Animals with bad design.

Does that have any relevance to the issue?

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Hi Aaron, You think? To me it looks far more gracile than the dog pelvis. Well yes. They have changed shape and position as they evolved. They are free to do so because they are relatively non-essential to the whale. That leaves mutation free to act upon them unhindered. There are not several species. B. physalus is a single species. There are at least two sub-species. And if the shape of the bones in question is essential to the whale, I would like to know how it can vary. a) So you have completely discarded the opinion of your expert witness? The bones are not similar. You state this as fact, despite it being denied by Mead.b) It has more to do with region? Really? Please provide some evidence for this theory. Yes, there are deep homologies between fish and tetrapods. Why you imagine this argues against the Theory of Evolution is beyond me. But you argued that the bones are necessary to the whales. I pointed out that not all of them are present in all cases.How can a bone be both perfect and necessary when the whale can function perfectly well without it? This is nonsensical.I also think that you are abusing the word "perfect". Previously you asked "What if the shape of the whale "pelvis" is the most ideal shape for its purpose? ". This is not the same concept as you are pursuing above. The shape is either perfect or it is not. You cannot have it both ways. And it would be equally unintelligent for him to fit two whales of the same species with differing pelves, but he apparently does. This is patently false. You can see quite clearly that this bone consists of two fused bones. So why would any honest god create so misleading a structure? And thus you make the entire idea of a creator God universally unfalsifiable.Looks created? Great! God created it!Doesn't look created? Great! God chose to limit himself!An idea that is consistent with any observation imaginable is not really an idea at all.In embracing such an attitude you have reduced your argument to no more than divine whim.Mutate and Survive

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On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" ... I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage

Hi Aaron, I had a whole post all ready, and then my computer glitched me. Since then Bluejay has also answered this, but I want to add some details. Evolutionists only harp on some of the similarities - the ones that come from homologies.Evolution 101 - Understanding Evolution
Homologies and analogies - Understanding Evolution

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Since a phylogenetic tree is a hypothesis about evolutionary relationships, we want to use characters that are reliable indicators of common ancestry to build that tree. We use homologous characterscharacters in different organisms that are similar because they were inherited from a common ancestor that also had that character. An example of homologous characters is the four limbs of tetrapods. Birds, bats, mice, and crocodiles all have four limbs. Sharks and bony fish do not. The ancestor of tetrapods evolved four limbs, and its descendents have inherited that featureso the presence of four limbs is a homology.

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Not all characters are homologies. For example, birds and bats both have wings, while mice and crocodiles do not. Does that mean that birds and bats are more closely related to one another than to mice and crocodiles? No. When we examine bird wings and bat wings closely, we see that there are some major differences.

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Some similarities are analogies rather than homologies:

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Bird and bat wings are analogousthat is, they have separate evolutionary origins, but are superficially similar because they evolved to serve the same function. Analogies are the result of convergent evolution.

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Interestingly, though bird and bat wings are analogous as wings, as forelimbs they are homologous. Birds and bats did not inherit wings from a common ancestor with wings, but they did inherit forelimbs from a common ancestor with forelimbs.

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The distinction between homologous features and analogous features is that homologous features follow the cladistic nested hierarchy of descent:

• there are more homologies between bat and mouse than between bat and bird, and
• there are more homologies between bird and croc than between bird and bat, and
• the homologies between bat and bird are also shared by croc and mouse

