Just Accidental?

[sayak83]

@Deeje

"What, though, of the fossils that are used to show fish changing into amphibians, and reptiles into mammals? Do they provide solid proof of evolution in action? Upon closer inspection, several problems become obvious.
First, the comparative size of the creatures placed in the reptile-to-mammal sequence is sometimes misrepresented in textbooks. Rather than being similar in size, some creatures in the series are huge, while others are small.
A second, more serious challenge is the lack of proof that those creatures are somehow related.
Specimens placed in the series are often separated by what researchers estimate to be millions of years. Regarding
the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”

I have already addressed this question extensively. These conclusions are no longer even remotely tenable given the fossil record we have today. Once again it seems that the person here is using many decades old and highly incomplete fossil records.

Commenting on the fossils of fish and amphibians, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times.” He further says: “There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.” (Excerpts from the brochure "Origins of Life" WTBTS)

Once again, we have an isolated out of context quote. How do I know its out of context? Because the same Malcolm S Gordon writes papers too on tetrapod evolution where his views are seen to be fully consonant with what I have been stating here.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/425183
Here is the abstract (i have access to the full paper):-
Recent discoveries of previously unknown fossil forms have dramatically transformed understanding of many aspects of the fish-tetrapod transition. Newer paleobiological approaches have also contributed to changed views of which animals were involved and when, where, and how the transition occurred. This review summarizes major advances made and reevaluates alternative interpretations of important parts of the evidence. We begin with general issues and concepts, including limitations of the Paleozoic fossil record. We summarize important features of paleoclimates, paleoenvironments, paleobiogeography, and taphonomy. We then review the history of Devonian tetrapods and their closest stem group ancestors within the sarcopterygian fishes. It is now widely accepted that the first tetrapods arose from advanced tetrapodomorph stock (the elpistostegalids) in the Late Devonian, probably in Euramerica. However, truly terrestrial forms did not emerge until much later, in geographically far-flung regions, in the Lower Carboniferous. The complete transition occurred over about 25 million years; definitive emergences onto land took place during the most recent 5 million years. The sequence of character acquisition during the transition can be seen as a five-step process involving: (1) higher osteichthyan (tetrapodomorph) diversification in the Middle Devonian (beginning about 380 million years ago [mya]), (2) the emergence of "prototetrapods" (e.g., Elginerpeton) in the Frasnian stage (about 372 mya), (3) the appearance of aquatic tetrapods (e.g., Acanthostega) sometime in the early to mid-Famennian (about 360 mya), (4) the appearance of "eutetrapods" (e.g., Tulerpeton) at the very end of the Devonian period (about 358 mya), and (5) the first truly terrestrial tetrapods (e.g., Pederpes) in the Lower Carboniferous (about 340 mya). We discuss each of these steps with respect to inferred functional utility of acquired character sets. Dissociated heterochrony is seen as the most likely process for the evolutionarily rapid morphological transformations required. Developmental biological processes, including paedomorphosis, played important roles. We conclude with a discussion of phylogenetic interpretations of the evidence.


The discovery of 375 mya Tiktallik in 2008 has added another level of detail in this very well-documented evolutionary sequence.

Available to download here....
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/?start=48

You should fire your "teachers" for feeding you outdated, misleading and false information.

 

[Deeje]

Wherever the quote is from, its completely outdated. The gradual evolution of animals spanning over 150 million years from Late Precambrian to the Cambrian has been documented well enough that all such doubts have been put to rest. Furthermore, geneticists have shown that the body form of a developing embroyo are dependent in a select few genes and that mutations in them causes body forms to alter dramatically quite easily. Thus for evolution, changing of animal's body shape is not difficult at all.
Cambrian explosion is exciting to a big group of paleontologists because they specialize in bones, and this is the first time they are finding bones. But objectively, its just another episode of evolutionary transformation like all that went before and after.

The interesting thing about any recent discovery is that scientists claim it is adding to their knowledge base, but all they do is try to cover up the fact that they cannot link any species to another in the past and prove that one evolved from the other.

