Evolution & Creation (4/6/06)

[lordstar]

The Urban Elf

Going along with Craigor's idea, except i went with reptiles ---> birds instead.
The development of wings specifically.

Correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that it's possible to suddenly mutate the genes for a fully fledged, working wing. Therefore in order to have developed wings it would have begun with a limb coming out of the wrong end (I've forgotten what the limb was called... the elbow to the fingers bit xp i'm working off my rudimentary high school education here) or a lump of some sort. Which i don't think would've been all that much of an advantage. I mean they would've provide wonderful little handles for any predator that came along.

Anyway, having said that i do believe in evolution to a certain extent, i just find it almost impossible to have been solely responsible for all the different species that exist today. Although i don't completely rule out the idea that God could have used evolution to create everything... seeing as i don't believe that the seven days in the beginning of Genesis were actually 7 days as we know it. Except... i don't see why God would've done so when he could just *poof* there it is. I find it more likely that God created everything and then as the world changed so did the species that he created, which he obviously knew was going to happen.

it is a very slow posses taking hundreds of generations, climate changes, and migrations  

[Tarrou]

The Urban Elf

Correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that it's possible to suddenly mutate the genes for a fully fledged, working wing.

Of course it's not (or at the very least it's absurdly unlikely). But neither is that how evolution works. We're talking about the accumulation of incremental changes here, not jumping from A to Z whilst skipping the 24 intervening letters.

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Therefore in order to have developed wings it would have begun with a limb coming out of the wrong end (I've forgotten what the limb was called... the elbow to the fingers bit xp i'm working off my rudimentary high school education here) or a lump of some sort. Which i don't think would've been all that much of an advantage. I mean they would've provide wonderful little handles for any predator that came along.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're getting at. All the models for the evolution of avian (and, I suppose, mammalian flight) that I'm familiar with posit the conversion of forelimbs into wings, not the random sprouting of a third set of limbs.

Okay, Occam's Razor:

Option A: Forelimbs transitioning to wings.
Option B: Mutation causing growth of additional limbs; eventual loss of original forelimbs; development of proto-wings into fully functional wings.

Which makes more sense?
In the case of birds, wings may have first developed in dinosaurs who were using their 'arms' as stabilizers when jumping. From there, it's was simply a matter of selecting for individuals whose variations allow for greater control and thrust and we're well on our way to a proper wing.

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I find it more likely that God created everything and then as the world changed so did the species that he created, which he obviously knew was going to happen.

Nothing wrong with a little theistic evolution. Maybe just take a little time to acquaint yourself with how evolution actually works. If you're up for a bit of a read (if you hate reading via scrolling a web page as much as I do, reading almost anything on the internet is something of a slog), try this Introduction to Evolution FAQ. There's also this page on evidence for evolution, but I wouldn't recommend reading it all in one sitting.  

[The Urban Elf]

Tarrou

The Urban Elf

Correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that it's possible to suddenly mutate the genes for a fully fledged, working wing.

Of course it's not (or at the very least it's absurdly unlikely). But neither is that how evolution works. We're talking about the accumulation of incremental changes here, not jumping from A to Z whilst skipping the 24 intervening letters.

Quote:

Therefore in order to have developed wings it would have begun with a limb coming out of the wrong end (I've forgotten what the limb was called... the elbow to the fingers bit xp i'm working off my rudimentary high school education here) or a lump of some sort. Which i don't think would've been all that much of an advantage. I mean they would've provide wonderful little handles for any predator that came along.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you're getting at. All the models for the evolution of avian (and, I suppose, mammalian flight) that I'm familiar with posit the conversion of forelimbs into wings, not the random sprouting of a third set of limbs.

Okay, Occam's Razor:

Option A: Forelimbs transitioning to wings.
Option B: Mutation causing growth of additional limbs; eventual loss of original forelimbs; development of proto-wings into fully functional wings.

Which makes more sense?
In the case of birds, wings may have first developed in dinosaurs who were using their 'arms' as stabilizers when jumping. From there, it's was simply a matter of selecting for individuals whose variations allow for greater control and thrust and we're well on our way to a proper wing.

Quote:

I find it more likely that God created everything and then as the world changed so did the species that he created, which he obviously knew was going to happen.

