The Four Dirty Secrets Against Darwin Evolution

[TagliatelliMonster]

Anyone who is saying that "humans are fish" is saying something really rather silly. Humans are humans, fish are fish, apes are apes, millipedes are millipedes.

Now, as it happens, this human was born into a "white, anglo-saxon, protestant" family. I remain white, and essentiallly anglo-saxon, but protestant is something I can do without. My father was likewise born into a white, anglo-saxon, protestant family, and that's how he identified, as did his father, his grand-father and great-grand-father -- I can go back 7 generations from me, to about 1740. BUT, what if I could go back 20 generations? Well, there were no protestants then, so I suppose it would be catholic. And 100 generations ago, there were no Catholics, or even Christians. Nor were there Anglo-Saxons. So what would my grandsire of 100 generations ago be?

Well, I don't know. I cannot even be sure he would have been white. And 500 generations ago, he would have definitely been black and in Africa!

No, a human is not a fish, but somewhere in his very distant list of ancestors was a fish. And long before that, a single-celled something. As Pooh Bah says, in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta the Mikado, "Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule." Silly, I know, but surely you can see the point.

When (s)he says "fish", what (s)he really means is "chordate" though.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Of course, but then, to whoever said "humans are fish," what was the point of stopping at fish? Fish also have ancestors, and some of them were not chordates -- deuterostomia, and before them bilateria, and all in the "kingdom" animalia. So I think we should be able to say that humans (and fish) are animals, and be done with it.

Humans are eukaryotes too. That takes us all the way back to single celled life. Before that is perhaps the only "change of kind" in our history when a prokaryote surrounded another and did not digest it.

 

[Pogo]

I have a different opinion on this matter. Prejudiced people have always laughed at seemingly outlandish scientific discoveries like:-
1) The earth revolves round the Sun and rotates rapidly around its axis.
2) Time can slow down or speed up depending on your speed
3) Continents move over time.
4) Stars are in fact distant suns
5) physical phenomena are intrinsically probabilistic and reality is dependent on how one interacts with it.
Etc.
Modern phylogenetics and cladistics is an outcome of the toil of hundreds of researchers and evolutionary biologists who tracked down lineage lines based on painstaking DNA and anatomical information. It's information rich and vital to biological research. It realises Darwin's idea of the brachiating tree of life and the fundamental concepts of nested hierarchies in beautiful detail. Why should we not talk about its findings as confidently as other mind bending claims of science! Indeed we are apes who walked on two legs, birds are dinosaurs who took flight and all land animals with backbone are fish who adapted to land.
View attachment 88762

Obviously, what this thread needs is a Babelfish

There is more than one meaning to the word fish. Context is critical, and the misunderstanding is the basis of much humor.
Don't Panic.

 

[exchemist]

I have a different opinion on this matter. Prejudiced people have always laughed at seemingly outlandish scientific discoveries like:-
1) The earth revolves round the Sun and rotates rapidly around its axis.
2) Time can slow down or speed up depending on your speed
3) Continents move over time.
4) Stars are in fact distant suns
5) physical phenomena are intrinsically probabilistic and reality is dependent on how one interacts with it.
Etc.
Modern phylogenetics and cladistics is an outcome of the toil of hundreds of researchers and evolutionary biologists who tracked down lineage lines based on painstaking DNA and anatomical information. It's information rich and vital to biological research. It realises Darwin's idea of the brachiating tree of life and the fundamental concepts of nested hierarchies in beautiful detail. Why should we not talk about its findings as confidently as other mind bending claims of science! Indeed we are apes who walked on two legs, birds are dinosaurs who took flight and all land animals with backbone are fish who adapted to land.
View attachment 88762

These are not sound analogies, though. The issue is the choice of terms, not whether the science can be believed or not.

It is pointless trying to redefine a well established everyday word like “fish” to include all tetrapods. Saying all tetrapods belong to a classification of creatures that includes, and started with, lobe-finned fish is uncontroversial. Saying a cow is therefore a fish invites ridicule and understandably so.

 

[exchemist]

Obviously, what this thread needs is a Babelfish

There is more than one meaning to the word fish. Context is critical, and the misunderstanding is the basis of much humor.
Don't Panic.

There was a woman in the office once who looked a bit like that.

 

[YoursTrue]

Anyone who is saying that "humans are fish" is saying something really rather silly. Humans are humans, fish are fish, apes are apes, millipedes are millipedes.

Now, as it happens, this human was born into a "white, anglo-saxon, protestant" family. I remain white, and essentiallly anglo-saxon, but protestant is something I can do without. My father was likewise born into a white, anglo-saxon, protestant family, and that's how he identified, as did his father, his grand-father and great-grand-father -- I can go back 7 generations from me, to about 1740. BUT, what if I could go back 20 generations? Well, there were no protestants then, so I suppose it would be catholic. And 100 generations ago, there were no Catholics, or even Christians. Nor were there Anglo-Saxons. So what would my grandsire of 100 generations ago be?