You don't seem to understand that your first premise cannot be established from any evidence, therefore there is no proof linking one fossil to the next except from someone's imagination. Finding bones and skeletons is one thing....linking them together in a chain of descent is impossible to prove, so science must first suggest the possibility in a theory and then convince people that it actually took place. I have yet to see anyone do that without suggestion being the only thing driving the point.
The very foundation of this theory is supposition based on a pre-conceived idea that others wanted to promote.....the actual evidence is missing....it has always been missing.

"Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear?
As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!
The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory."

Nothing found recently alters one word of this statement.

 

[Deeje]

@Deeje



I have already addressed this question extensively. These conclusions are no longer even remotely tenable given the fossil record we have today. Once again it seems that the person here is using many decades old and highly incomplete fossil records.



Once again, we have an isolated out of context quote. How do I know its out of context? Because the same Malcolm S Gordon writes papers too on tetrapod evolution where his views are seen to be fully consonant with what I have been stating here.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/425183
Here is the abstract (i have access to the full paper):-
Recent discoveries of previously unknown fossil forms have dramatically transformed understanding of many aspects of the fish-tetrapod transition. Newer paleobiological approaches have also contributed to changed views of which animals were involved and when, where, and how the transition occurred. This review summarizes major advances made and reevaluates alternative interpretations of important parts of the evidence. We begin with general issues and concepts, including limitations of the Paleozoic fossil record. We summarize important features of paleoclimates, paleoenvironments, paleobiogeography, and taphonomy. We then review the history of Devonian tetrapods and their closest stem group ancestors within the sarcopterygian fishes. It is now widely accepted that the first tetrapods arose from advanced tetrapodomorph stock (the elpistostegalids) in the Late Devonian, probably in Euramerica. However, truly terrestrial forms did not emerge until much later, in geographically far-flung regions, in the Lower Carboniferous. The complete transition occurred over about 25 million years; definitive emergences onto land took place during the most recent 5 million years. The sequence of character acquisition during the transition can be seen as a five-step process involving: (1) higher osteichthyan (tetrapodomorph) diversification in the Middle Devonian (beginning about 380 million years ago [mya]), (2) the emergence of "prototetrapods" (e.g., Elginerpeton) in the Frasnian stage (about 372 mya), (3) the appearance of aquatic tetrapods (e.g., Acanthostega) sometime in the early to mid-Famennian (about 360 mya), (4) the appearance of "eutetrapods" (e.g., Tulerpeton) at the very end of the Devonian period (about 358 mya), and (5) the first truly terrestrial tetrapods (e.g., Pederpes) in the Lower Carboniferous (about 340 mya). We discuss each of these steps with respect to inferred functional utility of acquired character sets. Dissociated heterochrony is seen as the most likely process for the evolutionarily rapid morphological transformations required. Developmental biological processes, including paedomorphosis, played important roles. We conclude with a discussion of phylogenetic interpretations of the evidence.


The discovery of 375 mya Tiktallik in 2008 has added another level of detail in this very well-documented evolutionary sequence.


You should fire your "teachers" for feeding you outdated, misleading and false information.

You should fire your teachers for substituting imagination for fact.

"It is now widely accepted" is another way of saying..."if you don't believe this you are an uneducated moron".

From your quote.....
"We discuss each of these steps with respect to inferred functional utility of acquired character sets. Dissociated heterochrony is seen as the most likely process for the evolutionarily rapid morphological transformations required. Developmental biological processes, including paedomorphosis, played important roles. We conclude with a discussion of phylogenetic interpretations of the evidence."

This is "inferred" as the "most likely" "interpretation of the evidence".......seriously do you see facts presented here? All I see is wishful thinking couched in scientific jargon. If the results were not "interpreted" for you by those who have a reputation in the scientific community to uphold, what would we assume about those "rapid transformations" in the Cambrian period?.....that they could not possibly be explained by the very slow process of evolution.

 

[Shad]

You should fire your teachers for substituting imagination for fact.

"It is now widely accepted" is another way of saying..."if you don't believe this you are an uneducated moron".

From your quote.....
"We discuss each of these steps with respect to inferred functional utility of acquired character sets. Dissociated heterochrony is seen as the most likely process for the evolutionarily rapid morphological transformations required. Developmental biological processes, including paedomorphosis, played important roles. We conclude with a discussion of phylogenetic interpretations of the evidence."

