Canadian fossil makes waves in Huckabee's presidential run

The Ottawa Citizen ^ | Friday, January 11, 2008 | Randy Boswell

[Alter Kaker]

You’re telling me that you can’t teach “scientific method”, and also delve into some questions that are more theoretical and transcend scientific method?

No. Teaching materials that "transcend [the] scientific method" defeats the whole purpose of having a science class in the first place. For science, process is everything. If you're teaching kids ideas that aren't subject to standard methods of scientific testing then you're not messing with their ability to understand science.

[Coyoteman]

You’re telling me that you can’t teach “scientific method”, and also delve into some questions that are more theoretical and transcend scientific method?

Transcend the scientific method?

You mean like magic, superstition, wishful thinking, old wives tales, folklore, what the stars foretell and what the neighbors think, omens, public opinion, astromancy, spells, Ouija boards, anecdotes, Da Vinci codes, tarot cards, sorcery, seances, sore bunions, black cats, divine revelation, table tipping, witch doctors, crystals and crystal balls, numerology, divination, faith healing, miracles, palm reading, the unguessable verdict of history, magic tea leaves, new age mumbo-jumbo, hoodoo, voodoo and all that other weird stuff?

Science is designed to debunk such nonsense, not to promote it.

[dinoparty]

You make it sound as if the whole purpose of having a science class is to brainwash kids into believing that there is no reality outside of what can be tested through the “standard methods”.

IMO, the scientific method is very useful and has led to many advances that have made our lives more pleasant — that is its main purpose.

However, to teach kids about fundamental issues (origins of the universe, eternity, life, etc.) through the scientific method exclusively fundamentally distorts reality.

[Ichneumon]

So let me get this straight.

That would be refreshing.

You want me to accept as fact that 375 million years ago this fish was in some stage of morphing into a land animal,

Yes, because that's what mountains of evidence, including extensive study of this fossil as well as thousands of other pieces of multiply independent cross-confirming lines of evidence, overwhelmingly indicates.

shedding its' scales

No, that most likely came later. Fossils of primitive basal amphibians, more derived than tiktaalik (such as Colosteids, Rhinesuchoids, Archegosauroids, Trematosauroids and Dissorophoids), still had scales.

and gaining some other covering,

See above. By the way, that "other covering" is called "skin", which fish already had, so when they later lost the scales, the amphibian clade didn't have to "gain" some "other" covering.

and necessarily going from a cold-blooded to a warm-blooded creature,

Are you under the bizarre impression that amphibians are warm-blooded? Or that all land-living vertebrates are "necessarily" warm-blooded? That's going to come as a big surprise to the reptiles and amphibians. Hint: the development of warm-blooded systems happened about a hundred million years after tiktaalik.

thereby leaving its' aquatic past.

Eventually, yes, but that was long after tiktaalik, with the rise of the non-amphibian descendant groups like reptiles.

And while I'm at it, that apostrophe you used doesn't belong in that word.

If all this is so then why are there still fish in the oceans? Why wouldn't they all evolve into something else?

Oh, puh-lease...

"If America split off from Britain, why is there still a Britain"?

"If dachshunds derived from other kinds of dogs, why are there still other kinds of dogs? Shouldn't they all have become dachshunds?"

Hint: As clearly explained in Darwin's Origin of Species (published in 1859, you seem to be a bit behind on your reading), and verified by enormous amounts of research in the ~150 years since, different ecological niches and different existing sets of traits in each species make for different evolutionary results, just as the fact that the British who colonized the Americas found their culture altered by their new opportunities and situation and resources, which is why they went on to form something like the United States and those left back in England didn't. This isn't rocket science.

Most fish thrive quite well in the sea. A few fish 350-ish million years ago, however, happened to be in a place where they could benefit more by visiting the land on occasion, *and* unlike many of the other extant fish species of the time, they had physical traits that gave them a "leg up" (almost literally) in being able to start taking steps (pun intended) onto the land -- they already had fins with fleshy muscular bases which were more practical for pushing themselves along than the ray-finned fishes.

Even today there are fish that are working on this same kind of dual lifestyle:

The Church of Darwin asks me to take almost everything on faith and forget using logic.

Gads, where do I start with *that* rant?

1. There is no "Church of Darwin". Such a thing exists only in the fantasies of the anti-evolutionists.

2. Nothing in evolutionary biology is to be taken "on faith", much less "everything", and no one "asks" you to do such a pointless thing. This is science, and taking things "on faith" is looked down on as a greatly inferior method of adopting conclusions. On the contrary, we expect supporting evidence, and expect it to be verifiable.

3. Rather than "take it on faith", you are expected to educate yourself on the subject, become familiar with the evidence, and read up on the research, in order to verify to your own satisfaction that the evidence does indeed support the conclusions. This is the part you have woefully failed at doing. Instead, you just want to go, "golly gosh gee, that don't make sense if I think about it for a full 2.5 seconds without being familiar with the actual dynamics of biological systems, it *must* be nothin' but hogwash!" Or if you don't want to actually come up to speed on the topic, at least have some awareness that you're likely to be woefully ill-equipped to have anything other than a silly, ignorant opinion on the topic, so you might want to think twice before opening your mouth and spreading misinformation while insulting those people who do actually understand the topic. Think how *you* feel when some Michael Moore wanabee bad-mouths conservatism without having the first clue what it really is about.

