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Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
Rather than linking sources that use The Discovery Institute as a reference, and ADVERTISE INTELLIGENT DESIGN, perhaps you could answer the above question.

Quote:evolutionnews.orgEdit
Requires work:

Fifelfoo (talk) 07:28, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
External links report: [1]

Summary of problem
79 external links that may be inappropriately used. Evolution news is an unedited news aggregator/blog.

Quote:http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/ is linked from Creation and evolution in public education
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/12/post_6.html is linked from Creationism

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia...onnews.org

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/the...02669.html is linked from Discovery Institute failed verification: misconstrued source. Fifelfoo (talk) 10:09, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia...onnews.org
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 26, 2014 at 11:18 pm)Godlesspanther Wrote:
(April 26, 2014 at 11:13 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: We got a problem with Tiktaalik. According to this article the tracks of a tetrapod were discovered apx 20 million years BEFORE Tiktaalik. So, if he indeed he were a transitional fossil, he arrived too late to the party. Titaalik is a fish and worthy of a good ol' fish fry. Pass the tartar sauce.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tik...MssRw.dpuf
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tik...30621.html

No we have another problem with your source -- Casey Luskin is another notorious liar and sleaze-bag who can't be trusted.

Soo -- on to your clear and precise definition of a transitional fossil -- what is it?

Even if tracks of another tetrapod were discovered before Tiktaalik, that doesn't make this fossil unimportant.
'The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference between a mermaid and seal. It could not be expressed better.'
-- Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens

"I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the scriptures, but with experiments, demonstrations, and observations".

- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)

"In short, Meyer has shown that his first disastrous book was not a fluke: he is capable of going into any field in which he has no training or research experience and botching it just as badly as he did molecular biology. As I've written before, if you are a complete amateur and don't understand a subject, don't demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect by writing a book about it and proving your ignorance to everyone else! "

- Dr. Donald Prothero
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
This is getting sad, Rev. You cannot link to any scholarly sources? Is it because you can't find any that fit your views?

Casey Luskin has done nothing in these articles but sensationalize a scientific find, and then link to his own articles as proof of his claim. He's a lawyer. And he's good at doing what creationists have to do: fabricate an imaginary controversy within the scientific community where there is none.

You know what, Rev---case in point about your intense dishonesty here--- you claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old, yet you'll link to an article claiming geologic time on the order of millions of years. So you'll eat up anything so long as it supports your claim, even if it belies a previous claim, huh?

(April 26, 2014 at 11:33 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: Rather than linking sources that use The Discovery Institute as a reference, and ADVERTISE INTELLIGENT DESIGN, perhaps you could answer the above question.

Quote:evolutionnews.orgEdit
Requires work:

Fifelfoo (talk) 07:28, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
External links report: [1]

Summary of problem
79 external links that may be inappropriately used. Evolution news is an unedited news aggregator/blog.

Quote:http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/09/ is linked from Creation and evolution in public education
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2005/12/post_6.html is linked from Creationism

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia...onnews.org

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2006/10/the...02669.html is linked from Discovery Institute failed verification: misconstrued source. Fifelfoo (talk) 10:09, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia...onnews.org

The internet is wonderful. You can hold people accountable for their dishonesty immediately.
"There remain four irreducible objections to religious faith: that it wholly misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos, that because of this original error it manages to combine the maximum servility with the maximum of solipsism, that it is both the result and the cause of dangerous sexual repression, and that it is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking." ~Christopher Hitchens, god is not Great

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Reply
RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 26, 2014 at 4:40 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: ... Are you telling me that if God could be proved you would be more than happy to believe in Him? Or, if evidence showed evolution is wrong that you would change your original beliefs?

YES!

Of course! Why do you even have to ask?

Well, I wouldn't be happy if the god turned out to be that nasty thing from the bible and I certainly wouldn't worship it, but if the evidence showed it to be real, I'd have to accept it as real. Same goes for evolution. Rational people go where the evidence leads.

(April 26, 2014 at 5:30 pm)Revelation777 Wrote:
(April 24, 2014 at 3:40 am)Ryantology (╯°◊°)╯︵ ══╬ Wrote: Yeah, it's not God's fault Rev777 was born without half of a normal, functioning brain. It's ours.

So because I believe in Intelligent Design I'm an imbecile? Then President Obama is one too I guess.

