The Debate Continues

To: DaveLoneRanger

Thanks, Dave. I will now present 3 major lines of evidence for evolution. When you see this (1) that is there to denote the passage. A reference will be posted at the bottom.

Evidence #1 The Fossil Record

When you start off with a 5 toed horse like animal, then higher up in the strata find a 4 toed horse like animal, then a 3 toed, then a single toed, what does that mean to you? The Geologic column is riddled with example after example of this. Here is the infamous horse series:

http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

Here are other examples:

Elephants
http://allelephants.com/allinfo/evol.php

Whales
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/lines_03

Titanothere
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/_0/evo_54

The Sea Sloths
http://laelaps.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/the-giant-swimming-sloths-of-south-america/

Why is the fossil record littered with sequences that just so happen to be in an order that makes them look like they evolved? I cannot make sense of it without evolution. In fact, I think anyone who saw these sequences would suggest evolution, had it not already been proposed so long ago.

Evidence #2 ERV’s

Another Major line of Evidence is the Endogenous retroviruses (ERV’s). About 8 percent of our genome is made up of these ERV’s(1). On a rare occasion a virus will insert itself into it’s host’s genome at random(2), and the host’s descendants will inherit this and have the virus in their genome. Our genome is 3 billion base pairs, so it is extremely unlikely that any creature would share the exact same virus in the exact same place in the genome. But yet humans and primates do have the same viruses in the same places in their genome.(3)

1. http://www.retrovirology.com/content/3/1/67
2. The Blue Lollipops show the regions that HIV has inserted:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/archive/1545-7885/2/8/figure/10.1371_journal.pbio.0020234.g001-L.jpg

Full article:
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020234
NOTE: When it says “distinct target site preference” it does not refer to one specific place, but rather a very wide range of places (the gene, the promoter of the gene).

3. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/96/18/10254

Evidence #3 Embryological Evidence

Now, the first thing I want to make perfectly clear is that I am NOT referring to Haeckel’s work nor to his long discarded theory. Ontogeny does not recapitalate Phylogeny, but there are some interesting similarities in development which I believe are best explained by evolution.

Mammal Kidneys

Mammal Embryos develop 3 sets of kidneys(1). The first, pronephros, is the same set found in primitive fish like Lampreys.(2)
After 3.5 weeks, the mammal embryo replaces it. The second set, the mesonephros, is the same set found in higher fish and amphibians. In human males it gives rise to urogenital structures, while in females the remnants are vestigial. The third set (Metanephros) is the set which develops and becomes the adults set of kidneys, and it is the same set found in mammals and birds.

Other Evidence

Snakes as well as Dolphins are known to develop legs as embryos, only to reabsorb them later. (3)

Whales Develop hair as embryos, only to discard it later (except for the nosehair) (4)

1. http://www.uoguelph.ca/zoology/devobio/210labs/kidney2.html
2. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9061539/pronephros
All Kidneys are listed here:
http://www.britannica.com/search?query=Mesonephros&ct=&searchSubmit.x=0&searchSubmit.y=0
3. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex3
4. http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/94_origin_of_whales_and_the_power_12_30_1899.asp

Thank you Dave, you now have the floor. : )
13 posted on 10/18/2007 11:30:45 PM EDT by AiGBusted

To: AiGBusted

Thanks, Ryan. Your post would have to clear at 11:30. I'll be reading, responding, rebutting and refuting, probably at least within 48 hours, probably sooner.
16 posted on 10/18/2007 11:33:47 PM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.")

To: AiGBusted

Good evening, Ryan. (Or morning, wherever you are.)

I’ve begun compiling a response, I hope to have it done by tomorrow, but I don’t know what the day may hold, and I’ve unexpectedly acquired several weighty but pleasant responsibilities in the past couple of days.

You’ve rather flippantly thrown out allusions to some rather complex and detailed issues such as whale evolution, which is why it may take a little while.

71 posted on 10/20/2007 1:52:58 AM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.")

To: AiGBusted; gobucks; mikeus_maximus; JudyB1938; isaiah55version11_0; Elsie; LiteKeeper; AndrewC; ...

When you start off with a 5 toed horse like animal, then higher up in the strata find a 4 toed horse like animal, then a 3 toed, then a single toed, what does that mean to you?

First, may I point out that you are assuming that the geologic strata is constant and accurately reflective of static dates. I do not consider this assumption to be sound. Second, you assume that the number of toes is an indication of sequence, as if the toes sprouted one-by-one, and finding them in ascending order indicates ordered evolution, which is also an unsound premise. But let's back up a little bit.

