Choosing a faith

Well dickhead, there are, of course hundreds of transitional fossils. Here a few. Tell me when to stop. Archaeopteryx: This fossil shows the transition from non-avian dinosaurs to birds. It had feathers, wings, and a wishbone like modern birds, but also teeth, claws, and a long bony tail like dinosaurs Tiktaalik: This fossil shows the transition from fish to tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates). It had scales, gills, and fins like fish, but also a flat head, a neck, and limb-like structures with joints and digits like tetrapods Australopithecus: This fossil shows the transition from ape-like ancestors to humans. It had a small brain, a protruding face, and long arms like apes, but also a bipedal posture, a reduced canine tooth, and a curved finger bone like humans Ambulocetus: This fossil shows the transition from land mammals to whales. It had nostrils at the front of the skull, legs, and a tail like land mammals, but also a streamlined body, webbed feet, and ear adaptations for underwater hearing like whales Pakicetus: This fossil shows the transition from land mammals to whales. It had a long snout, a large brain, and teeth adapted for eating fish like whales, but also a slender body, four legs, and hooves like land mammals Pteranodon: This fossil shows the transition from reptiles to pterosaurs (flying reptiles). It had a long, pointed beak, a large crest, and a membrane wing supported by an elongated fourth finger like pterosaurs, but also teeth, claws, and a long tail like reptiles Dimetrodon: This fossil shows the transition from reptiles to mammals. It had a sail-like structure on its back, a large skull, and differentiated teeth like mammals, but also a sprawling posture, scales, and a single temporal opening in the skull like reptiles

Tangle, as soon as I saw Archaeopteryx on you list I
knew there was no need to read further.Archaeopteryx has been debunked by creationists, as
well as many evolutionists.Even if I discarded my common sense and accepted all
on this list, you would still need millions of other
transitional fossils.Darwinian evolution is dead. Accept it.

Awe shucks, creationists have debunked archaeopteryx. Well that's that then. Game over.Just a minor detail, care to give us your reasons?