This is "inferred" as the "most likely" "interpretation of the evidence".......seriously do you see facts presented here? All I see is wishful thinking couched in scientific jargon. If the results were not "interpreted" for you by those who have a reputation in the scientific community to uphold, what would we assume about those "rapid transformations" in the Cambrian period?.....that they could not possibly be explained by the very slow process of evolution.

Science provides explanations. You do not understand this thus demand something from science which is does not actually do. You inject your standard as if it matters, it doesn't.

 

[sayak83]

The interesting thing about any recent discovery is that scientists claim it is adding to their knowledge base, but all they do is try to cover up the fact that they cannot link any species to another in the past and prove that one evolved from the other.

You don't seem to understand that your first premise cannot be established from any evidence, therefore there is no proof linking one fossil to the next except from someone's imagination. Finding bones and skeletons is one thing....linking them together in a chain of descent is impossible to prove, so science must first suggest the possibility in a theory and then convince people that it actually took place. I have yet to see anyone do that without suggestion being the only driving the point.
The very foundation of this theory is supposition based on a pre-conceived idea that others wanted to promote.....the actual evidence is missing....it has always been missing.

Of course it can. That is the point of all the evidence from fossils and from genetic and embroyological studies. Just as the existence of gravitational fields can be established by looking at the observational evidence of accelerations of massive bodies or the curvature of light beams in space (gravitational lensing); so too the existence of evolutionary processes can be established by seeing that the predictions from such a process-from fossils to embroyology to genes- are observed in the world. It is a universal feature of all science (theory of gravitation or the theory of evolution) that science describes the structure of reality in terms of scientific theories that are validated by thousands of observational evidence of this kind.

I will say it again, you do not understand science. I will advise you to read theories of science on a different topic (atomic theory, Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, Einstein's theory....) to really understand how science goes about creating and validating theories of reality. You will see that all science is done precisely in the way the theory of evolution is developed and validated in biology.

"Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear?
As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!
The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory."

Nothing found recently alters one word of this statement.

1) No evolutionary researchers today question the theory of evolution based on the Cambrian explosion.
2) They do not do this anymore because the Cambrian radiation event is now known to extend for 40 million years with excellent record of gradual evolutionary transformations from more primitive to more advanced forms through this entire period, perfectly in keeping with the predictions of evolution.
3) The appearance of suddenness is now known to be an artifact of earlier incomplete discovery of fossils, a lack that has since been filled. It is no longer sudden or rapid.
4) Precambrian record has extended the evolution of animals to another 100 million years before the Cambrian with the appearance of most soft bodied forms (and many extinct ones).
5) Thus animals do not appear suddenly, but rather quite gradually from very simple undifferentiated soft bodies to relatively more complex bony and shelly structures over a gradually evolving pathway extending 140 million years. The evolving pathway could be traced in the fossil record adequately.
6) The remark on the total time-span of the earth is irrelevant. While evolution is a slow process compared to human life-spans, its a rapid process compared to geological time-scales . The unit of evolutionary time scale is 1-2 million years (as I noted earlier) and large transformations take 10-20 million years. Earth however is 4500 million years old. The fact that evolutionary processes are so rapid compared to the total time available is the reason the process has been so effective in creating and recreating the stupendous diversity of life on the planet. How is that a problem?

Thus the statement you quotes above is either outdated, misleading and thinks something is a problem where it is not.

 

[sayak83]

You should fire your teachers for substituting imagination for fact.

"It is now widely accepted" is another way of saying..."if you don't believe this you are an uneducated moron".

From your quote.....
"We discuss each of these steps with respect to inferred functional utility of acquired character sets. Dissociated heterochrony is seen as the most likely process for the evolutionarily rapid morphological transformations required. Developmental biological processes, including paedomorphosis, played important roles. We conclude with a discussion of phylogenetic interpretations of the evidence."

This is "inferred" as the "most likely" "interpretation of the evidence".......seriously do you see facts presented here? All I see is wishful thinking couched in scientific jargon. If the results were not "interpreted" for you by those who have a reputation in the scientific community to uphold, what would we assume about those "rapid transformations" in the Cambrian period?.....that they could not possibly be explained by the very slow process of evolution.

You once again refuse to acknowledge that all of science uses probabilistic language in keeping with the scientific method. I had provided specific examples from Einstein's paper of Special Relativity and Watson-Crick's paper on the DNA. Did you read them? You are showing symptoms of willful denial when you refuse to acknowledge something that has been amply demonstrated to you again and again and again.