Whale evolution is one of the more incredible (literally, not credible) tenets of modern evolutionary theory. University of Michigan paleontologist Philip D. Gingerich was quoted in National Geographic as saying that whales are "so different from other warm-blooded, furry things that it's been a mystery both how they came to live in the sea and what ancestors they might have come from on land."

The number of changes required for a land-based mammal to metamorphosize into a whale present an astronomical range of difficulties. As suggested by Dr. David Dr. Berlinski, skin, breathing, lactation, eye, hearing and salivary functions must redesign themselves, as well as digestive and feeding habits. (Not to mention an entirely new, complex system of communication, which might be considered a tad more complex than, say, "moo".) Berlinski calculated somewhere around 50,000 interdependent changes had to take place for all of this to happen.

Now we come to another question. What did whales evolve from? Scientists still disagree over whether or not whales descended from mesonychians or artiodactyls.¹ Scientists going on grounds of morphology theorized descent from mesonychians. DNA and genetic techniques suggested the artiodactyls.

Scientists continue to disagree on this - in 2002, there were a couple of studies done that disagreed with each other.

The relationship between artiodactyls and cetaceans was recently addressed in two morphological/paleontological studies. The conclusions of these studies were inconsistent. Gingerich et al., in agreement with molecular results, concluded that cetaceans have their origin within Artiodactyla, whereas Thewissen et al. inferred that Artiodactyla and Cetacea were sister groups. Test of the latter phylogeny relative to the best mtg tree found the latter relationship as highly improbable. Although the morphological conclusions may initially seem incongruent, both might be correct if Archaeoceti is paraphyletic. Archaeocete paraphyly has been suggested and it is possible that the study by Thewissen et al. focused on taxa that do not form a monophyletic group together with extant cetaceans.²

Dr. Philip D. Gingerich, well-known paleontologist (he discovered Pakicetus) was convinced of the second theory about artiodactyls³, but Kenneth D. Rose, with the Program for Functional Anatomy and Evolution (Johns Hopkins), points out that there are substantial discrepancies with the theory. He said, "If cetacaeans belong to artiodactyls," he said, "then similarities in the cranial and dental morphologies of mesonychians and cetaceans must be the result of convergent evolution or must have been lost in artiodactyls. Well-preserved ankles of the earliest ancient whales are now needed to confirm that the traits seen in the new skeletons are indeed inherited from early artiodactyls and not a result of convergent evolution."⁴ As late as 2005, scientists were still questioning the serious question of whether or not Artiodactyla is paraphyletic (composed of some but not all members descending from a common ancestor). Scientists in the Proceedings from the National Academy of Science write:

Molecular comparisons indicate that Cetacea should be the modern sister group of hippos. This finding implies the existence of a fossil lineage linking cetaceans (first known in the early Eocene) to hippos (first known in the middle Miocene). The relationships of hippos within Artiodactyla are challenging, and the immediate affinities of Hippopotamidae have been studied by biologists for almost two centuries without resolution.⁵

The paper also notes that "the position of Ruminantia [cows and other hoofed animals with four stomachs] is a central question, still to be solved." In other words, scientists still don't have the a spine on which to hang all of these fossils they are trumpeting.

The entire chain of progression between whale species is that massive game of connect-the-dots again. Except, instead of the puppy dog or ice cream cones we drew in connect-the-dot activity books as children, these dots have vast white gaps between them, and the zig-zagging connections are a far cry from a complete picture, let alone one that makes sense. You may read other creationist responses/rebuttals regarding whale evolution in the following links:

A whale of a tale

Whale evolution? (Note that some evolutionists here on Free Republic have asserted that, since this was written, there have been more documented finds of Ambulocetus natans which validate the fossil line, and which Dr. Sarfati and Answers in Genesis have not addressed.)

The Overselling of Whale Evolution

A Whale Fantasy from National Geographic

Not at all like a whale - Problems with Pakicetus

Scientific Roadblocks to Whale Evolution (Published prior to scientists jumping the mesonychian bandwagon)

The world of whales

I do wish I could give the same treatment to your other examples, but since you only gave links, and since it seems our local evolutionist gallery is waiting with baited breath for a response, I fear that is not feasible if I wish to remain within the 48-hour estimation of mine, which some have somehow been twisted into a deadline of sorts, seemingly constituting a failure of mine to exceed. (I note that they demand evolution itself be given years to sort out their new finds, and the continual declaration that "real science takes time" and yet we observe an unwillingness to accord the same privilage to me.)