candle2, sadly your "objections" as you call them in your Message 3083 to Tangle are mostly nothing but extremely stupid creationist nonsense to which there can be no response ... besides rolling on the floor in derisive laughter at such sheer idiocy. While you arrogantly glory in (what you imagine to be) being called a fool for believing in Christ, that is not what's happening here. Rather, you are seen to be a fool because you gullibly fall for extremely stupid claims which is not covered by Christianity and which drags down your religion and your gods along with you.The other parts are stupid posturings intended to drive your opponents away with your unreasonable willful stupidity.GDR said that he does not consider you to be lying (Message 3071) but rather "simply badly mistaken". I must disagree with him, since your engagement in creationist dishonesty is too fully committed to allow you that alibi. Your constant evasiveness demonstrates your mens rea, your consciousness of guilt. You are climbing up the creationist ladder of dishonesty and deliberate deception.I will return to specific sections later.You ask grand sweeping origin questions. Why? Do you really want to know our answers to those things? Or is that nothing more than a dishonest rhetorical trick to drive us away and destroy any possibility of discussion.I am very much for discussion. I really want us to engage in discussion. But your false position must not allow discussion, since that will expose your false position's lies. Therefore, you must prevent any and all attempts at discussion.
Like you have just done.Now, there's the issue of authority, or at least the competence of the person you're asking questions of to be able to answer those questions. I have personally witnessed creationists asking highly technical questions of individuals who could not be expected to answer those questions. One example is a local creationist who repeated a creationist claim that the scientists' issues with refrigerants were bogus (it turns out that all the "unanswered questions" the creationists asked were taken verbatim from National Ocean and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) and were all answered immediately. For eleven years that creationist knew full well that those "questions" had all been answered, but he continued to post on his series of websites that same false claim and in every email with him about that false claim he would at first declare that he would not lie, but then when presented with irrefutable evidence that he was indeed lying he would run away. Finally after eleven years of that, he finally removed that knownly false claim from his web sites.The relevance here is his story of "visiting the experts on the distribution of those refrigerants in the atmosphere."  Did he visit any actual atmospheric scientists? No, he visited air-conditioning systems salesmen at a trade show. I SHIT THEE NOT! Those were his "experts".I do not doubt that you do not see the pattern there, but all normals will see it immediately. And see what a complete fucking idiot you insist on being.Latch onto any man on the street and ask him how a computer works in complete detail. He won't be able to answer your question. How could you possibly expect him to answer such a question? Does that mean that computers are incapable of functioning? Obviously not! So just what the fuck are you talking about and demanding?I was a 30574, a USAF Electronic Computer Systems Repairman. Through the COMTRAN-10 we (and US Navy DSes, which I became later) learned in great detail just exactly how a computer CPU works. If you were to ask us how a computer CPU worked, we could tell you. Would you care? Obviously not.Even worse for you, would you even try to read or listen to the answer? Obviously not as you have demonstrated over and over again!BTW, I still have my COMTRAN-10 logic diagrams. Care to compare Boolean equations? Here's the basic lesson: If you really want to know something, then ask the experts. If you want to put on a sham show of "asking questions" from which you exclude any experts, then you are engaging in deception.Uh, because they have been deposited thus over time? Duh?What the fuck alternative do you provide and with what HARD CORE EVIDENCE?. Well, consider the lungfish. What problem to you have with them possessing both gills and lungs? Uh, over many generations as a structure separate from the gills.What the fuck is your problem with that? Or your problem in general? What the actual FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?Where is your stupid bullshit coming from? Right there you have cited THREE DIFFRERENT AND SEPARATE WAYS AN ANIMAL CAN OBTAIN OXYGEN FROM ITS ENVIRONMENT. Why cannot two different methods have operated at one single time?So why does that present any kind of problem for the respiratory systems? Explain yourself!Seriously! What the FUCK are you talking about?Gills are only a further step in extracting oxygen from water. There can be no "partly formed gills" because they are functional in every step of their evolution , just like the eye.And they can very well indeed be imperfect and, arguably inadequate (though there's a lot of interpretation involved there).First, nothing is perfect, so everything is imperfect. Indeed, the criterion for fitness is that it be good enough to work. A perfect car would get a thousand miles per gallon of fuel. My car is imperfect since it gets only forty (40) miles per gallon, but it still works quite well enough to get me around.As for adequacy, that begs the question of "adequate for what?" All animal life in the seas is able to extract oxygen from the water, some even use gills. Smaller animals with low metabolisms that don't require a lot of oxygen can make use of very imperfect mechanisms to extract what little oxygen that they need. For them "imperfect gills" would be completely adequate. But larger and more active animals require a more oxygen at higher rates, so their gills (they are assured of having gotten to gills by this point) must be much more efficient despite still being imperfect. For them, their imperfect gills are still adequate for their needs. However, the less efficient gills of smaller less active animals would not be adequate for them.The same applies to the three-chambered heart versus the four-chambered heart. The three-chambered heart mixes oxygenated and unoxygenated blood together in a single ventricle from which it goes to both the lungs or gills to get oxygenated and to the rest of the body to supply oxygen. Allowing oxygenated and unoxygenated blood to mix together like that is very inefficient, but since the animals' metabolisms do not require high efficiency of oxygen delivery then that is good enough for them and hence adequate. But not adequate enough for larger animals or animals with higher metabolic demands (eg, warm-blooded animals). They require a four-chambered heart with two ventricles that keep the oxygenated and unoxygenated blood separate; for them, a three-chambered heart would be very inadequate.So to put a point on it yet again, whether or not something is adequate depends on the application.BTW, reptiles generally have three-chambered hearts which serve them quite adequately. Crocodilians hatch with a three-chambered heart, but as they grow larger their hearts are no longer adequate, so they convert that three-chambered heart to a four-chambered heart. And they do it without skipping a beat.So what's your problem with all that?  ​ What the actual fuck are you talking about? Do you really know nothing at all about anything?Gills do not produce air, but rather they extract oxygen and other gases that are dissolved in the water.And despite the lack of your imaginary generated air from water, fish have indeed existed and continue to exist. Nothing you say makes any sense! That is why we have to continuously ask you what the fuck you are talking about! Yes, what you describe is indeed impossible. BUT THAT'S NOT HOW ANYTHING WORKS!Nobody would suggest, let alone insist upon it, EXCEPT FOR STUPID CREATIONISTS WHO HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT.You will of course refuse yet again to explain to us what the fuck you are talking about, but it certainly looks like your misunderstanding of evolution includes an individual undergoing drastic change in an instant, which is completely false and stupid and thought by stupid creationists. Which is why everybody recognizes you as nothing but a stupid fucking idiot!I've told you far too many times already: Individuals do not evolve, but rather populations evolve. And structural changes occur during embryonic development, not post partum. I don't care how many times Star Trek and other science fiction have played fast and loose with modified DNA: It does not work that way!Plus, as I have already explained to you, gills and lungs are two different structures which form from two different parts of the embryo. The embryo developes pharyngeal arches which in fish go on to support the gills, but in land vertebrates form other structures unrelated to gills.You appear to be claiming that the path from gills to lungs required gills turning into lungs (in an adult animal!). That is not only completely false, but also insanely stupid.Obviously you did not come up with this stupid bullshit all on your own, but rather you copied it from some stupid lying creationist who is just as willfully ignorant as you are. If instead of gullibly swallowing whole truckloads of creationist bullshit you were to learn something, then you wouldn't fall for stupid stinkers like you did.Learn to think and to question and verify. Did you just say "Crocoduck?" I distinctly heard you invoke the crocoduck! Seriously, when I saw that, I kept breaking out in uncontrollable laughter. Even days later as I'm writing this, I'm still laughing out loud. The Crocoduck is the poster child for the extreme idiocy of creationist claims. It has become a meme, just as the Bullfrog (including responses of "Bullfrog!" to creationist claims) became a meme for Dr. Duane Gish's outrageous public lies.From the Wikipedia article linked to above:

