All Evolutionists, go see the movie "Expelled"

[Jim Richards]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

take that big leap

This is the sticking point, IMO.

Still, I think this is an interesting article.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by IROC

Actually, we have seen it, but it is in the form of fossils. The evolution of the horse from its ancient ancestor to its current species is pretty well documented.

Here's a quote:

"Here, one could see the fossil species "Eohippus" transformed into an almost totally different-looking (and very familiar) descendent, Equus, through a series of clear intermediates."

Through a series of clear intermediates...

From:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

The problem is, until we see it actually take place, one can argue that they may have evolved in parallell to the other similar species, not neccesarily from said species, or any other number of arguments.

For instance when i was a kid i loved dinosaurs, i knew the names of all the most popular dinosaurs scientists said once lived. But it turns out some of them weren't actual dinosaurs at all, just mis-assembled or mis-identified skeletons of other dinosaurs. Let's face it, even smart people are honestly or unintentionally wrong quite often.

Theory is great, but cold, hard A-ha! proof is something else again.

I would love to see some explanation offered as to how scientists were totally wrong about the sea sponge vs jellyfish issue that just hit the presses recently. That was a gigantic, huge, fundamental mistake that one of the researches even described as "Shocking".

Is that the last "Shock" we're in for when it comes to evolution? I doubt it.

My favorite mind trippin scientific theory is M theory. If you go by that theory, that there are infinite universes so all possibilites exist, then there are universes where God DID create Adam and Eve in his image and there is no such thing as evolution at all. :-P

Freaky.

[Jim Richards]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin's_finches


Sniper, is the problem that you, personally, haven't seen the transition?

[m21sniper]

No one has. Not in a living, breathing specimen. (By "it" i am referring to the transformation from one type of species to another, at the moment it occurs. For instance from reptile to bird.)

I have read many articles about Darwins travels to Galapagos Islands, btw.

[Rearden]

Why do people who know next to nothing about biology spend all this time posting about something as complicated as genetics? Genetics takes a lot of study to even begin to understand.

[kang]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

No one has given an answer.

Offering "There are millions of steps along the way" does NOT change the fact that at some finite point in time for the claim "birds evolved from lizards" to be true, that the first bird must have been born from a lizard's egg. The difference in the parent and offspring might be very, very minute...but it would have to be enough that a scientist would look at the parent and say "Reptile" then look at the offspring and say "Bird."

No, this is not correct. You don’t have a parent that is a reptile and an offspring that is a bird. Evolution does not make this claim. Remember the term intermediaries? What you have is a parent that is 100% reptile and an offspring that is 99% reptile and 1% bird. After a few thousand years, you have a parent that is 98% reptile and 2% bird. Wait another few thousand years, and now you have 97% reptile and 3% bird. Eventually, a very, very long eventually, you get something that is 100% bird. Your statement that “for the claim "birds evolved from lizards" to be true, that the first bird must have been born from a lizard's egg" is not correct and shows your lack of education on how evolution works. Evolution does not make this claim, and you are misrepresenting evolution when you say that.

Let me expand on this to show where common ancestors come from. Remember that parent that was 100% reptile? The one that gave birth to an offspring that was 99% reptile and 1% bird? Well, some other 100% reptile parent in that general time frame gave birth to something that was 99% reptile and 1% something else (besides a bird). Eventually that 1% something else became 100% something else. Now you have a bird, and whatever this something else is, living at the same time, and we now say that these two species have a common ancestor.

[IROC]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

The problem is, until we see it actually take place, one can argue that they may have evolved in parallell to the other similar species, not neccesarily from said species, or any other number of arguments.

OK, so it's obvious you didn't read it.

How do you explain the sequence of horse fossils that we have found? What is your explanation? It's easy to make your above statement, but what do you propose if the scientists have it so wrong? ID? Hardly.

You've never actually seen an electron, so they obviously don't exist, right? Have you ever seen an isotope created by the addition of a neutron to the nucleus of the atom? Do you doubt that isotopes exist?

[Jim Richards]

Impass reached...buh-bye.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by kang

No, this is not correct. You don’t have a parent that is a reptile and an offspring that is a bird. Evolution does not make this claim. Remember the term intermediaries? What you have is a parent that is 100% reptile and an offspring that is 99% reptile and 1% bird. After a few thousand years, you have a parent that is 98% reptile and 2% bird. Wait another few thousand years, and now you have 97% reptile and 3% bird. Eventually, a very, very long eventually, you get something that is 100% bird. Your statement that “for the claim "birds evolved from lizards" to be true, that the first bird must have been born from a lizard's egg" is not correct and shows your lack of education on how evolution works. Evolution does not make this claim, and you are misrepresenting evolution when you say that.

