Evidence For And Against Evolution

[leroy]

Did they find tiktaalik where they thought it should be, based on the available evidence, or not?

**They did.**

Yes, as I said before it is a false positive. It is still a fact that evolution predicts “fishapods” older than the oldest land tetrapod, And as of yet the prediction has not been proven to be correct, and it is also a fact that tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, because tetrapods where already there long before tiktaalik.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes, as I said before it is a false positive. It is still a fact that evolution predicts “fishapods” older than the oldest land tetrapod, And as of yet the prediction has not been proven to be correct, and it is also a fact that tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, because tetrapods where already there long before tiktaalik.

Evolution does not proceed in a linear progression.
None of this has anything to do with the point - that they were able to find what they were looking for, based on the available evidence.

 

[Subduction Zone]

My point is that it is fallacious to simply relax and assume that fine tuning problems will be solved with natural mechanisms just because some FT have been solved in the past, just as it is fallacious to relax and assume that all transitional fossils are fraudulent, just because some have been proven to be frauds in the past.

Yes the NH is not an argument from ignorance (but nether is the FT argument) in both arguments a complex and unlikely pattern is observed and an explanation for such a pattern is set to be required. Common ancestry and Intelligent design are proposed respectively as the best explanation for such a pattern. …. Anyone who disagrees is obligated to provide an alternative explanation and explain why is that alternative explanation better than the one that is being proposed.

It would be fallacious to simply relax and assume that future discoveries would provide an explanation for NH (and explanation that YEC would like) just as it is fallacious to simply relax and assume that future discoveries would provide an explanation for the FT of the universe (an explanation that atheist would like)……..I mean sure science can find something in the future but up to this point common asncestrry is the best explanation for the NH and ID is the best explanation for the FT of the universe, anyone who disagrees is obligated to provide an alternative explanation and explain/justify that his explanation a better explanation.

Again with the strawman arguments. No one is relaxing. Those problems are being researched. They simply are not evidence for your beliefs. Perhaps you should learn what is and what is not evidence.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Yes, as I said before it is a false positive. It is still a fact that evolution predicts “fishapods” older than the oldest land tetrapod, And as of yet the prediction has not been proven to be correct, and it is also a fact that tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, because tetrapods where already there long before tiktaalik.

Do you actively try not to understand?

 

[dad]

I said no such thing.




I said no such thing.

Well what would you like to call it when a claim is made that if biogenesis happened we would not see the evidence cause the new little critter gets eaten first?

 

[dad]

I said that, nog @gnostic

Goes to show with how much attention you read posts.

Ok, so I guess the poster can come out and agree or disagree with a fellow evo. Your bet?

No, *I* am not claiming that.
Read the sentence that you copy pasted again. I'm sure you can figure out how it's not a claim that *I* am making.

Seems to me if it seemed a certain way to me, that you should explain how it actually means something else if you are the one pushing the thing!

 

[ecco]

What are atheist/naturalists? Do Christian/naturalists also exist?

What hard questions are explained away by the anthropic principle? Who uses the anthropic principle to explain away hard questions?

What hard questions are explained away by multiverse theories? Who uses multiverse theories to explain away hard questions?

Richard dawkins for example uses the Abthropic Principle to explain away fine tunning arguments.



Dawkins claims, that no matter how improbable life or our planet is, because of the AP..... To that I respond (sarcastically) no matter how improbable a Nested Hierarchy is because of the AP.

You addressed one of six questions. You really explained nothing. I don't look at youtube videos. Care to try again or am I just wasting my time with you?

 

[leroy]

Evolution does not proceed in a linear progression.
None of this has anything to do with the point - that they were able to find what they were looking for, based on the available evidence.

That is the definition of a false positive. Based on the evidence that they had they predicted that fishapods evolved in the late denovian, they looked in denovian rocks and they found a fishapod, know we know that fishponds evolved at least 20M years before that , so the fact that they found a fishapod in the late devonian was just a coincidence.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

To me they sound more like postdictions rather than predictions

Scientific predictions aren't like "prophecy" where you tell the future.

The point is that evolution as presently understood, should result in nested hierarchies. So the model predicts that traits that evolve in one line, won't end up in another line, but only in its descendants.

This is true for the things we have already modeled from sequenced genomes, and it is expected to be true for the genomes we'll sequence tomorrow.