As I have demonstrated, scientists now believe whales came from artiodactyls, hoofed, or two-toed animals, which refutes your use of whales in the evidence.

I will be addressing further elements of Evidence #1, as well as #2 and 3 in the very-near future - please withhold a formal response until I am finished.

Regards,
-Dave
102 posted on 10/20/2007 3:24:05 PM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.")

To: AiGBusted

Elephants are another interesting story. Your own link is very ambiguous, and references both classification problems (shouldn't be too difficult if they fit neatly in evolution) as well as the unique structure for the elephant trunk. How did this trunk evolve? There are 40,000+ muscles involved, and it is useful for anything from ripping trees to blowing water to breathing under water to feeding itself. How and when and why did it evolve?

Elephant lungs are another very unique trait. According to scientists, elephant lungs are practically a physiological impossibility; "the differences in pressure exerted by the outside air and the deep water should cause the blood vessels in the lining of the lungs to burst." According to the same article, elephants have a lung structure unlike those of any other four-legged animal; no other mammal has that kind of lung structure.¹

There is very little information from the link you've given to judge the accuracy of dates or the nature of the finds supporting this supposed linkage of ancestry, which I already know to be flimsy anyway from other sources.

Please note that there is little disagreement among creationists about whether or not certain species descended from parent ancestors, and that this chain of descent likely did bring about changes. Therefore, mammoths, mastadons and so forth were likely members of the same kind. So while not accepting the ancient eons of time that evolutionists posit, nor that elephants came from extinct pig-like creatures, there is very little problem with accepting morphological differences in certain kinds through the years.

Here are some further articles addressing the idea of elephant evolution:

The confusion of elephant and mammoth classification

Scientific rebuttal to Talk.Origins' claims

Discovery Channel's Tell Tales Of Elephant Evolution - DarwinismWatch dissents from Discovery

The elephant kind
125 posted on 10/20/2007 10:35:43 PM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.") [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

To: AiGBusted

These titanotheres you've linked to, are rather obscure, and from the link you've given me, do not defy creationism in the slightest. Mere changes within a created kind are not incongruous with creationism, and the titanotheres example merely demonstrates changes (cause and reason unknown) for a horn changing length.

Horse evolution has been a pack of fun. Originally, scientists posited the idea of orthogenesis, meaning they all descended from one ancestor. Then they figured out that the evidence didn't match their textbooks, and (as they are wont to do) they had to scrap the old books and write new ones. The old theory was rather amusing, though. Different finds, out of order, scattered across different continents were somehow supposed to form a solid line of descent?

It's just another game of connect-the-dots with evolutionists. Don't take my word for it. Scientists themselves admit that, "while the overall picture of equid evolution is well known, the details are surprisingly poorly understood" noting that "no consensus on the number of equid species or even the number of lineages that existed" in the Americas.¹

Meanwhile, even TalkOrigins admits that "The fossil record does not show a gradual, linear progression from Hyracotherium (Eohippus) to Equus."²

Since it is one of special meaning to evolutionists, there's no shortage of creationist rebuttals, of which I list a few here:

The non-evolution of the horse

Horse non-sense

National Geographic Shoots Itself in the Foot — Again! (Scroll down)

What about the evolution of the horse?

Icons Still Standing (Jonathan Wells rings in)
132 posted on 10/20/2007 11:40:51 PM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.") [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

To: AiGBusted

That about wraps it up for Evidence #1. I will contact you privately about expectations of my next responses, to avoid the peanut gallery’s reactions.

Regards,
-Dave
136 posted on 10/20/2007 11:51:34 PM EDT by DaveLoneRanger ("Being normal is not necessarily a virtue. It rather denotes a lack of courage.")

Blue seems to be the color of links, so it’s a bad choice for text. You indicated that red would be for quoting opponents.

If you have no objection, I will copy arguments and responses over here without pinging anyone until a significant number of rounds have been completed. The other thread can remain a free for all.

But I’m not kidding you. I think it is useful to have a clean copy of the debate available, without snide comments from myself, or anyone else.

Hello Dave! You seem to have worked hard on your response, but I have a bone to pick with it. Almost all of your links are to True Origin, Answers in Genesis, and ICR, with precious few references to peer reviewed work. These organizations are KNOWN for deception, as both you and I know (you stated that AiG had made an error in their article on whales). If you and I are aware of such sloppiness, why cite it? I also found a quote mine by AiG while reading an article you linked:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v21/i3/horse.asp
Reference 21 is a quote mine:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/scadding.html

Recently My blog did an article on a quote mine from True Origin. The site owner was contacted, yet he was arrogant and would not admit wrong:
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/10/deception-of-trueorigin.html

ICR was caught claiming that new species had been seen forming:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html

(The link to the original article is given if you want to verify it for yourself).

