Richard Dawkins Gets "Expelled" by Ben Stein!

by Perry 365 Replies latest watchtower scandals

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  inrainbows

  Auld

  One might well use similar taxonomomical methods to speciate Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.

  No, one might not. If you were to draw the typical ranges of taxonomical features of the above groups in the manner of a Linn diagramm, the area of overlap would be very high and preclude speciation even if they were not living.

  Surely there is cause for speciation if one examines the social habits of each group during, let's say, the 400s to 800s AD.

  No there is not, as there is proof of interbreeding in the mentioned periods. There is no proof of interbreeding in Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls, a classic example of a ring species, but then you wouldn't know that.

  BSC is an example of science employing extreme bias in defining its terms so that it can be deemed correct.

  Explain

  There's "plenty there" alright, plenty of talk and plenty of eagerness to bolster Darwinist theory by whatever imaginative stretches may be employed to the task.

  Please, don't get all Daily Mail. 'Bolster'? Like it needs it? And as you demostrate, you need to know more before you can be quite so authoratative.

  There is nothing of any weight whatsoever when it comes to showing that one thing evolved FROM another thing significantly different in form and function, not using mere behavior or decoration to speciate.

  Okay, define what level of difference in form and function would satisfy you. I am very aware in addition to not knowing the off-side rule you may well move the goal posts.

  Define what would prove it to you. I get a sinking feeling nothing short of a giraffe popping out of an okapi's ass into your lap would do it.
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  AuldSoul

  inrainbows: It is also predicted by evolutionary theory. Did you know that?

  Of course I knew that. It was predicted by evolutionary theory and is now supported by defining what constitutes a species such that over 1,000 "species" of cichlid fish have been identified in a single lake!

  It seems quite dramatic until you remind yourself they are ALL cichlid fish, despite their many, many variations within species.

  Just because evolutionary theory predicts it does not mean evolutionary theory has met its burden of proof. Without being able to demonstrate the mechanics of one thing becoming another thing, I cannot credit extraspecial evolution as having been scientifically proved. I don't actively disbelieve it any more than atheists must actively disbelieve God. There is proof of micro evolution. There is no proof of macro evolution, there is only belief that it MUST have happened. Not as a terribly rare occurrence, at that.

  The response from dyed-in-the-wool evolutionists has consistently been, "It is happening all the time, it is just happening so incrementally that it escapes notice!" If this is true and has always been true, the incremental nature of speciation would be PLAINLY evident . . . in the fossil record. Unfortunately, it is not, which gave rise to several theories hopeful of explaining this glaring absence. If this constant process is a relatively new development and such speciation was more abrupt in the past than it is today, macro evolutionists will just have to wait for another abruption to prove their case to me, won't they?

  However, the Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gull are sufficiently different that they do not normally interbreed . . .

  Two distinct forms of Ensatina salamanders, differing dramatically in color, coexist in southern California and interbreed there only rarely.

  "Cannot" and "do not normally" or "only rarely" are vastly different things, are they not. In fact, one site you offered candidly admitted:

  Since we can learn so much from ring species, it is unfortunate that few examples are known. At least 23 cases have been proposed, but most of them are not such clear examples as the salamanders and warblers.

  The salamanders remained salamanders. The Greenish Warblers remained Greenish Warblers. They are not genetically incompatible with the other distinctive social group of the same species any more than a male member of an African pygmy tribe could not have successfully mated with a female the socially VERY distinct South American cultures Cortez encountered. Such a union would have been incredibly unlikely to be appealing to either party, for social and aesthetic reasons, but was not genetically impossible.

  In other words, the BEST examples you have produced are empty. We "can learn so much from" ring species that we already know from observing the poor interactivity between humans societies that are or were isolated from each other for long periods of time. Are the pygmy tribes human? If they refused to mate with whites would that be proof of speciation? Of course not.

  Respectfully,
  AuldSoul
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  AuldSoul

  There is no proof of interbreeding in Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls, a classic example of a ring species, but then you wouldn't know that.

  Oh, that is rich. Did you even read the sources you offered? They disagree directly with the statement you made here.

  Proof of a few instances of successful interbreeding or the absence thereof cannot possibly be the standard for speciation, can it?

  With Rapidly Declining Respect,
  AuldSoul
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  BurnTheShips

  There is no proof of interbreeding in Lesser Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls, a classic example of a ring species, but then you wouldn't know that.

  Wrong:

  http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/94/15/7768

  At the point of ring closure or overlap where two populationsestablish secondary contact they do not interbreed, or do so extremelyrarely; e.g., herring gull and lesser black-backed gull (104).A crossfostering experiment with these gulls showed that, as inDarwin's finches, misimprinted birds are capable of producingviable hybrids, i.e., once the premating isolating mechanism isbroken (104, 105).

  Some birds, such as parrots when raised exclusively with humans, imprint exclusively on humans and won't try to mate with their own kind at all. Is this speciation? Macroevolution? Or just bird psychology?

  Plumage of Herring Gull: , and plumage of Black-backed Gull: .

  Combined with the info that these two birds can interbreed makes me think that this is more an example of bird behavior and that a if GullB has sufficiently different plumage from GullA it doesn't match the GullB's built in mental image of what a fellow Gull is supposed to look like. But if the barrier is overcome, the offspring are viable, and meet many of the different definitions of what a species is.

  I don't think this is macroevolution. Micro? Yes. But not macro.

  Burn
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  serotonin_wraith

  There is no proof of macro evolution,

  http://www.edwardtbabinski.us/whales/evolution_of_whales/
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  Galileo

  Here are a couple of my favorite examples of common descent (macro-evolution, as creationists like to call it):

  Endogenous Retroviral (ERV) Insertions

  A retrovirus is a virus that uses RNA to store it's genetic information. The retrovirus than inserts itself into the host genome at random. These ERVs are generally species specific.