You also dodged the fact that your source misleadingly quote-mined a scientist who, from all his investigations and papers, are fully seen to be supporting and bolstering the scientific theory of evolution for the emergence of land animals from fish.

 

[SkepticThinker]

@sayak83 This is what my teachers tell me......please let us know what parts of this information are incorrect.

"Fact: All scientific research indicates that life cannot spring from nonliving matter.
Question: What is the scientific basis for saying that the first cell sprang from nonliving chemicals?

Fact: Researchers have recreated in the laboratory the environmental conditions that they believe existed early in the earth’s history. In these experiments, a few scientists have manufactured some of the molecules found in living things.
Question: If the chemicals in the experiment represent the earth’s early environment and the molecules produced represent the building blocks of life, whom or what does the scientist who performed the experiment represent? Does he or she represent blind chance or an intelligent entity?

Fact: Protein and RNA molecules must work together for a cell to survive. Scientists admit that it is highly unlikely that RNA formed by chance. The odds against even one protein forming by chance are astronomical. It is exceedingly improbable that RNA and proteins should form by chance in the same place at the same time and be able to work together.
Question: What takes greater faith—to believe that the millions of intricately coordinated parts of a cell arose by chance or to believe that the cell is the product of an intelligent mind?

"Many scientists point to the fossil record as support for the idea that life emerged from a common origin. They argue,
for example, that the fossil record documents the notion that fish became amphibians and reptiles became mammals.
What, though, does the fossil evidence really show?

“Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life,” says evolutionary paleontologist David M. Raup, “what geologists of Darwin’s time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record.”

In reality, the vast majority of fossils show stability among types of creatures over extensive amounts of time. The evidence
does not show them evolving from one type into another. Unique body plans appear suddenly. New features appear suddenly. For example, bats with sonar and echolocation systems appear with no obvious link to a more primitive ancestor.
In fact, more than half of all the major divisions of animal life seem to have appeared in a relatively short period of time. Because many new and distinct life forms appear so suddenly in the fossil record, paleontologists refer to this period as “the Cambrian explosion.” When was the Cambrian period?

Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear?
As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!
The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory."

"What, though, of the fossils that are used to show fish changing into amphibians, and reptiles into mammals? Do they provide solid proof of evolution in action? Upon closer inspection, several problems become obvious.
First, the comparative size of the creatures placed in the reptile-to-mammal sequence is sometimes misrepresented in textbooks. Rather than being similar in size, some creatures in the series are huge, while others are small.
A second, more serious challenge is the lack of proof that those creatures are somehow related.
Specimens placed in the series are often separated by what researchers estimate to be millions of years. Regarding
the time spans that separate many of these fossils, zoologist Henry Gee says: “The intervals of time that separate the fossils are so huge that we cannot say anything definite about their possible connection through ancestry and descent.”

Commenting on the fossils of fish and amphibians, biologist Malcolm S. Gordon states that the fossils found represent only a small, “possibly quite unrepresentative, sample of the biodiversity that existed in these groups at those times.” He further says: “There is no way of knowing to what extent, if at all, those specific organisms were relevant to later developments, or what their relationships might have been to each other.” (Excerpts from the brochure "Origins of Life" WTBTS)

Available to download here....
https://www.jw.org/en/publications/books/?start=48

If it would take an intelligent entity to create and program a computer, what would it take to create a living cell, let alone a human brain, which is, after all, a living computer?

What your diagrams fail to present is any real connection between the species pictured. The "dots" connecting them are the product of imagination, not facts.

Please, no more quote mines.

It has been explained and demonstrated on this thread that scientists use actual scientific methods and tools when determining common ancestry which amounts to much, much more than just
"imagination." Remember all that talk about comparative genomics, genetics, comparative anatomy and so forth? That's a lot more than just "imagination." So I wonder why you keep repeating this claim.

Also, I wonder why you keep harping on about diagrams when you've been shown the actual fossil evidence that you've requested. I wish creationists didn't feel the need to argue in such a dishonest manner.