There are many, many more cases of creationist deception on blog. Given that, I did not look through every link given, only at your objections. I numbered them so I could keep track and went through one by one.

Objection 1
you are assuming that the geologic strata is constant and accurately reflective of static dates

I am assuming that strata on the bottom of the geologic column are oldest and the ones on top are youngest (except in cases that geological activity has caused a change, which is apparently easy for geologists to detect.).

Objection 2
you assume that the number of toes is an indication of sequence, as if the toes sprouted one-by-one, and finding them in ascending order indicates ordered evolution

Yes, I am. There is simply no explanation for them to be in that order other than evolution. I have repeatedly asked you for an explantion of why they are in this order, and you have not given it.

Objection 3
Berlinski calculated somewhere around 50,000 interdependent changes had to take place for all of this to happen.

So? Sean Carrol, in his book The Making of the Fittest, calculated that a specific one point mutation would arise and spread 20-100 times over the course of 1 million years, in a population of ten thousand. That means that every single point mutation would arise multiple times, and spread if it were good, over the course of one million years (plus gene duplications and insertions). Whale evolution took many tens of millions of years, so I see no reason to call it impossible.

Objection 4
Scientists still disagree over whether or not whales descended from mesonychians or artiodactyls.

Artiodactyls are a sister clade to the Whale, both descended from Mesonychids.

“We start with Sinonyx, a wolf-sized mesonychid (a primitive ungulate from the order Condylarthra, which gave rise to artiodactyls, perissodactyls, proboscideans, and so on)”

from:
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/rncse_content/vol20/94_origin_of_whales_and_the_power_12_30_1899.asp

“For the first time, morphological evidence shows that artiodactyls are the closest relatives of the cetaceans,” Christian de Muizon of the Museum of Natural History in Paris writes in a commentary accompanying the Science report.

“Now I admit the possibility that hippos are a sideline of artiodactyls that might be closer to whales than any other living animals,” he remarks.

“In the last few years, 15 or 20 DNA studies have come out supporting this artiodactyl connection,” Gingerich notes. “Those weren’t taken very seriously, but this finding shows that they need to be. If the studies are done well, the DNA that animals carry in their bodies today gives us a better picture of the past than we might have thought it did.” He further asserts that although molecular techniques will never replace paleontology, “they will complement it and expand on what we can competently infer.”

from:
http://sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=000DF443-A772-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21

Objection 5
How did this trunk evolve?

I was on Richard Dawkins’ website the other day, reading his sample chapter from “Climbing Mt. Improbable” and he said he intended to discuss the evolution of the trunk in the book. Perhaps read it.

Objection 6
Elephant lungs are another very unique trait. (You imply they are too complex to evolve).

I would’ve thought that creationists would have learned something about the complexity argument from Michael Behe. Apparently not.

Objection 7
Horse fossils are scattered across continents

Wrong. Every fossil listed in this link was found in the U.S., mostly in the west and midwest:
http://chem.tufts.edu/science/evolution/HorseEvolution.htm

Objection 8
“no consensus on the number of equid species or even the number of lineages that existed” in the Americas.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see this as a real objection. Why would this affect evolution?

Objection 9
Mere changes within a created kind are not incongruous with creationism

I suppose that’s true. I’m assuming mammals and reptiles are of different kinds, here are some transtionals between them:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17361176&ordinalpos=394&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0014-3820%28196312%2917%3A4%3C431%3ATEOTMJ%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/220/4602/1151

Objection 10
Newer finds are contradicting the well-known and widely-held ideas about mountain formation.

Good for science!

Objection 11
What about “Big Bob” the T-Rex, which they found stretchy tissue in?

I addressed that here (and also cited sources):
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/10/dinosaur-blood-bs.html

Objection 12
We just saw how a few teeth have scientists ready to throw the human-ape equation back three million years.

3 million years is not much time in the grand scheme of things (4.5 billion years)

Objection 13
Scientists even had to throw the obscure “Little Foot” missing link out because of revised dating.

They did not “throw it out” but because of its place in the fossil record, it is not considered ancestral to humans, just an “offshoot” of the human lineage. To see what I mean, look here (it illustrates the same point of an offshoot):

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/vertpaleo/fhc/Stratmap1.htm

Objection 14
[Various Geologic Structures are] younger than previously thought.

None of the things you cite were calculated to be less than 10,000 years old. Thus, these things are still incongruent with young earth creationism.

