I note many public evolutionists, Prothero and Shermer and many others always stress the cases of vestigial parts in marine mammals as evidence for evolutionary biology.
Yet in reality this is a sampling error that in fact makes the opposite case against evolution.
I agree marine mamnmals once were land lovers and only later gained features to surbvve in the water. Not the impossible steps said by evolutionists, as Berlinski demonstrates, but some other mechanism.
Anyways evolutionists persusde themselves, and try to persuade others, that the real changes found in marine mammals proves creatures changed greatly and by Darwins method.
Yet the great truth is that for all the living and fossil biology that is observed at least 99%% has no vestigial features whatsoever. If all biology evolved then all biology should be crawling with remaining bits but in fact its a great missing anatomy. There are no vestigial bits save in very few special cases like marine mammals.
Therefore if evolutionists use these few cases to make the evolution case then in strict sampling disipline they actually make the opposite case. If finding a few vestigial bits is to prove evolution then the glorious ascence makes the true case that evolution didn’t happen because it should be that vestigial bits are the norm and not the exception.
So i propose its a sampling error to say vestigial bits of marine mammals prove evolution and in fact it must be proving the opposite.
I think this is a good point unless someone can show otherwise.
WHY? You keep claiming this but give no reason why it should be so.
You give me details of papers with no links. I searched online and all I could find were abstracts or short extracts. I do not have access to full papers that are behind paywalls and/or need a subscription to read.
So why do you say that I refuse to read them?
Majority rules! Most of the whale’s relatives live on land but whales live in the sea. Most of my relatives live abroad, does this make me a foreigner in the country where I was born and still live?
Then why bother dating fossils if their age can be so easily disregarded?
Branching trees are fine until we come across an anomaly then convergent evolution kicks in.
My (admittedly poor) understanding is that “convergent evolution” applies to functional similarity – like the development of somewhat similar wings in birds and bats, or somewhat similar shapes in tuna and dolphins. Harshman is talking about similarity right down at the molecular level.
A different lifestyle adopted by one interior branch of a much larger tree, does NOT mean this “anomaly” is unrelated to its relatives!
Still, you raise a valid point. If ALL your relatives from way back live and have always lived in China, and if you yourself are visibly and genetically Chinese, you are unavoidably of Chinese ancestry even if your parents move to Germany and gave birth to you there. You are not a German who just happened to “converge” on Chinese.
I think phylogenetics have settled on hippos as the nearest living relatives of cetaceans.
This is the first you have mentioned any difficulties. But you just need to find a library. I just picked the first few references in my files. Bet you could google and find equally good references. Any recent study of eutherian phylogeny ought to do, of which there are quite a few.
No, you misunderstand the nature of the data and the inference. It isn’t just a majority. It’s an inference from the structure of the phylogenetic tree. In trying to reconstruct whether the mammal ancestor was a land animal or an aquatic animal, you consider how many changes would be necessary in either case. If mammals are primitively aquatic, you would need dozens of independent changes from aquatic to terrestrial. If they’re primitively terrestrial, you need just one transition to the water. (Well, a few more if we think about dugongs, seals, and sea otters.)
Just because dating is irrelevant for one purpose doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant for all purposes.
Is there something wrong with that?
Thats not my point.
I mean the few cases selected by evolutionist teachers to audiences are not a accurate sample of biology’s evolution evidence on the matter of vestigial bits.
I mean all that is shown is change took place. not the mechanism for it.
SO the samples they pick are not accurate sampling. Accurate sampling would show no vestigial bits or rather 99% of critters don’t have these remnants.
THATS THE IMPORTANT POINT.
The few are VERY SPECIAL CASES.
Not a rool of the dice in picking from a hat of creature names.
So its bad sampling.
Then the lack of vestigial bits suggests there must be other options for mechanisms for the changes.
getting excited about REAL anatomical evidence for changes, like in marine mammals, is a self deception.
if vestigial bits makes a case then the bigger case is made by the lack of them and nullify’s any evolution case.
I think sampling math aids creationism here.
why!!
why not/
I mean if evolution has been going on for all biology for so long and producing so much change inside and out of our bodies tHEN our bodies should be crawling with bits and pieces and remnants of knobs and knabs like crazy.
when in archeology they investigate old cities and buildings they finf structures built on top of structures and bits of the former structure are found a lot or a little.
Its impossible that CLEAN SWEEP of all bits of a previous anatomical/etc body plan is done for the next body plan and the next and the next.
It would require a agenda of evolution to have this clean sweep.
Impossible by evolutionists own doctrines.
Then they sin by bringing up the few cases WHERE THERE REALLY WAS ANATOMICAL CHANGE, like marine MAMMALS, and say AHA look at the bits remaining.Proof of evolution.
If remaining bits is proof of evolution the striking absence of them os the trumping proof that evolution didn’t happen.
Another point of the thread is the wrong sampling used here by evolutionists in their preaching.
