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Science Disproves Evolution

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Pahu
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#521 Post by Pahu » May 17th, 2017, 3:33 pm

Latest post of the previous page:

[quote author=Pahu link=topic=49433.msg1695940#msg1695940 date=1495031530]
Fossil Gaps 1

If evolution happened, the fossil record should show continuous and gradual changes from the bottom to the top layers. Actually, many gaps or discontinuities appear throughout the fossil record (a).

a. “But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them imbedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?” Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 163.

“...the number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed [must] truly be enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory [of evolution].”  Ibid., p. 323.

Darwin then explained that he thought that these gaps existed because of the “imperfection of the geologic record.” Early Darwinians expected the gaps would be filled as fossil exploration continued. Most paleontologists now agree that this expectation has not been fulfilled.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
[/quote]
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Dave B
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#522 Post by Dave B » May 17th, 2017, 9:11 pm

Still cutting, pasting and propagating the same old same old without managing to enter debate I see, Pahu.

Nice to know some things stay the same when you take a spell away. But, ultimately, boring.
"Look forward; yesterday was a lesson, if you did not learn from it you wasted it."
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Pahu
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#523 Post by Pahu » May 24th, 2017, 8:38 pm

Fossil Gaps 2

The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has one of the largest collections of fossils in the world. Consequently, its former dean, Dr. David Raup, was highly qualified to discuss the absence of transitions in the fossil record:

“Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information—what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated in the last 120 years and we still have a record which does show change but one that can hardly be looked upon as the most reasonable consequence of natural selection.” David M. Raup, “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1, January 1979, p. 25.

“Surely the lack of gradualism—the lack of intermediates—is a major problem.” Dr. David Raup, as taken from page 16 of an approved and verified transcript of a taped interview conducted by Luther D. Sunderland on 27 July 1979.

“In fact, the fossil record does not convincingly document a single transition from one species to another.” Stanley, p. 95.

“But fossil species remain unchanged throughout most of their history and the record fails to contain a single example of a significant transition.” David S. Woodruff, “Evolution: The Paleobiological View,” Science, Vol. 208, 16 May 1980, p. 716.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Alan H
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#524 Post by Alan H » May 24th, 2017, 9:58 pm

Uh oh! Non sequitur alert...
Alan Henness

There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:

1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#525 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » May 25th, 2017, 7:50 pm

Another snippet from Brown's stop-frame Gish Gallop, I see.

This has been dealt with years ago:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.

Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.
If you prefer something a bit more jazzy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwBWvVLlC2g
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Pahu
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#526 Post by Pahu » May 25th, 2017, 8:24 pm

Lord Muck oGentry wrote:Another snippet from Brown's stop-frame Gish Gallop, I see.

This has been dealt with years ago:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html
There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.
The problem here is the use of the word "transitional", the adjectival form of "transition"

transition: Passage from one form, state, style, or place to another.
Transitional fossil definition on the free online dictionary

The use of the word "transitional" implies an ancestor / descendant relationship. If evolutionists do not mean it that way, then it is they that are redefining "transitional". Certainly when the average person hears the term "transitional form" they think ancestor / descendant, not simply a mosaic of different types. It also implies individual body parts in transition from one to the other. It seems that evolutionists are playing word games that make evolution theory seem stronger than it really is.
Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.
However these gaps tend to show up in patterns predicted by a creation model.

http://creationwiki.org/Transitional_fo ... k.Origins)
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#527 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » May 25th, 2017, 9:14 pm

Pahu wrote: The use of the word "transitional" implies an ancestor / descendant relationship. If evolutionists do not mean it that way, then it is they that are redefining "transitional". Certainly when the average person hears the term "transitional form" they think ancestor / descendant, not simply a mosaic of different types. It also implies individual body parts in transition from one to the other. It seems that evolutionists are playing word games that make evolution theory seem stronger than it really is.
Sorry, Pahu, but that really won't do. You are creating another strawman here. If you want to know the meaning of any technical term, you must not assume that you can infer it from some non-technical usage. If you happen to have a scientific or medical or legal or indeed any other technical dictionary on your bookshelves, and you take the trouble, you can check this for yourself. You will find everyday terms that have been pressed into technical service.
However these gaps tend to show up in patterns predicted by a creation model.
Well, if you can find any peer-reviewed scientific papers explaining the model, deriving the patterns and setting out the corroboration obtained in scientific testing, you will be doing better than you have done so far. And no: creationist vanity-publishing doesn't count.
What we can't say, we can't say and we can't whistle it either. — Frank Ramsey