Objection 15
Fossil Anomalies
Almost all the anomalies listed are pollen and spores. TO has given the explanation for this:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC341.html

There is also a geologist who has reviewed Woodmappe’s work:
http://westerngeologist.blogspot.com/2006/02/fossil-record.html

You also linked to some fossil fish that were found:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v402/n6757/abs/402042a0.html

I don’t see how this is a problem, because fish are known in the Cambrian.

Objection 16
Creationists see common design (in ERV’s).

ERV’s cause disease when they are active. They are viruses! That is hardly something that is designed. For more on homology, see:
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com/2007/10/homology-common-descent-or-common.html

Objection 17
“if I understand your argument correctly, the ERV would require existence in the entire alleged chain of descent from primate to human. According to a report in 2005, these retroviruses were inserted exogenously and independent of supposed human ancestors.”

Not true. The ERV’s do not have to be present in every single primate alive, because insertions can take place after the ape human split. From the article you site:

“The infections took place independently, and did not originate in a common ancestor of humans and apes. The event also took place between three and four million years ago, well after the separation of humans from apes.”

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/uow-rsa022705.php

Objection 18
How many times were we told the appendix was/is a useless vestigial leftover with no known function or purpose in humans?

We have a misunderstanding here. Vestigial does not mean totally useless. It means that has lost most or all of its original function. The appendix is homologous to the primate caecum, used for digesting cellulose. While ours may have some immunological function, it is still vestigial. For more, see:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/vestiges/appendix.html
http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11555

Objection 19
Scientists have found a function for the appendix

Not quite.

“In industrialized societies with good sanitation, this function may not be important, he and his colleagues suggest.”
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_56461.html

One Minor note to all the onlookers:

Dave’s nonresponse shouldn’t be noted as anything other than his abiding to our previously agreed upon rules. He has agreed to now present his 3 lines of evidence for creation. Likewise, I will make a rebuttal and he will get the final word (I am not to respond after that).

We may both write about it and comment on the debate in our blogs:

DaveLoneRanger
http://daveloneranger.blogspot.com/

Myself
http://aigbusted.blogspot.com

TalkOrigins is a junk propaganda site. I am surprised that the evos are not called on that all of the time.

But even there if you dig deep enough, they will allude to the falsehoods and fabrications of the evolutionist ideology. Just a little of hedging their bets I guess.

TalkOrigins is a junk propaganda site.

1. This thread is for DaveLoneRanger and AigBusted to post their exchanges without interruption from others. If you want to comment, do it on this thread instead: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1913314/posts

2. If you were able to identify anything actually wrong in the TalkOrigins links which AigBusted provided, you should have documented the errors (on the other thread), not just make a blanket condemnation of the source -- condemning the source without rebutting the material is one of the sleaziest forms of fallacy, the ad hominem fallacy.

3. If you've got the guts to actually attempt to substantiate your slur, I invite you to post for us (on the other thread) your three VERY BEST examples of things from the TalkOrigins.org website which support your characterization of that site. Then we'll have a look at your three best examples to see if they hold water or not, so as to evaluate the strength of your claim, and your credibility on this topic.

4. If you make the mistake of using Ashby Camp's attack on TalkOrigins, you're violating the challenge (because that contains more than three scattershot attacks at TalkOrigins), and setting yourself up for a fall, because Camp's an idiot. Nonetheless, if you want to plagiarize from him, select what you consider the three best examples from it, don't just fling his whole pile-o-garbage as a link.

I am surprised that the evos are not called on that all of the time.

TalkOrigins is seldom impugned because it is an extremely well researched and accurate site. Unfortunately, a number of anti-evolution activists foolishly try to attack the messenger instead of the material, as you have done here.

But even there if you dig deep enough, they will allude to the falsehoods and fabrications of the evolutionist ideology.

Gee, really? Name (on the other thread) your top three on *that* claim as well. This should be amusing.

Just a little of hedging their bets I guess.

Just a little sleazy innuendo and ad hominem without any specific examples given by you, I guess.

Whoa! you really come out with all barrels blazing there.

And I can see that you are passionate about TalkOrigins. Yes, TalkOrigins is a junk propaganda site.

So You do not like it so what, what are the consequences of that?

Regards

placemarker

All I was going to do was reference something in the new thread with an re: such and such, and then provide a link to the other thread where that point is addressed. Is that ok?

Yes, I am also asking everyone from both camps to settle down and let me and Dave duke it out till the bloody end.

You have an odd sense of ownership

If the thread was hijacked as you say, then it was because you were essentially a nonparticipant.