The Problem with Christians

[Esquilax]

No? Then what is this right here?

How do we know that the existence of Samotherium represents a species that evolved into the giraffe and wasn't simply a separate animal?

So, to be clear before we begin: when science can be spun to agree with the bible, you'll accept it, but when science doesn't agree with what you want to be true, you'll find any excuse possible to dismiss it without evidence? Because you didn't have this deep suspicion of the findings of scientists when you were braying about biblical prophecy, but now that someone's proved you wrong on something you're willing to dismiss those findings based on nothing at all. How convenient.

That said, let's play.

So, first of all, it's an established fact that morphology tends to reflect genetics; that is, that physiological similarities correlate to genetic similarities, indicating that two morphologically similar animals are related. That's just an objective fact, it's so demonstrable that to reject it is to reject a cornerstone foundation of modern biology- not that that's ever stopped you- and would be an incredible double standard for you to lean so heavily on genetics to derive your long odds for strawman-evolution, yet to dismiss genetics when the findings would suggest something you don't like. So what we have here is a well established biological principle that, while not universal when thinking in simplistic, superficial similarities alone- something I've no doubt you'll race to attempt once you've read this in an effort to give yourself wriggle room to dismiss the science anyway, to which I'll remind you we're talking about morphology and not the short eyeballing of an untrained ideologue- establishes a good evidential basis for concluding that Samotherium is related to the modern Giraffe.

However, I can do better than that, because the Giraffe actually has a modern day relative in the Okapi, a short-necked Giraffid animal native to Central Africa. So what we have now are two related animals on branching evolutionary paths, which gives us a baseline idea of what a long-necked Giraffid's bone structure looks like, and what a short-necked Giraffid's bone structure looks like. When we examine Samotherium's bone structure, there's too many similarities there to simply dismiss it as a coincidence: not only is the neck length a perfect intermediary between the two, not only are the bones identical to both Giraffe and Okapi bones near the top of the neck while being a perfect blend of the two toward the bottom where the long-necked evolution would have happened, but even the angle of the way the bones are set in the neck perfectly match up with Giraffes and Okapis. The level of similarity is too perfect, and since we know that morphology at this resolution reflects genetic similarities consistent with related organisms, the conclusion rationally is that Samotherium represents a common ancestor of (though not the direct ancestor to) Giraffes and Okapis, and an intermediate species between short-necked and long-necked Giraffids.

Now, you can dismiss that if you want. You can take all these wonderful morphological similarities and reflections and you can say "nuh uh," you can chalk them all up to a series of freak coincidences (I thought you didn't like long odds?) and I can't stop you. But in doing so you'll be rejecting science, you'll be rejecting over a hundred years of observations and genetic research, and you'll be relinquishing any claim you might have had to having a rational position in this discussion. If you're willing to just throw away the findings of those actually trained in this area solely to keep your presupposition intact, with no evidence to support that at all, then I don't know what to say to you. Unlike you, though, I actually read the report on Samotherium before I came to my conclusion, so of the two of us, at least I have an informed basis with which to come to my conclusion. If you're happy not having that and just continuing to believe what you want to believe, heedless of evidence, then why didn't you just say that at the outset, instead of bullshitting us with all these pretensions of intellectual rigor, if you're going to abandon them at the first hurdle you can't simply bluster your way past?