Crocoduck:

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The crocoduck is a fictitious hybrid animal with the head of a crocodile and the body of a duck proposed in 2007 by young-Earth creationists Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron to be an animal that should exist, were their misconceptions about the theory of evolution true. The animal became an internet meme used to ridicule common misrepresentations of evolution, namely, that the theory predicts forms intermediate between any two currently living organisms.

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In creationism

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In 2007, young-Earth creationists Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort participated in a televised debate, parts of which were aired on ABC Nightline, on the existence of God. Kirk Cameron held up composite pictures of what "we imagined would be genuine species-to-species transitional forms. They called one a 'crocoduck' and another was called a 'birddog'." The "crocoduck" was an animal with the head of a crocodile and the body of a duck, the "bullfrog" was an animal with the head of a bull and the body of a frog, and the "sheepdog" was an animal with the head of a dog and the body of a sheep. These pictures were used as a straw man argument to ridicule the theory of evolution as represented by Cameron and Comfort.

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This claim was widely publicized and ridiculed as an example of creationist misconceptions. In The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, the evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins included a section titled 'Show me your crocoduck!' in which he compared this to the question put by another creationist as to why there was no transitional fossil "fronkey" between frogs and monkeys, and described it as a warped misunderstanding of evolution. Modern species share a common ancestor, but are neither descended from each other nor from some crude composite chimera, and ducks are not descended from crocodiles. An illustration shows the Crocoduck Tie, designed by web designer Josh Timonen in commemoration of this misconception. Dawkins has stated that "There are only two in existence. PZ Myers has one. I'm proud to say I have the other." Dawkins' tie made a prominent appearance on an episode of The Colbert Report.

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Somehow I get the feeling that you want us to take you seriously. But how could anyone possibly take you seriously when you post such absolutely insanely stupid bullshit? CROCKDUCK! CROCKDUCK! CROCKDUCK! Jessica H. Christ! Pull your head out of your ass and get a fucking clue already!

Not so fast, Tangle. Remember who we are talking to.He's a priest. He lies.His are the lies that poison intellect in humanity. His is the forked tongue crying out against reality.He is a priest. He lies.