And this principle is assumed to be true universally.
This is why you pay a lot of money for a horse of a sepcific bloodline.
This is why you can take a test to see if a kid is your biological kid.
And that is why you can breed dogs into different breeds / races / whatever you wish to call them, by selecting for specific traits and preserving the bloodline.

This is how evolution works.

So no, they are not just postdictions.
Every new genome sequenced, every new species mapped, is a test against this entire thing.

, we knew that mammals don’t have feathers long before evolution was ever proposed, if mammals would have had feathers, you would have simply said that feathers evolved before mammals and birds diverged,

If only it were that easy.

You'ld have to come up with some pretty solid evidence that feathers indeed DID evolve much sooner.

But anyway, it doesn't matter to the point since you were wrong about these being "just postdictions".

You forgot about all genomes we have yet to sequence - each one being a test against the prediction of nested hierarchies - as well as the fact that a scientific prediction, isn't some prophecy about teling the future. It's rather about stating what should be the case, if the model in question is accurate. So if those things aren't the case, the model is wrong. That's called falsifiability.

Making testable predictions, is what makes a model falsifiable.

or that feathers evolved independently twice.

µ

The genetics would be different.
Just like eyes have evolved multiple times, they are also distinct from one another.

ERVs in dogs: well as far as I know nobody has looked at the dog genome searching for ERVs,

Endogenous retroviral pathogenesis in lupus

There are a lot of scientists in the world, looking at lots of things.

so it is a good time to make predictions, what if we find orthologs ERVs in humans and dogs that are absent in other primates, would that be a problem for common descent?

If the ERV's mapped out reflect a closer ancestor with humans then with chimps, then sure that would be a problem.

Tiktaalik: It is not clear for me what you mean, are you saying that tiktaalik was found in strata dated before any other land tetrapod evolved? Implying that Tiktaalik is older than land tertapods and younger that fish………….would finding a land tetrapod older than tiktaalik nullify that supposed correct prediction?

The age of transition from sea to land was inferred from what was already known from the fossil record.


Finding Tiktaalik, the Fossil Link Between Fish and Land Animals

He explains how he scoured maps to find rocks of the right age and type that were accessible at the earth’s surface. This led him to the Canadian arctic where, in 2004, Shubin and his colleagues found Tiktaalik, a fossil of a creature with traits found in both fish and tetrapods.​

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Ok let’s use some “atheist logic”

There's no such thing.
There's only "logic".

We have seen fraudulent transitional fossils in the past too

Yes, a handfull out of millions.
Not the majority of them..........................

And the argument form Nested Hierarchies is also an argument from ignorance

No, it isn't.

, just because we currently don’t know of any other mechanism that would produce a NH (rather than common ancestry)

Why would we need another mechanism, if we know about the mechanism of evolution?

that doesn’t mean that future discoveries would not provide another mechanism

Who ever said otherwise?
This is why scientific models are called "theories", because future discoveries can always overturn what is accepted today.

Until those discoveries are made though, there is no reason to stop accepting perfectly reasonable models with great explanatory power.

Perhaps this mechanism is consistent with the YEC model

Then that future discovery will be something akin to discovering that we live in the Matrix.

What a thing to say.
But yea, sure... and by the same token, we might perhaps discover that we are nothing but pixie dust blown into the universe by the eternally farting unicorn.

But let's worry about that when such discoveries are made.
For the moment, our scientific models seem to be working just fine....

The point that I am making is that it is very easy to be a YEC if one is allowed to use atheist logic,

It's not very impressive.

all you have to do is avoid the burden proof, hide under the possibility that new discoveries will solve your problems, avoid direct answers and keep your position vague and ambiguous.

serious case of projection here.

 

[leroy]

Again with the strawman arguments. No one is relaxing. Those problems are being researched.

But up to this date ID is the best explanation for FT agree? If not please provide a better explanation and explain why is that explanation better than ID

They simply are not evidence for your beliefs. Perhaps you should learn what is and what is not evidence.

Well justify your assertion, define evidence and explain why isn’t FT evidence for ID

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

from your source


However the truth is that later that original prediction was proven to be wrong because we have land tetrpods that predate tiktaalik. So that supposed prediction end up being a false positive.

This also proves that Tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of land tetrapods,

Seems like you are not aware that nobody is claiming that the species tiktaalik is necessarily the "father" of land crawlers.

