than individual genes, and this means that non-lethal mutations can be preserved. The more an individual organism reproduces the more it is likely to pass on bundles of genes and mutations to the next generation, increasing the selection of those genes.
The ecological challenges and opportunities change when the environment changes, when the breeding population evolves, when other organisms within the ecology evolve, when migrations change the mixture of organisms within the ecology, and when a breeding population immigrates into a new ecology. These changes can result in different survival and reproductive challenges and opportunities, affecting selection pressure, perhaps causing speciation, perhaps causing extinction.
This is a two-step feedback response system that is repeated in each generation:
Like walking on first one foot and then the next.
The result is that every generation differs slightly from the previous generation, even though this may not be noticeable to the average observer.
If every species (breeding population) is constantly changing, then does it remain the same species or does it become a new species?
Well, if we look at the continued effects of evolution over many generations, the accumulation of changes from generation to generation may eventually become sufficient for all the individuals in a breeding population to develop combinations of traits that are observably different from the ancestral parent population, and a new species name may be appropriate.
(2) The process of lineal change within species is sometimes called phyletic speciation, or anagenesis.
This is also sometimes called arbitrary speciation in that the place to draw the line between linearly evolved genealogical populations is subjective, and because the definition of species in general is tentative and sometimes arbitrary.
Within the science some scientists tend to be "lumpers" - breaking the ancestral history into few species groups - and some tend to be "splitters" - breaking the ancestral history into many species groups. This doesn't change the natural history, just the labels used for different stages of the evolution of breeding populations.
quote:
Lumpers and splitters are opposing factions in any discipline that has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper-splitter problem occurs when there is the need to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature, biological taxa and so on. A "lumper" is an individual who takes a gestalt view of a definition, and assigns examples broadly, assuming that differences are not as important as signature similarities. A "splitter" is an individual who takes precise definitions, and creates new categories to classify samples that differ in key ways.
If anagenesis was all that occurred, then all life would be one species, readily sharing DNA via horizontal transfer (asexual) and interbreeding (sexual) and various combinations. This is not the case, however, because there is a second process that results in multiple species and increases the diversity of life.
(3) The process of divergent speciation, or cladogenesis, involves the division of a parent population into two or more reproductively isolated daughter populations, which then are free to (micro) evolve independently of each other.
The reduction or loss of interbreeding (gene flow, sharing of mutations) between the sub-populations results in different evolutionary responses within the separated sub-populations, each then responds independently to their different ecological challenges and opportunities, and this leads to divergence of hereditary traits between the subpopulations and the frequency of their distributions within the sub-populations.
Over generations phyletic change (anagenesis) occurs in each of these populations, the responses to different ecologies accumulate into differences between the hereditary traits available within each of the daughter populations, and when these differences have reached a critical level, such that interbreeding no longer occurs, then the formation of new species is deemed to have occurred. After this has occurred each daughter population microevolves independently of the other/s. These are often called speciation events because the development of a new species is not arbitrary in this process: one species (breeding population) has split into two reproductively isolated species (independent breeding populations).
Such divides do not generally occur suddenly, however, but take several generations, sometimes with some hybrid interaction and limited gene flow, before they reach the point of not interbreeding.
If we looked at each branch linearly, from the common ancestor population to each daughter population, while ignoring the sister population, they would show anagenesis (accumulation of evolutionary changes over many generations), and this shows that the same basic processes of evolution within breeding populations are involved in each branch.
An additional observable result of speciation events, however, is a branching of the genealogical history for the species involved, where two or more offspring daughter species are each independently descended from the same common pool of the ancestor parent species. At this point a clade has been formed, consisting of the common ancestor species and all of their descendants.
With multiple speciation events, a pattern is formed that looks like a branching bush or tree: the tree of descent from common ancestor populations. Each branching point is a node for a clade of the parent species at the node point and all their descendants, and with multiple speciation events we see a pattern form of clades branching from parent ancestor species and nesting within larger clades branching from older parent ancestor species.
Where A, B, C and G represent speciation events and the common ancestor populations of a clade that includes the common ancestor species and all their descendants: C and below form a clade that is part of the B clade, B and below form a clade that is also part of the A clade; G and below also form a clade that is also part of the A clade, but the G clade is not part of the B clade.
The process of forming a nested hierarchy by descent of new species from common ancestor populations, via the combination of anagenesis and cladogenesis, and resulting in an increase in the diversity of life, is sometimes called macroevolution. This is often confusing, because there is no additional mechanism of evolution involved, and there is no sudden appearance of new species, rather this is just the result of looking at evolution over many generations and different ecologies.
The end result is that it is difficult to define when new species (breeding populations) occur, even with speciation events (taking many generations).
Does this make it hard to define species? Inevitably, however, one point to remember is that species names are just labels we humans apply to the evidence to enable conversation, the natural world has no need to have labels for the processes of evolution to proceed.
The difficulty in defining species has to do with our desire to label things in a consistent matter that assists clear communication of observations of the natural world.
This teachable moment has been brought to you by CRR.
Enjoy