Real quick since I have to get ready to go out tonight.So creationists have debunked Archaeopteryx, how? By showing it to have been "100% bird"? Or "100% dinosaur"? Or BOTH?Fun fact. Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR, "Doctor Bullfrog" himself, wrote an Impact article for the ICR's newsletter, Acts & Facts, in which he summarized their refutation of Archaeopteryx and "proved conclusively" that it was "100% bird, nothing even remotely dinosaurian about it."That was the first and main part of the 4- or 5-page article. But this was written around or shortly after these two creationists had been requesting access to one of the original Archaeopteryx fossils in order to examine it under the microscope. Their contention was that it was actually a dinosaur fossil skeleton that someone had altered with feather imprints; IOW, they claimed that it was a hoax. When it was examined (don't remember if the creationists were part of that, but I would doubt it) the feathers were found to have been part of the original matrix and they could see where at least one of the feathers went behind one of the bones.So after Gish had used the first three or so pages concluding absolutely that Archaeopteryx was "100% bird, nothing dinosaurian about it", he reports on this other claim concluding that Archaeopteryx was "100% dinosaur, nothing avian about it."So in the same creationist article by a leading creationist (one of the founders of the ICR and of "creation science" itself), Gish concluded confidently that Archaeopteryx was "100% bird" and "100% dinosaur". Which he was cool with, just so long as it wasn't intermediate.I can look it up later if you'd like a reference to it. I'm just out of time right now.Share and enjoy!-------------------------------------"Creationism is more fun than science!" -- David Ruse

I think the examination of the feathers was in response to Fred Hoyle's claims that the feathers were fakes. The examination demonstrated he was wrong.It's always surprising to me when a scientist with a good mind and even an international reputation suddenly seems to veer off into completely unscientific Bizarro Land where their public behavior destroys their reputation. I'm always thinking "Holy crap! Could that happen to me or one of my friends?"

The Impact article in question is As a Transitional Form Archaeopteryx Won't Fly by Dr. Duane Gish, 01 September 1989.The paragraph in question reads:

quote:

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Another threat to the notion that Archaeopteryx was intermediate between reptiles and birds are the claims of Sir Fred Hoyle, the famous British astronomer, fellow astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe, and Israeli scientist Lee Spetner, based on detailed photographic evidence, that Archaeopteryx is a fraud.15,16 They maintain that an artificial matrix was placed on a reptilian fossil and that modern feathers were used to impress the matrix, to leave a likeness of fossil feathers. Scientists of the British Museum of Natural History have defended the authenticity of the fossil.17 If the allegations of Hoyle, Wickramasinghe, and Spetner turn out to be correct, it would be a devastating blow to evolutionists. If the fossil is a forgery, however, it would have to be a devilishly clever one, because the forger would not only have to fake the feathers, but also somehow emplace the many bird-like features described in this article.

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15. Gail Vines, New Scientist, 14 March 1985, p. 3; Ted Nield, New Scientist, 1 August 1985, p. 49.
16. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, Archaeopteryx: The Primordial Bird. A Case of Fossil Forgery, Christopher Davies Publishers, Swansea, 1986.
17. A.J. Charig, F. Greenaway, A.C. Milner, C.A. Walker, and P.J. Whybrow, Science 232:622(1986).

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I had forgotten that Fred Hoyle was involved, remembering instead astronomer Chandra Wickramasinghe who had testified in the Arkansas "balanced treatment" trial, McLean v. Arkansas (1982, trial held in 1981), where he revealed himself to be a crank. As I recall, one of his revelations under oath is that insects are more intelligent than humans, but they don't want us to catch on to that "fact" (or it could have been that his writings where he had written that was presented in court). Well, that's what can happen when an expert in a particular field or fields tries to claim to also be an expert in unrelated fields, like an astronomer pretending to be expert in paleontology. Didn't Hoyle, who supported a steady state universe, coin the term, "Big Bang", in derision to that idea? He also gave us the "tornado in a junkyard randomly assembling a 747". I looked up his book that described the probability of life forming in order to view his model; the moment I saw him use the standard creationist single-step selection approach I said to myself, "Well, he doesn't know what he's talking about!"