All four show the same homolgous features in ancestors, while analogous features are later developments of derived features after the lineages have split and that bear some superficial resemblance across lineage lines but show a different development of the derived features within the cladistic nested hierarchies of descent, with different adaptations of previous features to take advantage of a similar ecological opportunity.The wings of the bats and birds both use forelimbs, but in different ways, and the structure particular to the bat type of wing is only found in bats, not in birds, while the structure particular to birds is only found in birds, not in bats. They are different adaptations of the forelimb for flight.The analogous similarities have developed independently using different adaptations to suit a similar ecological opportunity.The differences observed are those predicted by evolution - the change in the frequency of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation in response to ecological opportunities. Change the opportunities (by say having one population of a species move into a new environment) and you change how the response mechanism reacts to the different opportunities, selecting different variations in the population as they improve the survival and breeding ability of the individuals that have them. These variations are due to the different mixes of mutations available in individuals in the breeding population in each generation. These differences are derived by mutations from existing structures, not sudden de novo structures, and are called derived traits.This is where the increase in diversity in life occurs, where a newly derived trait branches off from the homologous lineage/s of other organism populations. Once a derived trait has evolved, then it will becomes homologous in the descendents, but not the ancestors. Thus the derived traits are just as important as the homologous traits in determining the cladistic nested hierarchy of descent:

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To build a phylogenetic tree from these data, we must base our clades on shared derived charactersnot shared ancestral characters. Since we have a good idea of what the ancestral characters are (see above), this is not so hard. We might start out by examining the egg character. We focus in on the group of lineages that share the derived form of this character (an amniotic egg) and hypothesize that they form a clade ...

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If we go through the whole table like this, grouping clades according to shared derived characters, we get the following hypothesis:

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Of course, this was just an example of the tree-building process. Phylogenetic trees are generally based on many more characters and often involve more lineages. For example, biologists reconstructing relationships between 499 lineages of seed plants began with more than 1400 molecular characters!

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Would it make a difference if we did this at each stage of the development from packicetus to modern whale to show the different stages of the development?Or would it show the cladistic nested hierarchy of descent that we see in the above example/s?Do you realize that this has already been done?You can contact Phil Gingrich at the Uof M for more information if you want:
Philip D. Gingerich
Philip D. GingerichEnjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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It would also be unintelligent to fit tiny wheels on a submarine.Vestigial wheels would suggest that the submarine had evolved from a land vehicle.

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"

These theoretical questions are a bit difficult. We can only examine and explain what we see. If there were no such thing as whales, I wouldn't ask "why are there no whales?" You don't like my answers about what DOES exist. How am I supposed to discuss a reality that DOESN'T exist.The simplest answer to what the right mix is a food chain where the biggest guys eat the littler guys right down the line to the tiniest guys - who in turn receive nutrients from either the biggest guys or the sun. The chain is going to look different in different places with different mixes of animals.Why did God get mammals involved in the marine mix? Maybe just for variety and creativity sake. You ask theoretical questions, you get theoretical answers. Well, its a good thing there are other creatures who play a similar ecological role. Nice to know there are "back-up" creatures. Or would you like to argue that we can lose every variety of plant eaters or meat eaters and still have a healthy planet? All that I'm doing is describing the way biology works (at least my limited understanding of it). It's not that big of a leap to suggest that something must go through certain stages for it to develop into the end product. Otherwise, if certain steps could be done away with, don't you think nature would have gotten rid of them? Why would a fetus devote precious resources to structures that provide absolutely no benefit to development. You might say that evolution is limited in what it can or can't do. That's great to say when looking at one thing - but then you turn around and trust the near limitless power of evolution to produce massive body changes like transforming a stubby forearm into a wing.One final note on the importance of the hind leg buds in whales:
I continued to discuss this with Dr. Hans Thewissen, the scientist who wrote the paper I referenced. I asked if the leg buds eventually form the pelvic bones.He said: ----------------- And I wouldn't argue that river dolphins "evolved" from marine dolphins who already possessed echolocation. It was probably this ability that helped them hunt and survive in muddy rivers with poor visibility. Dorudon lived in the open sea - hunting in shallow clear waters. That is remarkable, but there is no comparison between what a blind person can do and what a whale can do. Are you denying that whales have special organs for echolocation? And more than the special body parts, the whales brain must be "programmed" to interpret those signals so they make sense to the whale. I can point to the same proving grounds you can. How does an evolutionist know what the "best" arrangement of pieces is? The arrangement that survives. Millions of years have a way of sorting out the best way from the inadequate way. The fossils we find represent the species that lasted for millions of years, not the hampered mutants that came and went. It would be hard to argue that what we see isn't a great solution to the problem. As far as "best"? That becomes hypothetical. How do we know what might be "better" if it doesn't exist? You may be able to imagine a better solution - but unless that idea can be tested in the wild, you don't know if your better solution might actually be worse. Fortunately I don't have to defend the loss of antlers in whales.
You're other issues aren't as silly.I'm sure you won't put much stock into this quote from comparative physiology professor Louis Vialleton because it was posted on a creation site - but I'll post it anyway. I tried to find it in the original source, but I didn't find an English translation. A 1995 paper that explored the role of tooth buds in baleen whales suggests the degradation of the tooth buds may induce the formation of baleen. Development and physiological degradation of tooth buds and development of rudiment of baleen plate in southern minke whale, Balaenoptera acutorostrata - PubMedOur favorite topic once again - structural induction.

