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It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann 5
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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geo wrote:If you had actually read the article, you’d know that some dinosaurs became very small first and it was that miniaturization likely conferred an advantage. Small size was only one of several adaptations that eventually led to the bird. This is absolutely supported by the fossil record. Indeed, dwarfism has occurred throughout evolutionary history, even in humans. This is well known and not controversial. You betray your ignorance of the subject.
Well evidently they had sufficient fossils to track this miniaturization process in the branch of theropod dinosaurs they believe became birds eventually. And since the article stated that the dinosaur snout evolved into a beak over millions of years they have the fossils of these creatures with intermediates between having snouts and beaks, No? What a shame. We'll just have to take their word for it then.
Sure there is dwarfism and gigantism but it's not usually the norm. It may that theropod dinosaurs did rapidly reduce in size but evolution has no foresight or goal they say.

It's not a problem that birds these dinosaurs are supposed to have evolved into appear millions of years earlier than them in the fossil record, and modern birds were flying over their heads while they were busy evolving into them?
geo wrote:What the article actually says is, “small changes in how genes are regulated likely drove both the initial creation of the beak, which evolved over millions of years, and the diverse shape of bird beaks, which can change over just a few generations.”

So it’s the shape of beaks that can change over just a few generations. This is evident even in Darwin’s finches. Not controversial, Flann.

Beaks are not that unusual in the animal kingdom. Beaks are present in a few invertebrates (e.g., cephalopods and some insects), some fishes and mammals, and all birds and turtles. It's not a great surprise that some dinosaurs were beaked.
It seemed like they were saying that snouts evolved into beaks. Fossil intermediates please? They got the miniaturization process fossils so why not these intermediate snout/beaks?

Finch beaks change shapes in populations based on types of food supplies,droughts etc. What does this mean? Those with the appropriate beaks survive and interbreed accentuating that trait but this can change again depending on conditions. Or maybe that trait is expressed more frequently in response to the environment but it must exist already in the genome to be expressed.
It's not a new trait.
geo wrote:It’s funny to me that Creationists persist in digging their heels in even as as paleontologists discover more and more feathered dinosaurs that only confirm the theory that birds evolved from dinosaur. Birds share many unique skeletal features with dinosaurs and there are even very small dinosaurs, such as Microraptor and Anchiornis, that evolved arm and leg feathers and eventually wings.
It's not just creationists but people like Quick and Ruben who think there are physiolgical differences in leg structures that imply theropod dinosaurs could not support the respiratory system that birds have.

Reptiles are cold blooded but birds warm blooded. They speculate again that some dinosaurs may not have been cold blooded.
You have to assume that if this was possible these theropod dinosaurs were warm blooded unlike the vast majority of reptiles.

And bats are mammals that fly yet there is not a single credible ancestor for bats and they are actually well represented in the fossil record, contrary to claims otherwise. By the way what and where are the ancestors of the dinosaurs in the fossil record?
geo wrote:As one of articles I previously linked discusses, a scientific theory must be refined in light of new evidence. It’s expected and necessary. Bird evolution is a fascinating area of science, an unfolding mystery. It’s too bad Creationists are too entrenched in their religious ideology to be able to see the wonders and mysteries of the natural world. As Sagan once said, “it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
It's a cleverly constructed theory for dinosaur to bird evolution but the crucial fossil evidence is missing. I would agree with Sagan but I'm not the one believing life constructed itself originally from chemicals, while everything we know tells us that this does not happen, but life alone generates life.

For convenience here are the top ten "nitpicks" http://www.discovery.org/a/24041
I'll leave at that.
Last edited by Flann 5 on Tue Sep 27, 2016 8:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann, Just FYI, I'm never going to read links from the Discovery Institute. The organization has no scientific credibility.

Quick and Reuben's paper, that challenges the dinosaurs-to-bird theory, is a fringe view that relies on the usual Intelligent Design tactics. I don't know if Quick and Reuben are IDers, but they are getting some attention with a paper that falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. As this British palentologist does in great detail.

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology ... dinosaurs/

The fact that you are personally skeptical about the evolution of dinosaurs to birds, or evolution generally, means absolutely nothing. There will always be fringe deniers, I suppose, who ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus because it doesn't fit with their worldview. Moreover, your continued campaign of misinformation related to evolution says absolutely nothing about your God. Even if you could prove absolutely that evolution is false, you still haven't made a case for Creationism. As such, the Creationist belief goes something like this: Any gap in the fossil record, however minor, proves that Earth was created 5000 years ago by god. It's fallacious thinking out of the gate.