 

[SkepticThinker]

LOL....I have all the empirical evidence I need to demonstrate Intelligent Design, not a long process of chance mutations and blind evolutionary forces for which I see NO evidence whatsoever, but what my own eyes tell me....what the Bible tells me....and what my own logic tells me. You can choose the things that convince you. I have chosen mine.



Speciation is an interesting topic. Variety of species within a Genesis "kind" is perfectly acceptable and compatible with what the Bible teaches, but science cannot prove that adaptation and variety go beyond genetic roadblocks to produce species that are completely unrelated. See my last post.



Science can be a substitute for religion, like a lot of other activities that people are passionate about.
The Bible describes it this way....."They exchanged the truth of God for the lie and venerated and rendered sacred service to the creation rather than the Creator".....this was written almost 2000 years ago, before people ever even thought of pursuing a theory that eliminated the existence of any gods.

The Bible explains a lot of things if you give it half a chance. It is grossly misrepresented along with its teachings and for the most part by the very ones who claim to believe it.

Evolutionary theory doesn't eliminate any god(s). Many, many people accept evolution and believe in god. That's a major problem with your argument.

I wonder why you think god couldn't have come up with evolution.

 

[SkepticThinker]

"Empirical evidence, also known as sense experience, is the knowledge or source of knowledge acquired by means of the senses, particularly by observation and experimentation. The term comes from the Greek word for experience, ἐμπειρία (empeiría)."

My "senses" are not swayed by the interpretation of "evidence" that could fall away tomorrow with the next big discovery.
Truth is not like that...it can't be true today but false tomorrow. If evolution is a theory, scientists need to call it that (in the dictionary definition of the word) and stop pretending that its fact just because science says so. Science can be dead wrong....as it has been proven to be so often.



And why is this thread still going if the visible "evidence" I have presented thus far is not convincing?
From my previous post....please address this....what does the "Cambrian explosion" mean in reality?

"In reality, the vast majority of fossils show stability among types of creatures over extensive amounts of time. The evidence
does not show them evolving from one type into another. Unique body plans appear suddenly. New features appear suddenly. For example, bats with sonar and echolocation systems appear with no obvious link to a more primitive ancestor.
In fact, more than half of all the major divisions of animal life seem to have appeared in a relatively short period of time. Because many new and distinct life forms appear so suddenly in the fossil record, paleontologists refer to this period as “the Cambrian explosion.” When was the Cambrian period?

Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear?
As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!
The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory."


Since when has any experiment by scientists resulted in any species changing in form from the original?
The flies remained flies...the fish remained fish....the bacteria remained bacteria...and the plants remained plants. Species within "kinds"....this is what is observed in these experiments. Adaptation within species is not in question.



We all know that in the various fields of science are some very big egos. There is an agenda and there is peer pressure and there is a push to gain funding as well as accolades from fellow academics. All of which is a potent mix...truth is easily lost in that environment....."I think" becomes "I know".



Which reinforces the reason why it should be presented as a theory and not taught to school children as fact.



You and I both know that any change is fiercely challenged. How many hoops are needed to be jumped through before any challenge to the status quo is accepted?


That is only true if you have a mindset bogged down with that assumption. I can incorporate both, seeing the clear distinction between what is a fact and what is supposition or prediction. You need a machete though to chop through the jungle of interpretation.



Research is the key to both as well as choosing your sources carefully so as to gain a broad view of the subject from both perspectives. This applies to both religion and science. I reject the false knowledge in both.
The Bible was not written as a science textbook but when it touches on matters of science, it is accurate.

Because your worldview is apparently impervious to facts.

 

[Deeje]

Science provides explanations.

Science provides hypothesis and suggestion and educated guessing based on biased leanings towards a pet theory.
But there is no actual evidence that what they suggest ever took place.

You do not understand this thus demand something from science which is does not actually do.

Yes, I know....evolutionary science actually doesn't confess that its whole foundation is based on assumption, and there is not one single established fact to back it up.

You inject your standard as if it matters, it doesn't.

It isn't my standard that matters. What would a scientist who is the top in his field do, if someone stole his thesis, was given accolades for it and then given a squillion dollar grant for research, taking full credit for the ideas himself? Who would cry foul?

 

[Deeje]

Evolutionary theory doesn't eliminate any god(s). Many, many people accept evolution and believe in god. That's a major problem with your argument.