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#528 Post by Pahu » June 8th, 2017, 4:11 pm

Fossil Gaps 3

Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum (Natural History), was asked by Luther D. Sunderland why no evolutionary transitions were included in Dr. Patterson’s recent book, Evolution. In a personal letter, Patterson said:

“I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be asked to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader?...Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least “show a photo of the fossil from which each type organism was derived.” I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” Copy of letter, dated 10 April 1979, from Patterson to Sunderland.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#529 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » June 8th, 2017, 6:12 pm

Pahu wrote:
Fossil Gaps 3

Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum (Natural History), was asked by Luther D. Sunderland why no evolutionary transitions were included in Dr. Patterson’s recent book, Evolution. In a personal letter, Patterson said:

[...] I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” [/color] Copy of letter, dated 10 April 1979, from Patterson to Sunderland.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
This canard must be getting a bit gamey by now. The matter was settled twenty-four years ago by Lionel Theunissen, who got his information from Patterson himself:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

Patterson to Theunissen:
"I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false..."
You will note that the creationist Wieland, having been caught quote-mining and creating strawmen, takes much the same line as you take upthread: the meaning of scientific terms is to be settled not by scientists but by creationists. Such methods of argument ( to borrow a phrase from Betrand Russell ) have certain advantages: they are those of theft over honest toil.
What we can't say, we can't say and we can't whistle it either. — Frank Ramsey

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#530 Post by Pahu » June 8th, 2017, 6:31 pm

Lord Muck oGentry wrote:
Pahu wrote:
Fossil Gaps 3

Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum (Natural History), was asked by Luther D. Sunderland why no evolutionary transitions were included in Dr. Patterson’s recent book, Evolution. In a personal letter, Patterson said:

[...] I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” [/color] Copy of letter, dated 10 April 1979, from Patterson to Sunderland.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
This canard must be getting a bit gamey by now. The matter was settled twenty-four years ago by Lionel Theunissen, who got his information from Patterson himself:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

Patterson to Theunissen:
"I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false..."
You will note that the creationist Wieland, having been caught quote-mining and creating strawmen, takes much the same line as you take upthread: the meaning of scientific terms is to be settled not by scientists but by creationists. Such methods of argument ( to borrow a phrase from Betrand Russell ) have certain advantages: they are those of theft over honest toil.
How does any of that change Patterson's letter?
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#531 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » June 8th, 2017, 7:16 pm

It doesn't. What it does is make plain the mischievous misreading by creationists.
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#532 Post by Pahu » June 8th, 2017, 7:38 pm

Lord Muck oGentry wrote:It doesn't. What it does is make plain the mischievous misreading by creationists.
What misreading?
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#533 Post by Tetenterre » June 9th, 2017, 3:26 pm

It is also the case that gaps in the fossil record mean diddly squat (to anyone who understands what the fossil record is and how it is formed, anyway). However, if we found a fossilised black-and-white telly in the trilobite layer, we'd really be in the shite.
Steve

Quantum Theory: The branch of science with which people who know absolutely sod all about quantum theory can explain anything.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#534 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » June 10th, 2017, 12:44 am

Pahu wrote:
Lord Muck oGentry wrote:It doesn't. What it does is make plain the mischievous misreading by creationists.
What misreading?
The misreading about which we currently seem to be disagreeing.

Keep going. You haven't C&P'd for a couple of posts, so there is hope yet.
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#535 Post by animist » June 10th, 2017, 1:18 pm

Pahu, how about reading and rereading this extract from the Lionel Theunissen piece quoted by Lord M, and then making a proper response:



Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#536 Post by Pahu » June 10th, 2017, 2:09 pm

animist wrote:Pahu, how about reading and rereading this extract from the Lionel Theunissen piece quoted by Lord M, and then making a proper response:



Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups.


False! He clearly admitted he knew of no transitions:

Dr. Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the British Museum (Natural History), was asked by Luther D. Sunderland why no evolutionary transitions were shown in Dr. Patterson’s recent book, Evolution. In a personal letter, Patterson said:

"I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transitions in my book. If I knew of any, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them. You suggest that an artist should be asked to visualise such transformations, but where would he get the information from? I could not, honestly, provide it, and if I were to leave it to artistic licence, would that not mislead the reader? ... Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils. As a palaeontologist myself, I am much occupied with the philosophical problems of identifying ancestral forms in the fossil record. You say that I should at least 'show a photo of the fossil from which each type organism was derived.' I will lay it on the line—there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument." Copy of letter, dated 10 April 1979, from Patterson to Sunderland.