Our knowledge of evolution has grown by leaps and bounds since Darwin first proposed the theory to the point that it is now undisputable fact. Stephen Novella, as usual, summarizes it so much better than I can.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... fferently/
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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geo wrote:Flann, Just FYI, I'm never going to read links from the Discovery Institute. The organization has no scientific credibility.

Quick and Reuben's paper, that challenges the dinosaurs-to-bird theory, is a fringe view that relies on the usual Intelligent Design tactics. I don't know if Quick and Reuben are IDers, but they are getting some attention with a paper that falls apart under any kind of scrutiny. As this British palentologist does in great detail.

http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology ... dinosaurs/
There is conflict among evolutionists about the birds evolved from dinosaurs contention. It still makes no sense to me that birds predate and modern birds are found alongside theropod dinosaurs who have yet to allegedly evolve into birds.

Sort of reminds of that country music ditty; "Im my own Grampaw."

You make a criticism of the discovery institute as having no scientific credibility. There are actually scientists working with them and in the article I linked arguments were frequently based on papers by scientists with no connection to the institute.

For example Michael Lynch's critique of natural selection was presented, and is based on scientific observation in relation to genetic drift and the difficulty of fixing new mutations in populations.
geo wrote:There will always be fringe deniers, I suppose, who ignore the overwhelming scientific consensus because it doesn't fit with their worldview.
There are scientists who dissent from neo-Darwinism and there does seem to be pressure to conform or say nothing if they are skeptical about it. It is currently the majority view.
geo wrote: Moreover, your continued campaign of misinformation related to evolution says absolutely nothing about your God.
Can you provide examples of misinformation I have presented on factual scientific matters? I have referenced creationist websites at times but even then it's to address specific scientific claims such as in reference to the fossil record and particular claimed links for fish to tetrapods like Tiktaalik for example.

Or more recently that modern birds existed alongside dinosaurs and even then I provided evolutionists corroborating this and though the scientist at Berkeley was commendably honest about this, it seemed almost like he was confessing a crime.

The point here is that creationist websites may refer to the age of the earth or the global flood. I happen to believe in the global flood and think that probably Genesis indicates a young earth,but my purpose when referencing these scientists is usually on some specific point connected with neo-Darwinism.

You know that the neo-Darwinian theory is expressed as a random unguided process which of course appeals to atheistic sensibilties as Dawkins never tires of telling us this, and it proves for him the delusory nature of belief in God.
Yes science disproves God, and the "appearance of design" is just an illusion that fooled all those theists.
geo wrote: Even if you could prove absolutely that evolution is false, you still haven't made a case for Creationism. As such, the Creationist belief goes something like this: Any gap in the fossil record, however minor, proves that Earth was created 5000 years ago by god. It's fallacious thinking out of the gate.
They aren't minor gaps though are they? The are large and systematic say the paleontologists. Curiously on the Scientific American article about how easy it is for genes to be controlled for changing snouts into beaks etc, it's all the more astonishing then that stasis is the most conspicuous aspect over all those millions of years.

There are all kinds of Christian theists with different views and I have my views. I certainly don't think life creating itself by somehow self arranging primordial chemicals could be called a scientifically supported view at all,or else observable, testable and repeatable means nothing.
geo wrote:Our knowledge of evolution has grown by leaps and bounds since Darwin first proposed the theory to the point that it is now undisputable fact. Stephen Novella, as usual, summarizes it so much better than I can.

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... fferently/
Actually Novella's article is filled with many assertions which are not supported by the evidence. He's been reading too much Dawkins I think.
The article I linked on the top ten problems with the theory refutes quite a lot of them. He even cites Ambulocetus even though Gingerich himself when caught 'fessed up and admitted he didn't think it was a "walking whale" any more. It could walk a lot better without those flippers tagged on. He's unlikely to get that info from Dawkins though.
Actually that was Rhodocetus but no matter, Ambulocetus is no whale and the ear bone which was the sole basis for saying it was a Cetecean lacks the features of the same bone found in whales and Dolphins. So both were dud 'links'. It's a joke that Ambulocetus was claimed to be a Cetacean.