Well, if you want to claim that nature looks like the perfect product of a perfect designer, then you need to have some idea of what would constitute an imperfect design. So ... it was perfect then and it's perfect now? That doesn't require "near limitless power". Not even near near limitless power. A wing is a forearm tweaked --- the homologies are very, very obvious.To give tetrapods wings that were designed from scratch would have taken "near limitless power". But for some reason the Creator decided that the very very best wings he could make for tetrapods involved variations on the same design that he used for the front legs of other tetrapods.From an evolutionary perspective, the reason why is obvious. For a creationist, it must be just another of those things God likes to do. Do you have any evidence for this or are you making it up as you go along? No, my point is that they don't have to start with special organs --- they can start with no special organs or "programming" of the brain at all, and build on that. But you could if you wanted to. It would just be God Moving In Mysterious Ways again. And once more God in his infinite wisdom couldn't find any way to achieve his purpose (in this case, baleen) that wasn't consistent with evolutionary biology.Why couldn't it have been the degradation of antlers that triggers the formation of baleen? I know, but you just have to have faith that this way just happened to be the best --- just like all God's ineffably perfect methods turn out to be consistent with evolution. Well, we can in many cases say a priori what would and wouldn't be good. For example, an animal with a lifestyle involving lots of rapid swimming would do well to be streamlined. But to the extent that your statement is true, and there is certainly an element of truth in it, I would point out that evolution has other constraints.Since "with God all things are possible", the only way that creationism would have any predictive power with respect to anatomy is if you did have some clear idea of what would constitute good design.Evolution is constrained by history as well as by natural selection. For example, at least one of the following is true:* Placental mammals have vestigial genes for producing egg-yolk proteins.
* Placental mammals have vestigial genes for producing feathers.Which? If we adopt a creationist view and then follow our natural instincts as to what constitutes good design, then we would think that neither would be true. In that case, creationism has predictive power but would be wrong.If we adopt a creationist view and furnish ourselves with your methods of making excuses, then either, neither, or both could be true. In which case creationism evades being wrong only by virtue of having no predictive power.And if we adopt a evolutionary point of view, we know that only one of them is possible, and the other is completely impossible. And it is only the possible one which occurs. Evolution has predictive power and is correct.And this sort of thing makes the evolutionary view more compelling. The very best that you can do is to protect your hypothesis by rendering it vacuous with respect to what we might or might not observe in nature.

But why put the echolocation option in only some of the animals that need it? That's like putting headlights on certain models of cars but not on others.Evolution suggests that organisms with a "special ability" move into niches where they can exploit that ability. When Henry Ford saw that compact cars with headlights were useful for pizza delivery, he realized that four-door sedans with headlights would also be useful as taxis.A good salesman might try to sell you one car for daytime and one for night but a good designer would provide an option for both.Edited by ringo, : Spellind and minor changes in order word.Edited by ringo, : Added clever subtitle.

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"I'm Rory Bellows, I tell you! And I got a lot of corroborating evidence... over here... by the throttle!"