Here is some information about Archaeopteryx you may find interesting:


[center]As a Transitional Form Archaeopteryx Won't Fly[/center][/color]

There is a growing consensus that Archaeopteryx, a bird whose fossils have been found in the Solnhofen Plattenkalk of Franconia (West Germany), was indeed capable of flight. The claim, however, that Archaeopteryx was a transitional form between reptiles and birds simply won't fly.

Recent fossil discoveries and recent research on Archaeopteryx argue strongly against the suggestion that it is transitional between reptiles and birds. The rocks in which fossils of Archaeopteryx have been found are designated Upper Jurassic, and thus are dated at about 150 million years on the standard evolutionary geological time scale. Ninety years ago, with reference to Archaeopteryx and to two other ancient birds, Ichthyornis and Hesperornis, Beddard declared, "So emphatically were all these creatures birds that the actual origin of Aves is barely hinted at in the structure of these remarkable remains."1 During the years since publication of Beddard's book, no better candidate as an intermediate between reptiles and birds has appeared, and so, in the eyes of its beholders, Archaeopteryx has become more and more reptile-like until it is now fashionable to declare that Archaeopteryx was hardly more than a feathered reptile. In 90 years, Archaeopteryx has thus evolved from a creature so emphatically bird-like its reptilian ancestry was barely hinted at into a creature some evolutionists declare to be nothing more than a reptile with feathers!

What is the true status of Archaeopteryx? Was it a transitional form between reptiles and birds? First, the general nature of the evidence: The sudden appearance, fully formed, of all the complex invertebrates (snails, clams, jellyfish, sponges, worms, sea urchins, brachiopods, trilobites, etc.) without a trace of ancestors, and the sudden appearance, fully formed, of every major kind of fish (supposedly the first vertebrates) without a trace of ancestors, proves beyond reasonable doubt that evolution has not occurred. Quarrels about disputable cases such as Archaeopteryx are really pointless. Furthermore, there are three other basically different types of flying creatures—flying insects, flying reptiles (now extinct), and flying mammals (bats). It would be strange, indeed, even incomprehensible, that millions of years of evolution of these three basically different types of flying creatures, each involving the remarkable transition of a land animal into a flying animal, would have failed to produce large numbers of transitional forms. If all of that evolution has occurred, our museums should contain scores, if not hundreds or thousands, of fossils of intermediate forms in each case. However, not a trace of an ancestor or transitional form has ever been found for any of these creatures!

Archaeopteryx had an impressive array of features that immediately identify it as a bird, whatever else may be said about it. It had perching feet. Several of its fossils bear the impression of feathers. These feathers were identical to those of modern birds in every respect. The primary feathers of non-flying birds are distinctly different from those of flying birds. Archaeopteryx had the feathers of flying birds,2 had the basic pattern and proportions of the avian wing, and an especially robust furcula (wishbone). Furthermore, there was nothing in the anatomy of Archaeopteryx that would have prevented it being a powered flyer.3 No doubt Archaeopteryx was a feathered creature that flew. It was a bird!

It has been asserted that Archaeopteryx shares 21 specialized characters with coelurosaurian dinosaurs.4 Research on various anatomical features of Archaeopteryx in the last ten years or so, however, has shown, in every case, that the characteristic in question is bird-like, not reptile-like. When the cranium of the London specimen was removed from the limestone and studied, it was shown to be bird-like, not reptile-like.5 Benton has stated that "details of the brain case and associated bones at the back of the skull seem to suggest that Archaeopteryx is not the ancestral bird, but an offshoot from the early avian stem."6 In this same paper, Benton states that the quadrate (the bone in the jaw that articulates with the squamosal of the skull) in Archaeopteryx was singleheaded as in reptiles. Using a newly devised technique, computed tomography, Haubitz, et al, established that the quadrate of the Eichstatt specimen of Archaepoteryx was double-headed and thus similar to the condition of modern birds,7 rather than single-headed, as stated by Benton.