Nothing wrong with a little theistic evolution. Maybe just take a little time to acquaint yourself with how evolution actually works. If you're up for a bit of a read (if you hate reading via scrolling a web page as much as I do, reading almost anything on the internet is something of a slog), try this Introduction to Evolution FAQ. There's also this page on evidence for evolution, but I wouldn't recommend reading it all in one sitting.

Sorry i did actually mean the forelimbs turning into wings. Not the random sprouting of a third set of limbs.
Even if they were used as "stabilizers" I still feel that having half-developed wings would be more of a disadvantage... I'm pretty much imagining a reptile/bird with wing/claws that can't support it's weight yet... O_o  

[Tarrou]

The Urban Elf

Sorry i did actually mean the forelimbs turning into wings. Not the random sprouting of a third set of limbs.
Even if they were used as "stabilizers" I still feel that having half-developed wings would be more of a disadvantage... I'm pretty much imagining a reptile/bird with wing/claws that can't support it's weight yet... O_o

Well, again, you wouldn't expect 'half a wing' to function as a 'whole' wing. A partially developed wing could be used for stabilizing functions while running or jumping, as a means of propulsion to increase jumping distance and/or height, a gliding mechanism (depending on the evolutionary path the organism is taking), or, later in its development, for short bursts of non-sustained flight. Any one of these has obvious survival benefits even though it wouldn't be true flight.

What I'm trying to get at is that evolution does not progress along the lines of useful structure -> useless transitional structure -> useful new structure. The transition from limb to wing would have been gradual, and at no point would the proto-wing have suddenly just lost all it's previous functionality without gaining some new beneficial function in return. Remember, evolution isn't a zero-sum affair: halfway through its evolution, the limb/wing was probably still almost as useful for carrying out limb-like functions as its earlier, pure-limb forms, while also having gained some extra wing-like utility. If a structure gains a new or modified use, it does no necessarily follow that it will suffer a commensurate degradation of its original abilities. Only once the organism truly begins to abandon its old niche in favor of specialization in a new one should we see the structure's old functions falling away. It could also be that, since they were almost certainly bipedal, birds' ancestors didn't get much use out of their forelimbs anyway, and so any evolutionary changes to them were net gains regardless of whether they became less useful in an already disused capacity.

What I'm trying to get at is that you can't think of transitional structures as transitional. Adaptations are preserved because they confer survival benefits; they evolve because they are useful in and of themselves, not because they are a stepping stone to another form that we, from out privileged temporal vantage point, consider 'complete'. 'Half-wings' never really existed—there were only adaptations that led to the wing, nothing more or less.  

[The Urban Elf]

Tarrou

The Urban Elf

Sorry i did actually mean the forelimbs turning into wings. Not the random sprouting of a third set of limbs.
Even if they were used as "stabilizers" I still feel that having half-developed wings would be more of a disadvantage... I'm pretty much imagining a reptile/bird with wing/claws that can't support it's weight yet... O_o

Well, again, you wouldn't expect 'half a wing' to function as a 'whole' wing. A partially developed wing could be used for stabilizing functions while running or jumping, as a means of propulsion to increase jumping distance and/or height, a gliding mechanism (depending on the evolutionary path the organism is taking), or, later in its development, for short bursts of non-sustained flight. Any one of these has obvious survival benefits even though it wouldn't be true flight.

What I'm trying to get at is that evolution does not progress along the lines of useful structure -> useless transitional structure -> useful new structure. The transition from limb to wing would have been gradual, and at no point would the proto-wing have suddenly just lost all it's previous functionality without gaining some new beneficial function in return. Remember, evolution isn't a zero-sum affair: halfway through its evolution, the limb/wing was probably still almost as useful for carrying out limb-like functions as its earlier, pure-limb forms, while also having gained some extra wing-like utility. If a structure gains a new or modified use, it does no necessarily follow that it will suffer a commensurate degradation of its original abilities. Only once the organism truly begins to abandon its old niche in favor of specialization in a new one should we see the structure's old functions falling away. It could also be that, since they were almost certainly bipedal, birds' ancestors didn't get much use out of their forelimbs anyway, and so any evolutionary changes to them were net gains regardless of whether they became less useful in an already disused capacity.