I evolutionism trues to say bits are removed that are in the way or not needed IT STILL would not be the clean sweep.
The ones remaining is a point against this even if they say they REUSE them and this kept them from being evolved away.
naw come on. give up.
There’s not a single calorie of intellectual nutrition in that word salad.
See, now, this is why there should be some kind of minimal standards for OPs.
CharlieM,
3rd hit on Google for ‘SINE evolution whale’. SINE data is cool, where available, because there is very little opportunity for convergent evolution or cryptic reversal.
Robert Byers,
That is enough to support biological evolution. Not to prove it, but if the vestige descended from the more complete structure, that is a strong expectation of the conventional evolutionary paradigm. All other evolutionary scenarios one can cook up are ‘supported’ as well – hyper-acceleration, front-loading, guided mutation, intentional selection – but it separates evolutionary ones from non-evolutionary ones. Other lines of argument allow dismissal of the rubbish theories in that little list!
Well I have only made one rushed post since you accused me of refusing to read the references.
You are begging the question. If the changes come about by blind, unguided processes then multiple independent changes would be a real problem, But this is no problem for directed changes. Look at the development of a single human embryo which I consider to be directed. There are multiple changes going on here.
I would think that when we are trying to determine the relationship between life forms dating is relevant.
No. But the more convergence we see the more it would seem that there are other factors beside unguided, blind processes.
Convergence does apply to functional similarity but there are other forms of convergence.
Here is another form:
Do you not find the OP thought provoking and interesting to think about?
For instance frogs may have vestigial teeth but is there any evidence that they have vestigial scales?
See this example of frogs with teeth
Controlling and/ or influencing development is not the same as determining what will develop. The claim is that genomes do not determine what type of organism will develop
Nice projection. We are still waiting for any evidence that genomes DETERMINE what type of organism will develop
And yet you can’t find any evidence that supports your claim and refutes mine. Strange, eh?
Perhaps you should post less and read more.
You need to be clearer on what you are proposing. Do you want to claim that whales are the primitive form and that all terrestrial features of mammals (actually, all tetrapods) are massively convergent? You’re always trying to poke holes in the evolutionary story but you never make your preferred story clear.
Similarly, in what way do you suppose the development of a human embryo is directed? Directed by what? What evidence do you have for such a thing? And why would multiple changes in a human embryo have anything to do with convergence?
You might think that, but you would be wrong. Your intuition would be correct if the fossil record were complete; then we could just assemble the path of evolution by connecting one generation to the next. But it’s highly fragmentary. We are unlikely to find any ancestor-descendant sequences laid out before us. For the longest time, Archaeopteryx was the oldest maniraptoran fossil, and all its closest, more primitive relatives were much younger. Fairly recently we have found older maniraptorans, but even before then we could reconstruct phylogeny reasonably well, without reference to dates.
Why? Explain your hypothesis and the evidence supporting it. Convergence is reasonably explained by similar selective environments acting on similar organisms. Why would you need anything else?
It’s good that you put “determine” in all caps, because that’s the crucial term. What exactly do you mean by it? I don’t quite know what it means, so I will make a different claim: the differences between species are determined by the differences in their genomes. If you disagree, what exactly do you think makes species different?
I’m not clear on what that means. You can help by stating what you think does determine what type of organism will develop.
No. I found it incoherent. That’s the problem.
We don’t know*, John. That is the point. And without that knowledge Common Descent is untestable.
*if ID is right then it is software- internal software- that determines the type of organism that will develop. And everything else is the assembly line that makes it so
AGAIN, it depends on which species you are talking about. As I said earlier the difference between two species of the same Genus could very well be due to genetics. That doesn’t mean the same holds for two species of different Phyla.
Human assembly lines control and influence what will come out. The determination of what the assembly lines will produce comes before
petrushka,
Thanks for that link. I hope CharlieM can find time to watch. It’s a very clear summary of some of the evidence for evolutionary theory.
Maybe Frankie could find 11 minutes to have a look, too.
Could you be clearer on what you propose? I have no idea what you mean. If the differences are not genetic, what are they? What leads you to believe the differences are not genetic?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
You are a funny man.
petrushka,
I honestly think it is a well-made presentation pitched at a good level for the lay-person. I enjoyed it, anyway. The point about hippos giving birth under water is telling. There are several video recordings of such events on the net, too.
Testability, Alan. How can test it, ie that natural selection, drift and/ or neutral changes did it to the exclusion of directed evolution and a Common Design?
Humans can give birth underwater also. There are lots of advantages.
But any such human birth would be the result of cultural teaching.
I don’t see any of those bits as relevant to any others. For the purpose of providing evidence of phylogeny, it doesn’t matter what the genome does as long as it’s inherited. It could be just a useless passenger (and of course 90% of it is, in humans) for all it matters. Nor does this question seem at all relevant to ID. Whatever the relevant form of inheritance is (and I’m assuming you believe that form is somehow inherited), differences could be either designed or not.