L.D. Martin and co-workers have established that neither the teeth nor the ankle of Archaeopteryx could have been derived from theropod dinosaurs—the teeth being those typical of other (presumably later) toothed birds, and the ankle bones showing no homology with those of dinosaurs.8 John Ostrom, a strong advocate of a dinosaurian ancestry for birds, had claimed that the pubis of Archaeopteryx pointed downward—an intermediate position between that of coelurosaurian dinosaurs, which points forward, and that of birds, which points backward. A.D. Walker, in more recent studies, asserts that Ostrom's interpretation is wrong, and that the pubis of Archaeopteryx was oriented in a bird-like position.9 Further, Tarsitano and Hecht criticize various aspects of Ostrom's hypothesis of a dinosaurian origin of birds, arguing that Ostrom had misinterpreted the homologies of the limbs of Archaeopteryx and theropod dinosaurs.10

A.D. Walker has presented an analysis of the ear region of Archaeopteryx that shows, contrary to previous studies, that this region is very similar to the otic region of modern birds.11 J.R. Hinchliffe, utilizing modern isotopic techniques on chick embryos, claims to have established that the "hand" of birds consists of digits II, III and IV, while the digits of the "hand" of theropod dinosaurs consist of digits I, II, and III.

Scales are flat horny plates; feathers are very complex in structure, consisting of a central shaft from which radiate barbs and barbules. Barbules are equipped with tiny hooks which lock onto the barbs and bind the feather surface into a flat, strong, flexible vane. Feathers and scales arise from different layers of the skin. Furthermore, the development of a feather is extremely complex, and fundamentally different from that of a scale. Feathers, as do hairs, but unlike scales, develop from follicles. A hair, however, is a much simpler structure than a feather. The developing feather is protected by a horny sheath, and forms around a bloody, conical, inductive dermal core. Not only is the developing feather sandwiched between the sheath and dermal core, it is complex in structure. Development of the cells that will become the mature feather involves complex processes. Cells migrate and split apart in highly specific patterns to form the complex arrangement of barbs and barbules.12

Philip Regal attempts to imagine how feathers may have developed from scales.13 Regal presents a series of hypothetical events whereby the elongation of body scales on reptiles, as an adaptive response to excessive solar heat, eventually produced feathers. What we are left to believe is that a series of genetic mistakes, or mutations, just happened somehow to result in a sequence of incredible events that not only converted a simple horny plate into the tremendously complex and marvelously engineered structure of a feather, but completely reorganized the simple method of development of a scale into the highly complex process necessary to produce a feather. What an incredible faith in the blind forces of evolution! Regal's paper simply adds another "Just-so" story to evolutionary scenarios, completely devoid of empirical support.

Recent events cast even further doubt on Archaeopteryx as a transitional form. If the claims of Sankar Chatterjee prove to be valid, then certainly Archaeopteryx could not be the ancestral bird, and dinosaurs could not be ancestral to birds. Chatterjee and his co-workers at Texas Tech University claim to have found two crow-sized fossils of a bird near Post, Texas, in rocks supposedly 225 million years old—thus allegedly 75 million years older than Archaeopteryx and as old as the first dinosaurs. Totally contrary to what evolutionists would expect for such a fossil bird, however, Chatterjee claims that his bird is even more bird-like than Archaeopteryx! In contrast to Archaeopteryx, this bird had a keel-like breastbone and hollow bones. In most other respects, it was similar to Archaeopteryx.14 If evolutionary assumptions are correct, this bird should have been much more reptile-like than Archaeopteryx. In fact, he shouldn't even exist!

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.

The conclusion which appears to be most reasonable is that Archaeopteryx was a true bird, remarkably isolated from any alleged reptilian progenitor and other birds. A discussion of other features of Archaeopteryx, such as its teeth and clawed wings, may be found in Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record.18

http://www.icr.org/articles/print/321
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#537 Post by Pahu » June 14th, 2017, 4:59 pm

Fossil Gaps 4

“But the curious thing is that there is a consistency about the fossil gaps: the fossils go missing in all the important places. When you look for links between major groups of animals, they simply aren’t there; at least, not in enough numbers to put their status beyond doubt. Either they don’t exist at all, or they are so rare that endless argument goes on about whether a particular fossil is, or isn’t, or might be, transitional between this group or that.” Hitching, p. 19. [emphasis in original]

“There is no more conclusive refutation of Darwinism than that furnished by palaeontology. Simple probability indicates that fossil hoards can only be test samples. Each sample, then, should represent a different stage of evolution, and there ought to be merely ‘transitional’ types, no definition and no species. Instead of this we find perfectly stable and unaltered forms persevering through long ages, forms that have not developed themselves on the fitness principle, but appear suddenly and at once in their definitive shape; that do not thereafter evolve towards better adaptation, but become rarer and finally disappear, while quite different forms crop up again. What unfolds itself, in ever-increasing richness of form, is the great classes and kinds of living beings which exist aboriginally and exist still, without transition types, in the grouping of today.” [emphasis in original] Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol. 2 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 32.

