Posted on 05/23/2006 4:08:38 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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I'm sorry, but this can't possibly be true. Everyone knows that Haeckel guy was a fraud, so therefore embryology can never, ever, ever tell us anything at all about evolution. Or something.
LOL
"scientists say the gradual shrinkage of the whales' hind limbs over 15 million years was the result of slowly accumulated genetic changes that influenced the size of the limbs and that these changes happened sometime late in development, during the fetal period."
Then, the whales decided to make disingenuous films about guns at Columbine and leftist propaganda about 9/11.
A bunch of wristwatch parts tumbled in a clothes dryer for 35,000,000 years won't put themselves together into a wristwatch; not even if you run it for 100,000,000 years.
I don't believe it.
Now, I'm sure you know ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING about evolutionary theory - what it ACTUALLY is, how it works, the science behind it....or you wouldn't throw out the old stupid teleological argument.....which has been addressed hundreds of times.
No, you prefer to cling to your ignorance in hopes that it will buy you eternal salvation.
Hint: God doesn't like people who deny his wonders (Evolution being one of them).
I'm ALWAYS amazed when these folks think that MAN knows better than GOD. God set it up this way, all we have to do is live by the rules. Figuring out those rules is what science does. To deny obvious truths spread about you by the creator is blasphemous!
If certain genes turn off (or on) to effect some of these changes, isn't it reasonable to assume that there would be the occasional "throwback" that exhibited the properties of an earlier version?
Are they inferring that a creature's habits cause it to "evolve" to meet the preferred environment (whales lost their legs because they swam and legs were a hindrance) instead of having the changes occur, which would require the creature to either adapt or perish (whales lost their legs and had to become full-time swimmers because they couldn't get around on land)?
This evolution stuff gets so confusing sometimes - it seems that it can follow either the nature or nurture path and all findings are good because they give more credence to evolution even (or perhaps especially) if they seem to contradict the theory.
Must be a new creationist comic book being left at all the laundromats around the trailer parks. The old edition was "tornado in a junkyard." Now it's "wristwatch parts tumbled in a clothes dryer." Most impressive. It's good to see that the creationists are keeping up with the latest research.
"It's good to see that the creationists are keeping up with the latest research."
It's an excellent example of descent with modification.
I don't understand why, if whales evolved, we still have Sonic the Hedgehog today? < /luddite>
Depending on the mechanism of the gene regulation, it's possible. This is why humans are sometimes born with little tails.
Are they inferring that a creature's habits cause it to "evolve" to meet the preferred environment (whales lost their legs because they swam and legs were a hindrance) instead of having the changes occur, which would require the creature to either adapt or perish (whales lost their legs and had to become full-time swimmers because they couldn't get around on land)?
No, it is never accurate to say that a change occurred because the creature needed it. Evolution is not prescient. If a necessary beneficial mutation does not occur, the species simply goes extinct. The same mutation that caused these legs not to develop could happen in a land-dwelling whale ancestor as well. The difference is the land-dwelling ancestor can't manage without hind legs and would die, while the ocean-dwelling whale does better without its legs. By the time this change occurred, whales were already obligate marine creatures, with vestigial legs whose only utility is possibly as claspers (similar to sharks' claspers) for aid in mating. If the complete absence of hind legs is more beneficial, eventually that phenotype is likely to become the prominent phenotype.
It's more a question of, if you don't use your legs, does it matter if if you have a birth defect that causes them not to grow.
There are birth defects in humans where their limbs don't develop that's similar to what happened to the thalidomide babies in the '50's. If we were aquatic, we wouldn't need legs. And it would allow us to swim faster and easier, so it would likely be passed on to our offspring. No one would want to mate with the slowskys.
Yet you still have no alternate explanation.
I don't know if Sonic Hedgehog is a great name for a band, or an ice cream treat one would have with a SuperSONIC® Jalapeño Cheeseburger.
"tornado in a junkyard" was coined by Hoyle, and
Wickram(xxxx)...sorry I cannot remember how to spell
his name.
Both of them purported that they felt life was seeded
to earth from another extraterrestrial source, cuz of the "tornado in a junkyard making a 747" scenario
was unacceptable...Neither of them are creationists, they felt (from what I understood) that life had evolved on a different planet under different conditions than that found on earth.
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