I have as firm a grasp of this as any, however, at some finite point in time the offspring will be 50.0000001% bird, and a scientist examining it would then be forced to look at it and say, "Bird"

That 50.000001% bird would neccesarilly come from the egg of a creature that was 50.0000001% reptile.

There are no hybrid species. Every living species on earth belongs to one parent group or another. Mammal, Insect, Lizard, etc, etc. Your explanation is therefore not sound. Something reptile that lives somewhere may have a lot of bird like characteristics, but it is either a lizard or a bird, and it will be codified as one or the other. There is no "Hybrid" class. Specimens are either categorized as a reptile or a bird, not both.

Observation of that birth and examination of the parent and offspring is the smoking gun that evolution lacks.

No one has ever seen a bird come from a lizards egg.

Since we're all into science today, the concept of space-time as Einstien explained it states that all events must have a time and a place. You can't have one without the other, space and time are inter-related. So there must be a time and a place where the first bird was hatched. In that time and place, it must have come from something other than a birds egg. At one point, a codifiable(sp?) reptile must have laid an egg that gave birth to a codifiable bird. There is simply no way around this.

BTW, if you can kindly show me a lizard that is 49% bird, that would be cool. I'd like one as a pet. It would be a good conversation piece. It would still be a lizard though.

EDIT: Sorry for all the edits and additions to my posts, my hamster wheel is spinning away so i'm adding ideas or expressing thoughts as they come to me. :-P

[IROC]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

No one has ever seen a bird come from a lizards egg.

OK, I give up.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by IROC

OK, I give up.

Shame, i was asking a very simple question, one that dewolf answered with ease.

Originally Posted by dewolf

(Evolution theorizes that) It's happened, we just haven't found it yet. There are some incredible examples only just now coming out of China etc. They claim some of these finds will change the way we view reptiles and mammals.

At some finite point in time an evolved lizard stops being a lizard and would give birth to a bird.

At the moment that occurs a scientist examining the specimen would be able to say "This is a bird, but it's parent is a reptile."

And to date, that has never been observed.

Look, there was a point in history where there were no birds. Then, at some finite point in space-time, the first bird was born. If you tell me birds evolved from reptiles, then there is no way around the simple fact that a reptile must have given birth to a bird.

A species is either a reptile or a bird. Not both. If there was no demarkation point, there would not be a species called birds. They'd all be classified as reptiles.

[kang]

Originally Posted by Nathans_Dad

Well, you seem to have assumed that I fall into the category of people that espouse the ultra-religious 6,000 year old earth, literal Bible, Noah's Ark version. I do not.

You know what happens when you assume...

Intelligent Design simply says that the universe as we can observe it today is too complex to have occurred by chance alone. It says that if life did not come from nothing, then it must have come from something. It does not state what that something is. Many of the "leaders" of the ID movement are Christians so often times they implicate the Christian God. This is similar to abiogenesis proponents using the theory of evolution to further their cause. They use an idea that does not apply to their agenda and morph it into what they want. I think that's dishonest on both parts.

The actual method by which the intelligent designer may have helped along life on earth and to what extent the designer helped is up for debate and a matter of personal belief.

Let’s take this first sentence:

“Intelligent Design simply says that the universe as we can observe it today is too complex to have occurred by chance alone.”

We’re talking subjective opinion here, that’s all. What you are really saying is that “in my humble opinion, the universe seems really complex” therefore a designer was required. You’re also assuming that humans should have the ability to explain everything there is, in infinite detail, at this particular moment in history, to a level that we can prove it did not occur by chance. Just because our feeble brains can’t do this right now doesn’t mean it’s not possible. Heck, there may be things our feeble brains can never understand. It doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation. A monkey’s brain can never explain how bananas grow, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation.

Now this:

“It says that if life did not come from nothing, then it must have come from something.”

This claim comes from the fact that science has not yet linked all the processes required to from life from nothing just yet. A lot of the processes have been described, and many of the links as well, but we do not have the complete chain. This leads you to a “god of the gaps” explanation of how life started. We all know how bankrupt “god of the gaps” is.

There is nothing behind ID besides your desire for there to be an IDer, nothing. There is nothing behind ID besides your belief that a god exists. There is nothing behind ID besides your desire to make god responsible for something in this universe. ID is essentially “god of the gaps.”

I urge you to go back and follow those links to the Dover trial on ID. As a proponent of it, I would think you would want to see what happened when it was put on trial. ID fell flat on its face in the trial. All the points made in favor of ID were made at that trial and you are just re-making them. They all fell flat on their face under cross-examination in the trail, just as your points are falling flat on their face now.