[From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
Last edited by Alan H on June 14th, 2017, 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Ho hum.
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#538 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » June 17th, 2017, 1:07 am

Pahu wrote:
animist wrote:Pahu, how about reading and rereading this extract from the Lionel Theunissen piece quoted by Lord M, and then making a proper response:



Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups.


False! He clearly admitted he knew of no transitions:
Pahu, you have not replied to animist's point.

Let's spell this out. Not for your sake, for you are probably beyond hope, but for the more impressionable lurkers.

First: it makes no sense to talk of Patterson's admitting what he had said all along. Most of us think that bears spurn indoor plumbing, but only those who denied it in the first place can later admit it.

Second: you make a tyro error in the passage you quote.
... Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils.
.

Patterson refers specifically and with approval to Gould's views, which can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part3.html

You may ( although you probably won't) want to have a look at this:
Yet once again, this is Gould discussing "Punctuated Equilibria." It is best, perhaps, simply to allow Gould to defend himself, as he did in his article "Evolution as Fact and Theory", originally published in 1981:

[T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples: therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices.

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

Gould, in this article and many more over the next twenty years, consistently and extensively explained his position and the evidence for evolution, including transitional forms found in the fossil record. The constant abuse of the body of Gould's life's work in the face of this is not merely dishonest, it is despicable.
The bolding is mine.
What we can't say, we can't say and we can't whistle it either. — Frank Ramsey

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Pahu
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#539 Post by Pahu » June 17th, 2017, 2:27 pm

Lord Muck oGentry wrote:
Pahu wrote:
animist wrote:Pahu, how about reading and rereading this extract from the Lionel Theunissen piece quoted by Lord M, and then making a proper response:



Patterson goes on to acknowledge that there are gaps in the fossil record, but points out that this is possibly due to the limitations of what fossils can tell us. He finishes the paragraph with:

". . .Fossils may tell us many things, but one thing they can never disclose is whether they were ancestors of anything else."

It is actually this statement which is the key to interpreting the Sunderland quote correctly; it is not possible to say for certain whether a fossil is in the direct ancestral line of a species group. Archaeopteryx, for example, is not necessarily directly ancestral to birds. It may have been a species on a side-branch. However, that in no way disqualifies it as a transitional form, or as evidence for evolution. Evolution predicts that such fossils will exist, and if there was no link between reptiles and birds then Archaeopteryx would not exist, whether it is directly ancestral or not. What Patterson was saying to Sunderland was that, of the transitional forms that are known, he could not make a watertight argument for any being directly ancestral to living species groups.


False! He clearly admitted he knew of no transitions:
Pahu, you have not replied to animist's point.

Let's spell this out. Not for your sake, for you are probably beyond hope, but for the more impressionable lurkers.

First: it makes no sense to talk of Patterson's admitting what he had said all along. Most of us think that bears spurn indoor plumbing, but only those who denied it in the first place can later admit it.

Second: you make a tyro error in the passage you quote.
... Yet Gould and the American Museum people are hard to contradict when they say that there are no transitional fossils.
.

Patterson refers specifically and with approval to Gould's views, which can be found here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part3.html

You may ( although you probably won't) want to have a look at this:
Yet once again, this is Gould discussing "Punctuated Equilibria." It is best, perhaps, simply to allow Gould to defend himself, as he did in his article "Evolution as Fact and Theory", originally published in 1981:

[T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples: therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices.

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond . . .

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

Gould, in this article and many more over the next twenty years, consistently and extensively explained his position and the evidence for evolution, including transitional forms found in the fossil record. The constant abuse of the body of Gould's life's work in the face of this is not merely dishonest, it is despicable.
The bolding is mine.
It is interesting that Gould contradicts himself. For example:

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters,” p. 23.

“The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?” Paleobiology, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1980, p. 127.