But what is this internal software you’re talking about? Unless you’re more specific it’s impossible to discuss it.
It’s a wonderful and compelling video, which is why the Discovery Institute will never mention it, and why UD will not feature it. Or will they? Perhaps Torley will post it.
You misunderstand the claims being made in the video. They have nothing to do with selection, drift, any evolutionary processes, or the existence or non-existence of ID. They have to do with the evidence for common descent. Do we agree on common descent?
Good point. Though human babies seem to have some vestigial innate behaviour.
Did you watch the video, Joe? Its only 11 minutes and packs a lot in.
AGAIN- there isn’t any way to objectively, ie scientifically, test the concept.
OK, so you can’t answer my question. That is all you had to say
Phylogeny supports a common design and its variants.
The internal software I am talking about is the software that runs cells and determines what develops. The software that will never be found thanks to evolutionists
Of course there is: by examining the evidence and determining whether it fits one hypothesis better than another. Common descent and separate creation have different expectations. In separate creation, we would expect to see different “kinds” with no clear connections to any particular other kinds. If you consider that as expressed in trees, no tree connecting kinds should be favored by the evidence over any other tree. This is not what we see. And that’s an objective, scientific test.
Creationism has no necessary expectations.
Since ID often cites human artifacts as examples of design (Paley’s watch) I will note that human design evolution involves much more lateral transfer (stealing) than seen in biological evolution. there would be even more borrowing if not for patent and copyright laws.
Take at look at the early history of sewing machines.
I don’t know what you mean by that. You need to stop talking in meaningless sound bites and specify more clearly what your hypothesis is in opposition to common descent, and what evidence is capable of distinguishing the two.
Why will that software never be found, and how do you know it exists? If I can make sense, you seem to be talking about the regulatory networks of development and metabolism. But we know quite a bit about those, and they aren’t inherited; they arise dynamically within cells and embryos. If you’re looking for the reasons species are different, that can’t be it.
John Harshman,
You have no idea what a special creation entails. I would expect much commonality as no one reinvents the wheel for every different car, truck or SUV.
AGAIN, if you do not know what makes an organism what it is you cannot test Common Descent
John, If you were an engineer with design experience what I said would make perfect sense. If you have designed a working archetype then there isn’t any reason to keep redesigning a protein that has the same function. You would just use variants to support the alternative splicing requirements of the different organisms.
We won’t find the software because evolutionism doesn’t expect it and cannot explain is. I know it exists because we are unable to create life in a lab, from scratch. And yet, as you say, we know quite a bit about it along with all the chemistry and physics that apply
John Harshman,
If it is all genetics then it should be very easy to manipulate fish embryos with targeted mutagenesis and eventually get a fish-a-pod to develop.
That’s your claim. I have explained why it isn’t true. All we need are inherited markers. Do you have any idea what special creation entails or what we expect to see? It looks to me that all you have to go on is a prior belief that you have no way to test; or, more precisely, that you refuse to consider testing.
We have no reason to believe that separate creation would closely mimic what we expect from common descent. Since the data fit that expectation, that’s the conclusion we should draw. You can say that separate creation could be arranged to look like anything at all, and while that’s true, it merely removes creation from the bounds of science and makes the hypothetical creator look deceitful.
I see no reason to suppose that’s true. Let’s remember that nobody says modern fish are ancestral to tetrapods, so you would have to backtrack through hundreds of millions of years of evolution before you reached the point at which lineages diverged. That is in fact just where Axe went wrong. Nor is there any reason to suppose that everything that’s possible is also easy.
John Harshman,
You have no idea what to expect if Common Descent was true. You don’t know because there isn’t any theory. You need a way to validate your claim, that Common Descent can produce that pattern.
OK, great. You have just admitted that there is no way to objectively test Common Descent.
Nice own goal
Are you saying the creator is an engineer? Even granted that claim, what you propose isn’t what we see. Organisms are not composed of the same parts; parts that do identical jobs are different in all sorts of ways among species. Homology isn’t identity. And their differences are organized in a nested hierarchy, which moreover is the same nested hierarchy for different parts. Finally, homologous parts can serve radically different functions. It’s as if an engineer would make an airplane by twisting and stretching a lawnmower. Your analogy to engineering just doesn’t hold up under and serious examination.
Your argument for the existence of software is vacuous. You are incapable of articulating what this “software” is, even a little bit, or whether or how it might be inherited. Are you perchance a vitalist?
Are you acquainted with Russel’s teapot? Hypotheses that are carefully designed to be untestable are indeed untestable and can be ignored. That’s what your creationism is. Common descent fits the data better than any other testable hypothesis; therefore we accept it. You can accept creationism on the grounds that you really want to believe it, and as long as you make no appeal to evidence I’m happy to let you continue doing so. But you should stop bothering other people.