The problem is that those who wish to fuse their religious beliefs with popular opinion, place the Creator in a box that cannot contain him. He is the Creator, not merely the originator of all life who sat back and just let it evolve, undirected. He has been directly involved and intensely interested in human affairs all through history. He even bothered to prophesy future events down to the present day. Are you aware of prophesy that is taking place in the world right now? It was written over 2,500 years ago by someone who had no idea what he was writing about....yet his words apply to our own time and we are seeing their fulfillment. There is a reason why great change is taking place in the world right now, just as God said it would.He even foretold the outcome.

I wonder why you think god couldn't have come up with evolution.

Why would God use evolution when he has the power to create anything he wants as a whole and complete article. Why just create paint when you can create a masterpiece?

God told us how he did it in simple terminology, and in the order that things appeared. How could the Bible writer of Genesis know that life began in the oceans and with flying creatures? How did he know that man was last on the scene? Just a guess?

The universe did not evolve....did it? It was brought into existence in one awe-inspiring act.....the power of which is beyond the comprehension of mere humans.
Compared with that kind of power, anything produced by man's ideas is insignificant to say the least. With the knowledge and ability possessed by such a powerful being, human scientists could hardly claim that his existence is impossible.....nor can they state with any certainty that there is an evolutionary chain of creatures leading to man. All the fossil record shows is that creatures at one time lived and died...the rest is pure conjecture.

 

[Deeje]

Because your worldview is apparently impervious to facts.

LOL....you don't have any more "facts" than I do.

 

[Deeje]

You once again refuse to acknowledge that all of science uses probabilistic language in keeping with the scientific method. I had provided specific examples from Einstein's paper of Special Relativity and Watson-Crick's paper on the DNA. Did you read them? You are showing symptoms of willful denial when you refuse to acknowledge something that has been amply demonstrated to you again and again and again.

A probability is not a fact. Use whatever language you like.....if I have a hypothesis that I cannot prove by anything other than suggestion, then that is all it is.

hypothesis

"a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

synonyms: theory, theorem, thesis, conjecture, supposition, speculation, postulation, postulate, proposition, premise, surmise, assumption, presumption, presupposition; More
notion, concept, idea, contention, opinion, view, belief


Philosophy
a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth."

You also dodged the fact that your source misleadingly quote-mined a scientist who, from all his investigations and papers, are fully seen to be supporting and bolstering the scientific theory of evolution for the emergence of land animals from fish.

There is not a single solitary shred of evidence linking land animals to amphibians.....it is assumed and suggested that there are links in an imaginary chain, but there is no proof of any real relationship of one fossil to another, millions of years apart.

 

[sayak83]

A probability is not a fact. Use whatever language you like.....if I have a hypothesis that I cannot prove by anything other than suggestion, then that is all it is.

hypothesis

"a supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation.

synonyms: theory, theorem, thesis, conjecture, supposition, speculation, postulation, postulate, proposition, premise, surmise, assumption, presumption, presupposition; More
notion, concept, idea, contention, opinion, view, belief


Philosophy
a proposition made as a basis for reasoning, without any assumption of its truth."



There is not a single solitary shred of evidence linking land animals to amphibians.....it is assumed and suggested that there are links in an imaginary chain, but there is no proof of any real relationship of one fossil to another, millions of years apart.

All knowledge of the world is probabilistic. Certainty and proofs can only be found in mathematics, not in any field of science science and not certainly in the ordinary so called "common sense ideas" of the world people have. Scientific knowledge have far greater probability of being true than common sense knowledge.
You have once again dodged the question of why you accept some things in science and not others when all use the same methods of your so called "suggestions" in their explanations. There are no proofs in any of science. NONE. Do you know this?

A scientific theory is not synonymous with hypothesis. A scientific theory is something that has been validated by many many observations and has made lots of successful predictions. A scientific hypothesis is a conjecture that has less or ambiguous evidential support and is yet to be fully validated by lots of evidence and predictions.

An aspect of your science denial is rejecting the terminology of science which is not English because science is not associated with any particular language or culture.

For me it is more than sufficient to show that you reject science and its methods as practiced in the universities and research institutions around the world and whose results are published in the journals like Nature or Science. That you reject this science is more than evident in your discussion here.

 

[Shad]

Science provides hypothesis and suggestion and educated guessing based on biased leanings towards a pet theory.