A transitional isn't necessarily a direct ancestor.
There's lots of variations.

Consider cats. There are quite a few of them, aren't there? Felines, I mean.
This is true for most if not all species.

Tiktaalik wouldn't have been any different.

The fact is that they went looking for a creature with both fish and tetrapod traits.
The fact is that found exactly that, in the exact rock they expected it to find it in.

Tiktaalik is the sensible version of Kirk Cameron's "crockoduck".

Evolution doesn't product things like "crockoduck".
It produces things like Tiktaalik.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

But up to this date ID is the best explanation for FT agree? If not please provide a better explanation and explain why is that explanation better than ID



Well justify your assertion, define evidence and explain why isn’t FT evidence for ID

How can a belief be an explanation when it cannot be verified? Because belief has been reformulated to include technical jargon does not establish that belief as superior to evidence-based explanations with verification or even other beliefs.

You have simply picked a personal position, declared it immutable, but never demonstrated it objectively. Nor can you, since it is belief.

ID has been demonstrated to fail as an explanation for observations at every turn. It could not even hold up in court.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes, as I said before it is a false positive. It is still a fact that evolution predicts “fishapods” older than the oldest land tetrapod,

Tiktaalik *is* a "fishapod".

Once more, it IS a transitional.
Which doesn't necessarily mean it is ancestral.
It is transitional in the sense that it has both fish and tetrapod traits.

Tiktaalik was one species. Where there's one, there are others.
Tiktaalik also had parents. And grandparents. Etc.
And cousins. And distant cousins, and very distant cousins.

And all of them will have had these transitional traits.
These are the traits expected from life gradually crawling out of the sea.

And as of yet the prediction has not been proven to be correct

Except that it has.
They expected to find a "fishapod" in a specific layer and type of rock.
They went to such rock and dug up a "fishapod".

Prediction => result.

You're grasping at straws.

, and it is also a fact that tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, because tetrapods where already there long before tiktaalik.

Again: transitional doesn't necessarily mean ancestral.

 

[leroy]

Scientific predictions aren't like "prophecy" where you tell the future.

The point is that evolution as presently understood, should result in nested hierarchies. So the model predicts that traits that evolve in one line, won't end up in another line, but only in its descendants.

.

well we do have echolocation in the "dolphin line" and in the "bat line"
In bats and whales, convergence in echolocation ability runs deep

so we have the same traits in 2 independnet lines, why is this different from finding a mammal with feathers?

He explains how he scoured maps to find rocks of the right age and type that were accessible at the earth’s surface. This led him to the Canadian arctic where, in 2004, Shubin and his colleagues found Tiktaalik, a fossil of a creature with traits found in both fish and tetrapods.​

So would finding a land tetrapod that predates tiktaalik be a problem ?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

That is the definition of a false positive. Based on the evidence that they had they predicted that fishapods evolved in the late denovian, they looked in denovian rocks and they found a fishapod, know we know that fishponds evolved at least 20M years before that , so the fact that they found a fishapod in the late devonian was just a coincidence.

Except nobody was claiming that it would be the "first fishapod ever".

That's something you invented to argue against it, it seems.

 

[leroy]

How can a belief be an explanation when it cannot be verified? Because belief has been reformulated to include technical jargon does not establish that belief as superior to evidence-based explanations with verification or even other beliefs.

You have simply picked a personal position, declared it immutable, but never demonstrated it objectively. Nor can you, since it is belief.

ID has been demonstrated to fail as an explanation for observations at every turn. It could not even hold up in court.

I would say that objectively speaking ID the best explanation for FT of the universe, feel free to provide your favorite naturalistic explanation and lets see who has the best objective evidence

 

[leroy]

Except nobody was claiming that it would be the "first fishapod ever".

That's something you invented to argue against it, it seems.

Ok then tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, agree?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I would say that objectively speaking ID the best explanation for FT of the universe, feel free to provide your favorite naturalistic explanation and lets see who has the best objective evidence

Since a designer has no objective evidence, your assertion does not hold up. Your argument is circular.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Ok then tiktaalik had nothing to do with the evolution of tetrapods, agree?

It is an example of evolution. It is an example of tetrapod evolution. It was discovered on the prediction of the theory. You have produced only misunderstanding as an argument against it.