What I'm trying to get at is that you can't think of transitional structures as transitional. Adaptations are preserved because they confer survival benefits; they evolve because they are useful in and of themselves, not because they are a stepping stone to another form that we, from out privileged temporal vantage point, consider 'complete'. 'Half-wings' never really existed—there were only adaptations that led to the wing, nothing more or less.

... i see what you mean. Makes a lot more sense now xd
Thanks for that =)  

[Incarcerated_love]

There are two types of evolution, macro and micro.

Microevolution is when a recessive gene or combination becomes dominant in a population due to change, example: the peppered moths of England The moths in this region were predominantly light colored and blended in well with the trees' bark that was similar thus camaflouging them, the recessive gene was a dark color and most of the moths who were dark did not survive due to the lack of camaflouge. Then over the Industrial Revolution in England, many of the trees died out, and the trees which peppered moths rested on became blackened by soot, causing most of the light-colored moths to die off. But the dark colored moths flourished due to the change in environment.

This change represents microevolution which is a genetic change within a species.

I used this example because many of you should be familiar with it. It is publicated in many textbooks that teach evolution in Biology classes, both high school and college. I must note here that the Bible or Creationism do not speak out against microevolution , but against macroevolution (the change from one species to another) which its controversy is not only disputed among creationists but within the scientific community itself.  

[Tarrou]

Incarcerated_love

I must note here that the Bible or Creationism do not speak out against microevolution , but against macroevolution (the change from one species to another) which its controversy is not only disputed among creationists but within the scientific community itself.

And which scientific community is that? This 'scientific' community? Because this scientific community disagrees. Let's get something straight: there is no controversy within the scientific community about macroevolution, common descent, natural selection, or any of the other fundamental issues of evolutionary theory. The 'controversy' has been manufactured by creationists as a means to sneak their pseudo-creationist ID claptrap into the public schools; it's a whole-cloth fabrication.  

[Incarcerated_love]

Tarrou

Incarcerated_love

I must note here that the Bible or Creationism do not speak out against microevolution , but against macroevolution (the change from one species to another) which its controversy is not only disputed among creationists but within the scientific community itself.

And which scientific community is that? This 'scientific' community? Because this scientific community disagrees. Let's get something straight: there is no controversy within the scientific community about macroevolution, common descent, natural selection, or any of the other fundamental issues of evolutionary theory. The 'controversy' has been manufactured by creationists as a means to sneak their pseudo-creationist ID claptrap into the public schools; it's a whole-cloth fabrication.

There are scientists who have rebuked macroevolution. Many scientists trying to prove macroevolution sometimes go so low as to fake the results to look better. A good example is Haeckel's embryos, they were considered false in 1874 by Professor Wilhelm. And the sad thing is they still use his drawings in text books. I remember in biology class looking how similar the embryos of humans are to pigs etc., when in reality there are just bad pictures of embroys not showing the distinct details between the two.

An wait there's more...let's not disclude the numerous faked fossils found half reptile and half bird just to get their name in some textbook. Look at the Archaeoraptor, a total fake that had a featured article in National Geographic magazine in 1999! A Chinese paleontologist proved that someone had glued a dinosaur tail to a primitive bird.

Let's talk about gills, some biology books proudly display pictures of human embryos with "gill pouches" or "gill slits". Look at a picture of an embryo, it's doubled over. It has ridges on its neck which is an anatomical feature that grows out of the fact that this is how vertebrate in embryos develop. They are not gills, even fish do not have gills in this stage. A British embryologist Lewis Wolpert showed how the "gills" were an illusion.

wings, flipper, leg, hand: Berra's Blunder
There is a common thought, homology, that limbs for example of different species have been adapted to serve different uses, and because of their similarity, they must have a common ancestor. so, lets get on with Berra's blunder. Tim Berra in 1990, compared fossil records to automobile models. He illustrated the fact that merely having a succession of similar forms does not provide it's own explanation. A mechanism is needed!

I can go on I have books and articles on this... scientists themselves have debunked macroevolution while trying to prove it.  

[Tarrou]

*twitch*

Incarcerated_love

There are scientists who have rebuked macroevolution.