  The method used by ERVs to insert itself into it's host (known as "reverse transcriptase") is prone to transcription errors. Sometimes these errors will inactivate the ERV completely, rendering it harmless, and it remains exactly where it inserted itself into the host genome. If the inactivated ERV was inserted into a germ line cell, it is passed on to its offspring in exatly the same spot. So, if you have this ERV than any of your descendants created by this germ line cell would also have it, in the same spot, with the same mutation. We have many, many, many of these inactivated ERV's in our genetic code. The odds against two creatures having the same ERV insertion pattern just by chance is so high as to make it impossible: one in ten to the hundredth power.

  ERVs, therefore, are very useful for tracking ancestry. All humans have many of these ERVs in common, which is not surprising, as we all have a common ancestor. And, as you have probably guessed by now, humans and chimps also have at least a dozen of these ERVs in common as well. In fact, what we find is that ERV insertions track exactly with what evolution predicts: the more recent in time two species diverged from a common ancestor, th more ERVs that they share. The further back in time, the fewer ERVs they have in common. Here is a good paper that explains it well in laymans terms: http://www.darwinawards.com/science/retrovirus.html

  This is evidence so powerful as to virtually constitute proof, yet it is just one more in a mountain of evidence supporting evolution. Here's another:

  The Missing Human Chromosome

  Human and chimpanzee chromosomes are very similar. One striking difference, however, is that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than chimpanzees. Evolution predicted that two ancestral ape chromosomes must have fused together somewhere far back in our development. And eventually this prediction was found to be true, in the form of human chromosome two.

  Chromosome two is different than all other chromosomes. Normally chromosomes have one centromere (in the center) and two telomeres (one on each end). Chromosome two, unlkie any other, has remnants of a second centromere, and has an additional telomere sequence in the middle, exactly as would happen if two chromosomes fused at the ends. Additionally, it bears a near identical DNA sequence as two different chimpanzee chromosomes, if those two were combined together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_2_(human)
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  5go

  Back on topic.

  Notice Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed makes no attempt to explain ID at all and why ID deserves to be taught as science. It just states that ID isn't taught and those teaching it are persecuted. Also the idea of evolution has caused evil in the world. That is not the way to win minds over to your intellectual argument at all.
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  AuldSoul

  serotonin_wraith,

  From the site you linked to:

  Molecular data from DNA samples, indicate whales arose from artiodactyls, which include hippos, not mesonychids, and that hippos are in fact the closest living relatives to whales ...

  I am hypersensitive to certain "exit strategy" words due to my long history with a certain religion. Permit me to reword the statement and ask if you agree:

  Molecular data from DNA samples positively proves that whales share genetic similarities with artiodactyls; which include hippos, not mesonychids, and that hippos are in fact genetically the most similar non-extinct animals to whales ...

  Do you agree with that statement? If so, is there any other explanation that fits these facts apart from common ancestry? If so, is there any reason, apart from assumptive bias, for choosing common ancestry as the cause of the genetic similarities?

  Let's try that again.

  The remains of Pakicetus are closely linked to river channels, which suggest the creature spent part time around and perhaps in water. Subtle clues in the anatomy of Pakicetus cause scientists to declare the creature an early whale.

  The remains of Pakicetus are closely linked to river channels, which suggest the creature spent part time around and perhaps in water. Subtle clues in the anatomy of the now-extinct Pakicetus cause scientists to declare the creature structurally quite similar to whales.

  What is so cute is the pictures they draw to illustrate the similarity. It reminds me of this trait of humanity:

  Yes, it is very tempting for humans to compare things that look similar and group these things together, attributing characteristics and behaviors that have never been observed to be true. <sigh!> It is called "prejudice"; it is never absent a huge quantity of BIAS. The "IA" can be omitted from "BIAS" and you will have the best description of the scientific validity of resultant conclusions.

  —AuldSoul
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  Galileo

  Notice Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed makes no attempt to explain ID at all and why ID deserves to be taught as science.

  Indeed. For all that think that creationism is a scientific hypothesis, ask yourself this question: "What evidence would I accept that would disprove creationism?" If you cannot think of any, than it is not a scientific question. One important aspect of the scientific method is falsifiability. If you will accept no evidence as proof against it, than it isn't science. That doesn't in itself make it untrue, it just makes it an unscientific question. If it's not science, it doesn't belong in a science class.
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  inrainbows

  Good points about occasional interbreeding in commonly cited ring-species. Of course, mules can sometime breed too.

  The fact that a process takes place which means that interbreeding become vastly raregets ignored, and there doesn't seem to be any wish to consider the implications of such a process through real evolutionary time scales, i.e. that vastly rare might become none.

  No attempt to document the clear signs that genetic drift is limited that one would expect.

  And then of course the fundamental lack of trouserage both Creationism and it's cousin have; lack of theory. Forms of criticism than cannot assemble any form of theory themselves coherent enough to be subject to scientific testing or falsification.

  I'll wait on responding to any post after 17.11 as I've not read them yet, having pecked this out between work. And now it is home time.

  For now I'd love to know how this photo is explicable using the Creationist and ID hypotheses.

  (hint, dolphins don't have anal fins... well, not normally)

  

  Mmmm... this fits evolutinary theory.

  It does not fit Creationism or ID.

  Nor does this

  "True human tails range in length from about one inch to over 5 inches long (on a newborn baby), and they can move via voluntary striped muscle contractions in response to various emotional states."

  http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex1

  I'd also love to see someone fit the fauna of Australia, Madagasgar and New Zealand into an ID or Creationist format. Fits evolution like a glove. I suspect given that ring species was new to you guys that you may not grock me, but I can explain the question (obvious to anyone who's studied evolution) if need be.