Wrong as inference, which you clearly stated, involves using evidence. You do not seem to even know what the words you use actually mean. Buy a dictionary.

Funny that you cry "bias" when you have your own religious bias.... Pot meet Kettle.

But there is no actual evidence that what they suggest ever took place.

See above

Yes, I know....evolutionary science actually doesn't confess that its whole foundation is based on assumption, and there is not one single established fact to back it up.

Wrong as Ive already mentioned speciation. The Anemone Flower is another example. You should of stayed in school and learned something.

It isn't my standard that matters.

Yes it is as you have already demonstrated that you do not understand science provides explanation in the form of models. You demand certainty

What would a scientist who is the top in his field do, if someone stole his thesis, was given accolades for it and then given a squillion dollar grant for research, taking full credit for the ideas himself? Who would cry foul?

Empty speculation and irrelevant. Amusing that you demand evidence for something you disagree with but feel that you can freely speculate when it pleases you.

I could turn this speculation around. Those that deny evolution have an emotional investment is creationism as part of their religious view which they can not let go off as it all or nothing in their worldview. Which itself has no supporting evidence outside the claims of religious traditions.

Yawn.

 

[sayak83]

They just designed themselves to be too irresistible to their women? Really? How did they do that? Did they imagine a design long enough for the outfit to materialize out of thin air?
The world's top designers would win awards for color co-ordination and fashion accessories like these.

Sexual selection of more colorful male birds and male fish by females is the primary driving mechanism for the evolution of colorful feathers or patterns in birds and fish. Despite your disbelief, there is experimental evidence that not only does this happen, but also it happens quite quickly.
The case in point is the evolution of colorful male fish

from far more plain looking male fish

within a space of few years (30-40 generations; as generation time is only 3 months for this fish).

How did this happen?

These fish (guppies) are subdivided across many streams. In some streams there are large predators in others there are no large predators. In streams with large predators, natural selection due to predation keeps the color of fish to transparent white so that they are not seen and eaten. In strems without large predators, the preference of females towards brightly colored males lead them to be colorful so that they can get laid more and have more offsprings.

These facts were experimentally observed. Then, to test the theory, guppies from a stream that had lots of predators were taken and introduced into a stream that had no predators. Within a few years their descendants (30-40 generations remove) have developed the bright colors (seen in the pics) due to mutation driven by sexual selection of the female.

Thus evolution of color is animals by sexual selection is validated and shown to be quite easy for evolution to accomplish by a few mutations within a short period of time.


Why do females like brightly colored males. In species of fish and birds, bright scales and bright feathers can only be had by healthy individuals with helathy and parasite free body. Hence bright colors is a symbol of health, just as ripping muscles would one for human males.

http://www.newtonsapple.org.uk/guppy-fish-amazingly-fast-evolution/

 

[gnostic]

Awesome statement.
When younger I PAID bucks to hunt the little wood duck.
One needed a State hunting license, Federal Permit and State Permit to harvest ONE duck.
Often I didn't even get the one.
The money went to waterfowl habitat.
Hunters are responsible for the conservation of the species.
Over the years I saw an increase in the population from seeing a flock of a few to flocks of hundreds.

I find the whole argument of conservation of duck or to control population through hunting, merely empty rhetoric.

There are thousands times more seagulls, crows, sparrows than ducks, and yet you don't see hunters going after these birds to control these populations. Clearly there are nothing about gull hunting.

And then we have here fruit bats overpopulation in Victoria, but no one is putting up their hands, to go bat hunting.

I think it is nothing more than double standard with this whole conservation and population control.

 

[SkepticThinker]

LOL....you don't have any more "facts" than I do.

Refusal to face facts does not mean the those facts don't exist.

The evidence for evolution is mountainous and confirmed via many, many independent sources, carefully collected, observed and analyzed and re-analyzed over time.

The evidence for creationism, according to you, is a bunch of pictures of random animals and a fallacious argument from personal incredulity. Oh and the Bible, which describes the order of creation inaccurately.

It seems pretty obvious to me, where the facts lie.