Rebuked or rejected, yes; disproved, no. And I might point out that, to return to the Answers in Genesis list, many of the scientists who claim to reject evolution aren't even involved in fields of study relevant to evolution. It's rather like trying to claim that there's controversy about general relativity by compiling a list of marine biologists who disagree with Einstein.

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Many scientists trying to prove macroevolution sometimes go so lowas to fake the results to look better. A good example is Haeckel's embryos, they were considered false in 1874 by Professor Wilhelm. And the sad thing is they still use his drawings in text books. I remember in biology class looking how similar the embryos of humans are to pigs etc., when in reality there are just bad pictures of embroys not showing the distinct details between the two.

That's a gross conflation of the Darwinian theory of evolution and Ernst Haekel's recapitulation theory.

Firstly, Darwin did no rely on Haeckel's embryos to prove his theory of evolution. Haeckle receives only one mention in On the Origin of Species, and all Darwin says about his (Haeckel's) work is that it will 'shows us how classification will in the future be treated'; and that wasn't even in reference to Haeckel's embryo drawings, which were published two years after the final 1872 edition of Species. Darwin's interest in embryos was that they offered a glimpse at the general evolutionary course of an organism or class of organism may have taken (for example, in all vertebrate embryos, the backbone is one of the first structures to develop, while more specialized structures like the human cerebrum develop much later), as well as being useful for taxonomic classification.

Secondly, with those drawings, Haeckel was attempting to advance a now-discredited theory that embryological development literally mirrored an organism's evolutionary path, a claim that Darwin never made. It was in an effort to support this now discredited theory that Haeckel embellished his embryo drawings; it had nothing to do with supporting or discrediting Darwin.

Thirdly, the reason that you still see pictures of various organisms' embryo's used in textbooks is that there is some merit to a 'soft' version of recapitulation theory (although they really shouldn't use Haeckel's). As pointed out above, embryonic structures are useful in determining phylogeny, as well as giving us some insight into the very general development of structural differences between organisms with a common ancestor (see the above point about backbones).

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An wait there's more...let's not disclude the numerous faked fossils found half reptile and half bird just to get their name in some textbook. Look at the Archaeoraptor, a total fake that had a featured article in National Geographic magazine in 1999! A Chinese paleontologist proved that someone had glued a dinosaur tail to a primitive bird.

Except that Achaeoraptor wasn't a scientific fraud: the thing was glued together by a Chinese farmer hunter so it would collect a higher price on the black market when it was sold to collectors (in this case, the owner of 'The Dinosaur Museum' of Blanding, Utah and non-paleontologist Steve Czerkas). In fact, the scientific community was quick to question the authenticity of the archaeoraptor fossil, with the peer-reviewed journals Nature and Science both rejecting the National Geographic Society's paper on the fossil. The fact that National Geographic still decided to run a feature on the 'archaeoraptor' written by their art editor is somewhat beyond understanding.

In any event, the fraud was discovered and National Geographic retracted its article—a rather good example of how science weeds out frauds, actually. But the main point to remember is that this was a case of economic fraud that was kept afloat by some people's wishful thinking and desire for personal glory, not a calculated attempt to manufacture fossils in the service of evolutionary theory.

As for that other bird-reptile transitional fossil, Archaeopteryx, it's well attested to by the fossil record (at least nine distinct fossils) and is anything but a fake. Most fossils are legitimate, actually, fraud being the exception to the rule, and without exception they all support universal common descent.

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Let's talk about gills, some biology books proudly display pictures of human embryos with "gill pouches" or "gill slits". Look at a picture of an embryo, it's doubled over. It has ridges on its neck which is an anatomical feature that grows out of the fact that this is how vertebrate in embryos develop. They are not gills, even fish do not have gills in this stage. A British embryologist Lewis Wolpert showed how the "gills" were an illusion.

Your point? You're trying to discredit literal recapitulation theory, which no-one actually considers legitimate these days. Furthermore, although you are right in stating that these 'gill pouches' are not in fact, gills, you're rather missing the larger point: whether you want to call them pharyngeal arches, branchial pouches, gills slits, or whatever, the fact is that all vertebrate embryos, fish and human alike, possess between four and seven of these structures. In both, the first arch always becomes the jaw, and the second the hyoid. The subsequent arches always become cartilaginous structures in the neck in humans and gills in fish.