Well, I don't know. I cannot even be sure he would have been white. And 500 generations ago, he would have definitely been black and in Africa!

No, a human is not a fish, but somewhere in his very distant list of ancestors was a fish. And long before that, a single-celled something. As Pooh Bah says, in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta the Mikado, "Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule." Silly, I know, but surely you can see the point.

Yahhhh Pooh bah said that? Here I sang in that operetta and never knew that!! Fascinating. Ok it was many years ago and I was happy to memorize my part. And at that time had no questions, as I do today, about the legitimacy that any or all human evolved from...fish. thanks for that, and you do bring up some interesting points about lineage. Of the human kind though. Gilbert and Sullivan were smarter than I thought. Even though I do not believe the theory of evolution in its entirety now. But then, new discoveries come to scientific light from time to time.

 

[YoursTrue]

Obviously, what this thread needs is a Babelfish
There is more than one meaning to the word fish. Context is critical, and the misunderstanding is the basis of much humor.
Don't Panic.

That's part of what I found. There are all types of fish. Like weird and fascinating anyway.

 

[sayak83]

Anyone who is saying that "humans are fish" is saying something really rather silly. Humans are humans, fish are fish, apes are apes, millipedes are millipedes.

Now, as it happens, this human was born into a "white, anglo-saxon, protestant" family. I remain white, and essentiallly anglo-saxon, but protestant is something I can do without. My father was likewise born into a white, anglo-saxon, protestant family, and that's how he identified, as did his father, his grand-father and great-grand-father -- I can go back 7 generations from me, to about 1740. BUT, what if I could go back 20 generations? Well, there were no protestants then, so I suppose it would be catholic. And 100 generations ago, there were no Catholics, or even Christians. Nor were there Anglo-Saxons. So what would my grandsire of 100 generations ago be?

Well, I don't know. I cannot even be sure he would have been white. And 500 generations ago, he would have definitely been black and in Africa!

No, a human is not a fish, but somewhere in his very distant list of ancestors was a fish. And long before that, a single-celled something. As Pooh Bah says, in the Gilbert & Sullivan operetta the Mikado, "Don't mention it. I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule." Silly, I know, but surely you can see the point.

Well. I said it.
Could you tell what was it I said in the post below is wrong?

The Four Dirty Secrets Against Darwin Evolution

Quoting from the post and the idea -- from @sayak83 "Humans (and all land vertebrates) evolved from and continue to remain FISH. That is problem with regular language and scientific language. Scientifically we are a type of land living fish along with cows, lizards, tigers, sparrows etc." So...

www.religiousforums.com

 

[sayak83]

These are not sound analogies, though. The issue is the choice of terms, not whether the science can be believed or not.

It is pointless trying to redefine a well established everyday word like “fish” to include all tetrapods. Saying all tetrapods belong to a classification of creatures that includes, and started with, lobe-finned fish is uncontroversial. Saying a cow is therefore a fish invites ridicule and understandably so.

That need not be the case. Check out this video.

 

[exchemist]

That need not be the case. Check out this video.

The point is at the end: the term “fish” is a category that does not constitute a clade.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well. I said it.
Could you tell what was it I said in the post below is wrong?

The Four Dirty Secrets Against Darwin Evolution

Quoting from the post and the idea -- from @sayak83 "Humans (and all land vertebrates) evolved from and continue to remain FISH. That is problem with regular language and scientific language. Scientifically we are a type of land living fish along with cows, lizards, tigers, sparrows etc." So...

www.religiousforums.com

What I find wrong about it is quite simply this: fish are chordates, humans are chordates, cows and birds and lizards and tigers are all chordates. But humans are not cows, birds, lizards or tigers, or even fish, nor is any one of those any of the others in the list. We are all examples of chordates in the Domain Eukaryota, in the Kingdom Animalia, the Subkingdom Eumetazoa and the Superphylum Deuterstomia.

But within all of those taxa, each of the animals mentioned occupy their own Species within Order within Family within Genus -- and each are thus distinguished from each other.

 

[sayak83]

The point is at the end: the term “fish” is a category that does not constitute a clade.

Fish as used in common understanding is a paraphyletic group and is scientifically meaningless. To make fish a clade and a scientifically meaningful category, we need to add tetrapods. What this tells us is that we need to extend our conception of fish and include land tetrapods in it. I find it no different that extending other commonly used words and giving it richer meaning through science (energy, hear, space and time etc are all such). This phylogenetics understanding of fish as a clade that includes us is an important finding and should be used where appropriate.