 

[SkepticThinker]

The problem is that those who wish to fuse their religious beliefs with popular opinion, place the Creator in a box that cannot contain him. He is the Creator, not merely the originator of all life who sat back and just let it evolve, undirected. He has been directly involved and intensely interested in human affairs all through history. He even bothered to prophesy future events down to the present day. Are you aware of prophesy that is taking place in the world right now? It was written over 2,500 years ago by someone who had no idea what he was writing about....yet his words apply to our own time and we are seeing their fulfillment. There is a reason why great change is taking place in the world right now, just as God said it would.He even foretold the outcome.

The theory of evolution is not just “popular opinion.” It’s a well-evidenced, demonstrable scientific theory, no different from germ theory or gravitational theory which uses the methods of inquiry involved in all fields of science (like the ones you accept).

The people who believe their god is intelligent enough to have planned and created evolution obviously disagree with you. So how do we go about determining who’s got it right?

Your assertion that “He [God] has been directly involved and intensely interested in human affairs all through history” is a claim. For a person who demands the highest and most rigorous levels of evidence from the scientific community, it’s quite ironic that you’re perfectly happy making unsupported and indemonstrable claims over and over.

What prophecy are you referring to? Does it give dates? Names? Details of any kind? Also, assuming there is some prophecy written down that turns out to be true, how does that demonstrate the existence of a god?

Why would God use evolution when he has the power to create anything he wants as a whole and complete article. Why just create paint when you can create a masterpiece?

Because evolution makes sense? Why aren’t we born as fully grown adults then? What is the point of (a)sexual reproduction if god is always just poofing creatures into existence from thin air? Why would God want to create billions of creatures so that he has to constantly be tinkering with and tweaking them all the time? Isn’t that kind of time consuming and inefficient? And why is he so bad at it, given that 99% of every living species on the planet has gone extinct? Oh, and why take 4 billion years to finally create human beings, the creatures for which the entire universe was supposedly made for in the first place?

I wonder why and how this god left so much evidence pointing to evolution behind then, if this is the way He operates. We should see much different evidence than we currently have, if what you are saying is how it happened.

This doesn’t seem to make much sense.

God told us how he did it in simple terminology, and in the order that things appeared. How could the Bible writer of Genesis know that life began in the oceans and with flying creatures? How did he know that man was last on the scene? Just a guess?

The thing is, “god did it” is not a statement that has any explanatory power at all. It doesn’t tell us now, why, where or when. The Bible certainly is not a science textbook.

The order of how things appear according to Genesis is not accurate, by the way.

What do you mean “man was last on the scene?” How would the last one “on the scene” know they were the last ones “on the scene?” Is that what you’re asking me?

The universe did not evolve....did it? It was brought into existence in one awe-inspiring act.....the power of which is beyond the comprehension of mere humans.

Are you referring to the Big Bang? Guess who collected the evidence and discovered that event? Scientists. Using science. And it has a lot more descriptive power than “god did it.”

I wonder where god came from. I wonder if god wonders where god came from?

Compared with that kind of power, anything produced by man's ideas is insignificant to say the least. With the knowledge and ability possessed by such a powerful being, human scientists could hardly claim that his existence is impossible.....nor can they state with any certainty that there is an evolutionary chain of creatures leading to man. All the fossil record shows is that creatures at one time lived and died...the rest is pure conjecture.

Scientists generally don’t claim that “his existence is impossible.” Science can’t say much about untestable claims.

Scientists can claim quite confidently that there evolution is responsible for the diversity of life on earth. And they can do that from drawing evidence from multiple fields of science.

Please stop carrying on as if the fossil record is the only evidence anybody has for evolution. The fact that that is most certainly not the case has been pointed out several times now. To repeat the claim again would be dishonest on your part.

 

[Milton Platt]

Until they prove how life began, they cannot prove that an Intelligent Designer does not exist as that "First Cause". Put it into whatever class is appropriate, but give it to kids as a reasonable alternative. And don't let them pretend that science has "proven" anything when all it can ever do is "suggest" what "might have" happened when no one was here to document any of it.



I am not surprised.....their initial stance on Galileo's position wasn't biblical and their current stance on theistic evolution isn't either.
They have sold out to popular opinion to maintain some credibility for a church system that has failed in every way to maintain truth in worship.

so should we teach every unproven thing in class as possible? Where do you find the time to teach all the different versions of how the universe was created? And it should not be in a science class, because the science does not support it.