If there were no evolution, why is there this common pattern of embryological development? Again, Haeckel's theory that an embryo's development outlines its evolutionary course is bunk, but that does not mean that embryos don't provide evidence for universal common descent.

I also feel sorry for poor Lewis Wolpert being misappropriated by creationists like this.

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There is a common thought, homology, that limbs for example of different species have been adapted to serve different uses, and because of their similarity, they must have a common ancestor. so, lets get on with Berra's blunder. Tim Berra in 1990, compared fossil records to automobile models. He illustrated the fact that merely having a succession of similar forms does not provide it's own explanation. A mechanism is needed!

Berra's comparison of automobile models was an analogy designed to illustrate the ways in which paleontologists chart the progression from one fossil to the next. The progression merely helps to prove that evolution happened; the mechanism was supplied by Darwin nearly one hundred and fifty years ago: natural selection.

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I can go on I have books and articles on this... scientists themselves have debunked macroevolution while trying to prove it.

Bring it on. I've got entire databases of material. The amount of scientific evidence that can be brought to bear on your creationist claptrap is truly astonishing. I'd welcome the opportunity to simply bury this thread in data.  

[Incarcerated_love]

Tarrou

Rebuked or rejected, yes.

~ok glad we agree on this

Tarrou

And I might point out that, to return to the Answers in Genesis list, many of the scientists who claim to reject evolution aren't even involved in fields of study relevant to evolution. It's rather like trying to claim that there's controversy about general relativity by compiling a list of marine biologists who disagree with Einstein.

~My sources above just stated a few Biologists, Paleontologists who rebuked macroevolution...if they aren't working hand in hand with evolution what profession do you propose do?

quote="Tarrou"]Firstly, Darwin did no rely on Haeckel's embryos to prove his theory of evolution. that is not what I claimed, would be kind of hard since Darwin came out with his theory before Haeckel published his sketches.

Tarrou

Haeckle receives only one mention in On the Origin of Species, and all Darwin says about his (Haeckel's) work is that it will 'shows us how classification will in the future be treated';

what is meant by this? You need to clarify.

Tarrou

Darwin's interest in embryos was that they offered a glimpse at the general evolutionary course of an organism or class of organism may have taken (for example, in all vertebrate embryos, the backbone is one of the first structures to develop, while more specialized structures like the human cerebrum develop much later), as well as being useful for taxonomic classification.

How did Darwin prove this?

Tarrou

Thirdly, the reason that you still see pictures of various organisms' embryo's used in textbooks is that there is some merit to a 'soft' version of recapitulation theory (although they really shouldn't use Haeckel's).

that still amazes me.

Tarrou

As pointed out above, embryonic structures are useful in determining phylogeny, as well as giving us some insight into the very general development of structural differences between organisms with a common ancestor (see the above point about backbones).

again how do you know this is true?

Tarrou

In any event, the fraud was discovered and National Geographic retracted its article—a rather good example of how science weeds out frauds, actually. But the main point to remember is that this was a case of economic fraud that was kept afloat by some people's wishful thinking and desire for personal glory, not a calculated attempt to manufacture fossils in the service of evolutionary theory.

Yes, and that still makes it wrong.

Tarrou

As for that other bird-reptile transitional fossil, Archaeopteryx, it's well attested to by the fossil record (at least nine distinct fossils) and is anything but a fake. Most fossils are legitimate, actually, fraud being the exception to the rule, and without exception they all support universal common descent.

I did not say this one was a fake.

Quote:

Let's talk about gills, some biology books proudly display pictures of human embryos with "gill pouches" or "gill slits". Look at a picture of an embryo, it's doubled over. It has ridges on its neck which is an anatomical feature that grows out of the fact that this is how vertebrate in embryos develop. They are not gills, even fish do not have gills in this stage. A British embryologist Lewis Wolpert showed how the "gills" were an illusion.

Tarrou

Your point?

My point was to the whole question backed up by evidence scientists themselves are in disagreement over evolution!!

Tarrou

Tarrou

If there were no evolution, why is there this common pattern of embryological development? Again, Haeckel's theory that an embryo's development outlines its evolutionary course is bunk, but that does not mean that embryos don't provide evidence for universal common descent.

again where do you get this information?