I'm pretty certain Obama accepts evolution because he's NOT an imbecile.

(April 26, 2014 at 8:37 pm)SteelCurtain Wrote: My suggestion is that we vote for two or three people for Rev to debate in future threads. Or that we come to an agreement amongst ourselves to only post meaningful, relevant posts, and to not muddy the waters with pot shots and jokes?

Rev, no kidding, no joking, no witty statements: Could you please tell us what you think evolution is?

No way! The pot shots and jokes are the only thing that make this train-wreck of a thread worth reading at all.
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
To Revelation777

Before you start Argument 2, read this at the bottom of the page I'm linking to. A warning from Saint Augustine (4th century) to Christians about the creation:

I'll bold the bits which are relevant to this topic and any others you start in the hope of proving the Bible true.

Quote:"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although 'they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.'" (Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, vol. 1, ch.19.)

In other words, you're never going to convert anyone here by providing rubbish arguments for why God exists.

Back to Francis Collins . Francis Collins and Karl Giberson Talk about Evolution and the Church, Part 2

Here he explains how the study of DNA backs up evolution.

I couldn't find your answer to my question about what you believe the purpose of the Bible to be. Here's an article on a Christian website which shows what I was hoping you'd think about. I don't believe that God spoke to Moses myself but that's not the point here.

Why aren't Dinosaurs Mentioned in the Biblical Creation Account?

Quote:The first five books of the Bible, including Genesis, were written by Moses. Since nobody except God was present at the creation, the Genesis creation account was given to Moses by God. If one is attempting to second guess the Author of Genesis, one must take these facts into account.

Purpose of the creation account

God was not interested in giving Moses a scientific treatise on the creation of the world. The Bible indicates that God's communication to Moses was centered on the relationship between God and man and the rules by which God wanted man to live. Therefore, the creation account mirrors the content of the rest of the Bible, which centers on mankind and his relationship to God. The question, "Why would God leave out a description of the dinosaurs?" is a bad one to begin with. A more appropriate question should be "What would God want to relate to man about His description of the creation?"

Problems with including dinosaurs

There are some technical problems that God would have faced in including dinosaurs in the creation account. There is no word for "dinosaur" in the Hebrew language. Now, God could have invented a Hebrew word for dinosaur and explained what those animals were like and how they had died out. However, this is a one page description of the creation of the world and life in it. Trying to explain about an extinct group of creatures would have taken a lot of space and distracted from the rest of the creation account.

Obviously, there were a lot more creatures than just dinosaurs that were left out of the creation account. If God were to have included every creature in the creation account (well over one billion), such inclusion would have completely lost the spiritual significance of the passage (and would be much longer than the Bible itself).
The purpose of the Genesis creation account is to give an account of how God created mankind and provided for him. The account, like the entire Bible, centers on God and His miraculous workings for mankind. Therefore, in the creation account, we find the supernatural creation of the universe by God, indicating that the universe wasn't always here, but created by God for man. Next, it talks about the creation of plants, which are important to humans, since we eat them, and also important to the animals that we rely upon, which also eat them. Then, it talks about the sea creatures and birds, which we also eat. It next talks about the beasts of the field, which we eat and use for labor. Then it talks about the creation of mankind and how he is to have dominion and manage the earth and its creatures.

The second chapter of Genesis gives a spiritual account of the creation of mankind and man's relationship to God. The entire account is centered on God and man. Therefore, one would expect the creation account to describe events that are important to mankind.

The idea that evolution is the way God did it still means that God created everything.

Moses is supposed to died in 1405 BC when he was 120 years old. If God had tried to give him full scientific details about the universe, poor Moses would have been dead of old age before he'd finished writing everything down. (Don't forget that God would know everything, not just what humans have discovered so far.) Yes, being God, he could have extended Moses's life for the purpose but this would have meant the Israelites being stuck in the desert for a lot longer than 40 years.
Badger Badger Badger Badger Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 24, 2014 at 11:39 pm)Revelation777 Wrote:
(April 23, 2014 at 9:49 am)Stimbo Wrote: Who cares? What matters, all that matters, is can you demonstrate any of it?

I can if we had a time machine...

So your beliefs and related assertions depend in their entirety on not being falsifiable? Are you incapable of seeing how insanely irrational that is?