You knock the I.D. group but Novella is a dyed in the wool philosophical materialist, and President of the New England skeptical society. How's that for impartial objectivity?
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann: It still makes no sense to me that birds predate and modern birds are found alongside theropod dinosaurs who have yet to allegedly evolve into birds.
This is a misconception a lot of people have. Birds did evolve from theropod dinosaurs. But not ALL theropod dinosaurs.

That is only one lineage led to the first basal birds, and from them sprouted all extant forms of bird. There's often a misconception that if birds came from dinosaurs, that means the T-rex evolved into the ostritch, the triceratops evolved into the canary, and the stegosaurus evolved into a finch. That's not the case.

Instead there was only one lineage of theropods which began shifting toward what we recognize as birds. This was a very long process which led to varying branches of the bird-like, but not yet bird theropods to diversify, flourish and become extinct right along with very NON bird-like theropod dinosaurs, as well as sauropods and ceratopcians.

Think of a family tree diagram with ancestors on top and descendants on bottom. Imagine super-imposing an hour glass shape on that family tree. on the top V of the hour glass are the species which evolved toward bird-like forms. at the pinch in the middle is the basal bird form from which all modern neo-gnaths and paleognaths emerged. everything in the lowe /\ are actual birds. All the millions of species outside of the hour glass were not part of the lineage which produced birds, and that would include nearly all dinosaurs.

If you have a question about this, ask it and i'll see if I can describe this more clearly.
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Are you pushing your own short comings on us and safely hating them from a distance?

Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

Young Earth Creationists take offense at the idea that we have a common heritage with other animals. Why is being the descendant of a mud golem any better?
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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johnson1010 wrote:Quote:
Flann: It still makes no sense to me that birds predate and modern birds are found alongside theropod dinosaurs who have yet to allegedly evolve into birds.




This is a misconception a lot of people have. Birds did evolve from theropod dinosaurs. But not ALL theropod dinosaurs.

That is only one lineage led to the first basal birds, and from them sprouted all extant forms of bird. There's often a misconception that if birds came from dinosaurs, that means the T-rex evolved into the ostritch, the triceratops evolved into the canary, and the stegosaurus evolved into a finch. That's not the case.

Instead there was only one lineage of theropods which began shifting toward what we recognize as birds. This was a very long process which led to varying branches of the bird-like, but not yet bird theropods to diversify, flourish and become extinct right along with very NON bird-like theropod dinosaurs, as well as sauropods and ceratopcians.
Hi Johnson. Unless I'm missing something badly here, it seems to be uncontroversial that birds appear in the fossil record before the particular theropod dinosaurs who are said to have evolved into birds.

Geo linked an article by a British paleontologist criticising Quick and Reuben's paper which appeared in the Journal of Morphology.

I'm not qualified on the finer points of the issues of anatomy and respiratory systems to make a judgement on this, but the criticism that they have a hidden agenda is nonsense, as they have no problem at all with the theory of evolution.
They think dinosaurs may have evolved from birds or that they both may have a common ancestor.

So the evidence for birds and other mammals existing alongside these dinosaurs including their supposed ancestors is significant.
http://www.genesispark.com/exhibits/trivia/birds/

Alonside this where D.n.a comparisons are made between animals thought to be closely related in evolutionary terms, in fact the evidence comes out in a confused and conflicting manner. This is true of birds also.

http://www.creationrevolution.com/new-e ... -dinosaurs

There seems to be a modern trend towards relying on cladistics to determine relationships between various animals. I've seen your
friend Aronra, on one youtube video, vociferously telling a creationist that not only is he descended from apes but that he literally is a monkey.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyKl7NMhw9E

In the same vein disciples of this school say that you are not just descended from fish but that you are a fish!

In fact the methodologies used for determining ancestries and links are themselves questionable.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/07/wh ... 02974.html


I provided a broad strokes critique of the latest shrinking dinosaurs evolving to birds paper. It sometimes appears that they are rigging their programs to get the results they are looking for. It is using a lot of data but some basic questions need to be asked.
http://www.crev.info/2014/08/shrink-a-d ... ke-a-bird/


In a way I'm making a broader point. The large systematic gaps in the fossil record do not support neo-Darwinian evolution.