 

[exchemist]

Fish as used in common understanding is a paraphyletic group and is scientifically meaningless. To make fish a clade and a scientifically meaningful category, we need to add tetrapods. What this tells us is that we need to extend our conception of fish and include land tetrapods in it. I find it no different that extending other commonly used words and giving it richer meaning through science (energy, hear, space and time etc are all such). This phylogenetics understanding of fish as a clade that includes us is an important finding and should be used where appropriate.

My point (and that of a number of others) is that the term "fish" is not a cladistic term and can't sensibly be used as one.

Science cannot expect to take a commonly used word and mangle it out of all recognition in an attempt to redefine it just to fit one of its theories. We can just about manage with "energy" or "mass" in physics, as in these cases the scientific meaning is merely a narrower, more closely defined version of the general meaning. But with "fish", the attempt to use it as a synonym for the cladistic term sarcopterygii would widen its meaning so as to render it utterly useless in normal speech.

The analogy would be with the rather ridiculously broad meaning astronomers attach to the word "metals". If one is not an astronomer, one has to keep constantly in mind, when reading astronomical articles, that they mean all elements other than H and He. But no astronomer would dream of suggesting everyone should now regard every other element as a metal. They use the term in their own field in this way and everyone is happy. They don't try to tell the rest of the world that the common understanding of what a metal is is wrong.

 

[Subduction Zone]

My point (and that of a number of others) is that the term "fish" is not a cladistic term and can't sensibly be used as one.

Science cannot expect to take a commonly used word and mangle it out of all recognition in an attempt to redefine it just to fit one of its theories. We can just about manage with "energy" or "mass" in physics, as in these cases the scientific meaning is merely a narrower, more closely defined version of the general meaning. But with "fish", the attempt to use it as a synonym for the cladistic term sarcopterygii would widen its meaning so as to render it utterly useless in normal speech.

The analogy would be with the rather ridiculously broad meaning astronomers attach to the word "metals". If one is not an astronomer, one has to keep constantly in mind, when reading astronomical articles, that they mean all elements other than H and He. But no astronomer would dream of suggesting everyone should now regard every other element as a metal. They use the term in their own field in this way and everyone is happy. They don't try to tell the rest of the world that the common understanding of what a metal is is wrong.

I tend to use "fish" that way only when I am dealing with a creationist that tries to claim that there is a "change of kind" in evolution when there is not. Though lately I have tried the term Vertebrata, but that has not helped all that much either. Let's face it, creationists simply do not want to learn. They can see that knowledge is antithetical to their beliefs. Utter ignorance is their friend.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Yahhhh Pooh bah said that? Here I sang in that operetta and never knew that!! Fascinating. Ok it was many years ago and I was happy to memorize my part. And at that time had no questions, as I do today, about the legitimacy that any or all human evolved from...fish. thanks for that, and you do bring up some interesting points about lineage. Of the human kind though. Gilbert and Sullivan were smarter than I thought. Even though I do not believe the theory of evolution in its entirety now. But then, new discoveries come to scientific light from time to time.

I also sang in it -- the role of Koko, the Lord High Executioner. I have a strange sort of ability to remember immense amounts of whatever production I've been in. I can still quote the entirety of Romeo & Juliet (as edited in the production I was in) from memory. From the opening Chorus to the closing lines by Prince Escalus.

 

[metis]

Obviously, what this thread needs is a Babelfish

There is more than one meaning to the word fish. Context is critical, and the misunderstanding is the basis of much humor.
Don't Panic.

She's a blind date I had once!

 

[YoursTrue]

I also sang in it -- the role of Koko, the Lord High Executioner. I have a strange sort of ability to remember immense amounts of whatever production I've been in. I can still quote the entirety of Romeo & Juliet (as edited in the production I was in) from memory. From the opening Chorus to the closing lines by Prince Escalus.

I am impressed. I was talented but never had a good memory for some things. I played Katisha. I remember the tune now to "I am the royal high executioner!..." Bravo. Or was it Lord High Executioner?"

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I am impressed. I was talented but never had a good memory for some things. I played Katisha. I remember the tune now to "I am the royal high executioner!..." Bravo. Or was it Lord High Executioner?"

Behold the Lord High Executioner
A personage of noble rank and title —
A dignified and potent officer
Whose functions are particularly vital!

 

[YoursTrue]

Humans are eukaryotes too. That takes us all the way back to single celled life. Before that is perhaps the only "change of kind" in our history when a prokaryote surrounded another and did not digest it.

So again, there we go back to abiogenesis. At least it's not something from nothing...in the scientific mind.

 

[YoursTrue]

Behold the Lord High Executioner
A personage of noble rank and title —
A dignified and potent officer
Whose functions are particularly vital!

Very good!! I think I remember some of the tune at least. First four notes were the notes of a major chord...individually of course.