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There is a common thought, homology, that limbs for example of different species have been adapted to serve different uses, and because of their similarity, they must have a common ancestor. so, lets get on with Berra's blunder. Tim Berra in 1990, compared fossil records to automobile models. He illustrated the fact that merely having a succession of similar forms does not provide it's own explanation. A mechanism is needed!

Tarrou

Berra's comparison of automobile models was an analogy designed to illustrate the ways in which paleontologists chart the progression from one fossil to the next. The progression merely helps to prove that evolution happened; the mechanism was supplied by Darwin nearly one hundred and fifty years ago: natural selection.

Again a mechanism is needed.

Anyways, I wish I had more time to sit here and type it all, have to go get my kids from the bus stop, there is more stuff I can add but besides pointing out holes in darwinism, I was specifically trying to prove that scientists are in disagreement among themselves over macroevolution. Any Biology professor can tell you that.

 

[Tarrou]

Incarcerated_love

Tarrou

Rebuked or rejected, yes.

~ok glad we agree on this

I feel like I'm being quote-mined here. I also said that they had failed to disprove it.

Tarrou

~My sources above just stated a few Biologists, Paleontologists who rebuked macroevolution...if they aren't working hand in hand with evolution what profession do you propose do?

Here, let's have your list (which you haven't posted). Let's tally up the number of scientists working in evolution-related fields who reject Darwin. Let's compare that number to the total number of their collegues who aren't absolutely barmy. Trust me, when you do it that way, your group turns into a marginal fringe very, very quickly.

Now if we're done attempting an appeal to authority? Good. Moving on.

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Tarrou

Haeckle receives only one mention in On the Origin of Species, and all Darwin says about his (Haeckel's) work is that it will 'shows us how classification will in the future be treated';

what is meant by this? You need to clarify.

Darwin was referring to Haeckel's work in phylogenetics (a method of classifying organisms similar to but still distinct from taxonomy). Again, Haeckel's work was imperfect, to put it politely, but Darwin was correct: modern phylogenetics, having discarded Haeckel's methodology, is an important part of modern evolutionary theory. Ever seen a phylogenetic tree?

Tarrou

How did Darwin prove this?

He didn't, and I'm afraid I've been putting words in Darwin's mouth. Darwin did not state, at any point, that embryos recapitulated an organism's evolutionary path. His main point as regards embryos was that, among related organisms like vertebrates, embryos look very similar at the outset and only begin to display distinguishing features later in their development; among very closely related creatures, like two species of birds, the embryos will appear nearly indistinguishable from one another long after an observer would have been able to tell them apart from, say, a mammalian embryo. Essentially, his point was that the longer it takes for two embryos to develop species-specific characteristics, the more closely related they are. He came to this conclusion by studying embryos of various species and noting the ways in which they developed.

The explicitly stated idea that this represents a 'soft' recapitulation of an organism's evolution, with common 'primitive' structures developing earlier in an embryo and species-specific ones appearing later is somewhat more modern. Darwin certainly never used the backbone-cerebellum analogy that I did.

Tarrou

that still amazes me.

Which? Soft recapitulation or Haeckel's drawings? If the latter, then yes, that's a mistake. If the former, though, I have to ask why.

Tarrou

again how do you know this is true?

I shall endeavor to explain (as if I hadn't already).

It all starts with deductive reasoning. We observe that three vertebrate embryos—let's say a mammal, a lizard, and a bird—look very nearly identical at an early gestational stage. As they develop, we notice that the mammal is the first to differentiate itself, while the lizard and the bird still remain very similar. It's only two thirds of the way through their growth that the bird and lizard can be readily identified as belonging to separate classes of organism. If we throw another bird in there, it will continue to look very nearly the same as the first avian embryo until very late in their development.

Now, with this observation in hand, we ask ourselves several question: If each of these animals belongs to an immutable species unrelated to any other, why the similarities? And why is one species' development more similar to this creature than that one? If, on the other hand, there is universal common descent, then this makes perfect sense: they are the result of these creatures sharing a common ancestor, with the rate at which their embryological developments diverge indicating how recently their species split off from any other.