Dwise, what is wrong with you? You keep printing the
newspaper size posts, and expect me to reply to every
single word. You seem to think that these very long
posts make you look more intelligent.Phat asked me why I did not reply to some of your posts.
The answer is simply that I do not have the time to devote
to this forum.In any event, I was going to discuss the lung fish in my
post about fishes, but I figured somebody would bring
it up soon enough.Do you know that the lung fish does not have just partial
lungs and partial gills? He does not have half-lungs and
half-gills. No fish does.The lungfish is a perfect example of design. He has the
ability to breathe in water and out. However, his ability to
breathe air is limited to a few hours.The lungfish has the ability to estivate (lie dormant) for
months and even years in dry mud, waiting for the next
rainy season.As I asked before, how can something like this evolve?
A fish that decides he wants to breath air will die in a
matter of minutes on land.The lunguish is perfectly designed for his environment.During the dry season the lung fish squirms into the ooze
nose first, and then turns back upward so that his nose
is just below the surface, close enough to breathe. He
then covers his eyes with his slimy tail.During estivation period, the fish lives off of its own fat.
The lungfish can lower its metabolism to three beats
per minute, while taking one breathe every few hours.This is an incredible example of design. There is no way
that an evolutionist can explain how this developed over
time.While buried, the lungfish, through slimy, gooey secretions,
develop a cocoon, which protects him from the environment.
Remove him from this cocoon and he will die in hours.When the rains begin water floods the air-pocket. And
the lungfish emerges from his cocoon.This cycle begins again during the dry season.How is it even remotely possible for a fish to decide
that he wants to build a cocoon and slow his heart rate
to three beats per hour, and limit its air intake to once
every few hours. This is not how it works.The Creator designed a fish that was equipped for its
environment. There are millions of organisms that were
designed for a specific purpose.I will take a closer look at the remainder of your post, and
reply to some of it. There are a few other remarks I wish
to make.

Phat, I do not care if you take me seriously or not. I
certainly do not take you seriously.Where are the millions of intermediate fossils? Without
them evolution is a joke.

Every fossil of an extinct life form is a transitional fossil unless that particular life did not procreate and pass on its genetics. Your parents are a transitional life form. As you would be if(please no) you procreate.

Oh, you want us, none of whom has extensive experience and expertise in paleontology (to my knowledge) nor ready access to all of the literature, to provide you a detailed list of every single intermediate fossil? Including the ones that are still buried away undiscovered? And you want us to present all that knowledge in 25 words or less? (analogous to the gentile challenging Rabbi Hillel to recite the whole of the Law (the Torah) within the short time that the gentile could stand on one foot, to which Hillel replied "Do not to others that which is displeasing to yourself. That is the whole of the Law; the rest is just explanation." -- 20 BCE)Instead, you would learn vastly more by talking with a paleontologist who can present you with that information (not to the ridiculous extent you demand and certainly not within the short time you can stand on one foot). You can find some such individuals in the Paleontology Department at a college or university (not a creationist school where they would just lie to you again). Part of the visit would be to the university library for the vast library of journals and books describing the intermediate fossils we have found -- on his page, when Merle discovered that library he described it as filling a large room.But you refuse to even begin to consider looking for an actual answer. You are like an old vaudeville joke (earliest sighting by me is from a 1941 French murder mystery): Will he ever find his watch that way? Of course not! He's looking in the wrong place! Will you ever find your intermediate fossils by looking in the wrong place and refusing to even consider looking in the right place? Of course not! But then you don't want to find that evidence because your mission is to support a stupid creationist bullshit lie. You are practicing your deception.Also, you don't know what an intermediate fossil would be. You couldn't recognize an intermediate fossil if it fell off the table and crushed your foot. You insist on incredibly stupid things like "half-gill/half-lung", "an individual decides to evolve in the middle of its life", CROCODUCKS.Your willful ignorance has you demanding properties of intermediate fossils that simply do not apply at all. It would be like you demanding evidence that operational aircraft exist, but for you demand that to be an operational aircraft it would need to fly by flapping its wings. That's not how aircraft work, so you use your impossible misdefinition to eliminate every single example we provide to you (that even the experts provide) and declare victory in dispelling the "lie of operational aircraft."What the fuck is wrong with you?We have answered your challenge several times already, but you refuse to even read our answers. And even if you were to read them, you would reject them because they do not fit your ignorant misdefinition (ie, no, there are no CROCODUCKS!)I will repost that answer yet again after I return from our monthly discussion breakfast which I'm late to. And of course you will yet again blind yourself to the truth.In the meantime, answer this question: What are the characteristics of an intermediate fossil that you use to determine whether a fossil is intermediate or not?Of course, you will not answer that question either.