In a published interview, Dr. Niles Eldredge, an invertebrate paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, stated:

“But the smooth transition from one form of life to another which is implied in the theory is ... not borne out by the facts. The search for “missing links” between various living creatures, like humans and apes, is probably fruitless ... because they probably never existed as distinct transitional types ... But no one has yet found any evidence of such transitional creatures. This oddity has been attributed to gaps in the fossil record which gradualists expected to fill when rock strata of the proper age had been found. In the last decade, however, geologists have found rock layers of all divisions of the last 500 million years and no transitional forms were contained in them. If it is not the fossil record which is incomplete then it must be the theory.” “Missing, Believed Nonexistent,” Manchester Guardian (The Washington Post Weekly), Vol. 119, 26 November 1978, p. 1.

Gould and Eldredge claimed transitional fossils are missing because rapid evolutionary jumps (which they called punctuated equilibria) occurred over these gaps. They did not explain how this could happen.

Many geneticists are shocked by the proposal of Gould and Eldredge. Why would they propose something so contradictory to genetics? Gould and Eldredge were forced to say that evolution must proceed in jumps. Never explained, in genetic and mathematical terms, is how such large jumps could occur. To some, this desperation is justified.

Gould admitted that “The eyes of early trilobites, for example, have never been exceeded for complexity or acuity by later arthropods. ... I regard the failure to find a clear ‘vector of progress’ in life’s history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record.” [Stephen Jay Gould, “The Ediacaran Experiment,” Natural History, Vol. 93, February 1984, pp. 22–23.]

“Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing?” Stephen Jay Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters,” p. 23.

“The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils. ... We fancy ourselves as the only true students of life’s history, yet to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” Stephen Jay Gould, “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, Vol. 86, May 1977, p. 14.

“New species almost always appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no intermediate links to ancestors in older rocks of the same region.” Ibid., p. 12.

“The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time ... The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash.” Stephen Jay Gould, “An Asteroid to Die For,” Discover, October 1989, p. 65.

“A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time [Cambrian] (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means [there are] more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils [of animal life], than exist now.

“Stephen Jay Gould has referred to this as the reverse cone of diversity. The theory of evolution implies that things get more complex and get more and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out to be reversed—we have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and less now.” Chien, p. 2.

“It was puzzling for a while because they [evolutionary paleontologists] refused to see that in the beginning there could be more complexity than we have now. What they are seeing are phyla that do not exist now—that’s more than 50 phyla compared to the 38 we have now.” Ibid., p. 3.

“I well remember how the synthetic theory beguiled me with its unifying power when I was a graduate student in the mid-1960's. Since then I have been watching it slowly unravel as a universal description of evolution. The molecular assault came first, followed quickly by renewed attention to unorthodox theories of speciation and by challenges at the level of macroevolution itself.

“I have been reluctant to admit it - since beguiling is often forever - but if Mayr's characterization of the
synthetic theory is accurate, then that theory, as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its
persistence as textbook orthodoxy.”
(Gould S.J., "Is a new and general theory of evolution
emerging?", Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p120)
Truth frees! Evolution is evidence free speculation masquerading as science.

Lord Muck oGentry
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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#540 Post by Lord Muck oGentry » June 17th, 2017, 7:06 pm

Pahu wrote:
It is interesting that Gould contradicts himself. For example:

“All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt.” Gould, “The Return of Hopeful Monsters,” p. 23.
More alert readers will have spotted that precious little is not nothing.
Bang goes your contradiction, Pahu.

Since you have brought up Gould's Hopeful Monsters, I may as well provide a link:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/00e0/f ... 636589.pdf

Readers may judge for themselves Gould's views, expressed in his own words rather than in creationist distortion.
They will, I am sure, notice that Gould is taking a side in a dispute that lies wholly within evolutionary theory: there is not a crumb of comfort there for creationists.

Then there's this:
Gould and Eldredge claimed transitional fossils are missing because rapid evolutionary jumps (which they called punctuated equilibria) occurred over these gaps. They did not explain how this could happen.
Gould does in fact offer an explanation. It's in the text to which I have provided a link. I shan't quote the passage for you. You'll have to find it for yourself.
What we can't say, we can't say and we can't whistle it either. — Frank Ramsey

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Re: Science Disproves Evolution

#541 Post by Tetenterre » June 19th, 2017, 9:44 am

And yet again, the paucity of transitional forms in the fossil record is not a problem for evolution; finding something like an i-phone or a skeleton of homo sapiens in the Precambrian strata would constitute a problem.
Steve

Quantum Theory: The branch of science with which people who know absolutely sod all about quantum theory can explain anything.

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