(April 24, 2014 at 11:39 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: But my take is that no, inert matter can't produce life

You claimed that "God" can produce life from inert matter. Please clarify: is that the only mechanism to achieve that?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
Special Pleading in 5....4....3....2...1....
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 26, 2014 at 11:13 pm)Revelation777 Wrote:
(April 26, 2014 at 8:42 pm)ThePaleolithicFreethinker Wrote:


We got a problem with Tiktaalik. According to this article the tracks of a tetrapod were discovered apx 20 million years BEFORE Tiktaalik. So, if he indeed he were a transitional fossil, he arrived too late to the party. Titaalik is a fish and worthy of a good ol' fish fry. Pass the tartar sauce.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tik...MssRw.dpuf
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/01/tik...30621.html

This is a common misunderstanding of what a transitional fossil is. A transitional fossil specimen doesn't have to be a direct line descendent involved in a species or class transition. A transitional fossil may be that of a much later specimen than the actual specimens which formed the original transition. Showing that a transitional fossil is later than the actual transition doesn't invalidate the specimen as a transitional fossil. The fossil demonstrates that there were living examples that possessed the right set of characteristics to be intermediate, not that this specific specimen or that one was indeed a key intermediate. Transitional fossils show that intermediates existed. Not that the specific fossil was in a direct line between two different classes. Evolution predicts intermediate examples, not that the specific intermediate examples found must be direct ancestral bridges between the two lineages. A transitional fossil shows that intermediates of the right type existed, not that the intermediate was a direct ancestor of the later class. I as a human am an intermediate between two different lineages of ape. My fossil, if found, would be a transitional fossil. This is because I possess the right characteristics after the two lineages of ape split off from each other, not because I am a direct link between the two. Evolution only needs to show that such animals could and did exist, not that you have one of the actual first ones in the transition.

(This is basically the creationist canard about "If humans descended from apes, why are there still apes?" It's a misunderstanding of what evolution says and what an intermediate, transitional fossil is. That there were tetrapod tracks that predate the time of Tiktaalik doesn't invalidate Tiktaalik as a transitional specimen. Your creationist source either didn't understand what he was talking about, or chose to play into a common misunderstanding of evolution to make cheap [and invalid] points.)

ENV Wrote:
Shubin Wrote:What evolution enables us to do is to make specific predictions about what we should find in the fossil record. The prediction in this case is clear-cut. That is, if we go to rocks of the right age, and the rocks of the right type, we should find transitions between two great forms of life, between fish and amphibian. ...What we see when we look at the fossil record, at rocks of just the right age, is a creature like Tiktaalik.
...Shubin's arguments that these fossils confirm a "specific prediction" of evolution appear to have been wrong. (But don't expect a correction from PBS anytime soon.)
No, Shubin was right. Your creationist authors have misrepresented what evolutionary science says, likely to take advantage of your ignorance about what the term "transitional fossil" means to actual scientists. It doesn't mean what they are implying that it means. You won't expect a retraction because they weren't wrong.

"[A]s a Nature news story put it, these tetrapod tracks are "more than 18 million years before tetrapods were thought to have evolved."" ~ ENV

It does tell us things we didn't know about the transition before. It does not invalidate Tiktaalik as a transitional fossil.

[Image: extraordinarywoo-sig.jpg]
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 25, 2014 at 10:58 pm)Revelation777 Wrote:
(April 23, 2014 at 9:52 am)Stimbo Wrote: And what precisely are their findings? They have a museum with 100% fake contents and a land-locked boat amusement park that's sinking faster than it would have done at sea.

Dear Stimbo,
Then don't go and visit. Simple.

Not so simple. Ken Ham and his ilk are spending millions of dollars of other people's money to convince entire generations of inpressionable people - including schoolchildren - that humans rode around on the the backs of tame dinosaurs. They are pushing a political agenda. How can you not see this as a crime against humanity? (Largely rhetorical: unfortunately, we all know the answer to that one.)

And my other question goes evaded: What precisely are AiG's findings?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: Argument #1: Transitional Fossils
(April 25, 2014 at 10:58 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: Do you know that most universities if a professor even hints that they believe in creationism that they will be brow beaten to the point where they will be forced to resign. Watch Ben Stein's movie Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed.

Ok, now I know you're a poe.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist.  This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair.  Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second.  That means there's a situation vacant.'
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