If as the neo-Darwinists say 99.9% of all species went extinct and living species (.1% of total purported alltime species), are very well represented in the record while extinct species are considerably poorer representatively, how does this make sense at all?

A ratio of 10 to 1 of living to extinct species in the fossil record is given, but in reality if 99.9% of alltime historic species having gone extinct was remotely true, there should be way more extinct species found. And it should be possible particularly where there are large numbers of fossils like with fish and marine creatures, to see these transitions ancestries and intermediates in clear and large numbers.

Yet all we get are a handful of debatable intermediates and sometimes it's just that some minor trait in one fish is said to be "developed" in a later fish.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann 5 wrote:[Unless I'm missing something badly here, it seems to be uncontroversial that birds appear in the fossil record before the particular theropod dinosaurs who are said to have evolved into birds.
Yes, you are missing something badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_birds states "the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropoda dinosaurs named Paraves."
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann 5 wrote:You knock the I.D. group but Novella is a dyed in the wool philosophical materialist, and President of the New England skeptical society. How's that for impartial objectivity?
Yes, we should turn to a religious book (and religious propaganda) for our information on science. Makes perfect sense. And those who advocate critical thinking are always suspect in our mission for objective truth.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Robert Tulip wrote:Flann 5 wrote:
[Unless I'm missing something badly here, it seems to be uncontroversial that birds appear in the fossil record before the particular theropod dinosaurs who are said to have evolved into birds.




Yes, you are missing something badly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_birds states "the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropoda dinosaurs named Paraves."
When you look into it there are different and sometimes changing views on Paraves. Some think they are flightless birds others think they are dinosaurs. Besides there are bird tracks right at the earliest stages on standard dating when dinosaur fossils are found.

The whole use of cladistics which is so prevalent among evolutionists today has been questioned not only by creationists but also prominent well qualified evolutionists.

http://www.creation.com/cladistics
geo wrote:Flann 5 wrote:
You knock the I.D. group but Novella is a dyed in the wool philosophical materialist, and President of the New England skeptical society. How's that for impartial objectivity?



Yes, we should turn to a religious book (and religious propaganda) for our information on science. Makes perfect sense. And those who advocate critical thinking are always suspect.
There doesn't seem to me to be much critical thinking going into examining the theory among it's proponents. More like just so stories dressed up in obscure Latin names and scientific jargon.

http://www.crev.info/2015/04/convergent ... idespread/

What I'm saying is that the scientific evidence is contrary to the theory. There's a reason it is promoted so zealously which has less to do with science than prior commitment to philsophical materialism, which is dogmatically insisted on in the name of science.

The rapidly shrinking theropod dinosaurs who turned into little birds and took flight theory, gives the impression that evolution had a plan to get huge dinosaurs off the ground 50 million years down the line. But it has no plan or foresight they say. Even a swan can get airborne in seconds.

So what advantage would all the intervening shrinkings be until 50 millions years later when they supposedly got small enough to take off?

In fact Novella made quite a few assertions which are not supported by the evidence. You think it's good science,and I don't.What are Dawkin's assertions but propaganda that evolution disproves God and any design inference?

So we are not allowed to critique it because this might show that it's nonsense,and that there is at a minimum design requiring intelligence?

I'll drop the subject if it bothers you,but I think it does no harm to hear these critiques and not just say that the majority view must be right because a current majority of scientists say they are right. Other scientists disagree.
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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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The mammal lineage does thread it's way right through the time of dinosaurs, but those ancestors didn't all look like what we would call a mammal today. they were "mammal-like" in the same way that the precursor forms that lead to birds were "bird-like".
it seems to be uncontroversial that birds appear in the fossil record before the particular theropod dinosaurs who are said to have evolved into birds.
It looks like you might be talking about archaeopteryx here. Remember the family tree with the hour glass on it. Further up the hour glass, before the point in the middle representing the basal bird form there were a lot of animals which shared features that were "bird-like". But by far most of those species did not go on to evolve into birds. There was only one lineage that turned into actual birds, and although archaeopteryx is certainly a transitional species, it doesn't mean it must be one of the animals that was in the lineage that led to birds. It is one example of a wide range of animals which were trending toward that fulcrum in the hour glass, but again, only one species threaded that needle.

Also, archaeopteryx was definitely not a bird. it was bird-like. this is the classic example of a transitional species because it sports characteristics of both categorizations. Something creationists go to great lengths to ignore.