[m21sniper]

Originally Posted by kang

“It says that if life did not come from nothing, then it must have come from something.”

This claim comes from the fact that science has not yet linked all the processes required to from life from nothing just yet.

Or that science EVER will when it comes to the spontatneous formation of organic life.

You are making a gigantic assumption that it ever will.

Originally Posted by kang

A lot of the processes have been described, and many of the links as well, but we do not have the complete chain. This leads you to a “god of the gaps” explanation of how life started. We all know how bankrupt “god of the gaps” is.

Not only do scientists not have the complete chain, but they admit that they were "Shocked" at how wrong they were with some fundamental aspects of it:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,350688,00.html

I submit that the gaps are much larger than some of you are stating. I bet last year you'd have called us idiots for arguing that the sea sponge was not the first animal life on earth. "The fossil record proves it" you'd say.

Bzzzt. Wrong.

Originally Posted by kang

There is nothing behind ID besides your desire for there to be an IDer, nothing. There is nothing behind ID besides your belief that a god exists. There is nothing behind ID besides your desire to make god responsible for something in this universe. ID is essentially “god of the gaps.”

This is such a ignorant, utterly unprovable statement that again, it makes you look like a total jerk.

Neither you or anyone alive is capable of disproving ID as a possibility, so it is utterly assinine to make the statement you just did. We can't see past the big bang, we never will be able to, so we will never know how the universe was created, so we will never know how life or the universe ultimately originated. To me, these questions are inter-related.


When the first AI is born, in a lab, the concept of ID will have been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. What will you say then?

[kang]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

I have as firm a grasp of this as any, however, at some finite point in time the offspring will be 50.0000001% bird, and a scientist examining it would then be forced to look at it and say, "Bird"

That 50.000001% bird would neccesarilly come from the egg of a creature that was 50.0000001% reptile.

There are no hybrid species. Every living species on earth belongs to one parent group or another. Mammal, Insect, Lizard, etc, etc. Your explanation is therefore not sound. Something reptile that lives somewhere may have a lot of bird like characteristics, but it is either a lizard or a bird, and it will be codified as one or the other. There is no "Hybrid" class. Specimens are either categorized as a reptile or a bird, not both.

Observation of that birth and examination of the parent and offspring is the smoking gun that evolution lacks.

No one has ever seen a bird come from a lizards egg.

Since we're all into science today, the concept of space-time as Einstien explained it states that all events must have a time and a place. You can't have one without the other, space and time are inter-related. So there must be a time and a place where the first bird was hatched. In that time and place, it must have come from something other than a birds egg. At one point, a codifiable(sp?) reptile must have laid an egg that gave birth to a codifiable bird. There is simply no way around this.

BTW, if you can kindly show me a lizard that is 49% bird, that would be cool. I'd like one as a pet. It would be a good conversation piece. It would still be a lizard though.

EDIT: Sorry for all the edits and additions to my posts, my hamster wheel is spinning away so i'm adding ideas or expressing thoughts as they come to me. :-P

By “hybrid,” I assume you mean transitional. That’s the term most commonly used.

You say there are no transitional species. That is incorrect. There are a bundles and bundles of them. Do some Google searches on transitional species to see for yourself.

You also say that observation of that birth and examination of the parent and child is the smoking gun that evolution lacks. That is also incorrect. We have that smoking gun. We have, in fact, seen this in the lab. No, we haven’t seen a reptile go to a bird, that takes eons. But we have seen something go from 75% X and 25% Y to 74% X and 26% Y.

We also have nearly complete fossil records of many species going from 100% X and 0% Y to 10% X and 90% Y (you’ll never get rid of X completely. Birds and reptiles share many features. Human and ape DNA is 97% (or something like that number) the same).

You asked “if you can kindly show me a lizard that is 49% bird, that would be cool. I'd like one as a pet.” First of all, if you think there is one alive today that you can have as a pet, then you clearly don’t understand the idea of transitional species, despite your claim that “I have as firm a grasp of this as any.” Here is a list of transitional species between reptiles and birds. As for calling something that is 49% bird a lizard, fine, call it what you want. It is what it is (or, “a rose by any other name…”). Scientists don’t call them birds or lizards, which again shows your lack of education on the matter. The names are things like Sapeornis and Apsaravis Hesperornis and Avimimus. What are those? Birds or lizards? They are all part of the same chain.

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC214.html

[m21sniper]

A species is either a bird or a reptile. Any transitional species is ultimately either one or the other, not both.