A real theory is able to tell us what should and should not exist. It would appear that intelligent design is not able to do this. The problem is that a "right mix" is a self fulfilling prophesy, if you will. Species that do not fit in well with a food chain tend to die off leaving the species who do fit in. We can look through the history of life of on Earth and find many extinction events, the most recent being the death of megafauna (e.g. mammoths) after the last ice age. Food chains are always in flux and find stability through the extinction of species or the evolution of species into a new niche. Why would an omnipotent and omniscient deity need to put a tail on a fetus only to have it reabsorbed?As to nature, the process of evolution is blind to the specific steps in embryology. Evolution only selects adaptations of the post-natal organism. It is not surprising at all that evolution would rely on Rube Goldberg-like mechanisms. Evolution doesn't produce the "best" arrangement of pieces. It produces arrangements that are good enough.

So the baleen whales leave out about three steps and eat krill instead of largish fish? Why would they want to do that?

Bluejay,I appreciate the cordial conversation. That makes sense. However - extremely cold temperature also reduce metabolism and chemical efficiency. That's why the tuna's ability to retain some body heat is linked to its ability to maintain fast swimming speeds. Deep water creatures like giant squids have low metabolism and tend to be docile - especially the larger deep sea creatures (which tend to be few).That's where the whale's advanced ability to regulate body temperature gives it an advantage over large predatory fish in cold water situations. As cold water hunters, whales can maintain efficient metabolic activity - allowing them to be fast and efficient. I doubt you have many herring that die of old age in mid swim and float gracefully to the ocean floor to feed the bottom dwellers. I'm sure most herring die from being eaten by upper ocean predators. Even if they did make it to the ocean floor, wouldn't they be consumed pretty quickly by the larger deep sea predators?A dead whale is only able to sustain a large and diverse population of scavenging creatures because of its immense size - most notably its large skeleton - which becomes food for ocean worms. It's the whale's size that provides a feeding ground for decades.And you can't really compare today's whale population to what it was 200 years ago. Whale falls might be few and far between today, but they wouldn't have been too hard to find by the deep sea scavengers before humans started hunting them to extinction.That's one of the concerns with whale extinction is the negative effect it has on photoplankton numbers - and ultimately oxygen production.