4. Rather than ask you to "forget using logic", in fact we ask that you actually take the time to apply some for a change, something you haven't bothered to do in this post. Go educate yourself more on how evolutionary processes work, how these findings have been verified experimentally, through field studies, and through rigorous mathematical analyses, then get a passing acquaintance with the history of life on Earth so that you no longer make goofy mistakes like thinking that amphibians must "necessarily" be warm-blooded and that if one fish was in a position to evolve into amphibian descendants then they all should have leaving the oceans empty (ROFL), then get familiar with the vast fossil evidence, then the even vaster DNA evidence, *then* you'll have something to actually connect logically instead of your current method of getting confused and then taking your bafflement as some sort of logical disproof of the field you so poorly understand...

Sorry, not for me.

Yes, it is clear that actually pondering this field of science is "not for you", as demonstrated by how little effort you have put into learning even the most very basic things about it (and the few things you do "know" appear to be wrong, if this post of yours is any indication, since you think that land animals are "necessarily" warm-blooded).

Tell you what, why don't you leave the critiquing of science to those who know something about it? I'm sure there's a football thread on which you can offer your deep insights.

Tell me, why is that almost no one would be foolish enough to try to rip into quantum mechanics or the theory of relativity without at least a few college-level courses of background on the topic, but just about everyone who has read one or two anti-evolution pamphlets feels qualified to use something that popped into their head during their lunch break to personally "disprove" 150 years of research results in evolutionary biology?

[dinoparty]

Yes, those things are so much more ridiculous than such assertions as: alternative universes, fourth and fifth dimensions, something being a particle and not a particle at the same time, eternity being explained as a circle, consciousness somehow being identical with chemical reactions, etc. etc.

/sarcasm off/

Yes, I did mean transcend. What, you think wisdom began with 20th century geeks? Try again.

[Alter Kaker]

You make it sound as if the whole purpose of having a science class is to brainwash kids into believing that there is no reality outside of what can be tested through the “standard methods”.

No, the whole purpose of having a science class is to teach kids the scientific method.

If we wanted to "brainwash kids" into believing there is no reality outside of the scientific method, then we would only have science class and not teach anything else. Obviously that's not the case. Teach history in history class, math in math class, religion in Sunday school and science in science class. What's so complicated about that?

[dinoparty]

It is a distinction without a difference, as you must be able to see. So its OK if the kids get out of their seat and walk to the next room for ID class after science class, or stay in the same room but have a bell go off separating classes, but its not OK to refer to them together as a single class?

[Ben Chad]

Tell you what, why don't you leave the critiquing of science to those who know something about it? I'm sure there's a football thread on which you can offer your deep insights.

slam dunk

[dinoparty]

But the volumes of uninformed pulp boneheadism written by modern scientists criticizing or mocking religion, the Bible, ancient philosophy, etc. are OK?

[fanfan]

No offence meant towards your beliefs, oldsalt, but Ichneumon, that was a great post.

Thank you.

[COBOL2Java]

The only fossil dogging the Huck would be Helen Thomas.

Well, with the discovery of Tiktaalik, at least we now know her direct ancestors.

[fanfan]

Well, with the discovery of Tiktaalik, at least we now know her direct ancestors.

OR

The fish thing has a nicer smile.

[oldsalt]

I suppose I could try to rebut your post #64, but since your nose is stuck up so high in the air this poor, uneducated, goofy unencumbered by facts Freeper will just have to say,”Have a nice day.”

[gondramB]

>>So let me get this straight. You want me to accept as fact that 375 million years ago this fish was in some stage of morphing into a land animal,shedding its’ scales and gaining some other covering,and necessarily going from a cold-blooded to a warm-blooded creature, thereby leaving its’ aquatic past.

If all this is so then why are there still fish in the oceans? Why wouldn’t they all evolve into something else?<<

As i understand it, the fish that evolved limbs were less successful predators forced into shallower waters but the armored top predator species of the day. In the dryer seasons it became advantageous to be able to survive in air for a while.

Other species that lost the conflict for the deep waters simply died off.

“Fish” as a whole didn’t evolve in land dwellers, various things happened to specific species.

[gondramB]

Apologies for the typos.

That should have read

>>less successful predators forced into shallower waters {by} the armored top predator species <<

[AndrewB]

72 posts to get a Helen Thomas pic on a thread with “fossil” in the title? What’s wrong with you people?

[fanfan]

72 posts to get a Helen Thomas pic on a thread with “fossil” in the title? What’s wrong with you people?

I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m a slacker.

I come from a family of slackers.

Have a good day, Mr. Strickland.

;-)

[Grig]

Whoa, 77 replies and nobody posted ‘Blame Canada’. Someone is asleep at the switch. :)

[fanfan]

;-)

It’s OK, I’m sure someone will get aroundtuit.

[valkyry1]

Just because the fish looks like that does not infer that it was evidence a creature transitioning through several generation from fish to salamander.

Much more likely it was a variant of Gar or other primitive scaly fish which had adapted to its environment.

Just like Ichneumon’s mud skippers, there is no indication that they ever went further in development than a fish that can exist and feed on a mud flat between tides, or that the crawling catfish now in Florida ever turned the spiny fins it crawls on into limbs, its external gills into internal lungs, yada yada yada.

Look at how wide and varied the Sharks & Rays are, but still a shark, or a ray.

Because the evolutionist ‘sees’ evolution and calls it science, does not make it so, PHD or not.