Yes, we are in fact categorically monkeys. But monkey is not a term which fully encompasses our description now. Just like we are categorically stegacephalian cordates (<-- "fish"). Though that term is too broad to narrow the focus down to us either.

lets put this in different terms.

If I tell you my vehicle is American made, that puts you in mind of a certain class of vehicles, but doesn't pin point what I'm driving. If I then tell you it's a 4 door car, you have a much better idea of what I'm talking about. But still you could take a guess now and eliminate the vast majority of vehicles on the road. I'm definitely not driving a Subaru forester. But you could still be really wrong. If you guessed a ford Taurus, that would be wrong. Each stipulation brings you closer to a full description of what I am driving.

American is broad and includes lots and lots of vehicles, even vehicles with really different features. This is equivalent to being a stegacephalian. Because humans are stegacephalian, but so are crocodiles, sheep and fish.

Then we can say 4 door car, but there are a lot of 4 door cars, just as there are a lot of different catharhinni (<-- monkeys). All monkeys, new world and old world, and all apes are all descended from the clade carharhinni, meaning they are all by definition and derivation monkeys. But a gorilla is different than a cappucin, and that difference can be categorized by further cladistics distinctions. Because while both are monkeys, gorillas are in a different class of monkey which has characteristics only shared by a few others, those diagnostic differences are what separate the "great apes" from "monkeys". Humans have further diagnostic traits (features shared by all in the group, but not shared by any outside the group) which make us a special class of ape, we are among the hominids. And there used to be several of those as well. But we are not just hominids, we are homo sapiens.

stegacephalian<...mammal...<primate...<monkey<ape<homo<sapien

American<...chevy<....4 door car<... impala

an impala IS an American car, just like a dodge ram. But calling it American doesn't describe the car well enough to pick it out of a parking lot. These classifications serve two functions. They describe the details, and in so doing put them into diagnostic groups. Comparing the diagnostic groups against the fossil record, developmental stages in embryo, and DNA comparisons cross-confirm heredity.

The rapidly shrinking theropod dinosaurs who turned into little birds and took flight theory, gives the impression that evolution had a plan to get huge dinosaurs off the ground 50 million years down the line. But it has no plan or foresight they say. Even a swan can get airborne in seconds.
Remember what the focus of my earlier post was: birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that doesn't mean brachiosaurus evolved into a bird! Brachiosaurus, triceratops and T-rex didn't evolve into birds by shrinking down. They went extinct.

About size differences: you could take an animal the size of compsognathus and grow or shrink it's proportions to astonishing degree, even within a relatively few generations. the progenitor of birds was probably an animal about the size of a small chicken, not a lumbering behemoth like allosaurus.

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Is this the virtue of faith? To never change your mind: especially when you should?

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Re: It's Inerrancy, Stupid

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Flann 5 wrote: In fact Novella made quite a few assertions which are not supported by the evidence. You think it's good science,and I don't.What are Dawkin's assertions but propaganda that evolution disproves God and any design inference?

So we are not allowed to critique it because this might show that it's nonsense,and that there is at a minimum design requiring intelligence?
Critique all you want, Flann. I have already pointed out how creationists use gaps in our knowledge to suggest there is something wrong with evolutionary theory. This shows only a lack of understanding of both evolution and the way science works. As such your "critiques" are all red herrings. By relying on Creationist literature for information on science demonstrates your lack of sincerity to learn the truth. By the way, johnson does a fantastic job addressing some of your misconceptions. I wonder why you don't respond.

My mother once said she didn't understand why evolution has to be in conflict with a belief in God. I agree. Why can't evolution be God's mechanism for creating diversity of life on earth? But Creationists (and IDers) have a very specific agenda to accommodate a literal interpretation of the Bible. Otherwise, there would be no conflict. There would be no reason to fight the very strong evidence that supports the evolution of whales and dinosaur-to-birds. The conflict is manufactured.

The atheist argument against God is separate from the argument for evolution, which is supported only by evidence. You can't prove God doesn't exist, only argue the point from lack of evidence. But everything we know about evolution stems from the evidence. I think it's important not to conflate the two.

Novella, a neurologist, is merely an excellent science communicator. He understands the science as well as anyone. What are these assertions he makes that are not supported by the evidence? But do me a favor and leave the Creationist links at home.
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