Hi, Aaron. Me too: it's been fun. ----- This is complicated by the observation that tuna can actually swim faster than whales, despite having lower body temperature, lower metabolism and thus, lower chemical efficiency, than whales. So, even thought there is a correlation between metabolism and swimming speed, it isn't a direct correlation.----- Sure, I'll grant that whales have a more efficient metabolism, and are apparently quite fast swimmers.But, just like with body heat and body size, I have to ask why speed is important (this must be getting annoying for you: sorry). Most plankton-feeders apparently do just fine without blazing speeds or high metabolisms, so I'm not clear why this is a particularly important trait for the ecological niche of whales.But, even if I grant that warm-bloodedness is an essential part of the whale's purpose (which I'm not actually willing to do yet), why does it just so happen that so many of the other essential parts of the whale's purpose (e.g., mammary glands, a pelvis, live birth, lungs, hair, etc.) also coincide with the essential parts of the purposes of land mammals? It's too much coincidence for me to give any credibility to the idea that these features are required for both types of organisms' purposes.----- I have a hard time believing that the purpose of whales is to feed benthic scavengers. If whales were replaced by manta rays, and a much larger number and diversity of manta rays is required to consume the same amount of plankton, the total biomass falling to the ocean floor would likely be comparable.Sure, the exact makeup of the benthic detritivore community would be different ("manta falls" would be quite different in size and distribution from "whale falls"), but there's no reason to think it would all collapse just because the Designer used manta rays instead of whales.-----You're probably noticing by now that this is an extremely easy debate for me: I can literally keep backing up and asking you, "Why is X so important?" and "Why not Z?" ad infinitum. I realize that it's not reasonable or fair to expect you to be able to produce better than hypothetical or speculative answers to these questions, but that's kind of the nature of the claim that whales are the optimal design for the role they play in the ecosystem.The trouble with the "good design" arguments for Intelligent Design (and with optimality arguments, in general) is that you really just have to assume optimality, because you never really know if a more optimal system is possible. As such, optimality allows too many escape clauses: if it's found that the system is not optimal when currently-known variables are incorporated into the analysis, we can just speculate that some currently-unknown variable accounts for the difference. So, we get stuck in a cycle of incorporating more and more new variables in response to more and more criticisms of the optimality argument, and we'll eventually just have to either give up the optimality argument, or give up the criticism of it and just let it be.A common creationist criticism of science is the use of "Man's limited knowledge and understanding" to form opinions and hypotheses about what we don't know or haven't studied yet. And, it's true that we don't know what new thing we're going to learn in the future that might demonstrate the optimality of the mammalian whale design, but we can't keep making decisions and forming opinions based on what we might find in the future, because we might find any number of outlandish things.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Dr. A Of course modern whales have better underwater hearing than packicetus did - they are also strictly marine creatures and can't hear well out of the water. Packicetus was semi-aquatic. Naturally they didn't have an ear structure completely dedicated to marine life - however it is understood that the thicker involucrum alone would have aided them in sensing sound waves better while underwater. Sure you can explain anything as adaptive - but that isn't an explanation of how it happened. It's all too easy to say that as early whales moved closer to a marine life, there was selective pressure for mutations that assisted in the transition - such as acquiring webbed feet or migration of the nostril to the top of the head - followed by blowhole muscles to completely seal off the nostril when underwater... But the mathematical odds of random mutations producing just the right structural changes in a lstep-wise fashion are enormous. You don't understand why God would do certain things - and I don't understand how random mutations can produce a fraction of the complex adaptations necessary for a transition from land to water.Would you or anyone care to comment on the audio lecture I posted in #71 by Richard Sternberg?Using data from a 2008 study (Europe PMC) he points out the crucial role of population size and generation time in gaining beneficial mutations. Larger animals like whales have smaller population sizes and longer generation times - more similar to humans than to flies.The study notes: ----------------------- Yes I've seen that quote from the 1881 paper. Apparently, we have a better understanding of whale physiology in the last 100+ years. Dr. Struthers was a medical doctor - not a marine biologist. As noted before, the bones are an anchor point for reproductive muscles.

Yes, but it isn't the thickness of the involucrum or any other adaptation to hearing underwater that made the discoverers of Pakicetus exclaim: "By Jingo, this has the ears of a whale!" You seem to be using the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. You're retrospectively calculating the odds of the mutations which actually happened to happen happening. But it seems to me that there are probably lots of ways in which to (for example) not have legs.Also I would point out that if whales still had bitty legs like Dorudon, you wouldn't be saying: "Oh, well, in that case evolution must be true", would you? You do? And all that without going to the trouble of dissecting a whale. Well, given that he dissected a whale and published a paper on whale anatomy, I'll wager that he was more of an expert on whale anatomy then you are. I don't see how you can get more expert in the anatomy of whales than by actually dissecting a frickin' whale.Give the man some credit. This still doesn't help you. Of all the things that an omnipotent God could have chosen to attach reproductive muscles to, he chose what look exactly like vestigial legs. That was the very best plan that omnipotence could come up with.Again, I know why. And you just have to think that it's another of those things.Step back, see the big picture. This isn't just about whale legs. Why is it that time and time and time again, the mighty omniscience of God always comes up with the solution conformal to evolutionary biology?It's as though you asserted that there's no such thing as gravity, things are just pushed around by invisible angels. The question that one would then ask is why the angels always push things around in a way conformal with the theory of gravity. They could push the planets round in triangular orbits. So why do they always do it in the form of an ellipse with the Sun at one focus?Surely the theory that explains the particular observations that we actually make must be held superior to the vacuous hypothesis that would explain any observations whatsoever.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

They are? How enormous? Give me a number.Show your workings......

Hi Coragyps, Or even the odds for the first step.Then list how many steps there are ...... or is it a gradual transition with no discernible before/after junctions that could be labeled a step to get from one to the next?Enjoy.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

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Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click)