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This message is a reply to:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 186 of 218 (825378)
12-14-2017 11:26 AM
Reply to: Message 172 by Granny Magda
12-11-2017 2:47 PM


lions and tigers and bears, oh my
I have to sound a note of scepticism here
Fair enough, so you'll let me keep an open mind then.
The notion that dragons were inspired by dinosaur or marine reptile bones has little to no evidence for it. Insofar as dinosaur fossils were associated with dragons, it seems just as likely that it was the other way around, i.e. someone looked at a fossil and it reminded them of pre-existing stories about dragons.
And yet, looking at that picture and image of chinese dragons shows an amazing coincidence. I can almost see a breath of fire.
The protoceratops origin for griffins is extremely dubious. The usual version of this tale is that griffins were based upon the protoceratops fossils found by Scythian gold-miners and that griffin-lore entered Greek culture when those cultures first came into contact. The problem with this is that griffin iconography pre-dates this by some thousands of years. Lots of ancient Near East cultures depicted griffins and they definitely weren't inspired by Mongolian fossils.
Which doesn't mean that their discovery had to wait for the Scythians, where the evidence could have been taken as corroboration of previous stories.
Personally I think a lot of creatures of mythology were created out of interpretations of fossil finds, such as the possibility that Neanderthals and/or Homo erectus were the basis for trolls, ogres and orcs, living in caves and more primitive socially than Cro-Magnon. Stories of encounters between populations being passed down as verbal history.
... . I think that these are simply imaginary monsters, exaggerated, mythic versions of real animals. The griffin in particular seems to be just an animal chimera. ...
Or people trying to make sense of fossils by layering over them characteristics of creatures they knew about.
They weren't scientists, and their knowledge of the variety of life was limited.
And I do think they had a better understanding of anatomy than most people today, due to skinning and butchering prey animals. So they should have been able to do rudimentary assembly of skeletons to map out the fossil finds, but they would have no idea how to flesh them out -- that's where imagination took over.
... As a keen Dungeons and Dragons player, I know just how hard it is to imagine a new monster that isn't essentially some combination of elements taken from existing organisms and I think that's all that's going on here. I think that people have been creating imaginary animal mash-ups for a long time and I think that when the Greeks said that a griffin was a combination of a bird and a big cat, they meant exactly that.
So you don't think finding fossils of creatures with beaks, four clawed legs and long tails wouldn't fuel their imagination?
Fascinating.
Enjoy

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 172 by Granny Magda, posted 12-11-2017 2:47 PM Granny Magda has replied

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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 201 of 218 (825503)
12-15-2017 11:44 AM
Reply to: Message 190 by Dredge
12-14-2017 10:40 PM


RAZD writes:
Show me the evidence of a flying pig and then we can discuss it.
If flying pigs don't exist, explain the photo in post #160.
It's a drawing of a fantasy not a photograph of a real flying pig.
What we have here is a failure to understand what constitutes (objective empirical) evidence for the existence of something real.
Objective empirical evidence means that people can observe and evaluate the evidence, and the evidence presented -- a drawing -- is not evidence of factual existence.
It -- and similar but inconsistently different drawings -- does provide evidence of imagination and fantasy.
If you want to provide evidence that something in fact exists, then you need evidence that actually demonstrates that existence.
Another teachable moment
Enjoy

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RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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This message is a reply to:
 Message 190 by Dredge, posted 12-14-2017 10:40 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
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RAZD
Member (Idle past 1404 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


Message 203 of 218 (825505)
12-15-2017 11:56 AM
Reply to: Message 192 by Dredge
12-14-2017 10:59 PM


No fossils of Leviathan have been found yet. Since it was a sea-monster, the chances of finding the remains of one may be small.
quote:
Leviathan
The Leviathan of the Book of Job is a reflection of the older Canaanite Lotan, a primeval monster defeated by the god Hadad. Parallels to the role of Mesopotamian Tiamat defeated by Marduk have long been drawn in comparative mythology, as have been wider comparisons to dragon and world serpent narratives such as Indra slaying Vrtra or Thor slaying Jrmungandr,[1] but Leviathan already figures in the Hebrew Bible as a metaphor for a powerful enemy, notably Babylon (Isaiah 27:1), and some scholars have pragmatically interpreted it as referring to large aquatic creatures, such as the crocodile.[2] The word later came to be used as a term for "great whale" as well as of sea monsters in general.
So the "leviathan" is so ill-defined that fossils of any large sea creature would suffice to fill the bill -- if one had to provide a real actual creature to take the place of fantasy and mythology. Including a crocodile.
A book of mythology is not a good source for information on what may or may not exist.
The way science works is by finding evidence and then explaining it, not by dreaming something up first and then saying it should be looked for.
Another teachable moment brought to you by Dredge.
Enjoy

we are limited in our ability to understand
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RebelAmerican☆Zen☯Deist
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This message is a reply to:
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