Dwise, are you so out of touch that you have no idea
what intermediate fossils should look like.Evolutionists make unsubstantiated claims that some
dinosaurs evolved into birds. Are you one of them.If you are. You should have a fairly good idea of what
dinosaurs to birds should look like. There should be
millions of transitional fossils.Avian lungs are unique among all vertebrates. Their lungs
are small in size, but they are the most efficient vertebrate
lungs.There is a tremendous ount of difference in the ways that
birds respirate compared to dinosaurs and mammals.Birds do not have a diaphragm; dinosaurs and mammals do.I have an opportunity to supplement my income over the
next month to six weeks. I will have a limited amount of
time to come to this forum.This is an abbreviated account of the differences between
the lungs and respiration of birds and dinosaurs. Read the
differences and then you will understand.Birds have wings dinosaurs do not. Birds chest muscles
and other anatomy involved with flying is totally different
from that of dinosaurs. Read about the tremendous amount
of anatomical changes a dinosaur would by, necessity, go
through in order to develop wing and fly.Bird legs and dinosaur legs, as well as the way they walk.
Birds walk from their knees on down rather than from
their hips. There are no other vertebrate quite like this.The center of balance between birds and dinosaurs is
vastly different. Bipedal dinosaurs held their heavy
muscular tail of the ground. The tail behind the hip
counterbalanced the body in front of the hips. The tails
of bipedal dinosaurs function was for balance. The
tail feathers of birds were not.There is no known means of scales evolving into feathers.Dwise, I have merely outlined an abbreviated account of
differences between birds and dinosaurs.Dinosaurs were cold blooded; birds are warm blooded.Now, you should have a good idea of what to look for
when identifying transitional fossils between birds and
dinosaurs.Also, you should have a decent idea of what transitional
fossils from gill breathing fish to lung breathing land
creatures look like.I could make numerous posts of the vast differences
between birds and dinosaurs, but I don't have time.I could also make numerous posts of the vast amount
of differences between fish and land animals. We do
know that the Coelacanth is not in this group.You stated that I would not reply to a question that you
posed.Ask that question by itself and I will answer it. I might have
to wait for the first rainy day, but I will reply to it.

Actual science. The scientists disagree with your claims. This is just one of the claims you made. To tired to expose more if your ignorance.

quote:

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So, how did dinosaurs breathe exactly?
In summary, dinosaurs breathed using partitioned lungs. In some dinosaurs, these were fully split into a gas-exchanging lung and ventilatory air sacs. Evidence for air sacs comes from pneumatic features preserved in bones, and the patterns of pneumaticity (such as pneumatic hiatuses). Evidence for a rigid lung — or at least one with certain rigid regions specialized for gas exchange — also comes from the anatomy of the costovertebral joints, which are generally vertically oriented and are more like those of birds than those of crocodilians. It’s also fairly clear how they ventilated their lungs: not with a crocodilian-style diaphragm, but through the motion of the ribs and sternum. Some theropods even had very birdlike modifications to their ribcage in the form of uncinate processes. The respiratory system of dinosaurs was probably capable of sustaining fairly high levels of activity and high metabolic rates, consistent with evidence from bone and other sources, that dinosaurs did not simply have ‘reptilian’ cold-blooded lifestyles.

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PALAEONTOLOGY[online] | Article: Fossil Focus > Fossil Focus: The Archosaur Respiratory System — Or — Breathing Life into Dinosaurs

Theoodoric, this is my last post for a while. I had clicked
to see if Dwise had asked his question.I want you to understand something: Natural selection
can only select from an existing gene pool. Natural
selection cannot program itself to choose from outside
this pool.Evolution is a joke. It amazes me that grownups still
believe that a prince evolved from a frog.I believe what Paul wrote in Romans 1. He states that
the creation is enough to convince everyone that God
exists.Evolutionists remain wilfully ignorant. Professing
themselves to be wise, they become fools.How sad it is that one day all will be resurrected to life,
and atheists and evolutionists will realize that they
wasted their entire life on fool's gold.They spend their entire lifetime on denying God, and
in trying to get others to do the same.Evolutionists want no part of God, and after the
resurrection God will remember this.I am not your enemy. I do not want to see anyone mess
up their chance at eternal life.