This is illustrated even more vividly with wales, who, as embryos, develop proto-legs around the same time as any other mammal, but who later lose those structures. If wales had not evolved from land mammals, then why on earth would they ever start to develop legs, only to discard them later? Similarly, it is theorized that fish's swim bladders evolved from a sac connected to the stomach. Now, in modern fish the swim bladder and gut are not connected, but lo and behold, as an embryo, the swim bladder develops out of the gut and is later disconnected.

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Yes, and that still makes it wrong.

But it is still not an example of scientists faking evidence to support evolution. It is an example of unscientific profit-hunting and an over-enthusiastic art editor.

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I did not say this one was a fake.

In which case you may wish to explain why it doesn't represent a transitional form or why it is not evidence for evolution.

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My point was to the whole question backed up by evidence scientists themselves are in disagreement over evolution!!

Except they're not. The only one who claimed that the pharyngeal arch was a gill was Haeckel. Scientists use several different terms to describe that particular structure, but they all know that they are not gills, just a structure common to all vertebrates that can, in fish, develop into gills. And there's no disagreement that these arches, even though they're not gills (I feel that this has to be stressed since creationists seem to have such a problem figuring out that 'gill slits' doesn't mean 'gills'), they are evidence of a common ancestor.

Tarrou

again where do you get this information?

Here, here, and here.

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Again a mechanism is needed.

Natural selection, and don't you dare say 'a mechanism is needed' again until you've thoroughly disproved natural selection. You can't just go around ignoring an established mechanism until you've actually proved that it's false!

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Anyways, I wish I had more time to sit here and type it all, have to go get my kids from the bus stop, there is more stuff I can add but besides pointing out holes in darwinism, I was specifically trying to prove that scientists are in disagreement among themselves over macroevolution. Any Biology professor can tell you that.

A biology professor where? At Bob Jones University? In my first response to you, I posted eight links in which the scientific community firmly stated the absolute lack of controversy or in which a federal judge restated said community's affirmation of solidarity and three links pointing out how this 'controversy' is a fabrication of the ID/Creationist movement, or didn't you read those? Or did you read them and dismiss them as 'evolutionist propaganda'?  

[kuntrykid]

divineseraph

Night WingsFtty

No such thing as evolution, and even if there is, it's the devil's work.

You're joking ,right? If not, anything you don't want to understand is devilwork?

I ask you this- You think God is stupid? You think he's too dumb to figure out how to set up an evolutionary system?

1: rofl, theories that oppose conventional Christianity are not devil-work.

2: Do you think that God is too dumb to set up a self-aware species?  

[scotch0069]

im not gonna debate to much because ill admit that i dont know much on the subject, but i gotta know does the scientific community see that atoms the protons electrons and neutrons as perpetual (meaning they just exist forever) or were they created by some means... i ask this because fundamentally everything is these three sparks i guess you could call them. and how they came to be is an important question atleast i think....im not in here much so dont get mad if i dont respond right away. thank you  

[Isaac742]

I belive that god caused the big nang. And evolution is just the way he does his work  

[Kick-A Gallifrey]

Evolution, just can't be... 1st of, the Bible says that God made everything in six days. Not, "he started it, and the rest is history."

2nd. Mutualism - A relationship of two or more organism of different species where all benefit from the association.

There is a tropical fish that is a carnivore, so it must have teeth. Like all organisms that have teeth, they must have a way to clean them. (Humans brush their teeth, dogs chew on bones and such.) The fish is an Oriental Sweetlips, this fish will go to areas of coral and wait with its mouth open. After a while a Blue-Streak Wrasses will swim in the Sweetlips mouth and eat the food and plaque off its teeth. This is a form of Mutualism.

Mutualism presents a huge challenge for evolution. An example of how evolution could explain this is... At some point in time the Sweeylips ancestor's did not have any teeth. After a few generations the fish started to form teeth. Now, in order for their teeth to aviod rotting and falling out, they would have to develop the instinct to seek out the Wrasse. The Sweetlips would let the little fish swim in and clean its teeth, and at the same time know not to eat the little fish, even though it has carnivorous instincts. The instict to seek out the little fish, would have to develop at the same time as his teeth were developing. That is not all... The Wrasse would have to develop the instict to swim in the Sweetlip's mouth with out fear of getting eaten. If all of these thing did not happen at the same time the ststem would not work

When an evolutionist looks at the world they must see way too many of these "happy coincidences"...