At some point a bird ceased being a reptile, and became a bird. If there was no distinction, there would be no such classification as 'bird'. (Yes, i know this is not the scientific term)

It's a simple concept.

Furthermore, according to evolution, all species are transitional. No species is static. The only truly static species are extinct. Human Beings are transitional too.

[Nathans_Dad]

Kang:

I'm not interested in the Dover trial because it deals with ID in an iteration that I don't espouse or agree with. It would be like telling a center left liberal to go check out Move-On.org to get a better idea of his beliefs.

Second, I understand fully that science will continue to evolve and ask and answer more questions. That isn't the point. The universe as we know it today is an extraordinarily complex place where every part has a role. If we are talking about life, again I BELIEVE (and yes it is a belief) that life on earth is too complex and intricate to have come out of a random jumble of events. I'm not afraid of saying I believe this because ID isn't science, it is a philosophy. Abiogenesis as a method of life coming to be is also a philosophy at this point, the science is so thin as to be non-existent.

Lastly, life either came from nothing or if it did not, it by definition came from something. That is a simple logical statement. The absence of something is nothing. Therefore either life came from abiogenesis (nothing) or SOMETHING helped it along. I'm not here to try and tell you what that something might be because it is a matter of personal belief. The logic of the statement holds though, no matter whether you believe it or not.

Oh, and you are doing the same thing sjf did, which is put me into your ID box and assign beliefs to me based on what has been in the press about ID. My thoughts on ID are not aligned with the "ID Community" so denigrating them and extending it to me really does you no good.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

There must be a finite point in time where a lizard laid an egg that sprung forth a critter that was no longer a lizard, but was actually codifiable as a bird. A critter that a scientist would look at and say, "This is a bird."

.

No. There may have been dozens or hundreds of intermediate species (now extinct) of winged reptilian birds. You are looking for a magical moment where reptile transitions to bird. Nature does not require such clear delineations. Intermediate life forms may not conform well to modern taxonomic structure.

This should not be a serious point of contention.

[IROC]

Rick,

While I understand where you are coming from, do you see that your entire premise is a "god of the gaps" argument? You're perfectly welcome to subscribe to that belief, but history has shown that god of the gaps arguments are never correct.

Sorry, too, for assuming that your use of the term ID implied the mainstream definition of the term. Your views are very contrary to what the ID movement is pushing, so it's easy to jump to conclusions when you claim to be an ID proponent.

[kstar]

Rick:

Philosophically, life came from nothing, or from something that came from nothing . . . or came from something else.

I am reminded of the this classic bit:

Recursion

See "Recursion".

(edit: My old mind is failing me - my first statement was meant to refer to infinite regression, not recursion!)

I think science is trying to "solve" what's on the table, today, i.e. abiogenesis.

Maybe as our species matures we might learn what happened before the Big Bang, and even further back in time. Like I've said before, in the context of geologic time, we have just started to begin to understand our world.

Folks are free to draw their own respective conclusions, but science is working with what it has and doing so with a decent track record. I prefer not to jump ahead of what is known and draw a conclusion based on faith, but that's just me. I'm content to let science do the things science is good at. Historically and conclusively, the act of "jumping to conclusions" outside of science has proven to be ineffective.

FWIW, I love talking about "what ifs" and the "creator" topics beyond religion - good way to stretch the mind, but I don't place too much credence in those thoughts.

Best,

Kurt

[the]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

No one has. Not in a living, breathing specimen. (By "it" i am referring to the transformation from one type of species to another, at the moment it occurs. For instance from reptile to bird.)

I have read many articles about Darwins travels to Galapagos Islands, btw.

What about the platypus?

A semi-aquatic, egg laying, venomous MAMMAL!

Who knows what its predessors looked like 50 million years ago, or what they will look like 50 million years from now. Could that not be in the process of evolving from one species to another?



The Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is a semi-aquatic mammal endemic to eastern Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay eggs instead of giving birth to live young. It is the sole living representative of its family (Ornithorhynchidae) and genus (Ornithorhynchus), though a number of related species have been found in the fossil record.

The bizarre appearance of this egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal baffled European naturalists when they first encountered it, with some considering it an elaborate fraud. It is one of the few venomous mammals; the male Platypus has a spur on the hind foot that delivers a venom capable of causing severe pain to humans. The unique features of the Platypus make it an important subject in the study of evolutionary biology and a recognizable and iconic symbol of Australia; it has appeared as a mascot at national events and is featured on the reverse of the Australian 20 cent coin.

Until the early 20th century it was hunted for its fur, but it is now protected throughout its range. Although captive breeding programs have had only limited success and the Platypus is vulnerable to the effects of pollution, it is not under any immediate threat.